11 quotes found
"I went to my mother and told her I intended to commence a different life. I asked for and obtained her blessing, and at once commenced the career of a robber."
"Guzmán's capture is a success, a great blow against organized crime, and drug trafficking,.. "finally, this individual (Guzmán), like all criminals, will find what he deserves in the eyes of justice, and we celebrate that the Mexican authorities have recaptured this criminal."
"His (Guzmán) reaction was a calm reaction, I mean, he didn’t look scared, nervous or violent."
"Made Mission fulfilled, we have it, I want to inform the Mexicans and the Mexicans, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, has been arrested."
"[Chapo] may be the only Forbes billionaire who stopped school at third grade. Looking over his crispy-curl handwriting, one sees he taught himself script. There were schoolbooks left behind in his [jail] cell in Puente Grande, where he was corked in a bottle from 1993 to 2001."
"Less jowly now thanks to crappy jailhouse cooking—his country-boy haircut and jaunty hunting cap retired for a CEO’s side part—Chapo looked surprisingly guapo in a business suit. (And at 5’ 6”, not nearly as diminutive as his nickname Chapo—“Shorty”—would imply.) U.S. Marshals would knot his necktie just before he entered the room because mirrors can be smashed and weaponized. A former secretary observed in court he’d never seen Chapo in a suit. Early in the trial, Chapo would absently tug at his collar. Months in, he’d grown accustomed to the yoke."
"At trial, it became clear that in the macho, mustache-man world of drug-trafficking, [Chapo] had as much use for women, seducing them with saccharine forevers, then putting them to work in his stable—as buyers, as Blackberry-tapping go-betweens to preserve his anonymity on deals—involving their family members because there’s no glue stronger than blood."
"Does [Chapo] speak in tongues? “I think he has,” [Chapo’s sister] Bernarda told me. By all accounts, he has spent many hours in this church. There’s been some signature Pentecostal healing-hand work, too. “Many brothers who are pastors have laid hands on him and prayed for him, and with a contrite heart, that’s when he cries.”"
"People in La Tuna miss [Chapo] , the town’s greatest, wiliest patrón. The young women debate whether he’s finally lost his looks, having only late-period pale-and-doughy mug shots to go by. (Avoiding stepping outside where one might be seen and subsisting on takeout tacos takes a toll on the body.)"
"I asked [Chapo] why he had to kill people,” recalled one former lieutenant on the [witness] stand [at the 2018-2019 trial]. “And he said, “either your mom’s going to cry or their mom’s going to cry."
"Apart from the heads of the Sinaloa cartel, 'El Mencho' has been the biggest prize for many, many years."