The dust has settled from the latest war within the Sinaloa Cartel, revealing what remains—the surviving criminal structures—after 15 months of fighting. The struggle between clans has left the main ones battered, especially the one commanded by the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the old regional drug lord. Of the four original sons, only two remain at large, living on the run, stripped of their main lieutenants, either killed or captured. Their enemies, the sons and followers of their father’s former partner, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, have emerged strengthened from the war. But the biggest winner of all this violent chaos belongs to neither faction.
A new Chapo is emerging in Sinaloa, less media-savvy than his predecessor, but just as capable of exporting drugs north. Security sources indicate that the main beneficiary of the war is, without a doubt, the group led by Fausto Isidro Meza Flores, alias El Chapo Isidro. One of the U.S. government’s biggest enemies, Meza Flores runs a major operation producing and trafficking synthetic drugs, fentanyl, and methamphetamine, primarily in northern Sinaloa, in Los Mochis and Guasave. “He exports more drugs than everyone else,” one of the sources asserts. “He’s the big winner of the war; he’s very powerful,” the source adds, a surprising statement given the events of December.
In the final weeks of last year, Mexican authorities practically wiped out one of the pillars of El Chapo Isidro’s faction, the Inzunza family. On December 1, marines killed his son, Pedro Inzunza Coronel, alias El Pichón, in Choix, a small municipality inland from the coastal city of Los Mochis. “[El Pichón] started shooting at the Navy helicopter, and they returned fire,” a source familiar with the federal security cabinet meetings noted. Several people were also arrested in that operation. On New Year’s Eve, the National Guard arrested the father, Pedro Inzunza Noriega, alias Sagitario, 62, in Culiacán, the state capital. Unlike the previous arrest, this one was made without a single shot being fired.
One would think that the downfall of the Noriegas, the first criminals accused of narco-terrorism by the U.S., has dealt a significant blow to El Chapo Isidro’s group. The Trump administration, in fact, considered the Noriegas to be the leaders of the faction. In a statement released in May, the U.S. Department of Justice placed them at the head of the “Beltrán Leyva organization,” the surname of the family that gave rise to the faction more than 20 years ago, now fallen from grace, with the brothers either dead or in prison. “This organization, under the leadership of Inzunza Noriega, is allegedly responsible for some of the largest seizures of fentanyl and cocaine drugs destined for the United States in history,” the FBI agent in charge of the investigation into the Noriega family said at the time.
