What to Watch: Drugs, cartels, bloody betrayal on Netflix

If Sir David Attenborough made a documentary about drug cartels, this would be it. It’s one thing to see someone’s leg blown off and you know that it’s special effects. It’s another matter entirely when you see a stompie bleeding on the back of a bakkie, and the guy who was shot up was real. In The Fall of El Mayo on Netflix, everything is real. It’s actual footage captured during the Sinaloan Mexican drug cartel wars. It’s the kind of realism that can leave your legs rubbery, because us-all in the suburbs never really experience the darkness of the criminal underworld. But it’s there. And it’s rough. For more than four decades, Ismael El Mayo Zambada García helped build one of the world’s most powerful drug cartels, evaded capture and amassed enormous influence while remaining largely invisible to the public. But his criminal empire eventually began to shrivel and crumble through family rivalries, betrayal and a bitter struggle for control of Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa cartel. The Fall of El Mayo tells this story powerfully. It looks at Zambada’s rise from his early involvement in drug trafficking, from his late teens, in fact, during the 1970s to his dramatic arrest in the United States in July 2024. It is a story of organised crime, extraordinary wealth, corruption and violence, but also of how loyalty within a criminal organisation can become its greatest weakness. Narco loyalty is a weakness In the final episode of the three-part limited series, El Mayo’s admiration of Gandhi and his view of himself as a pacifist, who loves peace, gives viewers a momentary glimpse into the complex and utter strangeness of the world of a major cartel boss. Zambada’s infamous partner, Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, attracted international attention through spectacular prison escapes, arrests and an extravagant public reputation. He’s also been the subject of several shows. But Zambada was the opposite and operated largely beyond the spotlight. He helped establish the Sinaloa cartel as a global trafficking operation, maintaining relationships and exercising influence while avoiding the kind of attention that eventually brought down many of his associates. But the cartel’s apparent strength concealed growing divisions. The capture of Zambada’s eldest son, Vicente, followed by El Chapo’s downfall and the emergence of his heirs and increasingly powerful sons, known as Los Chapitos, exposed tensions within the loosely knit and closely huddled organisation. Family allegiances, competing ambitions and the battle for control of lucrative trafficking networks threatened to destroy the empire that the dads built. In between all of this is the war between the factions, the slaughter in the streets of Sinaloa and the civil war-like scenes of clashes between the cartel and law enforcement. Mostly, it seems, driven by El Chapo’s sons. And then we flick back to paintings sent from prison to EL Mayo, and the gentler side of narco-butchers, Watch the trailer The show also presents the pathway from weed through to cocaine and the later introduction of fentanyl, which killed thousands of addicts in the States, and the intensification of law enforcement’s hunt to stop trafficking. There’s a side narrative of El Mayo’s relationship with two generations of journalists at a local investigative publication called Presso. First, taking a veteran writer into his confidence and later, years later, his daughter. And both described the man as kind, likeable, gentle and the antithesis of what anyone would expect from one of the most powerful criminals in the world. Then, of course, a few minutes later, we see the bloodiness of it all. Mugshot of El Mayo after his capture. Picture: Supplied Directed by Darren Foster and Miguel Fernández Flores, the series draws on archival footage, court records and interviews with the journalists, law enforcement officials and former cartel members. It’s done incredibly well, and this is not your stock standard wide shot and tight Netflix documentary formula. The Fall of EL Mayo is gritty, filthy and squeaky clean, veneered at the same time. It’s scary and draws empathy. This is the kind of documentary that is both entertaining, informative and overall riveting. If Sir David Attenborough made a documentary about drug cartels, this would be it. Betrayal is delicious to watch but awful to experience, and Zambada’s arrest is the epitome of that. He arrived aboard a private aircraft in the United States in July 2024. His capture, which he claimed followed an abduction orchestrated by one of El Chapo’s sons, triggered the accusations of Judas-like behaviour and intensified a violent conflict between rival cartel factions. This is a fascinating show and deserves a binge, because it’s that riveting.