La Tuna

His name, Joaquín Guzmán, otherwise known as El Chapo.

The man known to history as Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, or El Chapo, was born on the 4th of April 1957 in the small hamlet of La Tuna, located in the Sinaloa region of Mexico.

His father was Emilio Guzmán Bustillo, a farmer who presided over a modest herd of cattle inherited from his parents.

While some paint him as an abusive drunk and womanizer who beat his son at every available opportunity, members of El Chapo's family have downplayed these claims, characterizing him instead as lazy and work-shy.

In contrast, his mother, Maria Consuelo Loera Pérez, was well known for the hard work she put in tending to the family's small herd and raising her seven children, a work ethic that her son would later take after.

In fact, he was so close with his mother that even when he was on the run from authorities, he would make regular visits to see her back in La Tuna, where she lived in a large, comfortable compound he had built for her at the center of the village.

With Bustillo, she would give birth to his two sisters, Armida and Bernada, and his four brothers, Miguel Ángel, Aureliano, Emilio, and Arturo.

With a voracious sexual appetite who referred to women as his vitamins, El Chapo had at least four wives, countless mistresses, and a minimum of 15 children with many of them, most notably Ovidio, Iván, and Jesús Alfredo, the latter two of whom run the Sinaloa cartel now after the former's arrest in January 2023, joining the family business at an early age.

So I wanna start with his childhood in Sinaloa and an education that f- followed in the illegal drug trade.

Joaquín Guzmán was born in 1957 in La Tuna, a small community in Sinaloa.

Now the region down there is beautiful.

It's rugged, it's poor, it's historically difficult for the government to control in that area.