Interview with Chapo

May 14, 2014

Home » Commentary » Interview with Chapo

I’m a young reporter and delighted to be first to interview Chapo Guzman in his new cell at Altiplano, in the state of Mexico. I’ve met some celebrities but never such a big star. I imagine he must be pretty sad and discouraged living in a prison that has proven impregnable. Walls three feet thick deter frontal assaults as do armored vehicles stationed nearby. The bad guys can’t fly in, either, since airspace is restricted over the prison. They better not try any other trickery or the finest sensory and tracking devices will instantly pinpoint their location. And forget corrupting prison employees: everyone from guards to the director undergoes regular lie detector tests. They even give me one and electronically check my fingerprints. Chapo won’t escape from this prison like he did the last one.

He still seems happy when I arrive, shaking my hand hard and slapping my shoulder with his left hand as I enter a modest cell offering only a thin cushion over a concrete bed, an immovable concrete stool and desk, a steel toilet joined to a sink and water fountain, and a shower with a timer. From his cell Chapo can squint through a four-inch window into an inner courtyard. He rests on the bed, his back against the wall. I sit on the concrete stool about breaking my behind.

“Must be a difficult adjustment,” I say.

“Sure, but I’d spent most of my time hiding in rat holes in the Sierra. Didn’t get nearly as much luxury as a billionaire should.”

“Do you ever feel remorse about killing so many people?”

“No, I feel good because I destroyed people who were trying to take my territory or who’d insulted me or the Sinaloa Cartel. People like that, we cut their balls off, nice and slow, and then their lips, before we cut off their heads.”

“Isn’t there a helluva lot of stress in a job like that? Worrying about other narcotics traffickers killing you, always having to run from the police and the army, the ones you didn’t bribe.”

“There’s stress but, for me, being poor was worse.”

“How do you spend your days? Do you still run your businesses?”

Guzman looks very unpleasantly at me and says, “They’ve jammed cell phone communication outside ten kilometers. Can’t do much.”

“Not much drug dealing but what about other options?”

“My reading’s getting better. I only went to school about three years, you know. We can borrow two books from the library. Can’t go there so they roll the books here on a cart. We’ve got a week or so to read them and don’t get any more until we give a short book report.”

“You write the reports?”

“Most of the time they’re satisfied when I just tell them what I’ve read.”

“I’ve seen their workshop on TV. They’ve got a lot of hammers and sharp tools. Have you been making any furniture?”

“They don’t let our group in there, and they don’t let us see each other. I wouldn’t either, if I was in charge. At least sometimes I get to visit my family in the auditorium.”

“Are these conjugal visits?”

Chapo again appears unhappy.

“Well, great, I’m glad you’re able to see them,” I say. “Are you going to high school?”

“That shit’s too tough and doesn’t interest me. I’ve got a hundred degrees in my line of work. I should be teaching business and chemistry and agriculture and distribution and maintaining airplane fleets and paramilitary tactics and psychology and intimidation and plenty more. You think any high school teacher could do all those things.”

“No way. How’s the food?”

“Damn near every day they tell me how nutritious it is and to make sure I eat my apple.”

“You’re kidding?”

“No. They think they’re rehabilitating me.”

Looking at a gray steel door on the right wall of his cell, I ask, “What’s on the other side?”

Chapo eases up and walks over and scratches the door which soon opens, and he steps through and motions for me. The door closes and leaves us in a carpeted room with a king size bed and giant TV on the wall and a refrigerator and bar and two young ladies in bikinis. Chapo embraces one, kissing her open-mouthed, and motions for me to get busy. I comply, and four hours later I’m lying drunk and coked out on the bed with the other three, and Chapo points at me and says, “I’m thirty years older than you but took more drugs and fucked twice as much.”

“Yeah, but you ate all the Viagra.”

“Didn’t really need it. I’m a bull.”

Source: Borderland Beat, February 24, 2014

George Thomas Clark

George Thomas Clark is the author of Hitler Here, a biographical novel published in India and the Czech Republic as well as the United States. His commentaries for GeorgeThomasClark.com are read in more than 50 countries a month.

Recent Commentary

Books

HITLER HERE is a well researched and lyrically written biographical novel offering first-person stories by the Fuehrer and a variety of other characters. This intimate approach invites the reader to peer into Hitler’s mind, talk to Eva Braun, joust with Goering, Goebbels, and Himmler, debate with the generals, fight on land and at sea and…
See More
Art history and fiction merge to reveal the lives and emotions of great painters Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, William H. Johnson, Lee Krasner, and many others.
See More
This fast-moving collection blends fiction and movie history to illuminate the stimulating lives and careers of noted actors, actresses, and directors. Stars of this book include Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis, Alfred Hitchcock, Clint Eastwood, Cate Blanchett, and Spike Lee.
See More
In this collection of thirty-eight chiseled short stories, George Thomas Clark introduces readers to actors, alcoholics, addicts, writers famous and unknown, a general, a lovelorn farmer, a family besieged by cancer, extraterrestrials threatening the world, a couple time traveling back to a critical battle, a deranged husband chasing his wife, and many more memorable people…
See More
Anne Frank On Tour and Other Stories
This lively collection offers literary short stories founded on History, Love, Need, Excess, and Final Acts.
See More
In lucid prose author George Thomas Clark recalls the challenges of growing up in a family beset by divorce, depression, and alcoholism, and battling similar problems as an adult.
See More
Let’s invite many of the greatest boxers and their contemporaries to tell their own stories, some true, others tales based on history. The result is a fascinating look into the lives and battles of those who thrilled millions but often ruined themselves while so doing.
See More
In a rousing trip through the worlds of basketball and football, George Thomas Clark explores the professional basketball league in Mexico, the Herculean talents of Wilt Chamberlain, the artistry of LeBron James, the brilliance of Bill Walsh, and lots more. Half the stories are nonfiction and others are satirical pieces guided by the unwavering hand of an inspired storyteller.
See More
Get on board this collection of satirical stories, based on news, about the entertaining but absurd and often quite dangerous events following the election of President Donald J. Trump in November 2016 until January 6, 2021, shortly after his loss to Joe Biden.
See More
Join Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and other notables on a raucous ride into a fictional world infused with facts from one of the roughest political races in modern U.S. history.
See More
History and literary fiction enliven the Barack Obama phenomenon from the African roots of his father and grandfather to the United States where young Obama struggles to control vices and establish his racial identity. Soon, the young politician is soaring but under fire from a variety of adversaries including Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh.
See More
These satirical columns allow startlingly candid Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush to explain their need to control the destinies of countries, regions, and, ultimately, the world. Osama bin Laden, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Karl Rove, and other notables, not all famous, also demand part of the stage.
See More
Where Will We Sleep
Determined to learn more about those who fate did not favor, the author toured tattered, handmade refuges of those without homes and interviewed them on the streets and in homeless shelters, and conversed with the poor in the United States, Mexico, Ecuador, and Spain, and on occasion wrote composite stories to illuminate their difficult lives.
See More
In search of stimulating stories, the author interviewed prostitutes in Madrid, Mexico City, Havana, and Managua and on many boulevards in the United States, and he talked to detectives and rode the rough roads of social workers who deal with human trafficking, which is contemporary slavery, and sometimes used several lives to create stories, and everywhere he ventured he witnessed struggles of those whose lives are bound In Other Hands.
See More
In compressed language Clark presents a compilation of short stories and creative columns about relationships between men and women.
See More