MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president took the unusual step Monday of issuing a public plea to drug cartels not to fight each other following last week’s arrest of Top Mexican drug lord Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and Joaquín Guzmán López.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said in his daily press conference that he trusted that drug traffickers knew they would only suffer if they intensified the internal wars already plaguing the Sinaloa cartel.
“Those who are involved in these illegal activities know that they cannot solve anything with confrontations,” López Obrador said, adding “that they would go out and risk the lives of other human beings, and why would they make families suffer?”
“I trust there will be no clashes,” he said, even though the army announced over the weekend that it had sent 200 more elite soldiers from a paratrooper unit to the state of Sinaloa, just as a precaution.
There were no immediate reports of an increase in violence over the weekend. But the Sinaloa cartel has been torn apart for years by fighting between Zambada’s followers and rivals who follow the sons of jailed drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman, Guzmán López’s father. There are other children still at large.
Both Zambada and Guzmán’s son played leading roles in the Sinaloa cartel and both were detained on Thursday when they arrived in Texas aboard a private plane. López Obrador has a history of publicly appealing to drug traffickers for peace, sometimes even praising them.
In 2021, López Obrador praised the largely peaceful vote in that year’s elections and sent a message of recognition to the drug cartels that fuel much of the violence in the country.
“People who belong to organized crime behaved very well, in general, there were few acts of violence by these groups,” said the president at the time. “I think white-collar criminals did worse.”
The arrest of Zambada and Guzmán López proved to be a major embarrassment for the president. Mexican authorities were forced to admit they knew nothing about the operation until it was over.
Zambada eluded authorities for decades and had never set foot in prison until a plane carrying him and Guzmán López landed at an airport in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, near El Paso, Texas, on Thursday. Both men, who face multiple drug trafficking charges in the U.S., were arrested and remain in prison.
Zambada’s lawyer on Sunday rejected allegations that his client was tricked into flying into the country, saying he was “forcibly kidnapped” by Guzmán López. If this were true, it could fuel accusations of treason and additional fighting between the factions.
López Obrador said there are indications that U.S. authorities had been negotiating with Guzmán López to turn himself in for some time, possibly for months or years, before the trafficker apparently decided to do so.
But the Mexican president said nothing was known about how Zambada ended up on the flight and that Mexican prosecutors were investigating to see if he was kidnapped.
Frank Perez, Zambada’s attorney, said his client did not end up at the New Mexico airport of his own free will.
“My client did not surrender or negotiate any terms with the U.S. government,” Perez said in a statement. “Joaquín Guzmán López forcibly kidnapped my client. He was ambushed, thrown to the ground and handcuffed by six men in military uniform and Joaquín. His legs were tied and a black bag was placed over his head.” Perez went on to say that Zambada, 76, was thrown into the back of a pickup truck, forced onto a plane and strapped to the seat by Guzmán López.
Known as a cunning operator and skilled at corrupting officials, Zambada has a reputation for being able to negotiate with everyone, including rivals. He is charged in several cases in the USAincluding in New York and California.
Prosecutors filed a new indictment against him in New York in February, describing him as the “principal leader of the criminal enterprise responsible for importing enormous quantities of narcotics into the United States.”
