An Army patrol was patrolling the dirt roads of the El Barrio neighborhood in eastern Culiacán early Tuesday morning when they found the bodies of two men who had been executed. Their bodies were found face down in a puddle, with signs of torture and wrapped in blankets, and toy cars and a yellow plastic tray were placed on top of their bodies, according to witnesses and local journalists. Just two days earlier, five people were found murdered, all with their hands tied behind their backs and with small hats placed on their heads, on Mexico Highway 15, another epicenter of the violence.
Since September 9, Ismael’s allies The May Zambada and Los Chapitos, sons of his former partner Joaquin El Chapo Guzmán, have turned Sinaloa into a war zone. The biggest fracture within the Sinaloa Cartel in more than a decade has left at least 53 violent homicides and dozens of missing, wounded and detained, according to official data, without the population and authorities being able to anticipate when the conflict will end or how far it will go.
EL PAÍS has located each of the murders reported by the police and the state prosecutor’s office up to Friday, and has compiled the violent deaths reported by federal forces to get a clearer picture of the crisis that is ravaging the state and the trail of destruction left by drug trafficking. In the last two weeks there have been as many homicides as in the previous five weeks. Three out of four victims were killed in Culiacán and its surrounding communities, the historic stronghold of the criminal organization. And although the hostilities are concentrated in the state capital, the incidents have been dispersed in recent times, with more than 220 kilometers between the two furthest points where a murder has been reported.
A delayed revenge
July 25 was the day everything changed in Sinaloa. El Mayo, who had not set foot in jail in more than five decades of criminal career, landed unexpectedly at a small rural airport in New Mexico alongside Joaquín Guzmán López The Güeroson of El Chapo. The 76-year-old drug lord was captured without a shot being fired and the governments of both countries have not been able to give a convincing explanation about the circumstances of the arrest. Amid the confusion, Zambada published a letter on August 10 in which he claimed that he was betrayed by Guzmán López, his godson, and handed over against his will to the United States, after being summoned to a meeting with Governor Rubén Rocha and opposition leader Héctor Cuén, former rector and elected deputy. Cuén was killed the same day of the arrest. El Güero was named on August 21 as the main suspect in the kidnapping by Mexican authorities. Neither of these events translated into an immediate increase in murders in Sinaloa.
“I call on the people of Sinaloa to be moderate and to maintain peace in our state. Nothing is resolved with violence,” wrote El Mayo. The revenge was prepared slowly. Shortly before a month had passed since the capture, Rocha had already admitted that 10 members of both sides, seven loyal to Zambada and three to Los Chapitos, had been killed in sporadic events, but there were no signs of an open conflict.
The first warning of an increase in tensions came on August 29. An attack by “armed civilians” against an Army patrol in the municipality of Jesús María, a key territory for Los Chapitos, fueled fears of a new Culiacanazoas the episodes of extreme violence that affected the city after the arrest operations against Ovidio Guzmán are known The MouseEl Güero’s younger brother, in 2019 and 2023. That same day, the Attorney General’s Office hinted that El Ratón could be involved in the kidnapping of El Mayo. Despite the panic, there were only two murders that day. “Everything is calm,” Rocha said a day later.
The outbreak of war
It was another attack on the Armed Forces that set off alarm bells in Sinaloa. On the morning of September 9, a shootout between civilians and soldiers in the La Campiña neighborhood, east of Culiacán, forced the suspension of classes in that sector of the city. Until that moment, the governor still assured that it was an isolated incident and presumed that “there had been no casualties.” Hours later, it was announced that a sergeant had died after being taken to the hospital and another officer had been injured.
But the violence did not stop there. A man was found shot dead in the Simón Bolívar neighborhood. Another was shot dead on Mexico Highway 15, near the municipality of Costa Rica, also part of the municipality of Culiacán. In the Villa Satélite neighborhood, a man was shot dead after being chased with a handgun. And a man was found dead and tied up in the community of Portaceli, in the municipality of Eldorado, almost 70 kilometers from the capital. There were only three homicides that reached the official bulletin board of the federal authorities.
The beginning of the war was also marked by the silence of the state authorities, who took three days to give a detailed report of the violence and have presented inconsistent figures between the figures reported by the three levels of government and even by the Attorney General’s Office and the local police. The federal forces took even longer. It was not until last Tuesday that the Secretary of National Defense, Luis Cresencio Sandoval, acknowledged 13 drug attacks against military convoys in Sinaloa. The preliminary toll was two soldiers dead and nine wounded, as well as more than thirty civilians dead. The other element who died was an officer, who died after another attack on September 16 in La Campiña, the area where it all began.
