Sinaloa – El Mayo: Who is the drug lord – Dealings with ”El Chapo”

One of the most powerful drug lords in the world, Ismael Zambada García, known as ”El Mayo”, leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, was arrested last night in El Paso, Texas, in a special FBI operation.

Zambada, 76, founded the cartel with Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who is currently imprisoned in the US.

Special agents who had infiltrated the cartel tricked the 76-year-old and managed to convince him to fly to the US under false pretenses.

With him was 38-year-old Joaquin Guzman Lopez, son of the famous “El Chapo”, the other co-founder of one of the most violent and powerful drug-trafficking rings in the world.

“Ismael Zambada García, also known as ”El Mayo”, co-founder of the cartel, and Joaquin Guzman Lopez, son of its other co-founder, were arrested (…) in El Paso, Texas”US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement released by his office in Washington.

Joaquin Guzmán Lopez is one of the so-called “chapitos”, the sons of notorious drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera Joaquin, known as “El Chapo”, who is serving a life sentence in a US maximum security prison.

Both arrestees face charges from US prosecutors for their role in the gang’s activities, particularly the production and trafficking of fentanyl, a highly lethal opioid.

Fentanyl use, according to authorities, is the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18-45.

The US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) had offered a reward of up to $15m (£12m) for the capture of ”El Mayo”.

“He bribed the entire government of Mexico”

During “El Chapo’s” trial in 2019, his lawyers accused “El Mayo” of bribing “the entire” Mexican government in exchange for living “openly” without fear of prosecution.

“In fact [ο ”El Mayo”] he was not controlling anything,” El Mayo’s attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, told jurors. “Mayo Zambada did it,” he claimed.

According to the US State Department, ”El Mayo” also owns several legitimate businesses in Mexico, including a “major milk company, a bus line and a hotel,” as well as real estate assets.

Along with the fentanyl charges, he also faces charges in the US including drug trafficking, murder, kidnapping, money laundering and organized crime.

In May, the nephew of ”El Mayo” – Eliseo Imperial Castro, who was known as “Cheyo Antrax” – was killed in an ambush in Mexico.

“El Mayo” is arguably the biggest drug lord in the world and certainly the most powerful in America.

He had eluded authorities for decades, and as such, his arrest sent shockwaves through Mexico.

In a statement, US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said that the Sinaloa cartel “he is a pioneer in the production and trafficking of fentanyl in our country for years, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans and destroying countless communities.”

FBI Director Chris Wray said the arrests constitute “exemplifies the commitment of the FBI and our partners to disrupting violent transnational criminal organizations like the Sinaloa Cartel.”

As more information emerges, the arrest of “El Mayo” will undoubtedly be heralded by President Joe Biden’s administration as one of the most significant operations by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in years.

From the late 1908s

”El Mayo” co-founded the Sinaloa cartel in the wake of the collapse of the Guadalajara cartel in the late 1980s.

While “El Chapo” was the public face of the organization and the more notorious of the two men, many believed that it was actually El Mayo who was its real leader.

Not only ruthless, he was also innovative, creating and maintaining “links” with Colombian cartels that flooded the US with cocaine, heroin and, more recently, fentanyl.

His leadership of the “criminal empire” has endured amid repeated anti-drug raids by successive governments and continued efforts by his enemies in other drug-trafficking organizations to bring him down.

In the violent, dangerous and treacherous underworld he acted as an irresistible king for many years.

However, that appears to have stopped with his arrest yesterday in El Paso, Texas – a city ravaged by an influx of the synthetic opioid, fentanyl, much of which was smuggled in by his organization.

The Sinaloa Cartel

The Sinaloa cartel, named after the Mexican state where the gang was founded in the late 1980s, is one of the most powerful criminal groups in the world, generating billions of dollars in revenue annually from drug trafficking in the US and around the world .

Infamous cartel boss Joaquin Guzman, better known as “El Chapo,” was arrested in Guatemala in 1993 on murder and drug charges and extradited to Mexico. But he escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001 – allegedly bribing prison guards to smuggle him out via a laundry truck. He was arrested again in 2014, but again managed to escape, this time through a tunnel.

“El Chapo” was arrested for the third time in 2016 and then extradited to the United States.

In a major trial, he was sentenced by a federal jury in Brooklyn in 2018 to life in prison plus 30 years, according to the Justice Department.

“El Chapo” was found guilty of 10 federal criminal charges, which included participation in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiracy to launder drug products, international distribution of cocaine, heroin and marijuana, and use of firearms.

During the trial, “El Chapo’s” lawyers argued that “El Mayo” was the real kingpin of the cartel who bribed the Mexican government to trap “El Chapo” and remain free to run the criminal organization .

El Mayo was indicted in February by the US for conspiring to manufacture and distribute fentanyl, a highly potent synthetic opioid that has killed tens of thousands of Americans in an overdose epidemic.

Fentanyl “was largely unheard of when the [”El Mayo”] founded the Sinaloa Cartel more than 3 decades ago and today is responsible for untold harm,” Breon Peace, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in the indictment.

Since 1989, ”El Mayo” imported and distributed “vast quantities of narcotics,” generating billions of dollars in profits, according to the indictment.

Federal prosecutors said he employed people to obtain “transit routes and warehouses” to import and store drugs, along with assassins to carry out kidnappings and murders in Mexico “to retaliate against opponents who threatened the cartel.”

“El Mayo’s” son Vicente Zambada Niebla admitted during his testimony at “El Chapo’s” trial in 2018 that he ordered the murders and kidnappings and was sentenced to 15 years in 2019 by a federal judge in Chicago.

He began cooperating with the US government in 2011, prosecutors said in a May 2019 filing.

The younger Zambada had known “El Chapo” since he was 15, he testified at “El Chapo’s” trial in 2018. The younger Zambada often referred to “El Chapo” as a “friend” during the testimony of him and said that the drug lord was the godfather of his youngest son.

With information from BBC News, CNN, US Department of State