When he was a teenager, however, his father kicked him out of the house, and he went to live with his grandfather. It was during his adolescence that Guzmán gained the nickname "El Chapo", Mexican slang for "shorty", for his stature and stocky physique. Most people in Badiraguato worked in the poppy fields of the Sierra Madre Occidental for most of their lives, but Guzmán left his hometown in search of greater opportunities through his uncle Pedro Avilés Pérez, one of the pioneers of Mexican drug trafficking. He left Badiraguato in his twenties and joined organized crime.