Ovidio Guzmán López — El Chapo’s son — was born in Sinaloa Cartel country in northwestern Mexico, but raised a whole bunch of miles away from his drug-trafficking father within the lap of luxury.
As a boy, Ovidio — who was captured earlier this month by Mexican authorities, prompting a wave of cartel violence — was driven every morning by taxi to his elite Catholic boys’ school within the upscale Jardines del Pedregal neighborhood, one in every of Mexico City’s chicest enclaves.
But when his mother, Griselda López Perez, had wanted her youngest son to enter bourgeois society and pursue a post-secondary education, her plans were likely thwarted by her notorious husband.
Ovidio, who was captured in Sinaloa on Jan. 5, rose to form a part of the leadership of the cartel run by his father. Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán was captured by Mexican authorities in January 2016 and extradited to the US to face drug trafficking and murder charges.
By the point he was 11 years old in 2001, Ovidio — born to Griselda, El Chapo’s second wife and the mother of 4 of his reported 23 children — moved to Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, where his father had bribed prison guards and escaped from a maximum security prison. (El Chapo is currently serving a life sentence for murder and drug trafficking at a high-security prison in Colorado and recently pleaded with Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador to intervene over prison conditions which have allegedly left him “suffering.”)
By the point he turned 18, Ovidio had already joined the Sinaloa cartel on the behest of his father, working alongside his older brother Joaquin. Two of his half-brothers — Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar and Jésus Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, the sons of El Chapo’s first wife, Alejandrina Salazar Hernandez — had also been recruited into the cartel.
Together, they were generally known as Los Chapitos — the little Chapos.
“Ovidio isn’t the norm,” said Benjamin Smith, a professor of Latin American history on the University of Warwick and the creator of “The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade.” “Most cartel leaders want their kids to live a bourgeois lifestyle, to get an excellent education. They send them to Oxford or Harvard. They don’t want them to be a part of the family business.”
And for good reason. El Chapo’s son Edgar Guzmán López was killed in a mob shoot-out in Culiacan in May 2008 at just 21 years old. He left behind a widow — who went on to marry boxer Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. — and daughter, Frida Sofia Guzmán Muñoz, who’s now 17 and attempting to make it as a singer.
In 2021, the US State Department offered rewards of $5 million for information resulting in the capture of every of Los Chapitos.
Often called each El Raton (The Rat) or El Nuevo Raton (The Recent Rat), Ovidio, 32, is accused along together with his older brothers — of “overseeing roughly 11 methamphetamine labs within the state of Sinaloa, producing an estimated 3,000-5,000 kilos of methamphetamine per thirty days,” in line with a State Department press release.
Like Pablo Escobar, the Colombian cocaine kingpin who was killed by Colombian forces in 1993, Ovidio is keen on flashy cars and designer clothes, in line with Smith.
“Ovidio led an upper class life in Culiacan, and has never kept a low profile like a few of the leaders of the cartels,” Smith told The Post. “Everyone in Culiacan knew where he lived.”
Before his Jan. 5 capture by Mexican forces, Ovidio lived with girlfriend Adriana Meza Torres, and the 2 apparently had loads in common: She is the daughter of Raul Meza Ontiveros, a part of the old guard of the Sinaloa cartel. Her father, known by his underworld moniker M-6, was killed in a shoot-out in Sinaloa in 2007, in line with reports.
The glamorous Adriana’s reference to Ovidio her earned her the nickname of the brand new “Queen of the Sinaloa Cartel” after the drug-trafficking arrest of El Chapo’s current beauty-queen wife (and Ovidio’s stepmother), Emma Coronel Aispuro, in 2021.
Ovidio himself was first captured by Mexican National Guard forces on October 17, 2019, at his home in Culiacan. But when the Sinaloa cartel unleashed a wave of violence in town of 889,000 residents — burning cars and taking hostages — officials let him go. Eight people were killed and 16 were injured in what got here to be generally known as the “Culiacanazo,” or Black Thursday. The controversial decision to free Ovidio was backed by Mexico’s President Andres Manuel López Obrador, who has stressed social development as more necessary than a full-scale war on drugs since taking office in 2018.
“The officials who took this decision did well,” López Obrador said on the time.”The capture of a criminal isn’t price greater than people’s lives.”
