A documentary about Mexican drug cartels, I just had to watch. The three episodes bring you right up to date with the current position with the disintegration of the Sinaloa cartel. I binge watched the three episodes.
The Fall of El Mayo (original title La Caída de El Mayo) is a Netflix limited documentary series that premiered on October 29, 2026. It reconstructs the rise and sudden downfall of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García, the reclusive co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel and longtime shadowy partner of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
For roughly half a century, El Mayo ran one of the world’s most powerful drug trafficking organizations while remaining almost invisible. Unlike the flamboyant El Chapo, who became a global celebrity, Zambada operated from the shadows in Sinaloa with extreme caution—few photographs existed, and almost no recordings of his voice. He survived rivals, partners, and successive Mexican governments without spending a day in prison until July 25, 2024.
On that day he boarded a small plane in Mexico with Joaquín Guzmán López (one of El Chapo’s sons) and landed near El Paso in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, where U.S. authorities arrested him. Zambada claimed he was ambushed and kidnapped at a meeting under false pretenses. The series digs into the conflicting accounts of that flight, the question of who arranged it, and the betrayal that ended his decades-long freedom.
Directed by Emmy- and Peabody-winning filmmaker Darren Foster and Mexican director Miguel Fernández Flores (with Mariana van Zeller as executive producer), the series draws on exclusive interviews with security agents, politicians, journalists, people connected to the cartel, and families affected by the violence, plus previously unseen archival material and hundreds of Mexican and U.S. court records. The directors noted the challenge of documenting a man about whom almost nothing visual or audio existed before his capture.
The three episodes (all released at are):
- Episode 1: The Man in the Hat — How El Mayo operated as the ghost power behind El Chapo and controlled Sinaloa until betrayal forced him into the open.
- Episode 2: A Matter of Blood — The capture of his eldest son Vicente (“El Vicentillo”) and the rise of the Chapitos after El Chapo’s fall.
- Episode 3: Betrayal — Escalating violence, the alleged betrayal that delivered El Mayo to U.S. authorities, and the resulting schism between the Zambada and Guzmán factions.
It also details the horrific violence that affected the local population after his arrest from the infighting that followed and questions if cutting off the head of the snake is really the best tactic. Afterall, many major drug dealers have now been captured over the decades, yet the flow of drugs only increases.
Five stars out of five from me.
