Original subtitles

[birds calling]

[sirens wailing]

[man 1] If you want to know who runs a territory,

just ask around.

ARMY

'Cause it's the people who will tell you

whether the government or the cartel is in charge.

And today, in Sinaloa, the cartels have been calling the shots for years now.

MISSING

And people know it.

STATE POLICE

[sirens wailing]

Who runs the cartel?

Well, the baddest motherfucker, hands down.

Everyone would say that the boss was El Mayo.

Here, he was called "El Señor del Sombrero,"

- "The Man in the Hat." - [somber music playing]

[man 2] Every drug trafficker would tell you,

- "No, we don't talk about El Mayo." - [tense music rises]

They knew that if they opened their mouths,

and dared to even mention his name, it might be the last thing they ever did.

That was the kind of fear and respect

they had for a man like Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada García.

The boss of bosses.

[music intensifies]

JULY 25, 2024

July 25 of 2024 will mark a watershed moment

in the history of drug trafficking in Mexico.

[man 1] The cartel can respect even its enemies.

Betrayal, however, is unforgivable.

[somber music playing]

STATEMENT OF ISMAEL "EL MAYO" ZAMBADA

[El Mayo] On July 25, 2024,

I went to the ranch and event center called Huertos del Pedregal,

on the outskirts of Culiacán.

The meeting was gonna take place at 11 that morning.

I saw a group of armed men in green military uniforms,

who I assumed were Joaquín Guzmán and his brothers' gunmen.

CHAPO'S SONS "LOS CHAPITOS"

I saw Joaquín Guzmán López, who I've known since he was a child.

Trusting in the nature of the meeting, I simply followed him.

They lured me into an ambush.

[music swells]

I was attacked by a group of men.

They threw me to the ground and pulled a dark hood over my head.

- [screams] - [engine turns over]

[horns honking]

[El Mayo] They handcuffed me, then they made me get into a pickup truck.

[dramatic music playing]

[cows mooing]

[El Mayo] They drove me out to an airstrip,

and once we got there, they forced me into a private plane.

[engine revs]

[reporter 1] One of the founders of the Sinaloa Cartel,

Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada,

was arrested in the United States along with Joaquín Guzmán López.

[reporter 2] He was arrested alongside the son of El Chapo.

[man 3] El Mayo Zambada, the untouchable one.

The one who had never been arrested in half a century.

The one who had never set foot in prison.

They were practically a gift from heaven for the FBI.

[reporter 3] The circumstances of how those men ended up

at a rural airstrip tonight,

still not explained by federal authorities.

But no sources have suggested they took a wrong turn in midair.

[reporter 4] This whole case feels like something

out of a drug-trafficking novel.

[intense music playing]

THE FALL OF EL MAYO

[intense music fades]

6 YEARS EARLIER

NOVEMBER 5, 2018

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

[sirens wailing]

[reporter 1] This morning, the trial,

expected to last four months or more, has started.

[reporter 2] Security is extremely tight outside the federal courthouse,

as Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán goes on trial.

Police are closing down the Brooklyn Bridge

every time Guzmán is transported from prison to the courtroom.

[man 1] Guzmán's destructive and murderous rise

as an international narcotics trafficker

is akin to that of a small cancerous tumor

that metastasized and grew into a full-blown scourge.

[man 2] This is a powerful individual, a powerful criminal.

The most notorious criminal of modern times.

[excited chatter]

[man 3] Back when El Chapo's trial began,

I remember showing up with a colleague, and I couldn't help but laugh.

Well, because I saw the armored vehicles, the entire federal building surrounded...

And what were they expecting? A group of Sinaloa Cartel thugs

would suddenly exit the... the subway

or attack using a helicopter or one of their little planes?

"We're here to set our leader free!"

It was El Chapo.

And that was the image the DEA created for him.

[tense string music playing]

[man] Mayo and Chapo were, for the better part of 25 years,

central figures in the Sinaloa Cartel.

JOURNALIST

But they could not have been stylistically more different.

El Chapo was ostentatious, an iconic public figure.

Whereas Mayo Zambada was,

for the entirety of his 40- to 50-year career, a ghost.

El Mayo was very much present in the larger story of this trial.

In fact, on the very first day of the trial,

when El Chapo's lawyer stood up

to deliver his opening argument to the jury,

and proceeded to blame everything on El Mayo.

US V. JOAQUÍN ARCHIVALDO GUZMÁN LOERA

OPENING STATEMENT - LICHTMAN

PROSECUTORS WILL TELL YOU

GUZMÁN IS THE WORLD'S BIGGEST DRUG DEALER.

NOT EVEN ALLEGED TO BE THE BIGGEST IN MEXICO.

BUT WHO IS HE?

The argument that he put forward was that,

"Oh, Chapo Guzmán might have been the best known member

of the Sinaloa Drug Cartel,

but Mayo Zambada was the true brains behind the operation."

