Los Chapitos’ Lose 7 of 10 Warlords After Six Months of Warfare

Among the fallen are hitmen leaders, security chiefs, money launderers and crypto-investors. “They have never been so close to extinction,” said the military commander.

The “war in Sinaloa” will be half a year old this March 9 and Los Chapitos are weaker than ever, having lost most of the leaders with whom they began the mission to annihilate the Mayiza mob, after the attack they faced because one of their own, Joaquin junior, took El Mayo Zambada against his will to the United States, where he remains in prison and awaiting a trial that could lead to lethal injection.

DOMINGA, MILENIO’s digital magazine, published last October a list drawn up by the Ministry of National Defense (Defensa) that detailed the 10 most powerful people that Chapo Guzmán’s sons counted on to fight their most important battles.

Those ten were made up of high-ranking criminal leaders with varied tasks, such as security chiefs, leaders of hitmen, money launderers, cryptocurrency investors, arms traffickers or alleged negotiators with the state government headed by Morenista governor Ruben Rocha Moya.

But half a year after September 9 — when the so-called “war in Sinaloa” began — those 10 original ringleaders have been reduced to three. Four are outside the first circle of Los Chapitos due to the direct actions of the strategy headed by Secretary Omar Garcia Harfuch and three others have been killed by rivals, diminished by enemies or are distracted in their own battles.

Only three are still free and operating, although federal government sources assured this newspaper that they are no longer operating with the same intensity due to the siege inflicted by the Mexican government, the United States government and their enemies.

“Los Chapitos are in crisis, the worst they have suffered since their father El Chapo was extradited to the United States. They have never been so close to extinction,” a prominent military officer in Sinaloa who is part of the National Security Strategy told MILENIO.

Two masterminds fall: the financial one and the security one

On February 19, Los Chapitos lost two leaders in less than seven hours in Culiacán, Sinaloa, their stronghold.

At 5:08 p.m. José Angel Cannobio Inzunza, El Güerito, was arrested, and at 11:35 p.m. on the same Wednesday Kevin Alonso Gil Acosta, El 200, was arrested, according to the National Registry of Arrests. The simultaneity was not a coincidence: the double operation was planned at least three months in advance.

The arrest in the afternoon was considered “number 3” in the organization of Los Menores because he was the top administrator of the financial, material and human resources of Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo. If Los Chapitos were a legal company, the position left vacant by Cannobio Inzunza would be that of financial director or CFO, a position that would take months or years for any global organization to fill again.

While the one captured in the night, El 200, was positioned as the head of security for the two free sons of El Chapo Guzmán. In addition to being the leader of bodyguards, Gil Acosta was aware of the addresses of the safe houses, the one who kept the plans of the secret passages and the one who had the keys to the hiding places. His knowledge of the group’s secrets is worth its weight in gold.

“It is a double strategic blow: on the one hand, you hit the head, the top of the criminal organization with the arrest of ‘Güero’ and, on the other, you hit the feet, the social base of the hitmen who see how their bosses, one by one, are falling faster and faster,” says the military consulted for this text.

In the run in Culiacán

Two other leaders lost power almost immediately at the beginning of the “war”: Jorge Humberto Figueroa, La Perris or El 27, handed over the position of head of security of the organization because investigative police and military were very close to apprehending him on September 21, 2024, when he escaped from an operation in the Culiacán sewers. 

Since then, his main subordinates such as El Wero Brayan, El Saavedra, El Dorantes and El Cañas have been arrested and he, ousted, fled the urban areas of the capital of Sinaloa. His position was taken by Juan Luis Castro, El Gavilán, who was killed on January 6 after a confrontation with La Mayiza.

“The other [leader] who has lost power is [Óscar Noé Medina] El Panu –also in charge of security–, due to high-level arrests in his immediate circle, such as his right-hand man, El Piyi (arrested on September 19).”

“He no longer has many allies, there is a reward for him in the United States for four million dollars and in Mexico he is an ‘extraditable’. The Chapitos have taken away important tasks from him, because they already see him as a future detainee,” says the military source.

Hits where it hurts the most

On February 2, a leader was murdered: Mario Alberto Jiménez Castro, El Kastor, one of the main financial operators of Los Chapitos and who funded the “war” through the purchase and sale of crypto currencies and fentanyl trafficking.

The man for whom the United States offered a million dollars in reward was killed by a mysterious shooter who hunted him down in Calimaya, State of Mexico, where he was hiding from the Mayiza mob. 

Three months before his murder, the body of his brother-in-law Jesús Miguel Vibanco, El Jasper, was found in Culiacán amid rumors that both were laundering money with the earnings of influencers, whose “careers” they themselves had inflated to make money through social media.

Four days after El Kastor’s murder, a house in the Villas del Real neighborhood in Culiacán burned with the power of three Molotov cocktails thrown by an armed criminal cell who also fired bullets at the gate. The house belonged to the leader Samuel León Alvarado, El León, who is also worth a million dollars to the anti-drug agency DEA and who is accused of being a trafficker of tons of fentanyl.

The residence was empty because El León is no longer located in Culiacán, according to the most recent government intelligence reports. The simultaneous harassment of the Mexican government and its enemies has forced him to take physical and communicational distance from the faction that he swore to protect with his social base.

Finally, there is the only foreign leader, Jobanis de Jesús Ávila Villadiego, the Colombian Chiquito Malo, leader of the Clan del Golfo, who is apparently distracted from helping his Mexican partners because he is also taking care not to be apprehended or killed: on February 3, he miraculously survived a military operation against him that was reinforced with four armed helicopters, a reconnaissance plane, two fighter-bombers, specialized counter insurgency commandos and snipers.

Chiquito Malo is said to be wounded and hiding, attending to his own alliances and betrayals, distracted from the conflict in Sinaloa.

There are still leaders, but… will they be enough?

Three original leaders are still fighting: Pedrito Loaiza, son of Don Pedro Loaiza, whose main strength is financing Los Chapitos; Juan Pablo Lozano, El Camarón, who also has a million-dollar reward hanging over his head for his ability to traffic drugs and weapons to Sinaloa; and Liborio Núñez Aguirre, El Karateca, another individual worth a million dollars, whose strengths are in his bulging wallet to lend Los Menores many properties in Mexico that serve as hideouts, safe houses, warehouses or decoys.

“We are talking about three characters whose importance is in money, which is very important in a war, but it’s not everything. On the ground, at ground level, Los Chapitos are running out of operators. And they are losing very trustworthy people faster than they are being replaced,” says the military man who has been in Sinaloa for half a year now. Other arrests of important figures for the criminal structure of Chapo Guzmán’s sons – but who are not considered leaders – are El Jando, Iván Archivaldo’s pilot, pointed out as the accomplice who hatched the flight plan with Joaquín Guzmán López to take Mayo Zambada out of Mexico and land him in New Mexico.

There’s also Rogelio Reynoso, alias El Gato, in charge of making bombs and handling explosive drones; Horacio Félix Loaiza, El H, responsible for the payroll of hitmen for this faction of the Pacific Cartel; Juan Manuel Bernal Hernández, El Drácula, head of gunmen, and Hernán Domingo Ojeda, El Mero Mero, uncle of Ovidio Guzmán, plus several others.

“There is optimism among the authorities, I guarantee you that. “It’s been half a year and it’s clear that they (Los Chapitos) are going backwards and we are going forwards,” says the soldier who has participated in at least six high-level arrests. “If the strategy continues like this, they will no longer have leaders. Or the warlords will no longer have their leaders.”

Source: Milenio