The Sinaloa cartel remains dominant in Mexico

The Sinaloa cartel is one of Mexico’s largest and most violent criminal groups, whose power remains despite arrests such as that of Ovidio Guzmán, son of the organization’s imprisoned founder, Joaquín ‘Chapo’ Guzmán. The group, which is credited with hundreds of murders and barbaric acts, showed its firepower this Thursday (5) with shootings and roadblocks in Culiacán (northwest) after Ovidio’s arrest.

A similar incident occurred in 2019 during the so-called ‘Culiacanazo’, when violence unleashed by the group forced Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to order the release of Ovidio Guzmán. After the capture and extradition of ‘Chapo’ to the United States in 2017, the cartel’s command passed to Ismael ‘Mayo’ Zambada, one of Guzmán’s former associates, and his sons Ovidio, Joaquín, Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo, known as ‘Los Chapitos’.

Zambada is the most valuable Mexican criminal to the United States, which is offering him a $15 million reward. For Ovidio, Washington offered $5 million. The cartel takes its name from the state of Sinaloa, located in northwest Mexico and an important center for the production of marijuana and poppy, the raw material for heroin. Together with the Next Generation Cartel of Jalisco (CJNG), the Sinaloa Cartel is one of the country’s dominant criminal organizations, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Its networks are estimated to extend to fifty countries, according to the organization.

Barbarism

Members of the Sinaloa cartel have engaged in violent clashes with other criminal organizations and the police in several cities in Mexico. Some of the bloodiest incidents occurred in Ciudad Juárez, following a dispute between the organization and the Juárez cartel over drug trafficking routes in the region. Dismembered corpses or hanging from bridges are among the crimes committed by these cartels, according to Mexican authorities, who estimate the number of recorded murders in Mexico at 340,000 since a questionable US-backed military anti-drug operation was implemented in 2006.

The Sinaloa cartel exports and distributes large quantities of fentanyl, heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana to the continental US and also controls the Arizona and California trafficking corridors to ship the drugs. “Fentanyl’s greatest threat to the United States is the Sinaloa Cartel, due to their ability to have clandestine laboratories in parts of Mexico,” the DEA said in its most recent annual report. According to US health authorities, fentanyl – a synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin – is responsible for countless overdoses in that country

In 2022 alone, US law enforcement agencies seized more fentanyl than would be needed to kill the entire US population, the DEA revealed. According to Insight Crime, the Sinaloa cartel operates in 17 of Mexico’s 32 states. The same organization points out that the cartel has connections at the highest levels of the state police and army, which allows it to maintain an advantage over rivals.