Maybe at some point, they can actually

go after some of the people that have been sitting sunning themselves

for the last 40, 50 years and never been arrested.

Two of the star witnesses at El Chapo's trial

were Rey Zambada, Mayo Zambada's brother,

and Vicente Zambada,

Mayo's eldest son and heir apparent, Vicente.

[prosecutor] Your Honor, the government calls Vicente Zambada Niebla.

THE UNITED STATES FEDERAL COURTS DO NOT ALLOW THE RECORDING OF TRIALS.

THE TESTIMONIES ARE BASED ON OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPTS

AND HAVE BEEN PLAYED BY ACTORS.

[prosecutor] Mr. Zambada, where are you from?

[Vicente] From Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico.

- [prosecutor] Who is your father? - [Vicente] Ismael Zambada García.

[prosecutor] Does your father go by any nicknames?

[Vicente] Yes, El Mayo... is the most common.

[Feuer] And then, Rey Zambada

took the jury through like a master-class seminar

for how the Sinaloa Cartel operated.

"Here's the structure. Here's how the money works."

"Here's how we control the airports. Here's how we pay off the officials."

I came to think of it, at one point, as a blood opera.

Outlandish storytelling from the witness stand.

Full of violence and desire and betrayal, day after day.

[Esquivel] The trial of El Chapo Guzmán

was something that got everybody talking

and provided some of the most important clues to understanding

who Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada García was, at the time when he was a fugitive.

[prosecutor] From 1975 to 1985,

your brother was involved in heroin and marijuana.

Your brother, as in Mayo.

[Rey] Correct.

[film projector whirring]

[narrator] The red poppy, so beautiful and innocent-looking.

[distortion]

[narrator] The red poppy... so beautiful and...

The red poppy, so beautiful and...

The red poppy, so beautiful and innocent... The red poppy...

...beautiful and innocent...

[distortion fades]

[Esquivel] Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada García

first became involved in the drug trade back in the 1970s,

when everyone in Sinaloa

was trafficking some kind of marijuana or heroin on a reduced scale.

[man] I was born in 1961.

Back when I was in my teens, we never used the words "drug trafficking."

Never used the words, words like "organized crime" or "narcos."

We called them "gomeros."

[tense music playing]

Why were they called "gomeros"?

Well, because they were responsible for scoring the poppy pods,

which released a very thick sap

that would gradually turn into a sticky, gum-like substance.

[narrator] This is raw opium, called "goma" in Spanish.

And so it was this opium gum

that they collected in the highlands and brought to Tierra Blanca,

where the labs in charge of processing it into heroin were located.

And then they finally exported the product,

obviously illegally, into the United States.

[narrator] Along major roads leading to the American border,

the Mexicans have set up inspection stations

to try to catch heroin not destroyed in the fields.

But there is just too much traffic and too many places

for smugglers to hide the narcotics.

Some Mexican officials grumble

that they are doing the United States a big favor

by running this large and expensive campaign,

because they say heroin is an American problem

and not a Mexican problem.

[Esquivel] The pressure that the United States government

put on Mexico prompted the Mexican army and federal police

to be more involved in Sinaloa.

[narrator] This is flowering season,

and 2,000 Mexican soldiers are tramping through these high mountains

with orders to destroy all the poppy fields they find

before the flowers can be harvested and turned into opium and heroin

for sale to addicts in the United States.

[Clouthier] Who knows how many thousands of soldiers

had to come to Sinaloa,

had waged an intense, unrelenting campaign against the drug trade,

with a particular focus on the poppy growers.

And then-governor of Sinaloa, Alfonso Genaro Calderón,

declared that drug trafficking was done, eradicated from Sinaloa.

Today, drug trafficking is definitely done... playing nice.

The cockroach effect, that's what criminologists call it.

[helicopter blades whirring]

They did, in fact, leave Sinaloa, but they went to Jalisco.

[Esquivel] In Jalisco, there was the Guadalajara Cartel.

And that's where El Mayo laid much of his new foundation.

El Mayo, he started to build his empire.

MAYO'S BROTHER REY ZAMBADA

[prosecutor] Your brother started to work in cocaine?

[Rey] He was working in cocaine at that time.

[prosecutor] With, in particular, Miguel Félix Gallardo,

the Padrino, correct?

[Rey] Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo.

[reporter 1] Authorities say a citizen's tip

led them to the warehouse in a North Los Angeles suburb,

where they made the largest cocaine seizure in history.

[man] In the mid-'80s,

we became awash with huge cocaine seizures...

DEA ADMINISTRATOR 1990–1993

...in the Los Angeles area.

COFFEE GROWERS OF COLOMBIA

[reporter 1] Investigators believe the cocaine came

from Colombia's two largest drug cartels.

[Bonner] Everybody thought that Miami was the base for the Colombian organizations,

but we came to realize that there had been a major shift.

- See the name? - [man] What is it?

