Top Mexican Official Says Sinaloa Cartel Is Heavily Damaged But Not Extinct After 'El Mayo' Guilty Plea

Mexico's Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, Omar García Harfuch, said on Wednesday that the Sinaloa Cartel is not extinct, but it is heavily damaged following the guilty plea of its co-founder Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada on Monday.

Garcia Harfuch went on to say that the Claudia Sheinbaum administration has not had any news about bribes paid to officials even though Zambada said he doled them out for decades to strengthen the criminal organization. He added that no one will be protected.

"El Mayo" said on Monday that the Sinaloa Cartel's success depended on high-level corruption. "The organization I led fostered corruption in my home country by paying police, military commanders and politicians who allowed us to operate freely," Zambada said. "It goes back to the very beginning when I was a young man starting out and it continued for all those years."

Zambada changed his initial plea, considering he said he wasn't guilty in September last year. The change comes just weeks after U.S. authorities decided they will not seek the death penalty in Zambada's case, a move that appears to have catalyzed the agreement.

Sheinbaum also celebrated the plea, saying detractors were saying her administration was "chasing shadows."

"When we started, we were told we were chasing shadows," Sheinbaum added. She went on to say that the guilty plea marks the "collapse of the empire," referring to the fact that Zambada co-founded the Sinaloa Cartel. Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the other co-founder of the cartel, has been in prison for years at a Colorado maximum security facility.

Officials in the U.S. also celebrated the plea, with Attorney General Pam Bondi saying the drug lord "will spend the rest of his life behind bars and die in a U.S. prison, where he belongs." "His plea takes us a step closer towards our goal of eliminating drug cartels and international criminal organizations," she added.

In addition to Zambada himself, other aging cartel figures, like Rafael Caro Quintero, were similarly spared, suggesting a broader prosecutorial strategy of encouraging plea deals. His sentencing will take place on January 13 next year.