Drug lord El Chapo's family to build university with his fortune, Mexican prez to break ground
The family of former Sinaloa Cartel supremo Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán, who is currently serving life in prison at ADX Florence, has announced that they will be using the drug lord's money to build and open a university in Mexico.
The university will be constructed in Badiraguato, the town where Guzmán was born, according to the Daily Mail, and will be one of the three projects the family will embark on using the wealth the 62-year-old has left behind.
The family's attorney, José Luis González Meza, revealed that Guzmán's mother, Maria Consuelo Loera, and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador are the ones expected to break the ground for the project, for which they have already hired Mexican painter Hugo Zúñiga de Guerrero.
"We are hoping that when President López Obrador makes his first visit to Sinaloa he will go to Badiraguato and lay the stone together with El Chapo's mother, María Consuelo, and work can finally begin on building the university", he said.
The second project will see the family attempting to resurrect a chain of affordable food markets that will sell meals at half the normal price, as well as coffee, tequila, beer, and mezcal.
To finance it, they will reportedly ask the Mexican government to delve into the trusts left behind by Joaquín Hernández Galicia, the former feared boss of the country's powerful oil workers union, the Petroleum Workers Union of the Mexican Republic.
Galicia died in prison in 2013 at the age of 91, close to a decade after he was arrested and convicted of manslaughter and weapons charges, and the stores Guzmán's family is looking to revive were common during his life as a union leader.
The final project is arguably the most ambitious one and will look to develop a pharmaceutical industry that will provide affordable medicine to Mexico, before then expanding its service throughout Central America.
Meza said the family wants to "provide low-cost food and medicine for Mexicans" and did not care about making money for themselves.