"Smuggler's Blues."

[Bonner] The Colombian drug trafficking organizations

were having sufficient problems

with seizures and losses, trying to move cocaine into Florida

that they made a deal with the Guadalajara Cartel.

[reporter 2] Mexico is the springboard

for more than half the cocaine entering the United States.

[Esquivel] With the arrival of cocaine in Guadalajara,

they became the center of drug trafficking.

[up-tempo regional Mexican music playing]

[Esquivel] Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada García

was one of the armed men working for the Guadalajara Cartel.

El Chapo was also part of that group.

[in Spanish] All right!

[Esquivel, in English] El Mayo always stood out for being a great man.

He never hesitated to get into a gunfight.

Or a fistfight.

There's a story about La Langosta restaurant,

a seafood place in Guadalajara.

El Mayo took down several police officers with his bare hands.

He challenged all three of them, no guns allowed.

And he won.

[upbeat music ends]

American Enrique Camarena Salazar

went to Mexico to fight international drug traffickers.

Today, the US drug enforcement agent was flown home to California with honors.

A hero in a flag-draped coffin.

[Bonner] In February 1985, the Guadalajara Cartel

kidnapped and murdered a DEA agent named Kiki Camarena.

[tense music playing]

The US government really needed to send a strong message

that if you kidnap or murder a DEA agent,

if you harm a DEA agent, the US government's coming after you.

However we can get a hold of you,

and we're gonna prosecute you and bring you to American justice.

[grunting rhythmically]

Between '85 and '89, it would be fair to say that the Mexican government

was forced to... to decapitate

the organization by holding its leaders accountable

and sending them to prison.

[reporter 1] In less than a week, 2 out of 3 heads

of Mexico's mafia-like drug syndicate "La Familia,"

have been apprehended and are now behind bars.

[Esquivel] The three leaders in Guadalajara were captured.

And so he returned, El Mayo with El Chapo, to Sinaloa.

["El M Grande" playing]

[upbeat corrido continues]

[Esquivel] But they were able to successfully replicate

everything they had already learned, especially El Mayo.

What set him apart from that point on was that he never cared for the spotlight.

He'd always been aware that his associate's personality,

his ambition to move in and take control of the territory to traffic drugs,

would cause problems for the business.

[foreboding music playing]

[man] It was just a typical day.

As always, there were cartel battles for power that were playing out.

At that time, Chapo was feuding with the Arellanos.

Chapo is on his way to the airport,

and Cardinal Posadas Ocampo is also on the way to the airport.

FORMER DEA AGENT

Same time. Talk about synchronicity.

And in the parking lot, there's a firefight that ensues.

[gunfire]

[pedestrians screaming]

[sirens wailing]

[reporter 1] Truly devastating news

of the tragic events that had taken place in Guadalajara, in the capital of Jalisco.

[Servín] Chapo escapes. The cardinal is dead.

[busy chatter]

[Servín] But Chapo would take the blame for the death of the cardinal.

[reporter] Fifteen million new pesos,

the equivalent of five million dollars,

for anyone providing information leading to the capture of the drug traffickers

Joaquín Guzmán Loera, aka El Chapo Guzmán...

[reporter 2] Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán

was apprehended on the Talismán International Bridge,

across the Suchiate River, in Guatemala.

He was then handed over to the Mexican authorities.

[reporter 3] The intended victim, now in custody in Mexico,

Joaquín Guzmán, a drug lord from the state of Sinaloa.

"EL CHAPO" ARRESTED

Chapo, after that, became a household name.

[reporters 4 and 5] Joaquín Chapo Guzmán.

[reporter 6] El Chapo.

[reporters 7 and 8] El Chapo.

- [man] Are you in the drug business? - No, sir.

- [man] What's your job? - A farmer.

[Servín] The assassination of Cardinal Posadas Ocampo

was a turning point

in the career of El Mayo and El Chapo Guzmán Loera.

They arrested El Chapo Guzmán back in 1993,

and he was committed to Puente Grande Penitentiary,

where he was held for eight years.

What happened was, during those eight years, El Mayo Zambada,

he rose to become the leader and chief coordinator,

taking on greater responsibility

and effectively running the Sinaloa Cartel.

And, during that time,

El Mayo Zambada was also responsible

for co-opting and making deals with the governors of Sinaloa,

and with the mayors and the chiefs of the military district.

Sinaloa is a great and clear example of a state,

in fact, governed by a shadow power broker.

The real governor was Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada.

[prosecutor] What did your brother Mayo say to you

about the defendant getting out of jail?

[Rey] In mid-January of 2001, my brother came to my house in Acapulco.

[man] We are now in Acapulco, Mexico,

looking down the hill.

Oh, man!

[tense music playing]

[Rey] He said,

"We need to go 'cause my buddy Chapo is getting out of jail."

I asked him, "When's he getting out?"

And he said, "He's breaking out."

