Does already a lot time that the Sinaloa cartel does not exist as such. This divided and confronted between several groups, but from the July 25th past the division has become a open war to gain control of the criminal organization, one of the largest and most prosperous in the world.
Since the extradition of El Chapo Guzmán on January 19, 2017the divisions For the succession they have done nothing but to be accentuatedThe triumvirate that had maintained iron-fisted control of the organization no longer existed: the Chapo was prisoner and incommunicado in New York; the great strategist, a man who was as powerful as he was little known, Juan Jose the Blue Esparragozaaccording to his relatives had died of natural causes. The remaining May Zambadathe most discreet of all of them and the one who had never set foot in jail in his half-century career due to the extreme precautions he took.
But the Chapo’s extradition sparked a fight for succession.
Since his escape from Almoloya, Guzmán Loera has been pursued by the security structure and by the intelligence services. USAhardly operated and his place was taken by his children, headed by Ivan Archivaldowho began to ignore the authority of The May and his uncle Aureliano Guzman, the Guano. Even when the chapitos were kidnapped by the CJNG In Vallarta, the Mayo intervened to negotiate with the captors and rescue them. The same thing happened with the capture of Ovid in 2019 that detonated the culiacanazo. But when in the El Chapo trial The brother and son of The May Zambadathe relationship broke up.
The clashes began in peripheral territories, such as Chiapas, and gradually moved closer to Sinaloa. And after the events of July 25, a total rupture and war were inevitable.
The story that began in 2008 with the capture of one of the Beltrán Leyva brothers, El Mochomo, was repeated in the cartel, which led to a war in which they obtained the support of the Zetas and the Juárez cartel to try to finish off the Sinaloa cartel. Now, to confront the Chapitos, the alliances are very similar: in these confrontations that are taking place in different parts of Sinaloa (to control the plaza but above all the fentanyl and synthetic drug laboratories that operate in a good part of the state) the troops of El Mayo, led by one of his sons, El Mayito Flaco, Ismael Zamabada Sicairos, were joined by forces from other states, particularly the group of Russians who worked for El Mayo in Baja California (a key territory for fentanyl trafficking), but also groups from Juárez, who have always been at odds with the Chapitos and who already had their first battles in Ojinagua, Chihuahua, this week. But it is significant
They were also joined by the main successor of the Beltrán Leyva groups, Fausto Isidro Meza López, known as Chapo Isidro, with a strong presence in northern Sinaloa and part of Sonora.
When it is said that the structures of the Mayo have turned out to be stronger than they seemed, it is because it is a formation, an organization that has nothing or little to do with the original, a new criminal group was formed, at least with the objective, in the short and medium term, of defeating the forces of Iván Archivaldo Guzmán.
These clashes and this reconfiguration are not foreign to the political and business forces that have supported the cartel as a single organization in the past. As happened in 2008 with the breakup of the Beltrán Leyva, this forces many to take sides and increases confrontation and score-settling.
The difference is that those in power did not expect what happened on July 25 and they still do not know what really happened, how Mayo and Jesús Guzmán López ended up that morning at the Santa Teresa airport in New Mexico. And everything is happening in the final days of the six-year term and in the midst of a situation of confrontation over security issues with the United States, which will begin to judge these and other drug traffickers from these same groups in the coming days.
The issue is not minor and also intersects with the reconfiguration of the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, which cannot intervene in the fight being waged in Sinaloa and take advantage of the division, because its own unity is precarious in the face of the hypothetical succession of Nemesio Oseguera El Mencho, who is suffering, like Mayo Zambada, from delicate health problems.
The CJNG is focused on its internal divisions and the fight to retain its territories in Jalisco, Zacatecas, Colima, Nayarit, but especially in Chiapas, Guanajuato and Michoacán, where they face internal divisions but also very tough rivals. That and its own structure, which is organized around a seriously weakened central and family nucleus, along with exponential franchise-type growth is what prevents it from intervening in the Sinaloa war. In any case, they know one thing: whoever wins, sooner or later, will turn against them.
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