Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada
Ismael Mario Zambada García (born 1 January 1948) is a Mexican drug lord, co-founder and current top leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, an international crime syndicate based in Sinaloa. Before he assumed leadership of the entire cartel, he allegedly served as the logistical coordinator for its Guzmán-Zambada organization, which has overseen the trafficking of cocaine and heroin into Chicago and other US cities by aircraft, narcosubs, container ships, go-fast boats, fishing vessels, buses, rail cars, tractor trailers, and automobiles. As of early 2023, he has never been arrested or incarcerated and is the single last remaining fugitive of the List of Mexico's 37 most-wanted drug lords (2009). Career Zambada has historically worked closely with the Juárez Cartel and the Carrillo Fuentes family, while maintaining independent ties to Colombian cocaine suppliers. In 1989, when Mexican drug lord Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo was arrested, his organization split into two opposing factions: the Tijuana Cartel whose leadership was inherited by his nephews and heirs, the Arellano Félix brothers and the Sinaloa Cartel whose leadership fell to former lieutenants Héctor Luis Palma Salazar, Ismael Zambada García and Joaquín Guzmán Loera (El Chapo). The Sinaloa Cartel drug lords were active in the states of Sinaloa,