Throwback Thursday: 'El Mayo Zambada' To Julio Scherer García: "If They Catch Me Or Kill Me... Nothing Changes".

 “Char” for Borderland Beat 

This article was translated and reposted from PROCESO

WRITTEN BY: JULIO SCHERER GARCÍA

This Monday the 7th marks the fourth anniversary of the death of Julio Scherer García, in whose memory we reproduce the text he wrote in 2010 about his encounter with Ismael Zambada, undoubtedly a milestone in the recent history of journalism in Mexico. The text takes on particular relevance because the front page in which Scherer García appears next to Mayo Zambada was used today in the trial of Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán in New York. 

MEXICO CITY (Proceso) – One day in February I received a message in Proceso that offered clear information about its veracity. It announced that Ismael Zambada wanted to talk to me. The note gave the place, time, and day when a person would take me to the drug lord’s hideout. It did not add a word. From that day on, I did not let go of my uneasiness. However, at no time did I ever think of an attempt on my life. I know I am vulnerable and that is how I have lived. I have no driver, I refuse protection and I generally travel alone, luck is always on my side. The persistent concern had to do with journalistic work. Inevitably I would have to recount the circumstances and details of the trip, but I could not leave any clues that would lead the capo’s pursuers to his lair. I would recreate as much as possible the atmosphere of the event and its essential truth, but I would avoid data that could turn me into a whistleblower. It did me good to remember Octavio Paz, whom I once heard say, emphatic as he was: “Up to the last beat of the heart, life can roll on forever. One morning of absolute sunshine, my companion and I boarded a cab that I had no idea where it would take us. After a short ride, we boarded a second car, then a third, and finally a fourth. We walked for a long time until we stopped in front of a light-colored facade. A lady opened the door for us and I had no way of looking at her. As soon as she closed the bolt, she disappeared. The house was two-story, solid. There were five paintings around, deformed birds in a bluish sky. In contrast, the walls of the three bedrooms showed a cold abandonment. In the living room, there were armchairs and sofas for about ten people, and the dining table seated six. I peeked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, gleaming and empty. Curiosity led me to look for a telephone and I only noticed fixed devices for internal communication. The bedroom assigned to me had a narrow bed and a bureau with three dusty drawers in the center. The mattress, with no sheet to cover it, exhibited the poverty of an old blanket. I tested the water in the shower, which was cold, and in the sink, I saw four bottles of Bonafont and used soap. Hungry, the messenger and I went out into the street to eat, drink, and stretch our legs. We walked aimlessly to a pleasant fonda, the music at a reasonable volume. We talked without conversing, our sentences cut without any allusion to Zambada, the narco, the insecurity, the army patrolling the peripheral areas of the city. We returned to the desolate house at night. We would wake up at seven in the morning. At eight o’clock the next day, we had breakfast in a restaurant as there were many. I avoided any expression that could be interpreted as a sign of impatience or restlessness, even the insistent look in the eyes, a form of deep interrogation. Time stretched on, indolent, and we ate slowly. The next few hours were spent within the familiar four walls. I carried a book with me and immersed myself in reading, half-heartedly. My companion seemed born for isolation. As if nothing existed around him, I came to think that he himself might have disappeared without realizing it, without noticing it. It pains me to write that he had no life but servitude, existence with no other horizon than the minute to come. “They will let us know,” he told me surprisingly. The call will come on the cell phone.” A shapeless time passed, without hands.

