The Sinaloa Cartel has entrusted its future to a second generation. Three sons of Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán have taken the reins of the drug trade in Mexico, built an efficient corporate structure and perfected the model their father established 30 years ago to now distribute fentanyl in the United States. This is what the indictment the Justice Department filed this week against El Chapo’s descendants – Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar and Ovidio Guzmán López – reveals that it is considering six counts of charges against them and 25 members of the powerful organization. The document produced by prosecutors outlines a highly organized operation that has capitalized on the cartel’s old structure but adds new business elements that have positioned the Chapitos, as the capo’s sons are known, as the cartel’s largest suppliers of fentanyl to the United States.
The company started in 2014, when Ovidio Guzmán López, aka El Ratón, established his first fentanyl processing laboratory in Culiacán, Sinaloa state. The youngest of the three Guzmán used his father’s cartel routes to send small shipments to Tijuana and get the drugs to Los Angeles through the usual channels – land, sea and air. By 2016 at the latest, it was clear the business needed to turn around: Beginning with the marijuana trade in the 1980s, the organization included the transfer of substances such as cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine into its operations. The “company,” founded by El Chapo alongside Ismael El Mayo Zambada, has undergone other transformations, but none like this, the indictment says. “The Sinaloa Cartel’s fentanyl operation has grown exponentially in volume, scope and sophistication,” they point out. Los Chapitos converted a methamphetamine manufacturing lab in Durango into a new fentanyl manufacturing facility in 2016, and they have not backed down.
The “Chapitos”: Jesús Alfredo, Iván Archivaldo and Ovidio Guzmán Agencies / RR SS
After El Chapo was arrested in 2016 and extradited to the United States in 2017, his three sons shaped the fentanyl trade and personally took the reins of the family business. Ovidio was responsible for building a network of laboratories to ensure sustainable production; Jesús Alfredo developed alliances to obtain from China the necessary chemical precursors to “cook” fentanyl; and Iván Archivaldo, the eldest of the sons, managed the security apparatus around the entire operation, mainly in production with highly protected laboratories and distribution. The Chapitos also conducted a sort of “purge” in the states of Coahuila, Michoacán, Sonora, Tamaulipas, and Chihuahua to ensure they were in control of places because they were considered “strategic positions” where they made sure they Their enemies sow terror. They also formed alliances, for example with the Northeast Cartel in Coahuila and with the Artistas Asesinos assassins in Chihuahua.
Cruelty continued to be the hallmark of the House, according to the Justice Department. Los Chapitos allied with the Ninis, a group of killers also from Sinaloa, and made them their armed wing. Torture became a constant to punish those who did not comply with their wishes, and techniques included drowning, electrocution, beatings, and confronting tigers. Still according to the US version, on Iván Archivaldo’s ranch in Sinaloa there is a group of tiger specimens – he does not name the number – kept as pets by drug dealers and who are occasionally fed the bodies of their enemies, living or dead. “During a few [de sus enemigos] They shot them, others were taken to feed the tigers they keep as pets,” says the US government, which ensures it got the information after infiltrating the first circle of Chapitos.
Los Chapitos S.A
One of the pillars of the Chapitos operation is the extraction of chemical precursors used to manufacture fentanyl. “The chemicals that allow the cartel to manufacture deadly fentanyl and fill the United States with it come primarily from China,” the US government states without a doubt. The bosses have created a network so their suppliers can easily send the chemical from Asia and through Mexican customs. In charge of this operation was the Guatemalan Ana Gabriela Rubio Zea, who acted as an intermediary to ensure the supply of raw materials for the cartel. Rubio Zea has primarily allied itself with the Chinese company Wuhan Shookang Biological Technology, which ensures that the chemicals are disguised as food containers or packaged with legally marketed chemicals. To mislead the Mexican authorities, some shipments arrive at the ports on ships that have previously passed through countries such as the United States and Germany, as they are subject to less strict controls than those arriving directly from China.
The chemicals are distributed in the laboratories, which are mainly located in the state of Sinaloa. There the Chapitos prepare the medicine to be sent to the United States in pill or powder form. The indictment says that last year the Mexican government seized an underground laboratory that had elevators to move supplies, as well as industrial ovens and tablet presses. “The cartel is trying to make the strongest fentanyl and sell it in the US at the lowest price,” Americans estimate. Testimonies from their undercover officers reveal that lab foremen experiment on humans with doses of fentanyl and its combination with other drugs such as heroin. Prosecutors report the case of a woman who was given three doses of the opiate to calculate the amounts of the chemicals and died of an overdose. Some addicts were also subjected to these tests: one of them died fatally from an overdose, but the drug he was using was also sent to the United States.
The Department of Defense secured a fentanyl pills manufacturing center and the laboratory with the largest methamphetamine production capacity in the municipality of Culiacán on February 15, 2023. Sedena (Cuartoscuro)
El Chapo’s sons are using the old ways of the Sinaloa cartel to bring fentanyl to the United States. In planes, trucks, boats, through the border crossings and tunnels that made his father famous in his day. Because the amount of the opiate is lower than that of other substances, the drug lords have increased traffic across the border crossings between Mexico and the USA: hidden in cars or in people, the so-called mules, who pass through the checkpoints every day. “The cartel relies on the impossibility of controlling all cross-border goods and also exploits the corruption on both sides of the border,” the USA admits. The focus is, for example, on the crossings from Ciudad Juárez to El Paso (Texas). the US government that one of its immigration officers, in exchange for payments from the cartel, was allowing mules to pass through without inspection.For 12 months, the officer, who worked a night shift, let through women carrying up to 2,000 pills per trip and up The pills were printed with the word Chapiza or Ratón, in reference to the youngest of the Guzmán family.
The Chapitos business was more than profitable: With a kilogram of precursor, for which they pay $800, they can produce up to 415,000 tablets, or four kilograms of fentanyl powder. The pills are sold individually in places like New York for up to three dollars. Each shipment represents millions of dollars sent to Mexico through offshore account transfers and cryptocurrency. Drug dealers in the US are responsible for collecting the money and depositing it into the cartel’s bitcoin accounts, which are managed from Mexico. Blockchain technology prevents the financial system from recognizing the money and it can be converted to dollars or pesos in Mexico. In some cases, switching to legal tender is not necessary: some precursor suppliers in China are also paid for their products in cryptocurrency. The organization also buys real estate in the United States, makes cash deliveries, or buys products in the US, such as cell phones, which are then sold in Mexico to complete the money laundering.
Image of DEA informants planted in the Sinaloa cartel led by Los Chapitos to transport the drug to the United States. Special
The Justice Department describes a powerful, organized Sinaloa cartel as “more ruthless, more violent, more deadly” than in El Chapo Guzmán’s prime. The warning from the United States focuses on the exponential growth of the fentanyl trade and the severe damage it has already wreaked in this country. Between August 2021 and 2022, more than 107,000 Americans died from an opioid overdose. Drug enforcement says the drug is 50 times stronger than heroin. The structure put in place by the Chapitos supports the thesis that Mexico, the United States and China are already immersed in a new model of illicit drug trafficking. The second generation of the Sinaloa Cartel has the reach cemented by its founders — with a presence in some 45 countries around the world — innovative tools and a vision akin to that of a transnational corporation that not even El Chapo Guzmán could achieve in his prime.
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