While on the Lam, El Chapo entered the U.S. twice, "betrayed" by El Mayo

Lucio R. Borderland Beat republished from The Guardian

Note: Newly identified daughter, must be one of the half dozen children fathered by El Chapo outside his marriage.  He entered into only one legal marriage, that being with his first wife, Alejandrina Salazar.  His second was a common law wife named Griselda Lopez, and the most recent common law wife, Emma Coronel.  So far he has fathered 10 children from these three unions.

Outside these relationships Chapo fathered 6-12 children.

The person in this article says she is the daughter of El Chapo, and she appears to have been well vetted, as you will be read about in the article. He would have been 19 when she was born.

As for the claim the Sinaloa Cartel leader would have chanced sneaking into to the U.S. while on the lam….twice, I would say highly doubtful, if not for his carelessness exhibited by him while on the run….See what you readers think.

The drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán bankrolled the election of senior Mexico politicians and

twice secretly entered the United States to visit relatives, according to his eldest daughter.

Rosa Isela Guzmán Ortiz (right)) said that shortly after an interview with Hollywood star Sean Penn last year, her father dodged a massive manhunt with the complicity of corrupt Mexican officials and evaded US border controls to sneak into California – despite being one of the world’s most wanted fugitives.

She also accused senior Mexican politicians of accepting donations from El Chapo when they ran for office, and said that in return officials turned a blind eye to his escapes from prison.

“My dad is not a criminal. The government is guilty,” she told the Guardian.

The explosive allegations made by Guzmán Ortiz could not be independently verified and are likely to be vigorously contested by Mexican and US authorities.

Guzmán Ortiz, 39, made the claims in a series of interviews which she said were given in consultation with her father.

Earlier this week, he instructed his lawyers to drop their attempts to fight extradition to the United States in the apparent hope of negotiating a lighter sentence.

Guzmán Ortiz said the drug lord had planned to hand the reins of the Sinaloa cartel to her half-brother, Iván Archivaldo, but was betrayed by a cartel colleague, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada – and by the Mexican government, which she said had broken an agreement to protect El Chapo.

It is the first time the cartel leader’s daughter has spoken to the media. The Guardian has seen several documents confirming her identity, including her birth certificate and Mexican voting card.

Guzmán Ortiz’s identity was also confirmed by Francisco Villa Gurrola, an evangelical minister in El Chapo’s hometown of Badiraguato, who is a close friend of the drug lord’s 87-year-old mother Consuela Loera.

Her claims about El Chapo’s visits to California will raise questions about US intelligence and border security. As head of the world’s biggest and richest criminal syndicate he was the drug war’s most prized target.

Guzmán Ortiz said her father crossed the border in late 2015 to visit relatives and to view her home, a five-bedroom house with a large garden which he bought for her and her four children (one son is with Chapo at left). She granted the interview on condition its location not be disclosed.

“My dad deposited the money in a bank account with a lawyer and a while after he came to see the house, his house. He came twice.”

She declined to specify how he criss-crossed the heavily guarded frontier, saying only: “I asked him the same, believe me.”

José Reveles, the author of a string of books about the Mexican underworld, said that “nothing is impossible” for El Chapo, pointing out that Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel pioneered the use of sophisticated tunnels to smuggle drug shipments – and cartel members – into the US.

“Everything indicates that El Chapo would be able to visit the US: he’s very smart, he has well-trained operatives and he has experts in building tunnels,” said Reveles.

Guzmán Ortiz is not the only member of El Chapo’s family to have approached the media, suggesting a concerted attempt by the capo to promote his version of events – or exert pressure on Mexican authorities.

El Chapo’s meeting with Sean Penn was enabled by the actress Kate del Castillo, who hoped toproduce a biopic of the drug lord, and his lawyers contacted at least two authors over a possible biography. In recent weeks his third wife, Emma Coronel, has granted a string of television interviews.

The Escape

“My dad’s escape was an agreement,” she said.

At least 34 people have been charged with helping El Chapo escape, including the former director of Altiplano prison and the head of Mexico’s federal prison system.

Towards the end of last year, the net appeared to be closing in on El Chapo after he arranged a meeting with del Castillo and Penn, who were under surveillance by intelligence agents. In October, the Mexican military launched a massive operation in the mountainous region between Sinaloa and Durango states, but failed to capture the cartel boss.

A US citizen, Guzmán Ortiz runs a chain of small businesses in California and speaks fluent English. She compared herself to narco juniors – a Mexican term for the privileged offspring of the country’s drug lords – but said any money she received from her father was clean.

“My businesses are the result of my own efforts,” she said.

Rosa and Vincentillo Zambada

In a sign of the closed – and arguably feudal – narco world, Chapo told his daughter he wanted her to marry Vicente Zambada Niebla, (at left) also known as El Vicentillo, the 16-year-old son of another drug lord, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. Both fathers were annoyed, however, when she became pregnant before the marriage. 

Guzmán Ortiz had a second child with El Vicentillo after they married.

In May 1993 her father’s profession almost cost both their lives. They were in a parking lot at Guadalajara airport, she said, when a group of hitmen dispatched by the rival Tijuana cartel targeted the wrong car, killing a Roman Catholic cardinal, Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo, and six other people.

“On the day of the assassination I was in a car with my father when they started shooting from every direction. We didn’t know who it was that got killed, but later we heard it was the cardinal. My father had nothing to do with it,” she said.

Amid national outrage over the massacre Chapo sent his daughter to live with an aunt in California, who she had visited regularly from an early age. He was caught a few weeks later and spent the next eight years directing his growing empire from behind bars. 

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