Security & Strategic Review - February 2014 (ISSN 1741-4202)

The capture of Joaquín Guzmán Loera (‘el Chapo’), boss of the Sinaloa/Pacífico drug trafficking organisation (DTO) and possibly the world’s leading drug trafficker, has been counted as a great victory for the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto. Speculation is rife about the possible consequences for the DTO, for the inter-DTO war and consequently for the government’s efforts to curb drug-fuelled organised crime. For now, however, information is insufficient for this to go much beyond guesswork.

Guzmán, sought unsuccessfully by the authorities since he broke out of the Puente Grande prison in 2001, was captured on 22 February in Mazatlán, the seaside state capital of Sinaloa. There has been no detailed official account of the events leading up to his arrest, but with gaps provided by off-the-record versions by Mexican and US officials to the media (particularly Reforma and Proceso in Mexico) it seems that serendipity played a key role.

Acting largely with the assistance of US telephone surveillance, the Mexican authorities had been engaging in the pursuit of leading figures in the branch of the Sinaloa/Pacífico DTO, headed by Ismael Zambada (‘el Mayo’). Last November this resulted in the arrest of Zambada’s son Serafín, the DTO’s overseer of operations on the northern border and Zambada’s chief of security. On 12 February it led to the arrest of Daniel Fernández Domínguez (‘el Pelacas’), leader of a gang called La Oficina in Aguascalientes, and a haul of telephones, some of which had been in touch with Zambada’s security team. The new leader of that team and five of his associates were captured the following day, and their phones provided a connection with Guzmán (chiefly his outgoing calls on a satellite phone).

With the assistance of US tracking equipment that pinpointed the satellite phone when it was on, Guzmán was located in Culiacán, where he narrowly escaped a first attempt to capture him. Over the following days he was tracked to a new hiding place in Mazatlán, where he was arrested. The authorities have said that their intention is to try him on offences for which he has been indicted in Mexico, before considering extradition requests already filed in the US.

Succession

Given the nature of the Sinaloa/Pacífico DTO (not a monolithic structure with a vertical structure but a close partnership of two organisations), speculation about who might succeed Guzmán has inevitably begun with Zambada, the head of the partner organisation. This option depends largely on two considerations. The first is how successful the Mexican authorities will be in their effort, clearly already under way, to disrupt Zambada’s side of the DTO. The second is whether someone on Guzmán’s side might rise to take his place as Zambada’s partner.

One person who has been cited as a likely candidate for that second option is Juan José Esparragoza Moreno (‘el Azul’), a former leader of the Guadalajara DTO who has been associated with Guzmán since he escaped from prison in January 2001. Others who have been mentioned are Dámaso López Núñez (‘el licenciado’) a lawyer who, as head of security in Puente Grande, had aided Guzmán’s escape and is now believed to handle the DTO’s relations with corrupt officials, former federal agent Francisco Javier Jiménez Sánchez. Also on the tentative list are Guzmán’s sons Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar. Also to be considered is the extent to which Guzmán will be able to influence events from prison, particularly if he must serve any sentences passed in Mexico before being extradited to the US.

Few analysts believe the Sinaloa/Pacífico DTO will fall apart. Previous predictions that violence would escalate both between and within other DTOs after the capture of their leaders (particularly those of Zetas boss Miguel Treviño Morales and Gulf boss Mario Ramírez Treviño last year) did not prove right, at least not in the short term.

Overall the violence associated with inter-DTO turf wars has been declining: absolute numbers fell last year in 17 of Mexico’s 32 federal entities. Indeed, among those are six of the top 10 states in the drug-war fatalities league compiled by Milenio: Nuevo León, Guerrero, Chihuahua, Michoacán, Sinaloa and Tamaulipas. Of the 15 entities in which drug-war killings increased, only four are in the top 10 list: Jalisco, Sonora, México and Morelos. [Milenio counted 10,095 drug-war deaths in 2013; the consulting firm Lantia, 11,788. The national public security system reported 18,432 intentional homicides.]

End of preview - This article contains approximately 1111 words.

Subscribers: Log in now to read the full article

Not a Subscriber?

Choose from one of the following options

• Subscribe
• Sign up for a one-time, 14-day trial