' El Chapo: The Most Infamous Drug Lord?

El Chapo: The Most Infamous Drug Lord Joaquin Guzmán, alias El Chapo, was the head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, the most dangerous and powerful cartel in the world. He was in charge for almost thirty years until he was arrested in January 2016. During his time in the cartel, he earned up to one billion dollars, making him one of world’s richest people.
El Chapo was born as Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera. His birthdate was either December 25, 1954 or April 4, 1957 (“Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman Loera” 2). He was born to Emilio Guzmán Bustillos and María Consuelo Loera Pérez in Badiraguato, Mexico (“Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman Fast Facts” 1). Due to his childhood filled with poverty and his abusive father, who was also in the drug trade, he was kicked out of his house by the time he reached his teens. With no formal education beyond the third grade, he started following in his father’s footsteps by growing marijuana for small amounts of money in his backyard.
By his twenties, he really seriously entered into the drug trade business. He earned the alias El Chapo, which means ‘shorty’ because of his height of 5’6” (“Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman Loera” 1). El Chapo started working for another young drug dealer named Héctor Luis Palma Salazar, who was rising in the drug world. Under him, El Chapo’s job was to oversee the movement of drugs into the U.S.
It had its origins in the northwest Pacific coast of Mexico, in the state of Sinaloa (Feuer and Goldstein 2). Two of the cartel’s biggest rivals are the Juarez cartel and the Los Zetas cartel. The Sinaloa cartel controls up to forty to sixty percent of all of Mexico’s drug trade (“Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman Fast Facts” 2). It stretches all the way from New York to Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is estimated that it operates in fifty countries and in seventeen Mexican states. The cartel earns three billion dollars annually, making it one of the most powerful drug cartels in the