This is how the sons of 'El Chapo' switched to the Sinaloa cartel to flood the United States with the deadliest and cheapest fentanyl

By Christopher Sherman and Mark Stevenson -

While Sinaloa Cartel kingpin Joaquín

Guzmán was serving a life sentence in a Colorado maximum-security prison, his sons turned the family business toward trafficking fentanyl, creating a network of laboratories that produce massive amounts of the drug. this cheap and lethal drug to traffic it to the United States, as revealed by the Prosecutor's Office in a recent indictment.

The trial against Guzmán revolved around cocaine shipments, while the ongoing case now against his sons exposes the operation of a cartel that is undergoing a generational change while making adjustments “to manufacture a more powerful fentanyl and sell it in the United States

,” according to the prosecutor's brief filed in a New York federal court on April 14.

Synthetic opioids, most notably fentanyl, kill more Americans each year than were killed in the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.

“Fentanyl, as they told me in the State Department, must be repositioned: it is not a drug problem, it is a poisoning problem,” said Alejandro Hope, a recently deceased Mexican analyst.

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The foundations of the fentanyl epidemic in the United States were laid more than 20 years ago, with the overprescription of the synthetic opioid oxycodone.

When the authorities clamped down on its prescription, its users switched to heroin, supplied by the Sinaloa cartel, according to the Prosecutor's Office.

Making its own fentanyl, much more powerful and versatile than heroin, in small, easily hidden laboratories, however, changed the business model of the Sinaloa cartel, which in less than a decade created an extensive network of clandestine laboratories.

“These are not super labs, because they give people the illusion that they are like pharmaceutical labs, you know, very sophisticated,” said Mike Vigil, former head of international operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA, in English).

“It's just metal vats and wooden paddles, even shovels, for mixing the chemicals,” he explained.

[In seashells, tamales and even in guitars and tequila: drug traffickers use increasingly ingenious hiding places to bring drugs into the US]

A single cartel

can produce as many as 100,000 pills every day, which they then sell as cheaper versions of Xanax, Percocet or oxycodone.

Between August 2021 and August 2022, more than 107,000 people in the United States died from drug overdoses, the majority from synthetic opioids.

Last year, the DEA seized more than 57 million fentanyl-laced pills, according to court documents.

To protect and expand that business,

, as the sons of Guzmán are known, resorted to violence, according to prosecutors.

Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar are the main defendants among the 23 who have been charged in New York.

Ovidio Guzmán López, alias

is accused of another accusation in the same district;

Mexico arrested him in January and the United States requested his extradition.

Joaquín Guzmán López was charged in the Northern District of Illinois

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According to the accusation against the Guzmán Salazar brothers, the cartel tests its product in its laboratories, but then carries out more macabre tests on kidnapped rivals or addicts who are injected until they suffer an overdose.

The indictment filed in New York against the brothers details their penchant for feeding their pet tigers the bodies of their enemies and describes how they allegedly tortured two Mexican federal agents, tearing into their muscles with a corkscrew and then plugging the holes with chili peppers before shoot them.

The indictment also provides context about some violent events in Mexico.

In August 2022, gunmen fired into Ciudad Juárez from El Paso, Texas.

Two prisoners and nine civilians died in the Mexican city.

Prosecutors say the security arm of

allegedly hired local gang members to get rid of their rivals.

[The new drug mix that makes the “deadliest substance the country has ever faced, fentanyl, even deadlier”]

“This is not their father's Sinaloa cartel,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a security expert at the Strobe Talbott Center, “these guys operate with very different mindsets.”

The indictment against the Guzmán Salazars marks a first attempt to disrupt the cartel's supply chain, naming four people linked to a China-based chemical company and an associate in Guatemala who allegedly helped the cartel obtain chemical precursors and even they were given instructions on the best recipes for fentanyl.

The Government of Mexico has sent mixed messages: on the one hand, it has reported an increase in the dismantling of laboratories and, on the other, the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has affirmed that fentanyl is not produced in Mexico.

In her testimony before Congress on Thursday, DEA Administrator Anne Milgram came under pressure about whether Mexico and China are doing enough to cooperate with the United States.

“We want the Mexicans to work with us and we want them to do more,” Milgram said, adding that the DEA would not hesitate to go after public officials in Mexico or anywhere else if it finds evidence of ties to the cartels.

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Experts say López Obrador is an obstacle to stopping the cartels' fentanyl production.

After US prosecutors announced the concerted effort against the Sinaloa cartel, López Obrador reacted angrily, accusing the US of “espionage” and “interference”, suggesting that the case had been based on information from agents in Mexico.

The president had already severely reduced Mexico's cooperation with the DEA, according to experts.

Hope said that a fundamental problem is that López Obrador does not seem to understand the threat of fentanyl: he criticizes the deterioration of family values ​​in the United States and paints addiction as a moral failure.

"He's stuck in a 50-year-old moral universe," Hope concluded.