‘Greatest Escapes With Arturo Castro’ Episode 1: El Chapo’s First Escape

Mental Floss is partnering with FilmNation and iHeartPodcasts to bring you the transcripts for Greatest Escapes, a podcast hosted by Arturo Castro about some of the wildest escape stories across history. In this episode, Diane Guerrero (Encanto, Doom Patrol) joins Arturo as he recounts the first grand escape by one of the most infamous crime lords of the 21st century: El Chapo.

1. Diane’s Escape
2. CHAPTER 1: A Clean Getaway
3. CHAPTER 2: Leaving Dad in the Dust
4. CHAPTER 3: One-Track Mind
5. CHAPTER 4: Cardinal Sin
6. CHAPTER 5: Readaptation Center
7. CHAPTER 6: The Head’s in the Clink, but the Legs Are Still Kicking
8. CHAPTER 7: Airing the Dirty Laundry
9. Recap and Outro
10. Credits

Arturo: Hey guys, welcome to Greatest Escapes, a show bringing you the wildest true escape stories of all time. This is our first episode and we are kicking it off in style. I’m Arturo Castro. I am an actor. Not that one. No, no, not the one you’re thinking about, the other one. Yeah. That’s me. 

So you might not be shocked to hear that I loved to stir the pot when I was younger, you know? And I’ve escaped some pretty crazy life-threatening situations.

I’ve always been drawn to the ingenuity that it takes to escape. So when I heard about some of the craziest escapes in history, I don’t know, I wanted to explore them in a deeper format while also having fun and maybe some laughs along the way.

Also, I don’t make this show on my own, right? No man is an island. So throughout the episodes you’ll hear my producers, a.k.a. my Overlords—please help me—Carl, Ben, and Tory!

For our story, we’re revisiting an early escape by one of the most infamous jailbreakers of the 21st century. And I’m joined by the powerful voice of the activist, the actress, the wonderful human being, Diane Guerrero.

Hey, so listener, what a treat we have for you today: our very own Colombian sensation, Ms. Diane Guerrero on the podcast. [Airhorn noises] Welcome!

Diane: [Airhorn noises]

Arturo: I love that. I love that sound.

Diane’s Escape

Arturo: Diane, tell me, what do you consider to be your greatest escape?

Diane: Oh my gosh. Well, this was actually really PG compared to something that I wanted to tell you about. Um …

Arturo: Tell me all about it. Go ahead.

Diane: OK. I’ll, I’ll tell you, I, I don’t consider myself a bad kid. You know what I mean?

Arturo: OK.

Diane: But I was heavily influenced by movies like Home Alone.

Arturo: Yes.

Diane: Or like basically where any little white kid was like doing mischief, I was like, that’s exactly what I wanna do for my career.

Arturo: Yes.

Diane: And my mom would take me to the mall a lot. This was like during Christmas time. And then, so like the malls were really decorated.

Arturo: This is in New Jersey?

Diane: This is in Boston.

Arturo: Boston, OK.

Diane: And so I was with my friend and we had drinks and we, the drinks were over and then all we had was ice. So we were like sucking on the ice and then we were kind of like, on the, on the balcony.

Arturo: OK.

Diane: And so, like

Arturo: How old are you at this point? Sorry.

Diane: Maybe like 7, 8.

Arturo: OK, OK. OK. Sorry. So a child child, got it.

Diane: Sorry. I was a child. Yeah. But I had ice in my mouth and I just, I happened to drop it and it, and it landed on someone’s head.

Arturo: Wow.

Diane: And um, and we were like, oh, sh*t. And we went, we, we went back and we just thought it was so funny. We just, we, we just kept doing it and, but we didn’t get in trouble. It was like innocent. It was fine. There was multiple days in the shopping mall, not just that day.

Arturo: Yeah.

Diane: So the next day we went, I thought it was a really great idea. Hey, what do you think about, instead of ice, I bring this bucket of toys. And here’s the thing, toys back in the day, these were like 1986 toys.

Arturo: [Laughs] Yeah they were made of steel. Yes, of course.

Diane: They’re made of steel, dude. This is like, this is like Big Bird on a car and that sh*t is heavy. And so we’re like, what if we throw these off of the second floor or whatever?

Arturo: [whispers] Oh my god …

Diane: And so we went and we started doing this and like it would hit people in the head and we thought it was hilarious and we’re like, gua gua gua gua! Whatever. All of a sudden we turn around and this guy goes, is this yours? This man shows me my big bird on a firetruck.

Arturo: No.

Diane: And I just freaking grab it and I was like: run. We ran. Oh, we didn’t know where our parents were. Thank God we passed by the Talbots. It’s a store that my mom was in. Anyway, I tell her the situation and she goes, you’re on your own. You have to run.

Arturo: [Laughs] I love it.

Diane: I swear to God. Oh yeah.

Arturo: What a Latina mother thing to do. It’s like, I didn’t throw the f***ing thing.

Diane: She was like, [Spanish].

Arturo: [Spanish]

Diane: [Spanish] … Exactly.

Diane: And so, um, yeah, and then we just booked it but the guy did say he was gonna call the cops.

Arturo: Guess what, Diane?

Diane: What?

Arturo: We have the guy here today…

Diane: No! [laughs]

Arturo: Come on out, motherf***er. Come on out. Let’s do this.

Diane: No…

Arturo: Also, we definitely played with like asbestos, like f***ing rubber duckies when we were children and, what … like, you know, abuelitas were like, yeah, that’ll be fine. It builds character.

Diane: Those things hurt.

Arturo: Yeah!

Diane: Those things are weapons.

Arturo: I know.

Diane: Yeah.

Arturo: Well, you know, and that’s, and I think some of that will be relevant to our story today. So if you’re ready, Diane …

Diane: I’m ready.

Arturo: Let’s escape…

CHAPTER 1: A Clean Getaway

Arturo: Hey, Ben Chugg, can you gimme some escape music? There we go.

Diane: Oh my God.

