Betrayal and capture of Sinaloa cartel leaders spark fears of turf war

The once powerful Zambada said he was betrayed by the son of his longtime associate Joaquín “El Chapo" Guzmán. Now, many fear an open war between the two first families of the Sinaloa cartel.

The 76-year-old co-founder of one of the world’s top criminal organizations was kidnapped, taken to a plane and tied to his chair with zip ties by Joaquín Guzmán López, according to Zambada’s lawyer.

The U.S. Ambassador to Mexico said the plane took off from Sinaloa and headed to a tiny airport near El Paso, Texas. Both drug bosses were arrested by U.S. agents when they stepped off the plane.

Members of the two main factions of the criminal group are now assimilating the defection of Guzmán López and his unprecedented alleged act of treason against a top cartel boss such as Zambada, a venerated godfather who had seen El Chapo’s children grow up in the hardscrabble mountains and valleys of the Sierra Madre.

Hours after the July 25 arrest of the two drug bosses, the Mexican government deployed hundreds of special forces soldiers to Culiacán. For now, there are enough soldiers to keep the peace in the city, said one Mexican official familiar with the deployment.

But the two sides are now enlisting gunmen and acquiring weapons, said one cartel member.

“There will be war," said a person who has worked with Zambada arranging drug shipments and dealing with other cartel groups for decades. He says the “Chapitos," as the sons of El Chapo are known, can count on an army of as many as 5,000 gunmen.

Zambada’s son and heir apparent, Ismael “Skinny" Zambada, doesn’t have as many gunmen at his command but could call on alliances that his father made with other criminal groups throughout his 50-year career, this person said.

“This will determine the future of the mafia in Sinaloa," said Ismael Bohórquez, the editor of Río Doce, a Culiacán-based publication that covers the Sinaloa drug business.

If history is any guide, such a conflict would involve other organized crime groups throughout Mexico aiming to nab a share of Sinaloa’s lucrative fentanyl smuggling business, which has ravaged communities across the U.S.

Convoys of elite Mexican army troops patrol the streets of Culiacán, whose restaurants and malls are nevertheless full. Young cartel lookouts on motorcycles whiz by the army trucks and report troop movements to their bosses by radio.

In Culiacán two days after the arrests, army troops allegedly killed five men in a predawn firefight deep in territory controlled by Zambada. So far it is the only notable incident of violence, authorities said.

“This is a critical area, organized crime runs this place," said a soldier, his face hidden by a balaclava adorned with a skull design.

A mysterious flight and surrender

U.S. officials say that Guzmán López had approached law-enforcement agents in the U.S. through a lawyer. The conversations about turning himself in extended for months. At some point, Guzmán López upped the ante: He would bring Zambada along, according to U.S. officials familiar with the case. Guzmán López’s motivation for kidnapping Zambada would be to sweeten a potential deal with U.S. authorities, one senior U.S. official said.

“No U.S. assets were used in the surrender. It wasn’t our plane, nor our pilot, or our agents," said U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar during a news conference Friday.

In Sinaloa, cartel members say they wouldn’t be surprised if Guzmán López, 38, was eager to cut a deal with U.S. law enforcement. “Joaquín is young and it would be easy for him to spend four years in prison as long as he was able to keep his millions," one cartel member said.

In a statement released by his lawyer, Zambada said he was ambushed when he attended a meeting on the morning of July 25 in the suburbs of Culiacán. The meeting was called by Guzmán López to help resolve a dispute between two local politicians, he said. “I was kidnapped and brought to the U.S. forcibly and against my will," Zambada wrote.

Zambada said he went to the meeting held at a secluded event center and followed Guzmán López into a darkened room. “A group of men assaulted me, knocked me to the ground and placed a dark-colored hood over my head," he wrote. “They tied me up and handcuffed me and then forced me into the bed of a pickup truck."

He was taken to a nearby landing strip and forced to board a plane, suffering injuries to his back, knees and wrist along the way, he wrote.

In his letter, Zambada called on the people of Sinaloa to use restraint and maintain peace. “Nothing can be solved by violence. We have been down that road before, and everyone loses," the letter said.

It wouldn’t be the first betrayal in the tangled dealings between the two families. In 2019, Vicente Zambada, a son of El Mayo, was a key witness in El Chapo’s New York trial, as was El Mayo’s brother Jesus “Rey" Zambada earlier. In his testimony, Vicente Zambada said his father spent $1 million a month bribing public officials.

