"El Mayo", the most powerful capo according to the DEA

Translated by Otis B Fly-Wheel for Borderland Beat from a Proceso article

[ Subject Matter: El Mayo Zambada, Sinaloa Cartel, Drug Enforcement Agency
Recommendation: Some prior knowledge of the Sinaloa Cartel would be useful]

El Mayo Zambada in a 2010 photograph

Reporter: J Jesus Esquivel
Jack Riley, interim Chief of the DEA, is blunt: in the world there is no Cartel more solid than the Sinaloa Cartel, and no Capo more powerful than "El Mayo" Zambada. In an interview with Proceso, the anti-drug functionary speaks about the "boom" of the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the decline of Los Zetas.

And he clarifies: the Sinaloa Mafia, owns the herion market in the United States and he discusses the power struggle between the historical cartel leaders and the new generations, among whom are the children of Joachin Archivaldo Guzman Loera "El Chapo".

Washington
For Jack Riley, Chief of Operations of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the Sinaloa Cartel is the  most established criminal organization in the world, and its leader Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada Garcia, the Capo who enjoys the most power in the world.

"El Mayo is the most powerful narco trafficker. I believe that the organization he formed is the most solid, because he has lasted the longest in the history of international narco trafficking", he said.

Despite the notoriety gained in recent weeks for the "Cartel considered the richest in the world", the Cartel Jalisco Nuevo Generacion, explains Riley in the interview, does not have the power or the domain of the Sinaloa Cartel.



Riley, was made interim Chief last May, after the retirement of Michele Leonhart, has reason to sustain his affirmation:" We are highly concentrated on combating the market that El Mayo and the Sinaloa Cartel has. I include that I think we have underestimated his influence and power in controlling the drugs market in the United States".

He is in charge of DEA opeartions both internally and outside of the United States, the Agent is keen to expose the new reality of the threat of Mexican narco traffickers:" We are inundated with Mexican heroin, and according to our estimations, the Sinaloa Cartel has almost complete ownership of the market for this drug, as well as on a lesser scale the trafficking of marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamines".

With the augmentation of local production of marijuana, the reduction in cocaine consumed and the difficulty of more laws on the control and sale of controlled medicines and precursor products for the production of methamphetamines, heroin now is the most consumed illicit drug in the United States.

According to the statistics of the DEA, the Sinaloa Cartel is almost the only exporter of heroin consumed in all of the United States. Other Mexican organizations, like the Juarez and Gulf Cartels, and the Knights Templar, continue selling drugs, but to increasingly smaller segments of the U.S. market.

"The Sinaloa Cartel has been thinned out in Mexico, but in the United States it maintains its contacts and businesses, and its routes and plazas are well established", he emphasizes.

The Government of Barack Obama is engaged in containing the scourge of increasing heroin use, and while the Sinaloa Cartel is the main supplier of the drug, the fight is not against the front of this organization because it outside of its borders.

Riley insists:" The people of the Sinaloa Cartel" are not in the United States. They operate from Mexico and its Northern frontier, and in the American Union moves a lot of drugs through a huge network of brokers, transporters, distributors, retailers and money launderers.

Original article in Spanish at Proceso