(typing) (writing) (digital tone) (traffic) (Spanish conversation) - [Voiceover] Shit! - [Voiceover] Sam! - [Voiceover] Shit! (motorcycles) (distant yelling) (sirens) (speaking Spanish) - We have a shootout
right now on the street here in downtown Culiacn,
or near downtown Culiacn. I'm not quite sure
what happened. We have the municipal police
and the federal police. We just heard some gunshots. This is what happens
during a cartel war; at any given moment, broad
daylight, it doesn't matter, gunfire can erupt at
any possible second. You really have to be on
alert when you're in Culiacn because of the violence,
because of the drug war that's going on right
now in the United States. It's a war on people here in
Mexico, a drug war in the USA. - We're on the streets of downtown Culiacn,
Sinaloa, Mexico. It's a very quiet Thursday
night in May of 2014. This city is the
homebase of the largest and most powerful drug
organization in the world, the Sinaloa cartel. And this city was rocked
in February of 2014, when their hero, their
son, was taken down. One report has it that El
Chapo Guzmn is responsible for about 80 thousand
dead Mexicans. [Female Reporter] A senior
US law enforcement official tells us it was a
joint operation. In Mexico's biggest border
city, nobody is surprised the US played a key role in Joaqun "Chapo"
Guzmn's capture. - They had to work with Mexico, because that's only way
they gonna catch him. - They tracked him from the
Sinaloa cartel's stronghold, Culiacn, to the
resort city, Mazatlan, and surprised the
kingpin named "Shorty" as his beauty queen wife
was cooking breakfast. The DEA, Homeland
Security investigations, and US marshal service
provided critical information to pinpoint the location. We've been told by a senior
US law enforcement official who has knowledge of the joint
operation, that Mexico gave the Americans permission
to operate in the country, but also set a limited
time frame: about a month. As the deadline was about
to expire, Mexican marines closed in on Chapo. - Tonight we're getting a new
look at where El Chapo was staying when he was caught. This is the Miramar
condos in Mazatln, you can see there's a
nice view from the rooms, but were they the
digs of a billionaire? Hardly. We checked it out on travel
websites, and condos here rent for as low as $89
during the slow season. - [Female Reporter] Across
Mexico, Chapo's capture is front-page news, and Jurez
people can hardly believe the most-wanted cartel
leader is in custody. Guzmn has waged a bloody
battle against rival cartels to control nearly every
key smuggling route. In the border city, Jurez,
alone, the death tole: 10 thousand people in the
span of about five years. - [Male Reporter] The
FBI confirms the majority of drug loads arriving from
Jurez now belong to El Chapo. Forbes magazine put Guzmn on
its annual billionaires list. - [Female Reporter] Guzmn
is accused of leading the powerful Sinaloa drug
cartel, an empire that stretches throughout North America
and reaches as far away as Europe and Australia. - [Voiceover] How does a
billionaire get caught, under the most
ordinary circumstance? A man with so much power, and
who supposedly has 200 armed guards surrounding him at all
times, how does he get caught so easily at the
Miramar condominiums? - [Charlie] I continued
my research at the University of
Texas at El Paso. I was curious if
Americans believed whether it was the
real Chapo Guzmn. - You know what, it's
really hard to tell. I mean I would like to think so. I have faith, I have
trust in our government that they did what they
could to capture him. - I think that they have
the real person in custody, because it would be
a huge embarrassment to the United States and
to the government of Mexico if they didn't, and the
real Chapo Guzmn emerged. - If it were the real Chapo
Guzmn, I'm thinking he would be dead by now, actually. I don't think they'd
take him, and without any type of resistance from him
or the people around him. - Not really, but if it is
him, it's just a public stunt, you know, it's to make the
new presidency look good. You know, if I can be able
to capture this drug lord, I can do anything. So I don't think it is
him, but if it is him, it's just for that. - [Charlie] Do you think
it's the real Chapo Guzmn they have in custody? - Yes, I do, because President
Enrique Pea Nieto of Mexico has been bragging about how
he's lessening the violence of the drug war, and so he
wants good public relations, he wants to catch a
top drug lord to prove to the United States
and the Mexican people that he's actually
winning the war against cartels in Mexico. - [Charlie] A lot of people in
El Paso don't think it's him. What's your reaction to that? - My reaction to that is that
it's typical of the attitude of many people that are
connected to Mexico, that they don't trust
their government, they don't trust
the authorities, and they don't believe
the official version. In this particular case, I
think the official version is true, because I think
the Mexican president and the government has a
vested interest in catching a figurehead like Chapo
Guzmn that they can parade in public and say that
they're doing a great job and fighting crime in Mexico. But most Mexican people do
not believe in their leaders and their government,
and that's why there's so much distrust of
this capture of El Chapo. - [Charlie] What percentage
of Mexico do you think likes Chapo Guzmn, or
even loves Chapo Guzmn? - That's a good question. I do think that because of
the nature of the injustices of Mexican society,
the inequalities, that Robin Hood
type social bandits, like Chapo Guzmn in a sense is, sometimes have a lot of support, especially in regional
areas like Sinaloa, where they provide a lot of jobs and revenue for local people. And so many people in a place
like Sinaloa may believe more in El Chapo
Guzmn than they do in the actual
president of Mexico. - My family in Jurez, they
talk bad about the cartels and El Chapo, and my family
who lives in Culiacn, they're singing praises to them. And to me, it's like,
their base is there, and where they go to
do their dirty deeds are over near the border. And that's why we get
to see more violence. To me, that's what I believe. - [Voiceover] Four
days after his arrest, the people of Sinaloa
made their point. - [Charlie] Despite being
responsible for reportedly 80 thousand dead Mexicans, the man is loved
by so many people. Why is that? I interviewed renowned author,
Javier Valdez Crdenas, who has received several
international awards for his writing on drug
trafficking and organized crime. - [Charlie] In Mexico, cartel
leaders are revered, feared, loved, and respected, not
because they kill people, but for other reasons. One example is Jess Malverde. (Mexican folk music) (happy parade music) (cheering crowd) (gunshots) (pop music) - [Voiceover] A lot of
Mexican people blame former president, Felipe Caldern,
for the spike in violence. Just 10 days into
his campaign in 2006, Caldern declared war
on the drug cartels, unleashing the federal
army and the federal police into the trouble
spots of Mexico. Unfortunately, these two groups, rather than quell the violence,
may have aggravated it. (sirens) (gunshots) (men speaking Spanish) - [Charlie] Back in Culiacn,
we interviewed the editor of Noroeste, the major newspaper
there, Francisco Cuamea. - This is a very mysterious war. We're not exactly
sure who's in charge, there's a state of paranoia,
a state of distrust. Are the police killers? Politicians? Your neighbor? We're not exactly sure
who's who in Mexico, because the corruption
level runs so deep. What we do know is over
100 thousand Mexican people have been slaughtered,
and 95% of those murders are not resolved. 27 thousand have gone missing. The next three scenes are
perhaps the most powerful during the drug war. If everybody in the United
States knew about these moments, perhaps there would've been a
movement from Mexico by now. (gunshots) (applause) (cheering) (crowd chanting "Chapo") - [Charlie] The reported
arrest of Chapo Guzmn has not appeared to help
the average Mexican citizen. Was Chapo Mexico's economy? Who stands to benefit
from his arrest? Could it be current
president, Enrique Pea Nieto? - My name is Anabel Hernndez. I am Mexican
investigative journalist. I have been investigating
the Sinaloa cartel about nine years. The war against the
drugs doesn't exist in Mexico, and
neither in the US. Really, I think that the
governments don't want to fight that issue, because it's a
huge business for everyone. In this fake war
against the drugs, the society is the victim. My thoughts about journalists
changed definitively when my father was killed, because I really think that
the corruption, the impunity, the abuse of the power,
the abuse of the police, is the most important
problem in Mexico. And since my father was
killed, I start to investigate and fight against the
corruption as a journalist. I have met in these years,
to many people that is very close to him, many
people that used to watch him and met him, and the members
of the Sinaloa cartel really don't believe
that he could be alone, just with his wife and his kids. It's unbelievable. - [Charlie] Do you think
that's Chapo Guzmn that they have in
