THE COMPLICITY OF THE MEXICAN GOVERNMENT WITH THE SINALOA CARTEL IS PROVEN

On May 25, the main leader of the Sinaloa cartel, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, arrived on a private plane, accompanied by one of the sons of “El Chapo” Guzmán, Joaquín Guzmán López, to an airport in the United States. At first it was said that they arrived in El Paso, Texas, but later it was said that it was in New Mexico.

Regarding the arrest, it was said that there was a pact between both drug traffickers with United States authorities to surrender. It was said that it was with the DEA, with the FBI or with the Department of Justice directly. It was never completely clear whether it was a pact or not, or as Zambada's lawyer in the United States later stated, it was a kidnapping by Joaquín Guzmán López, who tricked Zambada into getting him on the plane.

Since this incident occurred, the López Obrador government has stressed that the Mexican government had nothing to do with what the president has said was an agreed delivery of the drug traffickers with the United States authorities; and has demanded that the Washington government inform the Mexican government how this delivery was carried out.

At first it was said that the private plane had left the state of Sonora, but later it was learned that it left from Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa.

The United States ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, faced with López Obrador's insistence that the United States government had given them very little information about what had happened, finally gave a press conference where he said that it was a delivery "between cartels," that is, that a part of the Sinaloa cartel decided to hand over "el Mayo" Zambada to the United States authorities.

The case of the son of "el Chapo Guzmán", Joaquín Guzmán López would then be the one who would have overseen kidnapping "el Mayo" and in turn, "el Chapo's" son would have given himself over.

Guzmán López has already been transferred to Chicago to be tried there; while "el Mayo" Zambada was transferred to New York, where he will be tried in the same court in Brooklyn where the trials of "el Chapo" Guzmán and the Secretary of Public Security in the government of President Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), Genaro García Luna, took place.

But now, through his lawyers, “El Mayo” Zambada has published a letter on social media in which he explains what really happened, and it is worth including it in full.

As can be seen from what Zambada says, he was indeed betrayed by Guzmán López, as he invited him to a ranch to talk, as they apparently did regularly, with the governor of the state of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha Moya, a politician from the ruling Morena party (and before that from the Institutional Revolutionary Party), who has been a friend of President López Obrador for 40 years.

While at the ranch, the recently elected federal deputy Héctor Cuén Ojeda also arrived. He is the founder of a local political party called Partido Sinaloense and former rector of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa. Zambada says in his letter that he was his friend for many years.

According to the Sinaloa authorities, Héctor Cuén was killed that same July 25 at a gas station in an attempted robbery. But according to Zambada's letter, that is false. Cuén was killed at the same ranch where he was kidnapped by Guzmán López's people.

Zambada also claims that two of his bodyguards were killed at the ranch, but nothing has been known about them since then. "Mayo" Zambada was one of the founders of the Sinaloa Cartel, once the Guadalajara Cartel was dismantled in the mid-1980s after the murder of DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, which unleashed a furious response from the Ronald Reagan administration and the then government of President Miguel de la Madrid (1982-1988) had to break the impunity pacts that existed with the Guadalajara Cartel, which led to the arrest of Rafael Caro Quintero and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, the cartel's main leaders; and later, during the government of Carlos Salinas (1988-1994), the arrest of Miguel Angel Félix Gallardo, considered the biggest drug lord in Mexico and the main leader of the Guadalajara Cartel.

The remnants of this cartel regrouped into the Sinaloa cartel, which became the most powerful cartel in the country in the 1990s, once they defeated the Tijuana cartel of the Arellano Félix brothers and the Juárez cartel of Amado Carrillo Fuentes “the lord of the skies.”

Zambada was never apprehended in 40 years of criminal activity, and this is explained by the continued protection and complicity of the various state and federal governments, up to the current one of López Obrador. Surely López Obrador will disqualify Zambrano's letter by pointing out that he is lying, but the reality is that during his government Zambada was as untouchable as he was during previous governments, and everything indicates that the sick and old boss of the Sinaloa cartel is willing to reveal the complicity of the current government of López Obrador, the current government of Sinaloa, and the previous state and federal governments of Mexico, with drug trafficking, in exchange for benefits for himself, since his son Vicente became a protected witness and since April 2021 the United States Bureau of Prisons reports that he is no longer in jail.

For the president-elect of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, who is about to take office on October 1st, it is very bad news that Zambada starts talking about the protection and agreements that he had for years with Mexican authorities at all levels, because that will give the winner of the US presidential elections invaluable leverage to put even more pressure on the very weak and incompetent Mexican government in the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime in general.