Editor's Note: This article was originally published on October 18, 2019 for the launch of the documentary ' El Chapo: dos rostros de un capo'.
Listen to the podcast of the documentary 'El Chapo: two faces of a capo' here:
(CNN Spanish) - The personal lineage of Joaquín el “Chapo” Guzmán is as extensive as his criminal enterprise. Although it is difficult to confirm the exact number of children, it is calculated that he would have had between 12 and 13 as a result of at least three marriages.
The origin of Guzmán goes back to the mountains of Sinaloa, Mexico, in the town of La Tuna, a town punished by misery. It was there that someone who was considered by the United States Government to be one of the most powerful and violent drug traffickers in the world was born. Doubt persists in many aspects of Guzmán's life, such as his date of birth: some reports point to December 25, 1954. Others, to April 4, 1957.
Son of María Consuelo Loera Pérez and Emilio Guzmán Bustillos, little is known about Guzmán's childhood. Security reports in both Mexico and the United States indicate that his father was involved in the cultivation of opium and marijuana and that this was one of Guzmán's first contacts with drug trafficking.
CNN spoke with Mónica Cano, who for a couple of months had meetings with Joaquín Guzmán in the Altiplano prison in Mexico, to build his psychological-criminal profile at the request of the government of that country. In these dialogues, Cano had the opportunity to learn about a more personal aspect of the drug trafficker. She says that Guzmán started selling bread and oranges that she obtained from a tree that was just outside her house in the town near La Tuna. With the first sale, Guzmán bought sandals for his brothers, who lived in extreme poverty. In addition to the lack of resources, suspicions of mistreatment were apparently added by his father, who also reportedly had problems with alcoholism. El Chapo assured Cano that she never wanted her children to experience the problems she suffered.
According to several experts on security issues, Guzmán always had a "weakness" for women. "He is a great seducer," María Idalia Gómez, a Mexican journalist who is an expert in security and drug trafficking, told CNN. El Chapo's first marriage would have been with María Alejandrina Salazar Hernández, born in July 1958. Three children were born from this link. Then came a second marriage to Griselda López Pérez born in August 1959. With her, she would have had 4 children: among them, Ovidio Guzmán López, who is known as “El Ratón” or “Ratón Nuevo”, 29 years old. He and his brother Joaquin were charged by the United States Department of Justice with conspiracy to distribute drugs in order to be shipped to the United States.
Both are reported to have imported large shipments of marijuana, methamphetamine, and cocaine into the American Union. This makes Ovidio an important and active piece, along with his other brother, Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, “El Chapito”, within the Sinaloa Cartel. As shown in the following diagram from the U.S. Treasury Department produced in 2012.
US Department of the Treasury
Iván Archivaldo, for his part, was arrested in 2005 in Mexico and accused of money laundering, but years later he was released when the evidence against him was dismissed. The United States government launched a lawsuit against him in 2013 in the Southern District of California (see court document).
His brother Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, another of El Chapo's sons, is on the DEA's most wanted list for drug-related crimes.
El Chapo's youngest daughters are 8-year-old twins born in the United States as a result of Guzmán's union with Emma Coronel, his third wife. All three were present on a couple of occasions during the trial that El Chapo faced in New York and in which he was convicted of 10 charges, including that of being the leader of a continuous criminal enterprise with a life sentence plus 30 years.
On the contrary, Alejandrina Gisselle, Guzmán's daughter, has tried to draw a line between her father and the illicit activities to which she was engaged. She recently launched a clothing brand named "El Chapo 701". 701 is her father's position on the Forbes Richest List in 2009.
Some versions of her alleged relationship with drug trafficking in Mexico have been written about Emma Coronel. During Guzmán's trial, she was identified by Dámaso López, alias “El Licenciado” —a witness from the Prosecutor's Office — as one of the coordinators of the escape of El Chapo from the Altiplano Prison in 2015. Until now, no evidence has been presented against her, Nor does it have an open process, in addition to the fact that she and her lawyers have dismissed the allegations. However, her father, and Guzmán's father-in-law, Inés Coronel Barreras, as well as Inés Omar Coronel Aispuro, Emma's brother and El Chapo's brother-in-law, are under arrest in Mexico accused of crimes against health, which is how drug trafficking is typified there. .
Joaquín Guzmán's inheritance to his family did not translate into money or property, but into arrests and crimes. His desire to provide a better life for his children was frustrated. Guzmán's family is marked by rupture, separation and a father who they will never see again. El Chapo is serving his sentence in the ADX Supermax maximum security prison in Colorado, where the only ones authorized to see him are his lawyers and the twins, on some special occasion. That is the destiny marked for Guzmán and his family.
Chapo GuzmánOvidio Guzmán