El Chapo's Boss & The Most Powerful Kingpin in Mexico: El Mayo
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Yep. Go to Carvana.com to finance your car the convenient way. It's 2017, and the man who many would call the most powerful drug trafficker in the world has just been extradited to the United States of America.

Joaquin El Chapo Guzman has recently been caught for the third time after escaping prison for the second time. But this time, it seems like he's really finished. There's no easy escape from U.S. custody. And if you listen to this podcast and, you know, have eyes and ears, I assume you don't need to know who El Chapo is and how powerful he was.

With him locked up, the most powerful cartel in Mexico, and the world likely, the Sinaloa Cartel, is supposedly without its leader. In the aftermath of his capture and extradition, one of El Chapo's lieutenants, his right-hand man, calls a meeting of the top Sinaloa cartel leaders. This meeting is supposed to include a couple of El Chapo's sons, called El Chapitos, and an elderly cartel leader in his 70s.

But on the way to the meeting, El Chapo's sons and this 71-year-old man are ambushed. Chapo's sons are slightly wounded, but everyone survives. It seems his lieutenant is making a play for control of the cartel. And maybe he thinks that Chapo's kids, who grew up rich and spoiled, narco princess essentially, and this elderly man are out of their depth and don't have the heart. And he can seize control with Guzman out of the picture.

It's one of those things that just happens when a cartel kingpin goes down. But this guy, this lieutenant,

He's very, very wrong. And within months, he's arrested by the Mexican authorities, supposedly with the help of those other cartel players. And soon after that, his son flees to the U.S. border to turn himself in, in fear of his life. And, you know, that's not the usual fear of your life in the cartel wars. If you're willing to cross over into the U.S. and turn yourself in to the austere U.S. justice system, well, who the hell could you even be running from?

See, that old man in his 70s who was going to the meeting, his name is Elmayo Zambada. And most people say he, not Chapo, is the most powerful, smartest, sharpest, ruthless drug trafficker cartel kingpin that Mexico has ever known. This is The Underworld Podcast. ♪♪

Welcome back to another episode of the Underworld Podcast, the audio experience where long-time journalists who have reported all over the world take you on a guided journey of people, places, and things having to do with international organized crime. I'm Danny Golds. I'm joined by Sean Williams. And this is his cue to make a reference or talk about something in New Zealand that no one else understands.

Okay, uh, yeah, what's going on for me? Nah, nothing really. I mean, my conversion to boring sports guy is nearing completion. I spent, what, like an hour comparing shin pads online yesterday? I mean, I always hoped my midlife crisis would involve drugs and casual sex, but...

Turns out it's just playing football with a bunch of hungover Kiwis. So yeah, that's something to aim for, right? Love it. Love it when you just like to share on the podcast. As always, support our sponsors. Support us at patreon.com slash new world podcast or on iTunes or Spotify for bonus material for a couple dollars a month. Send us money or contraband. And I don't know, if you work for a cool company, give us stuff for free.

Sean, you know, though, how how are things? I'm just kidding. Nobody want nobody. Nobody. Nobody wants to hear us talk about our lives when we have a fresh new episode about cartels and the men who love them and participate in them, lead them, whatever. El Mayo, we wanted to do an episode on him forever. My brother's actually been telling me to do one. I am. There's not a lot of info on him out there, though, and I'm lazy. So I told him to do most of the research and he did.

He also says that he will argue about the episode with anyone in the YouTube comments. Just post your sources and it better not be Narcos Mexico, the TV show or a Reddit post. His rules, not mine. Yeah. I mean, that's doesn't that rule out almost everyone? I don't know, man. If people want to argue in the comments, go for it. It's good for the algorithm. Yeah. There.

There are, once again, a lot of conflicting sources and even conflicting testimony from witnesses when they're on trial or when, you know, narcos are on trial or some of the narcos come forward to do state's evidence. But yeah, so he's a hard guy to parse. He's not like El Chapo or any of the other guys whose life stories are known. And you'll see, I think that he, you know, that's a concerted effort by him not to, you

you know, be the center of Narco Caritos or just have his life story be told. Sometimes two sources will say an event took place in 2008. Two other sources will say the same event took place in 2009. You know, just calm down about it, you nerds. We're having fun here. This is like kind of I talked about how in the Boris episode, right? So much information when it comes to underworld stuff like this is flexible, made up, exaggerated, just all that sort of stuff. Yes, useful if we're writing a script on short notice. Yeah, how long did this one take?

I don't know, man, two, a couple of days, but you know, it is, it is what it is. So.

Ismael Zambada Garcia, aka El Mayo, is born in 1948 in a very small town an hour outside of Culiacan. Culiacan? Culiacan. The capital of the Mexican state of Sinaloa and just an infamous narco region. He grows up dirt poor in a farmer's family, again, as many of the eventual powerful narcos do. He does odd jobs for money, like washing trucks and stuff like that. And he gets his start in the underworld, operating as a hitman in the Juarez cartel.