The capture of Guzmán López and El Mayo Zambada is unlikely to dent the smuggling of methamphetamines and fentanyl driven by U.S. demand, said Bohórquez, the editor of Río Doce.

The man who knows everything, with a ‘gold mine of information’

If Zambada agrees to cooperate with U.S. prosecutors in Brooklyn, where he is expected to stand trial, he could provide a wealth of information about his links with corrupt Mexican politicians and generals. “Zambada is the biggest gold mine of information that the U.S. could have captured," said Eduardo Guerrero, a security analyst based in Mexico City.

Zambada’s account of his abduction is an early indication of how damaging his information could prove. He wrote that he was told Sinaloa’s governor, Rubén Rocha, was expected to attend the meeting along with Héctor Cuen, a former rector of the state university, former Culiacán mayor and newly elected congressman. El Chapo’s son, he said, had asked Zambada to mediate a dispute over control of the university, whose large budget and payroll is considered a political plum, and a key asset to be used in electoral campaigns.

Zambada said that Cuen, “a good friend," was gunned down at the party hall at the same time that he was kidnapped. Sinaloa authorities say that Cuen was killed that night when he resisted robbers who were trying to hijack his car. The Sinaloa attorney general’s office said it is investigating the alleged carjacking attempt as a first line of inquiry, but is open to other hypotheses.

Zambada’s four-man security detail was led by a commander of Sinaloa’s investigative police who has been missing since then, he wrote. The attorney general’s office confirmed that the person named by Zambada was a police commander who had sought vacation leave and had been reported missing three days after the incident.

In a speech while touring Culiacán with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, Rocha said there was nothing to link him to the incident, which was a politically motivated attempt to label him a drug trafficker. López Obrador said he hoped there wouldn’t be any violence. “What’s important is that there is peace and tranquility in Sinaloa, the region, and throughout the country," he said.

Mexico’s Attorney General’s office said it had opened an investigation into the incident for kidnapping and treason to the homeland, among other crimes. Under Mexican law, the kidnapping and illegal handover of a Mexican national to a foreign government is criminalized as treason.

The ‘Gentleman of the Hat’

Culiacán residents don’t mention Zambada by name. They respectfully call him the “Gentleman of the Hat," a reference to his trademark Stetson. Close to where the five men were killed, the manager of a gas station said Zambada was a regular customer who gave big tips and sometimes drove his own pickup truck. She said he was well-liked because he provided a lot of work to peasants on his ranches clearing brush. “A lot of machete work," she said.

Without the drug trade there wouldn’t be any work in Culiacán, said a veterinary assistant whose uncles are cartel hit men. All the cartel watchmen whizzing by on motorcycles would turn to street crime. “That is what El Mayo and the Chapitos do—make sure there is no robbery and extortion," he said.

Merchants sell baseball caps and T-shirts adorned with initials and pictures representing the drug bosses. They say they take orders for the hats via WhatsApp from employees proud to be working for El Mayo.

The Sinaloa cartel was born decades ago as a business alliance of a few poor peasant families who began by growing and trafficking marijuana and opium poppies used to make heroin. They later turned to smuggling tons of Colombian cocaine into the U.S. A few years ago, the cartel discovered that making synthetic drugs—methamphetamines and fentanyl—was much more profitable. Their business, profits and influence boomed, U.S. authorities say.

The cartel is a loosely knit conglomerate of allied and sometimes intermarried family groups, many of them from the mountains around the town of Badiraguato. They have sometimes fought violent feuds fueled by betrayal, greed and ambition that have torn both Culiacán and Mexico apart.

The worst such war broke out in 2008 between the Guzmáns and the Beltrán Leyva family. The two groups split after one of the Beltrán Leyva brothers was captured by Mexican police and the family suspected that El Chapo had ratted him out. Thousands died in the violence that engulfed the country, helping double Mexico’s homicide rate in just two years, according to estimates by Guerrero.

Cartel members say the line that divides Culiacán into areas controlled by Zambada and the Chapitos is roughly the Jardines del Humaya cemetery, where members of Sinaloa’s narco dynasties are interred in air-conditioned family crypts larger than mansions and complete with private chapels, party rooms and private parking. Some are fashioned like colonial haciendas or cathedrals. The more modern ones have the sleek stainless-steel-and-glass look of townhouses.

In Culiacán, Zambada, a legend, is celebrated in many folk ballads praising his deeds. “Dollars protect him, as do his AK-47s. If no friendly agreement is reached, then he settles things in his own style," goes one song.