Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada is the biggest drug trafficker in the world, and his Sinaloa cartel is the top supplier of drugs to the United States, according to the US Department of Homeland Security. But how did the cartel gain so much power?

It was founded at the end of the 1980s in the Mexican state of the same name, Sinaloa. Together with the neighboring states of Durango and Chihuahua, the region is known as the "Golden Triangle" of drug trafficking.

Zambada is believed to be one of the cartel's founding members. Together with the sons of another cartel co-founder, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, he is said to have controlled the organization.

Guzman is notorious for his spectacular prison escapes. First arrested in Guatemala in 1993, he was extradited to Mexico and sentenced to 20 years and nine months in prison. In early 2001, he escaped from the Puente Grande maximum security prison in the Mexican state of Jalisco in a laundry van.

He was arrested again in 2014 and........

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