A burned vehicle is used as a roadblock by drug traffickers.
On Jan. 5, Mexican forces arrested Ovidio Guzmán, a major drug trafficker and the son of notorious drug baron Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, in Jesús María, Sinaloa, a small town on the outskirts of Culiacán, the state capital. Immediately after the arrest, hundreds of heavily armed Sinaloa Cartel operatives descended on Culiacán and blocked off all the highways leading to and from the city. They also hijacked and burned commercial vehicles, blocked roads within the city, and killed at least 10 members of the security forces. Members of the criminal group also fired on the military aircraft that extracted Guzmán from Culiacán International Airport (CUL), hitting the plane; an Aeroméxico flight at CUL was also struck by gunfire, forcing the airport, as well as those in Mazatlán, Los Mochis, and Ciudad Obregon, to close temporarily. The deadly response by the Sinaloa Cartel to the arrest shows that the group still exerts a great degree of influence over Culiacán and can quickly mobilize hundreds of heavily armed men and confront even the elite forces of the Mexican security apparatus.
Guzmán’s arrest will help alleviate the embarrassment the government has faced since he was first detained in Oct. 2019. During his initial arrest, soldiers were able to locate and detain Guzmán but quickly found themselves surrounded by hundreds of Sinaloa Cartel gunmen, many of whom were heavily armed and had armored vehicles. Unable to extract Guzmán and after several soldiers had been taken hostage by the Sinaloa Cartel, the government handed him back to his criminal associates in exchange for the unobstructed withdraw of the security forces. While President Andrés Manuel López Obrador publicly defended the move as necessary to prevent further bloodshed, it was widely seen as a humiliating defeat for both him and the Mexican military and became a symbol of the government’s inability to take on major drug-trafficking organizations directly.
The capture of Guzmán is unlikely to reduce the ability of the Sinaloa Cartel to produce and traffic drugs such as fentanyl and cocaine. The organization does not operate under a single unified command, and the faction that operated under Guzmán, known as the “Chapitos”, was also jointly led by his brother, Joaquín, and his two half-brothers, Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo. Given the tight familial bonds shared by the traffickers, it is likely that Guzmán’s responsibilities within the organization will simply be split up between his relatives, allowing the group to continue their operations with little disruption. However, it is also possible that Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia, who leads the other major faction of the group, will attempt to seize control of more of its operations, and profits. If this were to happen, the security situation would likely deteriorate, as all the traffickers leading the various factions of the Sinaloa Cartel have shown a willingness to use extreme violence to attain and hold onto power.
The arrest of Guzmán was an important symbolic victory that allows the government to demonstrate its commitment to combating drug-trafficking organizations during López Obrador’s January meeting with US President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. However, the ease with which the Sinaloa Cartel quickly sealed off all highways to Culiacán and fired upon military aircraft demonstrates that the criminal group continues to exert influence over the Sinaloan capital. Additionally, while the Canadian and US governments were likely heartened by the capture, due to the Sinaloa Cartel’s structure, it will likely do little to stem the northward flow of drugs that move across Mexico’s border with the US.
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