“Sol Prendido” for Borderland Beat
A Sedena report reveals that while the Guzman Lopez godfather grows stronger, ‘Los Menores’ release fentanyl, betray medium-sized capos and use their routes to smuggle migrants, weapons and vape devices.
The criminal organization was dealt important blows during 2023
365 days have passed since the successful capture of Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán’s most famous son and the changes in the Sinaloa Cartel are recorded in military dossiers as if they were wounds in a medical file: Los Menores suffered serious but not fatal injuries, El Mayo emerged unscathed and grew stronger in the months following the clash between La Chapiza and the Armed Forces, while the other factions of the criminal organization show deep bruises following the decision to gradually abandon the fentanyl business in the face of harassment from the US government.
The report generated by the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) in December 2023, to which MILENIO had access, gives an account of the main changes that took place the previous year after the second Culiacanazo on January 5. Among them, how Los Chapitos were forced to ask for a truce from their enemy Ismael El Mayo Zambada Garcia, who at 76 took advantage of the arrest of Ovidio Guzman Lopez — also known as El Raton — to improve his position on the country’s criminal chessboard.
According to the document, brothers Ivan Archivaldo and Jesus Alfredo established communication last February with their “godfather” – the report does not specify whether it was a direct contact or through intermediaries – to request a ceasefire between the two sides in order to focus on common enemies: the Mexican Army and the National Guard, which, together with the DEA, were seeking to extend a winning streak of arrests requested by the White House.
The Mexican government had demonstrated in previous months its effectiveness in hitting “extraditables” of the Sinaloa Cartel: José Bryan Salgueiro, El 90, was arrested, and days before the truce request, Gerardo Soberanes Ortiz, El G1, was also arrested.
Los Chapitos’ intuition did not fail: Jose Guadalupe Tapia Quintero, Lupe Tapia, a man very close to Mayo, died days later in Culiacan, a stronghold they presumed was secure after the operation against El Raton. Divided,” Chapo’s sons warned their godfather, “they were all at immediate risk of stepping foot in the United States.
“Let’s put it this way: in these environments, the one who proposes the truce has to lose something. And the one who accepts it sets the conditions. El Mayo put his conditions on the table and they were given to him,” said a military officer stationed in Sinaloa who participated in the arrest of Ovidio Guzmán.
Triad of conditions
The Mexican Army assumes that there were three conditions from the co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel: the resignation of ‘Los Chapitos’ from the fentanyl business to lower the pressure from the government of President Joe Biden, an alliance between both sides to face the arrival of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel in states like Durango and Zacatecas, and the promise that everyone would be activated, without reservation, in case a military operation surprised them.
In exchange, Los Chapitos would receive help in seeking a negotiation with the United States and a significant improvement in their security, which happened last November 22: Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, El Nini, then head bodyguard of Los Menores, was handed over by the cartel itself due to his scandals and high profile, to be replaced by Óscar Noé Medina González, El Panu, linked to the Tapia Quintero family and Mayo Zambada.
“The confirmations of that pact did not take long to arrive. There are, for example, the banners that people from Los Chapitos hung on bridges to announce that the fentanyl business was prohibited. Then began the killing of dealers who wanted to continue making profitable capital selling fentanyl even though it was prohibited.
“And then we began to see that the MZ Flechas — Mayo Zambada’s armed wing — were already hitting Jalisco Cartel operatives with weapons that Ivan Archivaldo’s mob were acquiring. We hadn’t seen that before,” said the consulted military officer.
Everything fit the truce hypothesis, including the anonymous calls that flowed with unusual speed to the National Defense Secretariat’s emergency lines about the locations of drug laboratories devoid of people, but full of precursor chemicals and tableting machines.
The same thing happened with alleged betrayals within the cartel: mid-level operators — such as El Acelerado or El Comandante Aurelio — began to crumble under the suspicion that they were given up by Los Menores to feed middleweights to the DEA hungry for a big fish.
For the military commanders in Sinaloa, Chapitos and Mayos were denouncing each other by controlling the risks in order to use the Mexican government’s communiqués as messages to the United States that they were throwing fentanyl in the trash.
The agreement dealt a blow to other minor splinters of the Pacific Cartel, such as the Cabrera Sarabia clan, Los Guanos or Chapo Isidro’s mob, as it left them vulnerable to continue with the business that in 2021 caused 106,000 overdose deaths in the United States. If they wanted to continue trafficking this synthetic opioid northward, they would do it alone and with the risk that the DEA’s priorities would turn against them.
El Mayo Zambada won, according to the official document, by hurting his rivals economically, strengthening his defenses in the states he disputes and gaining influence in Los Chapitos’ decision-making. The illness of others became the renewal of health of the oldest of the Sinaloa Cartel’s historic leaders.
Migrants and vape devices
More changes followed Ovidio Guzman’s extradition: by abandoning the fentanyl business – worth some $1 billion annually, according to the US Congress’ Special Commission to Combat Synthetic Opioid Trafficking – the three fugitive Chapitos would seek to balance their losses by concentrating on other illicit markets and new dirty business opportunities.
The report warns that the vacuum left by Raton would be filled with a violent break into the trafficking of undocumented migrants, a market estimated to be worth $13 billion annually, or 13 times more than fentanyl. To do so, they would use their connections from Chiapas and Tabasco to Baja California, Sonora and Chihuahua.
“The migrants were included in the report because it is something that is already being seen. The massive kidnappings of Central Americans in Altar, Sáric, and Benjamín Hill, in Sonora, is being done by their own mob. We know that they have increased the fees to cross them into California or Arizona by up to $5,000,” said the source.
They are also moving into modern trafficking, such as “ghost guns,” which are the latest trend among gun owners, who, in an effort to evade the supervision of authorities, buy the loose parts of a gun online and assemble them at home.
And the trafficking of electronic cigarettes from China, which are in high demand among minors and young adults in tourist areas. Although this business was already in their hands, this year they have stepped up punishments against those who sell vapes independently or without their permission, as happens with the sale of alcohol or slot machines.
The biggest example went viral on December 4, when two young men were beaten with wooden boards and forced to walk naked through the facilities of the Universidad Autónoma de Occidente campus in Guasave, Sinaloa, for allegedly selling vapes without the cartel’s permission, a business whose global value is estimated to reach 26 billion dollars by 2024, according to the website Statista.
The military health report of the Sinaloa Cartel after the removal of Ovidio Guzman is that of a body that, in one year, lost a limb, but has three more and several prostheses to keep moving forward. Sick, but stable. Injured, but not mortally wounded… although the Mexican government and the DEA want to place them into intensive care in 2024.