Arturo: As the minute hand on the wall climbed towards nine, Joaquin tapped on his cell gate. The year was 2001, and Joaquin was locked inside the maximum security prison in Jalisco, but it was finally the day he had planned for. It was his quinceañera!

Hey! Everybody … Just kidding. Just kidding. It was not. It was more dramatic than that.

Diane: Oh my God.

Arturo: He ran through all the steps in his head. The upcoming maneuvers necessary, the bribes handed off, the clock ticked and ticked and ticked. All of Joaquin’s tedious calculations for a grand escape accounted to this: laundry day.

Arturo: Today’s story is about a truly infamous character. We’ll get to laundry day in a second, but to start, let’s go back to the beginning.

CHAPTER 2: Leaving Dad in the Dust

Arturo: He was born in the spring of 1957 into a poor family in the rural community of La Tuna, a little town in the mountains of western Mexico, which was incidentally famous for its salmon.

Diane: Tuna!

Arturo: Tuna! No, it’s salmon goddamn it. It was so like ...

Diane: Oh, damnit.

Arturo: Imagine doing the pilgrimage and being like, do you guys have tuna? And they’re like, sorry,

Diane: We just have salmon.

Arturo: Just because our name is tuna, sir, does not mean, um, so the … so the nearest school, uh, to his home was about 60 miles away. And he was taught by traveling teachers during the early years.

Diane: OK.

Arturo: They would come stay for months, for a few months before moving on to other areas. So school was never that important to Joaquin and he quit after elementary school.

Diane: OK.

Arturo: But this did lead to stories about how bad his handwriting was. Were you, were you a good student, Diane? What was the subject that most tripped you?

Diane: Math.

Arturo: Math, OK.

Diane: Yeah, I wasn’t a good math student. It really, I mean, it got my armpits real drenched.

Arturo: Yeah. I was, it got, my armpits are flowing.

Diane: It scared me. I would hide. I would hide under like the desk, like—

Arturo: Oh my God.

Diane: Every time we had to do problems on the, on the pizzara or whatever it is,

Arturo: Uh huh. On the blackboard,

Diane: On the boar–, on the blackboard. Yeah. It was very scary for me.

Arturo: There is very little dread similar to that pit in your stomach when you don’t have your homework. Right?

Diane: Right, right.

Arturo: Or when you know you can’t f***ing do it. Whatever it is, it’s just like you don’t have it and they’re gonna ask for it.

Diane: Yeah.

Arturo: And it’s the day and your like, mouth is dry and like it’s just like there’s very little feelings like that.

Diane: You’re like peeing your pants, your mouth is dry, but you’re very wet in other areas.

Arturo: Yeah. Yeah. I was like, can you figure out the moisture? Like, yeah…

Diane: [laughs]

Arturo: The distribution is not working for me.

Diane: It’s not working.

Arturo: My handwriting is, is embarrassingly bad though. So I just tell people that it’s because I imitated my doctor father’s writing, which is not true. It just, my hands have always shaken for some reason.

Diane: Uh huh, you’re shaky guy.

Arturo: Maybe it’s … yeah I’m a shaky guy.

Diane: Shakes. We call him, we call him Shakes.

Arturo: Yeah. Jimmy Shakes over here. So for Joaquin, penmanship just didn’t matter that much. Because he had other work to do.

Diane: OK.

Arturo: It’s not like there were a lot of jobs in his hometown. La Tuna was a farming community, so that’s what Joaquin did. He would go up into the mountains and work on raising the area’s cash crops: opium poppies and marijuana plants. OK? Yeah.

Diane: Oh boy. Oh boy.

Arturo:  Yeah. So during harvest season, Joaquin and all of his brothers were busy hiking from farm to farm, cutting buds of one kind or another. Now, his past is a little hazy, but as the legend goes, Joaquin’s dad worked as a driver and the boys would cut and stack and their dad would drive the harvest to suppliers in Culiacán and Guamúchil.

Yeah, but there was one major problem with this arrangement: Joaquin’s dad was supposed to sell the crops and come back home with the money. But instead he would collect the money and immediately go on a f***ing bender.

Diane: Dude …

Arturo: Like drinks, sex, whatever crazy sh*t he felt like he was …

Diane: He dipped into the stash.

Arturo: He dipped into the stash. You never dip into your own stash.

Diane: The number one rule!

Arturo: Dude, don’t go into the—bro …

Diane: Don’t, don’t.

Arturo: You never talk about fight club. And you don’t go into your own stash, right? That’s such a classic story of the fields, sometimes where the father’s just like, I could use this. Not all the time I know, but like, I could use this to feed my family. Or there’s this saloon over here …

Diane: [laughs]

Arturo: … where, I don’t know why this is like, uh, the west.

Diane: There’s a saloon.

Arturo: Yeah, that’s right. They’re swinging doors.

Diane: It’s, it’s Mexico!

Arturo: Uh huh, OK.

Diane: It’s very western.

Arturo: Yeah. You never know. It’s not like it’s the 18 hundreds, but f*** it. Well, we’ll suspend in disbelief. Um, so. Obviously Joaquin was extremely tired of this year after year, right? He wanted more than just grinding poverty for himself and his family, which to be honest, fair.

Diane: Mm-hmm.

Arturo: So he saved up a little money until he could move away from home and start his own marijuana plantation. Oh, he’s an industrialist. Good for him.

Diane: Good for him.

Arturo: He set up his spot close to the bigger town of Badiraguato. It’s not like I can ask my producers if I’m pronouncing this correctly. I would love to.

Diane: Badiraguato?

Arturo: Ba-di-ra-guato.

Diane: Got it.

Arturo: Which sounds like a name of a sexy reggaeton dance, doesn’t it? Like…

Diane: For sure.

Arturo: [Singing] Uh! Badiraguato, uh! Tómalo, tómalo, yo no sé, yo no sé! Anyway, that was my … thank you for indulging me.

Diane: I love that.

Arturo: But the crazy thing was that this whole ‘start my own farm thing’ when he was only 15, that’s when it happened.

Diane: Wow.

Arturo: And he brung alo–, he brought along people in his family to help … brung, he brung along people in his family to help him get started.

