“They Were Tired and Old”: ‘La Chapodiputada’ Lucero Sánchez Says El Chapo and El Mayo Planned to Retire Together — and Didn’t Want Their Sons to Take Over
Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada talked about retiring together and passing the Sinaloa Cartel to a new generation. According to Lucero Sánchez López, the former Sinaloa state lawmaker known as “La Chapodiputada,” El Chapo did not want his sons to take over. Sánchez, who had a relationship with Guzmán and later testified against him in New York, told El Universal in an interview published Sept. 26, 2026, that the two bosses “were already tired and old, as they said.”
“They never talked about successors”
“They talked about how they were planning to retire, that is, to live their lives calmly, relaxed,” Sánchez told the newspaper. “But they never talked about who they would leave as successors. My understanding is that he didn’t want his sons to get involved.”
El Universal notes that Los Chapitos, Guzmán’s sons, took control of their father’s side of the cartel after his recapture in January 2016. Sánchez said she never foresaw the split between the Guzmán and Zambada families that followed El Mayo’s removal to the United States, which the paper attributes to Joaquín Guzmán López, one of El Chapo’s sons. The two factions, known as La Chapiza and La Mayiza, are now at war.
“The codes that used to exist, of not touching children, not touching innocent people, no longer exist,” she said. “The end of the Sinaloa Cartel is something we’re already seeing.”
Chinese food, a banda dream and Netflix
Sánchez said she saw El Mayo only once, in 2010, when he flew in on a small plane to visit his compadre El Chapo. He stayed for about an hour and brought Chinese food and bread. She also said Guzmán’s youthful dream was to sing with Banda El Recodo. By her account, he ate oatmeal for breakfast, used a treadmill daily and watched Netflix series.
She denied that El Chapo or El Mayo financed her 2013 run for the Sinaloa Congress. She also said Guzmán’s life sentence was, in her view, “not so fair,” while acknowledging that there are hundreds of victims because of him.
In the video below, El Universal presents the interview:
Who is La Chapodiputada?
El Universal reports that Sánchez won a seat in the Sinaloa Congress for a PAN-PRD-PAS alliance and was quickly linked to Guzmán. In June 2016, she was stripped of immunity after federal prosecutors accused her of visiting him in the Altiplano prison under a false identity before his 2015 tunnel escape. She was arrested entering the United States in July 2017. In January 2019, she testified against Guzmán in federal court in New York. The newspaper says she now lives in the United States as a cooperating witness and writes songs and sells sportswear.
Sources
- El Universal (Pedro Villa y Caña and Manuel Espino), “El Chapo y El Mayo quería retirarse, revela Lucero Sánchez conocida como ‘La Chapodiputada,’” Sept. 26, 2026.
- Video: El Universal (YouTube), Sept. 26, 2026.
- Photos: U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons (El Chapo, 2017; El Mayo wanted poster).
Reported Sept. 26, 2026, from El Universal’s interview. Sánchez’s statements are her own recollections and opinions. The Narco Blog did not independently verify them.