Questions remain after the arrest of two leaders of the Mexican Sinaloa cartel in the US (2024)

The arrest, on Thursday, July 25, on US soil, of two major leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, Mexico's most powerful criminal organization, remains pretty mysterious. According to Mexican Interior Minister Rosa Icela Rodriguez, interviewed on Friday, "narcos" Ismael Zambada Garcia, aka "El Mayo," co-founder of the cartel, and Joaquin Guzman Lopez, one of the five sons of Joaquin Guzman Loera, known as "El Chapo," boarded a private plane from the state of Sonora on Thursday morning, before landing at the El Paso, Texas, airport, where they were arrested.

The minister said she did not know whether the two leaders had been captured or had surrendered voluntarily to the US anti-drug agency (DEA). "The US embassy in Mexico informed us of their arrest, but we did not participate in the operation, nor do we have any details on how it was carried out," said the minister, during the daily press conference by President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador. The latter asked the US government for "a full report; There must be information, there must be transparency." He acknowledged that the arrests "represent an important step forward in the fight against drug trafficking." President Joe Biden, for his part, "commend[ed] the work of [US] law enforcement officials who made this arrest for their ongoing work to bring Sinaloa Cartel leaders to justice," without mentioning Mexico.

According to US media reports, citing police sources, Guzman Lopez, the son of notorious cartel boss "El Chapo," convinced "El Mayo" to board an aircraft supposedly bound for southern Mexico, when in fact it was headed for the US. This episode comes after years of discreet contact between Guzman Lopez and a team of officers from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, according to the American press.

'No bullets were fired'

In Mexico, "El Mayo's" surrender is a theory taken seriously by drug-trafficking specialists, despite the fact that the 76-year-old leader has never been in prison after a 60-year criminal career. In 2010, Zambada gave an interview to Julio Scherer, then director of the Mexican magazine Proceso, in which he recounted his early days in the Guadalajara cartel at the age of 16, before founding the Sinaloa cartel with "El Chapo."

Unlike other Mexican "capos," "El Mayo" has always shown great discretion, preferring the sketchy ranches of the Sinaloa mountains to the ostentatious luxury of villas in seaside resorts. While "El Chapo" was spotted and arrested for the third time in 2016 – he had escaped twice – because of messages he was sending to actress Kate del Castillo, "El Mayo" has never sought to draw any attention to himself or his family. Extradited to the United States, "El Chapo" was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2019.

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