Who Is Escaped Mexican Drug Lord ‘El Chapo?'

Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman escaped prison for the second time Saturday night using advanced underground tunnels built underneath the prison— but who is this criminal mastermind? The barely literate drug lord oversaw the explosion of subterranean networks used to smuggle massive amounts of narcotics across the U.S. border. The son of a poor farmer, Guzman was born in Sinaloa and entered the local drug economy in the 1970s after dropping out of school. He rose gradually within the Sinaloa cartel, and in the early 1990s took control. In 1993, Guzman was arrested in Guatemala, and extradited to Mexico, where he was put in a maximum security prison. He continued to run the organization behind bars while maintaining a comfortable lifestyle, surrounded by associates and paid-off guards. In January 2001, some of them helped him slip out of the prison while hidden in a laundry cart.

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