There isn't that much about Elmayo and his youth, so it's pretty bare bones. I assume he probably got to start doing the usual lookout stuff or in the fields, but that's kind of what we know about him, where he gets to start. And I think that's deliberate. He really adheres to the stay out of the news, stay out of the headlines, keep his information quiet, like a VPN for life attitude that we hear try to advise all aspiring criminals to aspire to.

Now, to start with his origins in the drug trafficking game, we first have to start with a Cuban named Antonio Cruz Vasquez, who is El Mayo's mentor in that whole world. And a lot of this comes from a 1978 Washington Post article.

Vasquez is 32 years old when Castro takes over, and he's a captain in the Cuban National Police when the new regime comes to power. He eventually vanishes from Cuba in what the Post describes as mysterious circumstances. And to quote the Post here, according to reports obtained by U.S. law enforcement officials, Cruz Vasquez turned up in Nicaragua, where some said he was working for a U.S. central intelligence agency, and others claimed he was representing Cuban army intelligence. When

When Nevada narcotics officials questioned him about these reports after his arrest last January 28th, Cruz Vasquez declined to discuss them. No shit. Oh, boys, you got me. Yeah, well done. Fair play. I'll tell you all about the spine. Take a seat. Yeah, I've got a story for you. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense that, you know, he knew before we had to tell him before this podcast even existed. Keep your mouth shut.

We've gone into detail before on like the wild Cuban expat world of spy games and drugs and crime, most notably in our episode about the Cuban crime syndicate known as the corporation, which was way back. So go back and look into that. And it just makes perfect sense that he's this incredibly shady and shadowy dude who doesn't answer questions because Elmayo is very similar. And he very well may have picked up that sort of subterfuge lessons from Elmayo.

from Vasquez. Or, you know, he may not have learned that at all from him. We're just going to speculate wildly over here, like the producers of a crappy Netflix doc series about some conspiracy or serial killer or something like that. Yeah, I mean, not the crappy Netflix producers who hit us up without doing stuff. We really, really love those guys. Just keep on sending us emails, guys. Especially when you try and get stuff for free. We really love that. In the 1960s, Vasquez gets a fake birth certificate saying he was born in Puerto Rico,

He ends up being arrested three times over the next decade, including twice for drug offenses. The last one being for smuggling 600 pounds of weed into the U.S.,

He's released in 1973 and he moves to Mexico where he meets and marries Modesta Zambada, who is El Mayo's sister. She's in her 20s and he's in his 50s at this point. But the Washington Post says it's a match made in heaven. And you know, those guys, they are a bunch of perverts. So we'll let it slide. Does this also mean that in some way El Mayo is a nepo baby? I guess somewhat. What do they what do they say? What's like that thing that people on TikTok get mad about? Age?

age something or other when it comes to dating. Oh man, you're more up on things than I am. Unfortunately, the answer, yeah. But anyway, we'll allow it. They say the Zimbada family was already involved in the production of drugs at this point, but it didn't really have the means to smuggle it. That's why, you know, El Mayo grew up dirt poor in Sinaloa and like these other poor farmers in the rural region, they start growing opium and weed, but they just didn't have the capability to traffic it on a big scale. That comes much later on.

For the next four years, Vasquez takes control though, and he runs a very sophisticated drug smuggling operation from the outspirts of Culiacan, Sinaloa. Sinaloa, you know, in the neighboring Mexican states of Durango and Chihuahua, they make up a region between them known as the Golden Trial of Mexico. It's an extremely rural area in the northwest of Mexico where, you know, it's mountainous and a lot of the illegal opium and weed coming into the states, it's coming from that region starting in the 1960s. I think even earlier with the opium.

Right. Even though it doesn't border the U.S., Sinaloa was also the birthplace of basically every famous Mexican trafficker who starts the original cartels, minus the Gulf cartel guys. Yeah, I think that that started with there was Chinese migrants to Mexico kind of ramped up the opium trade. Right. And they're like 20s or something like this. But is this still I mean, this is showing my ass a bit, but is this still happening? Like do people still traffic opium out of that Golden Triangle area?

Of Mexico or is it just the Asian stuff now? Well, first of all, I think it started, yeah, Asian workers, Chinese workers coming over, I think brought it with them and then grew it. And then, you know, some of these cartels got started smuggling alcohol into the US. And then once prohibition ended, they kind of, I think they amped up the, we've talked about this, I think they amped up the anti-Chinese racism and basically took over violently the opium fields from them.

