Actress Kate del Castillo said in a letter published by Proceso magazine over the weekend that she used her only one-on-one meeting with drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzman to tell him that the film she planned to make would serve to make amends to the victims of organized crime.
“Our project is also going to serve to in some way compensate the victims of organized crime, my friend. What do you think?” the actress said she told Guzman during their meeting on Oct. 2 near Cosala, a town in northwestern Mexico.
“Friend, you have a big heart, I think that’s really good,” the 43-year-old actress quoted the drug lord as responding.
Del Castillo said actor Sean Penn and the two film producers who accompanied her were not present when she asked Guzman to remember the request she made of him on Twitter in 2012.
“You can do good, you are a powerful man,” the actress told Guzman in her post.
The Sinaloa cartel boss became interested in meeting the actress, who is famous for playing a drug trafficker in the 2011 Spanish-language telenovela “La Reina del Sur” (Queen of the South), as a result of her Twitter post.
Del Castillo said in the letter, titled “El dia que conoci a Guzman Loera” (The Day I Met Guzman Loera), that she feared that if the drug lord did not like what she had said, it would be her “last words.”
The “real nightmare” did not start until months later, the actress said, referring to her problems with the Mexican government.
Guzman escaped from prison on July 11 through a 1.5-kilometer (nearly one-mile ) tunnel dug to his prison cell but was recaptured in January in his home state of Sinaloa and sent back to the same penitentiary outside Mexico City.
He had earlier broken out of a prison in the western state of Jalisco in 2001 and spent more than 13 years on the run before being recaptured on Feb. 22, 2014, in the Pacific resort city of Mazatlan.
Under his command, the Sinaloa cartel rose to become one of the main sources of illicit drugs entering the United States, and the Mexican kingpin’s wealth led to his name regularly appearing on Forbes magazine’s list of global billionaires.
Guzman, who had been one of the world’s most-wanted fugitives, faces dozens of drug-trafficking and money laundering charges in federal courts in Arizona, Texas, California, Illinois, Florida and New York.
