The capture and indictment of notorious drug kingpin Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada has created a power vacuum leading to more chaos and violence in the streets of Sinaloa, Mexico, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.
In September, the Department of Justice announced it had arraigned Zambada, 76, on 17 counts related to drug trafficking, firearms offenses and money laundering.
“El Mayo, the co-founder and leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, has been charged with overseeing a multi-billion-dollar conspiracy to flood American communities with narcotics, including deadly fentanyl,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.
Yet the July arrest of El Mayo has turned the state of Sinaloa into a war zone with close to 400 hundred people being killed in just the last two months, more than four times the number during the same period last year.
The U.S. has operated under a “kingpin strategy” the last several years, urging Mexico to capture and extradite drug lords while providing billions in security assistance. Some analysts have argued that such high-profile arrests lead to more deaths with varying factions battling for power. Political scientist Carlos Pérez Ricart wrote in the daily Reforma how this top-down strategy has resulted in chaos. “Zambada was something more than a criminal,” adding “He was a factor of stability.”
Since the Zambada arrest, Sinaloa’s ensuing drug war has crippled the state’s economy as residents have been forced to seek shelter. Despite the government sending thousands of troops to the city, hundreds of residents have fled and those that remain live a life of constant fear. “We never imagined we’d live this war,” said Guadalupe Gress, 54, a department store manager. “The schools are closed, people can’t work - and where’s the government?”
Miguel Taniyama, a prominent chef has had to close two of his three restaurants since July, saying it was the former kingpin who kept the city livable. “The person who kept the order was El Mayo,” he added. “Security should have been provided by the government. They didn’t do it.”
The kingpin strategy is likely to continue as President-elect Donald Trump has promised to “wage war on the cartels.” In a statement in 2023, Trump added, “When I am back in the White House, the drug kingpins and vicious traffickers will never sleep soundly again."
Benjamin T. Smith, a historian and author of “The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade, told the outlet, “There is plenty of statistical evidence that if you take out kingpins, you tend to cause a fight for supremacy between the seconds-in-command,” adding that the U.S. government “must have known this was going to happen.”
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