Age, Biography, and Wiki
Full Name: Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera
Birthdate: April 4, 1957
Birthplace: Badiraguato, Sinaloa, Mexico
Age: 68 years old (as of 2025)
Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán was born in a small village in Badiraguato, Sinaloa. His early life was marked by dropping out of school in the third grade to work for his father, eventually turning to marijuana cultivation at the age of 15. This early involvement in illegal activities laid the foundation for his future as a drug lord.
| Occupation | Criminals |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 4 April 1957 |
| Age | 68 Years |
| Birth Place | La Tuna, Badiraguato Municipality, Sinaloa, Mexico |
| Horoscope | Aries |
| Country | Mexico |
Height, Weight & Measurements
- Height: 5 ft 6 in (1.68 m)
- Weight: Not publicly disclosed
- Measurements: Not publicly disclosed
| Height | 168 cm |
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Dating & Relationship Status
El Chapo has been married multiple times, with his most recent marriage being to Emma Coronel Aispuro. However, his personal life has been overshadowed by his notorious career in drug trafficking.
He endured much physical abuse at the hands of his father, through whom he also entered the drug trade, helping him grow marijuana for local dealers during his early adulthood. Guzmán began working with Héctor Luis Palma Salazar by the late 1970s, one of the nation's rising drug lords. He helped Salazar map routes to move drugs through Sinaloa and into the United States. He later supervised logistics for Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, one of the nation's leading kingpins in the mid 1980s, but Guzmán founded his own cartel in 1988 after Félix's arrest.
His parents were Emilio Guzmán Bustillos and María Consuelo Loera Pérez. His paternal grandparents were Juan Guzmán and Otilia Bustillos, and his maternal grandparents were Ovidio Loera Cobret and Pomposa Pérez Uriarte. For many generations, his family lived at La Tuna. His father was officially a cattle rancher, as were most in the area where he grew up; according to some sources, however, he might also have been a gomero, an opium poppy farmer. He has two younger sisters named Armida and Bernarda and four younger brothers named Miguel Ángel, Aureliano, Arturo, and Emilio. He had three unnamed older brothers who reportedly died of natural causes when he was very young.
Few details are known about Guzmán's upbringing. As a child, he sold oranges and dropped out of school in third grade to work with his father and as a result is functionally illiterate. He was known for being a practical joker and enjoyed playing pranks on his friends and family when he was young. He was regularly beaten, and he sometimes fled to his maternal grandmother's house to escape such treatment. However, he stood up to his father to protect his younger siblings from being beaten. It is possible that Guzmán incurred his father's wrath for trying to stop him from beating them. His mother was his "foundation of emotional support". The nearest school to his home was about 100 km away, and he was taught by traveling teachers during his early years. The teachers stayed for a few months before moving to other areas. With few opportunities for employment in his hometown, he turned to the cultivation of opium poppy, a common practice among local residents. During harvest season, Guzmán and his brothers hiked the hills of Badiraguato to cut the bud of the poppy. Once the plant was stacked in kilos, his father sold the harvest to other suppliers in Culiacán and Guamúchil. He sold marijuana at commercial centers near the area while accompanied by Guzmán. His father spent most of the profits on liquor and women and often returned home with no money. Tired of his mismanagement, Guzmán cultivated his own marijuana plantation at age 15 with cousins Arturo, Alfredo, Carlos, and Héctor Beltrán Leyva, and he supported his family with his marijuana production.
When he was a teenager, his father kicked him out of the house, and he went to live with his grandfather. It was during his adolescence that Guzmán gained the nickname "El Chapo", Mexican slang for "shorty", for his 5 ft stature and stocky physique. Most people in Badiraguato worked in the poppy fields of the Sierra Madre Occidental for most of their lives, but Guzmán left his hometown in search of greater opportunities through his uncle Pedro Avilés Pérez, one of the pioneers of Mexican drug trafficking. He left Badiraguato in his twenties and joined organized crime.
When Félix Gallardo was arrested, the Tijuana corridor was handed over to the Arellano Félix brothers, Jesús Labra Áviles (alias "El Chuy"), and Javier Caro Payán (alias "El Doctor"), cousin of the former Guadalajara Cartel leader Rafael Caro Quintero. In fears of a coup, however, Caro Payán fled to Canada and was later arrested. Guzmán and the rest of the Sinaloa Cartel leaders consequently grew angry at the Arellano Félix clan about this. In 1989, Guzmán sent Armando López (alias "El Rayo"), one of his most trusted men, to speak with the Arellano Félix clan in Tijuana. Before he had a chance to speak face-to-face with them, López was killed by Ramón Arellano Félix. The corpse was disposed of in the outskirts of the city and the Tijuana Cartel ordered a hit on the remaining members of the López family to prevent future reprisals. That same year, the Arellano Félix brothers sent the Venezuelan drug trafficker Enrique Rafael Clavel Moreno to infiltrate Palma's family and seduce his wife Guadalupe Leija Serrano. After convincing her to withdraw US$7 million from one of Palma's bank accounts in San Diego, California, Clavel beheaded her and sent her head to Palma in a box. It was known as the first beheading linked to the drug trade in Mexico. Two weeks later, Clavel killed Palma's children, Héctor (aged 5) and Nataly (aged 4), by throwing them off a bridge in Venezuela. Palma retaliated by sending his men to kill Clavel while he was in prison. In 1991, Ramón killed another Sinaloa Cartel associate, Rigoberto Campos Salcido (alias "El Rigo"), and prompted bigger conflicts with Guzmán. In early 1992, a Tijuana Cartel-affiliated and San Diego-based gang known as Calle Treinta kidnapped six of Guzmán's men in Tijuana, tortured them to obtain information, and then shot them in the back of their heads. Their bodies were dumped on the outskirts of the city. Shortly after the attack, a car bomb exploded outside one of Guzmán's properties in Culiacán. No injuries were reported, but the drug lord became fully aware of the intended message.
