El Chapo: Trial concludes month one with tales of blood and money - TheSpec.com

7 Tons of Cocaine in Jalapeño Cans: The evidence against El Chapo

Guzman, who at that time had recently escaped from prison, usually waited for him at a remote mountain hideout. One hideout, Rosero said, was a farm with a big wooden gate, a normal-looking house and a pool with a palapa.

Rosero would make his pitch to Guzman — 3,000 kilos, say, delivered on the open seas by speedboat — while sitting in the shade underneath the palapa. Guzman, he recalled, often sat listening in a baseball cap.

Though he could be hotheaded when it came to personal slights, Guzman seemed relaxed when facing business problems. Once, Rosero said, the U.S. Coast Guard seized a mammoth load of more than 12 tons of cocaine that was headed to the Sinaloan traffickers. Hat in hand, Rosero flew into the mountains to see the kingpin and break the bad news.

"He told me we had to keep moving," Rosero said. "We had to keep working."

A New Face

In the early 2000s, Ramirez went to Brazil, learned Portuguese and underwent a series of face-altering surgeries in an effort to avoid the authorities. Doctors adjusted his jawbone and cheeks. He got a hair transplant, lip implants, and his eyes were widened, among other changes.

During cross-examination, one of the defence attorneys, William Purpura, who is bald, asked about the hair transplant.

"How did that work out for you?"

Ramirez, who still has a head of hair, laughed and said that it had worked out well.

Later, Purpura said, "You were a handsome man."

The prosecution objected.

Purpura pivoted: "You weren't a handsome man."

Another objection came.

Sleepy Jury

On Wednesday, Cogan admonished the jury for not paying attention. "I know there is a lot of testimony to listen to," he said. "Without singling anyone out, sometimes I look over and wonder if you're as focused as you should be."

The next day, gruelling testimony about tanker cars and secreted cocaine put two jurors to sleep — one still holding his notebook in the air — and a third woman doubled over in her chair. This time, the judge said nothing.

Jurors will get two weeks off for the holiday season starting Dec. 20.

Chapo Glossary

Bajadores — A word used often during the trial comes from the Spanish verb bajar, meaning "to go down." (The -dor suffix changes the verb to a noun.) Thus, bajadores has been used during the trial to describe people who bring drug money down from where the drugs are sold.

Seizures — Despite having created innovative techniques to hide drugs, including truck traps and false walls, several government agents testified this week about how the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Coast Guard seized large shipments of El Chapo's cocaine and marijuana. The revelations included details about a 1999 raid of 3,500 pounds of marijuana and more than 1,000 kilograms of cocaine, some of it bundled into Robert Wayne Footwear shoe boxes. Later, in 2002, some 1,900 kilos of cocaine was seized from a warehouse in Brooklyn and a similar amount of cocaine was seized the following year in Queens.