The Funerals of ‘Chapo’s’ Mother And The Fall of ‘El Mayo’ Shattered The Sinaloa Cartel

After sharing a pork roast, Aureliano Guzman Loera, Los Chapitos, Los Zambada and other factions turned their guns on each other. Now disloyalty walks in the Golden Triangle.

Mexico didn’t know it on December 11, 2023, but something began to break forever within the most powerful family in the Sierra Madre Occidental. The Sinaloa Cartel began to die the afternoon Maria Consuelo Loera Perez, the matriarch, passed away. Without her, it was impossible to stop an internal war for control of the most powerful mafia. And that coup would raise disputes and deep wounds throughout the country.

Twenty years ago, Mexico’s criminal landscape was different. There were only seven drug cartels: the Juarez cartel, the Tijuana cartel, La Empresa (later Familia Michoacana), the Milenio cartel (later the Jalisco New Generation Cartel), the Gulf cartel with its feared Zetas, the Oaxaca cartel (origin of the now extinct Isthmus cartel) and the best known of all, the Sinaloa cartel.

A handful of criminals who, among their codes of honor, placed family unity above all else: betrayal from within was unthinkable. They had vertical control, did not allow internal rebellions and maintained direct communication with local officials who guaranteed compliance with the pacts.

It was such a distant past that the national vocabulary did not include the words “plaza boss”, “pozoleado”, “tableado”, “narcofosa”, “encobijado” or even those who could not be located were called “ausentes” and not “desaparecidos”.

Each of these cartels had among its main characteristics family or couple leaderships that were well established and indisputable. The heads of organized crime were the Carrillo Fuentes brothers, the Arellano Felix clan, Nazario Moreno, the Valencia relatives, the Cardenas Guillen brothers, the Diaz Parada family and the duo of Joaquin El Chapo Guzman and Mario El Mayo Zambada.

Two decades later, Mexico no longer has seven cartels, but between 150 and 200 cells, according to the PPData Platform. We have learned to call these disorganized crime groups that have the same origin, but now fight among themselves and against third parties causing a bloodbath, “armed wings”.

Now they are called Los Ardillos, Los Mojarras, Los Tequileros or Los Mazatlecos. Some have folkloric names like Los Estúpidos; others have fearsome names like La Tropa del Infierno. Some take advantage of the situation, Comando Coronavirus, and others take foreign influences, Los Talibanes. There are also La Barredora, Los Sombra and Los Tanzanios. They have weak leaderships, betrayals on all sides and are as violent as they are ephemeral. Some are shards of broken glass.

The cartels, in theory, could be managed. That is why they were designed as monolithic structures. But not the armed wimgs: chaos is their characteristic. And they will be the future headache of the next six-year term, the one headed by Claudia Sheinbaum.

The Day Everything Changed in the Sinaloa Cartel

In a funeral that lasted two days, 67-year-old Aureliano Guzman Loera ordered armed men to guard the perimeter of La Tuna, in Badiraguato, Sinaloa. Only authorized persons could reach the most notable house in the town, 100 meters from the church, to participate in the burial of his mother and the most famous inhabitant of the area, Doña Consuelo Loera, Chapo’s mother, founder of the Sinaloa Cartel.

A day earlier, doña Consuelo had passed away from the after-effects of covid-19 at the age of 94. She died loved by her community and admired for her ability to learn by heart almost all the biblical passages, according to the inhabitants of the sierra, but above all she was respected for her natural leadership: her strong character used to be the glue that brought a divided family together.

When El Chapo was arrested and extradited in 2017 to the United States, she alone had the authority to quell the wars that had erupted between her grandsons Los Chapitos and her son Aureliano.

In addition, because she had known him since he was very young, she influenced the mind of El Mayo Zambada, who is now detained in the United States. And she could align the other factions by simply asking for it, as when she achieved a truce between the Arellano Felix and her son to avoid more deaths of priests, such as that of Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo in 1993. But her death would change that control of forces, with her absence the last pin that held a handful of fragile alliances would fall.