Diane: A big mistake. Number one rule, you don’t talk about fight club. You don’t go into your own stash, and you don’t brung your own family to your business. It’s a big mistake!

Arturo: That’s right, the business. So by 20, he was married and he was starting to make some real money.

Diane: OK.

Arturo: Enough to support all of them.

Diane: Wow.

Arturo: And, and everybody said, oh my God Joaquincito [Spanish], I knew he was always gonna make something of himself and like, yeah, no you didn’t.

Diane: Of course.

Arturo: No you didn’t. But OK. One thing to know about Joaquin is he was pretty short. He only grew up to be five foot six and had kind of a stocky physique, and that’s what gave him his nickname. It was slang for “shorty.” Do you know who we’re talking about?

Diane: El Chapo?

Arturo: El Chapo, man! You got it.

Diane: Oh my God.

Ominous voice: El Chapo …

Diane: Oooh shivers down my spine!

Arturo: I know!

Diane: That was El Chapo?

Arturo: I don’t know who that, whose voice that was, but it was really into my soul. Yeah. Can you believe? So the nickname for short people is Chaparro. What, what is it in Colombia, do you guys have one?

Diane: Enano.

Arturo: Enano? OK, that makes sense.

Diane: Enano is like, like, like no–, like what is it? Uh…

Arturo: Little little gnome, like little garden gnome.

Diane: Like little gnome. Yeah. Enano.

Arturo: It’s so f***ed up that we are like, it’s like that’s what you’ll be known for your entire life if you grow up in Latin America, you get one nickname and that’s it for life.

Diane: You get one nickname.

Arturo: That’s it.

Diane: It’s, and it’s attributed to your phys, whatever’s …

Arturo: It’s always with what you can see. They’re like, yeah.

Diane: It’s so rude and it’s like, now we’re like in this phase of like, or we’re starting to, to, it’s like, don’t comment on my body, don’t like, talk about my physical attributes, but Latin America don’t care.

Arturo: Yeah. Latin America is here like, yeah. Yeah. If you’re dark, you’re the dark one. If you’re like light, you’re the light one.

Diane: You’re like Machete if you kill somebody one time with a machete.

Arturo: Can you believe you kill somebody one time and they call you Machete forever?

Diane: Just one …

Arturo: Like that’s unfair.

Diane: … you know what I mean?

Arturo: Like, gimme a chance.

CHAPTER 3: One-Track Mind

Arturo: So yes, you got him. El Chapo’s full name was Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera.

Diane: Oh my God.

Arturo: Like a soap opera star. And by, you know, and by the ’70s he had caught the attention of some really big players in Mexican cartels. I wanna say his name one more time, just for the f*** of it. Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera. I feel like that’s like, there’s a certain university in Guatemala where if you’re from there, you tend to announce every one of your names

Diane: Uh huh.

Arturo: And it’s like by name number seven, you’re like, I get it. I know where you went to school.

Diane: Right, right.

Arturo: Uh huh [Spanish]. And I’m like, OK. Well thank you.

Diane: What’s your full name?

Arturo: Jose Arturo Castro Ruiz. Yeah.

Diane: You also have like five names.

Arturo: Yeah What is your name?

Diane: Diane Guerrero?

Arturo: No, there’s gotta be something.

Diane: No, te lo juro, I don’t have a second name. I guess my mom, my mom’s name is Becerra.

Arturo: OK, Diane Guerrero Becerra.

Diane: Diane Guerrero Becerra. Si.

Arturo: I expect you by the end of this podcast to start hyphenating that sh*t. OK?

Diane: I know.

Arturo: I do wanna unpack something. Did you ever consider changing your name to something less Latino when you were starting out?

Diane: No. You know why? I was always really proud of the name Guerrero and it was my dad’s name.

Arturo: By the way it means “warrior” in Spanish, you guys.

Diane: Yeah. It’s really what, like I felt inside of like who I was and I really wanted to honor my father.

Arturo: A hundred percent. I considered it for a brief second just because I’m Jose Arturo Castro, you know? And like I got like the first, when I first moved to the States, people couldn’t really pronounce Arturo. And I was like, f***, then I have to change it. And then I met this director called Anje Karkovskis, and he is like, he’s like, kid, if they can say my name, they can say your name.

Diane: Exactly, exactly.

Arturo: And I was like f*** it, you know? And I’ve been like this ever since, you know?

Diane: Yeah. What, what name did you, what name did you consider?

Arturo: You don’t want to know, please don’t f***ing make me do this.

Diane: Do share, do.

Arturo: Don’t, don’t make me do this in front of my FilmNation buddies. You know, they, they …

Diane: Come on, Billy!

Carl: Diane, Get ‘em, get ‘em Diane.

Arturo: Fine, fine, fine. So it was gonna be, f***, it was gonna be Joe D’sant. Jo, Joseph D’sant with an apostrophe.

Diane: Joseph D’sant?

Arturo: Yes. Let me walk you through this. Yes. Let me walk you through this. OK?

Diane: OK.

Arturo: So my first name’s Jose, and I was like, Joseph—f***ing Easy. And then my mother’s maiden name is Ruiz Santizo. And I was like, that’s it. I’m just, instead of, the, like, D-E I’m gonna do like hyphenated D and then it’s gonna be D’sant.

Diane: No …

Arturo: I’m gonna leave now. But thank you guys so much for having me! Oh my God. FilmNation, this is great.

Carl: Diane, you’re the new host of the podcast.

Diane: This is my podcast now. Get used to it, Joseph!

[Gong sound]

Arturo: The gong? You gonged me out, Ben? Wow.

Diane: I’m glad, I’m glad you kept, I’m glad you kept Arturo.

Arturo: Thank you. Joe D’sant is leaving the building.

Arturo: So after a little while, he wasn’t working for himself anymore. No, no, no. Instead El Chapo was employed by the drug lord Héctor ‘El Güero’ Palma. And El Chapo was entrusted with the difficult stuff, right? He transported drugs and supervised shipments from the Sierra Madre region to cities on the U.S. and Mexico border. And El Chapo was super ambitious. The little guy, oh my god, you know [cute sounds].

