Editorial and AP
La Jornada Newspaper
Tuesday, December 2, 2025, p. 6
In a hearing before the Federal District Court of Chicago, Joaquín Guzmán López, El Güero Morenomember of the group of Los Chapitos, who heads a faction of the Sinaloa cartel, pleaded guilty to drug trafficking as part of an agreement with which, in exchange for declining an appeal of his sentence, he seeks to avoid life imprisonment.
But he also agreed to full cooperation with the US authorities and acknowledged having organized a film operation to kidnap a person who, it is deduced, is Ismael Zambada, Mayafter inviting him to a meeting in Culiacán.
Guzmán López, 39 years old, and Ovidio’s brother, are two of Joaquín Guzmán’s children, El Chapo. All three are under trial in the United States.
Yesterday, Guzmán López was presented before the Court in Chicago, where he arrived wearing an orange jumpsuit and amid strict security deployment. He acknowledged his guilt on two counts of drug trafficking and continued crime, as well as his role in supervising the transportation of tens of thousands of kilograms of drugs to that country, mainly through tunnel trafficking.
From the beginning of the hearing, U.S. District Judge Sharon Coleman asked him what he did for a living.
“Drug trafficking,” he responded directly according to the AP agency.
“Ah, that’s your job,” Coleman said, laughing. There you have it.
Andrew Erskine, a lawyer for the US federal government, explained some of the terms of the agreement with which, he said, if Joaquín Guzmán López cooperates with the authorities, his sentence could be reduced to 10 years.
However, by accepting that he will not appeal the ruling, he has no guarantees of a sentence in those terms, according to a “plea agreement” document that was released, and which tells how Ismael Zambada was forcibly taken to the borders between New Mexico and Texas, where he was detained.
Story coincides with version of the kidnapped boss
The statement cited in that document refers only to May as “Individual A”; However, the story coincides with the one Zambada presented through a letter.
It is indicated that Joaquín Guzmán López cited May “to resolve a disagreement” with others, without providing further information about who attended the meeting on a farm on the outskirts of Culiacán, on July 25, 2024.
Guzmán López asked Zambada to speak privately in another of the rooms, where a floor-to-ceiling window had previously been completely removed.
Once they were both alone in the room, “Guzmán López locked the door” and under his coordination, several armed men entered through the window that was removed.
Immediately, “they handcuffed ‘Individual A’ and placed a bag over his head.” They immediately placed him on their lap in the back seat of a van that was already waiting for them, and he was taken to a take-off runway 10 or 15 minutes from the site, where a small plane was waiting for them.
Only the two of them traveled inside the aircraft along with the pilot. Zambada was tied to one of the seats, while Guzmán López prepared him a drink with sedatives, of which he also drank a little. The plane landed in New Mexico, next to the Texas border, where they were detained.
In the court document, Guzmán López asserted that the United States government “did not request, induce, sanction, approve or tolerate the kidnapping.”
It is also noted that the accused “agrees to cooperate fully and truthfully” in any matter in which representatives of various prosecutor’s offices or the United States Department of Justice request it.
“This cooperation will include providing complete and truthful information in any investigation and pretrial preparation, as well as complete and truthful testimony in any criminal, civil or administrative proceeding,” the agreement adds.
Meanwhile, Jeffrey Lichtman, Guzmán López’s lawyer and who has represented the rest of his family members in trials in the United States, described as “very fair” the treatment that the government of that country has given to his client, while he thanked the Mexican authorities for “not interfering” in that process.
Likewise, Lichtman stated that he would try to seek a lower sentence for Guzmán López. “I don’t know how this will end.”
