[Trending News] Sinaloa, flooded with fentanyl: Mexico hits Los Chapitos in its drug stronghold

The Mexican government is stifling the Sinaloa Cartel. The organization founded by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán has suffered severe blows to its most lucrative business in the last five years: the trafficking of fentanyl to the United States, controlled by the sons and heirs of the historic capo, Los Chapitos. Mexican security agencies, led by the army, have staged a strategic campaign of fentanyl seizures in Sinaloa, Sonora, and Baja California, Pacific states under the control of the cartel and which make up the production and transit chain of the opioid until it is trafficked to the U.S., mainly through the border at San Diego and Tucson. The seizure statistics demonstrate not only the rapid growth in the production and trafficking of the synthetic drug, especially in Sinaloa, but also the efforts of the Mexican government, at least since the middle of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s six-year term, and even more so now, under the administration of Claudia Sheinbaum, to suffocate the cartel, particularly the heirs of El Chapo, who have also been waging a bloody internal war for months with another faction of the criminal organization loyal to Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.

The backdrop to this crusade is Washington’s pressure on Mexico to act against drug trafficking, and specifically against the powerful opioid, which kills tens of thousands of Americans every year. Mexico’s response has been forceful, according to a compilation of data on fentanyl seizures prepared by EL PAÍS based on reports from the army, the navy, the National Guard, the Attorney General’s Office, and the National Customs Agency. Between 2021 and February of this year, Mexican security agencies seized 5.4 tons of the synthetic drug.

Of the total, 47% was seized in Sinaloa alone. If the seizures in Sonora and Baja California are added together, it turns out that the three states — strongholds of El Chapo’s cartel — have been the epicenter of 95% of the total fentanyl seized in the last five years. In the period under review, security authorities have also seized 2.3 million opiate pills: 54% of which was confiscated in Sonora and another 30% in Sinaloa. The monumental figure contrasts with the minimal seizures in the territories controlled by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), an organization with less history than that of the Sinaloa Cartel, but which in the last decade has become the second-most significant criminal organization in the fentanyl business.

For specialists, these data not only put an end to the discussion about whether fentanyl is synthesized in Mexico and then trafficked to the United States (governments of the ruling Morena party have continually insisted that the drug is not produced in the country). They also show that, for the first time, the Sinaloa Cartel is the target of such an attack by the government, which translates into million-dollar losses for the organization’s finances. To this must be added the internal war between Los Chapitos and La Mayiza, triggered by betrayals and power struggles, and the siege that the security agencies have laid around the leaders of both factions. The historic cartel is experiencing critical times.

“The Sinaloa Cartel had not previously been attacked with the force that it has been faced with in the last three years. The conditions that ensured abundant and adequate production for illegal fentanyl trafficking have changed radically. Now instability reigns,” says researcher Josué González, a specialist in security and organized crime issues. “I believe that we are experiencing the last stage of the Sinaloa Cartel as we knew it. And that will impact fentanyl and the drug business. We will have to see if the CJNG grows and becomes dominant, or if organizations with greater regional control are born,” he adds.

In November 2024 the Sheinbaum administration’s security czar, Omar García Harfuch, announced the historic seizure of a ton of fentanyl in the municipality of Ahome, Sinaloa. To give an idea of the impact of the blow to Los Chapitos: one kilo of the substance is enough to produce a million doses (one gram) and brings the cartels profits of between $10 million and $20 million, according to information from the DEA. The toll of the opioid pandemic in the U.S. is devastating: since 2020, more than 50,000 people have died each year from overdoses of synthetic drugs, mainly fentanyl. In 2022, there was a historic peak in deaths that reached 74,225 cases.

The DEA says the Sinaloa Cartel has been producing “countless quantities” of fentanyl since 2012, according to a recent report. However, the document adds, Los Chapitos is responsible for having turned that business into the cornerstone of the criminal organization. “Los Chapitos initially established a base of operations for manufacturing illicit fentanyl in the mountains near Culiacan. Now, they control the procurement of precursor chemicals, largely from China, and direct the production of illicit fentanyl from labs hidden in the mountains of Sinaloa and in other Sinaloa Cartel strongholds throughout Mexico,” says the report. Many of the Sinaloa municipalities where seizures have been made have access to the Pacific and are entry points for precursors.

Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa, has been the epicenter of the seizures. More than 1,000 kilos of the drug and 689,000 pills have been seized there. From Culiacán, the route of the confiscations leads to the border with the United States. In the municipality of Guaymas, Sonora, the authorities have seized 1,291,000 pills; in Opodepe, in the same state, 252 kilos have been seized. At that point, the road forks toward two border municipalities: Nogales — with 271 kilos seized — and San Luis Río Colorado, where 230 kilos and 1,280 pills were seized. This last municipality is the gateway to Baja California, to the coveted city of Tijuana, where 949 kilos and 11,100 pills were seized.

On the U.S. side, data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) indicate the points through which fentanyl is trafficked from Mexico. The crossing in Tucson, Arizona, which borders Nogales (Sonora), is the preferred entry point. There, between 2022 and January 2025, 15.2 tons of the opiate were seized. The San Diego gateway, which shares a border with Tijuana (Baja California), is the second most important entry point, where U.S. authorities have seized 13.2 tons. The third-most frequently used point is Yuma, Arizona, a city on the border with San Luis Río Colorado, where 612 kilos of the drug were confiscated.

From 2021 to date, the Mexican government has conducted 291 fentanyl raids, according to the data analyzed. Researcher Carlos Pérez-Ricart, a specialist in the study of drug trafficking, says that the points in the Pacific states where seizures have been recorded in the territory of Sinaloa and Sonora coincide with the points where authorities have also located and dismantled methamphetamine and fentanyl laboratories, two synthetic drugs that are usually produced in the same spaces. “The data leaves no room for doubt that fentanyl is produced in Mexico,” he says.

The academic points out that the Covid pandemic gave a “quantum” boost to Mexico’s relevance in the fentanyl market, and that Los Chapitos knew how to read the demand of consumers in the United States, which was already experiencing an opiate addiction crisis. Pérez-Ricart adds that the Sinaloa Cartel adapted the structures and routes that had previously served it for marijuana and poppy trafficking to the new illicit business. “There was no geographic change or change of hands,” he maintains.

The cartel’s prosperity in the new market lasted a few years and is now at a breaking point, due to two conditions, the researcher explains: the persistent accusation by Donald Trump that Mexico is a bridge for trafficking and has pacts with the cartels, and the kidnapping of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada to hand him over to U.S. authorities, the event that unleashed the faction war that has left around 900 people dead in six months.

“So, Sinaloa, by accident or by design, we don’t know, becomes the center where the banner of the fight against drugs will be flown,” says Pérez-Ricart. “These two processes that have nothing to do with each other occur: the arrival of Trump [to the U.S. presidency] and the kidnapping of El Mayo, which lead to the federal government’s strategy being focused on trying to reduce violence in Sinaloa, something that hasn’t been seen since the 1970s.” The question remains as to why, according to the revised official figures, the CJNG has been so little affected by the policy against fentanyl. There are two hypotheses, according to Pérez-Ricart: either it is not being fought “with the same ferocity” as the Sinaloa Cartel, or it is less important in that market than was thought. “Both hypotheses are valid,” he says.

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