Diane: Little babes.

Arturo: Just wanna pinch him if he wasn’t such a f***ing psycho. Um, the story goes that he was always pushing for more responsibility.

Diane: Right.

Arturo: Over and over, he tried to get their, his bosses to give him more responsibility, bigger shipments and a bigger share of their business, right? In fact, one story says that he basically never talked about anything else.

Tory: That Chapo? He’s always talking about drug business, wherever he is with whatever people he is with, he’s talking about drugs!

Arturo: Is, is this an Italian Mexican dude? Uh, Tory? Or where’s he, where’s he from?

Tory: My name’s Joe D’sant. OK? Just gimme a break here!

Diane: Oh, sh*t. Joseph D’sant!

Arturo: Oh my God. God, I had that f***ing coming. Tory, our producer, everybody. Have you ever gotten so obsessed with one particular thing that you start to annoy your family and friends because you can’t talk about anything else?

Diane: Um, the Fresh Prince of Bel Air song, I just couldn’t stop singing it.

Arturo: No.

Diane: Yeah, yeah. For a, for a while. I just, I wish …

Arturo: For about 15 years.

Diane: I don’t, yeah, exactly. Exactly. I still do it to this day, but there was like definitely a one week where I just kind of like became obsessed.

Arturo: Yeah.

Diane: I just was like, yo, I can rap now.

Arturo: Yeah, no.

Diane: So like, I got really excited about that

Arturo: You got into a little fight and your mom got scared, you know?

Diane: Yeah. Moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel Air.

Arturo: Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Joe D’sant is gonna come out.

Diane: I whistle for a cat and when it came near. Sorry. But El Chapo was like this, he was like, he couldn’t stop talking about the business.

Arturo: Yeah, let’s get back to El Chapo. So on November 1984, brought a little shake-up to the business. So the Mexican military got a hot tip from an inside man. He got the hot goss, right, the el chisme, and they raided a large marijuana plantation owned by the Guadalajara cartel, known as Rancho Buffalo.

So in 1985, the cartel figured out who the snitch was, and killed them, cause that’s what these mass murdering f***heads tend to do. So after that raid, Mexico responded by carrying out a massive manhunt for those involved in the incident.

Diane: OK.

Arturo: And they swept up tons of cartel players. So with the leaders in the business arrested or on the run, El Chapo saw an opportunity. The feds were smashing up cartel operations and they were leaving a vacuum behind, a space that El Chapo could fill, a very tiny, tiny Chapo-filled space.

So, one of the imprisoned cartel leaders called for a summit in Acapulco a few years later, and at the meeting El Chapo and others who had dodged the raid discussed the future of Mexico’s drug trafficking.

Diane: OK.

Arturo: They agreed to divide up the territory.

Diane: They rented like a huge spa. Like, a whole, like … hotel.

Arturo: They’re like, don’t come in here until your chi’s aligned, guys. Your chi is not f***ing aligned. Hey, hey, Chapo? A little more Margarita for El Chapo, please. Thank you so much. Find your voice, find your inside voice, and then talk to me.

Diane: They had like group games trying to like, you know, get to know each other and everything.

Arturo: Trust fall, trust fall.

Diane: Icebreakers, yeah.

Arturo: It’s not your fault. It’s just a bunch of f***ing runts being like, it’s not your fault. And like crying into each other, like, uh, uh, Good Will Hunting.

Diane: Right.

Arturo: It was really actually, yeah. The most emotionally connected moment for all cartels.

Diane: Wow.

Arturo: Um, so after this peaceful retreat, they all agreed to divide up the territories previously controlled by the Guadalajara cartel. So that’s when the Sinaloa cartel was formed under three traffickers, right? Including El Chapo.

But he was really the one in charge. But the meeting didn’t really set up a happy split between the groups. It was less like cutting the cake so that everybody got a slice and more like drawing the battle lines just to see what side everyone was on.

But imagine if it really was about cake though. Like what? Like if everybody just resolved things with a Bake Off style, like Gabrón, listen to me. I don’t agree with your business practice, but this chocolate fondant is absolutely heavenly!

[Sting sound]

Arturo: No, that’s not. No, that’s not the chapter sound. Gimme the chapter sound.

[Chapter sound]

Arturo: There we go. That’s the chapter sound. And gimme a little Mariachi yell.

[Mariachi yell]

Arturo: Thank you very much. God, Ben Chugg is on it.

Diane: [impersonates Mariachi yell]

Arturo: Wow, that’s not a bad one. I, I got, I got one. I go rrrrrrr….ay! Hi! Hi! Hi!

Diane: No way!

Arturo: OK well that’s not, that was not very good.

Diane: [Mariachi yell] That’s a good one. I’ve been practicing that one.

CHAPTER 4: Cardinal Sin

Arturo: So for a little while, it seemed like life was good for El Chapo. He started raking in millions and he knew what to do with it. As the story goes, he bought himself four jets, uh, and he had ranches in every state of Mexico, not to mention houses on every beach. Oh. And yeah, he built his mom a little church right by their house.

[Heavenly sound]

Arturo: It’s, is that a heavenly? Give me that again, Ben Chugg?

Diane: Yeah, that’s a–

[Heavenly sound]

Arturo: He built this house, a church right by his house.

Diane: [impersonates heavenly sound]

Arturo: Wow. Good for you.

Diane: Yeah, because he might have been El Chapo, but he’s like, he still like loves his mom.

Arturo: But he still like believes in the first communion.

Diane: Exactly.

Arturo: But isn’t that, it, it seems like it’s always intertwined, right? Like the, these absolute lunatics always seem to consider themselves religious. It must be part of our culture, I guess? Like I don’t know, is your family religious?

Diane: Not intensely so, but I mean it’s, they still, yeah, believe in God and everything [spanish], you know,

Arturo: [Spanish]

Diane: Everything is [Spanish], this or that. And I think that those guys, they have to believe in God because their survival has depended really on that. On, on the fact that like God is with them. You know what I mean? And the way that they repent is by giving money to the church.

