Ballads glorifying Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s daring jailbreak were composed shortly after his escape. Now T-shirts and hats featuring the Mexican drug kingpin’s face are flying off the shelves.
The fashion line features a wanted poster with the multimillion dollar bounty, an image of Guzman escaping prison with a bag of cash and his face with the words “Boss” in the same red and blue design as US President Barack Obama’s famous campaign poster.
At prices ranging between US$5 and US$32, the T-shirts of the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel chief are available for sale in the streets of Mexico or on the Internet, with US Web sites among those seizing on the fugitive’s notoriety.
Some feature a younger Guzman with a clean-shaven face, others with his famous thick mustache or the man, whose nickname means “Shorty,” carrying a weapon.
Some stores have already run out of stock, days after Guzman made his July 11 escape from a maximum-security prison via a tunnel dug under his cell in central Mexico.
Online store Kartel Kollection, based in Los Angeles, posted the words “sold out” for a T-shirt with an old picture of Guzman.
“We have always had a lot of sales, but of course we’ve had to increase production” in the past week, Gabriella Zarazoga, one of the company’s managers, told reporters.
Clients of Kartel Kollection, whose brand has two AK-47s in the shape of the letter K, include people from Mexico, the US and the Middle East, she said.
The store’s collection includes a “Big Leagues” T-shirt with the face of Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel partner, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, and other designs featuring the late Amado Carrillo Fuentes, alias “The Lord of the Skies.”
For those who want a drug lord on their heads, Kartel Kollection sells a hat with the face of Rafael Caro Quintero, who is wanted by the US for the murder of an undercover US agent in 1985.
The Guzman fashion is part of the so-called narco-cultura, drug culture, that has spread across both sides of the US and Mexican borders.
Drug cartels have inspired low-budget films sold as DVDs in local markets and narco-corridos, drug ballads to polka-like beats.
Guzman has added another chapter to his legendary, if violent, life following his second escape in 14 years. In 2001, he fled another maximum-security prison by hiding inside a laundry cart.
His capture in February last year was a major victory in Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto’s drug war.
His escape is a major embarrassment for the government, but a boon to those profiting from the “Chapomania.”
Support for Guzman is strong in his native northwestern state of Sinaloa, where many see him as a sort of Robin Hood-like figure.
“Curiously, the main reactions on social media following his shameful escape were neither fear nor outrage against El Chapo,” said journalist Diego Enrique Osorno, author of The Sinaloa Cartel.
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