Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera’s birth date is indeterminate – either the 25th December, 1954, or the 4th April, 1957, and known as “El Chapo” (“The Shorty”), is notorious as a powerful Mexican drug lord, who escaped from prison in 2015.
How rich is El Chapo? Conservative sources estimate that his associated cartel’s annual revenue could exceed $3 billion. In 2011, he was ranked as the tenth richest person in Mexico, his own personal wealth being placed at around the $1 billion mark.
Joaquín Guzmán Loera Net Worth $3 Billion
Exact details on this criminal kingpin are sketchy due to the nature of his chosen profession. He was born in La Tuna, Badiraguato, in Sinaloa, Mexico, to Emilio Guzman Bustillos, and Maria Consuelo Loera Perez. His family had lived in the town for generations, and were poor, so Guzman would help earn money by selling oranges, and completing other odd jobs. He attended school only until the third grade, having been taught up until that point by travelling teachers, so far was he from the nearest school building. Instead of studying, he worked with his father – who would frequently physically abuse him and his siblings – cultivating and harvesting opium poppy seeds.
At the age of fifteen, Guzman began to grow marijuana, and to support his family with its sale. He was nicknamed “El Chapo”, “The Shorty”, standing at five feet six inches tall. At age twenty, Guzman left his home town in search of a more lucrative existence, and began by taking a job working for the drug lord, Hector Luis Palma Salazar, transporting drugs near the United States border. It was at this time that he began to cultivate his reputation as ambitious and deadly – he would kill smugglers who did not keep a timely schedule.
Guzman worked his way up the ranks and quickly amassed wealth and respect within his criminal circles. After working as a lieutenant to Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, he became head of his own Sinaloa cartel in the 1980s, building it into a hugely powerful industry. In 1993, he was captured by police for the first time in Guatemala, and was sentenced to twenty years and nine months prison time for his drug trafficking. His incarceration did not stop his empire from thriving, and he managed to keep his operations running smoothly from inside, until he escaped in 2001.
Guzman was captured again, in Mazatlan, Mexico, on the 22nd of February, 2014, and placed in Altiplano prison. Carving a hole in his shower and crawling away through a tunnel, he escaped in 2015. He was then recaptured in January of 2016, following a shootout.
It is estimated that the Sinaloa cartel is responsible for twenty five per cent of all drugs that enter the US via Mexico. He charted in Forbes Magazine’s “Most Powerful People” list in 2013, ranking at number sixty seven, and in their “Billionaires” list in 2012. In 2013, he was branded Public Enemy Number One in the city of Chicago, the first person to receive that label since Al Capone in 1930, despite the fact that he had never visited the city. As of early 2017, Guzman is on trial on many indictments in New York City.
In his personal life, Guzman has had at least four wives that we know of; firstly Alejandrina María Salazar Hernández in 1977, then Estela Peña, Griselda López Pérez in the mid-1980s, and apparently is still married to Emma Coronel Aispuro (m. 2007). He has fathered at least ten children, several involved in the illegal drugs trade, and one – Edgar – was killed in a police operation in 2008.
