LThis Christmas, the Sinaloa cartel made a show of sending branded gifts to children’s hospitals. This year, a bloody war between rival factions of the notorious Mexican drug mafia overshadowed the holidays, leaving Culiacán’s birthday party almost empty and the city silent at night.
Sinaloa has always had a complex connection with its narcos, who portray themselves as noble robbers with a code of conduct. But as a war the fourth month entersWith more than a thousand dead or missing, the story of the good narco is thin.
A fight triggered an arrest two of Mexico’s most powerful crime lords in El Paso, Texas. Zambada Ismael “El Mayo”, who founded the Sinaloa cartel Joaquín “El Chapo” GuzmánHe was detained along with one of Guzmán’s sons after a small plane touched down in the US.
May accused El Chapo son of treachery and handing him over to our authorities. The faction led by El Mayo has waged war against the other led by the two sons of El Chapo who remain at large. Mexico.
A wandering and spectacular force sometimes suspends the common life, and urges it consideration in Sinaloa about his relationship with his narcos.
One argument heard in Culiacán was that the old guards – figures like El Chapo and El Mayo – had rules: they provided teams, certain services, certain laws. and they left the innocent from it.
But El Chapo and El Mayo are now in US prisons. And their children. a new creation of narcos who had grown rich – they differ
The managers to the 17 October 2019 design as this moment is clear.
When Mexican authorities arrested Ovidio Guzmán, one of El Chapo’s sons; his assassins occupied the city for 24 hoursshooting with security and killing three civilians. Guzmán released the government within hours.
“The unwritten agreement to not touch the citizens, the innocent has been torn,” said Miguel Calderón, Coordinator of the Public Council on Public Security, an NGO.
He confirmed the long-term ardor of the future war.
Beyond the tracks in Culiacán, where hundreds of exposed families live in looted shacks, one man, who asked to remain anonymous, said he used to hear his parents and grandparents talk about the old guard with respect.
“El Chapo and El Mayo said, women and children, innocent – they cannot be touched. But now they are violently recruiting people who don’t even know how to use a gun, even kids.
“Before, there was more of an observation of simple life,” he said, bitterly, but resignedly. “Now they just want to win the war, no matter what.”
In another neighborhood, where a block was surrounded by soldiers ready to prepare for a safe house, a group of women said some boys were hanging around smoking weed, but they disappeared 10 days ago.
The women, all the mothers, began to talk about the sons of their friends and relatives who had turned the dead.
“No such good narco,” one of them interjected, adding that his son was addicted to drugs. “How should I deal with the child’s poisoning?”
“Let them go to the country, kill themselves there, and leave us in peace,” he said, while the others murmured their assent.
“I feel anger today, the demand that once and for all it is clear that there is no 1 crime against the public,” said Calderón.
“Before it was not so clear,” he added. “El Chapo at Christmas or El Mayo would deliver pieces of food to fix the school and throw a party. It was kind of marketable to get close to the community. After this I don’t think it will be so easy.
However, the new generation did not give up on it. Apart from the killing, it’s like a good narco propaganda war.
Near the Christmas Market, a man said a small plane flew overhead dropping leaflets, and the El Mayo party went around handing out business cards with numbers on them, saying to call them if anyone tried to extort them.
He began to reminisce about the old days, before there was such a thing about repeating money – then he laughed.
“There is nothing that I can actually call a number.”