“Patience,” he said to me. We finally set off into the darkness of the night. In a few hours sunset and sunrise would cross each other without light or shadow, still the world. We traveled in a van, followed by another. The second one suddenly disappeared and a third one took its place. It followed us, constant, a hundred meters away. I felt the loneliness and silence in a landscape of plains and mountains. Along winding paths and roads, we ascended a slope and from one moment to the next the whole universe turned upside down. On a surface of tamped earth and under a roof of logs and vines, we had arrived at the refuge of the capo, his head valued at millions of dollars, famous like El Chapo and powerful like the Colombian Escobar, in his heyday, drug czar. Ismael Zambada greeted me with a hand ready to greet me and a few words of welcome: “I was very interested in meeting you. Thank you very much,” I replied matter-of-factly. I was in a rustic two-bedroom, two-bathroom building, as I could tell in the minutes I could tear myself away from the hood to wash up. Outside there was a rough-hewn wooden table for six diners, and under a tree that looked like a forest, three rocking chairs with a small table in the center. It was clear to me that the shed had been erected for the purpose that the capo and his people could abandon it at the first sign of alarm. I sensed a small group of sworn men. A short distance from the narco, the bodyguards came and went, their eyes sometimes on the boss and sometimes on the immense panorama that stretched around them. All of them carried their pistols and some, in addition, long guns. Self-possessed, but nervous, I saw on the ground a black gun shining brightly under a vertical sun. I said to myself, deliberately forcing the image: it could be a bloodthirsty animal dozing. -I was waiting for him so we could have lunch together,” Zambada told me and pointed to the chair he would occupy, both of us facing each other. I watched his emissary out of the corner of my eye, his jaws clenched. He was asking me not to say that we had already had breakfast. Instantly we were served with glasses of orange juice and glasses of milk, meat, beans, toast, cheeses that crumbled between our fingers or melted on the palate, and sweetened coffee. -I brought with me an electronic tape recorder with playback for many hours,” I ventured with the purpose of setting the mood for the interview. -Let’s talk first. u u u I asked the capo about Vicente, Vicentillo. -He is my firstborn, the first of five. I call him “Mijo. He is also my compadre. Zambada continued in the personal review: “I have my wife, five wives, fifteen grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. They, all six of them, are here, on the ranches, daughters of the bush, like me. The bush is my home, my family, my protection, my land, the water I drink. The land is always good, but the sky is not. -I don’t understand you. -Sometimes the sky denies the rain. There was a silence that I took advantage of in the only way I could: -And Vicente? -For now, I don’t want to talk about him. I don’t know if he’s in Chicago or New York. I know he was in Matamoros. -I have to ask him, I am what I am. Speaking of your son, do you live his extradition with regrets that destroy you in your love as a father? -I’m not going to talk about “Mijo” today. I mourn him. -Shall we record? Silence. -I have many questions,” I insisted, already weakened. -Another day. You have my word. I watched him. He is over six feet tall and has a body like a fortress, beyond a barely pronounced belly. He wears a T-shirt and his blue denim pants maintain the straight line of neatly pressed clothes. He covers himself with a cap and the trimmed mustache is one of those that suggest a subtle and permanent irony. -I’ve read your books and you don’t lie,” he says. I stop my gaze on the hood, my lips closed. -Everyone lies, even Proceso. Your magazine is the first, it reports more than everyone else, but it also lies. -Tell me a case. -You wrote about a marriage that didn’t exist. -That of Chapo Guzmán? -He even gave details of the wedding. -Sandra Avila tells of a party she attended and where El Chapo was present. -I knew about the party, but it was an exception in Chapo’s life. If he had exhibited himself or I had done it, we would have been caught by now. -Have you ever felt the Army close to you? -Four times. El Chapo more. -How close? -Up above my head. I fled through the bush, where I knew the branches, the streams, the rocks, everything. They catch me if I’m still or if I’m careless, like Chapo. So that we could meet today, I came from far away. And as soon as we finish, I’m leaving. -Are you afraid of being caught? -I’m afraid they’ll lock me up. -If you were caught, would you end your life? -I don’t know if I’d have the guts to kill myself. I’d like to think so, that he would kill me. I notice that the boss is careful with his words. He used the term arrestos, not the classic word that I would have naturally expected.

