At the epicenter of Mexico’s drug trade, a deadly power struggle brings a city to a standstill

CULIACÁN, Mexico — In this city built from the spoils of Mexico’s richest drug trafficking empire, they’re calling it the “narco-pandemic” — not a virus but a deadly reckoning within the Sinaloa cartel that has shuttered businesses and schools. empty and the streets almost deserted.

Even the glitzy bars, high-end car dealerships and plastic surgery boutiques that cater to cartel lieutenants and their entourages are largely closed.

Driving around in the dark is a lonely experience, the eerie consequence of what many call a “voluntary” curfew.

“Right now there is a psychosis everywhere in Culiacán,” said Donaciano García, a trumpeter and leader of a band who has been desperate for work since the cantinas and dance halls closed. “It’s terrible. Nobody wants to leave their house. It’s worse than the pandemic.”

More than 140 people have been killed in the past month, many of whom have been dumped on the streets.

Behind the chaos lie two rival factions of the Sinaloa Cartel. One is loyal to Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the 76-year-old cartel co-founder who was recently captured in the United States after what he calls his kidnapping in Culiacán. The other pledges allegiance to los chapitos, the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Zambada’s ex-partner, who is now serving a life term in the United States.

Both sides can call on thousands of heavily armed gunmen. In a warning last month against travel to Sinaloa, the U.S. government cited “vehicle thefts, gunfire, security force operations, roadblocks, burning vehicles and closed roads.”

“We don’t call it a war – not yet anyway,” said Ismael Bojórquez, editor of the weekly Riodoce, whose co-founder Javier Valdez was murdered in 2017 – a killing linked to his fearless reporting. “But no one knows where this will lead.”

On September 29, hundreds of protesters emerged from their homes for several hours and marched through downtown behind a banner promising, “We will reclaim our streets!”

Every day brings new shootings and murders.

“I was cooking on the stove in my apartment when I heard the shots,” said Waldina Quintero, a housekeeper whose apartment complex in the Tres Ríos neighborhood became a fighting zone on September 21 when police cornered suspects there.

Quintero hid in a closet for two hours and listened to gunfire and what sounded like bombs – possibly grenades or tear gas canisters.

Finally, she appeared in a vision on the battlefield: clouds of smoke, blood-stained stairs and blackened walls riddled with dozens of bullets.

“I just feel lucky to be alive,” Quintero said. “It’s like I’ve been born again.”

Her neighbor Juan Carlos Sánchez was one of three men shot dead at the scene. His family said the 34-year-old city worker was an innocent man who was killed while trying to evacuate his wife and 8-month-old daughter, both of whom survived.

Authorities did not release details but said Sánchez may have been an “additional” victim.

Until the 1980s, the state of Sinaloa was best known for its agricultural and fishing industries, along with the distinctive seaside resort of Mazatlán.

Then a crackdown by U.S. and Mexican authorities broke up the country’s largest criminal organization—the Guadalajara Cartel—and El Chapo and El Mayo ultimately gained control of Sinaloa’s marijuana and heroin trade.

The cartel they created soon pioneered Colombian gangs to transport cocaine into the United States, eventually expanding into methamphetamine and fentanyl, the synthetic opioid responsible for tens of thousands of American deaths.

Sinaloa became the epicenter of the Mexican drug trade, which is now a multibillion-dollar global enterprise.

Much of the profits flowed into the state capital of Culiacán, a city of a million people where gangsters have enjoyed a certain respect for their contributions to the economy, public works and charities – and for curbing street crime.

The Jardines de Humaya cemetery, the final resting place of many racketeers and their families, features multi-story mausoleums, balconies, air conditioning, and ornate chapels.

Although the drug trade runs smoothest when there is peace, occasional outbreaks of deadly violence due to cartel fighting have long been a way of life here, earning the city a treacherous reputation.

“So what do you eat in Sinaloa, besides bullets?” A restaurant owner, Miguel Taniyama, said he was once asked to travel elsewhere in Mexico.

“We have become a society deeply perverted by narco-money,” he said recently. “We are paying the price of decades of living with the culture of los narcos.”

The latest battle for power within the cartel took a surprising turn on July 25. That afternoon, a private twin-engine plane landed at a rural airport outside El Paso, carrying Zambada and his godson, Joaquín Guzmán López, a leader of the los chapitos. . US authorities quickly arrested both.

In a letter distributed by his lawyer, Zambada said his godson’s accomplices kidnapped him at a resort in the suburb of Culiacán, tied him up, put him in the bed of a pickup truck, took him to an airstrip and put him in the plane forced.

