The over a decade long wanted 56-year-old drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was captured Saturday in the Mexican resort city of Mazatlán – with an assault rifle handy when authorities raided his beachside hideaway over the weekend, Remarkably his captured was a near-seamless operation without a shooting rampage, in fact not a single shot was fired during his capture.
That’s because marines used infrared and body-heat scanners to pinpoint the locations of everyone inside the condo and make sure they were asleep, a Mexican official told CNN.
“El Chapo“— is one of the world’s richest and most powerful drug traffickers. Over the years, his fortune grew to more than $1 billion, according to Forbes magazine, which listed him among the “World’s Most Powerful People“.
Guzman or “El Chapo” as he is called is head of the Sinaloa drug cartel responsible for a reported 25 percent of all illegal drugs brought in the United States via Mexico — had evaded capture for years. That is, unless you count a brief imprisonment in 2001, which ended when El Chapo escaped from Mexico’s maximum-security Puente Grande prison in a laundry cart or simply by walking out dressed as a policeman.
The United States Government has been after Guzman for almost a decade
Guzman had a $7 million bounty on his head. A U.S. federal indictment unsealed in San Diego in 1995 charged Guzman and 22 members of his organization with conspiracy to import more than eight tons of cocaine and money laundering. He has been indicted by federal authorities in the United States several times more since 1996 on charges that he and others conspired to smuggle “multi-ton quantities” of cocaine into the U.S. and used violence, including murder, kidnapping and torture to keep the smuggling operation running. He’s also accused of conspiring to smuggle heroin into the United States and money laundering.
For the past several years, ‘El Chapo’ has been Chicago’s authorities “Public Enemy No. 1″– a title that was only used for Al Capone.
““El Chapo” A Man’s Life of crime, drugs, and sex and murder” – The making of a movie based on his life is the stuff screenwriters and action directors couldn’t image well enough to come up with.
And why not? El Chapo’s rags-to-riches story would be the perfect gangster-crime movie (or Univision novela: The top-rated Spanish network announced in January that it had ordered 60-episodes miniseries based on the drug lord called The Drug Baron (‘El Varon de la Droga’).
Which brings us to question:
What would a Hollywood movie based on the world’s most-wanted drug lord life look like? Who would be the best Latino-actor to play the role of the heartless Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán?
Would it be:
• Edward James Olmos – Born February 24th, 1947 –best known for his role as Lt. Martin Castillo in the NBC television series Miami Vice (1984-1989), Olmos has been seen in numerous film and television productions. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his starring role in Stand and Deliver (1988). Most notable of his recent offerings is American Me (1992), which was also his directing debut.
• David Zayaz (former Latino Trendsetter Award Recipient) was born on August 15, 1962 in Puerto Rico. He is an actor and director, known for Dexter (2006) , Oz (1997) and The Expendables (2010)
• Benecio Del Toro Benicio Del Toro – Born February 19th, 1967 – emerged in the mid-’90s as one of the most watchable and charismatic character actors to come along in years. A favorite of film buffs, Del Toro gained mainstream public attention as the conflicted but basically honest Mexican cop in the movie Traffic (2000).
• Antonio Banderas ¬ Born August 10, 1960, in Málaga, Andalusia, Spain. In 1992 Banderas made his Hollywood debut with The Mambo Kings (1992) Banderas shot to international fame with his sensitive performance as a lover of Tom Hanks’ AIDS-infected lawyer in Philadelphia (1993), then played opposite Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in Interview with a Vampire (1994). Banderas further established himself as one of Hollywood’s leading men after co-starring in Evita. He received critical acclaim for his portrayal of Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros in Frida (2002).
• Benjamin Bratt – Born December 16th, 1963 – Bratt gained Hollywood’s attention with two 1994 releases: In The River Wild, he portrayed a Native American ranger, and in Clear and Present Danger, he was the field officer for American soldiers sent by the CIA to infiltrate the Colombian countryside. Soon after, he was cast as the lead in the ABC miniseries James A. Michener’s Texas (1995). That year was also Bratt’s first as the conservative detective Rey Curtis on Law & Order.
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