Fall of the Narco King

Mayo Zambada, "El Mero Mero" of Sinaloa is finally in American handcuffs. But has he made a deal?

South of the Sinaloan capital of Culiacán lie rugged hills full of roaming gunmen, narco crops and synthetic drug labs, which make up the heartland turf of veteran kingpin Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, who is said to have been born in the rustic village of El Alamo way back in 1948. Like many journalists seeking to understand Mexico’s drug trade, I had gone first to the north of Culiacán and to the village of La Tuna, home of the more infamous capo Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, which is remoter, in higher mountains. But when I later traveled to Mayo’s territory, I realized that we could be missing the bigger story, and that closer to the center of power, and a major military base, was an intense narco network that might be even more powerful.

This question of who was the biggest Sinaloan kingpin, El Mayo or El Chapo, has long been discussed. Chapo shot to global rock-star status with his two prison escapes, his beauty queen wife and his meeting with Sean Penn. But many I talked to on the ground in Sinaloa believed Mayo was the bigger player, and effectively the top man in the tangled network of traffickers we call the Sinaloa Cartel.

In the New York court case of El Chapo, his lawyers used the argument that there was another head of the Sinaloa Cartel; one of the attorneys, Eduardo Balarezo, said to me out of court that he genuinely believed Mayo was the senior partner.

Also known as “MZ,” Mayo is surrounded by mystery and legend. There are few photos and you can’t be sure if they are all really him. He once turned up on the Mexican TV show of host Paco Stanley, who was later murdered. Mayo is purported to be 76 years old and to have been in the narco game for well over half a century but astoundingly never set foot in a prison cell. Until this Thursday.

A plane flew Mayo and a son of El Chapo about 2 pm into a private airport in Texas, where he was taken into custody, an arrest revealed in the late afternoon to global headlines. The following photo of Mayo was leaked to the media today.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland cited it as a blow against fentanyl with the Sinaloa Cartel moving heinous quantities of the lethal narcotic. “Fentanyl is the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, and the Justice Department will not rest until every single cartel leader, member, and associate responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable,” Garland said.

But as with Mayo’s life being shrouded in riddles so are details of his detention. On one side, federal agents have told various news outlets that Mayo was lured to El Paso in a trap. As the Wall Street Journal reported, the FBI and Homeland Security carried out a months-long operation in which they got Chapo’s son (confusingly called Joaquin Guzmán López) to trick Mayo into going to inspect clandestine runways or drug crops. But while Mayo thought he would fly to another part of Mexico, the plane took him to Texas and a pair of handcuffs.

On the flipside, there was immediate speculation that Mayo had made a deal. Independent journalist Luis Chaparro (a compa who has written stellar pieces on CrashOut), produced alleged evidence of this deal including a conversation he had with Mayo’s grandson.

“You know my grandfather is sick,” the grandson told Luis in a WhatsApp. “His obsession is to see V” - this refers to Vicentillo Zambada, ‘El Mayo’s’ eldest son who became a protected witness in the United States.

I have issues with both explanations. On one side, I find it hard to accept that Mayo with his vast experience and status would need to go on a plane to inspect crops and fall into U.S. hands. But on the other, a deal for Mayo could be tricky as he is at the top level so it would be hard to make him a witness on a bigger target.

Furthermore, Mayo appeared in an El Paso court on Friday to enter a not guilty plea and his lawyer Frank Perez insisted he had not sold out. “I have no comment except to state that he did not surrender voluntarily; he was brought against his will,” Perez said, according to Keegan Hamilton of the Los Angeles Times.

Another factor is the Mexican government. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Mexico was not involved in the arrest and demanded answers. But could Mayo himself be asked to testify in a potential prosecution of a former Mexican president for narco corruption?

More evidence on the arrest will pour in over the coming days yet I don’t think the question of whether he was tricked or made a deal will be resolved quickly. Adding fuel to the speculations are the history of El Mayo right back to his start in trafficking, which could have been with a Cuban linked to the CIA.

