Sinaloa cartel

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States dominated by the Sinaloa cartel in 2008 (purple)

Known as the Sinaloa Cartel ( Spanish: Cártel de Sinaloa ) is the Mexican criminal organization that conducts business in the drug trade , money laundering and human trafficking. The cartel is based in Culiacan , Sinaloa , but operates in more than 20 Mexican states. The cartel is also known as the Guzmán Loera Organization and the Pacific Cartel . The cartel was also called "Federación". This “federación” dissolved when the Beltrán Leyva brothers split off from the Sinaloa cartel.

The Sinaloa cartel is said to have been active in several Latin American countries in 2010. It should be able to count on the support of Mexican authorities at local, regional and federal level.

In 2010, the United States Intelligence Community described the Sinaloa Cartel as "the most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world". According to the United States Attorney General , the Sinaloa Cartel was responsible for importing and distributing over 200 tons of cocaine between 1990 and 2008.

At the beginning of the 2010s, the criminal syndicate from Sinaloa gained increasing influence and is now again traded as the most powerful cartel in Mexico.

history

The drug trade in Mexico became more professional during the 1980s. While in the past predominantly Colombian cartels, such as the Cali cartel and the Medellín cartel , ensured that cocaine, marijuana and heroin reached the USA, a cartel began to form in the 1980s with its base in Guadalajara , Jalisco . The former police officer Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo founded the Guadalajara cartel together with his partners Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo and Rafael Caro Quintero , which in its heyday in the 1980s dominated the entire cocaine trade in Mexico.

Gallardo developed a new distribution model for cocaine in the mid-1980s, but thereby surrendered much of its power. He divided his area of ​​influence into six new districts:

region Responsible drug lord
Guadalajara Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo
Sinaloa Ismael Zambada García (El Mayo) after El Chapo was arrested
Tijuana Arellano Felix brothers
Ciudad Juarez Amado Carrillo Fuentes
Sonora Miguel Caro Quintero
Tamaulipas Juan Garcia Abrego

At the time, the Guadalajara cartel was arguably the most influential and powerful drug cartel in Mexican history. But after Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo was arrested in 1989, disputes over jurisdiction broke out. Since each of the five remaining drug lords wanted to secure increased influence that ultimately broke the Federacion, and it led to several small groups that places exist today: Sinaloa cartel, Gulf Cartel , Tijuana Cartel , Juárez Cartel .

At the beginning of the 1990s, the Sinaloa cartel developed into the most influential cartel in Mexico, despite numerous battles with the warring cartels. That changed as the fighting intensified. The smuggling route via Tijuana to California was particularly hotly contested. There were more and more clashes with the Arellano-Felix brothers from the Tijuana cartel. El Chapo often narrowly escaped attacks that could be traced back to the Tijuana cartel. He stayed in one and the same place for long periods of time less and less. He mostly used hotel rooms, often only staying two nights in order not to be found. His escape ended in 1993 in Guatemala , where he was captured and then taken to the maximum security Puente Grande prison in Jalisco.

As a result, the Sinaloa cartel was visibly weakened, even if El Chapo was able to continue the fortunes of the prison cell. After its legendary outbreak in 2001, the Sinaloa cartel regained its former strength. The cartel's power grew particularly strongly during Felipe Calderón's tenure (2006–2012). In the recent past it has again been called the strongest cartel in Mexico. While other cartels, particularly the Gulf cartel and Los Zetas , had brutal clashes with the Mexican armed forces , the Sinaloa cartel was largely spared. This led to the presumption of a secret collaboration agreement between President Felipe Calderón and the leaders of the Sinaloa cartel. The US Drug Enforcement Administration was also assumed to cooperate with the cartel.

On July 30, 2010, Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel , one of the three leaders of the cartel, was killed by Mexican military personnel. It was the Mexican Army's greatest success in fighting the Sinaloa cartel since the start of the drug war .

On September 25, 2010, Margarito Soto Reyes, the alleged successor to Ignacio Coronel, was arrested by the police.

On May 26, 2011, according to government information, members of the Sinaloa cartel engaged in a one-hour gun battle with members of the Zetas from moving cars in Ruiz on the main road from Tepic to Mazatlán , in which 29 people, some of them wearing riot suits and protective vests, were killed were. The police confiscated 14 vehicles, including two armored vehicles, as well as rifles, ammunition and hand grenades.