The first sign was given at that funeral in the Golden Triangle, the mountain range shared by Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Durango, the so-called “cradle of drug trafficking”. The story goes that Aureliano took control of the funeral and displaced his nephews from his organization. So much so that the pork roast that was served, the red roses scattered along the roads of the town, and the guests passed only through the filter of Aureliano, also nicknamed El Guano, and his hired killers. A seemingly harmless detail, but one that marked a milestone.

The day that the key piece of the cartel fell.

Seven months and 13 days after the funeral, her grandson Joaquín Guzmán López, whom doña Consuelo nicknamed Mi Güero Moreno, was arrested by US authorities. Alongside him was drug trafficking legend El Mayo Zambada, who descended from a Beechcraft King Air aircraft in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, ending more than seventy years of life at large. The double arrest unleashed a wave of hypotheses: “agreed surrender”, “inevitable surrender”, “extraordinary apprehension” or “high treason”. All four are as possible as they are implausible.

The last version is the story maintained by the major capo’s lawyer, Frank Perez: that Guzman Lopez took advantage of his “godfather’s” weak health, as they called each other, to kidnap and torture him in order to take him to the United States, where they were willing to pay a 15 million dollar bounty on his head. If true, it would be the most recent plot in the history of the Sinaloa Cartel.

In fact, it would be the sixth and last conspiracy – military sources have told MILENIO – since the founding of the criminal group between 1985 and 1989 after the arrest of Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, El Jefe de Jefes, who unleashed the fury of the DEA for ordering the kidnapping and murder of anti-narcotics agent Enrique Kiki Camarena.

El Chapo and El Mayo had managed to maintain a unified structure around their creation despite the plots and breaks against the Arellano Felix in 1993, against the Carrillo Fuentes in 2004, against the Beltran Leyva in 2008, against Rafael Caro Quintero in 2004 and even against Damaso Lopez in 2017 after the extradition of the trafficker also nicknamed 701. But contrary to the saying, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, with each dagger in the back the Sinaloa Cartel was losing vigor.

By the winter of 2023, the Cartel was as solid as the shreds of a leash that once withstood the toughest of strains. The Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) identified at least four splits and one last hope for unification: that one of those groups that were once allies would get the others to recognize it as the leader. That is, to return to being a cartel and not a swarm of disorganized armed groups.

That hope evaporated last July 25, when El Mayo was arrested. When he stepped on U.S. soil, a landmine was set off that blew the cartel into a thousand pieces.

Everyone wanted the Sinaloa Cartel’s inheritance.

In the Army’s drawer of secrets, a diagnosis that the hacker group Guacamaya Leaks extracted and brought to light a couple of years ago was under lock and key: without El Chapo, the Sinaloa Cartel has suffered since 2019 an internal war that threatens to finish them off.

According to the documents, Los Chapitos claimed that the criminal structure built by their father was theirs by inheritance; El Guano believed the same, due to the blood relationship of being brothers; El Mayo assured that the leadership was his due to seniority and being a co-founder; while other groups, such as the Caborca Cartel or Los Salazar claimed their local fiefdoms for the profits generated by the trafficking of drugs, weapons and undocumented migrants.

Each splinter strengthened its own armies to fight for that coveted position: Los Flechas MZ, Los Rusos, Los Pelones, Los Gorilas, Los Delta, Los Mata Salas, the Guano Cartel, La Plaza and more emerged. And where people used to boast that their municipalities were peaceful because only the Sinaloa Cartel “governed” them and no one else was fighting for their territories, suddenly they found themselves caught in the middle of gun battles.

Each split added one or more lines to the list of “armed branches” that we know today. They have the same origins, but they are at odds with each other. And with each group going its own way, any disloyalty will break the cartel forever.

That flimsy reality began last winter. A respiratory arrest ended Consuelo Loera’s life and with her last exhalation went the possibility for family members and old allies to sit down peacefully, around her famous plate of machaca, to settle their differences.

Since that funeral, the Chapitos, Mayos, Dámasos, Guanos, Salazares, Caborcas and others have been united only by their denomination of origin, that of the Sinaloa Cartel. As united as Cain and Abel, even though they shared the same cradle. Mexico didn’t know it on December 11 of last year, but in La Tuna national history was being made: the Sinaloa Cartel began to die to become a trail of small pieces.

Source: Milenio