Sinaloa Cartel: Investigating the Mexico region ruled by the world’s most powerful drug lords

The latest headlines from our reporters across the US sent straight to your inbox each weekday Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the US Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the US SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Commanded largely by the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the Sinaloa Cartel is the only organization in the state that, for decades, has co-opted communities, authorities and a large part of the Sinaloa mountains to carry out one of the most thriving businesses in the underworld: drug trafficking. A way of giving in to organised crime without the null application of the power of the State; an “unwritten pact” between the state or federal government and the drug barons, which ends up subcontracting the fate of citizens to the dynamics and criminal interests of “Los Chapitos”, “Los Ninis”, “Los Minions”, “Los Ántrax”, “Los Mayitos”, “Los Guanitos” and other groups and cells, all belonging to the Sinaloa Cartel and its main leaders. open image in gallery A Mexican soldier stands guard next to some graffitis of the drug trafficker Mayo Zambada and the criminal group “Cartel de Sinaloa”, in Palmas Altas village, Jerez de Garcia Salinas municipality, Zacatecas state, Mexico When AMLO insists that "Sinaloa is no longer one of the most violent states in Mexico," as he did during a state visit to the city of Mazatlán in March 2021, it is not because of the absence of violence, but because there is an excess of it. Under this premise, very few were surprised that on 17 October 2019, heavily armed elements of the Sinaloa Cartel besieged the state capital to prevent soldiers from the Mexican Army from taking Ovidio Guzmán López, one of the sons of “El Chapo” Guzmán, who presumably commands a large part of the business of the organisation that his father founded in the early 1990s.