But as far as smuggling opium, I think it's decreased a lot because they make so much more money off the synthetic stuff. So, you know, why do that when you can just make fentanyl? I don't know, though. I assume it's still going on. It's like weed. I think weed's decreased a lot, too, but they're still smuggling it in here and there. I think there was a big news story this week about some of the Sinaloa cartel factions going crazy.

entirely into synthetics now and like ditching everything else. It's so big now. I think they're like experimenting with fentanyl on the border and I don't know, it's pretty grim stuff, but yeah. I thought I saw something, again, I haven't had time to read more in the headlines, that they had declared that they wouldn't be

moving fentanyl. Oh, okay. At least maybe the chapitos did or something. I could be wrong, but I think it was, you know, if they smarten up, they realize that, that, that, you know, fentanyl is, I think that's getting a lot of attention. You know, why would you go in with that when you can just do your regular drugs and people will probably,

you know, leave you be for the most part. But fentanyl is the stuff that's really causing, you know, people to, you know, launch the US military at them and stuff like that, right? So fentanyl, it's getting all the attention. So it might be the most profitable, but it's also going to attract the, I think, most attention, whatever you, however you want to call it. I keep saying attention, but you know what I mean? The most effort from the DEA and whatnot. Anyway, Vasquez, who, you know, is essentially El Mayo's mentor, and it really teaches him

had a work in the drug game. He's later busted in Vegas for an $18 million a year retail drug ring, which doesn't sound like that much, but we're talking about, what, the 70s here? So I think he's doing well for himself. Authorities say at the time, it's one of the biggest retail operations in the state. Fun fact, his lawyer in this drug bust...

is none other than Oscar Goodman, who is a famed mob attorney turned mayor of Las Vegas. He represented the basis for Joe Baschi's character in Casino. Oh, God. Anthony Spolatro was one of his most famous clients. And basically every other mobster in Vegas, Oscar Goodman. He represented everyone from Meyer Lansky, Nicky Scarfo, Lefty Rosenthal at times. I actually recently tried to interview him for another project, and he wanted a cash payment.

which is just, I mean, classic. His wife, I think is now the mayor of Vegas or was after him. I don't know if she still is. So he was a three-term mayor and then his wife became the mayor, which is just, I mean, the most Vegas shit ever, right? I think there's actually a podcast out there about him now. I think it's one of the recent seasons of the Las Vegas mobster podcast. I forget what it's called, but just an absolute legend. Is,

Is Las Vegas corrupt? You're blowing my mind here. I thought it was a pretty cool place. I mean, we also accept cash payments in case you want to keep Patreon stuff off the books, guys. You've got a PO box on Staten Island, right? I have one in my maranac, actually. You can send cash there, too. Nice.

Around this time in 1980, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo forms the Guadalajara Cartel, which unifies all the different independent Sinaloa traffickers under one branch and basically forms one unified Mexican organization, minus the Gulf Cartel to traffic drugs.

They start off selling mostly weed, but soon advance into moving that white stuff for the Colombian cartels. Wait, white stuff, what's that? It's what we say to avoid being demonetized. Okay. Gallardo, who's always the visionary, he's quite clever when he makes a deal with the Colombians. He wants to get paid in half product as opposed to a fee per kilo, which leads to the Mexicans, just their profits skyrocketing and then becoming more powerful eventually than the Colombians, whereas in the past...

They were sort of subservient to them. Now they quickly start becoming their equals. But the good times, they do not last when the Guadalajara cartel takes out DEA agent Kik Camarena for taking down one of their massive weed plantations that was rumored to be worth about

Eight billion dollars. And there's a theory obviously out there that the CIA actually ordered him to be taken out because he was getting too close to revealing one of their working with the cartel, one of Reagan's drug profits to militia army schemes that were very popular in the 80s. I don't know if you want to go down that rabbit hole. Go ahead. But we're not going to focus on that.

So Gallardo, he goes on the run, sort of. Two of his top guys get arrested. While he's on the run, sometime between 1987 and 1989, he convenes a meeting of the top traffickers in the country at a house in Acapulco. And apparently it's the house...

That the Shah of Iran, and I'm not talking about Phil Liotardo, but the ex-ruler, the actual ex-ruler of Iran, used to rent when he was in exile. So, you know, it must have been a pretty dope house. Yeah. I mean, today I learned that the Shah of Iran rented an Acapulco frat house while he was on the run. What? This is madness. I didn't even know he was in Mexico. That's on me. But those parties must have been crazy.

Whoa. Wild. That guy, I think he liked to lay his hair down, right? I don't think he was on the run, right? I think he just was in exile. I don't think they were trying to... Or they might have been. I don't know. Here at that meeting, he decides not to shove her on, but the X-River on, but...

But Gallardo decides he's going to divvy up the territories and responsibilities to various people. The Arellano Felix brothers get Tijuana and form the Tijuana cartel. The Carrillo Fuentes family, led by Amado, a.k.a. Lord of the Skies, get Juarez and they form the Juarez cartel. And finally, the area of Sinaloa goes to El Chapo and El Mayo. And they go on to bring back Hector Palma, who had fallen out of favor with Gallardo, to form the Sinaloa cartel.

It's not clear if the Gulf cartel guys were even at the meeting. Some say they were, some people say they weren't. And now Gallardo, he's trying to keep this low profile, but he continues overseeing the different groups before he's arrested in 1989 as the walls close in. And then he's officially out of the picture. Now you might be wondering, what is Elmayo up to at this time? And did he work for the Guadalajara cartel in the 1980s?

Isn't this supposed to be Elmaio's episode? Well, it's not exactly clear if he was officially in the Guadalajara cartel or not, but we do know he was at the narco summit where they split up the territories. And we do know that he's doing deals with all these guys, but he might've been like a semi-independent operator. It's not clear as few things are with him.

