Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán

Born 4 April 1957 in Sinaloa to a poor farming family, Guzmán endured physical abuse from his father, who brought him into the drug trade growing marijuana for local dealers. By the late 1970s he was mapping smuggling routes with rising kingpin Héctor Luis Palma Salazar, then supervising logistics for Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo until founding his own cartel in 1988. He pioneered distribution cells and cross-border tunnels to push cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, and heroin into the U.S. and Europe at unprecedented scale; Forbes listed him among the world's most powerful people from 2009 t…