El Mayo’s Arrest: Could the CJNG Finally Top the Sinaloa Cartel?
The Sinaloa Cartel has retained its size and financial advantage over its Jalisco Cartel New Generation rivals for a decade.
The surrender of Sinaloa Cartel leader Ismael Zambada Garcia, alias “El Mayo,” to US authorities in Texas marks an end to a generation of “old school” kingpins who entered the drug trade before the hyper-violent drug wars of recent decades.
Bringing in El Mayo marks a real coup, and his trial will likely feature sensational revelations on criminal collusion and corruption in Mexico.
But his arrest is set to trigger a bloody scramble, as factions within the Sinaloa Cartel, as well as their deadly enemies, the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (CJNG), fight to control the flow of fentanyl and methamphetamine to the United States.
The former business partner of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, alias “El Chapo,” El Mayo was 76 and he may have been tired of hiding. There are conflicting reports about how he was arrested.
Either he was tricked onto a plane by Joaquín Guzmán López, one of El Chapo’s sons who was arrested alongside him, or El Mayo had been negotiating his surrender for some time now.
This difference matters. If he was tricked, the conflict inside the Sinaloa Cartel between El Mayo’s followers and the Chapitos, the faction controlled by El Chapo’s sons, could intensify.
Either way, under his reign, the Sinaloa Cartel had provided a form of stability amid criminal anarchy.
El Mayo, while having plenty of blood on his hands, enforced a code that discouraged extortion. Extreme violence was an option, but to be used cautiously, as it could be bad for business.
Few among Mexico’s cartels share such restraint. The Sinaloa Cartel was already in turmoil. It has been riven by internal conflicts, including between El Mayo’s loyalists and the Chapitos, the faction led by El Chapo’s sons. El Mayo’s continued influence and connection to the Chapitos has been cited as a major reason these ties have not deteriorated further.
One of the Chapitos, Ovidio, was arrested and extradited to the US in 2023. His brother, Joaquín, has now turned himself in alongside El Mayo, weakening both factions.
The Sinaloa Cartel’s reputation as Mexico’s leading criminal group is in jeopardy.
The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) would be delighted to take over.
It has relentlessly sought to overthrow the Sinaloa Cartel for over a decade. Their war to control the border city of Tijuana, a crucial spot for drug trafficking into California, has made it one of the deadliest places in the world. From the oil fields of Guanajuato to the remote southern state of Chiapas, the CJNG-Sinaloa Cartel conflict is one of Mexico’s core drivers of violence.
The opportunistic CJNG will undoubtedly view El Mayo and Guzmán López’s arrests as the ideal time to extend this conflict further. The CJNG is the most violent of Mexico’s criminal groups, using force like an invading army. It has normalized the worst excesses of the drug wars, using drone warfare, public displays of brutality, and military shows of strength to cow any resistance.
It would be naive to dismiss this as just a Mexican problem. It is not just the latest shake-up in a perpetually changing cartel landscape. The ramifications of El Mayo’s arrest will be felt keenly across the US, where the Sinaloa Cartel and the CJNG dominate the fentanyl and methamphetamine trade. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died due to drugs manufactured and sold by these two groups.
The Sinaloa Cartel, especially the Chapitos faction, had seemed somewhat responsive to US pressure. In 2023, after Ovidio’s arrest, the Chapitos ordered a ban on the production of fentanyl in parts of Sinaloa. This was later expanded to other Mexican states, according to an investigation by InSight Crime. Dozens of cooks who disobeyed were killed.
While the Chapitos were giving up on fentanyl production for good, as it’s far too lucrative a criminal economy, it showed a certain flexibility.
Not so the CJNG. Instead, the group has designed a criminal model of maximizing profit at all costs. Tequila, avocados, tourism, cattle ranching, fisheries, tortilla shops, every industry in territories it controls is a target for crippling extortion.
The group continues to be behind the manufacturing, transportation, and wholesale distribution of fentanyl and other drugs across the US, and its profits from this trade will only increase if it can coopt the Sinaloa Cartel.
The contrast between the two groups was made clear again during Mexico’s recent election campaigns. Levels of politically motivated violence and assassinations were significantly higher in CJNG-held states than in Sinaloa Cartel territory.
El Mayo’s surrender represents a real victory for law enforcement and should be heralded as such. But this will not reduce cartel violence, it marks a dangerous pivot.