El Chapo Intervened In One Of The First Conflicts Between ‘Los Chapitos’ And ‘Mini Dic’.

Mica for cartelinsider.com

With Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán in prison, his eldest sons – Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar – took over the drug empire known as the Sinaloa Cartel. ‘Los Chapitos’ initially did not want to assume responsibility for their father’s multimillion-dollar business, but they soon changed their minds after realizing the huge profits from drug trafficking, as journalist Anabel Hernández García reveals in her new book The Secret History: AMLO and the Sinaloa Cartel (Grijalbo, 2024).

“With the millions of dollars obtained from drug dealing, the excessive ambition of ‘Los Chapitos’ was born. They went from considering abdicating their father’s kingdom to wanting everything. ‘Mini Lic’ vividly remembers how their insatiable appetite developed,” reads the beginning of Chapter 4: How the fentanyl pandemic was forged, which collects the testimony of Dámaso López Serrano, son of Dámaso López Núñez ‘El Licenciado’, who was also one of the main leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel and the compadre of ‘El Chapo’ himself, as he was the godfather of Emaly and María Joaquina, the daughters that the kingpin had in 2011 with model Emma Coronel.

The ‘Mini Lic’, son of who was believed to be the heir to the empire forged by ‘El Chapo’, told the journalist that problems with ‘Los Chapitos’ began in 2014, as they controlled Culiacán but soon wanted to expand ‘the hard way’ to cities controlled by ‘Los Dámaso’ like Los Mochis and Mazatlán, and to Guamúchil, under the command of Jorge Iván Gastélum ‘Cholo’, one of the main lieutenants of Guzmán Loera.

The problems began in 2014. Why? Because they not only got into drug dealing. They also started with slot machines, where you put in 5 pesos, 20 pesos, or 50 pesos. They also started selling fake cigarettes. They started charging a fee for prostitution. The sale of pirated DVDs, basically anything that could be profitable. They also started stealing gasoline. So they were no longer making five million a week. They were making a lot, a lot, a lot! And they wanted to enter our territory,” recounted Lopez Serrano.

The appearance of ‘Los Chapitos’ in the territories of ‘Los Dámaso’ greatly angered ‘Mini Lic’ and he decided to confront Iván Archivaldo when he introduced slot machines into his areas with the permission of his own father, ‘El Licenciado’.

“My father always used to say yes to everything. I told him, ‘No, forget it! Those are our territories.’ Iván said, ‘No, but… No!’ (…) They did it anyway, they put machines on our land. I removed them. I sent trucks, and full, and like that… three thousand machines, two thousand… I removed them all! And they sent armed people, not to me, but to my gunmen,” says Dámaso López Serrano, who had already anticipated that his partners would have a violent reaction and instructed his people beforehand to defend their territory if they noticed the presence of armed men from the Guzmán.

This first altercation reached the ears of ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, who at that time was imprisoned in the maximum security prison of El Altiplano, in Almoloya, State of Mexico. He then communicated with ‘El Mini Lic’, who had been his godfather at his wedding, and asked him kindly to return the machines to his sons as they did not belong to them but to people who paid them rent or a ‘protection fee’.

The son of ‘El Licenciado’ was convinced by his godfather and returned what had been seized, but not without warning Iván not to get involved again in his territories. But Iván ignored the warning and soon smuggled his pirate cigarettes, so López Serrano told him, “I know you, I know how you are. My dad may let you slide, but I won’t. You’re not going to get in. Any car that comes in, I’ll destroy it.”

Soon, ‘Los Chapitos’ entered the drug dealing business in the territories of Dámaso and his son. They threatened drug sellers and forced them to only sell their product and then give them 80 percent of the profits while the locals only kept 20 percent. Amongst those affected, there were even family members of Ismael ‘Mayo’ Zambada, the other leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, but he was not bothered by the fact that the ‘Chapo’s’ sons were selling drugs locally. “He started to bend his hands,” said ‘Mini Lic’.

Dámaso Jr. told his father that if Iván continued to expand in that manner, the only thing that would happen was that they would go from being partners to killing each other. This did not take long to occur, as on February 4, 2017, war broke out between the two groups after a supposed attack against ‘Los Chapitos’ and the people of ‘Mayo’ Zambada, attributed to ‘Los Dámaso’. However, they denied involvement, according to a text by the late journalist Javier Valdez and published in Ríodoce on February 20.

That month, the war between ‘Los Dámaso’ and ‘Los Chapitos’ erupted (…) In reality, nothing triggered that war, but I can tell you that it was out of envy. They envied us because Ivan had already said in 2010 that he wanted to kill my father. Since 2010! And before that, in 2009, Ivan said that my father was stealing from ‘El Chapo’. So I tell you, that came from way back, these are things that had been accumulating,” concludes the testimony of ‘Mini Lic’ for Anabel Hernandez’s book.

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Mica

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