{"id":9003,"date":"2024-10-16T23:28:02","date_gmt":"2024-10-17T03:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=9003"},"modified":"2024-10-16T23:28:02","modified_gmt":"2024-10-17T03:28:02","slug":"in-the-heartland-of-mexicos-sinaloa-cartel-the-old-ways-have-changed-and-violence-rages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=9003","title":{"rendered":"In the Heartland of Mexico\u2019s Sinaloa Cartel, the Old Ways Have Changed and Violence Rages"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Cellphone chats have become death sentences in the continuing, bloody factional war inside Mexico\u2019s Sinaloa drug cartel.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Cartel gunmen stop youths on the street or in their cars and demand their phones. If they find a contact who\u2019s a member of a rival faction, a chat with a wrong word or a photo with the wrong person, the phone owner is dead.<\/p>\n

Then, they\u2019ll go after everyone on that person\u2019s contact list, forming a potential chain of kidnapping, torture and death. That has left residents of Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, afraid to even leave home at night, much less visit towns a few miles away where many have weekend retreats.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t go five minutes out of the city, … not even in daylight,\u201d said Ismael Boj\u00f3rquez, a veteran journalist in Culiacan. \u201cWhy? Because the narcos have set up roadblocks and they stop you and search through your cellphone.\u201d<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just your own chats: If a person is traveling in a car with others, one bad contact or chat can get the whole group kidnapped.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what happened to the son of a local news photographer. The 20-year-old was stopped with two other youths and something was found on one of their phones; all three disappeared. Calls were made and the photographer\u2019s son was finally released, but the other two were never seen again.<\/p>\n

Residents of Culiacan had long been accustomed to a day or two of violence once in a while. The presence of the Sinaloa cartel is woven into everyday life there, and people knew to stay indoors when they saw the convoys of double-cab pickups racing through the streets.<\/p>\n

But never have they seen the solid month of fighting<\/a><\/span> that broke out Sept. 9 between factions of the Sinaloa cartel after drug lords Ismael \u201cEl Mayo\u201d Zambada and Joaqu\u00edn Guzm\u00e1n L\u00f3pez were apprehended in the United States after flying there in a small plane on July 25.<\/p>\n

\n

Zambada later claimed he was kidnapped<\/a><\/span> and forced aboard the plane by Guzm\u00e1n L\u00f3pez, causing a violent battle between Zambada\u2019s faction and the \u201cChapitos\u201d group led by the sons of imprisoned drug lord Joaquin \u201cEl Chapo\u201d Guzm\u00e1n.<\/p>\n

Residents of Culiacan are mourning their old lives, when the wheels of the local economy were greased by cartel wealth but civilians seldom suffered \u2014 unless they cut off the wrong pickup truck in traffic.<\/p>\n

But the cartel factions have turned to new tactics, including a huge wave of armed carjackings in and around Culiacan. Cartel gunmen used to steal the SUVs and pickups they favor for use in cartel convoys; but now they focus on stealing smaller sedans.<\/p>\n

They use these to go undetected in their silent, deadly kidnappings.<\/p>\n

Often, the first a driver knows is when a passing car tosses out a spray of bent nails to puncture his tires. Vehicles pull up front and rear to cut him off. The driver is bundled into another car. All that is left for neighbors to find is a car with burst tires, the doors open, the engine running, in the middle of the street.<\/p>\n

The State Council on Public Safety, a civic group, estimates that in the past month there have been an average of six killings and seven disappearances or kidnappings in and around the city every day. The group said about 200 families have fled their homes in outlying communities because of the violence.<\/p>\n

Culiacan is no stranger to violence \u2014 shooting broke out across the city in October 2019 when soldiers mounted a failed attempt to arrest another of Chapo Guzm\u00e1n\u2019s sons, Ovidio. Fourteen people were killed that day.<\/p>\n

