After a life of crime on the run exporting cocaine, marijuana and heroin to the United States, it was fentanyl that brought about the downfall of one of Mexico’s most famous drug lords. Ismael The May Zambada was captured on Thursday afternoon at the Santa Teresa airport in El Paso (Texas) along with Joaquín Guzmán López, one of the sons of El Chapo Guzman. The two men lead two of the four factions of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, respectively. The capture has been celebrated in the highest spheres of Washington. President Joe Biden on Friday celebrated the capture of the two drug traffickers at a time when Republicans accuse him of allowing the flow of the powerful synthetic opioid, which has caused hundreds of thousands of American deaths. The leader of the Sinaloa Cartel faces four other serious charges: money laundering, kidnapping, use of firearms and conspiracy to kill.
The details of the fall of The May Zambada are still unclear. Hours after their arrest, the apprehension of the two cartel leaders is full of speculation and unconfirmed versions. The New York Times He says that Zambada had been negotiating his surrender to the US authorities for three years. The Wall Street Journal He claims that the 76-year-old drug lord was betrayed by Guzmán López, who convinced him to board a small plane to inspect some clandestine landing strips.
The Mexican government has only added confusion to these versions. “We don’t know if it was a delivery or a capture,” said the Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, Rosa Icela Rodríguez. “We have to wait to see if the capture was there or here. I think there,” added the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in his daily press conference. To add intrigue to the legend of mystery surrounding Zambada, the Mexican authorities affirm that the only occupant on the private plane that took off from Hermosillo, in the State of Sonora, shortly before eight o’clock on Thursday morning, bound for the United States, was the pilot Larry Curtis Parker. Neither of them was on board. The May Neither Guzmán López nor the other were with him. “One left and three arrived,” said Rodríguez. The Cessna-type aircraft landed after 10:00 local time.
The allegations that Zambada is collaborating with authorities have been rejected by his attorney, Frank Perez. “He did not surrender voluntarily, he was brought here against his will,” the attorney said Friday outside the federal court in El Paso. His first hearing will be held on Wednesday, July 31, before Judge Anne Berton.
On Friday, Zambada pleaded not guilty to the five charges brought against him by authorities: fentanyl trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping, use of firearms and conspiracy to kill. If found guilty, Zambada will face the same fate as his former partner. El Chapo Guzmán, a life in the shadows of a maximum security prison. Guzmán López only faces charges of drug trafficking.
“The Department of Justice has in its custody two alleged leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the most violent and powerful organizations in the world,” said US Attorney General Merrick Garland in the statement confirming the arrest. Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security, framed the operation within the efforts of the Biden and Kamala Harris Administration in the fight against fentanyl. Anne Milgram, the acting director of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), has considered the operation as “a blow to the heart of the cartel.”
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The May Zambada, born in 1948 in Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa, had been wanted by U.S. authorities for decades. His name appears in at least five extensive legal cases opened between 2003 and 2016 in federal courts. In all of them, he is accused of facilitating the trafficking of cocaine and marijuana into the United States and of inheriting the criminal empire after the capture of El Chapo, who has been serving a life sentence in Colorado since 2019.
The hunt for the drug lord has intensified as U.S. authorities have launched a crusade to combat the arrival of fentanyl in the country. Washington has targeted large Mexican organizations, especially the one operating in Sinaloa, which it accuses of receiving chemical precursors from Asia and manufacturing the opiate in clandestine laboratories in the mountains. Fentanyl has caused a health emergency with more than 100,000 deaths a year and is the leading cause of death among Americans aged 18 to 45. In February, prosecutors opened a new case against Zambada for the manufacture and distribution of this drug.
“Fentanyl is the deadliest drug our country has ever faced, and the Department of Justice will not rest until all cartel bosses, members and associates pay for poisoning our communities,” Garland said.
The May and Guzmán López join a growing list of Sinaloa cartel leaders and other members who are facing justice in the United States. The DEA has especially gone after Los Chapitos, the cell that inherited the day-to-day operations of the organization after the arrest of El Chapo in 2016. These include one of his sons, Ovidio Guzmán López, who was captured for the second time and extradited to the United States in September, and Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, known as The NEET, considered one of the organization’s chief hitmen.
Not a day in prison
Despite its long criminal record, the US anti-drug agency stands out from The May Zambada is unique. “Despite having dedicated his entire adult life to being a major drug trafficker, he has not spent a single day in prison,” the organization says. Fourteen years ago, the DEA was offering a $5 million reward for him.
His life on the run is the stuff of legend. In April 2010, Zambada had journalist Julio Scherer, one of the deans of the Mexican press and founder of the magazine ProcessThe meeting took place in a rustic house lost in the mountains and was far from being an interview, as the drug trafficker was reluctant to answer the 83-year-old reporter’s questions. “He is over 1.80 meters tall and has a body like a fortress,” Scherer wrote in his notebook. Zambada gave some details of his personal life. He had a wife, five women, 15 grandchildren and a great-grandson. And he also shared one of his greatest fears. “I’m terrified of being locked up,” he confessed.
The May He established himself at the top of the organization in the 1980s, along with El Chapo and Juan Jose Esparragoza, The bluethanks to his contacts with Colombian drug lords, who entrusted him with cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines to move them to the largest market on the continent, the United States. Prosecutors say that these operations have generated a fortune of several “billions of dollars.” During the trial against El Chapo It was revealed that Zambada had a budget of up to one million dollars a month to pay bribes to authorities in order to guarantee the movement of drugs to the north.
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