[sirens wailing]

[speaking indistinctly]

[reporter 1] After 8 years in prison,

the kingpin makes an escape straight out of the movies.

STATE POLICE

[reporter 2] Guzmán escaped authorities

using money, bribes, and a laundry truck.

One of the seminal moments in the history of the Sinaloa Cartel.

Chapo has just escaped from prison for the first time.

Chapo is at his weakest, most vulnerable moment.

He's been locked up for years.

The law is after him.

[Esquivel] So who does he turn to?

To the boss of bosses, his compadre,

Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada.

- [tense music playing] - [helicopter blades whirring]

[Rey] My brother called me and asked me

to find a safe place where a helicopter could land.

[whirring grows louder]

[Rey] At seven in the morning, the helicopter appeared.

And El Chapo was in it.

My brother was thrilled.

[somber music playing]

[Feuer] It's an interesting dynamic

between these two cartel leaders at that moment.

Mayo has the upper hand.

[Vicente] My compa Chapo said that

things weren't going too well for him financially at the time.

Mayo sees that it's a way to consolidate power.

And so, he essentially stakes Chapo with money.

[Vicente] Chapo thanked him and they agreed that, from then on,

they would split every kilo of cocaine that he got from Colombia.

See, at that point, they became partners.

[somber music fades]

That's the moment when they increased their reach.

Dramatically expanding the territorial control

of the drug trade in Mexico.

[energetic music playing]

[reporter] If the US is drowning in cocaine,

Mexico is the floodgate.

[officer] Go, go, go, go!

[energetic music building]

[reporter 2] Drug agents say it was shipped in every conceivable way.

[reporter 3] This year, we're hiding the cocaine in cans of jalapeño peppers.

Oh, next year, plaster statues of Jesus.

[reporter 4] They say his henchmen stuffed cocaine

into hollowed-out cucumbers and bananas.

Thousands of them at a time.

[Feuer] From that point forward, Mayo and Chapo

ran one of the most successful criminal partnerships

in the annals of organized crime.

[energetic music fades]

- [assistant] So you're in silhouette. - [man] Wow, that looks great.

- [assistant] That okay? - [man] Yeah, looks great.

I should fix my hair, huh?

MEXICO IS WHERE YOU ARE

My name is Margarito Flores. I was born and raised in Chicago,

in a neighborhood known as Little Village.

I have an identical twin brother named Pedro.

My father was a known drug trafficker.

We were his helpers.

From the harvesting, to the packaging, to the loading of the marijuana

into the gas tank.

He would teach us how to compress the marijuana into very small packages.

He taught us how to use a triple beam scale at a very young age.

We were not even eight years old.

For our family, the way we were raised, it was just normal.

Our first deal was in 1998.

We made our first million dollars before we were 18.

And the life took a hold of us.

We were moving anywhere between 1,800

and 2,200 kilos of cocaine a month

in the Chicagoland area and surrounding cities

like Minneapolis, Milwaukee, St. Louis.

We had a system where we would receive

anywhere from 300 to 400 kilos every three days from the Sinaloa Cartel.

We would meet at the Denny's parking lot at 6:00 a.m.

The van would be parked there

with the keys on the visor or under the mat.

It was like this weird-looking van that looked like a kidnapper van.

And my brother hated that van

because he felt like it stood out like a sore thumb.

We would just jump in the van, take it to unload the drugs,

and then bring it back in, put the keys in the same place, and leave.

After the September 11 attacks, the cocaine prices had skyrocketed.

My brother and I had a warehouse with a very large number of kilos.

We were able to take advantage of it.

That was really the turning point,

that we went from being, you know, just another drug trafficker

to becoming part of the most prominent drug traffickers.

We idolized Chapo and Mayo.

At the same time,

maybe kids growing up in Chicago idolized Michael Jordan.

They were our Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen.

We had offered a million dollars

to anyone who would introduce us to El Mayo or to El Chapo.

Looking back, it's always like, "Be careful what you wish for." [scoffs]

[tense music playing]

Pedro and Margarito Flores had been well-known by law enforcement

in Chicago for quite some time.

They were the age of street-corner drug dealers,

but... but their operation was, I mean, it was sort of staggering in size.

[interviewer] How much money would they make?

Uh, a lot. Um... [chuckles]

It... it... it translates to, um, billions of dollars.

Taking large loads, getting them safely into the United States

and then breaking them down

into more transportation-friendly quantities.

The most shocking piece was just how effective it all was,

and how it almost exclusively went through legal ports of entry.

Not just in Chicago, but throughout the United States.

So they very quickly moved to the top of the cartel

and sort of enjoyed most-favored customer status

with the Sinaloa Cartel.

[man] I was sworn in on September 11, 2001.

I was hired as a special agent with US Customs,

combating international drug trafficking and money laundering.

The Sinaloa Cartel controlled the majority of the US-Mexican border.

They had since the '90s.