A few days later, civic activist Estefan\u00eda L\u00f3pez arranged a peace march and 4,000 residents turned out for it. When she tried to do something similar this year, she could get only about 1,500 people to attend a similar demonstration.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got a lot of messages beforehand from a lot of people who said they wanted to join and march, to support the cause, but who were afraid to come,\u201d L\u00f3pez said.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s reason to be afraid: Last week, gunmen burst into a Culiacan hospital to kill a patient previously wounded by gunshots. In a town north of Culiacan, drivers were astonished to see a military helicopter seeking to corral four gunmen in helmets and tactical vests just yards from a highway; the gunmen were shooting back at the chopper.<\/p>\n

President Claudia Sheinbaum\u2019s response to all this has been to blame the United States<\/a><\/span> for stirring up trouble by allowing the drug lords to turn themselves in.<\/p>\n

\u201cSinaloa practically didn\u2019t have homicides\u201d before the two drug lord\u2019s capture on July 25, Sheinbaum said. \u201cStarting with that, a wave of violence was unleashed in Sinaloa,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Her claim is easily disproved: the cartel factions had been killing each other for years, albeit at lower levels. But it illustrates the government\u2019s head-in-the-sand approach: Sheinbaum and her predecessor, former president Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador, had little problem with the existence and local dominance of drug cartels as long as they didn\u2019t make headlines.<\/p>\n

\n

Now that the violence has boiled over, the government has sent in hundreds of army troops.<\/p>\n

But irregular urban combat in the heart of a city of 1 million inhabitants \u2014 against a cartel that has lots of .50-caliber sniper rifles and machine guns \u2014 is not the army\u2019s specialty.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Squads of soldiers went into a luxury apartment complex in the city\u2019s center to detain a suspect and they wound up shooting to death a young lawyer who was merely a bystander.<\/p>\n

L\u00f3pez, the peace activist, has been asking for soldiers and police to be posted outside schools, so children can return to classes \u2014 most are currently taking classes online because their parents judge it too dangerous to take them to school.<\/p>\n

But police can\u2019t solve the problem: Culiacan\u2019s entire municipal force has been temporarily disarmed by soldiers to check their guns, something that\u2019s been done in the past when the army suspects policemen are working for drug cartels.<\/p>\n

The local army commander recently acknowledged that it\u2019s up to the cartel factions \u2014 not authorities \u2014 when the violence will stop.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Culiacan, there is not even faith anymore that we will be safe, with police or soldiers,\u201d L\u00f3pez said, noting that that has had a clear effect on daily life and the economy. \u201cA lot of businesses, restaurants and nightclubs have been closed for the past month.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laura Guzm\u00e1n, the leader of the local restaurant chamber, said about 180 businesses in Culiacan have closed, permanently or temporarily, since Sept. 9 and almost 2,000 jobs have been lost.<\/p>\n

Local businesses tried to organize evening \u201ctardeadas\u201d \u2014 long afternoons \u2014 for residents who were afraid to go out after dark, but they didn\u2019t draw enough customers.<\/p>\n

\u201cYoung people are not interested in going out right now,\u201d Guzm\u00e1n said.<\/p>\n

For those looking to get away from the violence temporarily, the seaside resort of Mazatlan used to be only 2\u00bd hours away by car. But that\u2019s not an option since last month when cartel gunmen hijacked passenger buses, forced the tourists off and burned the vehicles to block the road to Mazatlan.<\/p>\n

That leaves just one option, and one only open to some.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose who have the economic resources get out of the city by airplane to take a break,\u201d Guzm\u00e1n said.<\/p>\n

– Mark Stevenson, AP News<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cellphone chats have become death sentences in the continuing, bloody factional war inside Mexico\u2019s Sinaloa drug cartel. Cartel gunmen stop youths on the street or in their cars and demand their phones. If they find a contact who\u2019s a member of a rival faction, a chat with a wrong word or a photo with the wrong…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":9005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dims.apnews.com\/dims4\/default\/26833d4\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/4506x3004+0+0\/resize\/1440x960!\/format\/webp\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2Fa6%2Fce%2Ffcdb44fc57300d86a51513913d99%2F1b48f3bd66134eccbbef7b472f0cc9e8","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9003","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\/9003","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=9003"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9006,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9003\/revisions\/9006"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}