At 9:00 p.m. on May 8, 2008, customers at the City Club in the Tres Ríos Urban Development district of Culiacán heard what sounded like a bomb blast. It was not a single explosion; rather, it was the sound of five hundred rounds fired from AK-47 assault rifles, along with a bazooka round striking the parking lot wall. In less than three minutes, the body of Édgar Guzmán López—the eldest son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera—lay sprawled on the asphalt alongside those of César Ariel Loera and Arturo Meza Cázares.
They had been executed at point-blank range by an armed cell. The entire city ground to a halt. For days, the streets remained deserted. The police did not appear at the scene until the entire ordeal was over. Residents spoke of a war, yet no one knew with certainty who had unleashed it.
According to the account written by Vicente Zambada Niebla—son of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada—in the documents that served as the basis for Anabel Hernández’s book *El traidor* (The Traitor), the attack was not the result of a clash between rival cartels. What actually transpired that night was a case of friendly fire—an internal operational error—within the Sinaloa Cartel itself.
According to “El Vicentillo’s” testimony, the death of “El Chapo’s” favorite son was not an act of retaliation by the Beltrán Leyva organization—as official reports and journalistic accounts had maintained for years—but rather the consequence of a botched operation carried out by the armed wing commanded by Gonzalo Inzunza Inzunza, alias “Macho Prieto”: the very hitman who, for years, had served as both shield and spearhead for “El Mayo” Zambada.
