By Robin Emmott

MONTERREY, Mexico, April 12 (Reuters) - Mexico's most wanted man, drug kingpin Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, has outwitted government attempts to capture him by moving constantly between safe houses, changing his cellphone every day and altering his appearance with plastic surgery.

Now, with a government crackdown apparently doing little to slow his business, Guzman -- described by authorities as one of their most cunning opponents ever -- is now trying to expand his empire by taking over Central American smuggling routes and production of coca, the raw material for cocaine, in Peru, authorities say.

Mexican authorities say Guzman has also expanded his links into China, importing ephedrine -- used to treat bronchitis and asthma -- to make the recreational drug methamphetamine. The United States has put a $5 million bounty on him.

"Will he become the Pablo Escobar of his day? Probably yes," said Jorge Chabat, a drug trade expert at the CIDE social science institute, referring to the Colombian drug lord who became one of the world's most powerful kingpins before his death in 1993.

Guzman stands just 5 feet tall (1.55 meters) and escaped from prison in a laundry van in 2001. He leads a powerful coalition of drug gangs from the Pacific state of Sinaloa, which went to war with the Gulf cartel based on the Atlantic Coast in 2003.

Despite President Felipe Calderon's army crackdown on drug cartel violence, Guzman remains locked in a fight with the rival cartel, unleashing an unprecedented wave of drug violence in the last three years. Their battles have littered Mexico with beheaded corpses, mass graves and increased kidnappings.

"Guzman is directly responsible for this very bloody battle going on in Mexico today," said Chabat. "He wants to grow his business, to find new smuggling routes, new markets."

Some 2,000 people were killed in drug-related violence in 2006 and 600 victims have been registered so far this year.

Calderon has promised to end the cartels' turf war, sending thousands of troops into Mexico's northern border cities and other trouble-torn states.

But Guzman, 50, who is believed to have recently had plastic surgery to change his appearance, is a master at evading capture. Mexico's most famous kingpin in decades, he has outwitted three major government drives to find him between 2002 and 2006, becoming an Al Capone figure for some Mexicans.

The closest call came when 100 elite troops were 10 minutes away from catching Guzman in November 2004 at his ranch in Sinaloa before he escaped after a tip off.

"This man is one of the most intelligent men we have ever faced," Mexico's deputy attorney general, Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, told reporters in May 2005, following another attempt to capture the drug trafficker.

GOLDEN TRIANGLE

Said to change his cellphone every day to avoid being tracked, Guzman is constantly on the move across Mexico. He often passes himself off as a wealthy farmer, authorities say. He is a fan of seafood having grown up near the Pacific coast.

Using a wide network of safe houses ranging from plush haciendas to caves, Guzman is at his safest within Mexico's so-called Golden Triangle, the mountainous, drug-producing region in the states of Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Durango, where he has bribed police to protect him, authorities add.

"He holds a position of power not seen since the death of Amado Carrillo Fuentes," said Luis Astorga, an analyst at Mexico's National Autonomous University, referring to the drug lord who dominated Mexico's drug trade in the mid-1990s.

Married and with a son, "Little Shorty," in prison, Guzman learned the drug business in the 1980s as an associate of the so-called "godfather" of Mexican narcotics trafficking, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, who pioneered cocaine smuggling routes to the United States for Colombian cartels.

At the head of his own gang in the early 1990s, Guzman used tunnels to haul huge quantities of cocaine into Arizona and California from northern Mexico. In one seizure alone, police found 7.3 tonnes of the drugs in cans of chili peppers.

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