The Sinaloa Cartel is one of the world’s largest and most feared crime syndicates, sending huge amounts of fentanyl into the United States and violently resisting efforts to subdue it.
But with two governments cracking down and an internal war raging, its very survival is under threat.
After months of heavy financial and human losses, the cartel faces a moment of profound turmoil — one that analysts say could signal the end of the organization in its current form.
What is the Sinaloa Cartel?
The Sinaloa Cartel is largely responsible for the mass production of fentanyl and other illicit drugs that have had a devastating effect in the United States.
For years, the cartel operated under an “umbrella” model — a cohesive network of criminal cells and affiliates, across dozens of countries, that coordinated to traffic drugs and launder billions of dollars. Fentanyl, methamphetamines and cocaine represent the bulk of the cartel’s profits. But the group also engages in human trafficking, migrant kidnapping, illegal logging and fuel theft.
Its members wield power through violence and intimidation, corrupting officials, extorting citizens and killing anyone they see as a threat to their business, including journalists.
The cartel was founded and led by Joaquin Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo, and Ismael Zambada Garcia, known as El Mayo.
Mr. Guzmán, now serving a life sentence in the United States, built his legend not only on violence but on his ability to escape capture. He once slipped out of a prison in a laundry cart, and years later vanished through a tunnel beneath the shower of a maximum-security cell.
How did its internal war start?
In a dramatic episode last summer, one of El Chapo’s sons abducted Mr. Zambada, handing him to U.S. authorities.
The betrayal deepened an already growing rift and ignited the conflict, turning Sinaloa State into a war zone.
El Chapo’s sons, known as Los Chapitos, are known for extreme violence and led by Ivan Guzmán Salazar and Jesus Alfredo Guzmán Salazar. Their half brothers, Joaquín Guzmán López and Ovidio Guzmán López, are imprisoned in the United States.
Following El Chapo’s arrest in 2016, Los Chapitos assumed their father’s leadership role and built a successful fentanyl empire, reaping millions by flooding U.S. streets with opioids.
Their enemies, known as Los Mayos, are loyal to Mr. Zambada, who built a reputation for his discretion and strategic alliances.
Compared with Los Chapitos, Los Mayos are seen as more disciplined, pragmatic and rooted in traditional drug-trafficking practices.
Who are the cartel’s rivals?
The Sinaloa Cartel has long been locked in bloody rivalries with several groups seeking influence, territorial control and trafficking routes.
But its most formidable competitor is the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, whose abbreviation in Spanish is C.J.N.G. Founded in 2009, it is considered by both Mexican and U.S. authorities to be one of the most violent and rapidly expanding transnational criminal organizations, known for its paramilitary tactics.
Under the leadership of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, it has become a major player in fentanyl smuggling and also traffics cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine. The two cartels have fought turf wars across Mexico, clashing in states like Guerrero, Sonora, Michoacán and Chiapas.
What are the United States and Mexico doing?
President Trump has threatened sweeping tariffs and the deployment of U.S. troops to Mexico unless it takes stronger action to curb fentanyl trafficking and dismantle cartels.
In response, President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico has cracked down on the Sinaloa Cartel, in particular. Her government has deployed thousands of soldiers to Sinaloa, arrested dozens of high-level operatives, seized large quantities of fentanyl and other drugs and dismantled dozens of drug labs.
The Trump administration, too, has taken a wide range of measures. It has designated the Sinaloa Cartel and other groups as foreign terrorist organizations, imposed sweeping sanctions on cartel leaders and expanded secret C.I.A. drone flights over Mexico to find fentanyl labs, U.S. officials say.
But thwarting the cartel’s dominance is a significant challenge given its vast resources. The ease with which fentanyl can be produced — even in a rudimentary kitchen — combined with the insatiable demand among American drug users makes the crisis extraordinarily difficult to contain, analysts and experts say.
Who is winning the war?
There is no clear consensus among experts or officials on which faction holds the upper hand, nor is there any sign the fighting will stop soon.
But experts say the Mexican government has delivered significant blows to the Chapitos faction by arresting dozens of key players and high-ranking operatives.
Los Chapitos’ unexpected alliance with the Jalisco cartel underscores just how desperate they are, analysts say. The war, said Vanda Felbab-Brown, an expert on nonstate armed groups at the Brookings Institution, has global implications for “how criminal markets will reorganize.”
Regardless of which faction comes out on top, she added, the war is likely to mean the end of the Sinaloa Cartel as we know it.
“The question is whether there will be anything left of the cartel, or of the Mayo faction, or will it be defeated, fragmented and shattered by C.J.N.G.,” she said.
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