'El Chapo': the great escape

On entering the warehouse I saw rubbish and discarded wood. A photographer from a local paper and I went down the tunnel together, accompanied by a public prosecutor.

Two metres down we reached a sort of basement, a convenient spot to store buckets, ropes and dug earth. There was also electrical equipment and a pulley just above the tunnel itself. An ideal way to keep evidence of burrowing away from the surface…

I was given just four or five minutes to take photos. The authorities had determined that a specially adapted motorbike able to run on rails allowed “El Chapo” to make a speedy escape, but we weren’t able to see that for ourselves.

My time was up and I jumped in the car to find a place where there was a phone signal so I could start sending the photos.

Next day, we queued up outside the warehouse for four or five hours and I protected myself as best I could from the sun with an umbrella.

After a while we realised that we were also going to get access to his cell, about 20 minutes away in the prison.

I went down to the basement area and started to clamber down a rickety ladder about 8 metres long. The darkness was intense and I couldn’t see my feet. Air was in short supply.

I looked for details, especially as I was now able to see the motorbike: wheels on the rails, the fuel tank, a knife on one of the trolleys pushed by the motorbike, oxygen bottles. “El Chapo” himself cut the headlights on the bike, the authorities said, to help evade detection.

Once back on the surface I ran to the car to reach the prison, queue up and access the cell. There were about 100 journalists waiting. We were only allowed to take in a camera, one lens and our ID.

Security was extremely tight to get in, including photo after photo of us, and countless ID checks. We were under strict instructions where and when not to take photos. Police were with us the whole time.

I soon lost count of the number of locked doors we passed through. After 10 minutes walking through a maze of staircases and corridors painted grey, blue and white, we came to a stop: the cell of “El Chapo”, we were told, was at the end of the corridor. We could only photograph inside.

My turn came and I had two minutes. There was his unmade bed, a desk. A small cement wall divided the cell from the hand basin and the excuse for a shower, from where, the authorities established, he made his escape.

Everything was rusty and damp. I saw the security camera in a corner of the cell and tried to figure out the two blind spots mentioned by the authorities. From what I could work out, it seemed they were the shower and the headboard of the bed.

With Guzman still on the run, those blind spots could tell quite a story.