Drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is escorted into a helicopter at Mexico City’s airport on Friday following his recapture during an intense military operation in Los Mochis, Mexico.OMAR TORRES/AFP / Getty Images
Whatever else critics might say about Sean Penn's interview with Joaquin Guzman, the actor did elicit from the Mexican drug baron an acknowledgment about his drug trafficking prowess, corroborating the allegations officials had made for years.
Insisting that he was not a violent man, Mr. Guzman boasted to Mr. Penn that "I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world. I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks and boats."
Nicknamed El Chapo (Shorty) because he is 5 feet 6 inches tall, Mr. Guzman's repeated jail escapes have cemented his reputation as Mexico's Public Enemy No. 1.
By his own account, he grew up poor in a ranch in Badiraguato, in the northwestern state of Sinaloa.
He told Mr. Penn that he started selling drugs at 15. "The only way to have money to buy food, to survive, is to grow poppy, marijuana, and at that age, I began to grow it, to cultivate it and to sell it."
He said he left home when he was 18. By the late 1980s, according to U.S. officials, Mr. Guzman was working for Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, at the time the most notorious trafficker in Mexico.
Mr. Guzman directed the operations of a drug transportation organization until his arrest in Mexico City in June, 1993, according to U.S. court documents.
Even while he was behind bars, he still directed his organization through his brother, Arturo, a 1995 indictment in California alleges.
The California indictment said Mr. Guzman's syndicate used a variety of means to smuggle drugs into the United States, including flying Lear Jets and using a 420-metre tunnel that ended inside a warehouse south of San Diego.
In early 2001, Mr. Guzman escaped from his prison, a high-security facility in Jalisco.
The Sinaloa Cartel emerged in the early 2000s, under the joint leadership of Mr. Guzman and his partner, Ismael Zambada Garcia, nicknamed El Mayo.
U.S. court indictments allege the Sinaloa Cartel eventually became "the largest drug trafficking organization in the world," generating billions of dollars in profit.
An indictment in New York alleges that the cartel smuggled tonnes of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana.
Mr. Guzman was also alleged to be the mastermind behind hundreds of acts of abduction, torture and murder.
In February, 2014, he was caught in a raid by Mexican Marines in the resort town of Mazatlan. He escaped again last July, thanks to a 1.5-kilometre tunnel fit with a motorcycle rigged to two carts on rails. Six months later, he was recaptured Friday after a shootout at a roadside motel.