Mexico drug kingpin Juan José 'el Azul' Esparragoza believed to have died

Reported death from heart attack at 65 would be second blow to Sinaloa cartel this year following arrest of 'el Chapo'

Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
theguardian.com, Monday 9 June 2014 14.27 EDT
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Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín 'el Chapo' Guzmán is escorted by members of the Mexican armed forces after his arrest in February. Photograph: Marco Ugarte/AP

Juan José Esparragoza, one of the architects of Mexico's global drug trafficking empire – and a key figure in the Sinaloa cartel – has reportedly died of a heart attack at 65.

The investigative weekly Río Doce, based in the northern state of Sinaloa, reported the death late on Sunday on its website, citing anonymous police sources and people close to the family of the trafficker known as "el Azul", or the Blue One.

Radio Formula reported on Monday that the attorney general's Office had started an investigation into "rumours" of El Azul's death. The FBI's website retained the crime boss on its most wanted list, alongside a five million dollar reward for information leading to his capture.

The death of Esparragoza would be the second blow to the Sinaloa cartel this year, following the February arrest of its most famous kingpin, Joaquín "el Chapo" Guzmán. It would leave Ismael "el Mayo" Zambada, as the only one of the cartel's main leaders still in action.

According to Río Doce's sources, Esparragoza died while convalescing from damage to his spine sustained in a car accident about two weeks ago. He was reportedly taken to a hospital, either in the capital, Mexico City, or in the central city of Guadalajara, and had the heart attack while trying to get out of bed.

The story added that Esparragoza's body has already been cremated and there are plans to return his ashes to his native Sinaloa in coming days.

Esparragoza was born in the mountain municipality of Badiraguato, an area that has a long history of marijuana and opium poppy cultivation and has produced several of Mexico's most important traffickers, including Guzmán.

Esparragoza's criminal career took off in the 1980s within a generation of Mexican capos that emerged to dominate cocaine trafficking, occupying the space left by the falling fortunes of the Colombian cartels.

The Sinaloa-born traffickers went on to head cartels based in several other parts of the country, including Guadalajara, Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana. Almost all of the main figures from that time are now either dead or in prison.

Over the decades Esparragoza developed a reputation as an able negotiator and corruptor of the authorities, as well as peacemaker among capos, much of it based on the period when he worked alongside Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the head of the Juárez cartel in the mid-1990s known as "the Lord of the Skies."

In recent years Esparragoza's conciliatory image has meant he has rarely been publicly associated with the vicious rivalries within and between cartels that underpin much of the brutal drug war violence in Mexico since 2005.

He also maintained a relatively low profile that meant he was less famous than many of his peers, though security analysts say he was no less influential.

In February one Sinaloa source told the Guardian that he had seen Esparragoza walking through a shopping mall in the state capital Culiacán a few years ago accompanied by only discrete security.

"He was dressed in a grey suit and tie, and he seemed relaxed. He had bodyguards, but the last thing he wanted to do was attract attention," the source said.