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Cipher Brief COO Brad Christian spoke with Michael Vigil, former Chief of International Operations at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), about the arrests of Sinaloa Cartel leaders Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, 76, a co-founder of the group, and Joaquin Guzman Lopez, 38, son of the other Sinaloa founder, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. As The Cipher Brief has reported, both men recently entered not guilty pleas following their capture by U.S. law enforcement in Texas in July, setting the stage for a high-profile legal battle this fall. Prosecutors and U.S. officials hope the arrests will help to at least slow the deadly, multi-billion-dollar traffic in fentanyl, a drug that has been blamed for the deaths of more than one million Americans. Vigil worries the Sinaloa Cartel may be strong enough to weather the loss of the two leaders.
The following answers have been edited for length and clarity. Find the full conversation in The State Secrets Podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Who is Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada?
Zambada has headed the Sinaloa Cartel for many years. He took this cartel from only dealing marijuana, cocaine, and heroin to now dealing synthetic drugs. They focused on methamphetamine and then also fentanyl. Why? Because they’re very easy to make. They’re trying to move away from plant-based drugs like marijuana and heroin because if they’re fumigated or destroyed, they have to wait till the next cultivation cycle. They don’t have to do that with synthetic drugs. They get most of their precursor chemicals from China. They move it into the Pacific seaports of Lazaro Cardenas in the state of Michoacán and then also Manzanillo in the state of Colima. Very easy to get those chemicals in.
A lot of people call these “super labs” and that’s not the case. They’re a metal tub. A metal tub, they mix the precursor chemicals with a shovel or a stick and that’s it. The Sinaloa Cartel has also grown exponentially under the leadership of Zambada. They have now penetrated the avocado industry, which is a $3.5 billion industry; lemon and lime, which also is a multi-billion dollar industry; they’re involved in the theft of lumber, the theft of petroleum, and then also the fishing industry. But they are also making billions of dollars in terms of migrants that come through Mexico. And the Sinaloa Cartel right now operates in six of the seven continents around the world. They don’t operate in Antarctica only because nobody lives there and the penguins don’t have any money to buy drugs.
Fighting the fentanyl traffic
Let’s say that China tomorrow was able to shut down the movement of precursor chemicals into Mexico, then the one that would pick up that slack would be India. And India is already sending some of those chemicals into Mexico, and there’s really little control over those substances in that country. So it’s very easy for them to get those precursor chemicals.
I think this is going to be a big issue for whoever wins the (U.S.) presidency, because the flow of fentanyl continues to come across the border, and the epicenter for that is San Diego, California. That is the epicenter for the entry of fentanyl into the United States. Fentanyl doesn’t have the bulk of cocaine and other drugs, and it’s very easy to smuggle in. But along the border, they’re starting to put technology like X-ray machines, because in the past, they were only able to search about 17 % of passenger or cargo trucks and 3 % of passenger vehicles. When they complete all of this technology insertion into the land ports of entry, then they’re going to be able to search about 75 % of the cargo trucks, and then probably about 20 % of passenger vehicles. But make no mistake about it, 80 % of the fentanyl coming into the United States comes in through the land ports of entry. There’s politicians that say that it’s undocumented migrants. That’s not the case.
The people that drive those chemicals from Mexico or the fentanyl are U.S. citizens. The ones that distribute it here in the United States are U.S. citizens. And it’s not even logical to say, OK, we captured a non-documented migrant with a backpack of fentanyl. A backpack or 10 backpacks or 100 backpacks is not going to satisfy the U.S. consumer demand that we have here in the United States. We need to do a better job here in terms of reducing the demand. I’ve always been an advocate of putting or creating curriculum at all levels of elementary, junior high, high school to educate our kids, because in the past they would get a healthcare professional or a police officer that will go to the schools and say, Don’t use drugs, stay away from drugs. That’s not gonna cut it. You have to have it with the curriculum.
And then we need to do a better job in terms of treatment because our treatment facilities, they detoxify the users but then they release them, there’s no follow-up and they go back to the same neighborhoods and back to the same people that got them addicted into in the first place, and then within two weeks they’re addicted again. So there’s many things that we can do.
Also, we need to do a better job in terms of trying to work with Mexico. There’s been issues there and the relationships are pretty broken. So I think that whoever wins the presidency needs to really sit down with (Mexican President) Claudia Scheinbaum and try to develop a viable and comprehensive counter drug strategy, because a lot of times here in the United States, we’re reactive rather than proactive. We can no longer do that. The drug traffickers change their routes on a dime. Here we have the United States trying to play catch. A reactive stance is not going to take you very far.
What comes next
The capture of Zambada and then Joaquin Guzman Lopez is not going to put a big dent in the Sinaloa cartel.
The Sinaloa cartel has a very solid infrastructure. And in order to really damage it, you’re going to have to basically destroy the entire infrastructure. Taking out a leader usually leads to the fragmentation of a cartel, and then you have internal conflict, people fighting for control of that organization. I don’t know if that’s going to happen with the Sinaloa Cartel. I think that they have a very strong bench in terms of leaders that can step in and take control. For example, Chapo Guzman’s brother, Aureliano Agusman Loera, and then maybe Ivan Archivaldo, Chapo’s son. And I’m sure that they know that if they do engage in internal turmoil, the only ones that would benefit would be the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Sinaloa’s rival.
In the past couple of years the U.S. has focused strictly on the Sinaloa Cartel. Why? Because they manufacture most of the fentanyl. But you also have other cartels like the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the second most powerful cartel in Mexico that also manufactures fentanyl. You have the Nueva Familia Michoacana that also manufactures fentanyl – that multicolored fentanyl that looks like skittles. So the DEA and all the other agencies are going to have to work together seamlessly to basically attack all of those cartels, and then maybe others that are at the mid-level. If you ignore them, then they’re going to become ultra powerful.
One of the big factors that we have had in Mexico is former President Lopez Obrador’s policy of abrazos y no balazos, hugs and not gunshots. And he took the policy of not confronting the cartels per se, thinking that they would minimize violence. His six-year term was the bloodiest that has existed in Mexico, with more killings than during any other administration.
Hopefully Claudia Scheinbaum will change that. But that remains to be seen, because she’s already made comments that she is going to follow the same strategy as Lopez Obrador. And if that’s the case, the only ones that are going to win are the cartels, because that’s going to translate into more drugs coming into the United States and then also more violence in Mexico. Also what I would recommend to whoever comes in as the next U.S. president, that they sit down with Claudia Scheinbaum and develop a comprehensive strategy in order to attack these cartels and maybe even get other countries to work together, because we’re talking about transnational organized crime. These organizations operate in many countries. And if we have ample sharing of information, we can put it all together and hopefully get indictments here in the United States and bring them to justice here, because a lot of countries in Latin America don’t have adequate judicial systems to deal with this problem.
he Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals.
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