'92, '93, there's the first drug tunnel discovered in Douglas, Arizona.

Customs officials say it's like something out of a James Bond movie.

They've dubbed it "Cocaine Alley."

[reporter] An underground tunnel as long as a football field,

linking Mexico and Arizona.

[Balliet] It's in a warehouse, it's on a hydraulic lift

with a pool table.

[lift whirring]

[Balliet] That really set the scale as to the volume of narcotics

that the Sinaloa Cartel were able to smuggle.

They must have had quite a bit of financial backing

and had been working in drug smuggling for quite some time.

[anchor] Thanks, Yvette.

And also the ingenuity that went behind it.

[reporter 2] Authorities said when the tunnel wasn't used for drug running,

the smugglers would flood it with water.

[man] Let's say we came here with technology, trying to detect this.

It would look like an underground stream if flooded.

It's a highly sophisticated, uh, engineering feat.

[train horn blaring]

[sirens wailing]

[Balliet] What we were responsible for was who controls

the biggest pieces of dirt between the US and Mexico.

Who's making the money, who's involved in the homicides and the kidnapping.

El Mayo Zambada had been around for decades.

People knew about him, but he was very strategic.

He wasn't in the spotlight. You didn't see photos of him.

Yeah, there were narco killings that alluded to him,

but he was fine with Chapo taking center stage,

because he was allowed to operate much more freely.

They did what they had to do as far as smuggling drugs.

We did what we had to do as far as catching 'em and putting 'em in jail.

It was a cat-and-mouse game.

[reporter 1] Chicago police have made their largest cocaine bust ever.

They have seized more than two tons of the drug.

[Flores] One day, I turn on the TV to watch the news,

and there on the screen was breaking news of a 2,000-kilo seizure

at the Denny's parking lot.

[reporter 2] The largest cocaine seizure in city history,

with a street value of nearly 240 million dollars.

[reporter 3] Three men are in custody being held on 500 million dollars' bond.

[Flores] The people that were supplying us had just been arrested.

And they showed the kidnapper's van that we had been complaining about.

We got rid of the phones, vehicles, stash house.

And we basically accepted we were gonna live a life on the run in Mexico.

[intense music playing]

[Flores] Once we went to Mexico,

we began working with my father's friend Lupe.

He basically became our main supplier of cocaine.

But we started having a falling-out and disagreements,

and we stopped our business relationship with him.

That made Lupe upset.

And in April 2005, he requested a meeting with my brother.

And they violently kidnapped my brother.

[phone ringing]

[Flores] A few days later, I picked up the phone,

and it was an individual saying that if I didn't pay 10 million dollars,

my brother was gonna be killed.

I hung up the phone.

I was on the road, heading towards Sinaloa.

And they put me in a bulletproof truck,

and they drove me to the outskirts of Culiacán to a dirt cornfield.

- [ominous music playing] - [crow caws]

And they roll out the plane, I remember, started up the plane, and he said,

"Come on. Let's go." It was me, him, and the pilot.

"You're good," he said. "Come on, jump in."

And... we took off.

And we headed towards, um, the mountains of Sinaloa.

I started to get nervous. Like, I'm starting to think like,

"Wow, I might not come back."

[ominous music building]

It was the side of a mountain, and we landed uphill.

[plane engine roars]

When we got to the end of the strip, there was a bunch of armed men.

You know, sicarios in military uniforms.

[crow caws]

Just sitting around. It's real hot.

It's summertime. In Sinaloa.

[crow caws]

They walked me over to a man that was pacing back and forth.

El Chapo.

[ominous music swells]

I was in awe, like, I still couldn't believe

that I was meeting him.

Then he looked over at me and took like a second take...

Like, "Who's he?" And I thought he was expecting me.

I said to him, "I'm Margarito Flores. I came for my brother.

And he just kind of nodded.

And he said, "You got the money to pay?"

And I remember telling him,

"Well, I don't owe the 10 million dollars."

And he told me, "That's what everyone says."

And I told him, I said, "You know, I move, you know,

an average of 2,200 kilos a month for you."

"I'm the one that makes the payments. I receive the drugs."

"I'm the one that does everything."

He said, "That's not what Lupe says."

"Lupe said that you owe him the money that you don't wanna pay."

He said, "I don't care about the 10 million dollars."

"It's nothing to me just to kill you and your brother and resolve this issue."

[tense music playing]

And I told him...

"Sir, with all due respect."

"I thought a man's word meant something in this business."

"And my word's all I got."

"I'm here for my brother."

And he just stared at me.

He crossed his arms like this.

He asked me, "You and your brother identical twins?"

And I told him, "Yes, sir."

"And you look exactly like him?"

I said, "Well, he looks exactly like me."

"But a little bit uglier." [chuckles]

You know, I would just say that just to break the ice. And he... he laughed.

He said, "I just lost my brother."

"There's no money in the world that is worth losing your brother."