Arturo: It seems like these psychopaths, or like people, murderers, uh, tyrants, they always line themselves with the church in order to try to pay their way out of their sin or their guilt. You know?

Diane: I mean, church kinda like the original kind of sinners and like hmm…

Arturo: Sin-forgiver thinger, yeah. Totally right.

Diane: I mean, no, they’re, but they’re like bad folks, right? I mean, if we think about the Christian Church and, and everything that they did, I mean…

Arturo: I mean, legally, I can’t say that out loud because they own my, the rights of my career but yeah, I, I am, I’m, I’m not nodding, but I’m nodding.

Diane: Yikes.

Arturo: Yeah, no. You know, if El, if El Chapo had a church, it was probably his ranch in Guadalajara, and that’s where he built his own zoo, full of panthers and tigers and lions and deer.

[Animals roar]

Diane: Oh my god, oh my.

Arturo: Plus, thank you for the sound effects. Yeah, there it is. Plus there was a little train that you could ride around to see it all.

Diane: Yeah. Like Neverland? He had like a Neverland situation?

Arturo: Choo choo! Kinda like Neverland, but way less dangerous. Oh, f***.

Diane: Got it. Oh yikes.

Arturo: Oh, oh, by the way, Chapo had—also had four wives. I, I’m not sure how that worked out, but maybe each of them stayed in a different jet? I don’t know. Oh. Or he went to Burning Man and pitched, like, ethical, non-monogamy, you know?

Diane: Right. he was like–

Arturo: He’s like, he’s like we all love each other, but we don’t, we don’t wanna be with each other that way.

Diane: Right.

Arturo: And El Chapo was making friends outside of Mexico too, for instance, the Medellín and Cali cartels in Colombia.

Diane: No.

Arturo: They found that he was the most efficient of the Mexican operators. Yeah. No one could smuggle north across the U.S. border as fast as El Chapo. To the Colombians, He was less El Chapo and more El Rapido.

Diane: Wow.

Arturo: Do you have a favorite nickname than someone has ever called you?

Diane: Um, I mean it’s really offensive sh*t.

Arturo: Like you don’t have to like go deep, in that way if you don’t want to.

Diane: Shrimpo, people called me Shrimpo.

Arturo: Shrimpo?

Diane: OK? If you must know…

Arturo: Because you are tiny?

Diane: Yes. Because I was small.

Arturo: El Chapo was taken so people called you Shrimpo.

Diane: El Chapo was taken so people called me Shrimpo.

Arturo: They called me El Joe D’sant. It was weird.

Diane: One day I was like going into like, you know, Sunday school or whatever we were practicing for like a big play or whatever. Um, and I come in and these kids are laughing and I was like, what’s so funny? And then somebody starts saying “Shrimpo.”

Arturo: Sons of b*tches!

Diane: And I was like, what’s happening? And they’re like, they’re calling you Shrimpo. And I was like, why are they calling me Shrimpo?

Arturo: Diane?

Diane: Yeah?

Arturo: I’m gonna need you to write down their social security numbers and their names. We are gonna get FilmNation to f***ing publicly cut off their, their access to any FilmNation film.

Diane: FilmNation have this much power?

Arturo: You … you don’t know.

Tory: You know we do damn straight. We got this. Don’t worry, Diane. We got this.

Diane: Oh my God. Joey D’sant?

Arturo: Yeah. Yeah. That’s Joey D’sant! So anyway, of course, El Chapo and his Sinaloa cartel were also making enemies, right? For instance, with the other Mexican cartels.

In the spring of 1993, El Chapo pulled up to the Guadalajara Airport in the white Mercury Grand Marquis. As his driver parked the car, a group of men rushed forward and blasted the car with a hail of bullets, right? Normal sh*t in Mexican drug cartels.

Diane: Right.

Arturo: But El Chapo ran for the terminal, dodging the gunfire. With his bodyguards, he climbed onto the baggage carousel and dove through the opening into the back of the airport. Now, the saddest part of these cartel wars are all the innocent people that are killed and affected by it, right? Like literally no one nowhere was safe during this time.

Diane: Right.

Arturo: But once they were thought to be on the other side, El Chapo and his soldiers ran across the runway and into the forest behind. It was an escape of sorts, but El Chapo wasn’t the only one who arrived at the airport in a white Mercury. The other one was the archbishop of the Catholic church in Mexico, Cardinal Ocampo, who by all accounts, was a really sweet man. And the assassins had hit his car as well because of–

Diane: No …

Arturo: –the confusion and the cardinal had been shot and killed in broad daylight. I didn’t know this, but anyway, at first the murder was pinned on El Chapo, but the shooters were hitmen from the Tijuana cartel. Apparently El Chapo was devastated by the cardinal’s death, as we, you know, already visited.

Diane: Yeah, he’s, he’s religious.

Arturo: He’s, uh, religious. He’s got a church.

Diane: He’s a religious guy.

Arturo: And he blamed the Tijuana cartel double, right? First for the hit itself and second for letting him take the blame for the Cardinal Ocampo’s murder.

Diane: Right.

Arturo: Regardless of the blame game, a cardinal had still been killed. And this put El Chapo in the international crosshairs.

Diane: International crosshairs? What do you mean? So what happens? Italy, Italy called and was like, you killed one of us? You’re done.

Arturo: Yeah. Yeah. They, yeah. Italy was a, was a mechanic from, from, uh, uh Freehold, New Jersey. But yeah, exactly. Cardinals are like one step down from the pope, so any time one of them dies, it’s a huge deal. And even more if it was … a murder.

CHAPTER 5: Readaptation Center

Arturo: El Chapo now had the attention of the world. Right? And now he also had the attention of the Mexican government. And as this–

Diane: This is 1985?

Arturo: 1985. Yeah.

Diane: OK. OK.

Arturo: Ah, the year I was born, what year were you born?

Diane: ’86, baby.

Arturo: Ooh. I’m an older man than you.

Diane: Is he still alive by the way?

Arturo: Yes.

Diane: OK, good, good, good.