We do know from one of his kids' testimonies when he's later arrested that in 1990, Benjamin Arellano Felix, the top dog for the Tijuana cartel, is his godfather, the kid's godfather at his baptism. And months later, as confirmation, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the top dog of the wires cartel, stood as another godfather. So he...

Obviously worked closely with Amado at the time. And of course he was a close associate of his Sinaloa co-leader and business partner El Chapo during the Guadalajara days. He just seems like a guy too who was, you know, a lot of these guys, there was bad blood or they hate each other. Amado seems like he was well liked and well respected. And there didn't seem to be a lot of bad blood for him, which, you know, he always had this rep as being smarter than everyone else and knowing how to keep the peace.

To quote a Mexican official about El Mayo before he ends up heading the Sinaloa cartel, he learned early on how to hitch his wagon to other bigger organizations. Actually, throughout this bit, I've been wondering myself how he got his name. Did he get it because he likes sunny days or whether he likes egg whites or why is he called El Mayo? I think it's a combination of some of his nicknames or names. I'm not really 100% sure.

But what does Sonny Day's or Egg White's have to do with it? Mayo or May. Oh, right. Okay. Yeah. The deal Gallardo works out with all the cartels is simple.

You do your own things in your territory, but if you want to use someone else's territory, also known as a plaza, you've got to pay them a tax to move stuff through their plaza. And it holds for a time, and these guys are all doing deals with each other, peacefully enough, with some minor fighting here and there, but this is the Mexican cartel, so you know that doesn't last too long. And I just...

I never understood that mentality, which again explains why I'm not the head of a cartel currently. But like, if you're all making more money than you know what to do with, like, why, why do you need to be in charge? You know, just like, uh, just get along with everyone, you know, live the good life. Why, uh, why go to war all the time? But, uh, a big thing is unlike the Juarez, Tijuana or Gulf cartels, the Sinaloa cartel

doesn't have any territory bordering the U.S. So the Sinaloa cartel, and especially El Chapo, they start to encroach on the Tijuana cartel's turf.

El Chapo starts building these elaborate tunnels, which he'll become famous for, and he ducks out on taxes he's supposed to be paying to the Tijuana cartel, the Arellano Felix clan. They find out and they put a bounty on his head in early 1992. I mean, this is a good time for tunnel builders, right? I mean, this is what I'm saying, building all those oil well tunnels under Kuwait. Also, the Channel Tunnel, I think that's 1992 as well.

Big, big year for tunnels. Good year. Engineers, man. There's never a shortage of legal things you can make money on.

Here we have the opening salvo in the Tijuana-Sinaloa cartel war that is brutal when they bring in these California gangbangers, the Ariano Felix Brothers Tijuana cartel, to Mexico. And they're supposed to serve as like the sicarios. They kidnap six of Chapo's lieutenants in Tijuana. They torture them. They kill them. Shortly after that, a car bomb explodes outside of one of El Chapo's houses in Culiacan, Mexico.

He strikes back in November of 1992 when 15 of his men dress up as policemen and try to take out two of the Arellano Felix brothers at a club when they're at a resort town of Jalisco.

For the next six months, El Chapo and the Arellano Felix brothers are hunting each other down and they're opposing men. El Mayo still remains sort of in the shadows, right? He plays it cool. In May of 1993, after spending a few days going after Chapo and Guadalajara and giving up, a couple of Arellano Felix brothers and a team of hitmen head to the airport to go back to Tijuana.

While at the airport, they get where the El Chapo is there as well. And there's this infamous crazy shootout. It's more like a running gun battle in the parking lot.

And the Tijuana cartel thinking they know El Chapo's car. They shoot up a white Mercury, but it's not Chapo who's there. It's a Cardinal, the Archbishop of Guadalajara. And he's hit 14 times. Ouch. I mean, yeah, I was going to make a pun about Cardinal sins, but then I could actually hear you groaning as I wrote it down. And I'm doing so well with the joke so far. So, yeah, I feel like I'll just try and get some gold in before the end of the show then.

But you've had some good ones recently. You know, you can't win them all. I want to roll. Ish. This would be a big deal in any country, a Cardinal getting assassinated in Underworld Feud, but it's an even bigger deal in Mexico where the Catholic Church is so powerful and the fallout is severe.

Chapo was captured later that year in Guatemala. The eldest, Arellano Felix Brothers, captured as well. A couple years later, Hector Palm was arrested, leaving El Mayo as the only original one of the three co-founders in the cartel who was out of prison.

Palm has extradited to the US. El Chapo bribes basically the entire prison and continues to work with El Mayo atop the Sinaloa cartel. But El Mayo at this point is firmly in the driver's seat. He stays loyal to Chapo. He doesn't cut him out of the picture. You know, he keeps sending him cash, puts that money as commissary and whatnot, and just, you know, remains like they remain partners in a way. Yeah. And also it's worth looking at pictures of both of them because they look

pretty much identical. These like big black bushy mustaches, a bit like Bob Hoskins' Mario. It's pretty nuts. They had that cowboy mystique, you know? A lot of this comes from Malcolm Bates' book, The Last Narco. I think that's how you say his last name, which is ostensibly about El Chapo, but El Mayo obviously plays a huge role in Sinaloa. Like, you know, El Mayo, he's the one who realizes once he's solely in charge when Chapo's locked up that corruption is an incredibly important toolkit for a narco to have.