On Jan. 9, 4 days before President Biden’s trip to Mexico for a North American leaders’ summit, authorities in Mexico recaptured Ovidio. The cartel unleashed one other wave of violence, which reportedly saw them shooting at industrial jets attempting to take off from Culiacan’s international airport and killing 30 people in town.
“The violence wasn’t a press release about Ovidio’s capture,” Smith told The Post. “If they really desired to go after the federal government and get him released, the cartel would shoot up government helicopters with missiles. As a substitute, the violence was more of a warning to the federal government to not go any further in attempting to capture other cartel members.”
For Smith, the dramatic capture was little greater than “a chunk of political theater” for the advantage of Biden. “It was just loads of noise because his capture does nothing for the drug trade except possibly to make drugs cheaper.”
Ovidio and his brothers can have a family legacy, but Smith said they’re ultimately “small nodes in an enormous network” that can proceed lucrative drug trafficking without them.
The siblings control different areas of the state where they charge a tax to drug producers, he said. “So now, together with his capture, you’ve just removed a layer of tax. Ovidio was essentially a tax man for the cartel.”
In keeping with Smith, Ovidio likely annoyed one in every of his competitors.
“They squealed on him, and the police knew pretty much where he was positioned in Sinaloa because he had an excessive amount of of a public profile and really a mini version of Escobar.”
Ovidio is currently being held in a federal prison in Mexico while his father languishes in a maximum security facility in Colorado.
El Chapo has repeatedly complained about his situation in US prisons.
“I actually have not seen the sunshine of day,” writes Guzman within the letter to the Mexican president, adding that within the six years that he has been in solitary confinement at Administrative Maximum Penitentiary in Florence he has not been taken outside to get sunlight. “I actually have suffered loads … from headaches, memory loss, muscle cramps, stress and depression.”
Meanwhile, in Mexico authorities are keeping an in depth eye on Ovidio in jail, said Smith, but that vigilance will likely ease up when he joins the final prison population.
“Then he’ll give you the chance to do what he desires to do,” said Smith, adding that it is probably going that Ovidio could proceed cartel operations from behind bars. “He’s not an enormous player, but he’s made to appear to be an enormous player because he’s been caught.”
Ovidio Guzmán López — El Chapo’s son — was born in Sinaloa Cartel country in northwestern Mexico, but raised a whole bunch of miles away from his drug-trafficking father within the lap of luxury.
As a boy, Ovidio — who was captured earlier this month by Mexican authorities, prompting a wave of cartel violence — was driven every morning by taxi to his elite Catholic boys’ school within the upscale Jardines del Pedregal neighborhood, one in every of Mexico City’s chicest enclaves.
But when his mother, Griselda López Perez, had wanted her youngest son to enter bourgeois society and pursue a post-secondary education, her plans were likely thwarted by her notorious husband.
Ovidio, who was captured in Sinaloa on Jan. 5, rose to form a part of the leadership of the cartel run by his father. Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán was captured by Mexican authorities in January 2016 and extradited to the US to face drug trafficking and murder charges.
By the point he was 11 years old in 2001, Ovidio — born to Griselda, El Chapo’s second wife and the mother of 4 of his reported 23 children — moved to Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, where his father had bribed prison guards and escaped from a maximum security prison. (El Chapo is currently serving a life sentence for murder and drug trafficking at a high-security prison in Colorado and recently pleaded with Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador to intervene over prison conditions which have allegedly left him “suffering.”)
By the point he turned 18, Ovidio had already joined the Sinaloa cartel on the behest of his father, working alongside his older brother Joaquin. Two of his half-brothers — Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar and Jésus Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, the sons of El Chapo’s first wife, Alejandrina Salazar Hernandez — had also been recruited into the cartel.
Together, they were generally known as Los Chapitos — the little Chapos.
“Ovidio isn’t the norm,” said Benjamin Smith, a professor of Latin American history on the University of Warwick and the creator of “The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade.” “Most cartel leaders want their kids to live a bourgeois lifestyle, to get an excellent education. They send them to Oxford or Harvard. They don’t want them to be a part of the family business.”
And for good reason. El Chapo’s son Edgar Guzmán López was killed in a mob shoot-out in Culiacan in May 2008 at just 21 years old. He left behind a widow — who went on to marry boxer Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. — and daughter, Frida Sofia Guzmán Muñoz, who’s now 17 and attempting to make it as a singer.