Arturo: But so, so good. Uh, um, so as the feds closed in El Chapo he decided he, he would rather try to slip away from the scrap than try and deal with the authorities. So to get out from the limelight, Joaquin and his girlfriend decided to take a trip to Guatemala. Why the f*** was he in Guatemala?

Diane: Get out of Guatemala!

Arturo: Yeah, get out of Guatemala. Actually, El Chapo was apparently trying to drive to El Salva to try to start a business connection there. But you know what? He was driving …

Diane: He ended up in Guatemala.

Arturo: He, he was driving through Guatemala cuz it was just on the way and he was like, actually this is kinda nice. And I don’t blame him cuz Guatemala is the sh*t. So …

Diane: Yeah. And actually I’ve been seeing more of Gua-, Guatemala on your trips. I’m like, I’m online stalking you. And I’m like, what is he doing? And, and ...

Arturo: That’s right.

Diane: Guatemala looks gorgeous!

Arturo: The whole point in my career is to take tourism away from Costa Rica. That’s all.

Diane: Yeah, yeah.

Arturo: That is one big long play from the Guatemala Tourism Board to just make sure that I get more than one person there a year.

Diane: I’m going.

Arturo: Yeah. I’ll give you all the good spots.

Diane: I wanna go there. OK!

Arturo: I, I got something that’ll take care of you.

Diane: I can’t wait.

Arturo: It’s our producer from FilmNation.

Tory: We got you covered. Don’t worry, don’t worry.

Diane: Ah, thanks, babe.

Arturo: So to make sure that his trip was totally under the radar, El Chapo paid a Guatemala military official, $1.2 million to allow him to hide south of the Mexican border. Yeah, so the guy took the money, but he was also passed on the information about El Chapo’s whereabouts to law enforcement. F*** them both. But also you can’t trust a guy who’s already corrupt, buddy boy.

Diane: Right. Right.

Arturo: So in June, 1993, when El Chapo was on his way back from El Salvador, he set up a meeting with a Guatemalan cartel. But when he showed up for the meeting at a hotel near Tapachula, instead of his guy, he was actually greeted by the Guatemalan Army. [imitates gun sounds]

Diane: No!

Arturo: They loaded him into, what—no? Are you on his side?

Diane: Sorry! I get scared.

Arturo: Whose side are you on?

Diane:  I don’t like authority, OK?

Arturo: OK. Well.

Diane: Not that I, I’m not on El Chapo’s side, but I gotta say I’m not on the f***ing military’s side either. OK?

Arturo: OK, I, I, fair enough, fair enough. So, they loaded him on a military plane and flew him back to Mexico. But on the ride, El Chapo was interrogated and he confessed to a ton of crimes.

Diane: Wow.

Arturo: Apparently he could still only talk about one thing, like, everybody’s like, do you need to tell us all about this? No, no, no.

Diane: Don’t worry.

Arturo: No, wait, wait till you hear this one. So when he landed, El Chapo was taken to Federal Social Readaptation Center Number One, a maximum security prison in [Spanish]. It needs a new f***ing name. That’s too long. I’ll tell you what, not very catchy is it? It just needs a name.

Diane: It’s no Alcatraz.

Arturo: Yeah. It’s name, it needs a name like El Spot or whatever the f***, you know. So El Chapo was sentenced to 20 years and he was transferred to a different maximum security person in Jalisco Federal Social Readaptation Center Number Two.

So, uh, this one, this, this one went by a much catchier name. Apparently it was called Puente Grande. Oh, it was a big bridge. Good for you guys. So metaphoric.

Diane: Puente grande.

Arturo: But by putting El Chapo in a cell, that wasn’t gonna be enough to shut that down because …

Ominous voice: El Chapo …

Arturo: Why does it suddenly turn into an ASMR session? El Chapo…

Diane: El Chapo…

Arturo: There was that grr grr grr. Um, little narco, little narco.

CHAPTER 6: The Head’s in the Clink, but the Legs Are Still Kicking

Arturo: Now while he was in prison, El Chapo’s drug empire and the cartel continued to operate unabated. His brother was known as El Pollo, the chicken.

Diane: Stop.

Arturo: Yeah I swear to God it wasn’t the most fearsome of names.

Diane:  El Chapo y El Pollo?

Arturo: I feel like everyone in Guatemala and central America had a nickname too. Mine was El Pupis, by the way.

Diane: You just like pooped your pants all the time?

Arturo: No. F*** that. No, because I was a pupil, look it up: Pupilo. By the way, because my friends were, when I was 13, I met these high school kids. They were older, and they taught me all my f***ed up ways.

Diane: OK, OK.

Arturo: Like they taught me how to smoke cigarettes and like, and I was like, I’m 13, I shouldn’t be doing this, but I wanna–

Diane: But you were like, really cool. So they’re like, El Pupis!

Arturo: Yeah. They called me. Oh man, that’s like our little mascot. That’s like our little padawan, El Pupis. But the problem with that nickname is that everybody assumes immediately, like, I just shat myself, you know?

Diane: You just shat your–

Arturo: Oh poopies!

Diane: F***ing uncontrollably all the time.

Arturo: And that didn’t come on, it didn’t come on until later on in life, and that’s how I got this podcast. Anyway, so during his time in the clink, El Chapo even met his longtime mistress, former police officer named Sulema! She was serving time for armed robbery.

Diane: Oh my god.

Arturo: Apparently El Chapo’s—

Diane: I love it.

Arturo: Yeah a [in unison] match made in heaven.

Diane: Just a match made in heaven.

Arturo: Hey, hey, jinx. Huh? Hey, jinx buddy boy.

Diane: Jinx.

Arturo: Um, apparently El Chapo spotted her during a family visitation time and started sending her flowers, love letters, and even a bottle of whiskey that the guards brought to her. Oh my God. They say romance is dead, you guys, but no …

Diane: Not for El Chapo.

Arturo: Also, a family visitation means that his family, a.k.a. his wife, was f***ing visiting him and he is like, “who’s that over there? Uh, she seems like trouble.” But while El Chapo was carrying on with his prison romance, he was indicted in San Diego on U.S. charges of money laundering and importing tons of cocaine into California.

