Exclusive: Sinaloa Cartel Operative Reveals Bloody Details Of El Mayo Capture
Mayo was lured to a meeting with a Sinaloan politician; bodyguards are missing, perhaps dead
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By Juan Alberto Cedillo and Ioan Grillo
The drug lord El Mayo was lured to a meeting in Sinaloa state capital Culiacán that was supposed to be with Joaquín Guzmán López as an envoy of the Chapitos cartel faction and a prominent Sinaloan politician. Mayo came from a hide out in the mountains of Durango to Culiacán about a week earlier to see doctors about a cancer he is suffering from and then went to the rendezvous.
However, Guzmán López, a son of El Chapo and the godson of Mayo, was planning to betray him and make a deal with the United States. Entering the house, in the Huertos del Pedregal residential community, gunmen for Guzmán López ambushed Mayo and overpowered four bodyguards. These operatives are still unaccounted for, possibly dead. Another bodyguard and a personal assistant of Mayo were in a vehicle behind and managed to escape.
The gunmen bound El Mayo and took him about 35 km in a car to the ranch of Lazareto. Here El Mayo was forced onto a plane and flown north. It is unclear if they could have stopped at another airport in Sonora and possibly changed plane. (Sonora has been cited as the source of the flight). El Mayo, Guzmán López and a pilot flew onto the United States and landed in the small airport of Santa Teresa near El Paso about 4 pm on Thursday July 25 where U.S. federal agents took them into custody.
These details of the capture of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the 76-year-old veteran of the Sinaloa Cartel, come from a former member of the kingpin’s security team who is currently incarcerated. He spoke to CrashOut on the condition his name not be used. Cartel operatives across northwest Mexico are bracing for a potential explosion of violence following the arrest.
As with any cartel source, we are taking the account with caution. But the description of the capture sounds more realistic than a version that U.S. federal agents, also anonymously, had told reporters on Thursday. According to that account, Mayo was tricked onto a plane to inspect a clandestine airstrip and was flown unwittingly to the United States. It seems highly unlikely that Mayo would need to inspect such a site and would do it without his own security.
Furthermore, the testimony fits in with a declaration that Mayo’s lawyer, Frank Perez, made to Keegan Hamilton of the Los Angeles Times on Saturday. As Perez said, El Mayo “was ambushed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed by six men in military uniforms and Joaquín. His legs were tied, and a black bag was placed over his head. He was then thrown into the back of a pickup truck and taken to a landing strip. There, he was forced onto a plane, his legs tied to the seat by Joaquín, and brought to the U.S. against his will.”
The Sinaloa operative that spoke to CrashOut made a further explosive allegation concerning the United States - he claimed that U.S. agents were at the house in Culiacán when Mayo was kidnapped. The source described the agents as “nuestros vecinos,” or “our neighbors,” a cartel term for American narcs. However, he did not specify what agency they were from.
While the DEA is at the forefront of the fight against narcos, U.S. sources have implied that the operation to get Mayo was spearheaded by the FBI and Homeland Security. All three agencies released statements championing the arrest as a great blow in the battle against fentanyl with the Sinaloa Cartel being a prolific trafficker of the synthetic drug that kills about 70,000 Americans a year.
The details of the Mayo capture throw sparks in multiple directions. The Mexican government has confirmed it was not involved in the detention and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador demanded an explanation from the United States of what happened. In response, U.S. officials said they were not previously informed of the plot to get Mayo. “The flight was not planned by any U.S. government agency,” Mexico’s security secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez said Monday.
It is hard to believe that U.S. agents knew nothing and were just given a present of such a major kingpin. But it is understandable why they would try to hide involvement. An armed kidnapping of Mayo could imply that U.S. agents outsourced the arrest to the Chapitos.
Meanwhile, the AMLO administration might be unhappy about allegations of links between the cartel and Sinaloan politicians. The meeting of Mayo was supposed to be with Héctor Melesio Cuén, who had been mayor of Culiacán and rector of Sinaloa university and was elected as a federal deputy in June.
Gunmen ambushed and shot Cuén late Thursday night, some hours after the arrest. While state prosecutors claim it was a robbery, Cuén could have been the first victim of revenge for what is being described in Sinaloa as the great “traición” or “act of treachery” in the Sinaloa Cartel.
Journalists have alternatively speculated that Mayo made a deal and handed himself into U.S. authorities, with Luis Chaparro here quoting a grandson of the drug lord. In the smoke and mirrors of the Mexican cartel war, we have to be open to all possibilities. But the evidence now points more strongly to a kidnapping.
A Sinaloa Cartel operative, who works with the Chapitos faction in Baja California, said everyone there was talking of treachery. “There are a lot of Mayos [gangsters loyal to Mayo Zambada] here,” he told CrashOut. “So we are just waiting for shoot outs.”
Betrayed By His Godson
Mayo could well have been the most prolific trafficker that ever came out of Sinaloa.
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