Francisco Javier "El Pancho Chimal" Zazueta Rosales (1986-14 April 2017) was a head of security of the Sinaloa Cartel and the boss of his armed group, Los Chimalis. He provided support to Ivan Archivaldo Guzman and was a major generator of violence in and around the city of Culiacan.
Biography[]
Francisco Javier Zazueta Rosales was born in Culiacan, Sinaloa in 1986. He took to organized delinquent activity from a young age, and beginning in 2007, started operating as a hitman for the Sinaloa Cartel. After some time, he rose to become a security chief in the criminal group of Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, and gained expertise in coordinating bodyguards and hitmen for ranking Cartel members. This led to him being recruited by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman to secure the well-being of his son Ivan Archivaldo in 2014. Through his work in the world of narcotics over the years, including his financing of drug transportation, Zazueta developed a strong following of armed underlings that would come to form part of his criminal faction, Los Chimalis. He and his subordinates became major generators of violence in the zones surrounding the Sinaloan capital, particularly in Navolato and Badiraguato. In 2016, he was one of the coordinators of the ambush on a military convoy carrying Cartel operator Julio Oscar Ortiz Vega, in which five officers died and ten others were injured. The brutality and brashness of this attack on behalf of Los Chapitos motivated a strong persecution by authorities, which culminated in Zazueta's arrest at one of his safehouses in the capital in February 2017 and subsequent confinement at the Aguaruto penitentiary. A little under a month after his capture, he and four other Sinaloan traffickers, Juan Jose Esparragoza Monzon, Rafael Guadalupe Felix Nunez, Jesus Pena Gonzalez and Alfonso Limon Sanchez escaped the prison, where they received special privileges, and the security chief went back to leading his men in confrontation to Guzman's former partner Damaso Lopez. On 14 April, the Mexican Army caught up to Zazueta and his hitmen in the small town of San Cayetano, and after a tense and extended confrontation, he was shot down by the military men, dying in combat at 31 years old. His funeral ceremony was accompanied by regional music bands, horse processions and a flurry of his compatriots shooting guns at the air in remembrance of their fallen boss.