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El Chapo’s Early Days as a Budding Kingpin

NEW YORK — The jurors at the trial of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo, were treated last week to a cinematic narrative about the early years of the kingpin’s career, detailing his rise from a young upstart in the drug trade to a wealthy and successful narco-entrepreneur.

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By
Alan Feuer
and
Emily Palmer, New York Times

NEW YORK — The jurors at the trial of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo, were treated last week to a cinematic narrative about the early years of the kingpin’s career, detailing his rise from a young upstart in the drug trade to a wealthy and successful narco-entrepreneur.

Much of the tale was told by one of El Chapo’s first employees, Miguel Angel Martínez, who began working for the cartel as a pilot in 1987 before being promoted to running operations in Mexico City.

During four days last week as a government witness in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, Martínez described how the crime lord went from being a novice trafficker with a staff of only 25 people to earning hundreds of millions of dollars that he spent on extravagances like a fleet of private jets and a rural ranch with a zoo where guests could ride a train past crocodiles and bears.

But as with many drug-world relationships, the bond between the two men ultimately soured. In this case, that occurred in 1998, after Martínez was arrested.

The kingpin trusted Martínez so completely that he placed many of his real estate holdings in his name, including a house where one of his mistresses was living. Martínez, in custody and facing mounting legal fees, sold the home without permission.

Within months, a team of assassins confronted him in jail, stabbing him seven times, he said. He survived, but suffered another knife attack, he told the jury last week, before the authorities moved him to a different jail. Even there, however, he faced death threats.

One night as he slept in his cell, he recalled, he was awakened by a band outside that was playing one of Guzmán’s favorite songs, “Un Puño de Tierra.” Martínez considered it a message from Guzmán.

Early the next morning, an assassin appeared outside his cell. This would-be killer, he said, pointed a pistol at the jail guard’s head and demanded that he open the door. When the guard said that he did not have a key, the assassin tossed two hand grenades at the cell door. Martínez told the jury that he survived the explosions by shielding himself in the bathroom.

Early Days as a Smuggler

On Thursday, after Martínez was excused, the jury got a glimpse into Guzmán’s skills as a smuggler from his chief cocaine supplier, Colombian drug lord Juan Carlos Ramírez Abadía.

A leader of the North Valley drug cartel, Ramírez recalled how in 1990 Guzmán moved their first shared load of cocaine through Mexico to Los Angeles in less than a week — much faster, he noted, than the month it took most other Mexican traffickers.

He seemed especially impressed by Guzmán’s secret airstrip where his five planes landed after arriving from Colombia. The strip was not only well lighted, Ramírez said, but the Mexican ground crew also refueled planes quickly. The pilots were even given an early morning meal.

A team of Mexican federal police officers protected, and often took part in, the unloading of drugs, Ramírez said.

Known as Chupeta — slang for “lollipop” — Ramírez was one of the most astonishing figures to testify so far. Before his arrest in Brazil in 2007, he surgically altered his entire face — cheekbones, jaw, eyes, mouth, nose and ears — to avoid detection by the authorities. On the witness stand he looked like a character out of an old Dick Tracy comic. He testified, without explanation, in a pair of gloves and a zipped-up winter parka.

Ramírez is scheduled to return to court Monday. According to court papers filed over the weekend, he will likely testify about coded ledgers in which he recorded his drug deals with El Chapo.

Find The Perfect Architect

Guzman is widely known for building tunnels that he used to quickly export cocaine from Mexico to the United States. But the man who deserves much of the early credit for those tunnels is Felipe Corona, who devised a tunnel from Agua Prieta to Douglas, Arizona, that allowed Guzman to bring cocaine into the United States in less than 24 hours.

Corona also built bodegas and homes with “clavos,” or hidden compartments, to stash drugs and money.

In these homes, the main bedrooms contained switches hidden in the windows. By pressing the switch, the bed frame and floor would lift up to reveal a secure room with steps, a ladder and a “very big, very secure safe,” Martínez testified.

Martínez, who met Corona at Guzman’s house in 1987, saw some of these structures first hand and even lived in one of the houses.

Another such clavo, which he described as being underwater, included a cistern. Draining the water would reveal a ladder, which would be used to gain access into a special compartment.

Lessons in Money Laundering

On the stand, Martínez detailed how a cartel launders money:

— Use small bills, mostly $20s.

— Use “straw parties” (typically people who give up their ID for money so that drug money can be hidden in their name) or “front companies” (legitimate businesses that also deal in drugs in the background).

— Ignorance is bliss. Typically, most members of the cartel do not know where the money is hidden in order to avoid seizure if anyone is caught.

— Infiltrate “casas del cambio,” or money exchanges, which work with banks. Traffickers can get prepaid cards (with hundreds of dollars on it) which are easier to pack than cash.

Cocaine Lost at Sea

In the early 1990s one 10-ton shipment of cocaine, worth approximately $178 million, was lost at sea when the cartel tried to transport it during a hurricane, Martínez told jurors.

Guzmán deployed all four of his jets to look for the shipment but “we never heard from it again,” Martínez said. “Not the boat, or the crew or the drugs.”

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