PHOENIX — Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the supreme leader and co-founder of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, eluded U.S. law enforcement for decades as the criminal organization grew to become the world’s largest manufacturer and smuggler of illegal fentanyl pills and other drugs into the United States.
Zambada, 76, once led the cartel in partnership with the flashier and more famous leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, who is now serving lifetime in an American prison.
Zambada and Guzmán’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, have been arrested in Texas on Thursday after arriving aboard a private jet. Zambada was being held without bail Friday after entering a not guilty plea to a series of drug trafficking charges in a 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 in which he was accused of conspiring to manufacture and distribute fentanyl. Prosecutors said he led “one of the most violent and powerful drug trafficking organizations in the world.”
Zambada was born in 1948 in the western state of Sinaloa and is widely known by his nickname “El Mayo”, short for Ismael.
Zambada is believed to have begun his criminal career as an enforcer 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. drug agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena by drug traffickers on Mexican soil.
The Juarez organization disintegrated and Zambada joined forces with “El Chapo” Guzmán, transforming a regional smuggling syndicate into the far-reaching Sinaloa Cartel.
Zambada has been the cartel’s strategist and deal broker for decades, overseeing its day-to-day operations, protecting the enterprise by avoiding a flamboyant lifestyle and eschewing the most gruesome violence. He has used largesse to earn the loyalty of locals in Sinaloa, where ringleaders have long been immortalized in ballads called “narcocorridos.”
“He’s like the George Washington of dope in Mexico. A huge figure,” said Elaine Shannon, an American journalist and author who first heard about Zambada in the mid-1980s when she was writing her book about Camarena’s 1985 killing, “Desperados: Latin Druglords, US Lawmen, and the War America Can’t Win.”
The American government had offered a reward of up to $15 million for information leading to Zambada’s arrest.
The most lucrative trade now is fentanyl, much of which is pressed into pills in large-scale operations south of the border involving professional chemists. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, most fentanyl is smuggled into the country through official ports of entry, usually in large trucks loaded with manufactured goods or products.
The cartel once focused primarily on marijuana and cocaine, but has diversified over the years to meet consumer demand. In addition to fentanyl, it also smuggles Mexican-made methamphetamine, heroin made from Mexican-grown opium poppies, and small amounts of lower-quality marijuana destined for parts of the U.S. where pot has not been legalized.
According to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Zambada oversaw the smuggling of “tens of thousands of pounds of drugs into the United States, along with the violence that accompanied it.”
In its 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment, the Drug Enforcement Agency calls fentanyl the most urgent drug threat in the U.S., saying these 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 every cartel leader, member and associate responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement after the arrests.
U.S. officials also blame the Sinaloa agency for much of the migrant smuggling from Mexico into the United States. This year, record numbers of people have arrived at the border, a major issue in the presidential election.
The son of “El Chapo” Guzmán, who was arrested in Texas along with Zambada, is considered one of the lesser-known sons in 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 convicted in 2021 in a federal court in San Diego as the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Friday that Mexico was still waiting for details of the arrests and was not involved in the operation.
The country’s drug lords have long wielded influence at all levels of Mexican government, reportedly bribing governors and even entire police forces to look the other way.
Now that Zambada is behind bars, many powerful people in Mexico will worry that in an attempt to get a more comfortable deal, he will cooperate with U.S. authorities and accuse them of collaborating with the cartels, Shannon said.
“They should all be worried,” she said. “He has literally bought off generations of Mexican politicians. He knows where all the skeletons are buried, more skeletons than Dia de los Muertos.”