El Chapo devoured Viagra, delivery meals and women in prison

When Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera landed in prison for the first time, he transformed himself into the king of the penal colony — ordering in meals, drugs and women on demand, according to a new book.

“During his years at Puente Grande [prison], El Chapo was a drug and sex addict,” writes Anabel Hernandez in “Emma and the Other Narco Women” (Grijalbo Publishing), out Jan. 25.

The Mexican journalist adds that El Chapo competed with fellow prisoner Hector Luis Palma Salazar, also a Sinaloa drug trafficker, to see who could last the longest during sexual acts and who could accumulate the greatest number of partners.

“They brought in prostitutes from outside, and when that was not possible they paid nurses, cleaners and cooks who worked in the penal system,” Hernandez writes.

El Chapo reportedly was able to fund his prison lifestyle thanks to money funneled in from a drug-dealer cousin.
El Chapo reportedly was able to fund his prison lifestyle thanks to money funneled in from a drug-dealer cousin.
AFP/Getty Images

The men also had sex with female prisoners who were incarcerated in the men’s section of the facility. Among El Chapo’s lovers was Zulema Yulia Hernandez, 23, who was serving time for robbery. El Chapo, then a married father of five, got her pregnant on at least two occasions and arranged for her to obtain abortions at the prison, according to Hernandez.

Among the drugs the cartel leader arranged to receive in prison: Viagra.
Among the drugs the cartel leader arranged to receive in prison: Viagra.
Bloomberg /Getty Images

Meanwhile, he ordered that an unnamed female prisoner who refused his advances be savagely beaten and raped.

Hernandez writes that the drug kingpin also had food from the best Mexican restaurants delivered to his cell, as well as — perhaps unsurprisingly, given his competition with Salazar — Viagra.

El Chapo, who began his life of crime in the 1970s as a driver for drug trafficker Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, landed in prison in 1993 for his role in the assassination of Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo, who was gunned down in the parking lot of the international airport in Guadalajara.

The Catholic bishop was caught in the crossfire between rival drug traffickers and mistaken for a drug lord.

El Chapo reportedly bribed prison guards to get his way.
El Chapo reportedly bribed prison guards to get his way.
AFP/Getty Images

In prison, Hernandez writes, El Chapo was able to pay for his lifestyle thanks to regular infusions of cash from his cousin, drug dealer Arturo Beltran Leyva. He also bribed federal guards at the Puente Grande high security prison in Jalisco, according to the book.

The cartel leader escaped in January 2001. The official version was that he left the prison in a laundry cart, but, according to Henandez, El Chapo left the building dressed as a policeman “with the complicity of many federal authorities.”

In 2019, he was sentenced to life on drug trafficking charges in the US and is now serving a life sentence at a maximum security prison in Colorado, where presumably Viagra isn’t available on tap.

This article was originally posted here