Mexico City (AFP) – After a life of humble beginnings, a journey to the top of the criminal world, and a professed fear of imprisonment, Mexico’s Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada will spend the rest of his days in a US jail. Mexico’s last old-school drug lord was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for co-founding and leading the notorious Sinaloa cartel by a New York court on Monday.
Starting out as a poor farmworker and eventually becoming one of the world’s most powerful and wealthy criminal bosses, Zambada was arrested at a US airport in July 2024. He claims he was tricked by a cartel ally into boarding a plane that delivered him into the hands of US authorities. Known for keeping a low profile and avoiding being photographed, Zambada, now 76, spent decades rising through the cartel ranks, evading both capture and multiple assassination attempts.
He was born in 1950 in Sinaloa — a rugged mountainous state of Mexico known for producing corn, beans, cattle, and some of the world’s most notorious drug traffickers. His early years coincided with the emergence of Sinaloa as a marijuana and opium growing region — and eventually a transit point for Colombian cocaine going to the United States. Mexico’s drug violence has surged since then. Since 2006, almost half a million people have been killed, and 130,000 are missing, according to government estimates.
– ‘Systematic assassinations’ –
Zambada began his criminal career with the Guadalajara and Juarez cartels, working alongside Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo and “The Lord of the Skies” Amado Carrillo Fuentes — both also from Sinaloa. But he eventually struck out, working alongside another Sinaloan, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, to establish the Sinaloa cartel in the 1980s and 1990s. With Zambada playing a key role in paying off officials, setting up distribution networks across the US, and moving billions of dollars back to Mexico, the Sinaloa cartel soon became the world’s largest. It is one of six Mexican drug gangs that US President Donald Trump has designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
US court documents paint him as not just smart but violently ruthless. He allegedly ordered the killing of his own nephew, who was then found dead in a car by the side of the road. According to US prosecutors, Zambada also engaged in “systematic assassinations” of fellow cartel members, police, and the military. In 2010, he gave a rare interview to the Mexican magazine Proceso, revealing that the Mexican army had come close to capturing him four times. Known as the “man in the hat,” Zambada said that he feared jail more than death, and his arrest or murder would not change Mexico’s drug trafficking landscape.
Almost a year after being detained in the US, he pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and organized crime charges and agreed to pay a $15 billion forfeiture as part of his plea deal. In exchange for pleading guilty, US authorities waived their right to seek the death penalty. “I stand before you today knowing that my actions caused harm,” Zambada told the packed courtroom. “I chose this path and I understand that today I’m being held accountable for those decisions.”
– War, suspicion –
His former partner Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is already serving a life sentence in the United States. El Chapo’s demise prompted an internal war within the Sinaloa cartel between Zambada’s supporters and El Chapo’s sons, killing about 2,000 people. El Chapo’s son, Joaquin Guzman Lopez, was on the same plane that brought Zambada to the US. Lopez was arrested and admitted to having kidnapped Zambada as part of his own plea deal.
The operation continues to raise questions nearly two years later, especially amid US-Mexico tensions over the FBI’s alleged participation. The United States has denied any role in the operation to bring Zambada onto US soil. However, the recent display of the aircraft that brought him there as part of an FBI operations collection prompted Mexico to seek explanations.
© 2024 AFP
