Gringo Fantasies Regarding Arrest of El Mayo Fueled by US Law Enforcement & Cartel Leaders Themselves

For a moment, there was a very clear narrative around the arrest of the notorious, El Mayo, a Mexican drug cartel godfather of sorts and defacto leader of Mexico’s narco trafficking old school. El Mayo simply flew over to New Mexico and turned himself in eventually being processed in an El Paso, Texas Department of Justice office.

Now, the US media wants to spin a more gratifying narrative that justifies billions of agency salaries and door busting police tactics.

El Mayo’s Strategic Surrender

Last thursday, El Mayo was simply breaking from a pattern of either being incomunicado or from a location so difficult to access that the government would be seen arriving from miles away. Nevertheless, the cartel leader’s storied reign gives much pause to the possibility of him being arrested forcibly. El Mayo is a shrewd and calculated leader whose connections with US intelligence are embarrassingly deep for both the US and Mexico.

For one, El Mayo was from a generation modest means and learned his way to the top thanks to constant adjustments and calculations that optimized his control over his relevant drug routes. In the 1980’s, that meant paying people like former Mexican Senator Manuel Bartlett Díaz now Director of the Federal Electricity Commission. Barlett is long attributed the deaths of both Manuel Buendia and linked to the fiasco that was the death of Kiki Camerana though in both cases, the actual killers were CIA operatives or Mexican federal police. The fallout of

The necessary go-between between El Mayo and the Mexican and American government eventually became El Mayo’s own son, Vicente Zambada Niebla, who testified in federal court that he and he alone would send millions over to Mexico’s presidential security detail starting in 1999. Later in 2005, El Mayo would feed information to the American government – via the DEA – on the whereabouts of enemy cartel leaders in exchange for diminished attention and interference in his international drug trafficking operations. If one has a clear memory, both governments were particularly terrified at the

How, then, would someone so well connected be ‘duped’ into anything let alone an arrest by people who are essentially his subordinates and at some level family too?

Recall that the DEA is also subject to the whims of cartel leaders that they collaborate with to the extent that they give useful intelligence. For decades, El Mayo was the tail that wagged the dog and negotiated settlements not because he was the strongest leader, but because he was the smartest and most well connected. For decades, the DEA accepted this connection and likely was not the only agency given the well documented collaborations that the CIA has had with these cartel elements. It would not be unlikely for El Mayo to collaborate with members of the US Intelligence that had some kind of dual membership with both agencies given the murky lines crossed into this Mexican underworld.

Motives

Unlike the depictions from immature political leadership, Mexican cartels are family oriented both operationally and culturally. According to the two most serious journalists around the matter, Jesus Esquivel and Jorge Chaparro, El Mayo surrendered to see his two sons held in American jails.

El Mayo’s physical state and political currency is also somewhat diminished. Mexico’s government is changing to a stricter military state less in service of a cartel and concentrating power into the executive branch. The financing for this has ironically been sourced from markets.

Therefore, pragmatic concerns, like going out at his peak to live out his time in the US (and possibly use the American justice system for his own purposes) could be driving El Mayo’s decision.

The fairy tale is that a Mexican capo can not negotiate at that level. El Mayo is exploiting the electoral context and obsession with blaming external groups for American addictions. For years, traffickers have maintained the not unreasonable position that addictions should be managed from American homes, not law enforcement operating abroad. Most posit that even when arrested the demand will merit a new capo taking their place.

If indeed El Mayo had been arrested forcibly, the chaos and disorder in Mexico would already have been present in Culiacan, Sinaloa today. His son El Mayo Flaquito is already in play as the head of his faction of the CDS not much changed despite the successful execution of the kingpin strategy, which was by default not even fully implemented since El Mayo surrendered.