Zambada carries the bush in his body, but he owns his own enclosure. His children, their families, his grandchildren, the children’s friends, and the grandchildren, all like to party. They often get together in discos, in public places, and the capo can’t go with them. He tells me that for him it is not the birthdays, the celebrations of the saints, cakes for the children, the joy of the fifteen years, the music, the dance. -Is there room for tranquility in you? -I am afraid. -All the time? -All the time. -Will they catch you, finally? -Any time or never. Zambada is sixty years old and started in the narco business when he was sixteen. Forty-four years have passed, which gives him a great advantage over his pursuers today. He knows how to hide, he knows how to flee and he is very well-liked among the men and women where he half lives and half dies by leap and bounds. -Until today a traitor has not appeared,” he suddenly says to himself. I imagine him unfathomable. -How did he get started in the drug trade? His answer makes me smile. -No more. -No more? I ask again: -Nomás? He answers again: -Nomás. The dialogue does not continue and I stick to my own ideas: drug trafficking as an irresistible and merciless magnet that pursues money, power, yachts, airplanes, own and other women with residences and buildings, jewels like colored beads to play with, the brutal impulse that leads to the top. In the capacity of drug trafficking there is, already without horizon and terrifying, the capacity to crush. u u u u Zambada does not object to the government’s pursuit to capture him. It is his right and his duty. However, he rejects the Army’s barbaric actions. Soldiers, he says, break doors and windows, penetrate the privacy of homes, and sow and spread terror. In the unleashed war they find immediate response to their onslaught. The result is an ever-increasing number of victims. The capos are in the crosshairs, although they are no longer the unique figures of the past. -What are they then? -I ask. Zambada answers with a fanciful example: “One day I decided to turn myself in to the government so they could shoot me. My case should be exemplary, a lesson for everyone. They shoot me and euphoria breaks out. But after a few days, we learn that nothing has changed. -Nothing, when the capo fell? -The drug problem involves millions. How to control them? As for the capos, locked up, dead, or extradited, their replacements are already out there. In Zambada’s opinion, the government arrived late in this fight and no one can solve in days problems generated for years. Infiltrated the government from below, time did its “work” in the heart of the system and corruption took root in the country. The president is also deceived by his collaborators. They are liars and inform him of progress, which is not happening, in this lost war. -Why lost? -The narco is in a society, rooted in corruption. -And you, what do you do now? -I dedicate myself to agriculture and cattle ranching, but if I can do business in the United States, I do it. I wanted to inquire about the Capo’s fortune and chose to use Forbes magazine to introduce the subject into the conversation. I looked him in the eye, concealing an anxious mood: “Did you know that Forbes includes Chapo among the world’s greatest millionaires? -It’s nonsense. The question that would follow, now superfluous, was on my lips, but I could no longer contain it. -Could you be on the magazine’s list? -I told you. It’s nonsense. -Your friendship with El Chapo Guzmán is well known, and it wouldn’t be surprising if you were waiting for him outside the Puente Grande prison on the day of the escape. Could you tell me how you lived that story? -Chapo Guzmán and I are friends, and compadres and we talk to each other on the phone frequently. But that story didn’t exist. It’s one more lie they hang on me. Like the fabrication that I was planning an assassination attempt against the president of the Republic. It wouldn’t occur to me. -Zulema Hernández, Chapo’s wife, told me about the corruption that prevailed in Puente Grande and how that corruption facilitated her lover’s escape. Do you have any news about the events of that day and how they unfolded? -I know that there was no blood, only one death. The rest, I don’t know. Unexpectedly, Zambada surprised me with his question: -Are you interested in El Chapo? -Yes, of course. -Would you like to see him? -I came to see you. -Would you like to…? -Of course. -I’ll call him and maybe he’ll see you. The conversation comes to an end. Zambada, standing, walks under the fullness of the sun and again surprises me: -Shall we take a picture? I felt an internal heat, absolutely explainable. The photo proved the veracity of the meeting with the capo. Zambada called one of his bodyguards and asked for a hat. He put it on, white, very thin. -How do you see? -The hat is so flashy that it detracts from his personality. -So with the hat? -I think so. The bodyguard pointed the camera at him and fired. 

Source: PROCESO 

This interview was first published on April 4, 2010, in issue 1744 of Proceso magazine and then on January 6, 2019, in issue 2201 of the same weekly.

DEA HQ on X or TWITTER stated the following on September 23, 2021,”@StateDept announces the increased reward from $5 million to UP TO $15 MILLION for info leading to the arrest/conviction of Sinaloa Cartel leader, Ismael Zambada-Garcia.  @TheJusticeDept@USTreasury.”