Diane: Oh boy.

Arturo: At first, it seemed fine to El Chapo, you know, he was in Mexico, not the U.S. He was already in prison. So what could they do to him? But then the Supreme Court of Mexico handed down a ruling that made extradition between Mexico and the United States much easier.

Diane: So the Uni-ni States basically brought him–

Arturo: Uni-ni states, my f***ing accent.

Diane: They brought him over?

Arturo: No, not yet, but a ruling from the Supreme Court made it easier. Before that, it was kind of like you could stall it forever, but now it was basically in the works, and El Chapo didn’t intend to get shipped to the United States, so he set a plan into motion.

Diane: Wait a minute. So his—he got extradited to the United States?

Arturo: Not yet, but the threat was imminent. Right? It suddenly became a real possibility. So he started a plan to get the f*** out of prison, which brings us to the year 2001 and the escape, the first that made El Chapo famous as an escape artist, or in other words, we’re finally back to laundry day. Bra bra bra bra bra-oooo!

CHAPTER 7: Airing the Dirty Laundry

Arturo: Diana, are you ready for this?

Diane: Yes.

Arturo: Let’s rock and roll. So the plan starts–

Diane: Mm-hmm

Arturo: –with a prison guard nicknamed El Chito or the silent one. Alright, so he was the one in charge of the prison laundry. So when laundry day came, El Chito was the man who hit the switch that opened El Chapo’s cell door.

Once El Chapo‘s cell door was open, El Chito rolled the laundry cart inside.

El Chapo hopped in. Come on, you little munchkin, nestling down into the dirty clothes.

I’ve, I’ve never been tempted to jump into a pile of dirty clothes, but clean clothes? F*** yeah, man. I get the impulse.

Diane: Hell yeah, for sure.

Arturo: OK, from there on the route was simple, but strewn with obstacles. El Chito would have to roll the laundry cart through multiple security checkpoints where a guard could look down through the glass and see who was waiting at the door.

But of course, El Chito was a familiar figure doing a familiar job. So the guards let him pass through doors one by one, pushing the cart the way he always did.

At one point, as the story goes, El Chito stopped to talk to one of the guards and let go of the cart, and it started to roll away. And they should’ve known something was up because like the cart started going, wee! wee!

El Chito had to jump forward and grab it, but eventually he pushed the cart right out the front door.

Diane: Whoa.

Arturo: As a maximum security prison, the Jalisco facility was supposedly equipped with heat sensors, and surveillance cameras, all kinds of locked doors and other stuff that should have caught El Chapo on his way out.

Diane: Right.

Arturo: But he slipped past all of them undetected. As El Chito rolled the cart through the electronic doors one by one, the sensors that should have detected El Chapo never went off. He left without a trace.

Diane: Wow.

Arturo: Almost! One thing he did leave was a love note for Sulema.

Diane: Oh my gosh.

Arturo: “I say goodbye sending all my greatest sentiment that the man can feel for a woman that he loves.”

Echoed voice: Loves…

Diane: And she was like, you left me??

Arturo: You f***ing left me. You f***ing bastard!

Arturo: “Soon there may be an excellent surprise.”

Echoed voice: Surprise…

Arturo: “I love you” ... signed JGL.

Echoed Voice: Joaquin Guzman…

Diane: Wait, did you say J G L? Also known as, uh, what’s that actor’s name? J G L.

Arturo: Uh, Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Diane: Yes! He’s El Chapo. I knew it.

Arturo: You are the f***ing Chapo. I knew it. His career started around the same time that f***ing–

Diane: That’s right.

Arturo: That the escape happened. That’s wild.

Diane: That’s right.

Arturo: And uh, remember though his handwriting was so terrible, right? El Chapo’s. So she probably didn’t know what the f*** he was saying.

Diane: Right, exactly.

Arturo: Like, it was just like, uh, I don’t know, like this is just a bunch of scratches.

Diane: Was he like, I’ll be back for you?

Arturo: No. No, not all. He was just like–

Diane: Oh, OK.

Arturo: He was just like, it’s been fun. See you later! Hey, let me ask you something. Has anyone ever made a love gesture to you that was like, that really turned you off because it was so grating?

Diane: Yes.

Arturo: OK, name names.

Diane: OK. So lemme tell you something. It was, I was dating this guy and like, I went over to his house, he like made dinner. It was like really nice. And then, you know, we’re, we’re like, kind of like laying on his bed and I like look over and on his nightstand is a picture of me with my prom date. It was a picture of me and my prom date, like a prom picture of me.

Arturo: What?

Diane: He had it framed. And I was like, what do you-

Arturo: He didn’t go to high school with you?

Diane: No, this guy did not.

Arturo: He pulled that sh*t from your Facebook or whatever.

Diane: I don’t know where he got it from, but yeah, he took a picture of me with another guy and it was on his nightstand and I thought, I was like, what is this?

Arturo: Oh my God, that’s so f***ing creepy.

Diane: It was so creepy.

Diane: We’re not, we’re not together.

Arturo: And now we’re engaged!

Diane: And check it out. No, and then check it out. His ex-girlfriend came later that day, um, to …

Arturo: To like, to start to start some ruckus at the apartment?

Diane: To start some sh*t! Ready? And this kid sticks me in the closet. I felt very unsafe. Very unsafe.

Arturo: Oh my God. I’m so sorry that happened to you. So my biggest turnoff is when I, when I was, when I was single, and I would go to a girl’s house and she didn’t have f***ing pictures of me in my prom printed on her f***ing nightstand. I’m like, how do you, do you not give a f*** about me? Done. Done. You’re done to me kid.

So, back to El Chapo: once his tender little love note was delivered, he was on his way.

Once he was outside, El Chapo had jumped from the laundry into a trunk of a car that was waiting for them. El Chito jumped into the driver’s seat and chauffeured them, uh, out of town.

Now one story says that El Chapo was dressed as a prison guard by the time they got outside, though the, that sounds a little too much to be honest. When El Chito had to stop the getaway car for gas, he pulled over at a station and he went inside to pay. When he went back out, El Chapo was gone.

