All language subtitles for Gangland Chronicles - S01E02 - The Sinaloa Cartel The El Chapo Years

Gangs rule their territories through
ruthless enterprises, fear, and a strict code.

Deviate from this code,
or challenge their power.

Retribution soon follows.

Especially for the most
powerful and dangerous

drug trafficking operation in the world,

the Sinaloa Cartel, a
criminal enterprise built

on terror and a devious business strategy.

Here are three stories about their quest
to become the world's largest drug empire.

First, the Sinaloa cartel takes
their business deep underground.

These tunnels were engineered to
the max. It was a real wake-up call.

Then, a power struggle pushes the Sinaloa
cartel into a deadly war across Mexico.

They would use extreme
violence to make sure that

they control and send a
message to their enemies.

And finally, authorities must
crack the cartel's sophisticated

communication system to
bring down its leader,

El Chapo. This technology
really became his undoing.

These are stories from the El
Chapo years of the Sinaloa Cartel.

This is Gangland Chronicles. 1985, Mexico.

The Guadalajara Cartel,
one of Mexico's largest

and most brutal drug
trafficking organizations, falls apart.

As the Guadalajara Cartel
buckled under the pressure of U.S.

and Mexico law enforcement,
that left a bit of a power vacuum.

And so we see this
period of reorganization.

The Guadalajara cartel splits into
three separate factions, Tijuana, Juarez,

and Sinaloa, turning former
partners into competitors.

A ruthless former Guadalajara lieutenant
takes control of the new Sinaloa cartel.

His name...

Joaquin Guzman Loera, aka El Chapo.

Chapo Guzman was clearly the leader of
Sinaloa as it evolved and became as violent.

He really is dominating in the drug
market, certainly in the United States.

I also think he's one of the most
cunning criminals of our lifetime.

By 1989, El Chapo runs the
Sinaloa cartel alongside

two other former Guadalajara lieutenants,

Elmayo Zambada and
Hector Salazar. Beneath them,

a well-oiled machine takes the
cartel's reach around the world.

They had a security department,
they had a communications department,

and they had hundreds of sicarios who,
when needed, would go do the dirty work.

I don't like giving them credit,
but Chapo was one hell of a CEO.

The Sinaloa cartel is massive.

Not everyone reports directly to Chapo.

If there's a conflict that is
serious enough where it rises to the top,

Chapo will make a decision.

Who's right? Who's wrong? Who
needs to live? Who needs to die?

The Sinaloa cartel's swift
violence works hand-in-hand

with their strategy to
deal with law enforcement.

With police agencies, they'll
pay them off, they'll bribe them,

and if they don't take the bribe, then
they'll often target them for assassination.

During El Chapo's reign, Sinaloa will
become the richest drug cartel in Mexico,

earning over $12 billion from
trafficking drugs to the United States.

But in the beginning, the cartel has
challenges reaching its number one market.

The initial methods that Sinaloa
would utilize to smuggle drugs

across the border was
straight through the port of entry.

Expecting to lose several of the vehicles,

hoping to get the majority
of that shipment through.

The Sinaloa cartel has a better plan,

one they hope will turn
their criminal enterprise into a

multibillion-dollar
industry by taking it underground.

1989, Mexico.

El Chapo dispatches a lawyer
to buy a home in Agua Prieta,

a few hundred yards from the U.S. border.

Then he buys a
warehouse in Douglas, Arizona.

People started to
notice that something's up.

And he said, oh, you know, I'm
building a pool for my kids.

Instead of building a pool, his
workers were actually digging a tunnel.

This isn't just any tunnel.

Excavated to a depth of 30 feet,

the tunnel stretches the length of a
football field beneath the border.

Full scale, fully
operational, ventilated, lighting.

They'd set up hydraulics in
Mexico so that they could drop

a ton of cocaine and then
put it on a rail system.

From 1989 to 1990, El Chapo
moves tons of drugs into the U.S.,

all under the noses of law enforcement.

Chapo built his legend on
transporting narcotics from Mexico to, say, L.A.

or Chicago or New York, and
doing that within 24 to 48 hours.

Before long, he earned the
nickname El Rapido, the speedy one.

The Sinaloa cartel was
responsible for upwards to 75% to 80%

of all the narcotics being
trafficked in the United States.

All of this success puts a
target on the Sinaloa cartel.

1990, Agua Prieta, Mexico.

The Sinaloa cartel's
super tunnel to Douglas,

Arizona has made them
Mexico's top drug traffickers.

El Chapo is able to move
a staggering amount of

drugs under the border,
virtually undetected.

Now, this sort of golden age of El
Chapo's tunnel success lasted only about a year.

In May, US law
enforcement gets a tip about

a suspicious warehouse
located in Douglas, Arizona.

