He had escaped justice for more than 40 years but he will end his days in an American prison: Mexico’s last old-style drug lord, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, is one of the historic leaders of the powerful Sinaloa cartel.
Almost two years after his arrest at the end of July 2024 at an airport in the southern United States, the septuagenarian criminal was sentenced Monday to life in prison by a federal court in New York. He pleaded guilty in August 2025 so as not to risk the death penalty.
Former accomplice of the famous drug trafficker Joaquin Guzmán, nicknamed “El Chapo”, Ismael Zambada claims to have been trapped by one of the latter’s four sons, who forced him to board a private plane to transport him against his will to the United States.
A former farm worker who started from nothing, Zambada patiently climbed the ranks of the cartel, cultivating a discretion that allowed him for decades to evade capture and several assassination attempts.
Born in Sinaloa, a mountainous state of Mexico, in his youth he saw the emergence of the cultivation of marijuana and opium, before the region became a hub for trafficking Colombian cocaine to the United States.
Subsequently, violence linked to drug trafficking exploded in Mexico, with nearly half a million people killed and 130,000 missing since 2006, according to government estimates.
“Systematic assassinations”
Zambada began his criminal career within the Guadalajara and Juarez cartels, alongside Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and Amado Carrillo Fuentes, “the Lord of the Skies”, like him from Sinaloa. But he gained independence, working with another native of the state, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, to create the Sinaloa cartel beginning in the 1980s.
Zambada played a key role in setting up distribution networks across the United States and moving billions of dollars to Mexico and the cartel quickly became the largest in the world. It is one of six Mexican drug gangs that the Trump administration has designated as foreign terrorist organizations in the United States.
American court documents portray him as intelligent, but also extremely cruel. He allegedly ordered the assassination of his own nephew, found dead in a car on the side of a road. According to US prosecutors, Zambada participated in “systematic assassinations” of cartel members, police officers and military personnel.
In a rare interview with the Mexican magazine Proceso, “El Mayo” revealed that the Mexican army had almost captured him four times. He also said he feared prison more than death and believed that his arrest or assassination would not change anything about drug trafficking in Mexico.
After a year in U.S. detention, Zambada pleaded guilty in August 2025 to drug trafficking and participation in a criminal organization. By pleading guilty, he faced a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. He also agreed to the forfeiture of $15 billion in ill-gotten gains, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
