A Look at “El Mayo” Zambada, the Mexican Sinaloa Drug Cartel Baron – NBC 7 San Diego

Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a key leader and co-founder of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, eluded U.S. law enforcement for decades as the criminal organization transformed itself into the world’s largest producer and smuggler of illegal fentanyl pills and other drugs into the United States.

Zambada, 76, once ran the cartel in partnership with the more famous and glamorous baron Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, who is serving a life sentence in the U.S.

Zambada and Guzmán’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, was arrested in Texas on Thursday after boarding a private plane. Zambada was being held without bail Friday after pleading guilty to a series of drug trafficking charges in federal court in El Paso.

Zambada has been charged in numerous cases across the U.S., including one filed in February in the Eastern District of New York accusing him of conspiring to manufacture and distribute fentanyl. Prosecutors said he led “one of the most violent and powerful drug trafficking organizations in the world.”

Who is Zambada?

Zambada was born in 1948 in the western state of Sinaloa and is widely known by his nickname “El Mayo”, a diminutive of the name Ismael.

Zambada is believed to have begun his criminal career as an enforcer in the 1970s. He later became a key figure in the Juarez cartel until its main 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, helping to transform the regional smuggling syndicate into the broader Sinaloa Cartel.

For decades, Zambada was the cartel’s strategist and go-between, overseeing day-to-day operations, protecting the enterprise by eschewing extravagant lifestyles and avoiding the most gruesome violence. He used generosity to gain the loyalty of Sinaloa’s residents, where the barons have long been immortalized in ballads called “narcocorridos.”

“He was like the George Washington of drugs 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 a book about Camarena’s 1985 killing, “Desperados: Latin Druglords, U.S. Lawmen, and the War America Can’t Win.”

The U.S. government has offered a $15 million reward for information leading to Zambada’s arrest.

What business does the Sinaloa cartel do?

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. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say most fentanyl is smuggled into the country through official ports of entry, usually in large trucks carrying goods or products.

Once focused primarily on marijuana and cocaine, it has diversified over the years to meet consumer demand. In addition to fentanyl, it also smuggles Mexican-produced methamphetamine, heroin made from Mexican-grown opium poppies, and small amounts of lower-grade marijuana into parts of the United States where marijuana has not been legalized.

Zambada oversaw the smuggling of “tens of thousands of pounds of narcotics into the United States, as well as the violence that went along with it,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said.

In its 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) identified fentanyl as the most serious drug threat in the U.S. and found that it and other synthetic opioids were responsible for about 70% of the country’s 107,941 fatal overdoses 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 organization for much of the smuggling of migrants from Mexico into the United States, which has seen record numbers of people arriving at the border this year, a major issue in the presidential election.

Who is Joaquín Guzmán Lopez?

The son of “El Chapo” Guzmán, who was arrested with Zambada in Texas, is considered one of the lesser-known sons in the family.

His more famous son, Ovidio Guzmán López, is also in custody in the U.S. and pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges in Chicago in September.

Meanwhile, “El Mayo’s” son, Ismael Zambada Imperial, pleaded guilty in 2021 in a U.S. federal court in San Diego and was charged with leadership of the Sinaloa cartel.

What does Zambada’s capture mean for Mexico?

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Friday that Mexico was still waiting for details about the arrests and was not involved in the operation.

Drug lords have long had influence at all levels of the Mexican government, allegedly bribing governors and even entire police forces to turn a blind eye.

Shannon said that now that Zambada is behind bars, many influential people in Mexico will be concerned that he could cooperate with U.S. authorities and accuse them of working with the cartels in order to get a more convenient deal.

“They all need to worry,” she said. “He has literally bought off generations of Mexican politicians. He knows where all the skeletons are buried, more skeletons than there are on Dia de los Muertos.”