Four previously unpublished videos have brought into focus the first moments after the arrest of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, one of the best-known names in international drug trafficking. The footage, published by the Mexican daily El Universal, shows the Sinaloa cartel boss in the first hours of his detention, amid questioning by authorities and security movements aimed at keeping him beyond the reach of any possible intervention attempt.
Footage after the capture in January 2016
According to El Universal, the videos show El Chapo and his bodyguard, Orso Ivan “El Cholo Iván” Gastelum, immediately after they were captured on January 8, 2016, after emerging from a sewer manhole.
The footage offers a rare look at him before his extradition to the United States, at a time when Mexican authorities were managing an arrest with major security and symbolic weight.
From the hotel to questioning by the military
In one of the videos, El Chapo is seen washing his face while police officers speak to him and allow him to remove his shirt, which was stained with mud. Later, according to the version published by the Mexican media outlet, he and the person who was with him were taken to a hotel while officers waited for reinforcements.
That decision, according to the same report, was linked to fears that people connected to the Sinaloa cartel might try to track them down. The detainees were later transferred to a military hangar in Mexico City.
“There will be no war,” the statement that stands out
In another video, El Chapo is seen handcuffed in the back of a vehicle and answers “No” when asked whether he had been mistreated. After arriving in Mexico City, he is questioned by the military.
According to the published video, he acknowledges that he had been involved in cannabis cultivation and trafficking since childhood, but not in theft. Politically and symbolically, his most striking statement remains that he had instructed cartel members not to intervene if he were captured.
In the footage, he is heard saying that he did not want clashes with the police and that he was convinced there would be no war to free him. It is an assertion that, even taken in the context of questioning under the control of the authorities, has drawn attention for the weight it carries.
The contrast with what happened later
That line of statement contrasts with what happened several years later. On October 17, 2019, cartel members set up roadblocks, burned vehicles and applied armed pressure for the release of his son, Ovidio Guzmán López, who had been briefly detained in Culiacan.
According to publicly known information, El Chapo was extradited to the United States on January 19, 2017. On February 12, 2019, he was sentenced to life imprisonment by a federal court in Brooklyn and is currently being held at the maximum-security ADX Florence prison in Colorado.
The release of these videos brings renewed attention not only to one of the most high-profile arrests of the decade, but also to the way authorities manage the public narrative in cases carrying major criminal and political significance.
Beyond the image of a subdued detainee, the footage once again opens debate over the relationship between the state, organized violence and the messages that emerge from the most tightly controlled moments of an investigation.