'El Chapo' dreamed of biopic for years
before capture, says trial witness
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[January 15, 2019]
By Brendan Pierson
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Accused Mexican drug
lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was interested in directing a movie about
his life story as early as 2007, long before his well-known meeting with
U.S. actor Sean Penn and Mexican actress Kate Del Castillo in 2015,
jurors in Guzman's U.S. trial heard on Monday.
Alex Cifuentes, Guzman's self-described one-time "right hand man," said
he learned about a planned movie project while living with Guzman in the
mountains of his boss' home state of Sinaloa from 2007 to 2009.
Colombian-born Cifuentes is one of about a dozen witnesses who have so
far testified against Guzman after striking deals with U.S. prosecutors,
in a trial that has provided a window into the secretive world of the
Sinaloa Cartel, one of the world's most powerful drug trafficking
organization.
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On trial in federal court in Brooklyn since November, Guzman, 61, was
extradited to the United States in 2017 to face charges of trafficking
cocaine, heroin and other drugs into the country as leader of the
cartel.
The alleged kingpin's silver screen dreams first surfaced after Penn
wrote a story for Rolling Stone magazine in 2016 about traveling with
Del Castillo to meet Guzman at a forest hideout, not long after Guzman
had escaped from a Mexican prison through a tunnel.
Del Castillo, who once played a drug trafficker in a well-known Mexican
TV soap, revealed soon after the article was published that the meeting
came about because Guzman's lawyers had reached out to her about a
possible movie.
When Guzman was eventually recaptured in 2016, Mexico's then-Attorney
General Arely Gomez said his contact with "actresses and producers" was
an "important aspect that helped locate him."
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![](../images/011519pics/news_g13.jpg)
Mexico's top drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is escorted as he
arrives at Long Island MacArthur airport in New York, U.S., January
19, 2017, after his extradition from Mexico. U.S. officials/Handout
via REUTERS/File Photo
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Cifuentes' own wife first urged Guzman to make a biopic around 2007,
Cifuentes said on Monday. Cifuentes said Guzman hired a Colombian
producer and planned a book tie-in, and the project got as far as a
draft that was shown to his lawyers.
In his testimony, Cifuentes also offered jurors a glimpse of
Guzman's life as a fugitive in the mountains. On a typical day,
Cifuentes said, Guzman got up at noon, received messages from his
personal secretary and then made calls while strolling under the
trees.
Cifuentes said that Guzman ordered him to kill the cartel's
communications expert, Christian Rodriguez, after learning that he
was cooperating with the FBI.
Cifuentes said he was unable to track down Rodriguez, who now lives
in the United States and testified at the trial last week, because
he did not know his last name.
(Reporting by Brendan Pierson, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
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