A cigarette butt found in the warehouse where the escape tunnel from the Altiplano prison ended led authorities to Édgar Coronel Aispuro, the brother-in-law of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Wiretaps resulting from this discovery revealed an unexpected task: retrieving a small monkey named “Botas” (Boots)—named after the character who accompanies Dora the Explorer in the animated series—which the kingpin’s family had left behind at a house near the prison.
The relocation of the animal confirmed the whereabouts of the hideout used by Mexico’s most-wanted drug trafficker, as revealed in the docuseries *Operación Cisne Negro* (Operation Black Swan), produced by N+ Docs and released on October 27 on ViX.
The pet was a monkey that the twin daughters of Guzmán Loera and Emma Coronel—Emaly and María Joaquina—had named after the character from the *Dora the Explorer* television cartoons. The animal served as the first link in an intelligence chain that connected a house in the State of Mexico to the community of Bastantitas de Abajo, located in the mountains of Tamazula, Durango—an area within the so-called “Golden Triangle.”
Following the escape on July 11, 2015, the then-Attorney General, Arely Gómez, visited the warehouse where the 1.4-kilometer escape tunnel used by Guzmán terminated. Several cigarette butts were found on the floor. One of them contained DNA that matched that of Édgar Coronel Aispuro, Emma Coronel’s brother and the kingpin’s brother-in-law.
Coronel Aispuro was not a minor figure in the escape operation. According to official reports cited in the docuseries, he personally entered the tunnel on the night of the escape, emerged alongside Guzmán Loera, got into a vehicle, and subsequently traveled by air with him.
