El Chapo outfit at GhoulishProductions.com. (Image: Screen shot)
Mexican authorities may have an even harder time than usual trying to find escaped Sinaloa Cartel chief Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán this Halloween.
A Mexican company is selling a costume made to look like the notorious drug kingpin, which includes a mask, pick axe and a striped shirt that reads, “El Chapo” on the right breast over Guzmán’s prison ID number 3578-AJ. On the back, the shirt has the hashtag, “#NoEraPenalDeMáximaSeguridad" (“It wasn’t a high-security prison”).
On July 12, Guzmán escaped from Mexico’s Altiplano maximum-security federal prison by stepping into an elaborate, mile-long tunnel that was clearly excavated with equipment much more advanced than a simple pick axe.
His escape embarrassed the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto and soured relations between Mexico and the U.S., which assisted in the drug lord’s capture in February 2014.
According to CNN en Español, the costume was created by a company called Grupo Rev.
“We’re a well-established company,” Grupo Rev director Diego Esponda Mendoza told CNN. “We created masks of [Mexican president Carlos] Salinas de Gortari, [Vicente] Fox, [Osama] bin Laden.”
The mask-maker told CNN that they began working on the Halloween outfit just after Chapo’s escape.
“One of our designers thought of it,” he said. “We thought it was a crazy idea, but Mexicans laugh at everything, and we decided to give it that sort of tone.”
Esponda said that more than 2,000 costumes have been sold in the U.S. and Mexico and that retailers in Mexico City have been ordering more. North of the border, it’s available for $29.90 at GhoulishProductions.com.
Next up for the company? Republican presidential candidate and sometime Chapo foil, Donald Trump.
“We already have a Trump mask,” Esponda said. “What we’re trying to figure out is the outfit. We are thinking in detail about what to include with it.”
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