So he assigns the Beltran-Leyva brothers, more on them later. For right now, just know that they're key players in the cartel, and El Mayo, he tasked them with buying off the right people. It's even alleged that him and the brothers bribed the then president of Mexico in the late 1990s, but that's never been proven.

Mayo, he just comes across in general like a different breed. He's the one who stays out of prison. He's the one who stays out of trouble. A lot of the cartel guys too we've covered, they're just real psychopaths who kill for nothing. According to the DEA agents who tracked him, El Mayo really only kills people when it's the last option for business in a cold, calculating manner. Oh, okay. So just a cold, calculated murder. All good. Yeah. I mean, the second I said that, I realized how absurd it sounds, but you know what I mean.

And whereas many cartel bosses, including El Chapo, just want to flood the American markets with drugs, he always understood supply and demand economics and would use it to his advantage, sometimes slowing down shipments, causing that drought. And while El Chapo would just store a ton of cash all over the country in various villas and stash houses he owned,

El Mayo learns how to launder money through dozens of front companies that he eventually brought in his wife and daughters to run as the owners. He has four daughters and four sons. All of them are involved in the family business. In the late 90s, we get another one of those narco summits where all the heads of the top national cartels, like a sorority house at Arizona State, they go meet up in Puerto Vallarta, minus the Tijuana cartel this time, where

One of the main motives on the agenda is to discuss the Ariano Felix brothers, who, just to remind you, that's the Tijuana cartel. They've been creating a lot of problems in Tijuana. Too many murders. Their bloodlust is bad for everyone. Like we've said, Chapo and them have been beefing. At this point, El Mayo is actually having personal problems with Ramon Ariano Felix, who is the most psychotic of the brothers. And it's over a $20 million debt that Ramon claims El Mayo owes him.

I got 99 problems, but a $20 million feud with a murderous cartel leader ain't one. Solid reference to a rap song that was popular 15 years ago. That's where I am. Yeah. The second big agenda item is the passing of the leader of the Juarez cartel, who's Amado Carrillo. We talked about he dies during a botched plastic surgery in 1997. Yeah.

He is like, you know, it's not that abnormal for these guys to get worked on to try to evade capture more, but apparently he was doing it for vanity's sake, which, you know, makes it a little worse. The Tijuana and Gulf cartels, they're trying to muscle into Juarez's turf, and El Mayo doesn't like that because he has close ties to the Puentes family. So he makes an alliance with El Mayo's brother, who's the new leader of the Juarez cartel, and together...

They're going to go after the Arellano Felix brothers, the Tijuana cartel. God, you guys are staying up with it, right? Is this getting too confusing? Let's see. So where are we in the ties between these things now? So like the Tijuana cartel is going to get done by Juarez. And then where... Well, Juarez and Sinaloa are teaming up to go after the Tijuana cartel, which is those brothers, the Arellano Felix brothers, who Chapo's had problems with for years and now Amayo has some problems with as well. And then the Gulf cartel are just out on their own at this point.

Yeah, yeah. Cool. Eventually, I mean, you know, they have the Zeta situation and they go to war with Sinaloa, but right now that's where it stands. And Mayo starts this war by ordering a series of high profile assassinations, including the murder of the Tijuana police chief, who obviously was on the take. And right away, the war is just completely on.

By February of 2002, one of the Arellano Felix brothers, Ramon, tries to take on El Mayo on his home turf of Sinaloa, but the local police who are in El Mayo's pocket, they end up killing him. He was, like we said, the one with the 20 million who was supposed to be the most psychotic and the leader.

A month later, another one of the brothers gets arrested, who's the supposed brains of the family. The Tijuana cartel is starting to hurt. The Sinaloa cartel in El Mayo, they never officially take Tijuana, but the cartel is severely weakened. Two other brothers get arrested in 2006, 2008. And finally, to wrap up, the last brother, the eldest one, who was the one who got arrested in 1993 for that shootout that killed the Cardinal, he's released a few years later in 2013. He gets killed when he's celebrating his 64th birthday.

He's killed by a clown assassin, which is not a technical term. It's a guy who's dressed like an actual birthday clown with a red nose and stuff who takes him out at his birthday, which, you know, tough way to go.

Yeah, I mean, didn't they reverse this? Spoiler alert, but didn't they reverse this for that Netflix show? Like the clown got shot dead, I think, at the end of the show? I don't remember exactly, but the show does seem to be relatively accurate with all these alliances and families and fighting. Oh, was that the end of 000? Maybe I'm getting my shows mixed up now. Maybe that was another show. God, there's so many narco shows out there. And we still haven't been paid for any of them. Like what is...

going on here. We're just failing miserably at this. That's the whole point of this podcast. With the fall... Yes, that's the spirit. Yeah. With the fall...

