Journalist Phoebe Eaton with El Chapo's mother, María Consuelo Loera Pérez, la madre del Chapo Guzmán.

[IMAGE © PHOEBE EATON 2024]


"At trial, it became clear that in the macho, mustache-man world of drug-trafficking, Chapo had as much use for women, seducing them with saccharine forevers, then putting them to work in his stable—as buyers, as Blackberry-tapping go-betweens to preserve his anonymity on deals—involving their family members because there’s no glue stronger than blood."— Phoebe Eaton

Also, surprising revelations about the Pentecostal faith his family (and he) credit with keeping him alive all these years. The unusual practices he believes helped him escape jail and the authorities over and over again. Including the gift his mother and sisters (and even himself, supposedly) have of speaking in tongues.

The book features many hitherto unseen photos of Chapo's haunts in Badiraguato Municipality’s La Tuna, the surprising seat of empire. Also rare material from Chapo’s Brooklyn court trial, where he was convicted on all ten counts of his indictment and is now serving a life sentence in Colorado's Supermax prison. 

How El Chapo lived and how he loved, the deal with his many wives and the very many children, and a multitude of new stories and details of his life straight from the courthouse.

The book features many hitherto unseen photos of Chapo's haunts in La Tuna, the surprising seat of empire. And revelations about the Pentecostal faith his family (and he) credit with keeping him alive and free so many years.

[CHAPO’S HOMETOWN HIGH IN THE SIERRA MADRE: La Tuna, Sinaloa. IMAGE © PHOEBE EATON 2020]

[IMAGES ABOVE AND RIGHT © PHOEBE EATON 2024]

MORE PHOTOS HERE

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MORE PHOTOS HERE

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MORE PHOTOS HERE • MORE PHOTOS HERE •

[Left, Chapo’s hometown high in the Sierra Madre: La Tuna, Sinaloa. Below, Doña Consuelo Loera de Guzmán, outside the church son Chapo had built so she could pray away the threat of his imprisonment.]

Coke on a grave in Sinaloa's capital, a visual pun.

[IMAGES ABOVE AND RIGHT © PHOEBE EATON 2024)

[Above, “Coke” Grave, and right, narco-saint Malverde, Culiacán, Sinaloa.]

The El Chapo Guide to LIVING LA VIDA NARCO

Bust of narc-saint Malverde for sale at the Culiacan shrine.

Lifestyles of the rich and narco in Culiacán, the essentially closed city almost every notorious narco called home and—according to the senior DEA agent on the scene at the 2014 arrest of Sinaloa Cartel-boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán—“the lion’s den and stronghold of the most powerful cartel in the world.” Original, at-the-scene reporting and photographs, including wild and weird Tarantino-ish tales of life in the high-flying Sinaloa Cartel as recounted by its top tier of management, Chapo’s own senior staff.

 
A scene from the day El Chapo was extradited to the United States.

[COURTESY OF U.S. ATTORNEY’S OFFICE, EASTERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK]

THE TRIAL OF EL CHAPO GUZMÁN

The high times and even higher maintenance of an alleged $14-billion empire.

[Below, Chapo’s principal trial team: lawyers Eduardo Balarezo, Jeffrey Lichtman, and William Purpura.]

El Chapo's legal team: from left, Eduardo Balarezo, Jeffrey Lichtman, and William Purpura.

[IMAGE © PHOEBE EATON 2024]

 


"Listen, shit gets ripped off at hospitals all the fucking time. I mean Jesus, who wants to work in a hospital? The money sucks and it's boring and disgusting and you can get attacked with like, staplers, because people are genuinely off their rockers, and if I tell anybody something's wrong—any little, the slightest nothing, anything—the whole entire desk gangs up on you like you're some traitor to their mind-blowing incompetence. By law, they have to call the police and file a report. It's a whole thing, a giant hassle, and they all hate you 'cause it means tossing the cells, it really is like jail only everybody knows it's somebody on staff, and that gets them extra table-flipping pissy because it's this big hot steaming pile of extra work for nothing!"— A Field Guide to the Amazon

 

SHE PERSISTED: STAGE MONOLOGUES BY WOMEN 2021 (Applause Books Acting Series; click pic to buy on Amazon)

From: A Field Guide to the Amazon

Finalist: Screencraft Stage Play/Playwriting Award 2018-19

Semifinalist: LaBute New Play Festival 2018 (as shorter one-act iteration ‘Good People’)

Monologue “HOSPITAL”: In recovery from a suicide attempt, attention-seeking JULIET LIDDELL, 18, calls the paralegal her mother has assigned to keep an eye on her and threatens to go AWOL from the psych ward.

From: Woman Descending a Staircase

Finalist: Woodward/Newman Drama Award 2017-18

Short list: Austin Film Festival Stage Play/Playwriting Award 2019

Short list: Ashland New Plays Festival 2021

Monologue “TYPING": Sylvia decides her best plan of action is to out-money her estranged husband Ted Hughes.

Monologue “SLED DOG”: Sylvia contemplates the career girls of her time.

Monologue “MEDEA”: Her divorce now officially underway, Sylvia teeters on the brink of self-destruction.