After obtaining a passport with the fake name of Jorge Ramos Pérez, Guzmán was transported to the southern state of Chiapas by one of his trusted associates before leaving the country and settling in Guatemala on 4 June 1993. His plan was to move across Guatemala with his girlfriend María del Rocío del Villar Becerra and several of his bodyguards and settle in El Salvador. During his travel, Mexican and Guatemalan authorities were tracking his movements. Guzmán paid a Guatemalan military official US$1.2 million to allow him to hide south of the Mexican border. The unnamed official, however, passed information about Guzmán's whereabouts to law enforcement. On 9 June 1993, Guzmán was arrested by the Guatemalan Army at a hotel near Tapachula, close to the Guatemala–Mexico border. He was extradited to Mexico two days later aboard a military airplane, where he was immediately taken to the Federal Social Readaptation Center No. 1 (often referred to simply as "La Palma" or "Altiplano"), a maximum-security prison in Almoloya de Juárez, State of Mexico. He was sentenced to 20 years, nine months in prison on charges of drug trafficking, criminal association and bribery. Initially jailed at Federal Social Readaptation Center No. 1, on 22 November 1995, he was transferred to another maximum se
| Parents | |
| Husband | At least 4 Alejandrina María Salazar Hernández (m. 1977) Estela Peña (m. date unknown) Griselda López Pérez (m. mid-1980s) Emma Coronel Aispuro (m. 2 July 2007) |
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Net Worth and Salary
Net Worth: Estimated at around $1 billion at the height of his power.
Salary: The exact salary is not publicly disclosed, but his annual revenue from drug trafficking was estimated to range from $3 billion to $39 billion.
Guzmán oversaw operations whereby mass cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, and heroin were produced, smuggled into, and distributed throughout the United States and Europe, the world's largest users. He achieved this by pioneering the use of distribution cells and long-range tunnels near borders, which enabled him to export more drugs to the United States than any other trafficker in history. Guzmán's leadership of the cartel also brought immense wealth and power; Forbes ranked him as one of the most powerful people in the world between 2009 and 2013, while the Drug Enforcement Administration estimated that he matched the influence and wealth of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.
Career, Business, and Investments
El Chapo's career as a drug lord began in his early years, gradually building up to become the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. He was instrumental in smuggling vast quantities of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines, and marijuana across borders. His empire expanded beyond drug trafficking, incorporating shipping and transport interests.
El Chapo's rise to prominence was facilitated by his strategic exploitation of power vacuums in the drug trade, particularly after the decline of Colombian cartels. He was known for his cunning use of tunnels and ingenious methods to hide drugs in everyday items.
Social Network
El Chapo's social network consists mainly of his associates within the Sinaloa Cartel. However, he does not have a public social media presence due to his imprisonment and the illegal nature of his activities.
During the 1980s, the leading crime syndicate in Mexico was the Guadalajara Cartel, which was headed by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo (alias "El Padrino" or "The Godfather"), Rafael Caro Quintero, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo (alias "Don Neto"), Juan José Esparragoza Moreno (alias El Azul, "The Blue One") and others. In the 1970s, Guzmán first worked for the drug lord Héctor "El Güero" Palma by transporting drugs and overseeing their shipments from the Sierra Madre region to urban areas near the Mexico–U.S. border by aircraft. Since his initial steps in organized crime, Guzmán was ambitious and regularly pressed on his superiors to allow him to increase the share of narcotics that were smuggled across the border. He also favored a violent and serious approach when doing business; if any of his drug shipments were not on time, Guzmán would simply kill the smuggler himself by shooting him in the head. Those around him learned that cheating him or going with other competitors—even if they offered better prices—was unwise. The leaders of the Guadalajara Cartel liked Guzmán's business acumen, and in the early 1980s introduced him to Félix Gallardo, one of the major drug lords in Mexico at that time. Guzmán worked as a chauffeur for Félix Gallardo, before being put in charge of logistics, where Guzmán coordinated drug shipments from Colombia to Mexico by land, air, and sea. Palma ensured the deliveries arrived in the United States. Guzmán earned enough standing and began working for Félix Gallardo directly.
The night the cardinal was killed, Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari flew to Guadalajara and condemned the attack, stating it was "a criminal act" that targeted innocent civilians, but he did not give any indications of the involvement of organized crime. The death of Cardinal Posadas Ocampo, a high-profile religious figure, outraged the Mexican public, the Catholic Church, and many politicians. The government responded by carrying out a massive manhunt to arrest the people involved in the shootout, and offered about US$5 million bounties for each of them. Pictures of Guzmán's face, previously unknown to the public, started to appear in newspapers and television across Mexico. Fearing his capture, Guzmán fled to Tonalá, Jalisco, where he reportedly owned a ranch. The drug lord then fled to Mexico City and stayed at a hotel for about ten days. He met with one of his associates in an unknown location and handed him US$200 million to provide for his family in case of his absence. He gave that same amount to another of his employees to make sure the Sinaloa Cartel ran its day-to-day activities smoothly in case he was gone for some time.
Education
- Education Level: El Chapo dropped out of school in the third grade.
- Notable Institutions: None.
In summary, El Chapo's life has been defined by his involvement in the drug trade, which catapulted him to international fame and wealth. His current status is that of an imprisoned individual, serving a life sentence for his crimes.
