Ismael Zambada García | |
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Born |
Ismael Zambada García January 1, 1948 El Álamo, Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico |
Other names | "El Mayo", "El M-Z", "El Padrino", |
Occupation | Leader of Sinaloa Cartel |
Height | 5 ft 9 in (1.75 m) |
Weight | 160 lb (73 kg) |
Predecessor | Jaoquin Guzmán Loera |
Criminal status | Fugitive |
Children | Ismael "El Mayito", Héctor "El Flaco", Serafín, Vicente "El Niño", Midiam Patricia, Mónica del Rosario, Modesta, María Teresa, Jose Alberto Zambada(missing) |
Reward amount
|
Mexico: 30 million Mexican pesos; USA: US$5 million |
Partner(s) | Juan José Esparragoza Moreno |
Notes | |
$5 million reward in U.S.A. and $1.6 million reward in Mexico.
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Ismael Zambada García (born 1 January 1948), also known as El Mayo Zambada, is a Mexican drug lord who serves as the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. Before assuming leadership of the entire cartel, he served as the logistical coordinator for the Zambada-García faction of the Sinaloa Cartel which has assisted in the exporting of cocaine and heroin into Chicago and other U.S. cities by train, ship, jet and submarine.
A former farmer with extensive agricultural and botanical knowledge, Zambada began his criminal career by smuggling a few kilograms of drugs at the time, then increased his gang's production of heroin and marijuana while consolidating his position as a trafficker of Colombian cocaine. When drug lord Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo was arrested in 1989, his old organization broke up into two factions: the Tijuana Cartel led by his nephews, the Arellano Félix brothers, and the Sinaloa Cartel, run by former lieutenants Héctor Luis Palma Salazar, Adrián Gómez González, Ismael Zambada García, Ignacio Coronel Villarreal, and Joaquín Guzmán Loera (El Chapo). The Sinaloa Cartel drug lords were active in the states of Sinaloa, Durango, Chihuahua, Sonora, Nuevo León, and Michoacán.
In 2006 the administration of President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against Mexico’s drug trafficking networks. The Arellano Felix Organization (Tijuana Cartel), the largest and most sophisticated of the Mexican cartels at the time, received the brunt of the blows. Taking advantage of the pressure being placed on the Tijuana Cartel, other drug bosses, most notably Ismael Zambada and Joaquín Guzmán, began to encroach on strongholds in northwestern Mexico, leading to full-scale war.