"Pay the 10 million dollars, you come back,

and we'll continue to work together."

And my brother was released.

[engine starts]

[Flores] Five days later, I received another phone call.

And he said, "The boss is... is waiting for you."

We headed to Culiacán.

I remember that the property had maybe, like, at least 15-foot walls.

And when the doors opened up, there was a group of maybe 12, 14 men.

[unsettling music rises]

But, you know, I saw a hat.

Instantly, I knew. It was him.

He shook my hand, and he said, "Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada."

"Finally, I get to meet the famous twins."

"Oh my God, man, you guys are identical," he said.

"Which is the one that we had tied up?"

"You, it had to be you! Look at you! How are you feeling?"

"How many kilos are you selling?"

And then we told him, and he'd be like... "Pfft!"

"Imagine you guys were triplets."

"Imagine how much money you'd really be making."

He told everyone, "Look, these guys right here, they're special."

"Moving that quantity of drugs in the United States is impossible."

He said, "I tried it, and I'm Mayo Zambada."

That's when I knew that we were at the top of the cartel world.

For many drug traffickers, they'll say it like...

"I'm one of Chapo Guzmán's people."

But saying you were one of Mayo Zambada's people

was just different.

That was the team you wanted to be on.

We gained his respect as businessmen.

"You're a lot like me," he said.

"I've been Mayo Zambada for over 30 years."

He spoke about himself in the third person at times.

He wouldn't speak about it in like this glory...

He would speak about it like as a matter of fact.

You know, like, "That's why I'm Mayo Zambada."

100%, he knew exactly who he was.

- [man, in Spanish] Hey, friend. - [El Mayo] Yes?

[man] Do you belong to Sinaloa?

[El Mayo] No, buddy. Sinaloa belongs to me.

[playing "El MZ"]

[upbeat narcocorrido continues]

POLICE

ARMY

[tense music rises]

[helicopter blades whirring]

[man, in English] El Mayo Zambada came from a different background

and had a very different philosophy when it came to criminal business.

Our intelligence work had to adapt to that structure.

And so, we operated in a compartmentalized manner.

Consequently, the fewer people who knew about our intentions,

the greater the element of surprise.

We would leave early, at 6:00 a.m., and switch routes along the way.

And yet, whenever we landed, no one was there.

Everybody was gone.

It left us feeling somewhat powerless. Certainly frustrated.

The citizens, they don't know...

Don't realize just how difficult it is to mount an operation of this caliber.

[indistinct chatter]

It may seem, uh, almost impossible, but...

we didn't have a picture of Ismael Zambada García.

[chopper blades whirring overhead]

- [man 1] They brought it down. - [man 2] There's one missing.

[indistinct shouting]

[Aguilera] In one of the operations carried out in 2001,

my men secured pictures that had been left behind in a vehicle

and we assumed that it was being used by El Mayo Zambada.

That's where we finally got an image that we could use.

[officer] Why was Zambada García's ID in your truck?

[Torres] He left it there.

[officer] Why?

[Torres] He left it there.

[officer] So he was with you?

- [Torres] Yes. Mm-hmm. - [officer] Yeah?

It was an ID, which had his picture but another name, obviously.

[interviewer] Is it the one...? This one. This.

- Let me see? - [interviewer] Here.

- Was it this one? - That's it. Mm-hmm. That's the picture.

[dramatic music playing]

[Balliet] Before this, he was like a phantom.

But now, like, the... the guy actually existed.

[Aguilera] The fact we had a picture, especially one that recent...

What can I say? It was fundamental

in bringing us to the culmination of it all, the apprehension.

[news fanfare playing]

Wanna see the face of evil? Well, here it is.

The DEA says he's one of the most vicious and wealthy drug lords.

And that he stops at nothing, and I mean nothing,

to grab power and hold on to it.

[announcer] Mexican police say he looks like this photo.

The DEA has plastered it

on huge billboards along highways between Tucson and Phoenix, Arizona.

[crowd murmuring]

[man] The Department of Justice today is announcing the indictment

charging Ismael Zambada García

with conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine.

[reporter] Where is Zambada García now?

He is, uh, believed to be in Mexico.

Uh, but he is not in custody in Mexico.

[reporter] Have you come close to catching him

as part of this investigation?

We do not believe that we have had, uh...

uh, an opportunity that was sort of a near miss.

The Mexican officials have arrested some individuals

in this particular matter,

but it... they do not include, uh, Zambada García.

Yes, sir?

[festive music playing]

Namaste. Namaste. [laughs]

[Aguilera] We carried out a lot of operations to secure his capture.

Through intelligence gathering,

we were able to determine that Ismael had a habit of going

during the equinox at the beginning of spring

to visit the pyramids in Chichén Itzá.

[bright music playing]

[woman] Welcome to Chichén Itzá in southern Mexico.

We're here today to celebrate Sun-Earth Day and the Spring Equinox.

