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Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel sentenced to life in prison in New York, is the last of Mexico's historic drug trafficking leaders.
Zambada was arrested at an airport in the southern United States on July 26, 2024, after allegedly being lured there by a son of his former partner, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.
In August 2025, "El Mayo," now 76 years old, pleaded guilty to drug trafficking to avoid the death penalty. This Monday, the U.S. justice system sentenced him to life in prison.
The man nicknamed "The Lord of the Hat" is the last of the great Mexican drug lords. "El Chapo" is already serving a life sentence in the United States, and the historic leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Nemesio Oseguera "El Mencho," died in February during a Mexican military operation to arrest him.
However, Mexico has not been spared from criminal violence.
An internal war within the Sinaloa Cartel between the heirs of "El Mayo" and the sons of "El Chapo," who accuse each other of betrayal, has left 2,000 dead in that Mexican state over two years.
To reduce his own sentence, Vicente Zambada, the son of "El Mayo," collaborated with the U.S. justice system in 2019 by testifying in the trial against "El Chapo." He now lives under a different identity as part of the witness protection program.
That testimony led one of the "Chapitos" to orchestrate the delivery of Zambada the elder to the United States five years later.
- Discreto y escurridizo -
A former agricultural laborer who started with nothing, Zambada patiently ascended the hierarchy of Mexican cartels with a level of discretion that allowed him to escape Mexican justice and various assassination attempts for decades.
He was born in the state of Sinaloa, in the western part of the country. There, during his youth, he lived through the boom in marijuana and opium cultivation before the region became a hub for trafficking Colombian cocaine into the United States.
He began his criminal career at age 16, working for the Juárez and Guadalajara cartels. Amid the decline of other gangs, he formed his own organization alongside "El Chapo," also a native of Sinaloa.
U.S. court documents describe him as intelligent and extremely cruel.
According to prosecutors, Zambada participated in "systematic murders" of police officers, soldiers, and cartel members.
He allegedly ordered the murder of his own nephew, who was found dead in a car.
In 2010, he gave a brief interview to the Mexican magazine Proceso, in which he said he felt the Mexican army had come close to capturing him on four occasions, and that ending up behind bars caused him "panic."
In that interview, Zambada predicted that his arrest or death would change nothing in the drug trafficking landscape in Mexico. Since the government declared an open war on drug trafficking in 2006 involving the military, the violence has left about 450,000 dead and more than 130,000 missing.
- Tensión entre México y EU -
Uncertainty regarding the details of Zambada's arrest has recently strained relations between the governments of Claudia Sheinbaum and Donald Trump.
His sentencing comes amid drug trafficking accusations launched by U.S. authorities against the suspended governor of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha Moya, a member of Sheinbaum's party.
For its part, the Mexican government claims that Zambada's arrest was the result of a covert operation by U.S. authorities on Mexican soil, which would represent a violation of its sovereignty.
The United States denied any involvement in the kidnapping.
However, the recent display of the plane in which "El Mayo" arrived in that country, as part of an exhibit of items used in FBI operations, led Mexico to request explanations regarding the unauthorized participation of that federal agency.
[Publicidad]