Feuding members of the world’s most-feared fentanyl cartel, reeling from internal war and a crackdown by Mexico and the US, have forged a desperate alliance with a rival gang, threatening to transform the criminal underworld across dozens of countries.
The cartel, the Sinaloa Cartel, has for years run a global empire built through alliances with criminal groups and affiliates from the Americas to New Zealand — reaping millions of dollars from smuggling drugs like fentanyl at a devastating toll, especially in the US.
But the cartel has for months been torn by violence between two main factions, as Mexico, under pressure from the Trump administration, has moved aggressively against it.
In that turmoil, a faction of the cartel led by sons of the drug lord known as El Chapo have allied with an old and powerful adversary, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, according to four people familiar with the matter. The risky move by El Chapo’s sons could ultimately turn the Jalisco cartel into the world’s biggest drug trafficker — a shift that could potentially redraw alliances and power structures across international drug markets, analysts say.
“It’s like if the eastern coast of the US seceded during the Cold War and reached out to the Soviet Union,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, an expert on nonstate armed groups at the Brookings Institution. “This has global implications for how the conflict will unfold and how criminal markets will reorganise.”
Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa State, is a stronghold of the Sinaloa cartel.
Tapping into the financial muscle, fentanyl expertise and international reach of El Chapo’s sons could bolster the Jalisco cartel’s global ambitions and help cement its dominance in Mexico, said Eduardo Guerrero, a security analyst.
“It’s like bringing Messi to your football team,” said Guerrero, referring to the Argentine star Lionel Messi. “Combining both forces will mean having an enormous global production capacity.”
But this reshuffling of Mexico’s criminal map is likely to ignite several major regional wars between competing groups, he added. Burning through resources and suffering casualties, El Chapo’s sons, called Los Chapitos, have sought help from the Jalisco cartel in recent months, handing over territory in exchange for money and weapons.
The alliance, described by two high-level operatives of the Sinaloa Cartel and two people in the US with knowledge of the matter, is itself a sea change. The Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels had waged a bloody, yearslong turf war across Mexico, terrorising millions of people in the process.
The twist in the drug war underscored not just the back-stabbing nature of the cartels’ trade, but also how traffickers are adapting to the Trump administration’s aggressive push against them. The US has put intense pressure on Mexico to curb the flow of fentanyl, and those efforts, combined with the cartel infighting, have pushed two criminal adversaries together.
Mexico has moved aggressively against fentanyl trafficking in recent months, deploying thousands of troops to the Sinaloa Cartel’s home state. The Trump administration has lauded its own efforts, asserting that seizures at the US-Mexico border have dropped 30 per cent.
The war within the Sinaloa Cartel grew out of a fracture between two main groups. Those who follow the sons of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the Sinaloa leader known as El Chapo, are often called Los Chapitos, like their leaders. Their rivals follow Ismael Zambada García, another founder of the Sinaloa Cartel who is known as El Mayo.
A major sign of Los Chapitos’ weak position is that they would give up territory in exchange for support from the Jalisco cartel. Such a trade would severely weaken the Sinaloa Cartel because territory is crucial to secure trafficking routes.
The alliance took months to materialise, as both sides worked to hammer out the details — sometimes meeting in neutral zones outside their disputed territories, and even outside the country, according to the two cartel operatives.The decline of the Sinaloa Cartel has also been accelerated by a recent, concerted effort by the Mexican government to crack down on it, especially in Sinaloa State.
Hundreds of additional Mexican troops have been sent there, and lab raids, arrests and drug seizures make headlines every week.
New York Times News Service