Chapos vs. Mayos: The Fratricidal War

The funereal war that is bleeding Sinaloa today continues its course. It’s already public knowledge that the breaking point was the arrest of Mayo Zambada in July of 2024. His extradition and detention on U.S. soil stemmed from a betrayal by Los Chapitos. 

This was what finally broke the non-aggression pact, which definitively broke the non-aggression pact that kept one of the most powerful cartels in the world cohesive. This event not only decapitated the old guard of the organization, but also provoked a bloody dispute, turning the historic alliance into an unprecedented armed confrontation, which today takes a devastating toll on lives and resources. 

To date, the war has plunged the entity into the most severe security crisis in its recent history. Official statistics and analyses by civil society organizations paint a devastating picture. 

The prolonged conflict has resulted in approximately 3,000 deaths and more than 3,000 enforced disappearances. This wave of violence has permanently altered the daily lives of the citizens of Sinaloa. To this are added the financial repercussions at the state level that are catastrophic.

According to the Mexico Peace Index, the global economic impact of violence in Sinaloa is estimated at 170.5 billion pesos. The prolonged insecurity has led to the bankruptcy of more than 4,500 local businesses and companies. 

This trade paralysis has already resulted in the loss of more than 30,000 direct jobs, suffocating supply chains and driving away investment in key sectors such as agriculture, commerce, and tourism.

But citizens are not the only ones who have faced these losses. For the factions in dispute, maintaining a high-intensity and prolonged war of attrition represents an enormous financial burden. Specialists in criminal economies identify three main fronts where the budgets of both groups are running out. 

Maintaining mercenary armies requires the payment of fixed salaries, combat bonuses, and permanent allowances. Furthermore, the high casualty rate on the battlefront forces both factions to invest millions of dollars in constant recruitment, express training, and tactical equipment for new combatants to avoid losing ground.

As the presence of the armed forces in the state increases, the cartels are forced to increase the payments of bribes. Maintaining institutional protection networks for bribery and information leakage in the midst of a federal operation requires massive flows of cash to ensure the inaction of local authorities or buy loyalty within the police forces.

This self-destruction of financial and human capital weakens its global structures against external rivals. By allocating a large part of their liquid resources to defend their own territory instead of expanding their logistics routes, organizations see their operational capacity at an international level diminished, turning this dispute into a financial trap where both sides lose market power.

Regarding who has the greatest advantages at the moment in the military field, intelligence agencies describe a bloody technical tie where neither faction has managed to impose itself decisively. 

According to cartographic reports and tactical analysis published by Infobae Mexico and Inside Crime, the Mayiza faction, led by Ismael Zambada Ziqueros, El Mayito Flaco, has consolidated a decisive territorial and strategic advantage.

In contrast, the Chapitos faction faces a marked structural decline, financial asphyxiation, and the collapse of its political protection networks. Alongside the armed offensive, reports from the US Department of the Treasury and the Department of Justice document that financial sanctions against money laundering networks in Culiacan have substantially reduced their economic flow.

The systematic blocking of their front companies and the tracking of cryptocurrency operations have suffocated the ability of the Chapitos to finance a prolonged state of war. 

The departure of Rocha Moya from the governorship after accusations by US prosecutors for conspiracy and protection of the Chapitos, added to the guilty pleas and collaboration agreements of Ovidio Guzmán with the US justice system, has completely fractured the networks of impunity that operationally shielded the criminal group in Sinaloan territory.

In the regional operational map, special coverages from Milenio Diario and El País detail that the militia maintains a permanent offensive of attrition around Culiacán. The Zambada gang has taken advantage of its logistical advantage to bring closer the key corridor Mazatlán, Concordia, Rosario, Escuinapa, and have cut strategic supply routes of weapons and chemical precursors, isolating the Chapitos in their urban strongholds, according to the aforementioned media. 

In this way, Sinaloa will continue to pay the highest cost in lives within a scenario where the self-destruction of the Sinaloa cartel only paves the way for an inevitable and violent reconfiguration of the map of organized crime in Mexico.

Source: Grillonautas 2