Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks

Keefe’s next subject is Mexican drug cartel leader, Chapo Guzmán. Guzmán frequently evaded arrest and once escaped prison, becoming notorious for his longtime fugitive status. Guzmán benefitted from a network of informers within Mexican law enforcement, who frequently tipped him off to possible arrests. He was rarely seen in public and scrupulous about never sending any form of recoverable communication. His secrecy and ability to remain at large helped Guzmán acquire the stature of a folk hero. However, when several key figures in the cartel were incarcerated in 2013, the organization’s remaining leadership was forced to strategize more openly over the phone or by email. As Guzmán left his mountain retreat in Sinaloa for some business meetings, the elite strike force of Mexico’s Marine Corps, SEMAR, plotted to capture him.

The son of a “subsistence farmer who dabbled in the drug trade” (152), Guzmán quickly became a specialist in controlling cocaine smuggling routes. In a 1992 attempt to eliminate rivals, he staged a mass shooting at a nightclub and was nearly assassinated in turn at an airport in Guadalajara. The standoff there resulted in the death of a Catholic archbishop, and Guzmán was eventually arrested. He continued to run his business from prison, living lavishly. He staged an escape in 2001.

Keefe compares Sinaloa, Guzmán’s home turf, to Mafia-controlled areas of Italy: In the absence of reliable state services and a functioning economy, high-level drug traffickers have “invested and laundered their proceeds by buying hundreds of legitimate businesses” (154). Guzmán’s residences were high in the mountains, so encroaching law enforcement would be unable to avoid detection. His weaknesses were his interest in urban luxury and his young wife’s preference for cities: It seemed increasingly unlikely he would stay in Sinaloa indefinitely. In 2012, law enforcement was able to trace his BlackBerry, but Chapo thwarted the wiretap by handing the phone to a decoy and fleeing.

After this near-miss, Guzmán became especially careful about communication, sending text messages through “intermediaries” who conveyed them to the recipients, and ensuring that his BlackBerry “communicated with only one other device” (158). This forced law enforcement to locate these intermediaries to narrow search parameters. Keefe stresses that the success of this effort is due to the fact that Mexico’s elite Marines led the 2013 to 2014 search. The marines are veterans of combat against the cartels and collaborate less directly with the police—this ensures no security leaks and rapid deployment.

SEMAR used data from some 2013 arrests to track one of Guzmán’s close associates, a man called “The Nose,” whom they captured in the city of Culiacan. He quickly gave them Guzmán’s safe house location. The marines found the house had a massive steel door that was difficult to open, and when they finally succeed, the only evidence of Guzmán’s presence was the open entrance to an underground tunnel. Guzmán’s use of tunnels was one of the hallmarks in his professional career: He built massive tunnel networks between the US and Mexico to facilitate drug smuggling, and “since then, U.S. Intelligence has attributed no fewer than ninety border tunnels to the Sinaloa cartel” (161). Guzmán escaped successfully through this tunnel network, though the Marines gave chase. Keefe compares this to a similar scene from the famous political thriller The Third Man, where notorious criminal Harry Lime is chased through underground Berlin.

Keefe contextualizes this effort with Mexican domestic politics and the incoming administration of then-president Enrique Peña Nieto, who took office as the public was increasingly weary of violent crackdowns and US influence. Nieto promised more autonomy for his own government in the struggle with drug trafficking; but, having given himself rhetorical cover, he ended up using American support for the manhunt.

Unlike in previous efforts to capture Guzmán, the Marines continued the search after the initial underground escape. They occupied all the safe houses they found linked to the original tunnel network. They followed another lead to the resort town of Mazatlan, ultimately using the BlackBerry signal of another close associate to arrest El Chapo after a brief standoff. Keefe speculates that the surrender was rapid because SEMAR was known to use force, and Guzmán’s family was with him at the time.

The arrest, though not a seismic change in the nature of the narcotics trade, was a “powerful reassertion of the rule of law in Mexico” (168). A debate began about in which country Guzmán should face trial: Keefe notes that the overwhelming violence and trauma of the drug trade occurs in Mexico, though American fears of another escape or a reconstituted jailhouse drug empire were not out of the realm of possibility. Keefe also cites sources indicating that Guzmán’s arrest may well have happened because Mexican Marines tortured the truth out of his subordinates. Moreover, the future of the struggle with the cartels is rapidly shifting, as kidnapping has become more lucrative than narcotics.

Guzmán’s status as a folk hero and national legend has shaped the narrative around his arrest. Journalist Anabel Hernandez suggests that his original escape and prison drug empire were both carried out with the government’s full knowledge. Keefe closes the chapter with a song from the narcocorrido genre, folk music valorizing the drug trade. The singer assumes Guzmán’s point of view, assuring the listener that “it won’t be long before I return to La Tuna and become a fugitive again. It’s what the people want” (174). In the afterword, Keefe notes that El Chapo did escape again in 2015, but was recaptured the following year. He is now serving his sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado.