El Chapo's Real Name: Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera

Quick answer: El Chapo's documented full name is Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera. Encyclopaedia Britannica records that form and describes him as the former head of the Sinaloa drug cartel. The U.S. Department of Justice used the same full name in announcing his 2019 federal sentence (Encyclopaedia Britannica; U.S. Department of Justice).

Real name and early life

Britannica gives the form "In full: Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera" and the aliases El Chapo and, in the Justice Department announcement, also El Rapido. His birth date is disputed: Britannica says sources give either December 25, 1954, or April 4, 1957. He was raised in Badiraguato municipality, a remote area of Sinaloa state in northwestern Mexico that was the birthplace of several later trafficking figures, Britannica says. This page records the birth-date conflict rather than choosing silently.

Career highlights

Britannica describes him as a leader of the Sinaloa cartel who helped develop smuggling methods later associated with the organization. He was arrested in Guatemala in 1993, extradited to Mexico, acquitted of murder, and convicted of drug trafficking and firearms possession, receiving a sentence of more than 20 years. He later escaped Mexican custody, was recaptured, and escaped again on July 11, 2015, from the maximum-security Altiplano prison near Toluca, Britannica records. The U.S. government had announced a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest on federal drug charges in 2004, Britannica says, and later raised its priority on the case. He was captured in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, on January 8, 2016, after a shoot-out, and was extradited to the United States the following year. The Justice Department said trial evidence included cooperating witnesses, large narcotics seizures, and records of trafficking activity over a period of more than two decades.

Trial and sentence

A federal jury in Brooklyn convicted him on February 12, 2019, on all ten counts of a superseding indictment, including leading a continuing criminal enterprise, narcotics trafficking, using a firearm in furtherance of drug crimes, and money laundering, the Justice Department said. On July 17, 2019, U.S. District Judge Brian M. Cogan sentenced him to life in prison plus 30 years, and ordered $12.6 billion in forfeiture.

Name notes for searchers

Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera is the documented full name; he is widely known as El Chapo. Searchers looking for the former Sinaloa cartel leader sentenced in the United States in 2019 are aiming at the same person.