With the fall of the Tijuana cartel, new opportunities for Omaio. The family had been an important connect between the Mexican cartels and the Colombian cartels. And the Colombians, they're tired of dealing with them at this point. So they seek out Omaio, who, like we said, has a solid reputation as a top trafficker and just guy who gets deals done. And he is able to secure his own sort of partnership with the Colombians, which is going to be huge. He gets these independent ties to them, which he still maintains to this day.

So yeah, early spoiler alert. He's still free, still alive. Two very important things that most traffickers, uh, we can't say the same for them, you know?

Just to step back a little at this point, too, they're basically partners, El Mayo and El Chapo. So we need to tell the story just a little bit about El Chapo. He escapes prison in 2001. Welcome back into the Sinaloa cartel fold by El Mayo. Like we said, loyal guy. This is the start of the myth of El Chapo really building in the Mexican media and I guess the international media, too, a little later on. You know, it's already gotten some legs broken.

with all these stories coming out of him living like a king in prison. You know, stuff's being reported in the media. But he now achieves this legendary outlaw status. And, you know, Mexicans love their legendary outlaws, though I guess...

We all love our legendary outlaws, right? He becomes not only the face of the Sinaloa cartel, but soon the face of cartels in general in the press in Mexico and in the international press, which is kind of perfect for El Mayo, who likes to operate in the background, right? Some people think he actually may have orchestrated the whole legend of El Chapo thing. He's about that more rich than famous life. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, that would, that would be a genius move for him. Bit like what I've done with you in this podcast. Right. So I can make no money in the shadows and you can make no money in the limelight. Yeah. Yeah. What's the, uh, the thing from, uh, I feel like I've referenced this before the, um, what's the band in New Zealand? Uh, it's the story of,

Yeah, when they're like, this is a story of two guys who start at the bottom and continue at the bottom and end up at the bottom. You're the second most famous thing to come out of New Zealand besides them, right? Oh, I know. I know. And everyone here knows it too. Yeah. While the DEA and the US government definitely know about El Mayo at this point, it's much better to be the guy not in the media. Again, much better to be the guy not in the media or on Instagram. I can't stress that enough. Yeah.

But still, with Omaio's rising status in the underworld comes even more attention from the U.S. government. President Bush designates him a tier one drug kingpin, which means the U.S. starts to target him directly. His money too, which is a huge problem. The DEA focuses on his business efforts. They put more offices in Arizona, which is where a lot of their drugs are coming through. They closely monitor some of his relatives who are in the States and they raid some of his homes in Sonora, Mexico.

They even put El Mayo wanted billboards on the highway between Tucson and Phoenix. Yeah, I think there's a Beatles song about that, right? I mean, I'd never heard. I'd never actually heard of this tier one kingpin thing. I mean, yeah, it seems like I would know about it, but I looked up who's on the list these days.

And what's interesting is where they're from. Right. So going on 2020 data, which is the last I could find. Mexico, Colombia have the most 62, 32 respectively. Afghanistan next with 17 kingpins. I mean, that's 17 kingpins in Afghanistan. OK. And then Honduras with 11 and Pakistan with eight. No Burma, no China, no Ecuador. You can. That's a bit weird. I don't know.

I think, well, Ecuador didn't really have kingpins, right? And that's really a new thing in the past couple of years. I'm surprised by the Burma thing. Yeah. And there's no Southeast Asia, but I assume, I feel like we've talked about that in recent episodes. I assume that's changed, right? Because they had that big bust of, um,

The Seichi Locke. The guy whose name I'm forgetting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I assume he must have made it on there. But those guys, like, you know, we talk about this. They seem much better at staying out of the limelight, you know? And I think the language issues are much bigger there. Yeah, they're like a bunch of El Mayos in the jungle. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And they seem to... And there doesn't seem to be, you know, there's no pivot to Asia, even with cartel stuff. Afghanistan and Pakistan seems weird, but I guess that because of such a U.S. presence there for decades, it makes sense. Yeah. Yeah.

I suppose. But Honduras with like true kingpins as well. I thought that was like similar to Ecuador, right? Just a sort of transshipment point, a lot of street gangs, that kind of stuff. Well, no, wasn't the president recently, you know, had that trial and everything. Oh, yeah. OK. Fair enough. The thing with Burma is that haven't they don't they really not focus that much on on getting stuff into the US now?

Right. Isn't their focus mostly Australia? There's a little bit coming into like California, but that's only for local, like sort of Southeast Asian gangs. So most of it's not coming. It's most of it's just coming through the Mexican border now. Yeah. Right. Or it's going to Asia, you know, that's where all the Yaba is going. Right. And Australia. Yeah, I guess so. It makes sense. The D.A. wouldn't focus a ton of their attention on Burma. Yeah. That's my assumption.

Yeah. Someone told us a crazy story on Instagram about Yaba in Yangon. I don't think we can. We can't talk about it, but yeah. Wow. That was insane. And if anyone knows much about how to get into Yangon these days, I am trying to get a visa. I wouldn't broadcast that. I would just go over and like may sod or something like that, you know? Yes.