custody right now? - I don't know it. I think that what we are leaving
in Mexico is a war between the cartels, and that the
Mexican government took one part in that war, they start to
protect the Sinaloa cartel, and use the power
of the government to fight against other cartels. That's what happened in all
the six years of the government of Felipe Caldern,
and I have to say that now it's happening again. - [Charlie] So if you're saying
Pea Nieto was protecting the Sinaloa cartel, how
did Chapo get arrested? - Well that is a huge question. It's my question. I'm still asking to
myself the same thing. (dance music) - Leading up to his
arrest, there were reports that Chapo Guzmn was
hiding in this very city, going from residence
to residence. He was being watched
closely, monitored by the Mexican marines, US DEA
and Intelligence, and finally, finally, after 13
years on the run, he was arrested in Mazatlan, and that's where we're
gonna be heading next. (happy music) We were accompanied by Jos, a freelance
photographer journalist. - We're down here on the
boardwalk in Mazatlan. We're just a few miles from
where the biggest drug lord in the world was taken down. This is just a beautiful,
beautiful coastline. Just a wonderful city to visit. A lot US tourists come here,
and they have a great time. - [Charlie] Back
in El Paso, Texas, I interviewed border scholar,
Diana Washington Valdez. - No one in Mexico can
protect you, and that's true. I myself have been threatened
there, I've had a grandfather who was assassinated
politically, and his murder was unsolved. - How does a man with so
much money and power and, supposedly, 200-300 armed
guards standing around him, get caught under
the most ordinary
circumstance in Mazatlan? - Well now, that is a very
good question because, then again, we enter into
this whole terrain of was this an arranged arrest,
or was this really something that caught Chapo
Guzmn off guard? Probably an arranged arrest, because everything
points to that, and we get the feeling that
the Mexican authorities, under pressure from
the United States, advance to Chapo Guzmn, "Look, you need to be captured;
you're either going to be "killed, or you're
going to be arrested. "However you wanna
do it, it's over." And the biggest circumstantial
evidence for that is the fact that his 300-plus man
security guard detail was nowhere present
when he was arrested, and he did not put up a fight. People closest to
him, it was like they were expecting
to be picked up. - Lot of people ask, will
this affect the drug war in some way? As long as the United States
keeps consuming illegal drugs, I don't think this
changes anything. What's your take on that? - Well, no, because even since
Chapo Guzmn was arrested, we've continued to have,
weekly, major drug loads being seized at the border,
and these are the drugs that are being seized. We've had heroin,
cocaine, marijuana, the flow of the drugs
continues uninterrupted. - So the odds of Sinaloa
cartel boss El Chapo Guzmn facing true justice
in Mexico are slim. - It is very likely that
Guzmn will be extradited to the United States. - [Reporter] Wonder whether
their government will be the one to prosecute him, or
if he'll stand trial in the US. - Phil, P-H-I-L,
J-O-R-D-A-N, former director of the El Paso
Intelligence Center, not speaking on
behalf of the DEA. I don't speak for them, I never
pretended to speak for DEA, I just speak for my experience. Well, first of all, we never
had a war on drugs, okay? I know that Nixon came
up with that term. I had a guy that used to
work here for me, in Dallas, as my number two man. And he accepted a promotion
to Washington, so then he was in a higher type position. He says, "Phil, you
know, if we wanted to, "we could win this war
on drugs overnight." To those of us that are retired, or the people that are
still in law enforcement, it's very hard to
accept the deception that's been caused by
this administration. If you connect all
the significant
indictments we've had in El Paso, whether it's
[Spanish names], whatever, my answer would have to be,
yeah, it was retaliation. Now the FBI said they were
not gonna get involved because it involved
a teenage murderer. The kid was 13 years old
when he shot my brother. DEA headquarters,
they called and said, "Do not use DEA
resources to investigate "your brother's murder,"
even though there was a significant drug
connection there. Corruption is on both
sides of the border. You will no longer ever
hear me say that Mexico has a worse corruption problem
than the United States. If the truth hurts, so be it. We have not lifted one finger
to get the biggest Corleone of the world, El Chapo Guzmn,
