"The true supreme leader is not El Chapo Guzmán but El Mayo": Anabel Hernández, a journalist specializing in drug trafficking

The award-winning Mexican journalist and writer Anabel Hernández, an expert in drug trafficking, questions Joaquín's "Chapo" Guzmán leaders as the leader of the Sinaloa cartel., currently directed by Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada.

"Here is the purpose of my new research and the new book that I will publish, is that Really "El Mayo" Zambada and "Chapo" Guzmán were the two leaders of the cartel or is the reality that "El Mayo" Zambada has always been the supreme leader? "said Hernandez in an interview in Australia.

The author of the book The lords of narco (2010), that has received death threats for his investigations of drug trafficking and corruption, is one of the guests of the Sydney Writers Festival held this week until Sunday.

Hernandez badured that there was always a "silent war" to take the reins of the cartel and that after the recovery of "El Chapo" in 2014, there was an internal struggle between the sons of Guzmán and Dámaso López Núñez, a man whom Guzmán trusted, until his arrest in 2017.

"After all the power wing of" El Chapo "has begun to dissipate in the cartel, that's when "El Mayo" Zambada takes full control "he says

Unlike "El Chapo", which has attracted media attention, "El Mayo", 70, has a profile Low and since he started devoting himself to drug trafficking 40 years ago has never been in jail.

During the trial against "El Chapo" in the United States, where he was extradited after his resumption in 2014, his lawyer, Eduardo Balarezo, badured that the only true leader of the cartel of Sinaloa was Zambada and that Guzmán was only a leading man to free others from guilt.

In his plan to unveil the secrets of Sinaloa, Hernández promises to reveal in his next book the keys to the functioning of the cartel over the last 40 years in which the organization could infiltrate the Mexican state apparatus.

According to the reporter, the level of impunity and violence in Mexico is explained by the "deep links" that the cartel has with the authorities, and for this reason, he badured that "the army and the federal police have become the armed arm of the cartel".

"I would not dare give names because I still work there", justified the expert in drug trafficking and corruption in Mexico, a country in which more than 200,000 murders and 40,000 missing have been identified in the last two years.

Hernández exposed these connections in your book The real night of Iguala, that connects the disappearance of 43 students from the rural school of Ayotzinapa, in the state of Guerrero, in September 2014, to a group of soldiers who went to recover a cargo of drugs on the orders of a drug lord.

Among the victims of the Sinaloa cartel also appear the women, removed from the power machine of the organization and used as a drug smuggler or a victim of trafficking as a bad slave, according to the researcher.

In other cases, they concern gangsters as "Sexual objects," added the journalist, who gave the example of Sandra Ávila Beltrán, known as the "Queen of the Pacific".

"Sandra had been the mistress of the major drug lords in Mexico"said Hernández about Avila, detained in 2007, extradited and released in the United States, and then sentenced in her country for money laundering to a term of imprisonment served until 2015.

"But she did not make any decision in the deal, she did not specify the way forward, it's not the one who sold the drugs or made the alliances with them." Colombians.. She has always witnessed many things but still in the role of badual object, "said Hernández.

His new work will also focus on the illicit Web of international companies, dedicated to companies such as tuna sales or courier services, which, according to Hernández, "were created specifically" to serve as a facade to drug trafficking.

"Some companies are listed on the Mexican stock exchange", said the award-winning writer this year by awarding him the" Freedom Of Speech "award from German international television Deutsche Welle (DW) for his commitment to freedom of expression.