MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican police have detained a woman said to be the wife of drug trafficker Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, in the government's latest push to track down the country's most wanted man, Mexican media said on Thursday.

Griselda Lopez and one of Guzman's daughters were taken into custody after a raid by police and soldiers on a house in Guzman's home state of Sinaloa in northwestern Mexico on Wednesday, Riodoce, a Sinaloan newspaper, said on its website.

Mexican law enforcement said anti-drug units searched seven homes seizing safes, jewels and luxury cars in the Sinaloan capital of Culiacan on Wednesday.

Authorities said Lopez was questioned and released, but they declined to comment on the Riodoce report.

Guzman, who escaped from prison in a laundry van in 2001, has a $5 million bounty on his head in the United States and runs a smuggling empire stretching from South America to Asia and deep into the United States.

The 53-year-old smuggler, nicknamed for his height of 5 feet, has unleashed a wave of violence after escaping prison in his bid to dominate Mexico's drug trade.

Some 23,000 people have died in drug violence since late 2006 when Calderon sent the military to fight cartels across Mexico, escalating a war that is scaring off tourists and foreign investment and worrying Washington.

Guzman, who made Forbes Magazine's list of the world's richest people last year, is believed to have fathered three children with Lopez, including a son, Edgar, who was killed by rival hitmen in Culiacan in 2008.

In 2007 Guzman married another woman, 18-year-old beauty queen Emma Coronel, at a ceremony in the northern state of Durango, according to Mexican and U.S. anti-drug officials.

U.S. officials say the kingpin was too heavily shielded by armed guards and protected by informants for Mexican troops to reach him.

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

(Writing by Robin Emmott; Editing by Xavier Briand)