El Chapo Legacy: Sinaloa Cartel Continues to Build Narco Tunnels for Drug Smuggling

Sinaloa Cartel boss Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera, also known as "El Chapo," is known for his ingenious ways of transporting drugs, including creating and using narco tunnels for his drug empire.

El Chapo also used the narco tunnels to evade capture and law enforcement officials for three decades. He even escaped from Mexico's super-maximum-security prison, Altiplano, through a tunnel on July 11, 2015.

The Sinaloa Cartel boss escaped from prison through the bathroom of his cell and went down to a ladder before entering a more than a kilometer tunnel built by his engineers.

Seven years after that event, the Mexican Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA) told Milenio that it had located 14 border drug tunnels since 2016.

Military authorities said Tijuana in Baja California state is the favorite city of drug tunnel builders since six of the 14 narco tunnels have been found there.

Two of these underground passageways were recently secured. One was located on a supposedly abandoned parcel of land in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz street in the Nueva Tijuana neighborhood on May 18, while the other was found on another farm just 50 meters away on the first property on June 8.

According to reports, both tunnels measured about 300 meters and were built at a depth of about 25 meters. They were made with steel beams to avoid any possibility of a collapse and have tracks along which carts can run.

The narco tunnels also have electrical lighting and ventilation, and officials believe that they were used to move drugs, weapons, and people.

According to Milenio, the construction method used in making these passageways is very similar to that employed to build the tunnel through which El Chapo used to escape from prison.

Thus, it is believed that the Sinaloa Cartel built the twin cross-border narco tunnels and at least some of the others found by the military since 2016.

Six people were arrested on charges of drug trafficking after recently finding the two tunnels, and all of them are still in prison, Mexican authorities said.

The other drug tunnels were reportedly found in Mexicali, Nogales, Matamoros, Tecate, and San Luis Río Colorado between 2016 and 2022.

Sinaloa Cartel Boss El Chapo Utilizes Narco Tunnels

The New Yorker reported that the Sinaloa Cartel built the first cross-border narco tunnel in 1989. Since then, the Sinaloa Cartel has refined the art of underground construction and has used these narco tunnels more effectively than any criminal group in history.

Officials have reportedly discovered 181 illicit passageways under the U.S.-Mexico border until 2014. They said most of them have been short and like narrow "gopher holes," just enough for a person to crawl through.

Federal agents said the Sinaloa Cartel specializes in these infrastructural wonders that they called "super tunnels." Authorities noted that a single "super tunnel" takes several months and over a million dollars to build as it has electric lights, elevators, and ventilation ducts, with disguised entry and exit shafts.

They said these passageways could also reach as deep as seventy feet and were normally tall enough for an adult to walk or ride through. This was the method that El Chapo left to the Sinaloa Cartel for drug trafficking and to get him out of jail.

Engineer of Sinaloa Cartel Narco Tunnels

Mexican and U.S. authorities have identified Jose Sanchez Villalobos as the mastermind behind the design of the Sinaloa Cartel narco tunnels, but El Chapo is considered the pioneer of their use to move contraband into the U.S.

Known as "the lord of the tunnels," Sanchez was reportedly the builder of the narco tunnels linking Tijuana on the Mexican side and San Diego on the U.S. side. He was recently released from prison in the U.S. after serving a 10-year term for a drug distribution conspiracy.

Sanchez, also one of the Sinaloa Cartel's high-level managers, pleaded guilty in December 2020 to planning, financing, and supervising the construction of several cross-border tunnels from 2010 to 2012.

He also pleaded guilty to overseeing the Sinaloa Cartel's operation as smuggling conduits. He was reportedly responsible for transporting drugs in Baja California, and Jalisco in Mexico and managing marijuana transport from southern Mexico to northern Mexico.

Sanchez was also reported to have overseen two narco tunnels found in the San Diego area built to transport Sinaloa Cartel drugs. He was also said to have been responsible for deciding who could use the said tunnels for a fee.

Sanchez was arrested in Mexico in 2012 and spent about eight years in custody there. He then spent the rest of his sentence in San Diego after being extradited to the U.S to face charges.

The narco tunnels became a huge part of El Chapo's operation for smuggling and escaping from prisons. El Chapo has earned the reputation of being the "Lord of the Tunnels" for his preference to use the underground.

He was compared to early Juarez Cartel boss Amado Carillo Fuentes, who was dubbed as "Lord of the Skies." Carillo Fuentes was known to transport drugs by using planes.

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

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