Actor Sean Penn met Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the drug lord of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico nicknamed `El Chapo,` at his hideout last October.
Mexican soldiers escorted `El Chapo` to the Mexican Attorney General’s Office in Mexico City on January 8.
This information was revealed in an article Penn wrote for Rolling Stone, published on the evening of January 9.
El Chapo escaped from a Mexican prison in July 2015 and was being hunted when he met Penn.
The information made the public very interested and to broaden public opinion, the New York Times wrote an article summarizing everything people need to know about that special meeting.
How did Penn approach El Chapo?
Penn’s article has the appearance of a secret break into the underground world of drug trafficking in Mexico and the relationship between Penn and El Chapo is quite circuitous.
The key to the relationship is a Mexican actress named Kate del Castillo, who once played a drug lord in a TV series and even sent a message on Twitter expressing sympathy for El Chapo in 2012.
That tweet led to an exchange between her, El Chapo’s lawyer and, two years later, the tycoon himself.
Last July, when El Chapo escaped from prison, Del Castillo met Penn in Los Angeles, through some mutual friends who were looking to develop a film project.
El Chapo agreed to meet Penn for an interview, but he wrote that the main reason may have been because he wanted to meet Del Castillo.
How did Penn come to meet El Chapo?
The trip, from Penn’s home in Los Angeles to El Chapo’s hideout in the jungle, was complicated and, he says, steeped in ambiguity.
Penn, Del Castillo and two characters he called El Alto and Espinoza bought plane tickets to go from an unnamed airport in Southern California to an unnamed city in Mexico.
Upon arrival, they were taken to a hotel, before El Chapo’s henchmen arranged for them to be taken to a dusty airport about half an hour’s drive from the city.
Next they met El Chapo’s son and boarded a small plane equipped with radar jamming technology.
Then they drove another 7 hours to an isolated clearing in the forest, with bungalow houses, where they met El Chapo and a local family responsible for cooking and serving dinner for the group.
Penn wrote that he saw several dozen of El Chapo’s gunmen.
What did El Chapo reveal?
Penn’s interview with El Chapo consisted of two parts: a 7-hour face-to-face meeting in the jungle and Penn did not bring pen, paper or any audio or video recording equipment;
Penn described the conversations at dinner that night as `casual and warm.`
“Very rarely did I see him without that smile,” Penn wrote.
According to Penn, El Capo was not interested in politics and throughout the evening showed a fascination with Del Castillo.
He also described the boss as someone who `felt absolutely no guilt` about the impact his drug trafficking activities had, even boasting a lot about his own success.
“I sell more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anyone in the world,` El Chapo boasted. `I have fleets of submarines, planes, trucks and boats.”
At one point during dinner, Penn asked El Chapo’s opinion about the Republican US presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump.
El Chapo simply responded to the question by calling Trump “Mi Amigo!”
The questions Penn sent via Messenger focused mainly on El Chapo’s family and his feelings about drugs.
“Well, it’s true that drugs cause a lot of harm,` El Chapo wrote about his drug dealing. `Unfortunately, like I said, where I grew up there was no other way (to make a living)
El Chapo also said he has not used drugs in his many years in the profession and called himself `not looking for trouble.`
Could the interview be the reason for the arrest of `El Chapo`?
The answer is that no one can know for sure.
The interview took place last October and it was not until January 8 of this year that El Chapo was arrested, more than 2 months after contacting Penn.
It is unclear whether the actors and producers named by Mexican authorities are Penn, Del Castillo and their friends.
But Penn writes that El Chapo was at one time interested in `seeing his life story told on film.`
Hours after Penn’s article was published, a Mexican official announced that all actors and producers who had contact with El Chapo, including Penn and Del Castillo, were under investigation.
However, it is still unclear whether the group’s meeting with El Chapo will be subject to criminal investigation, or whether Mexican authorities will scrutinize each person and look for violations to prosecute them./.
According to Linh Vu (VIETNAM+)
Nick John