A License to Traffic

El Mayo was already 20 years old in 1968, before anyone talked of drug cartels in Mexico but Sinaloans were growing weed and opium to supply American hippies in the Summer of Love. In the 1970s, a Cuban called Antonio Cruz Vazquez was moving dope from Sinaloa into the United States and linked up with the Zambada family.

Mayo’s brother Rey mentioned Cruz in the Chapo trial, saying he bought him a Porsche, and Mayo himself is noted in investigations into Cruz. As documented on the site of historian Benjamin T. Smith, Cruz lurked around from Florida to Vegas to Nicaragua, where the rumors of his CIA involvement came out.

While Cruz was arrested and jailed in the late 1970s, Mayo carried on trafficking through the 80s until the new millennium, building up his empire. By various accounts Mayo was a prolific drug smuggler who was key in shifting cocaine routes from Florida to the Mexican border.

Margarito Flores, a top cocaine distributor in the United States for the Sinaloa Cartel, said Mayo was one of the best businessmen with vast power in his homeland but played straight. “He was a fierce man but he was also one of the fairest,” Margarito told me.

In the 2000s, the Sinaloa Cartel became involved in brutal turf wars that drowned Mexico in blood and set off ongoing violence across the country. Yet while his partner Chapo became associated with the murder-fest, Mayo gained fame as a peace maker, a reputation that continues to this day.

As an example, a head of hit men called El Plaga described in this interview on CrashOut how Mayo was a conciliator who tried to quell violence between an operator called El Ruso and the sons of El Chapo.

On the flipside, cartel death squads using the name MZ or controlled by those who swear loyalty to him have dropped huge numbers of bodies. In Durango for example, in 2011 and 2012, at least 383 corpses were dug up in abandoned houses and plots. They were alleged to be Zetas killed by a Sinaloa Cartel faction loyal to Mayo.

To reach the age of 76 in such a violent drug war without being arrested or killed is something of a miracle. The trial of Mexico’s former security secretary Genaro García Luna revealed that Mayo had huge Mexican federal protection to help this.

A common rumor in Mexico however is that Mayo must also have had support from friends in the United States to stop an official south of the border from turning on him. These rumors were fired up when the son Vicente was extradited to the United States and attempted to use what is called a “public authority” defense. In this, he claimed his father and others were giving information to U.S. agents so they had a license to traffic.

“United States government agents in Mexico, including but limited to the DEA and ICE, were told by Loya that Mayo and Chapo and other alleged members of the Sinaloa Cartel, and Mr. Zambada-Niebla, were providing information to the United States government under the agreement with Loya, who would then pass along the information to the agents,” one memorandum on those court filings said.

Vicente would eventually make a deal himself and testified against El Chapo. The judge in the Chapo trial firmly stopped a public authority defense being used.

Without The King, More War

With El Mayo, perhaps Mexico’s powerful kingpin and certainly the most veteran, out of action there is fear of yet another explosion of violence. The idea that a son of Chapo helped arrest him adds fuel to this. And sons of Chapo, who are collectively known as the Chapitos, have been at odds with Mayo’s people for several years, flaring up in episodes of bloodshed.

The fears are genuine. Yet a full-on Chapitos-MZ war may not happen. Mayo’s son and brother had testified against El Chapo and this did not apparently lead to revenge. Joaquin Guzmán López is actually a junior member of the Chapitos who has been somewhat estranged from the family. And perhaps a deal was made.

At a high level, the politics of Sinaloan narcos move in mysterious ways.

Hopes of Mayo’s arrest reducing the fentanyl trade are unlikely to be fulfilled as there are too many traffickers to take his place. These kingpins should not be given impunity but realistically, there needs to be a broader strategy to stop the fentanyl holocaust, yet that is for another piece.

El Mayo’s detention does mean the end of an era though. He was one of the last of a generation of narcos who rose from wearing sandals and working in the fields to becoming larger than life anti-heroes moving billions of dollars worth of product and handing out presents in village. Replacing them are young killers high on meth showing off their designer watches and girlfriends with plastic surgery on Instagram.

And the overdose deaths north of the Rio Grande, and bullet ridden bodies in the south keep piling up.

Copyright Ioan Grillo and CrashOut Media 2024