[exclaims]

[Aguilera] He was deeply spiritual.

He went to the pyramids.

He'd go there to receive the sun rays, soak in the energy, so on and so forth.

[man] People say there's nothing here, but if we climb to the top of the pyramid,

we're able to get the energy that flows downward,

and we can receive it in this area.

That's why we carried out an operation there.

We went as tourists, wearing shorts, baseball caps.

The entire team dispersed around the Chichén Itzá pyramid.

Our goal was to try to apprehend him.

- [man] Huh? - Did you see that?

[man] Yes, the police is up there.

[woman] Yes, the police.

[Aguilera] Unfortunately, there were thousands of people.

[crowd cheering]

[woman] Hey, let's look at K'uk'ulkan! Here it comes!

[crowd cheering]

[woman] People are just going crazy out there!

We never knew whether he was there or hadn't gone on that occasion

and simply skipped his annual ritual.

But I don't know if, on that day...

Nobody saw him there.

[crowd's chatter distorting]

[chatter fades]

[cows mooing]

[Flores] I think what made El Mayo Zambada unique was his simplicity.

El Mayo was like a cowboy.

He loved that rancher life.

Cows and bulls and horses and agriculture.

There was... on one occasion, we went to this ranch,

and he had bought these really expensive million-dollar Swiss bulls.

And he was so happy, like he was a kid getting a new toy.

And... he went and he said, "Look, these are balls, for real."

[mooing]

[laughing] Like, grabbing the bull's balls.

I mean, he took two hands, you know? The bull had big balls.

[pensive music playing]

[Flores] El Mayo Zambada had many children.

Vicente Zambada.

Ismael, "El Mayito Gordo,"

Ismael, "El Mayito Flaco."

And then he had a younger son named Serafín.

[Balliet] Chapo Guzmán, he had at least six sons with different women.

With Griselda, he had Ovidio, Joaquín, Édgar.

And then with Alejandrina, he had Jesús Alfredo and Iván.

By and large, they all kind of viewed each other as a... a blended family.

[Flores] I met Vicente on the same day I met El Mayo.

He stood up right away. He had an AR-15 on his back shoulder.

Mayo Zambada, he said, "This is my son." Like, proud.

And they called him "El Niño."

The child. Not just any child, but the child.

You know, he is the symbol of this tribe of lions, right?

He knew he was gonna be their king.

[dramatic string music playing]

Later on, when I started to meet all the other narco juniors,

they were nothing like him.

My first reaction, like, when I'm meeting Édgar Guzmán,

who was Chapo Guzmán's son...

He was younger, and I could tell he had like a chip on his shoulder.

Making big moves in the cartel and built his name in the organization.

Just different from Vicente.

[Esquivel] Édgar was Chapo Guzmán's firstborn.

He was a guy, a young man, who generally enjoyed every chance he got to show people

that he had money.

Some stories have him showing up at clubs with his entourage

and trying to, as we commonly say in México,

"move on someone's girl."

When he really liked a woman,

he would send someone from his security detail

to tell the young man accompanying the woman Édgar wanted

that he better give her up... or else.

Either he stepped aside by letting the girl go

or Édgar's bodyguards would kill him

or at the very least give the guy a beating he'd never forget.

[Flores] They don't know much about the business and stuff.

It was a lot about the party aspect of it.

They're younger, and so they're partying and drinking and doing cocaine.

All the time.

Like, they're the heirs, right? You know, with money and power.

It was a unity of family. Of the Zambadas, the Guzmáns.

It's like a family gathering of cousins.

I, for a long time, thought that it was one happy cartel.

And little by little, I started to see that... it wasn't there.

So, at that time, the Sinaloa Cartel was made out of three factions.

Arturo Beltrán Leyva organization, and his brothers.

The Mayo Zambada organization.

And the Chapo Guzmán organization.

We had a very close business relationship with all three of 'em.

But there's inner disputes for, you know, jealousy and drug routes.

And... it was starting to boil over.

[crowd clamoring]

As Mexicans, we demand to live free from violence.

PRESIDENT OF MEXICO 2006-2012

In peace, without fear.

The citizens demand the elimination of corruption, impunity, and injustice.

The citizens long for a return to order and stability.

[crowd applauds]

[Valdés] When Felipe Calderón won the presidential election,

the nation was going through a very difficult period

because of the escalating levels of extreme and brutal violence.

At the time, there were already four wars going on.

[reporter 1] The executions being reported every day

are due to a reshuffling among the drug cartels

and a territorial dispute.

[Valdés] And so, a new conflict began, among the most violent of its kind,

following the breakup of the Sinaloa Cartel.

[reporter 2] They were tied hand and foot, and showed signs of torture.

They also recovered three messages,

addressed to Chapo Guzmán and Mayo Zambada.

[Valdés] El Chapo wanted to get rid of the Beltrán Leyva brothers.

Why? Because they were fighting over

who was gonna get control of their industry.