El Chapo was arrested on February 22, 2014. His long-time confidante Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada was now considered to be his successor. A week after Guzmán's arrest, several thousand supporters demonstrated across the country for the release of the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel. However, on July 11, 2015, El Chapo broke out of prison for the second time. After six months of escape, he was arrested on January 8, 2016 by Mexican marines in Los Mochis , together with his security chief, Jorge Iván Gastélum Ávila (aka "El Cholo"), and transferred to the USA on January 19, 2017.

Dámaso López Núñez, known as "El Licenciado" ("The Academician"), a long-time companion and advisor to El Chapo, who was arrested by the Mexican military in May 2017, established himself as the alleged new cartel leader and successor to El Chapo in a power struggle in 2016/17 . Some security experts suspect that he was behind the kidnapping of El Chapo's sons in August 2016 and that he was allied with the Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) cartel to assert himself against the Guzmán family's camp, which did not accept him. The cartel between supporters and opponents of the El Chapos family has been said to have been split since 2015. Between the beginning of the year and May 2017, clashes between the faction of El Licenciado and his son "Mini Lic" on the one hand and El Chapo's brother and sons on the other resulted in over 140 lives, especially on the Pacific coast of Mexico.

See also

Web links

Commons : Sinaloa Cartel  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolf-Dieter Vogel: Even more have to die. In: the daily newspaper . October 22, 2010, accessed on October 22, 2010 (interview with Edgardo Buscaglia, lawyer and economist).
  2. ↑ US Intelligence Says Sinaloa Cartel Has Won Battle for Ciudad Juarez Drug Routes, In: CNSNews.com, April 9, 2010
  3. ↑ "US charges 10 accused Mexican drug cartel leaders", In: Washington Post 20 August 2009
  4. ↑ US report: Sinaloa becomes Mexico's most powerful drug cartel, In: Spiegel online, January 6, 2011
  5. ↑ a b c d Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords And Their Godfathers, Anabel Hernandez, ISBN 978-1-78168-073-5
  6. ↑ Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords And Their Godfathers, Anabel Hernandez, ISBN 978-1-78168-073-5 , pp. 35 ff
  7. ↑ El Chapo: The Hunt for Mexico's Most Powerful Drug Baron, Malcom Beith, ISBN 978-3-453-67641-1
  8. ↑ US report: Sinaloa becomes Mexico's most powerful drug cartel, In: Spiegel online, January 6, 2011
  9. ↑ Mexican Mafia: US anti-drug agency reportedly cooperating with the Sinaloa cartel , In: Spiegel online, January 15, 2014
  10. ↑ Mexico's army kills powerful drug lord. Spiegel Online , July 30, 2010, accessed August 1, 2010 .
  11. ↑ Another leading drug lord arrested in Mexico. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , September 26, 2010.
  12. ↑ Bloody skirmish between gangster gangs in Mexico. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . May 27, 2011, accessed May 27, 2011 .
  13. ↑ Mexico celebrates arrest of drug lord «El Chapo». Süddeutsche Zeitung , February 23, 2014, accessed on August 26, 2020 .
  14. ↑ The next El Capo: Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada believed to have taken over notorious Sinaloa drug cartel after arrest of former boss
  15. ↑ Support for "Chapo" Guzmán: Why a mass murderer is revered as a benefactor
  16. ↑ "El Chapo": Mexican drug lord broke out of prison again. In: Zeit Online. July 12, 2015, accessed July 12, 2015 .
  17. ↑ Andreas Fink: El Chapo: The short one is in the kittchen. Die Presse, January 9, 2016, accessed January 10, 2016 .
  18. ↑ SPIEGEL ONLINE, Hamburg Germany: Drug boss: Mexico delivers "El Chapo" to the USA - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Panorama. Retrieved January 20, 2017 .
  19. ↑ Anabel Hernández : The Successor to El Chapo: Dámaso López Núñez. In: InSight Crime , March 13, 2017, quoted by June S. Beittel: Mexico: Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Organizations (PDF; 1.3 MB). CRS Report 7-5700, p. 10 and Note 39.
  20. ↑ Contender for "Chapos" throne goes military into the net. In: FAZ , May 3, 2017, accessed on June 7, 2019.