Last September a war broke out between two factions of the Sinaloa Cartel.
The intra-cartel war pits one faction, La Mayiza, led by the son of “El Mayo” Zambada, against the Chapitos, sons of “El Chapo” Guzman.
According to the Noroeste newspaper, the murder toll in Sinaloa from September 9th, 2024, to June 2nd, 2025, was 1,401, which would average out to 5.3 daily.
It appears that the Chapitos faction is making common cause with the CJNG cartel based in Jalisco. (See Is the CJNG Teaming Up with a Faction of the Sinaloa Cartel?)
According to a recent English-language report from Spain’s El País, the Chapitos faction is on its way out. Besides the pressure from the El Mayo faction, the Chapitos are under pressure from both the Mexican government and the U.S. government. The U.S. government has been using a carrot and stick approach to reduce the cartel. And Trump’s tariff pressure on Mexico gives the Sheinbaum administration a powerful incentive to produce public arrests and drug busts.
From El País: “Los Chapitos have become an endangered species. Only a few of their top bosses — the very ones immortalized in corridos for a few pesos or whose initials adorn caps sold on the streets of Culiacán — are still standing. Imprisoned, killed, extradited to the U.S., or voluntarily surrendered to U.S. authorities as part of plea deals to reduce sentences, the Sinaloa Cartel faction is rapidly vanishing. Only two leaders — Iván Archivaldo Guzmán and his brother Jesús Alfredo — remain at large. But they are increasingly cornered by Mexico’s security forces, who take daily pride in announcing new arrests and deaths of the traffickers whom Washington has identified as key figures behind the fentanyl crisis.“
OK, so the Chapitos faction is going downhill. But nature abhors a vacuum. Will the decline of this faction and its desperate alliance with the CJNG make that cartel more powerful?