This video purporting to show escaped drug lord "El Chapo" appeared on El Blog del Narco this week.
A video purporting to show escaped drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera hanging out at a ranch has been making the rounds on the Internet. But it's actually from a music video.
Last month, a Facebook user uploaded a video clip that zoomed in on a man with a white shirt and a mustache, whom the user claimed was Guzmán. The clip started to go viral -- most recently, Mexico’s widely read El Blog del Narco posted it on Thursday.
But Mexican news outlets have thrown cold water on that theory, pointing out that the clip is actually from the filming of the music video for “Ando Arremangado” by the group Los Titanes de Durango. The song is a “narco corrido,” a Mexican music genre that celebrates the exploits of drug traffickers.
The clip that was posted on Facebook shows a man riding a horse as the sounds of a brass band play in the background. As the outlets pointed out, the same scene appears at the end of the Titanes de Durango video.
Compare the first clip to the music video for "Ando Arremangado."
It’s not clear whether the clip that's circulating is an official scene from the music video that was altered in the final version, or a separate video shot on scene. The footage is of poorer quality than the music video and filmed vertically, as if it were taken on a cell phone.
Unaware of the origin of the clip, Mike Vigil, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's former chief of international relations, told the San Antonio Express-News he was “90 to 95 percent” sure it was Guzmán.
He also expressed some doubt in that interview, however, noting, "If I’m the most wanted man in the world, I would certainly not allow anyone to be making a video or phone calls around me."
Reached by HuffPost, Vigil said he had always left room for doubt and that certain factors, like the deference shown to the man in the video and the fact that he was wearing a baseball cap, made it seem possible that the video genuinely showed Guzmán.
"I said I couldn’t see his face clearly, but his stature was the same, he has an affinity for baseball caps," Vigil told HuffPost. "There were always doubts. I never said that it was definitely him."
Guzmán escaped from Mexico's maximum-security Altiplano jail through a tunnel in July.
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