MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s president took the unusual step Monday of issuing a public appeal to drug cartels not to fight each other following last week's detention of top Mexican drug lord Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and Joaquín Guzmán López.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said at his daily press briefing that he trusted that drug traffickers knew they would only suffer if they stepped up the internal wars that already plague the Sinaloa cartel.
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“Those who are engaged in these illegal activities know they resolve nothing with confrontations,” López Obrador said, adding “they would go out and risk the lives of other human beings, and why make families suffer?”
“I trust that there will be no confrontations,” he said, despite the fact the army announced over the weekend that it had sent an additional 200 elite soldiers from a paratrooper unit to the state of Sinaloa just in case.
There were no immediate reports of increased violence over the weekend. But the Sinaloa cartel has been riven for years by fighting between followers of Zambada, and rivals who follow the sons of imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman, the father of Guzmán López. There are other sons still at large.
Both Zambada and Guzmán's son played leading roles in the Sinaloa cartel, and both were detained Thursday when they arrived in Texas aboard a private airplane. López Obrador has a record of publicly appealing to drug gangs for peace, sometimes even praising them.
In 2021, López Obrador praised the largely peaceful voting in elections that year and sent a message of recognition to the drug cartels that fuel much of the country’s violence.
“People who belong to organized crime behaved very well, in general, there were few acts of violence by these groups,” the president said at the time. “I think the white-collar criminals acted worse.”
The detention of Zambada and Guzmán López has proved a major embarrassment for the president, Mexican officials were forced to admit they knew nothing about the operation until it was all over.
Zambada had eluded authorities for decades and had never set foot in prison until a plane carrying him and Guzmán López landed at an airport in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, near El Paso, Texas, on Thursday. Both men, who face various U.S. drug charges, were arrested and remain jailed.
Zambada's lawyer pushed back Sunday against claims that his client was tricked into flying into the country, saying he was “forcibly kidnapped” by Guzmán López. If that were true, it could stoke accusations of betrayal, and additional fighting, between the factions.
López Obrador said there were indications that U.S. authorities had been negotiating with Guzmán López to turn himself for some time, possibly for months or years before the drug lord apparently decided to do so.
But the Mexican president said nothing was known about how Zambada ended up on the flight, and that Mexican prosecutors were investigating to see if he was kidnapped.
Frank Perez, Zambada’s attorney, said his client did not end up at the New Mexico airport of his own free will.
“My client neither surrendered nor negotiated any terms with the U.S. government,” Perez said in a statement. “Joaquín Guzmán López forcibly kidnapped my client. He was ambushed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed by six men in military uniforms and Joaquin. His legs were tied, and a black bag was placed over his head.” Perez went on to say that Zambada, 76, was thrown in the back of a pickup truck, forced onto a plane and tied to the seat by Guzmán López.
Known as an astute operator skilled at corrupting officials, Zambada has a reputation for being able to negotiate with everyone, including rivals. He is charged in a number of U.S. cases, including in New York and California.
Prosecutors brought a new indictment against him in New York in February, describing him as the “principal leader of the criminal enterprise responsible for importing enormous quantities of narcotics into the United States.”