The Most Disturbing Details About Sinaloa Drug Cartel Leader Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada

Two factions of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel took a hit in July 2024 when Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada Garcia and Joaquin Guzman Lopez were arrested in the United States. The U.S. State Department has pinned the former as the leader of the Zambada Garcia faction — one of four that make up the organized crime syndicate, located in the city of Culiacan in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. His arrest came almost over a year after the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced indictments against several leaders of the organization, which operates globally and has reportedly engaged in drug trafficking and violence on U.S. soil for over a decade and a half.

Zambada Garcia founded the Sinaloa cartel in the late-1980s with Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, one of the more notorious and ruthless cartel leaders. El Chapo is currently imprisoned in the U.S., and it looks like Zambada Garcia might share the same fate. Guzman Lopez, El Chapo's son, is also accused of heading the organization's vicious activities via the Los Chapitos faction. Like many other drug lords, Zambada Garcia has been linked to many violent and disturbing acts.

[Featured image by FAL56 via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 4.0]

According to Al Jazeera, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada Garcia was more of a "shrewd operator" when compared to El Chapo's "violent and hot-headed" sons, who the DOJ says once fed their enemies to tigers. According to ABC7 Chicago, Zambada Garcia exercised restraint, had a tighter focus on business, and avoided "gruesome cartel violence," if only to elude the attention of law enforcement. Of course, "restraint" and "avoided" are used relative to the current cartel norm.

Zambada Garcia still ruled the cartel viciously, as you might expect from a drug lord, especially if you've heard of the tactics of the murderous Griselda Blanco and infamous Pablo Escobar. Under Zambada Garcia's leadership, the Sinaloa cartel beheaded, dismembered, and skinned their enemies. A 2009 indictment revealed more details of the brutal rule. Apparently, Zambada Garcia, along with El Chapo, entrusted their gruesome goals to "sicarios," a type of assassin that arose in the 1970s during Escobar's merciless Columbian empire. They specifically murder for drug lords, and the Sinaloa cartel's hired hits allegedly "carried out hundreds of acts of violence, including murders, kidnappings, tortures and violent collections of drug debts, at their direction."

According to The Washington Post, the Sinaloa cartel is the top supplier of fentanyl to the United States. In a statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada Garcia is accused of spearheading the organization's "deadly fentanyl manufacturing and trafficking networks." The Wilson Center says that opioids like fentanyl are driving "the worst drug crisis" America has even seen. Opioid-related deaths continue to climb, and the DEA says fentanyl overdose in particular are now the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45. 

The DOJ has set its sights on traffickers like Zambada Garcia to try and curb the crisis. As reported by CNN, DEA Administrator Anne Milgram believes the arrests will deal a huge blow to the power center of the Sinaloa cartel, which she pinned as responsible for "the majority of drugs, including fentanyl and methamphetamine, killing Americans from coast to coast." FBI Director Christopher Wray said Zambada Garcia, along with Joaquin Guzman Lopez, trafficked "tens of thousands of pounds of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and fentanyl into the US along with related violence." Just days before their arrest, the DEA seized over 2,000 kilograms of fentanyl chemicals from a Chinese national — one of the largest to date on U.S. soil.