US law enforcement followed a truck
from Douglas up to Phoenix, Arizona,

and they found a whole
bunch of kilos of cocaine.

U.S. Customs and Border
Protection agents raid the warehouse,

while Mexican authorities
storm the house in Agua Prieta.

At first, authorities are stumped.

There's nothing
suspicious in either location.

But then, after hours of searching,
they discover the tunnel entrance,

cleverly concealed in
the most unlikely place.

On the Mexican side, it
was covered by a pool table.

If you found a hidden switch, it
would rise up and reveal the entrance.

It was really something.

Inside the tunnel,
authorities seized 2,000

pounds of cocaine worth over $46 million.

The first tunnel brought
everybody to their knees in law

enforcement because we
realized a vulnerability worked.

But authorities don't realize
that the Sinaloa cartel is already

at work building more tunnels
from Arizona to California.

The whole art of building tunnels
is much like a cat and mouse game.

The difference is we
have to play by the rules.

Chapo made up the rules
and has unlimited budget.

Despite the Sinaloa cartel's massive
growth, El Chapo wants to make even more money.

For Chapo to control a desolate area
really was not money-making for him.

He wanted to get into
those high-volume corridors

and increase the volume
of what was going across.

Everything was at stake here.

El Chapo sets his sights on taking
control of the most lucrative smuggling routes.

Even if that means war.

1989, Tijuana, Mexico, one
of the most lucrative regions

of the US-Mexico border
for drug trafficking.

It is also the territory
of the Tijuana Cartel,

led by the ruthless
Arellano Felix Brothers.

There was some latitude for other
drug traffickers to operate in Tijuana,

but they had to pay, and El
Chapo didn't want to pay.

Chopper wasn't afraid to move in
and infringe on that territory.

Sinaloa's brazen disregard
of Tijuana's rules upsets

a fragile peace between the two cartels.

What these cartels often fight about is
controlling the flow of drugs into the U.S.

and the money coming back south.

It always came down to
money, greed, power, control.

In the early 1990s, there
started to be these sort of

tit-for-cat acts of
violence between the two crews.

The Tijuana cartel kills
two Sinaloa associates.

Then they behead the wife of El Chapo's
business partner, Hector Palma Salazar,

and send her ahead to her family in a box.

Cartels in Mexico are
extremely violent, so beheadings,

all these other ways
they would torture and kill

people was really about sending a message.

It's on now.

And retribution is really
important that it happens

quick, violently, and surprise is crucial.

The Sinaloa cartel learns that
the Arellano Felix brothers are

celebrating a birthday at a
discotheque in Puerto Vallarta.

El Chapo sends his men to
the club, armed to the teeth.

Several of the Arellano
Felix brothers and their

bodyguards are
relaxing, having a good time.

Outside, El Chapo and his men
pull up. They're dressed as cops.

The hitmen of the Sinaloa
Cartel have one mission.

Kill the heads of the Tijuana
Cartel and anyone who gets in their way.

November 8, 1992, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

In an escalation of their
war with the Tijuana Cartel,

gunmen from the Sinaloa
Cartel charge into a crowded

nightclub to
assassinate Tijuana's leaders,

the Arellano Felix Brothers.

They unleash hell on the nightclub.

A rain of bullets shooting at random.

Several people were shot, but the
brothers made it out of there alive.

And they were not happy, to say the least.

On May 24th, 1993, the Arellano
Felix brothers punch back after

learning El Chapo is flying out
from the Guadalajara airport.

El Chapo is driving to the airport,
and as he's getting out of the car,

gunmen from Tijuana
jump out and open fire.

As gunfire sprays across
the front of the airport,

El Chapo bolts through
the baggage terminal.

On a nearby road, he
hijacks a car and escapes.

Back in the parking lot,
it's just a scene of carnage.

Seven people are dead.

Among the casualties is
Cardinal Juan Jesus Posado Ocampo.

Archbishop of Guadalajara, a
popular figure from the Catholic Church.

His death sends
shockwaves across the country.

The killing of the cardinal was one of
those things that set the house on fire.

The Mexican government
now had to get serious.

Suddenly, El Chapo goes from
being a successful anonymous drug

trafficker to being one of
the most wanted men in Mexico.

And he immediately heads south, crosses
the border into Guatemala. June 9th, 1993.

El Chapo is captured by the
Guatemalan army and extradited back to Mexico.

He is convicted of drug
trafficking and bribery and

sentenced to 20 years in a
maximum security prison.

But jail has one advantage.

El Chapo is now out of the
reach of the Tijuana cartel.

He solidified power while he was
in jail, and at the same time,

he was protected about
as much as you could be.

But there is one adversary
El Chapo isn't safe from.

U.S. law enforcement.

In 2000, the Mexican Supreme
Court hands down a decision to allow

extradition of drug traffickers
from Mexico to the United States.

