How many children does Joaquín Guzmán have?
In an interview conducted during one of his several stays in Mexican prisons,
El Chapo
accepted the paternity of 23 descendants.
In another, perhaps more reliable version, the most famous criminal in Mexico recognized only ten.
Of all, there are two very close to his heart.
The first is Iván Archivaldo,
El Chapito
;
the second is his younger brother, Ovidio,
The Mouse
, son of his second wife.
Since 2016, when his father was finally extradited to the United States, the young Ovidio —then a 26-year-old boy— jumped into the big leagues of national drug trafficking along with three of his brothers: Joaquín, Iván and Jesús Alfredo.
As an evocation of their power, symbolic and real, they christened themselves
Los Chapitos
.
The history of
Los Chapitos
has been dizzying.
They began fighting, as orphans, for control of the organization left by their father.
The fight against Dámaso López Núñez, a former financial operator of the so-called Sinaloa Cartel, and his son
El Mini Lic
, was the first of several battles.
They won.
The second obstacle came in October 2019, when Mexican troops detained Ovidio for a few minutes before releasing him.
The Culiacanazo not only meant an incontestable triumph for
Los Chapitos,
but also a moral defeat for the Mexican State.
It was a black Thursday in the National Palace and in every inch of national territory.
MORE INFORMATION
The last hour of Ovidio Guzmán, live
The following years were times of arrogance and power.
Los Chapitos
managed to take advantage of the lack of cooperation between the US anti-narcotics agencies and the Mexican government.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), in other times with a thousand eyes and arms in Culiacán, ended up settling for writing boring reports that accounted for the group's power.
The federal government's policy of non-direct confrontation and the ineffectiveness of US intelligence allowed
Los Chapitos
to position itself in the fashionable market in North America: synthetic drug trafficking.
If Culiacán rose to fame decades ago as a center of opium, marijuana and later cocaine cultivation and trafficking operations, the sons of Guzmán Loera managed to build a complex network of trafficking and production of methamphetamine and fentanyl in the capital of Sinaloa.
In addition, they quietly managed to sneak into the luscious business of the fishing and logging industry.
In diversification they saw their kingdom grow.
But illegal markets are always complex and short-term;
like life, they do not offer definitive victories.
In the last year,
Los Chapitos
entered into different disputes.
First, with criminal cells in Northern Sonora for control of drug trafficking routes in that state (particularly in Caborca);
Later they did it with the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (CJNG), the most powerful criminal organization in the country.
At the center of this fight, the inhabitants of northern Jalisco and Zacatecas have been orphaned.
As if that were not enough, local media have warned of a fratricidal war with the group headed by Mayo Zambada, a former ally of Joaquín Guzmán.
Finally, we must add the beatings that Ovidio and his brothers have suffered from the police authorities: from the arrest of shipments of frozen sharks filled with cocaine in the south of the country, to the dismantling of a cell of the organization just recently. a few months in Madrid.
It is in the context of the weakness and fracture of the so-called Sinaloa Cartel that the arrest of Ovidio Guzmán must be understood.
This weakness explains, at least in part, why the fierce and bloody resistance we saw in the Culiacanazo was not repeated.
This does not mean, of course, that we will not see scenes of violence in Sinaloa in the coming days and weeks.
It is already known what violent dynamics usually follow events like this morning's.
The paradox of this absurd phenomenon that we have agreed to call the war on drugs lies in its ability to feed itself with each arrest and seizure.
Until it devours us all.
What awaits Ovid?
With barely thirty years to go, probably extradition and decades in jail.
In the United States, he is accused of trafficking cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana.
Thus, his arrest has to be read in the context of Joe Biden's next visit to Mexico (the first by a president was that of Barack Obama in 2014) and the start of the trial against Genaro García Luna in New York.
With the capture of Ovidio, the Mexican Government hit the table impossible to dismiss;
he redeems himself from the failure of two years ago and shows some of his operational ability.
He remains, however, the question of the implications of US intelligence in his capture.
We will guess his answer over the days.
Even so, fragmented and weakened, the Sinaloa Cartel —like any criminal organization of its kind— will continue to operate;
it will regroup, evolve, grow, and weaken again.
So to infinity.
The drug war, like the hydras of Greek mythology, has many heads left and many Ovid's brothers to cut off.
Carlos A. Perez Ricart
.
Professor-Researcher at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE), Mexico City.
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