Phoenix.- Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the top leader and co-founder of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, eluded the reach of U.S. law enforcement for decades as the criminal organization evolved into the world’s largest manufacturer and smuggler of illicit fentanyl pills and other drugs into the United States.
Zambada, 76, once ran the cartel in partnership with its most high-profile boss, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, who is serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison.
Zambada and Guzman’s son, Joaquin Guzman Lopez, were arrested Thursday in Texas after arriving aboard a private jet. Zambada was being held without bail Friday after pleading not guilty to a range of drug trafficking charges in federal court in El Paso.
Zambada has been charged in numerous U.S. cases, including one filed in February in the Eastern District of New York alleging he conspired to manufacture and distribute fentanyl. Prosecutors said he ran “one of the most violent and powerful drug trafficking organizations in the world.”
Who is Zambada?
Born in 1948 in the western state of Sinaloa, Zambada is known by his nickname “El Mayo,” short for Ismael.
Zambada is believed to have begun his criminal career as a hitman in the 1970s. He later became a major figure in the Juarez cartel until its top leader, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, was arrested in 1989 for the kidnapping and murder of U.S. anti-drug agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena by drug traffickers in Mexico.
The Juarez organization splintered and Zambada joined forces with “El Chapo” Guzman, helping transform what was a regional smuggling syndicate into the far-reaching Sinaloa cartel.
For decades, Zambada has been the cartel’s strategist and negotiator, overseeing day-to-day operations and protecting the enterprise by avoiding a lavish lifestyle and gruesome violence. He used largesse to win the loyalty of residents of Sinaloa, where kingpins have long been immortalized in ballads called “narcocorridos.”
“He’s been like the George Washington of drugs in Mexico. A huge figure,” said Elaine Shannon, an American journalist and author who first heard about Zambada in the mid-1980s while writing her book about Camarena’s 1985 murder, “Desperados: Latin Druglords, US Lawmen, and the War America Can’t Win.”
The U.S. government had offered a reward of up to $15 million for information leading to Zambada’s arrest.
What are the businesses of the Sinaloa cartel?
The most lucrative business now is fentanyl, much of it pressed into pills in large-scale operations south of the border involving professional chemists. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say most fentanyl is smuggled into the country through official ports of entry, typically in large trucks carrying manufactured or agricultural goods.
The cartel, which once focused primarily on marijuana and cocaine, has diversified over the years to meet consumer demand. In addition to fentanyl, it also traffics methamphetamine produced in Mexico, heroin made from poppies grown in Mexico and small amounts of low-grade marijuana destined for areas of the United States where the herb is not legal.
Zambada oversaw the trafficking of “tens of thousands of kilos of drugs into the United States, along with the associated violence,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said.
In its 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment, the Drug Enforcement Agency calls fentanyl the most urgent drug threat in the United States and says it and other synthetic opioids were responsible for about 70% of the 107,941 fatal overdoses in the country in 2022.
“The Department of Justice will not rest until each and every cartel leader, member, and associate responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement following the arrests.
U.S. authorities also blame the Sinaloa organization for much of the smuggling of migrants from Mexico into the United States. Record numbers of people have arrived at the border this year, something that has become a major issue in the presidential election.
Who is Joaquin Guzman Lopez?
The son of “El Chapo” Guzmán, who was arrested with Zambada in Texas, is considered one of the lowest-profile children of the family.
A more prominent son, Ovidio Guzmán López, is also in U.S. custody and pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges in Chicago in September.
Meanwhile, a son of “El Mayo,” Ismael Zambada Imperial, pleaded guilty in a US federal court in San Diego in 2021 to being one of the leaders of the Sinaloa cartel.
What does Zambada’s capture mean for Mexico?
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Friday that Mexico was still awaiting details about the arrests and that it was not involved in the operation.
Drug lords have long held sway at all levels of the Mexican government, reportedly bribing governors and even entire police forces to look the other way.
Now that Zambada is behind bars, Shannon said, many powerful people in Mexico will be concerned that, in an attempt to secure a sweeter deal, he might cooperate with U.S. authorities and accuse them of collaborating with the cartels.
“They all have to be worried,” he said. “He has literally paid off generations of Mexican politicians. He knows where all the skeletons are buried, more skeletons than on the Day of the Dead.”
#Mayo #boss #Mexican #drug #cartel