Faced members of the most feared Fentanyl Cartel in the world, which is recovered from an internal war and an offensive by Mexico and the United States, They have forged a desperate alliance with a rival bandthreatening to transform the criminal underworld into dozens of countries.
The Sinaloa Cartel has directed a global empire for years Built through alliances with criminal groups and affiliates from the Americas to New Zealand, obtaining millions of dollars from drug smuggling such as fentanyl at a devastating cost, especially in the United States.
But the cartel It has been divided by violence between two main factions for monthswhile Mexico, under pressure from the administration of Donald Trump, has taken aggressive measures against him.
In the midst of that turbulence, a faction of the cartel, led by the children of the Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán capo, Guzmán, It has allied with an old and powerful adversary, the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartelaccording to four people familiar with the matter. This risky maneuver of the children of El Chapo could turn the Jalisco cartel into the largest drug dealer in the world, a change that could redefine alliances and power structures in international drug markets, according to analysts.
“It is as if the east coast of the United States had separated during the Cold War and had contacted the Soviet Union.”Said Vanda Felbab-Brown, an expert in non-state armed groups of Brookings Institution. “This has global implications on how the conflict will develop and how criminal markets will be reorganized.”
Take advantage of financial power, experience with the fentanyl and international scope of the children of El Chapo could reinforce the global ambitions of the Jalisco cartel and help consolidate your domain in Mexico, Eduardo Guerrero said, security analyst.
“It’s like bringing Messi to your football team”Said Guerrero, referring to the Argentine star Lionel Messi. “Combining both forces will mean having an enormous global production capacity.”
But this reorganization of the criminal map of Mexico It will probably turn on several regional wars Important among rival groups, he added.
Consuming resources and suffering casualties, the children of El Chapo, called Los Chapitos, They have sought help from the Jalisco cartel in recent months, delivering territory in exchange for money and weapons.
The Alliance, described by two senior commanders of the Sinaloa Cartel and two people in the United States with knowledge of the matter, in itself a radical change. Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels They had fought a bloody territorial war throughout Mexico, terrorizing millions of people.
The turn in the war on drugs not only highlighted the treacherous nature of the cartels business, but also how traffickers are adapting to the aggressive offensive of the Trump administration against them. The United States has exerted intense pressure on Mexico to curb the Fentanyl flow, and these efforts, added to the internal struggles between the cartels, have joined two criminal adversaries.
Mexico has taken energetic measures against fentanyl traffic in recent months, deploying thousands of troops in the native state of the Sinaloa Cartel. The Trump administration has praised its own efforts, stating that the seizures on the border between the United States and Mexico They have decreased by 30%.
A high -ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel to The New York Times He said that the Chapitos had a desperate need for fundsstaggering for the financial losses caused by the interruption of the production of fentanil and the amazing deaths inside their ranks.
“The Chapitos were left out of breath, they no longer endured the pressure,” he said. “Imagine how many millions are spent in a war every day: The fighters, weapons, vehicles. The pressure increased little by little. ”
The war inside the Sinaloa cartel arose from a fracture between two main groups. Those who follow the children of Joaquín Guzmán, the leader of Sinaloa known as El Chapo, are usually called the Chapitos, as well as their leaders. His rivals follow Ismael Zambada, another founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, known as May.
An important sign of the weakness of the Chapitos is that they would give territory in exchange for the support of the Jalisco cartel. Said exchange would seriously weaken to the Sinaloa cartel, since the territory is crucial to ensure traffic routes.
The alliance took months to materialize, while both parties worked to finalize the details, sometimes gathering in neutral areas outside their dispute territories, And even outside the country, According to the two cartel agents.
“It’s as if the United States and China need to reach an agreement,” said a high position. “The Chinese will not want to go to the United States and Americans will not want to go to China, so it has long been to determine where to celebrate meetings and who will attend.”
The decline of the Sinaloa Cartel too It has been accelerated by a recent concerted effort of the Mexican government to combat it, especially in the state of Sinaloa. Hundreds of additional Mexican troops have been sent there, and those raised in laboratories, arrests and drug seizures monopolize headlines every week.
But so far, the Sinaloa cartel has received excessive attention. The rest of Mexico has not seen the same government effort, and cartel operators claimed to have transferred most of the fentanyl production to other states to avoid being detected.
Dismantling
“It is good to dismantle these groups, But it is almost impossible to achieve a sustained interruption of drug flow”Said John Creamer, a retired American diplomat who served in US embassies throughout Latin America, more recently in Mexico.
“You can never really sink an entire cartel,” he said. “They can destabilize and sow chaos, But drug trafficking always recovers. That is what makes the war against drugs so frustrating. ”
The current internal dispute began when Joaquín Guzmán López, a spit, He betrayed Zambada, his father’s lifetime partner. Guzmán kidnapped Zambada and took him by plane to the other side of the border, in custody of US federal agents, last summer.
The power struggle that followed has left more than 1,300 people dead and more than 1,500 missing in the state of Sinaloa, According to official data and search groups, and violence has not yielded.
Three people were brutally killed this month in a single afternoon in different events in Culiacán, the state capital. A man was found lying on the outskirts of the city, with bandaged eyes, hands tied behind his back and with torture signs.
The next day, a father and his son suffered an ambush while driving on a busy way. The father died in the place and the son was seriously injured; His vehicle received at least 50 high -caliber bullet impacts.
A fruit seller settled anxiously at the crime scene, while the soldiers lined up to ask for lemonade and other drinks under the scorching sun.
While the forensic team took the body of the driver’s seat and put it in a bodies bag, Gutural screams were heard among relatives who were close, sobbing and hugging.
The seller told a reporter that this was his first sales streak in months. So many people had fled from Culiacán due to the violence that the streets were empty of customers.
“But my hands tremble,” he said, asking to remain in anonymity due to violence. “I don’t want to sell like that”.