The six-year term of Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador ended in September 2024 amid a surge of violence in the state of Sinaloa — a crisis he blamed on the United States. Just a few months earlier, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the longtime leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, had been captured by U.S. authorities under murky circumstances.

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In the early 1980s, the surname Zambada did not openly resonate in the drug-trafficking world. That allowed Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, patriarch of the criminal dynasty, to move through California without worrying too much about hiding his tracks. He was 32 then and beginning to weave a network of warehouses, transporters, distributors, customers, and money launderers. Over time, the Los Angeles metropolitan area would become the Sinaloa Cartel’s main hub in the United States for drug distribution and collection of illicit proceeds. El Mayo has been serving a life sentence imposed by a New York judge since July.

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On the day of his sentencing hearing in New York this summer, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada read a letter overflowing with remorse. After a decades-long career in drug trafficking, the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel said his goodbyes with a mea culpa for everything he had done, without expanding greatly. Given his expected influence over the regional underworld, he dared to send a message to young people. “Choose a different path,” he said. “There is no honor in violence nor anything lasting in crime; they only bring pain and loss.” It is not known whether his second-born son knew about his father’s letter. But it is fairly clear that, if he did, he paid it no heed.

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