Sean Williams

speaker

3,291 appearances 10 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 15 Sep

Sean Williams’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 10 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 3.

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The Underworld Podcast · El Mayo Behind Bars: Cartel War, Conspiracy and Narcopolitics · 4 Aug 2026 podcast

Mayo has been invited to the Huertos de Pedregal ranch, just outside Sinaloa state capital Culiacan, by Joaquin Guzman Lopez, one of the four sons of El Chapo, who formed the Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa cartel.

Now,

The Sinaloa cartel has had a history of schisms going all the way back to 2008.

That year, the three Beltran Leyva brothers had split from Sinaloa after the arrest of Alfredo Beltran Leyva, allying themselves with the ultra-violent Los Zetas.

Leader Arturo Beltran Leiva is killed in a naval operation the following year.

And in 2016, after the, I think it's the third and definitive capture of El Chapo, Sinaloa broadly splits in two, between the Chapitos, who are four of Chapo's God knows how many sons overall, and the Maíza, led by Mayo.

Yeah, I think around this time people start calling it like the Sinaloa Federation instead of the cartel because it's kind of a broadly allied group of sort of organizations that are under the Sinaloa umbrella.

But that goes out of fashion a few years after that for whatever reason.

Anyway, a further flashpoint is the January 2023 arrest of Ovidio Guzman, one of the Chapitos, and his extradition to the United States to face a host of major organized criminal charges.

Now, the Americans have a gigantic bargaining chip, either by squeezing info about Mayo out of Ovidio, who's staring down the barrel of life without parole,

Or by getting Ovidio to put pressure on his Chapito brothers to find a way to get into the States, El Mayo, whom a US official describes as the quote, cherry on top of multiple operations to put major Sinaloa figures on trial.

This pressure ratchets up even further in February 2023, when a federal jury in Brooklyn finds former Mexican public security official Genaro Garcia Luna guilty of five charges of taking bribes from Sinaloa, including one count of taking suitcases stuffed with $3 million, not once, but twice.

This is a major, major coup for the Americans and sends a message that even top public officials wound into the cartels will not be able to hide under diplomatic cover.

Back in Sinaloa, tensions have been boiling over not only between the Maíza and the Chapitos, but between rival politicians alleged to be taking backhanders from either of them.

So on July 25th, just before 11am, El Mayo shows up to the Huertos de Pedregal ranch, having been invited by Joaquín Guzmán to this high-level meeting.

Here is a statement from Mayo himself.

Quote, I was asked by Joaquin Guzman Lopez to attend a meeting to help resolve differences among the political leaders in our state.

I was aware of an ongoing dispute between Rubén Rocha Moya,

who is the governor of Sinaloa, and Hector Melesio Cuenojeda, the former federal congressman, mayor of Culiacán, and rector of the Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa, the UAS, over who should lead that institution.

I was accompanied by four security personnel, of whom two stayed outside the perimeter.

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