And he said, "I'd rather get the jump on them first."

So he sent El Mochomo to jail.

[crowd murmuring]

[officer] Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, aka "El Mochomo,"

is one of the leading bosses in the organization.

[Valdés] The tip-off that led to arrest El Mochomo

came from El Chapo Guzmán.

The news caused a huge uproar.

And what we never expected was that this was gonna start a war.

[multiple gunshots]

[dogs barking in distance]

[Balliet] Édgar, who was in his early twenties at the time,

was shot and killed in a Culiacán supermarket,

with like hundreds of rounds.

It was overkill.

[solemn music playing]

That was retribution for turning Mochomo in to the Mexican authorities.

[Esquivel] In a land where anarchy prevailed,

Édgar felt untouchable.

And maybe he was.

But not among criminals.

[Flores] Soon after that,

I was able to give Chapo my condolences about his son, and...

And he kind of did a double take, and he said, "Thank you."

You know, like, "Gracias." Yeah.

[Esquivel] The bosses' families were untouchable.

That's when they broke that unwritten rule.

[man] It's a very quiet town, which tonight was turned into a war zone.

[gunfire]

El Chapo, uh, he reacted extremely violently.

[Flores] For the Mexican drug cartel world,

that was basically World War III.

[cell phone ringing]

[Flores] And then after that, sometime in 2008,

we received a call from a lieutenant, from Mayo Zambada,

explaining to us that El Mayo was on the phone listening.

And he basically said, "Look," he said, "This is a friendly warning."

"We only give this warning once."

"If we find out that you receive one gram of coke

from any of the Beltrán Leyvas...

you're gonna pay for that with your life."

Mm, I said, "Understood."

[unsettling music playing]

Now we were in the middle of a... war.

My intuition told me that it wasn't gonna end well.

[ominous music fades]

[Ferrara] Out of the blue, the Flores twins reached out,

and said that they wanted to cooperate with the US government.

[Flores] It was something we couldn't even believe

we were saying out of our mouths.

"I wanna cooperate."

I said,

"This is a matter of life and death. You have to understand that."

"There's no turning back."

"This is gonna be at the highest levels."

And they said, "Who do they have information about?"

And my lawyer repeated the names. "Chapo Guzmán. El Mayo Zambada."

So he said, "Are you fucking with me?"

The government needed evidence of the bosses doing deals.

And that was gonna be, you know, hard work.

I was more worried about El Mayo Zambada.

Like, Mayo, he could be in the damn mountains all the time.

He took his security very, very seriously.

He was very careful on... on the people that he brought around him

and then the people that were close to him.

[intriguing music rises]

[phones ringing]

[woman] My father, Julio Scherer García,

uh, he was a journalist whose integrity was unquestionable.

JOURNALIST

[camera shutter clicking]

He had built a long and well-established career.

And my dad would protect his sources at all costs.

[Esquivel] He was one of the best,

if not the best journalist Mexico has ever had.

As a reporter for Proceso magazine,

I have always considered myself fortunate

to be a part of that journalistic company founded by Julio Scherer.

[María] In March or April 2010,

he told us that someone turned up at Proceso.

And he was taking him

to an undisclosed location to meet Ismael Zambada.

Of course, I was nervous.

Um...

He was one of the most wanted gangsters in the world.

What I can say with certainty is no one said, "No, please don't."

I mean, no one would have thought of doing that, firstly, because we knew my dad.

My father used to say,

"If the devil agreed to an interview with me,

I would go to hell for that interview."

[bright music playing]

He took a flight to somewhere northeast of Sinaloa.

[eerie music playing]

A few hours later, they took him to a place in the mountains.

This is the written account my dad gave.

"On a surface of hard-packed earth and under a roof made of logs and reeds,

we had arrived at the boss's hideout, whose head was worth millions of dollars."

"Ismael Zambada greeted me with an outstretched hand

and a few welcoming words."

"He was very interested in meeting me."

"'Thank you very much,' I replied, naturally."

That was El Mayo's first interview.

[phone ringing]

[Esquivel] My cell phone rang, and it was an agent from the DEA.

The man said, "Have you seen your magazine?"

"Don Julio is on the cover with El Mayo!"

[scoffs]

IN MAYO ZAMBADA'S LAIR

[music swells]

[Esquivel] Well, it left me speechless.

It's Proceso's best-kept secret.

[intense music playing]

That was the most up-to-date photo any government had

of Ismael Zambada García at the time.

[chuckles] It was a whole spectacle and quite a flex.

He was saying, "Here I am. I've been right here."

"I can definitely afford to bring Mexico's top journalist to take a picture."

"And I'm not going anywhere."

[María] "Is there any room in you for tranquility?"

"I carry fear."

"All the time?" "Always."

"Will they catch you in the end?"

"At any given moment. Or never."

[tense music cuts out]

[ominous, rhythmic music playing]