How billionaire drug lord El Chapo became the ‘most feared man on the planet’ and broke out of prison TWICE after starting a drug war which left 34,000 dead
His criminal empire was so powerful that from 2009 to 2011, Forbes magazine rated El Chapo among the world's most powerful people
ONE of history's most feared drug lords, El Chapo has a reputation to rival that of legendary cocaine baron Pablo Escobar.
The leader of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán has been described as "the most ruthless, dangerous, and feared man on the planet" by the US government.
In 2003, El Chapo became the most powerful man in Mexico's criminal underworld, after the arrest of his rival Osiel Cárdenas Guillén.
Over the years that followed, El Chapo's cartel expanded far beyond the Sinaloa region of western Mexico the drug gang is named after, foraying deep into the United States.
The 5ft 6 drug baron cut a small figure, with El Chapo translating as "Shorty", but his influence was second to none.
His criminal empire was so powerful that from 2009 to 2013, Forbes magazine rated El Chapo among the world's most powerful people, peaking at 41st in 2009.
By 2014, El Chapo had exported more drugs to the United States than anyone else, amassing a net worth of approximately $1bn (£740m) through his narcotics empire.
Guzmán's reach even surpassed that of Pablo Escobar, the Colombian drug baron at the head of the feared Medellín cartel.
Now 62 and detained in America, El Chapo will feature in a new Netflix documentary next month, ahead of his "trial of the century", scheduled for April 2018.
But having escaped from Mexican prisons twice, El Chapo is no stranger to being caged.
He was first captured in 1993 in Guatemala, and was sentenced to prison in Mexico for 20 years, charged with murder and drug trafficking.
In 2001, El Chapo bribed his way out of the maximum-security prison, managing to evade capture by showering money on the people who lived on his turf.
With a $5m (£3.7m) bounty on his head, courtesy of the American government, Mexico's most-wanted man wasn't captured again until 2014, when he was arrested in the Mexican city of Mazatlán.
He escaped prison for the second time in July 2015 by tunnelling out to a construction site, before being recaptured by Mexican marines on 8 January 2016.
The drug lord has been a high-priority target for Mexican and American authorities throughout his criminal career.
Described by the US Drug Enforcement Agency as "the godfather of the drug world", El Chapo became locked in a bloody drug war with the Mexican army in 2006.
When Mexican President Felipe Calderòn took office in the same year, he vowed to crack down on the cartels which were holding the country to ransom.
But El Chapo's resistance dragged the army into a bloody turf battle, with 34,000 people dead in the resulting violence.
Even with El Chapo behind bars, the Sinaloa cartel is still a major headache for American law enforcement.
The feared gang, founded in the mid 1980s, is still the most active drug cartel involved in smuggling drugs to the United States.
Now a new Netflix documentary, , is set to offer a never-before-seen take on history's most famous drug lord, already the subject of Netflix's El Chapo.
Out on October 20, this new flick tells his story from a different perspective - that of Mexican actress, Kate del Castillo, who had been in touch with El Chapo in 2014 to talk about making a film about him.
Previously, we told the true story of Narcos’ Cali drug cartel, the multi-billion dollar drug gang which handled 90% of Europe’s cocaine and set death squads on their own people.
We also took you inside the warped world of Carlos Ledher, the Hitler-obsessed drug smuggler who turned on cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar.
