Who is Ismael Zambada García “El Mayo” captured by the US?

The Capture this Thursday In the United States, the capture of Ismael Mario Zambada, better known as “El Mayo,” raises questions about this 76-year-old man who for decades had remained at the top of the Sinaloa Cartel without being captured, despite arrest warrants and even rewards of up to 15 million dollars from the US.

“El Mayo”, along with Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, sentenced to life imprisonment in the USand Juan José Esparragoza Moreno, the mysterious “El Azul,” supposedly dead; formed the core of the Sinaloa Cartel, with Zambada being the last visible leader of the group.

A native of the small town of El Álamo, in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, “El Mayo” established himself as the top leader of the dangerous cartel, sanctioned by the US Treasury, for its illicit activities extending beyond the territory of Mexico.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas reacted Thursday night to the arrest, after the cartel boss landed in a private plane in Texas, along with the son of “El Chapo” Guzmán, who is also credited with leadership in the criminal organization, both were arrested.

“Today, two of the Cartel’s alleged top leaders, Ismael Zambada García (“El Mayo”) and Joaquín Guzmán López, are in United States custody and will be brought to justice. I commend the dedicated and courageous agents and officers of Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI whose years of work, along with others in the law enforcement community, have, at great personal sacrifice, disrupted and dismantled cartel operations around the world,” Mayorkas said.

Logistics Manager

“El Mayo” is believed to have headed the logistics of the Sinaloa Cartel to introduce drug shipments into the United States. For many years, he has been considered the head of the organization behind the scenes, and the one who helped raise the profile of the cartel and weave all the networks for drug transit.

The logistics of getting drugs into the United States led Zambada to use different strategies: from creating tunnels in the border areas between Mexico and the United States, to using various means of transport such as trains, ships, airplanes, submarines, light aircraft and helicopters, according to reports in the Mexican press.

“Family man”

In an interview with Mexico’s Proceso magazine published in April 2010, “El Mayo Zambada” described himself as a family man and offered details of his life in the drug world, a journey that began in the 1970s.

His first steps were in the Guadalajara Cartel, a structure of the legendary Los Quintero clan of drug lords of the time. Later he continued in the Juárez cartel, where he worked with the “Lord of the Skies” himself, Amado Carrillo.

He rose to the top in the late 1980s, when clan and cartel leaders were falling one after another after government raids that considered drug trafficking a central security problem in Mexico. Thus he began to use a strategy to operate with a low profile and be able to avoid arrest warrants.

In the 2010 interview with the Mexican magazine, he stressed that although he was afraid of being captured, he took precautions to avoid the Army.

But he also reflected on the nature of drug cartels, entrenched in Mexican society and the global drug market.

“The drug problem involves millions. How can we control them? As for the drug lords who are locked up, dead or extradited, their replacements are already out there. […] “Drug trafficking is ingrained in society, like corruption,” he explained.

By then he said he had a firstborn son who “is my godfather” also a wife, Five women, fifteen grandchildren and one great-grandson. “They, all six, are here, on the ranches, they are daughters of the forest like me. The forest is my home, my family, my protection, my land, the water I drink. The land is always good; the sky is not,” she said.

The DEA and the charges

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had an active arrest warrant against Zambada for numerous federal crimes including “conspiracy to import a controlled substance, more than 5 kilograms of cocaine and more than 1,000 kilograms of marijuana.”

Charges of murder during drug trafficking operations and disputes between cartels, and “conspiracy to murder in a foreign country” are added to kidnapping and complicity to boost the role of his criminal organization.

Secretary Mayorkas said the Biden administration has taken a “relentless” approach to combating drug trafficking, particularly the production and trafficking of fentanyl, the drug responsible for overdoses and deaths across the country.

“The Biden-Harris Administration has taken a relentless, unprecedented and comprehensive approach to combat the scourge of fentanyl,” Mayorkas said. He added that the United States is ready to bring to justice Ismael Zambada and Joaquín Guzmán López as the top leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel who came to the country to be captured.

US President Joe Biden on Friday praised the work of the officers who made the arrest. “Too many of our citizens have lost their lives to the scourge of fentanyl. Too many families have been broken and are suffering because of this destructive drug,” he said in a statement. release.

Mexico’s response

Mexico’s Security Secretary Rosa Rodriguez said Friday that her government was not involved in the operation to arrest “El Mayo” and Joaquin Guzman Lopez. She said she did not know if it was a capture or an agreed-upon delivery.

“It is part of the investigation to determine whether it was a capture or an agreed-upon delivery,” Rodriguez said at a press conference, and revealed that on Thursday afternoon the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City contacted the Mexican Security Secretariat to inform it of the arrests.

[Con información de Reuters]

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