A major outbreak of violence in Culiacán, Mexico, spotlights United States drug war tactics and puts hard questions to new President Claudia Sheinbaum.
Factions of the drug trafficking group known as the Sinaloa Cartel—the “Chapitos” and the “Mayitos”—are fighting for control following the July arrest, in Texas, of organizational leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.
The Financial Times reports that 90 people have been killed in and around the city of Culiacán, Sinaloa, in the space of three weeks. Al Jazeera describes the situation as “civil war,” and the worst violence seen there for 15 years.
Amid gunfights and abductions, the Mexican government has deployed 3,000 special forces to the area. AP reports that 1,500 Culiacán residents marched to call for peace on September 29. The next day, the army seized all weapons from the local police force, in what Sinaloa Governor Ruben Rocha called an “exceptional” measure to allow inspection of the guns’ permits and serial numbers.
The arrest that sparked all this took place in strange circumstances on July 25, after Zambada and Joaquin Guzmán Lopez, son of former Sinaloa leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, arrived in El Paso, Texas, in a private plane. A US official told CNN that Guzmán Lopez had “organized” his own arrest along with that of Zambada, whom he reportedly lured onto the plane under false pretenses. But both men face multiple charges, including trafficking of fentanyl and other drugs into the US.
“El Mayo” Zambada, 76, is described as a cofounder of the Sinaloa organization along with “El Chapo.” After the elder Guzmán was captured by Mexican authorities in 2016 and extradited to the US, his sons—the “Chapitos”—have reportedly sought control.
In 2023, the US Justice Department indicted four of the brothers, alleging they “pioneered the manufacture and trafficking of fentanyl—the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced— flooded it into the United States for the past eight years and killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.” That September, the Mexican government agreed to extradite one of the brothers, Ovidio Guzmán López, to the US after his arrest in January. Reports that Joaquín Jr. cut a deal with US authorities to turn in Zambada come in the context of a continuing factional struggle with the “Mayitos.”
López Obrador, who just finished his term as Mexican president, has criticized the US tactic of targeting leaders of trafficking organizations.
Mexican authorities’ response to Zambada’s capture and US involvement has been critical. The nation’s top prosecutor announced a criminal investigation into the circumstances leading to El Mayo’s apparent kidnapping, “for the possible crimes of illegal flight, illicit use of airports, immigration and customs violations, kidnapping, treason, and any other crimes that may apply.”
Officially, the US through its Mexican ambassador has denied bringing El Mayo to Texas, stating “It was not our aircraft, not our pilot, not our people.” Yet a US Department of Homeland Security statement called the arrests “a culmination of a joint Homeland Security Investigations and FBI investigation,” praising the “collaborative effort” they represented.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador (“AMLO”), who finished his term as president of Mexico on September 30, has directly criticized the US tactic of targeting leaders of trafficking organizations, asking in August, “Why don’t they change that policy?”
Known as the “kingpin strategy,” this has also been criticized by drug policy experts for leading to chaos and instability through the fragmentation of trafficking organizations, and violence as rival groups struggle to fill power vacuums. This pattern of incentivized violence has also been called the “freelancer effect.”
“Chapo’s arrest created internal chaos, and someone had to fill his place.”
Liliana Sanchez, an independent consultant in public security statistics based in Mexico City, told Filter about some of the dynamics, including US involvement, behind the current violence in Sinaloa.
“Beyond the whole circus surrounding El Chapo’s arrest, we forget that El Mayo’s people were partly responsible for his capture,” she said. “Mayo’s son became a DEA informant, and shared key details about the cartel’s business function and its dealings in synthetic drugs. Chapo’s arrest created internal chaos, and someone had to fill his place.”
His would-be successors had contrasting approaches.
“El Mayos’s skills were in organization, coordination, and maintaining business hegemony,” Sanchez said, noting that he always kept a low profile, and was unknown publicly until the 2000s. “Meanwhile the Chapitos, as a group of young leaders, aren’t governed by organizational loyalty. They have a more horizontal organization, where each brother can make decisions. There isn’t one leader in a vertical hierarchy who everyone follows.”
“The Chapitos’ style is more reactionary, very emotional, more prone to resort to violence,” she continued. “This has led to the creation of smaller cells, like ‘the Russians’ and ‘the Cabrera family’. This is creating much of the local violence.”
“The ideal black market situation is one that is tranquil,” Scott Stewart, a former US State Department agent and Mexican security analyst, previously told Filter. “When you have this level of competition that creeps in, it creates more and more friction points.”
“Claudia Sheinbaum has said she will not follow the policy of former President Felipe Calderón, to arrest and eliminate cartel leaders.”
Claudia Sheinbaum took office as Mexico’s president on October 1. Part of AMLO’s Morena Party, she will inherit and continue parts of his legacy while changing some policies. Sanchez explained how she sees Sheinbaum addressing violence like the current situation.
“Claudia Sheinbaum has said she will not follow the policy of former President Felipe Calderón, to arrest and eliminate cartel leaders,” she said. “The old approach isn’t effective—far from containing, it helped ignite some of the highest levels of homicide in Mexico, seen between 2011 and 2014.”
“Sheinbaum’s administration will emphasize focusing on social measures to prevent the causes of violence,” Sanchez continued. “I agree with this approach, but we won’t see results in one year. To address the risk factors that precipitate violence at the level of communities and towns [requires] a change in culture. And it’s important to recognize the gravity of the situation not just in Sinaloa, but throughout the country.”
It seems likely that President Sheinbaum will object to US drug enforcement’s role in creating violence and instability in Mexico by targeting leaders like Zambada (though she has been criticized for voicing support for relying more on the National Guard for internal security and placing it under full military command). How much her voice will be heard in the US—where Republicans have proposed military action against trafficking groups in Mexico, and where both main presidential candidates have promised more crackdowns on fentanyl trafficking—is another question.
Photograph of members of the National Guard of Mexico via Facebook