Ovidio Guzmán López during his first arrest in Culiacán on October 17, 2019.AP
Three years and three months after the Culiacanazo, the Mexican army finally arrested Ovidio Guzmán, El Chapo’s son, in Sinaloa in the north of the country on Thursday. Before noon, a military plane took the drug dealer to the capital and flew to military camp number one in Mexico City. The arrest took place at dawn and has provoked a brutal response from Guzmán’s criminal group known as Los Chapitos, one of the Sinaloa Cartel factions.
Los Chapitos’ virulent response is reminiscent of the Culiacanazo, one of the major security fiascos of the six-year tenure. On October 17, 2019, another Thursday, an elite team of armed forces arrived at the home of the Los Chapitos leader in Culiacan, hence the name of the frustrated operation. The idea was to take him to Mexico City like today, but the violent reaction of his henchmen forced the federal government to release him and withdraw. Today, the army has come all the way and captured the kingpin, one of the prime targets of the United States government.
Then as now, the actions of Los Chapitos left the country speechless, with blockades of streets, avenues and highways, burning vehicles and car movements by dozens of hitmen armed to the teeth. That Thursday, Guzmán’s henchmen even broke into Culiacan’s airport and fired on the military planes that were traveling into the city. City residents also denounced the looting of their vehicles by criminals.
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The main difference between the two Black Thursdays would be the geography of criminal activity, which received more of a focus in 2019. So did Los Chapitos even in the early afternoon hours, the rush hour in the city for the departure of students and workers’ lunch breaks. The videos of fleeing citizens with their children on their backs trying to avoid the shootings symbolized the great criminal barrage.
If the panic of citizens running through the center of the Sinaloan capital illustrated the first Culiacanazo, the grounded passengers of a plane trying to leave the city’s airfield will mark the second. Aside from the criminal group’s firepower, the audacity to shoot at planes at the airport speaks to the attitude and characteristics of Los Chapitos, whose expansive logic has been accentuated over the years.
It is a name that brings forth that of Los Chapitos. For years, the United States government has targeted Ovidio and his brothers, for whom it has offered $5 million in rewards, an amount updated just over a year ago. The authorities in that country have accused Ovidio Guzmán of conspiring to traffic in drugs north of the Rio Grande, including cocaine and methamphetamine. In the US, they also point to Los Chapitos for smuggling fentanyl into the country.
Since the first Culiacanazo, and despite the fiasco, the harassment of Los Chapitos in Mexico has been constant. In July, the army reported the discovery of more than 60 drug-making laboratories in Sinaloa, between Culiacan and the mountains, the traditional haunt of the crime group’s bosses. In the labs, authorities found machines to produce methamphetamine in large quantities at high speeds.
Mexico City has also been the scene of criminal activity and stalking by security forces. In mid-July, authorities in the capital seized a ton and a half of cocaine and arrested four suspected members of the Sinaloa cartel. At that time, too, there were clashes between police officers from the capital and suspected members of the criminal group in Topilejo in the south of the city. Fourteen members of the criminal group were arrested. In both situations he signed up for the group Los Chapitos.
All this in a confrontational logic of Los Chapitos, at odds with old allies of the great Sinaloan boss Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, the case of the Caborca cartel or the faction of the Sinaloa cartel led by Ismael El Mayo Zambada. Caro Quintero was arrested in Mexico a few months ago and El Chapo is serving a life sentence in the US. Zambada is still free.
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