Yeah, just for fun. Yeah, I was going to ask if you read that story. Maybe we will talk about it eventually if the person gives us permission. But yeah, very disturbing thing to read. And we hope you're doing better. At this point, the DEA isn't quite sure who exactly is in charge of the Sinaloa cartel and starts focusing more on El Mayo.

Right about that time, DA offices start receiving anonymous calls that Elmayo was not the guy they wanted, that the top dog was really El Chapo. And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that was probably Elmayo's people saying, don't look at me, look at El Chapo. He's the guy you want, which is just like, I mean, does that, if that works, you know, just like the, I feel like it's the kind of thing we would- I mean, Trump made it work in the 80s, right? Yeah. But according to, you know, the last Narco book,

The authorities believe they were always one step behind El Chapo and two steps behind El Mayo. I would have guessed one step and three step, but that's what they said. Although, honestly, the phone call thing just seems like, you know, not the most genius level tactics. It's, you know, I just, I don't know. I don't think it's the kind of thing, uh,

Or maybe it is the kind of thing like a dumbass who skims through Sun Tzu decides to do, you know? The DEA themselves conclude that the two narcos are just best buds who work together and that El Chapo even looks up to El Mayo, who I think is maybe 10 years older and probably more experienced at that point. Whereas El Chapo is always on the move and making big moves, they think El Mayo is always behind the scenes pulling the strings, making deals, and trying to keep the peace as much as possible.

To quote the last narco, quote, one DEA agent likens him to a chairman of the board who operates solely from the top floor and made the executive decisions. Elmayo knew what to do with the money and he knew how to handle the Colombians. He also knew what was good for business. He was the guy who wants to cooperate and bring people together. The DEA believed. Yeah, that podcast analogy is still checking out.

I feel like I've explained this before about the Sinaloa cartel, but they're different than the other cartels, right? They're not a hierarchical top-down structure with one boss, like say El Mencho and Jalisco. It's been referred to often as the Sinaloa Federation because it's a collection of organizations that are loosely aligned that

that might agree on an overall strategy, share drug smuggling routes, share intelligence they get from bribes, things like that. But they also have their own independent routes, their own bribes, their own operatives. So Amayo has his guys, Chapo has his guys, and another powerful leadership crew like the Beltran Labor Brothers, they got their guys as almost completely separate organizations that are also working together. They also all know each other from back in the day in Sinaloa.

The Belch and Leibovs grew up down the road from El Chapo's family, and there was a lot of marrying between the organizations because, as the DEA agent said, the thinking might be that you're going to be less likely to turn on or kill your amigo if your wife is going to annoy you afterwards, which is...

Just good policy in general. Just a list of a few of the marriages. El Chapo's last wife, the one he had when he got busted, the beauty queen. She was the daughter of a top figure in the cartel. Yeah, Emma Coronel. We got into some cool stuff about her on the show with Deborah Bonello about Narcos, female Narcos, I think a few months ago now. Or maybe it's like a year ago. I don't know anymore. But yeah, that was really interesting. I think it was like a year ago. You know, time's a flat circle. Yeah.

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Tune in to new episodes of Conspiracy Theories every Wednesday, free, wherever you listen to your podcast. And remember, click follow on those guys on Spotify and click follow on our Spotify. Does that work? One of the Beltran-Lever brothers was married to El Chapo's cousin. One of Omaio's sons was married to the daughter of another top Sinaloa cartel figure.

And this is a thing that I can't find conclusive proof of, but they say that one of El Mayo's sons is supposedly married to one of El Chapo's daughters, which I mean, talk about narco royalty right there. Like that wedding must have been a lot of fun. You guys, you guys are geniuses. You get the idea. The funny thing is, though, that still most of them, maybe not El Chapo and El Mayo or maybe they they still almost always turn on each other, even with that.

A lot of angry wives. But yeah, where was I? Choppo, fresh out of prison. He's eager to really get back into the mix of things.

And this is where we see the cartel become even more of a federation when Chapo really asserts his independence even more as a distinct separate group. The DEA believes that El Mayan and Chapo share a common interest to keep the businesses strong and not undermine each other. And even though they had a bunch of disagreements about strategy, they never really broke rank. But the thinking is at this point, they're operating just more and more independently, sort of like a non-aggression pact with shared resources.

So El Chapo then gets into the meth business without El Mayo, which is his first solo drug partnership. He's stepping out on his own, you know, like Sean does to his family for days at a time when he gets into his own meth business, if you know what I'm saying. An hour, an hour in line on shimp ads. So we're in 2003, El Chapo is looking to step out on his own, build himself back up, and he goes against El Mayo's wishes for stability for the first time.

By this point, the Tijuana cartel has fallen off its peak. El Mayo has a newish alliance with the Juarez cartel. So the Sinaloa cartel has control or options on most of the border. What they don't have control over is the lucrative border town of Nuevo Laredo in eastern Mexico. That is Gulf cartel territory. But El Chapo senses weakness in the Gulf cartel at that time. The leader has just gotten arrested a few years earlier. And even though it's been controlled by the same family for decades...

