Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán was born in 1957 in rural Sinaloa, Mexico, and rose from an impoverished, abusive childhood to lead the Sinaloa Cartel as one of history's most powerful drug traffickers. After founding his own cartel in 1988, he pioneered cross-border tunnels and distribution cells to flood the US and Europe with drugs, earning comparisons to Pablo Escobar and a Forbes ranking among the world's most powerful people. His violent reign was linked to over 34,000 deaths, yet he repeatedly evaded justice—escaping a Mexican prison in 2001, being recaptured in 2014, and making a dramatic 2015 escape through a tunnel dug into his cell before his final arrest in January 2016. Extradited to the United States in 2017, he was convicted in 2019 on multiple charges and sentenced to life in prison. He is currently incarcerated at the supermax facility ADX Florence in Colorado, marking the definitive end of his decades-long criminal empire.