To confront the Los Chapitos faction, led by the sons of Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, two of their rival organizations, La Mayiza and the Guasave Cartel, formed an alliance, which has generated a wave of violence in Sinaloa in recent days, according to sources from the Attorney General’s Office (FGR).
The criminal organizations themselves publicly endorsed the alliance in a statement released on social media, where they indicated that the pact between Ismael Zambada Sicairos, known as El Mayito Flaco, son of El Mayo Zambada, and Fausto Isidro Meza Flores, known as Chapito Isidro, is due to the fact that El Chapo’s sons have betrayed the codes and trampled on their own allies.
With this alliance, Los Chapitos—led by Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar—will remain entrenched in the center and northeast of the state. Since 2020, and following an alliance with the Caborca Cartel, led by Rafael Caro Quintero, El Chapo Isidro’s organization has expanded its influence to Sinaloa de Leyva, Navolato, El Fuerte, Choix, Ahome, Concordia, Escuinapa, El Rosario, and Mazatlán.
On social media, El Mayito Flaco and El Chapito Isidro accused Los Chapitos of being a group that grew under the banner of a legacy of blood.
“It has sown fear, extortion, and humiliation against its own people.”
During the first decade of the 2000s, La Oficina—the armed wing of Fausto Isidro Meza Flores’s organization—and Los Ántrax—gunmen from La Mayiza—engaged in a violent dispute over control of various territories; however, years later, both criminal cells survived in southern Sinaloa.
