In September 2013, a confidential source acting as a go-between with Mexico's most powerful drug baron, Joaquin Guzman Loera, better known as "El Chapo," delivered news I had been awaiting for years: Guzman had agreed to an on-camera, sit-down interview. I was simultaneously elated and troubled — the message came with a caveat.
In accepting our interview request, Guzman had made a request of his own: Everything that made it to air would have to be approved by him.
In a boardroom off Univision's newsroom in Miami, I met with the network's vice president of news, Daniel Coronell, a veteran investigative journalist who sharpened his reporting instincts in the darkest days of Pablo Escobar's reign in Colombia. We discussed Guzman's offer. Univision had been pursuing Guzman's story for a long time.
It was tempting to accept. Earlier that year, two producers, a cameraman and I had driven through the heart of El Chapo's kingdom in western Mexico, the isolated and lawless Sierra Madre mountain range where lush jungle is interrupted only by serpentine dirt roads and perched villages.
Outsiders here stick out and are often assumed to be with intruding rival cartels or government security forces. So we traveled with a local who drove a minivan belonging to a funeral home. As we drove, we cracked jokes to ease our nerves. The irony of driving in a vehicle accustomed to death through the backyard of Mexico's most wanted criminal was not lost on us.
For several days, we filmed in a poor and desolate part of Sinaloa, where the legendary generosity hurled around by Guzman was nowhere to be seen. We visited the area near his mother's home in the town of La Tuna, where he grew up with an abusive father who spent the proceeds from growing marijuana on booze and prostitutes, and where Guzman whetted his appetite for money selling oranges. We visited Culiacán, the state capital, and also the business hub for Guzman's international drug empire. We reported on the city's motels, owned by straw men and shadow businesses that launder Guzman's estimated $3 billion fortune, and we visited the homes of his many wives, friends and enemies. Off camera, waiters at popular restaurants proudly explained how Guzman often came down from the mountains to eat his favorite meals as other patrons were cordially ordered to hand over their cellphones.
During our reporting, we often felt as if we were being followed, our actions watched and our conversations listened to. The refrain was that nothing moved in Sinaloa without Guzman knowing about it. One day, we were filming on the road leading to the municipality of Badiraguato, near Guzman's hometown. We were recording a piece in which I said to the camera, "after growing up in a situation of extreme poverty, today this is known as El Chapo's territory." Later that night, Guzman sent us a message: "Tell the journalists that they're wrong about El Chapo's territory," explained the source close to Guzman. "It's all of Mexico." We assume a lookout on the road heard us, but we still don't know for sure.
Guzman's sphere of influence took us from Mexico to the U.S., where his cartel has burrowed hundreds of drug-running tunnels under the world's most watched border — the same one that separates him from his favorite consumer market. In Chicago, the center of Guzman's American franchise, he is as revered as in Sinaloa. Little did it matter that the city had declared Guzman Public Enemy No. 1 — a designation not seen since the days of Al Capone. Women had the face of their "hero" painted on their nails, and men tattooed their backs with artistic portrayals of Guzman's famous exploits, such as the time he first escaped prison in 2001, wearing a dress and a wig.