Ten years ago, Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar was celebrating his 33rd birthday at the La Leche restaurant in Puerto Vallarta when a commando unit from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) stormed the premises with a single objective: to kill him. The attack became a pivotal moment in the conflict between the two criminal groups.
This Saturday, August 15, Iván Archivaldo turns 43, but the situation is radically different. The son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán reaches this milestone as a fugitive with a $10 million bounty on his head, leading a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel that is experiencing one of its most vulnerable moments since he took control of the organization.
Ironically, the man who had ordered that attack against him a decade earlier—Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias “El Mencho”—would eventually become one of his most important allies. Yet that alliance is also faltering: on February 22, 2026, the CJNG leader was killed in Tapalpa, Jalisco, once again leaving Iván Archivaldo facing a criminal landscape unlike the one he had known for much of his career.
And the blows do not stop there. “El Chapito’s” half-brothers, Ovidio and Joaquín Guzmán López, are in U.S. custody and cooperating with the Department of Justice after pleading guilty. Meanwhile, nearly a dozen of his key operatives have been taken down in less than two years, weakening the inner circle that had long upheld the security structure of Los Chapitos.