in getting him over here. Since day one, we should've
had extradition papers on the desk of the
Attorney General of Mexico. Guzmn, when he was
a lower-level punk with the Sinaloa cartel,
he was there in the room when Kiki Camarena, our
agent, was murdered, and he was responsible,
according to three witnesses that used to be with the DFS, he was responsible for
kidnapping Kiki's pilot. No one has moved forward to
indict, not that he needs any more indictments, but I
would definitely indict him on the fact that he was there when Kiki Camarena was murdered. (crowd cheering) - You have to understand
that El Chapo Guzmn wasn't as powerful as the
Mexican government said. The power of El Chapo Guzmn is the protection
of the government. The real power of the Sinaloa
cartel, other than guns, is the protection of
the federal government. Of course, this business
works because, here in USA, you also have a huge corruption. Most exist, huge corruption,
in the border patrol, in the DEA, in the
police in many cities. Because this international
trade just cannot happen without the knowledge
of many other members of this government. - [Charlie] We took a trip
to Badiraguato, Chapo's home territory, to meet their
mayor, Mario Valenzuela. - It was time to head into
Chapo's hometown of La Tuna. As you enter the
village of La Tuna, you cannot miss this sign. It's written by Chapo
Guzmn's mother. We just drove three and a
half hours from Badiraguato. We're just minutes away now
from the town of La Tuna. You can see it over
my left shoulder. The red house right there is
Chapo Guzmn's mom's house. The left of the red house,
that's Chapo Guzmn's house. Apparently, the Sinaloa
cartel watches every car that comes up this way,
just to make sure that there's no false moves or some
ominous situation developing. Okay, we've reached the
house of Chapo Guzmn's mom. Hola! Hola? It's locked. - This is a nice house,
considering that we are in the middle of nowhere. - Yep. - The distance between
the states of Chihuahua, Durango, and Sinaloa. - The golden triangle. - Yeah. - Do you sense a
tunnel in this house? - No, but I will
mind that it exists. - The mayor of
Badiraguato told me that this is Chapo
Guzmn's house; it's next door to his
mother's house, and, from the looks of it,
there's nobody here, this gate here's locked. If Chapo Guzmn is indeed
the man in custody, well, obviously he
would not be here. If it's an impostor in prison, I guess there's a
possibility that he's here, but right now there's
nobody in the house, the gate is locked, and
neither him nor his mom is in La Tuna during
filming today. This angle, you can
certainly see how expensive this residence would be. From the other angle,
you really couldn't tell, but this angle's very revealing. Not to mention the
incredible scenic view here that Mr Guzmn had
while he was here. Chapo Guzmn's house,
Chapo's house is right here. And then we have
this house here. What a marked difference in
terms of wealth, money value. Can never quite tell what
a neighborhood looks like. Look at these individual
houses, see how it kinda stacks up
against the other. Hola! Hola? Nobody's home. I hear a television set,
but I don't see anybody. Okay. This does have a very
neighborhood feel to it, Latina. Lot of people are friendly,
they say hello, we've seen a lot of kids walk by,
and it seems like a very, very friendly,
small neighborhood. - Right. - And you wouldn't think
that the biggest drug lord would live here, or his
mother would live here. - Yeah, but they know who
they belong to. [Mumbles] - If you go to prison in Mexico, that doesn't mean your
organization stops. It just means that you
have a new office, and, as we sit here in this house, I can guarantee you that
when Chapo Guzmn finishes refurnishing, he'll
have better facilities than what you'll see here. Plus, he'll have his
wife, his mother, his paramours, come
over and visit. Plus, the business
will continue, I mean, nothing has stopped,
and anybody that thinks that he's incarcerated and
he's no longer involved, then they're smoking something,
because that's not true. - The big business
is not in Mexico. The big business is here, in US. That's why the
Sinaloa cartel moves thousands of millions of
dollars through the US bank. Bank of America, Wells
Fargo, HSBC, as we know in many court documents
that these banks used to launder the money of the
Sinaloa cartel, we can tell. But I haven't heard about this
operation, huge operation, to break the business
to the Sinaloa cartel. We just know that
one man is in jail. - [Charlie] If you had one
question for Chapo Guzmn, what would that be?