Diane: What?

Arturo: He had taken, yeah, man. He got left at the altar, boi, because you’re a f***ing dumb ass. Maybe you should have shouted after him, but you’re too quiet cause you’re El Chito, cabrón. He had taken off into the night on foot, apparently.

Diane: Damn.

Arturo: So police launched a nationwide search, the warden and over 70 prison workers were detained in questioned as potential accomplices. I mean, of course, like, what the f***, man? Of course. Regardless, when all the bribes on record were tallied up, the escape supposedly cost El Chapo $2.5 million. Like, that’s a lot of money, I guess, but like, not to El Chapo, right?

Diane: No, no.

Arturo: Like that’s a f***ing drop in a bucket. Yeah. And, and besides, he went on to have a successful Hollywood career and eventually do a show with me as Joseph Gordon-Levitt. So it, you know, it all, it all, it was worth it.

In addition to the prison employee accomplices, there’s a story that police in Jalisco were paid off to ensure that El Chapo had at least 24 hours to get outta the state and stay ahead of the military manhunt that followed.

Diane: Right.

Arturo: Stories about it—El Chapo sometimes strolled into restaurants as his bodyguards confiscated peoples’ cell phones. And he would eat his meal and then leave after paying everyone’s tab. Imagine you’re just one of those customers at a restaurant and, but like, there’s nothing anyone can do. Right? You’re like–

Diane: Right.

Arturo: You’re like, I don’t know. As long as we’re ordering can I get the nacho cheese please?

Diane: He paid for our tab …

Arturo: Yeah. So for more than 13 years, Mexican security forces coordinated many operations to rearrest El Chapo. But their efforts were largely in vain. He appeared to be always a few steps ahead of his captors.

Diane: Hmm.

Arturo: Like in his early days when El Chapo moved away from La Tuna to fire up his business, he wouldn’t stay hidden in the boondocks forever. But that’s another story for another day. That’s our story!

Diane: What?!

Recap and Outro

Diane: Oh my gosh. I actually didn’t know much about El Chapo.

Arturo: I didn’t know about this, I didn’t know about his first escape. I knew about the second one that we’ll cover at a later date.

Diane: I never knew, I didn’t know he was such a romantic, but I should have known because of the whole Kate del Castillo thing.

Arturo: A hundred percent. Yeah.

Diane: I mean, to go down because you were like this much in love with someone, you know?

Arturo: This big a horn ball. Um, listen, so, so in order to wrap up, wrap up with the show, I want Ben Chugg to play that romantic music again. I mean, I’m a terrible singer, but you’re such a wonderful singer. Maybe we’ll like sing back and, we’ll like, we’ll invent what Sulema’s response was to him and  we’ll just do a little back and forth once, once, once or twice back. What do you think?

Diane: OK.

Arturo: Let’s do this.

Arturo: Sulema …

Diane: Chapito …

Arturo: Is that you?

Diane: Porque… [Spanish]

Arturo: Because I have to go meet Kate del Castillo. [Spanish]

Diane: [Spanish] Did you leave a big fat bag for me?

Arturo: I had nowhere else to go poo poo when I was hiding in the laundry bag. But I love you. I will be back!

Diane: Chapito?

Arturo: Yes.

Diane: [Spanish]

Arturo: I know. I just have to go make a film career and work with Jonathan Nolan. Oh, no. With Chris Nolan.

Diane: But I’m pregnant. I have your child. His name is Chuckitititito!

Arturo: [claps] Oh my God. What a f***ing pleasure to have you. Come back anytime. Will you come back and visit us sometime, please?

Diane: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

Arturo: Hey, listeners can find you on the socials of course, but also catch you in the upcoming film The Whistler, and the final season of Doom Patrol.

Diane: Oh, final season of Doom Patrol. Yes.

Arturo: You can catch that in HBO Max, yup.

Diane: That’s right. HBO Max, fourth season. If you haven’t watched Encanto and heard me sing, I mean–

Arturo: My God, you were so good in that. I can’t, I can’t believe I got, you know what, what I was so proud of, I watched you perform at the f***ing Oscars, Diane, you understand how big that f***ing is?

Diane: Yeah that was wild. I was really, I was really, really nervous. I mean, I, of course, I, I was just like, I, I don’t know. I, I don’t even have words for it, but it was a really beautiful experience just to like, I’ve watched that show every year. It just kind of like made me feel closer to the possibility of like ever, um, of just, I, I mean, I was just kind of like, I can’t believe that I’m in a film that is being recognized, and not only that, but a film that has, that has such close ties to my, my family and my culture and my country. And so it was really–

Arturo: And it speaks to Latino joy and to Latino—that it’s not about the tragedy of being Latin, but about the joy of it.

Diane: Exactly. I’m just like, i dio, the, uh, yeah, I’m, I’m like, I’m like happy. You know? It was, it was a beautiful experience.

Arturo: It was, it was wonderful to see you there. Thank you so much for being here!

Uh, this is Greatest Escapes, guys. Until next time, make sure to not leave a love letter behind. Goodbye everybody.

Diane: Chapo!

Credits

Arturo Castro: Greatest Escapes is a production of iHeartRadio and FilmNation Entertainment, in association with Gilded Audio. Our executive producers are me, Arturo Castro, Alyssa Martino, and Milan Popelka from FilmNation Entertainment, Andrew Chugg and Whitney Donaldson from Gilded Audio, and Dylan Fagan from iHeartRadio.

The show is produced and edited by Carl Nellis and Ben Chugg, who are also, respectively, our research overlord and music overlord. Our associate producer is Tory Smith, who is our other overlord.

Nick Dooley is our technical director. Additional editing by Whitney Donaldson. Special thanks to Alison Cohen, Dan Welsh, Ben Ryzack, Sara Joyner, Nicki Stein, Olivia Canny, and Kelsey Albright.

Hey, thank you so much for listening, and if you’re enjoying the show, please leave a rating or review. My mom will call you each personally and thank you, and we’ll see you all next week.