Joaquin Guzman a.ka. El-Chapo when he was last arrested

On his way to becoming the world’s most powerful drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera had perfected burrowing tunnels under the border to smuggle drugs into the United States.

More than 75 of them have been discovered since 2008.

One that U.S. authorities found in 2013 stretched 2.4 miles from the edge of the Tijuana airport to southern San Diego. That tunnel had been equipped with electric lights and an electric railroad able to transport huge loads of drugs multiple times.

The escape tunnel used by El Chapo

And after El Chapo was arrested in February of last year, the authorities disclosed that he had constructed a remarkable network of tunnels linking various safe houses. The entrances to those tunnels were concealed generally under bathtubs.

Altiplano maximum-security prison outside Mexico City only has showers, but the stalls have the great advantage of being the only places where the video surveillance system does not intrude.

At 8:52 p.m. Saturday, Guzman disappeared from the view of the cameras as he entered shower stall 20 on corridor 2.

When the video did not show him emerging from this small zone of privacy after a reasonable time, prison guards went to check in person. They found no trace of him.

What they did find was a 20-by-20-inch hole in the floor leading to a mile-long tunnel equipped with lights just like the 2.4 mile-long smuggling tunnel that extended to San Diego.

Federal police patrol near the Altiplano maximum security prison in Almoloya, Toluca, Mexico, early Sunday, July 12, 2015. Mexico’s most powerful drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, escaped on Saturday night from the maximum security prison through a tunnel that opened into the shower area of his cell, the country’s top security official announced.

Since this one was intended to facilitate a single escape rather than convey numerous multi-ton loads of marijuana and cocaine, it was equipped not with a railroad but a track for a motorcycle-on-rails.

And this tunnel had more head clearance, as it was dug not for bales of pot, but for a particular drug lord.

The ceiling would no doubt have been even higher if El Chapo were not so aptly known by a nickname that translates as “Shorty.”

This was a strictly custom-built, bespoke tunnel.

None of which should have come as a surprise. What is surprising is that the Mexican authorities did so little to guard against it.

As they like to boast, Altiplano prison has walls three meters thick to prevent breaching. Cellphone transmissions are restricted for miles around to hamper communications by inmates with the outside. Armored personnel carriers stand ready in the event of an assault.

Yet nothing seems to have been done to prevent El Chapo from escaping by the most likely means.

Read more here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/12/inside-el-chapo-s-brazen-escape.html?via=newsletter&source=DDAfternoonEl Chapo had escaped from a Mexican maximum-security prison 14 years ago