On the day of the alleged kidnapping, former Culiacán mayor Héctor Melesio Cuén – who was reportedly close to Zambada – was shot dead in a still-mysterious killing spree that linked Zambada to his kidnapping.

Over the next few weeks, when the cartel bosses apparently knew what to do, life in Culiacán seemed to go on as usual. Then on September 9, nine people were found shot dead, bodies scattered on streets and roads. The murders have not decreased.

In addition to the rising number of murders – the total last month almost tripled compared to September 2023 – citizen groups have reported that more than 100 people have ‘disappeared’.

“There are many more people missing than what the government is saying,” said María Isabel Cruz, who heads a collective here that searches for bodies.

Most of the dead remain anonymous, believed to be foot soldiers from one side or the other in the bloodshed. Some were probably innocents caught in the crossfire.

In some cases, killers have sent messages to their rivals by decorating remains with cowboy hats – as Zambada was known for wearing – or with pizzas, a symbol of los chapitos.

In the days after July 25, vandals destroyed the ornate family crypt outside Culiacán of an imprisoned former cartel figure, Dámaso López Nuñez. While “El Licenciado” was a close associate of El Chapo, he feuded with los chapitos, who are widely blamed for the desecration of the ancestral grave here.

On September 27, police found an abandoned van, the exterior of which had been spray-painted with the salutation: ‘Welcome to Culiacán.’ Inside, authorities discovered the bodies of six shooting victims. It was unclear to whom the welcome message was addressed.

The government has sent more than 1,000 additional soldiers since July 25 to help keep the peace in Sinaloa, bringing the state total to more than 4,500 troops. Motorcycle lookouts on cartels’ payrolls monitor military and police convoys – with pickup trucks with mounted machine guns – regularly circulating through the streets.

No one seems confident that the reinforcements can curb the violence. The region’s top military commander, General Jesús Leana Ojeda, stated that it was up to the cartels to stop the chaos, and not the military.

“It depends on them,” he told reporters. “They are the ones carrying out attacks and costing lives.”

It remains to be seen how Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office last Tuesday, will tackle the devastation. But former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, her predecessor and mentor, accused the press of “sensationalizing” the Sinaloa fight. He also blamed the United States for initiating the recent events.

U.S. officials “conducted that operation” to take Zambada, he told reporters, calling it “completely illegal.”

Ken Salazar, the US ambassador to Mexico City, has tried to distance Washington from the affair and its deadly consequences. He has said that the plane used to transport Zambada from Culiacán was not a U.S. government aircraft — and that the pilot was not a U.S. citizen nor on the U.S. payroll.

Here in Culiacán, few seem to doubt that American officials orchestrated the mission.

“I doubt we’ll ever know what really happened in this case until the Americans turn it into a television series,” said Taniyama, the restaurant owner.

His restaurant is one of the few still open. According to the Chamber of Commerce, the closures are causing losses of at least $25 million a day.

“People in Culiacán are used to living with bullets and violence,” said Óscar Sánchez, head of an association of vendors. “But what they call betrayal within the group causes problems that could escalate into something worse than anything we’ve ever experienced before.”

Across the city, parents have hung banners at schools declaring their children will not return until it is safe.

“I would rather have my children lose a year of school than have to bury them,” said one mother who was too afraid to have her name published.

Photos recently went viral of students crouching under their desks during a police operation on a nearby boulevard, where fleeing suspects threw nails into the street to puncture the tires of National Guard vehicles pursuing them.

Two days later, none of the 266 children attending the primary school showed up.

“It’s sad, but I can understand how the parents feel,” said Rosalva Ramos, the school’s principal. “Hopefully this will be over soon. The violence will be over and this place will come alive again with the presence of children.”

In 2014, some 2,000 Culiacán residents, accompanied by a brass band, marched through the streets to protest the arrest of El Chapo Guzmán and his threatened extradition to the United States. Today, no one enjoys Sinaloa’s legacy of narco-folklore.

“Right now there is a very strong social rejection of what is going on,” said Carlos Ayala, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa. “Sinaloa has a legal economy that is permeated by an illegal economy, but that is very difficult to measure.”

Almost everyone here knows someone involved in the drug trade. But the subject is usually relegated to whispers.

“We have a way to sense it,” Ayala said. “They’re our cousins, neighbors, friends, they’re from the same community. We grew up with them. We went to school with them.”

Special correspondents Aarón Ibarra in Culiacán and Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico City and Times staff writer Keegan Hamilton in San Francisco contributed to this report.