Get 15% off OneSkin with the code MARIANA at https://www.oneskin.co/MARIANA #oneskinpod Go to http://uncommongoods.com/HIDDENTHIRD to get 15% off your next gift! Join The Hidden Third Patreon today! https://patreon.com/TheHiddenThird How did El Mayo Zambada, the Sinaloa Cartel co-founder who never spent a day in prison, end up on a plane to the U.S., allegedly kidnapped by his own godson? My guest this week is award-winning director Darren Foster, whose new series, THE FALL OF EL MAYO, became Netflix's No. 1 show in the U.S. and Mexico, and Top 10 in 43 countries. Darren also happens to be my husband, which gave me a chance to grill him on his work, and our wild life together. The Fall of El Mayo - For decades, El Mayo was the ghost of the Sinaloa Cartel and, by many accounts, its true leader. While his partner, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, became a legend through his arrests and prison escapes, El Mayo stayed behind the curtain. Then, on July 25, 2024, he suddenly landed at a small airport in New Mexico on a private plane with El Chapo's son, Joaquín Guzmán López, who was also El Mayo's godson. It was a total surprise and a mystery. Darren has spent the last two years unpacking what happened that day. He knew this Shakespearean saga could be a series when El Mayo's lawyer released a letter in which El Mayo claimed he had been ambushed and kidnapped at a meeting Joaquín invited him to, supposedly to settle a dispute between politicians in Sinaloa. The letter also said Héctor Melesio Cuén, a former mayor of Culiacán, was killed at that same meeting, contradicting the official story that he died at a gas station. To tell the story of a man almost nobody had ever seen, Darren, his co-director Miguel Fernández Flores and producers Zoey Haar, Miguel Ángel Vega and Keegan Hamilton tracked down people who had spent time with El Mayo, including Margarito "Jay" Flores, who moved tons of cocaine for the Sinaloa Cartel and met El Mayo face to face, as well as U.S. law enforcement officials who described the scramble to reach the airport that day. Darren also shares never-before-told details from El Mayo's lawyer, Frank Perez, who only agreed to speak after El Mayo pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison, including what Joaquín allegedly said to El Mayo on the plane. We get into the betrayal between the Guzmán and Zambada families, who had been partners for generations, the open questions about what the U.S. government knew, and the mystery of the pilot known as "Jando." Darren tells the story of El Mayo's son, Vicente Zambada, whose meeting with the DEA at a Mexico City hotel led to his arrest, and the calls U.S. authorities set up so he could urge his father to surrender. He also explains how El Mayo's capture set off a civil war inside the Sinaloa Cartel between Los Chapitos (El Chapo's sons) and El Mayo's faction that has devastated families in Culiacán, and why taking down cartel kingpins hasn't made drugs any harder to buy in the U.S. Our Work Together - Darren and I met as journalism students at Columbia University, where a Polaroid photo "incident" almost ended our relationship before it really began. We look back on our wild life working together, starting in Syria in 2003, when we reported on young Syrian men crossing into Iraq to fight U.S. troops. It was the first story we ever did together. That trip led to years of reporting around the world, first in the Amazon, where we investigated a deadly fight over diamonds on an Indigenous reservation for PBS Frontline World, and then for Current TV, the network co-founded by Al Gore where we covered Mexico's "Death Train," the freight trains migrants ride north toward the U.S., Sri Lanka's civil war, Nigeria's oil rebels, Kurdish female fighters and many other stories. One of the most memorable documentaries we did together was THE OXYCONTIN EXPRESS, our Peabody Award-winning investigation into Florida's pill mills, clinics handing out addictive opioid prescriptions with little or no medical need. It was during this story that we first heard of American Pain, one of the biggest pill-dispensing clinics, owned by twin brothers Chris and Jeff George, who chased us down I-95 when they saw us filming outside their clinic.Years later, Darren wrote to the brothers in prison, and that led to his CNN Films/HBO documentary, AMERICAN PAIN, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival to rave reviews. He explains how Purdue Pharma, the Sackler family and generic drug makers helped fuel the opioid crisis, and how the 30-milligram oxycodone "M30" became the pill cartels now counterfeit with fentanyl. 🎙️ From Emmy and Peabody Award-winning journalist Mariana van Zeller comes THE HIDDEN THIRD, a weekly dive into the underground markets that quietly power a third of the global economy. Every episode, Mariana sits down with people who know these worlds firsthand: the hustlers, smugglers, scammers, kingpins and those trying to shut them down. The series reveals how they function, why they endure and the profound ways they impact us all. 🔔 Subscribe for new episodes every Wednesday. THE HIDDEN THIRD: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoCiI8nJacn8gDiHxr6aQGA Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehiddenthirdpodcast Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hidden-third/id1845989117 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3n1BBoj3BgVuEYaiZ6SotF MARIANA: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mariana_vanzeller Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marianavz #ElMayo #ElMayoZambada #TheFallOfElMayo #DarrenFoster #SinaloaCartel #ElChapo #LosChapitos #Netflix #CartelDocumentary #OxyContinExpress #AmericanPain #OpioidCrisis #Fentanyl #PillMills #TrueCrime #InvestigativeJournalism #MarianaVanZeller #TheHiddenThird Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
