El Chapo’s successor as the head of the notorious Sinaloa drugs cartel has ‘calmly’ surrendered to US police after reportedly being ‘tricked’ into flying to Texas
The head of the feared Sinaloa drugs cartel has been arrested in the US – and now his chilling 14-year-old confession has emerged.
Ismael Zambada Garcia, known more commonly as El Mayo, “calmly” surrendered to waiting FBI agents in Texas overnight.
Former Sinaloa Cartel boss, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, has enjoyed a life of luxury behind bars, with regular visits from prostitutes, movie nights, gourmet meals and parties. Zambada can look forward to similar treatment.
But it’s possible that he may not have to spend very long behind bars at all, if he decides to co-operate with the authorities.
While his friend was the cartel’s figurehead, Zambada was its logistical boss, using private planes, speedboats, and even submarines to smuggle drugs from Colombia to Mexico, and then into the United States. He once vowed he’d never be taken alive.
In a 2010 interview with the Mexican magazine Proceso, he explained what he would do if he was jailed with a four-word comment: “I would kill myself”. He added that he was “terrified of being incarcerated”.
Zambada, almost a decade older than El Chapo, has always lived a less flamboyant life than his former boss. Despite leading what US prosecutors have called “one of the most violent and powerful drug trafficking organisations in the world” he has avoided being associated with the beheadings, dismemberments and flayings that his predecessor was known for.
But clearly he has crossed someone within the dark and savage world of the Sinaloa cartel. Author Don Winslow, an expert on the Central American drugs trade, observed when El Chapo was recaptured in 2016: “Any organised crime figure, Guzman not excepted, survives only as long as he’s making other people money.”
Like El Chapo before him, El Mayo appears to have “lost the support and confidence of his partners in the cartel, and with it the political influence and power that protected him”.
Witnesses to Zambada’s arrest say it appeared to be a “pretty calm, arranged thing” after the drug lord had reportedly been tricked by one of his confederates into flying into the US. The private jet carrying Zambada and El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, landed at a Texas airport before “two individuals got off the plane… and were calmly taken into custody”.
While El Chapo has served multiple prison terms, this is Zambada’s first arrest. However his son, Jesús Vicente Zambada Niebla, faced a lengthy prison term after being captured and extradited to the US in 2010.
But the younger Zambada successfully negotiated a deal with US prosecutors and after providing valuable evidence against his former friends in the Sinaloa Cartel, had his sentence massively reduced.
Jesús Vicente Zambada Niebla is now thought to be living under the US Justice Department’s Witness Protection Program somewhere in the United States.
Several other members of the family have also been arrested in connection with cartel activities. Zambada’s other son, Serafín Zambada-Ortiz served an unusually lenient five-year sentence after being caught arranging a massive drugs shipment across the US border.
Meanwhile his four daughters are all being actively sought by US and Mexican authorities in connection with drugs trafficking and money laundering charges.
