Violence in Sinaloa, Mexico is getting worse

Since cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada was arrested in El Paso, Texas on July 25, 2024, Sinaloa, Mexico, where he lived, has experienced a new wave of violence. El Mayo said he was kidnapped on his way to a meeting with the governor of Sinaloa, adding fuel to accusations that Mexico’s top politicians have direct ties to cartel leaders. While Sinaloa Gov. Ruben Rocha, a close ally of former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, denied claims that he planned to meet with El Mayo before his arrest, he struggled to deny claims that he had friendly relations with Sinaloa authorities. top organized crime figures. In the weeks since El Mayo’s arrest, Sinaloa has experienced a new phase of cartel fighting. Since El Mayo’s capture, more than 260 people have been killed in the city of Culiacan in Sinaloa.

During a recent podcast interview, historian Benjamin Smith, author of Drug: The Real Story of the Mexican Drug Trade said El Mayo’s arrest destabilized the dynamics of the underworld in Sinaloa, a state in northwestern Mexico that has long served as a base for the Sinaloa cartel of the same name.

“El Mayo has a very long history of drug trafficking, going back almost five decades. He was a major exporter of cocaine, but over the last decade or so, the importance of El Mayo… was that he was a key intermediary between the Sinaloa Cartel and the federal and state governments,” Smith explained.

“Now he is more of a political figure. This is partly why people are worried about what will happen in Sinaloa,” he added.

The chaos in Sinaloa has become a troubling code for President López Obrador’s tenure in power and has provided new fuel for criticism of López Obrador’s strategy to combat the Mexican cartels.

When it comes to fighting organized crime, “a lot of people would give (Lopez Obrador) a straight A. His sexenio has seen the country’s highest-ever murder rate (and) criminal gangs are extorting new industries from avocado farmers to chicken farmers,” Smith said.

Mexico is currently recognized as the world’s hottest spot for extortion and truck theft.

“The cartels are fragmented into smaller groups, and many of them do not have the capacity to engage in transnational drug smuggling. They resort to extortion, kidnapping, land theft and car theft,” Smith said.

The current fragmentation of Mexico’s criminal gangs could create new problems for Mexico’s political leaders, who want to try to reduce violence by negotiating with cartel leaders rather than investigating and arresting criminals.

“Lopez Obrador doesn’t really know how to deal with this (new criminal dynamics). He knows how to negotiate with people from big cartels like El Mayo. He (was) less good at managing the small gangs that run much of Mexico,” Smith said.

Continued violence in Sinaloa marks an inauspicious start to President Claudia Sheinbaum’s term. Sheinbaum vowed to try to improve security by improving interagency cooperation and investing in police intelligence.

But in 2022, for example, almost 96 percent of all crimes reported in Sinaloa were never solved. Unfortunately, the trend of impunity in Sinaloa is not an isolated problem. The level of impunity in Sinaloa is similar to the overall level of impunity throughout Mexico.

“People involved in organized crime enjoy almost complete impunity (and) only about 4 percent of violent crimes are ever prosecuted. If you want to find one solution, you have to rethink the court system,” Smith said.

Read the full conversation with historian Benjamin Smith here.