In 2021, the US State Department offered rewards of $5 million for information resulting in the capture of every of Los Chapitos.
Often called each El Raton (The Rat) or El Nuevo Raton (The Recent Rat), Ovidio, 32, is accused along together with his older brothers — of “overseeing roughly 11 methamphetamine labs within the state of Sinaloa, producing an estimated 3,000-5,000 kilos of methamphetamine per thirty days,” in line with a State Department press release.
Like Pablo Escobar, the Colombian cocaine kingpin who was killed by Colombian forces in 1993, Ovidio is keen on flashy cars and designer clothes, in line with Smith.
“Ovidio led an upper class life in Culiacan, and has never kept a low profile like a few of the leaders of the cartels,” Smith told The Post. “Everyone in Culiacan knew where he lived.”
Before his Jan. 5 capture by Mexican forces, Ovidio lived with girlfriend Adriana Meza Torres, and the 2 apparently had loads in common: She is the daughter of Raul Meza Ontiveros, a part of the old guard of the Sinaloa cartel. Her father, known by his underworld moniker M-6, was killed in a shoot-out in Sinaloa in 2007, in line with reports.
The glamorous Adriana’s reference to Ovidio her earned her the nickname of the brand new “Queen of the Sinaloa Cartel” after the drug-trafficking arrest of El Chapo’s current beauty-queen wife (and Ovidio’s stepmother), Emma Coronel Aispuro, in 2021.
Ovidio himself was first captured by Mexican National Guard forces on October 17, 2019, at his home in Culiacan. But when the Sinaloa cartel unleashed a wave of violence in town of 889,000 residents — burning cars and taking hostages — officials let him go. Eight people were killed and 16 were injured in what got here to be generally known as the “Culiacanazo,” or Black Thursday. The controversial decision to free Ovidio was backed by Mexico’s President Andres Manuel López Obrador, who has stressed social development as more necessary than a full-scale war on drugs since taking office in 2018.
“The officials who took this decision did well,” López Obrador said on the time.”The capture of a criminal isn’t price greater than people’s lives.”
On Jan. 9, 4 days before President Biden’s trip to Mexico for a North American leaders’ summit, authorities in Mexico recaptured Ovidio. The cartel unleashed one other wave of violence, which reportedly saw them shooting at industrial jets attempting to take off from Culiacan’s international airport and killing 30 people in town.
“The violence wasn’t a press release about Ovidio’s capture,” Smith told The Post. “If they really desired to go after the federal government and get him released, the cartel would shoot up government helicopters with missiles. As a substitute, the violence was more of a warning to the federal government to not go any further in attempting to capture other cartel members.”
For Smith, the dramatic capture was little greater than “a chunk of political theater” for the advantage of Biden. “It was just loads of noise because his capture does nothing for the drug trade except possibly to make drugs cheaper.”
Ovidio and his brothers can have a family legacy, but Smith said they’re ultimately “small nodes in an enormous network” that can proceed lucrative drug trafficking without them.
The siblings control different areas of the state where they charge a tax to drug producers, he said. “So now, together with his capture, you’ve just removed a layer of tax. Ovidio was essentially a tax man for the cartel.”
In keeping with Smith, Ovidio likely annoyed one in every of his competitors.
“They squealed on him, and the police knew pretty much where he was positioned in Sinaloa because he had an excessive amount of of a public profile and really a mini version of Escobar.”
Ovidio is currently being held in a federal prison in Mexico while his father languishes in a maximum security facility in Colorado.
El Chapo has repeatedly complained about his situation in US prisons.
“I actually have not seen the sunshine of day,” writes Guzman within the letter to the Mexican president, adding that within the six years that he has been in solitary confinement at Administrative Maximum Penitentiary in Florence he has not been taken outside to get sunlight. “I actually have suffered loads … from headaches, memory loss, muscle cramps, stress and depression.”
Meanwhile, in Mexico authorities are keeping an in depth eye on Ovidio in jail, said Smith, but that vigilance will likely ease up when he joins the final prison population.
“Then he’ll give you the chance to do what he desires to do,” said Smith, adding that it is probably going that Ovidio could proceed cartel operations from behind bars. “He’s not an enormous player, but he’s made to appear to be an enormous player because he’s been caught.”