The worst possible fate to El Chapo was
being extradited to the United States.

So he started to plan his escape.

After seven years behind
bars in a Mexican prison,

El Chapo masterminds his
escape by hiding in a laundry cart.

And this begins the second
era of El Chapo's career.

After years of operating in the open,

El Chapo and the Sinaloa Cartel
must now adapt to working on the run,

with the DEA on its
heels. 2001, Sinaloa, Mexico.

El Chapo vanishes into the
security of the mountains.

Chapo began plotting what
was the next move for Sinaloa.

El Chapo's main business for
many years had been cocaine,

but he and other traffickers
start manufacturing methamphetamine

and flooding the market
in the United States.

Through the 2000s, the
Sinaloa cartel ramps up production

of synthetic drugs like
methamphetamines and opioids,

including the deadly
but lucrative fentanyl.

The Sinaloa cartel
could generate hundreds of

millions of dollars
right there in Sinaloa,

utilizing chemicals to generate fentanyl.

As Sinaloa cashes in on
these lethal narcotics,

it creates a crisis on American
streets that the DEA can't ignore.

Notre Dame Stadium holds 80,000
people. I think to myself, last year,

more US citizens died of
drug overdose And it's because

of people like Chapo
Guzman and his organization.

So we really understood how
important it was for us to pursue

him so that the
organization itself would crumble.

Not only was it a manhunt, but
it was also a drug investigation.

We're not solely looking
to take down just Chapo.

We're looking to dismantle
his entire organization.

But with the Sinaloa cartel
leader always one step ahead,

law enforcement needs to first crack
El Chapo's secret weapon. 2011, Mexico.

El Chapo for years has
operated the cartel on the run.

The secret to his success
is in the palm of his hand.

Chapo had to have a
communication apparatus that was effective

and that he could deliver his
message to his subordinates.

Otherwise, they weren't
going to make any money.

The Sinaloa Cartel's
communication network is custom-built

by a young computer whiz
named Cristian Rodriguez.

El Chapo commissions
Cristian Rodriguez to set

up BlackBerrys with
this encrypted technology.

The system was next to
impossible to crack.

U.S. law enforcement
realizes the only way to break

the cartel is to hack
their communications.

The one weakness of this
system was if you have

the guy who built it, you can get inside.

And so the FBI set about trying to
find and entrap Cristiano Rodriguez.

The FBI track and secretly
record the young encryption

expert bragging about his
work for the Sinaloa cartel.

They tell him, look, man, we got you.

And Christian, after a few
hours of interrogation, cracks.

Rodriguez agrees to give
them the key to the software

in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

Suddenly, federal agents
of the United States have

access to all of El
Chapo's communications.

Before you know it, we're
painting this picture of Chapo's inner

world and actually his true
organization that he's running.

Was he moving drugs? Yes. Was
he moving money? Of course.

The Sinaloa cartel's communications
reveal the extent of their global empire.

And the secret partnership
fueling their fentanyl production.

We started seeing Chinese
groups and different factions

of these gangs
collaborating with the Sinaloa cartel.

They were primarily bringing in the
chemicals that they needed to produce fentanyl.

And by hacking cartel
members around El Chapo, U.S.

law enforcement is finally able
to track Sinaloa's elusive leader.

We would identify, well, who's
making contacts? Who's paying bribes?

Who's receiving money?
Who's delivering money to him?

And it changed our ability to
infiltrate him very quickly.

But with El Chapo constantly on the move,

it takes years to pin
down his exact location.

We start reading the messages of
Chapo's cartel members that are

sending messages to a man
that they were calling El Senor.

My partner and I were like, the
communication stops here, and he's right here.

We were essentially
staring Chapo in the eye.

After several near misses and
escapes over a two-year period,

El Chapo is captured for a
final time on January 8, 2016,

and extradited to the United States.

The fact that we were able to
bring this bigger-than-life

criminal leader to face
justice in the United States,

it basically said if we could do that
with him, then we could do that with anyone.

Three years later, Joaquin El
Chapo Guzman Loera is found guilty

on 17 charges in the United
States District Court of New York.

He's sentenced to life plus 30 years.

And imprisoned in ADX, the most
secure prison in the United States.

Despite El Chapo's incarceration, the
Sinaloa cartel is as strong as ever.

Believed to be run by El
Mayo and El Chapo's sons,

today the cartel profits
up to $3 billion a year.

In the years since El Chapo was
arrested, the amount of cocaine, fentanyl,

meth coming over the border has not
gone down. If anything, it's gone up.

The Sinaloa Cartel has
distribution cells in 47 countries worldwide.

It is a full-scale criminal organization
that is very powerful and very dangerous.

I would consider Sinaloa the largest,

most influential cartel still in
Mexico and probably in the world.