The world's most notorious drug lord 'El Chapo' is a master of tunnels

By AMANDA MACIAS

Pulling off another brazen escape, the world's most powerful drug trafficker, Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin " El Chapo" or "Shorty" Guzman Loera, escaped from a high-security prison on Saturday night.

A little more than 16 months after Mexican Marines arrested him in February 2014, Guzman used an elaborate tunnel underneath his prison cell's private shower to breakout of the Altiplano federal prison.

The entrance to Guzman's labyrinth was a 1 1/2 foot by 1 1/2 foot gap in the shower floor which led to a 32-foot ladder into a mile-long tunnel. The custom-built 5 1/2 feet high and 2 feet 7 inch wide tunnel (one inch taller than Guzman's height) was illuminated and equipped with a ventilation system.

A motorcycle built onto the rails was also placed in the secret passage to transport Guzman across the tunnel quickly.

The end of the tunnel opened up to a nondescript abandoned home that is at least a half a mile away from any other building.

While the owner of the half finished concrete building is still unknown, officials believe the site was uninhabited for some time.

"It's totally abandoned," Mexican attorney general Arely Gomez Gonzalez said, VICE News reports.

Guzman's escape largely undermines Mexico's incumbent President Enrique Pena Nieto, whose political platform is to eradicate the nation's drug cartels.

What's more, Guzman is known for using tunnels in the homes he stayed in as well as in the business of moving drugs to the US.

"In addition to pioneering the use of tunnels to smuggle drugs across, or rather under, the United States border, Mr. Guzman built a warren of them in Culiacan, the capital of the state of Sinaloa, where his cartel was based and where he was believed to have been hiding for years," The New York Times notes.

In 2001, Guzman paid guards to help him slip out of the high-security Puente Grande prison near the city of Guadalajara after he was arrested in 1993.

His escape triggered a 13-year manhunt. On February 22, 2014, Mexican marines surrounded his house in Sinaloa and caught him trying to escape through a secret door beneath a bathtub that led into a tunnel network.