Gonzalo Inzunza Inzunza

Gonzalo Inzunza Inzunza (17 August 1971 – 18 December 2013), commonly referred to by his alias El Macho Prieto, was a Mexican suspected drug lord and high-ranking leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, a criminal group based in Sinaloa, Mexico.

He worked as the cartel's assassins chief under the tutelage of Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada and as the regional leader of the cartel in the states of Baja California and Sonora.

His base of operations was in Mexicali, where he coordinated marijuana and cocaine shipments through the Calexico–Mexicali border region.

Inzunza was born in Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico on 17 August 1971.

His father René Inzunza was from La Vuelta, a rural community close to Culiacán; like many others who lived in the Sinaloan countryside, his father was involved in the drug trade, but he died when Inzunza was still a teenager.

Born into a middle-class family, Inzunza attended grade and middle school at Colegio Sinaloa, a religious institution.

He committed his first homicide when he was 19; one night during a party at his house, he shot a man dead after the man laughed at him.

He fled thereafter to the state of Sonora and got involved in drug trafficking and organized crime.

Inzunza worked for the drug lord Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada as his assassins' chief, and operated in Culiacán and in other regions across Sinaloa.

The Mexican authorities believe that he may be responsible for over 80 murders during his tenure in Sinaloa, including the killings of at least a dozen police officers.

Throughout his career, Inzunza was able to avoid going to prison several times and intimidate law enforcement; one time in the late 1990s, two patrol cars from the Federal Ministerial Police (PFM) went into a neighborhood where Inzunza was staying to carry out an arrest warrant.

Though the police were going after a person who was not involved with the drug lord, his gunmen stopped the PFM cars and ordered them to call their boss.

When the police commander arrived at the scene minutes later, Inzunza walked up to him and smacked him several times, telling him he had no permission to be in his territory and to never stop by again.

When the drug lord ordered them to leave, his gunmen took away their weapons for a couple of days.

On 12 November 2002 in Culiacán, the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) intercepted a convoy of gunmen in which Inzunza was traveling.

A shootout eventually broke out, resulting in the death of four policemen and one gunman.

However, Inzunza managed to escape the scene.

Three years later in April 2005, Inzunza intimidated several police officers who were patrolling his neighborhood and forced them to return to their headquarters.

On 5 May 2005, Inzunza travelled to Mazatlán to attend a rehab center for his drug addiction.

While heading there, he was arrested by the Mazatlán Municipal Police with eight of his men.

The police confiscated several assault rifles, handguns, grenades, and grenade launchers.

The arrest of Inzunza was initially reported by a photojournalist who managed to take a picture of him, but the drug lord never made it to prison; unconfirmed reports stated that he bribed the police to avoid going to jail.

The decline of Inzunza's hegemony in the Sinaloa Cartel began in May 2008 when Édgar Guzmán López, son of "El Chapo" Guzmán, was killed by gunmen in Culiacán.

During that time, the Sinaloa Cartel was engaged in an internal power struggle with the Beltrán Leyva Cartel.

Alfredo Beltrán Leyva was captured by the Mexican Army in January 2008, and his brothers Arturo, Carlos, and Héctor had suspicions that Guzmán had tipped authorities to Alfredo's whereabouts.

In an apparent revenge attack, the Beltrán Leyva Cartel reportedly killed Guzmán's son.

However, there are also reports that Inzunza might have possibly killed Guzmán López after confusing him with a member of a rival cartel.

This episode complicated Inzunza's business relationship with "El Mayo" Zambada, who turned his back on him and refused to give him protection.

Around 2010, he was transferred by the top echelons of the Sinaloa Cartel to the states of Baja California and Sonora.

His base of operations was in Mexicali, where he coordinated drug trafficking activities.

He oversaw Mexicali alongside Cenobio Flores Pacho and/or Luis Fernando Castro Villa (alias "El Checo"), a Sinaloa Cartel associate.

The drug lord also oversaw the areas of San Luis Río Colorado, Puerto Peñasco, Nogales, Sonoyta, and Caborca in Sonora.

His operational capacity also reached the states of Chiapas, Quintana Roo, Nayarit, Jalisco, and Sinaloa.

With the help of his brother, who is identified by Mexican authorities by his alias "El Peque", Inzunza received large quantities of narcotics in Sinaloa from South America.

He also had three major smuggling routes across Mexico that he oversaw to move narcotics to the United States.

The first route was through a smuggling network that started in Venezuela, crossed through Honduras, Costa Rica, and ended in Sinaloa.

The second route started in Chiapas and connected that state with Acapulco, Mexico City, Jalisco, and ended in the U.S. The third and final route started in Sinaloa, crossed through Sonora, Mexicali, Tijuana and ended north of the U.S.-Mexico border.

On 18 December 2013, Inzunza was killed in a shootout with Mexican authorities in the resort area of Puerto Peñasco, Sonora.

Before the gunfight was over, several of his gunmen took the corpse of the drug lord with them.

He escaped with Ismael Bernal Cristerna (alias "El Mongol"), an individual who was later killed by Inzunza in 2013 because Inzunza feared betrayal.