Will El Mayo’s arrest slow the spread of fentanyl?
The United States nets a very big fish
![View of the front pages of Mexican newspapers showing the news of the capture of Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, in Mexico City, Mexico.](https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=80,format=auto/content-assets/images/20240803_AMP003.jpg)
Ismael “EL mayo” zamBada is far less well-known than his fellow founder of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquín Gúzman, or “El Chapo”. With his daring prison escapes and a craving for notoriety, El Chapo became the face of the gang, until his capture in 2016 and his incarceration for life in a “supermax” prison in the United States. Yet for all his low-key manner, El Mayo was every bit as important in building the Sinaloa operation into a vast and violent drugs and money-laundering syndicate. Its connections ran deep into Mexico’s political establishment and it controlled the lion’s share of the North American market for illegal drugs. It was therefore a stunning coup when the United States arrested Mr Zambada on July 26th along with one of El Chapo’s four sons, Joaquín Gúzman López, in Texas.
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