Sancho Zamora

**Sancho Zamora** (also known as "**El Z**" or **The Z**) is a notorious and powerful Mexican drug lord, cartel leader and the main antagonist of the Season Six episode Legacy. A powerful cocaine kingpin, he is the founder and head of the Zamora Cartel, a powerful and violent Mexican drug cartel known for its reign of terror in Northern Mexico and for being the main supplier of cocaine and black tar heroin to the US. He is also the father of the late Ulan Zamora, a violent narcojunior who was rumored to be his successor and next head of the cartel until he was killed by 20-David S.W.A.T. team leader Daniel "Hondo" Harrelson Jr. (which led Sancho Zamora to start a bloody war in the streets of Los Angeles in search of the culprit for the death of his son and heir).

## Biography

Although not much is said about Sancho Zamora's past before he became Mexico's most powerful drug lord and one of the DEA's most wanted criminals, it is known that he was born in Mexico (he was born in Northern Mexico to be exact) several years before the events of Forget Shorty and Legacy. At some point before the 1990s (the period in which the wars between the Mexican drug cartels begin to become more violent), Zamora founded his own drug cartel, the Zamora Cartel, and with that resolves to demonstrate his drug cartel's dominance by eliminating rival cartels in pretty brutal ways (according to Deacon, Zamora and his sicarios decimated an entire rival cartel by throwing them into a barn and burning them alive, in a show of strength and intimidation).

In the 1990's, after dominating several rival drug cartels and seizing their territory, the Zamora Cartel becomes the most powerful drug cartel in Mexico and Sancho Zamora becomes the richest and most powerful drug lord of all time, earning billions of dollars with various illegal activities, such as drug trafficking (mainly cocaine, which becomes the main source of profit for his criminal empire), arms trafficking, extortion, prostitution, human trafficking, money laundering, among other criminal activities, thus expanding his multibillion-dollar criminal empire. But in order to expand the activities of the Zamora Cartel to all of Mexico and other countries, he ends up using brutal and limitless violence against rival criminals and even innocent people, killing tens of thousands of people and creating a bloody reign of terror in Northern Mexico, which leads to both US and Mexican authorities on a massive manhunt against him and the countless members of his cartel to stop Zamora's reign of terror once and for all.

Feeling that he could be arrested at any time, he decides to flee the authorities and hide somewhere in Mexico, where he has a relationship with a mysterious woman and they end up becoming parents of Ulan Zamora, a young and violent Mexican drug lord who would go on to become one of the Mexico's most violent narcojuniors (new generation drug dealers who are the sons and heirs of legendary Mexican drug lords) and the heir to the Zamora Cartel.

## Trivia

* According to the interrogation of Marcos (a member of the Los Nuevas gang) carried out by Street and Luca, Sancho Zamora is known by the dreaded nickname "El Z" (The Z) and that just by mentioning the letter Z they already knew that Los Nuevas were dealing with the Zamora Cartel (as it is implied by Marcos, Zamora's nickname became synonymous with the bloodthirsty violence of the Mexican Drug War).
* The actor who portrays Sancho Zamora, Steven Bauer is famous for portraying some of fiction's most brutal drug lords, such as Manolo "Manny Ray" Ribera in the 1983 film *Scarface*, Carlos Ayala in the 2000 film *Traffic* and the infamous Don Eladio Vuente in the popular TV series *Breaking Bad* and its spin-off *Better Call Saul* (his role on the S.W.A.T.'s Season Six as the feared Mexican drug lord Sancho Zamora is the latest in his long list of drug lord roles).