{"id":8755,"date":"2024-08-21T10:14:29","date_gmt":"2024-08-21T14:14:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=8755"},"modified":"2024-08-21T10:14:29","modified_gmt":"2024-08-21T14:14:29","slug":"sinaloa-cartel-infighting-rises-in-northern-mexico-following-the-detention-of-2-drug-lords-in-july","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=8755","title":{"rendered":"Sinaloa Cartel Infighting Rises in Northern Mexico Following the Detention of 2 Drug Lords in July"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

The murders of about a dozen people in the northern Mexican state of Sinaloa appear to be linked to infighting in the dominant drug smuggling cartel there, confirming fears of repercussions from the July 25 detention of two top cartel leaders.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Last month, Joaqu\u00edn Guzm\u00e1n L\u00f3pez, a capo from one faction of the Sinaloa cartel \u2014 the Chapitos or \u201cLittle Chapos,\u201d the sons of imprisoned cartel leader Joaquin \u201cEl Chapo\u201d Guzm\u00e1n \u2014 turned himself in to U.S. authorities. However, he allegedly abducted the leader of the rival faction, Ismael \u201cEl Mayo\u201d Zambada, forcing him on to the same flight to El Paso and turning him in.<\/p>\n

Mexican authorities are caught in the middle of the coming storm<\/a><\/span>: they weren\u2019t involved in the July 25 capture, but they are unwilling to use the opportunity to crack down on the Sinaloa cartel. The cartel is splintering, and what\u2019s at stake is who will take over Zambada\u2019s faction now that he is in a U.S. jail.<\/p>\n

\n

To paraphrase a famous Mexican corrido song, \u201cSmuggling and Betrayal,\u201d the mixture of the two always leads to murder.<\/p>\n

Analysts say the government doesn\u2019t want to get involved, because both sides in the Sinaloa cartel\u2019s internal dispute have damaging information on officials they could release at any time. So they have limited themselves to increasingly desperate appeals to both sides not to fight among themselves.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Sinaloa state Gov. Rub\u00e9n Rocha acknowledged that four killings on Friday and six murders on Saturday were related to the dispute between warring factions of the cartel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are related to the drug cartels … and they can be linked to the situation that arose after the detentions of July 25,\u201d said Gov. Rocha. \u201cWhat I want is peace, and I have to ask for that from whomever, from the violent ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

That echoed a statement earlier in the day from President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador, who acknowledged that two more killings were linked to the dispute.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want the situation in Sinaloa to take a turn for the worse,\u201d L\u00f3pez Obrador said. \u201cIt has been stable as far as violence is concerned. That doesn\u2019t mean there wasn\u2019t violence, but there wasn\u2019t confrontation, fighting between groups.\u201d<\/p>\n

That kind of peace \u2014 where drug cartels go about their business of smuggling, dealing and extortion, but don\u2019t cause too much violence \u2014 is something the president has praised in the past. Rooting out the cartels, he says, is a policy imposed upon Mexico in the past by the United States, and is something he does not agree with.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

But Mexican security analyst David Saucedo said authorities seem loathe to intervene for another reason. Zambada, the captured drug lord, appears to be willing to use the damaging insider knowledge he has about corrupt Mexican politicians to pressure them.<\/p>\n

Zambada has already shown he is willing to do that. In a jailhouse letter, Zambada gave a version of the killing of Hector Cu\u00e9n \u2014 a political rival of Gov. Rocha who was killed the same day Zambada was kidnapped \u2014 and blamed it on the Chapitos faction.<\/p>\n

Rocha and state prosecutors claimed Cu\u00e9n was killed in a random, unrelated gas station robbery, and published security camera footage they said backed that up. But federal prosecutors later said the governor\u2019s version didn\u2019t add up and was probably a fake.<\/p>\n

Zambada apparently has more information he can release if things get too hot in Sinaloa, and if his sons are prevented from taking over his part of the business: the names of politicians, police and military officers he has paid off.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems to me that Mayo Zambada\u2019s media strategy is focused on assuring an orderly transition in the organization he commands,\u201d said Saucedo. \u201cWith these (media) hand grenades, these public opinion bombs, Zambada is trying to assure that federal authorities don\u2019t try to interfere in the leadership succession in his organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

If that\u2019s the goal \u2014 keep things orderly in Sinaloa so drug leadership can pass from one generation to another, and politicians don\u2019t get publicly exposed for cooperating with drug cartels \u2014 then the most recent killings don\u2019t bode well for the strategy.<\/p>\n

At least two of the men killed last week \u2014 they were tortured, shot and found with their heads wrapped in duct tape \u2014 were close associates of Zambada.<\/p>\n

But as usual, it\u2019s hard to decipher which killing or act of violence was committed by which cartel faction, and why.<\/p>\n

For example, somebody started to methodically destroy the lavish family tomb of a prominent Sinaloa cartel clan a couple of days after July 25 arrests of the two capos. They used bulldozers and backhoes to break open the walls of the mausoleum and dig up the crypts.<\/p>\n

The clan whose grandfather\u2019s and uncle\u2019s bodies lay in the tomb \u2014 both corpses were stolen \u2014 had had violent brushes with both the Chapitos and Zambada factions in the past.<\/p>\n

If there is any clear victim to be laid to rest in the conflict, it\u2019s the idea that the Sinaloa cartel was ever a monolithic, hierarchal gang with one leader at the top. As the war of lavish tombs in Culiac\u00e1n, the state capital, shows, the cartel has always been made up of a loose alliance of drug trafficking clans who try to one-up each other, even in death.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The murders of about a dozen people in the northern Mexican state of Sinaloa appear to be linked to infighting in the dominant drug smuggling cartel there, confirming fears of repercussions from the July 25 detention of two top cartel leaders. Last month, Joaqu\u00edn Guzm\u00e1n L\u00f3pez, a capo from one faction of the Sinaloa cartel \u2014…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":8756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/4\/49\/Sinaloa_in_Mexico_%28location_map_scheme%29.svg","fifu_image_alt":"Sinaloa Cartel Infighting Rises in Northern Mexico Following the Detention of 2 Drug Lords in July","footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security-public-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8755"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8757,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8755\/revisions\/8757"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}