It now seems like their territory is pretty much up for grabs. After a ton of infighting, a guy who... Sean, why don't you pronounce this name for us? Osiel Cartenas Guillen. Listen to that accent. He takes the reins. El Chapo and the Beltran Leyva brothers, they have a narco summit. Again, these guys love their fricking conferences, right? They're like dentists in Vegas. They decide now is the time to strike. They're going to take over Nuevo Laredo and push the Gulf cartel out.

They think it's going to be an easy takeover, but what they don't account for is the Zetas, which again, you guys know who they are. Lunatic ex-Mexican military special forces guys that the Gulf cartel had recruited as their arm wing. We have a whole episode on them from only a couple months back. I don't even remember, but good episode. So go, go listen to that because we go into more detail there. Yeah. Yeah. That was a good one. I mean, they are pretty high up on that psychopath test too. Not nice guys. Very silly geese. Yeah.

Just bad news. Bad news all around. Bodies, of course, start dropping. Chapo and Belcher and Leyva, they form their own groups of goons called Los Negros, composed of gangbangers, a lot of Mexican mafia guys from El Salvador and Honduras and, you know, all the local gangs down there. But those guys are just no match for the Zetas, though the war doesn't seem to be going too well. But Chapo catches a double big breaker, so he thinks.

When Guillen gets arrested by the Mexicans in 2003, so they kind of assume that the Gulf cartel is finished, but it also helps Chapo out with the Mexican government. The U.S. had been breathing down their neck after he had busted out of prison, but now that they arrested the boss of one of the major cartels,

The pressure lowers and in turn relieves some of their need to go after Chapo. He even shows up in Nuevo Laredo a few months later to claim victory in a way, you know, mission accomplished and whatnot. By the way, how come the Mexicans get new Laredo and the Americans get OG Laredo? I mean, we got tons of guys emailing in about their dad who shot up a Walgreens or whatever, but no one is answering the big questions. What are you talking about?

shooting up a Walgreens I just what is what is why is it new Laredo in Mexico but it's old Laredo no I get that I get that question what is the I just want to get to the bottom of one of these like what does that mean maybe I'm thinking about this maybe I'm thinking about one particular guy who's really pressing me to do an interview with his dad who was like basically held up convenience stores I was like uh

Probably not, but yeah. The other emails we get are amazing. They are brilliant and I love them. I would listen to that episode.

Okay, cool. I'll get back to him. Yeah, I feel like that's interesting to me. It's the guy out there robbing gas stations like that. Yeah, let's see. What's it all? How do you expect to get away with it? There's a lot of cameras these days. What's his casing like? How much thought has he put into it? Has he just met up and runs in guns blazing? I mean, I think we've all thought about it. You didn't give up on journalism just yet. Maybe I did. I think we've all thought about tactically how we would rob a Walgreens.

Not that we do it, but it's like tactically. So I want to know what his process was. All right. Sorry, man. Look, get back to me. I will. I'll put you on the show. We'll do we'll do an episode next week about your dad and his Walgreens tactics. Could we call an episode how to rob a Walgreens and get away with it? Yeah, we do numbers there for sure. I think what you do when you do that is you reach out to CBS and they're like, look, we've got this episode idea. Do you guys want to sponsor it?

Yeah. Okay. Nice CBS. Shame if something happened to it. Yeah. Anyway, where were we? Yes. It's a little presumptuous, the mission accomplished thing, because, you know, the Zetas come back on the Sinaloa cartel with a vengeance and they lose a lot of people. I think we talked about this too in the little mini episode we did on LaBarbie, who was the American born psychopathic narco guy who was a key player in that war, which is, I think, available on the Patreon or on the YouTube. Yeah.

So while this battling of the Gulf cartel slash Zetas, while that's going on, El Mayo convenes this meeting with El Chapo and the brothers in 2004 in Monterrey, Mexico.

So he's got that alliance with the Juarez cartel, I think we mentioned, with El Mayo, Sinaloa Federation, and them. And it's been fruitful. It's taken out the Tijuana cartel. Chapo now wants to take out the current Juarez leader, who is the brother of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who died on the operating table. If you remember, El Mayo had formed an alliance with him after that death because he was friends with the family. But, like we said...

These guys don't stay loyal usually for long. He agrees to it. So El Chapo makes his move when the brother is visiting his family back in Culiacan and he is killed and it's not El Chapo. The brother is killed and so is his wife. Yeah, so things are going nuts with the Sinaloa Federation and El Mayo and Chapo. They're fighting the Zetas. They're now going to be fighting the Juarez cartel. And this is just the start of it. Things are about to get really bad in Mexico.

And El Mayo and Chopper are basically going to be at war against everyone. And that is what we will get into next week.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. You're doing next week's? That's amazing. I've got a deadline. And yeah, like I mentioned, I'm spending quite a lot of time these days looking up second rate sporting goods to distract myself from it. So yeah, that will be really good. Yeah. So let us know if you guys want to hear more. What the best shin pads are. Yeah. Or if you guys want to know more about, I feel like the cartel stuff can get so lost in this guy did that, that guy did this, this guy did that. So if you guys don't dig these episodes, let us know. And until next week.

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