The recorded, wiretapped life of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán has dominated this week’s evidence at his trial for allegedly running the world’s biggest narco-traffic organisation.
For all his four (perhaps five) wives, serial mistresses and up to 19 children, Guzmán used his own cyber-security system to spy on ladies in his life – even as US authorities eavesdropped on him.
In one call, the cartel boss was recorded for US authorities hoping to one day arm a six-month-old daughter with an AK-47 Kalashnikov.
Guzmán’s electronic life was revealed thanks to evidence from an undercover FBI agent, Charles Stephen Marston, and the man he recruited: the cartel’s top IT fixer, Cristian Rodríguez.
Marston had posed as a Russian mafioso to lure Rodríguez into disclosing codes for communications using Voice over Internet Protocol using servers in the Netherlands.
Rodríguez had already featured in evidence, when he was described by Colombian narco Jorge Cifuentes as having been too “irresponsible” to set up a proper encryption shield at one of Guzmán’s lairs. What Cifuentes did not know was that Rodríguez was worse than that: he was “proactively cooperating” with the FBI.
Testifying on Wednesday, Rodríguez explained how he was instructed by Guzmán to install a “spyware” called FlexiSPY on 50 “special phones” as Guzmán called them.
The cartel chief became obsessed with the technology, and wanted Rodríguez to hook it up to allow him access to other people’s computers too. On one occasion Rodíguez did so in the presence of the surveyed woman, whom Guzmán “distracted” while he installed the bug.
A series of messages were then entered into evidence, exposing Guzmán at a level of intimacy to which no other mafia don has ever been subjected in open court: texts to Guzmán’s current wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, and a mistress, Agustina Cabanillas Acosta, whom Guzmán calls “Fiera” – wild beast.
Guzmán tells Emma about an escape round the back of a safe house; “Oh love, that’s horrible”, she responds.
Ms Coronel sat in court listening to the evidence and reading the messages for a second time, including those suggesting that she acted as an intermediary in the business – Ms Coronel has denied all illegal activity and knowledge of her husband’s.
In one message, Guzmán says of his daughter Maria Joaquina, then aged six months: “Our Kiki is fearless. I’m going to give her an AK-47, so she can hang with me.”
With Ms Acosta, Guzmán talks more business than pleasure: “How are the sales going?” he texts, in 2012. “Like busy bees,” she replies. “Nonstop, my love.” She then complains Guzmán is spying on her – which he is.
As the messages were shown, Guzmán stared hard, apparently into space, twitching. Some observers noted that the couple refrained from their usual mutual glance before a break.
Other recordings were more business-like, such as a conversation in which Guzmán seeks assurance from a man called “Gato” – the cat – that a favoured federal police commander is “receiving the monthly payment”. A cocaine distributor in Ohio is told to expect a consignment of methamphetamine instead.
There’s a chat between a senior cartel manager and an operative called “Cholo Iván” telling him to hold off killing people he had kidnapped and bound “to make sure so we don’t execute innocent people”. Iván is then scolded for beating up police officers: “Don’t be chasing cops,” says Guzmán, “they’re the ones who help … Take it easy with the police.”
But there’s a second thought: “You already beat them up once,” adds Guzmán, “They should listen now”.
The early part of the week was, by contrast, given over to the street-level, brutish violent business of Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel, courtesy of the first prosecution witness to defect from its lowest ranks, Edgar Galván from El Paso, Texas.
Galván made for a more interesting witness than his lowly status would suggest, because he represents so many of his kind, and offered insight into how the non-commissioned ranks of a narco-trafficking operation work, how its small cogs turn.
Aged 26, he became “party friends” with a sicario – or hitman – for Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel called Antonio “Jaguar” Marrufo, tasked with the “cleansing” of Cuidad Juárez, the Mexican border city, of street-level affiliates of the Juárez cartel, La Línea, The Line.
The acquaintance led to Galván to smuggling guns from Texas to Juárez – which he called juguetitos, “little toys” – and modest quantities of cocaine in the opposite direction.
The southbound traffic is of especial significance in the light of previous evidence from Vicente Zambada Niebla, the cartel’s logistics manager and son of its cofounder, that 99% of the guns he bought for his organisation came from the US, the so-called “Iron River” of legally-purchased American weapons that fuels Mexico’s war.
Jaguar showed Galván a “murder house” with sloping floors to wash blood, in which he killed operatives for La Línea. Galván was arrested in 2011, and is serving 24 years, which he stands to reduce by testifying.
