MEXICO CITY— The world’s most wanted drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, was recaptured in western Mexico on Friday after a fierce pre-dawn gunbattle that left five people dead, the stunning culmination of a furious manhunt that began when Guzman tunneled out of a maximum-security prison nearly six months ago, according to Mexican authorities.
The operation took place in the Pacific town of Los Mochis, in Sinaloa state, the headquarters of Guzman’s drug-trafficking cartel, which ships more cocaine and marijuana to the United States than any other cartel, plus more than half the heroin that has ravaged U.S. communities. Members of the Mexican navy raided a home after a tip about gunmen inside, setting off a shootout that also injured one of the Mexican marines, according to a military statement.
“Mission accomplished,” President Enrique Peña Nieto wrote on Twitter. “I want to inform the Mexicans that Joaquin Guzman has been captured.”
The news was an immediate boost to Peña Nieto, who has struggled with corruption scandals, drug violence and the humiliation of the escape by Mexico’s most famous prisoner, who burrowed to freedom last year. Peña Nieto, speaking from the national palace, shared the credit with Mexico’s armed forces and intelligence services.
“Days and night, they worked to accomplish the mission I gave them, to recaptrue this criminal and bring him to justice,” Peña Nieto said in a televised speech standing before his national security team. “Months of intense and careful intelligence work and criminal investigation allowed them to detain this criminal and dismantle his network of influence and protection. Today, Mexico confirms that its institutions have the necessary capacity to confront and overcome those who threaten the tranquility of Mexican families.”
It was not immediately clear whether Mexico would try again to hold Guzman behind bars or extradite him to the United States. In a statement, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch congratulated Mexican authorities and said Guzman’s capture represented “a victory for the citizens of both Mexico and the United States, and a vindication of the rule of law in our countries.”
Since the billionaire drug lord escaped through a hole cut in his prison shower stall last July and exited through a mile-long tunnel, he has grown into a fugitive of epic proportions. He has broken out of Mexican prison twice in the past two decades and seemed capable of outwitting authorities at every turn. During his latest period on the lam, there were only sporadic reports of his whereabouts, including rumors that he had injured his leg fleeing one of many military operations to find him.
The arrest confirmed what many Chapo-watchers assumed, that he wouldn’t flee Mexico but return to his home state, where he enjoyed protection from residents, corrupt local police and his extensive cartel network. Up in the remote Sierra Madre mountains of eastern Sinaloa, checkered with plots of marijuana and opium poppy, residents have often praised Guzman for his largesse, which included giving them jobs and medical care and even air-dropping bags of money from Cessnas into peasant villages.
But like the first time he was recaptured, in a 2014 raid on his condominium in the coastal beach resort city of Mazatlan, he was caught on the coast on Friday — this time in a two-story white house on a residential street of Los Mochis, with a palm tree out front, according to televised images.
A neighbor who lives about two blocks from the house, in an upper middle class subdivision, said by telephone that the commotion started around 3:40 a.m. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the neighbor said she heard gunfire and what she assumed to be bombs, and rushed to a windowless room inside her house for safety.
The gun-battle lasted for about an hour, stopped for 15 minutes, then resumed, she said. Neighbors exchanged a running commentary of Whatsapp messages throughout the firefight, she said, which informed her that there were frequent military and police patrols driving down Benjamin Hill street with their lights off, while helicopters circled overhead. The neighbor added that authorities were searching storm drains and she believed that some of the suspects escaped by hiding in these underground drains.
After the raid, in which five suspected gunmen were killed, authorities recovered four vehicles, two of them armored, plus at least nine guns and rocket propelled grenades, officials said.
In the murky world of Mexican drug trafficking, it’s unclear how much the Sinaloa cartel suffered during Guzman’s incarceration last year or changed upon his release.
“We don’t know whether the Sinaloa Cartel will simply continue to operate as usual under El Mayo Zambada and other cartel leaders or if it will eventually devolve into smaller groups,” said Andrew Selee, a Mexico expert at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. “And if the Sinaloa Cartel does fragment, will it produce more violence or lower the death toll.”
On Friday morning, the euphoric news coursed through the Mexican government. Mexican officials said they expected a popularity boost for Peña Nieto, who suffered a massive embarrassment when Guzman escaped from the Altiplano prison.
“We are very happy,” said Aurelio Nuño, the secretary of education, who was Peña Nieto’s chief of staff when Guzman fled prison, in an interview. “This is an important step.”
Nuño noted that the first time Chapo slipped out of federal prison, in 2001, he managed to stay on the lam for more than a decade, while this time, he was free for less than a year.
“To achieve this for a second time ultimately speaks to the determination of this president, of this government, and a growing capacity of the Mexican state in terms of intelligence,” he said.
Minutes after Peña Nieto’s tweet, Miguel Angel Osorio Chong, the interior minister, called Nuño on the phone. Standing under the three crystal chandeliers of his office, Nuño kept repeating his congratulations for the drug lord’s capture.
“Muchas felicidades,” he told Osorio Chong. “Many congratulations.”
and not one comment which goes to prove what i was saying earlier