MIRROR
Considered the world’s most powerful and largest drug trafficking organisation, the Sinaloa Cartel is an organised crime syndicate that has ruled large segments of Mexico’s people, territory and economy since the 1980s.
From barbarically boiling human bodies in barrels of acid to recruiting child soldiers to fight in rival wars, and transporting fentanyl across the States, the infamous cartel is known for its brutal attacks and jailed drug lords.
On Wednesday, the Ecuadorian presidential candidate, Fernando Villavicencio, was shot dead at a political rally in the capital, days after he revealed he had received multiple death threats from people linked to the Sinaloa Cartel.
In a fearless statement, he said: “Here I am showing my face. I’m not scared of them.” Six Columbians have since been arrested, and President Guillermo Lasso has suggested his death could be linked to organised crime.
It comes as three high-ranking members of the Sinaloa Cartel were sanctioned for trafficking illegal drugs into America on the same day as Villavicencio’s killing. Here we take a look at some of the group’s most horrific crimes.
Lethal fentanyl trafficking
Fentanyl is a synthetic pain-relieving drug that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine – and it’s responsible for over 150 deaths in the US every single day. While the former Sinaloa Cartel leader, Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, is serving his life sentence, his three sons, known as the little Chapos, continue to traffic fentanyl across borders in exchange for cash.
“They know that they’re poisoning and killing Americans. They just don’t care because they make billions of dollars doing it,” Anne Milgram, chief of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, said of Guzman’s sons. “Their greed is shocking and without bounds.” The cartel is based primarily in the city of Culiacan, Sinaloa, whilst operating in the Mexican states of Baja California, Durango, Sonora and Chihuahua, and also the United States.
