The Rise and Fall of El Chapo

THE RISE AND FALL OF EL CHAPO
Cartel Wars, Prison Escapes, and the Manhunt for the Sinaloa Kingpin

A farm boy from a hamlet called La Tuna grew into the most feared trafficker in the Western Hemisphere. This is the story of how he did it, and how it ended.

Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán built an empire on a tunnel hidden beneath a pool table, on trains loaded with tanker cars of vegetable oil, and on an encrypted phone network he trusted completely, right up until it betrayed him. He fought wars with the Tijuana, Gulf, and Juárez cartels. He turned on the Beltrán Leyva brothers who had stood beside him for twenty years. He buried a son, ordered the death of a nephew, and bribed his way to lobster dinners inside a maximum-security prison.

He escaped from that prison in a laundry cart in 2001. He escaped a second one through a tunnel cut beneath his own shower in 2015, dropping through the floor and racing a mile underground on the back of a motorcycle. Both times, the authorities said it could never happen again.

It did, and it ended the same way both times: capture, a courtroom, and a sentence that could not be bribed away.

Drawing on trial testimony, FBI surveillance records, and the intercepted messages that brought down his organization, this book follows Guzmán from a childhood shaped by soldiers and corrupt officials to a cell in Colorado where he now spends twenty-three hours a day. It traces the wars that killed thousands, the betrayals that turned allies into enemies, and the technology meant to protect him that instead delivered him to the FBI.

It also follows what came after him. His sons took over the cartel he built. Two have since pleaded guilty in American courts. His oldest partner was sentenced to life in 2026. The organization he created is now fighting a war against itself.

This is a complete, carefully researched account of one of the most consequential criminal careers in modern history, and of the trade that outlived the man who ran it.

Inside this book:

• The hidden tunnel that made him a kingpin, and the raid that destroyed it

• The killing of a cardinal and the manhunt that followed

• Two prison escapes, a laundry cart, and a tunnel under a shower floor

• The encrypted network and the informants who turned it against him

• The Brooklyn trial, the life sentence, and the cartel war that came after