The Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel had a tough year with several high-profile arrests, extraditions to the United States, and infighting across Mexico. Still, these setbacks are unlikely to spell the end of the group.
The most recent blow came towards the end of November, when Mexico’s National Guard captured Néstor Isidro Pérez, alias “El Nini.” He is accused of being the head of security for the Chapitos and working directly for Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, one of several sons of former Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquín Guzmán Loera, alias “El Chapo,” who lead that faction of the group.
Isidro Pérez was one of multiple Chapitos members targeted by the US government this year. Prior to his capture, prosecutors in Washington, D.C. and New York had indicted him for drug trafficking in 2021 and 2023. The State Department also posted a reward up to $3 million for any information leading to his capture.
His arrest was just the latest setback for the powerful Sinaloa Cartel faction. The group has faced increased pressure during 2023 from both the US and Mexican governments.
In early January 2023, Mexican authorities arrested Ovidio Guzmán López for the second time in Culiacán, the home base of the Chapitos in Sinaloa. This time they managed to hang onto him. He was then indicted by US prosecutors in April and swiftly extradited to Chicago in September.
Guzmán López had allegedly spearheaded the expansion of the Chapitos drug trafficking operations, especially of fentanyl, the deadly synthetic opioid driving drug overdose deaths in the United States. A few months later, in May, the Mexican navy arrested Héctor Elías Flores Aceves, alias “El 15,” another Chapitos boss handling drug sales in Cancún, a tourist hotspot in Quintana Roo. Other leaders were also arrested in Sonora.
With the fentanyl crisis in the United States dominating the political agenda, prompting unrelenting US pressure, the Chapitos’ leaders ordered a ban on all fentanyl trafficking and production in Sinaloa in June. Other Sinaloa Cartel cells in Sonora and Baja California Sur reportedly agreed to follow suit, but not all the group’s factions did.
“When I tell you that it’s prohibited, I mean it. It’s prohibited,” one sicario affiliated with the Chapitos told InSight Crime in September.
For those that did not follow the ban, the consequences were fatal. In Culiacán, a commander of a large, independent synthetic drug production group and a security chief affiliated with the Chapitos recently told InSight Crime that between June and September, the group had killed at least 50 people for defying the order.
Internal conflicts over synthetic drug trafficking also sparked extreme violence in other parts of the country. Since October, various Sinaloa Cartel factions have been battling each other along the US-Mexico border in Sonora over drug trafficking and migrant smuggling routes through the desert.
And alliances are shifting quickly. A one-time Sinaloa Cartel affiliate known as the Cazadores has atomized after its armed wing, the Deltas, broke off and became independent. The Cazadores have since formed a new enforcer faction, the Alfas, to fight against the Deltas, who have joined forces with a local group called the Pelones. The Chapitos are now backing the Deltas-Pelones alliance against the independent Cazadores-Alfas coalition.
By the time Isidro Pérez was arrested in November, the Chapitos were already scrambling. And the day after he was detained, unknown gunmen shot and killed Eduardo Escobedo, a convicted drug trafficker known as “El Mago,” in Los Angeles, California. He had at one point been a key marijuana distributor for Guzmán Salazar and the Chapitos, according to US court documents.
It’s not yet clear if the murder had anything to do with Isidro Pérez’s arrest or internal fighting within the Chapitos’ leadership, but it capped a tumultuous year for one of the Sinaloa Cartel’s top factions.
InSight Crime Analysis
The Chapitos faction is one of Mexico’s and the Sinaloa Cartel’s most active criminal actors, and despite their current troubles, that is unlikely to change.
The extradition of Guzmán López and the arrest of Isidro Pérez and other top leaders this past year likely caused significant shifts within the Chapitos’ top leadership, but experts said this will not impact the group’s operational capacity.
“The adjustments will be in the closest circle. I don’t see another criminal group that could dispute their position of power,” said Javier Oliva Posada, coordinator of the University Seminar on Studies of Democracy, Defense, Dimensions of Security and Intelligence at Mexico’s National Autonomous University (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México — UNAM).
Several criminal groups, seeing the Chapitos in a weakened state and distracted by infighting, may seek to capitalize on that and expand their own criminal operations. Among the circling vultures are networks associated with the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG), arguably the most formidable rival to the Sinaloa Cartel, as well as the Caborca Cartel, and various internal Sinaloa Cartel factions.
One of the strongest Sinaloa cells is the Rusos, which are backed by Ismael Zambada Garcia, alias “El Mayo,” one of the last members of the Sinaloa Cartel’s old guard. As security chief, Isidro Pérez was at the center of the Chapitos’ fight against the Rusos along the US-Mexico border in Baja California and Sonora.
But experts don’t view his arrest as enough of an opening for the Rusos, or any other group, to exploit. The Chapitos’ ability to maintain control over these strategic corridors does not hinge on one irreplaceable lieutenant.
“I would be very surprised if [Isidro Pérez’s arrest] resulted in any kind of broader effects of really weakening the Chapitos,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “I think it’s a nuisance for them, it might have temporary repercussions on particular battlefronts, but I don’t think it’s in any way fatal.”
That is because the Chapitos have many armed cells present throughout Mexico, some with years of operational experience. They are aided by close ties to corrupt politicians and members of security forces that help them control their territory. As long as the US and Mexican governments continue to focus their efforts on arresting top criminal leaders, leaving this extensive network intact, the Chapitos should be able to maintain their dominance.
“We are not really seeing any systematic dismantling of the broader operational capacity, economic expansion, or political power of the Chapitos,” said Felbab-Brown.