Where The Legend Of El Chapo Was Born

As Joaquín Guzmán finally faces justice, America’s war on drugs is also on the defense

- Ioan Grillo

WHEN JOAQUÍN “ EL CHAPO ” Guzmán was born in the rugged village of La Tuna in Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountains in 1957, the houses were made of mud, there was no electricity or running water and mules provided the only form of transport. His mother described how she and his father scraped by growing beans and corn on the rocky slopes to care for him and his 10 siblings. “ They were difficult times. We longed for something better,” Consuelo Loera, Guzmán’s 88-year-old mother, tells TIME as she looks out at the homes and farmsteads clinging to the sunsoaked hillside. Known as El Chapo (or Shorty) for his diminutive, stocky stature, Guzmán toiled as a child to help bring food to the table, hauling sacks of oranges around the hills to sell to peasant farmers for a few pesos. “He always fought for a better life,” Loera says, “even as a small boy.”

Six decades later, Guzmán languishes in New York City ’s highest security prison, accused of trafficking drugs worth $14 billion into the U.S.— one of the biggest narcotics cases in U.S. criminal histor y. His mother lives not in a muddy shack but in a sprawling brick compound with guards outside on quad bikes brandishing Kalashnikovs. “I just talked to him by telephone,” Loera says. “He is putting on a brave face. He has always been someone who acts as if everything is fine.”