“We were monitoring for five weeks and there was no activity that indicated a confrontation or preparation for a confrontation. In the sixth week we did start to have data, which led us to increase reinforcements,” said Sandoval. One hypothesis that has gained ground to explain the delayed effect of the violence is that El Mayo’s group armed itself and sealed alliances with other factions before launching an attack on Los Chapitos.
This week, at least one attack against the military was reported in the Genaro Estrada neighborhood, which resulted in one person being arrested and two vehicles being seized. The outcome of the clashes with law enforcement is also a testament to the firepower of the warring factions. An attack against the National Guard resulted in five assault rifles, more than 2,100 cartridges and three arrests on September 15. In other operations, drones, armored vehicles, bullets and burnt vehicles, tire-punching devices, grenade launchers, anti-assault rifles and drugs such as methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana have been seized. The Sinaloa Public Security Secretariat has seized 120 weapons, 30,000 rounds of ammunition of different calibers and 75 vehicles as of Friday, and has arrested more than 40 people.
The Armed Forces have deployed more than 2,200 reinforcements that have arrived in recent weeks and have focused their strategy on containment: inhibiting clashes and avoiding confrontations.[El fin de la violencia] “It doesn’t depend on us, it depends on the antagonistic groups,” said Jesús Leana, commander of the third military region, in statements that revived criticism against Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s security policy. “The security forces have not had much impact in the area,” said Mike Ballard, director of Intelligence for the firm Global Guardian. “Our main concern is that this continues and will potentially expand beyond Sinaloa,” he added.
The red flags
The first episodes of violence offered hints of the war’s flashpoints. In La Costerita, an area south of Culiacán bordering Mexico Highway 15, there have been nearly a dozen murders in the past two weeks. On Monday, a man was killed by gunfire. On Tuesday, another man was shot to death. On Wednesday, authorities reported the discovery of three dead men, two of them decapitated and with their hands severed, under a bridge. That same day, a femicide was reported, with the victim abandoned with his hands tied. On Thursday, a man was reported shot after his kidnapping was reported this week.
Mexico City Highway 15, one of the main roads in the city and the country, has also become a corridor of violence, with attacks against authorities, clashes between drug traffickers and drug blockades. The multiple homicide of the victims with hats placed on their bodies occurred in front of the Splash Club, just at the entrance to Culiacán. In addition to the homicide recorded in Costa Rica, another man was killed last weekend. The story is repeated on other key roads such as the Culiacán-Mazatlán highway, with deaths recorded in remote towns and mountain communities, such as in the municipality of Elota. The municipality of Concordia, where there have been at least five murders this week, has been besieged and cut off for days. State authorities assured that there have been no roadblocks since last Monday.
In El Barrio, where the bodies were found with toys, another man was shot to death on Wednesday and another died in the same circumstances last week. In the Simón Bolivar neighborhood, at least three people have been found executed in the streets near the well-known Parque 87. The war has intensified in recent days with threats and public displays of violence to intimidate enemies and instill fear in the population. Deadly attacks have been reported in the parking lot of a supermarket, in a funeral home, in a gas station and in a hospital.
López Obrador has insisted that Sinaloa is not “out of control,” but the escalation of violence has led him to air the harshest claim he has made against the United States since the capture of El Mayo. The president said that Washington is “jointly responsible” for the fight for control of the Sinaloa Cartel, by not consulting or notifying the Mexican authorities until the arrest was made. “If we are now facing a situation of instability and confrontation in Sinaloa, it is because they made that decision, and we do not agree that Mexico should be ignored because that is where we have the problem,” he said.
Ballard says the “power vacuum” following Zambada’s arrest has accelerated internal conflicts over territory, drug trafficking routes and access to drugs and chemical precursors. He is targeting nearby states such as Chihuahua, Durango, Sonora and Baja California, where there have been clashes between feuding criminal groups. This week, for example, six burned bodies and two riddled with bullets were found after a confrontation on a highway in southern Chihuahua between La Línea, close to Rafael Caro Quintero’s faction and the Juárez Cartel, and Los Salgueiro, old hitmen from Sinaloa.
The deadliest day was last Sunday, when 14 murders were recorded in the midst of the Independence Day celebrations. But the impact of the conflict goes beyond violent deaths. It is about each and every one of the jobs that have been lost, the children who have not been able to go to school, the businesses that have remained closed, the reports of forced disappearances, the images that flood social media, the collective psychosis, the informal curfews, the siege of crime. While the authorities try to decree normality, the war between El Mayo and Los Chapitos has already left a permanent mark on Sinaloa.
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