Mexican kingpin’s arrest likely to set off violent jockeying for power
MEXICO CITY — A new era is dawning for Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa cartel after US authorities seized Ismael “El Mayo” Zambadathe last of the great old Mexican drug traffickers.
Experts believe his arrest will spark a new wave of violence in Mexico, while Zambada could provide a wealth of information to US prosecutors.
Zambada, who had eluded authorities for decades and had never set foot in prison, was known as a shrewd businessman adept at bribing officials and able to negotiate with anyone, even rivals.
Removing him from the criminal circuit could unleash an internal war for control of the cartel that has a global reach – as happened with the arrest or assassination of other leaders — and open the door to the more violent tendencies of a younger generation of Sinaloa traffickers, experts say.
With that in mind, the Mexican government sent 200 members of its special forces to Culiacan, the capital of the state of Sinaloa, on Friday.
There is “significant potential for a major escalation of violence across Mexico,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy and Technology at the Brookings Institution. That’s “bad for Mexico, it’s bad for the United States, and also the possibility that the even more vicious (Jalisco New Generation cartel) becomes even more important.”
For that reason, Zambada’s arrest can be seen as a “great tactical success,” but strategically problematic, Felbab-Brown said.
While few details are known, a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity said: Zambada was tricked into flying to the USwhere he was arrested along with Joaquín Guzmán López, a son of notorious Sinaloa leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. The elder Guzmán is serving a life sentence in the United States.
A small plane took off from Hermosillo in northern Mexico on Thursday morning with only an American pilot on board, bound for the airport in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, near El Paso, Texas. Mexican Security Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez said Friday that while one person left Hermosillo, three people arrived in New Mexico.
Flight tracking site Flight Aware showed the plane stopped reporting its altitude and speed for about half an hour over the mountains of northern Mexico before resuming its course toward the US.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, an outspoken critic of the strategy to capture drug lords, said Friday that Mexico had not participated in or been aware of the U.S. operation but said he considered the arrests “progress.”
Later, López Obrador, speaking at the site where the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels battled for control of smuggling routes along the Guatemalan border on Friday, said downplayed the violence that had has prompted nearly 600 Mexicans to seek refuge in Guatemala this week.
He said, as he has done before, that it is his political opponents who are trying to make the violence in Mexico seem out of control. But those cartels were already fighting each other in many places in Mexico before Zambada was arrested.
Frank Pérez, a lawyer for Zambada, told The Associated Press that his client “did not come to the United States voluntarily.”
It appeared that the sons of “El Chapo” Guzmán were somehow trapped by Zambada, said José Reveles, author of several books on the cartels. The so-called Chapitos, or Little Chapos, are a faction within the Sinaloa cartel that has often been at odds with Zambada, even during the drug trade.
Guzmán López, who was also arrested on Thursday, “is neither his friend nor his collaborator,” Reveles said.
He is considered the least influential of the four brothers who form the Chapitos, who are among the main exporters of the synthetic opioid fentanyl to the United States. Joaquín Guzmán López is now the second of them to end up in U.S. custody. Their security chief was arrested by Mexican authorities in November.
Guzmán López is accused of being the cartel’s link in the import of basic chemicals from Asia used to produce fentanyl, and of setting up the laboratories where the drug is produced, Reveles said.
Anne Milgram, director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said Zambada’s arrest “strikes at the heart of the cartel responsible for the majority of the drugs, including fentanyl and methamphetamine, that are killing Americans from coast to coast.”
During the current Mexican administration, which ends on September 30, Mexico has failed to bring the violence in the country under control. López Obrador’s decision to focus on alleviating what he sees as the root causes of the violence rather than confronting the cartels head-on has led to tensions with U.S. authorities, particularly the DEA.
According to Felbab-Brown, it has also allowed the cartels to acquire a level of power that is “unprecedented in the history of Mexico.”
Zambada could now offer reams of information about the cartel’s activities if he decides to cooperate. He is being charged in multiple federal courts in the US.
He was the cartel’s most skilled agent of corruption and its most influential trafficker who “ran extensive corruption networks across many administrations in Mexico, across large geographic areas, from the top of the Mexican government to municipal institutions,” Felbab-Brown said.
“The most important thing to keep an eye on is how much intelligence El Mayo will now provide and how much evidence in exchange for better terms,” she said.
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Durkin Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press journalists Christopher Sherman, Alexis Triboulard and Martín Silva in Mexico City contributed to this story.