Sinaloa Cartel

The Sinaloa Cartel, often described as the largest and most powerful drug trafficking organization in the Western Hemisphere, is an alliance of some of Mexico’s top capos. The coalition's members operate in concert to protect themselves, relying on connections at the highest levels and corrupting portions of the federal police and military to maintain the upper hand against its rivals.

The cartel’s tentacles stretch from New York City to Buenos Aires and almost every major city in between. It has successfully penetrated government and security forces wherever it operates. It often opts for the bribe over the bullet and alliances over fighting, but it is not above organizing its forces to overrun areas that it wants to control by force. Its central bond is blood: many of its members are related by blood or by marriage. However, the cartel also often acts more like a federation than a tightly knit organization. The core of the group, the Beltran Leyva Organization, split from the rest in 2008. The Sinaloa Cartel has since created new alliances with former enemies in the Gulf Cartel and the Familia Michoacana. More shifts are to be expected as these alliances, even those formed by blood, are tenuous.

Origins
Modus Operandi
Resources

Origins

The state of Sinaloa has long been a center for contraband in Mexico, as well as a home for marijuana and poppy cultivation. Nearly all of the trafficking organizations in Mexico have their origins in the region. They were, in essence, a small group of farming families that lived in rural parts of the state. In the 1960s and 1970s, they moved from the contraband trade into drugs, particularly marijuana. One of the first to traffic marijuana in bulk was Pedro Aviles, who later brought his friend's son, Joaquin Guzman Loera, alias "El Chapo," into the business.

Aviles was killed in a shootout with police in 1978. In the latter part of the 1970s, the various families branched into moving cocaine for Colombian and Central American traffickers, and shifted their operations to Guadalajara, in the state of Jalisco. Their leaders included Rafael Caro Quintero, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo. Working closely with the Honduran Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros, the men came into contact with Colombia's Medellin Cartel. Matta Ballesteros lived part-time in Colombia, where he operated as the main intermediary between Mexican and Colombian traffickers, particularly the Medellin and Guadalajara Cartels. They established the patterns that we see repeated today: movement of bulk shipments of cocaine via airplane and boat to Central America and Mexico, then by land routes into the United States. The boldness of the Mexican traffickers became evident when they murdered undercover Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique Camarena in 1985.

The death of Camarena was the beginning of the end of the Guadalajara Cartel. U.S. pressure forced Mexican authorities to act, and the leaders of the cartel fled. The remaining factions established bases in various parts of Mexico. The Arellano Felix brothers set up camp in Tijuana. The Carrillo Fuentes family moved to Juarez. Guzman and his partner, Hector Luis Palma Salazar, remained in the Sinaloa area.

The battles between these organizations began almost immediately. In November 1992, Guzman sent 40 gunmen to raid a Tijuana Cartel party in Puerto Vallarta, killing nine people. The Tijuana Cartel responded by trying to assassinate Guzman at the Guadalajara airport in 1993, killing a Mexican Cardinal instead. Guzman fled to Guatemala where he was arrested two weeks later. Palma Salazar was arrested in 1995.

The operations remained under the auspices of Joaquin's brother, Arturo Guzman Loera, Ramon Laija Serrano, and Hector, Alfredo and Arturo Beltran Leyva. Guzman maintained some control from prison, passing messages through his lawyers. He escaped in 2001, anticipating a decision to extradite him to the United States. He quickly resumed full control of the organization and assumed legendary status for constantly eluding capture.

Modus Operandi

The Sinaloa Cartel seems to have taken its cue from Colombia's Cali Cartel by establishing strong connections to the political and economic elite in Mexico. The cartel's most powerful contacts are in the National Action Party (PAN), which, according to some sources, help account for their growth in the last decade. The PAN's Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon have launched numerous offensives against trafficking organizations, and some major leaders have been captured, including Osiel Cardenas Guillen, head of the Gulf Cartel, and Benjamin Arellano Felix, head of the Tijuana Cartel. So strong is the perception that the PAN favors Sinaloa that Mexican justice officials issued a press release in 2010 denying it, while the Calderon government produced a video in 2011 with the same intention. But the perception persists.

Business has boomed since Guzman's escape, especially following the incarceration and deaths of the Norte del Valle Cartel and Colombian paramilitary leaders, the two key suppliers of raw cocaine to the Sinaloa factions, and the incarceration and deaths of some of Guzman's Mexican rivals. Indeed, since his escape in 2001, Guzman implemented an ambitious plan. This began with a meeting Guzman organized in Monterrey with, among others, Ismael Zambada, alias "El Mayo," Arturo Beltran Leyva and Juan Jose Esparragoza Moreno, alias "El Azul." The four men are more than trafficking partners, they are of the same blood: cousins by marriage, brothers in law, or otherwise connected via the small communities they come from, which is why their group is often referred to as the "alianza de sangre" (blood alliance).

Together they planned the death in 2004 of Rodolfo Carrillo Fuentes, who was one of the heads of the Juarez Cartel. The group of traffickers, who authorities used to call the "Federation," now operates in 17 Mexican States, numerous cities in the United States, and from Guatemala to Argentina. By some estimates, it operates in as many as 50 countries.

In recent months the Sinaloa has suffered a number of blows, with rival groups eating into their territory. The Zetas may be trying to take Guadalajara, while Sinaloa breakaway groups Gente Nueva and Los Ms are struggling for control of Durango.