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Thursday, September 22, 2022

The Empire of Los Chapitos, A postcard from Culiacán By Ioan Grillo

This story is by Ioan Grillo, reposted by "El Huaso"

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We run into the punteros by the tollbooth on the road from Mazatlán into Sinaloa’s colorful state capital of Culiacán. They are operating so brazenly they have even put up a tarp to shield themselves from the punishing sun. An older guy with a baseball cap and mustache stands under the tarp with his open palm above his belt buckle in the pistol-packing pose. A younger guy with a mop of black hair buzzes over to us on his motorbike and asks what we are up to. 


Punteros is a term you hear more in Sinaloa, the cradle of Mexican drug trafficking, than in other states. It is often used in place of halcones, the lookouts for the cartels, but the punteros of Culiacán are a little different. Halcones in other Mexican cities usually adopt a low profile as they keep their eyes open for anything that moves and report it up the chain by cell phone or radio. The punteros in Culiacán can be more overt, marking the territory, or el punto. They usually have motorbikes and are often armed. And they frequently sell drugs at their point as well as providing eyes.


We are filming a shot of the highway with a drone, which is grabbing their attention. When the puntero comes over, I explain we are making a documentary series which is just about music and he looks over the shoulder of the cameraman at the images from the sky. Our local producer gives the puntero a fist bump and asks what he is selling. The puntero flashes bags of weed and wraps of cocaine and asks if we want to buy. 


I have been coming to Culiacán since 2008 and made four trips here over the last year for this series. It’s changed. When I covered it in the 2008 to 2010 period, there was a bloody turf war between Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and his blood-brother turned mortal enemy Arturo “El Barbas' ' Beltrán Leyva. There were more bodies being dropped, and I spent days sprinting to stop lights and roundabouts to cover multiple executions.


Today, there are less murders but there is the feel of a more overarching narco control. This change is due to various shifts in Mexico’s crime environment but a big factor is the rise of the sons of El Chapo, known as Los Chapitos, who now dominate the city. As people here don’t like to say their name loudly in public, they are referred to as “the juniors.”


The flagrant nature of the punteros is one visible difference. Perhaps an even bigger novelty is that entire dispensaries of high-grade marijuana have opened up. Mexico’s Senate is taking forever in approving a bill to legalize cannabis, but in Culiacán they have gone ahead and effectively legalized it themselves.

I go into one such dispensary in a second-floor apartment. It is decked out like you are in Los Angeles with jars of herb marked as Candy Kush and Strawberry Banana and Jack Herer.  They offer plastic packets of marijuana cookies and candies and oils. And they have ready-rolled joints, laughably labeled as “sicarios.” The guy serving is in his early twenties and could pass as a student.


I don’t know who really owns the place. It may be nothing to do with the cartel. But it would seem tough in a city like Culiacán if it didn’t at least have the approval of the real power.


A wanted figure for Sinaloa Cartel figures in Tijuana.

What is known as the Sinaloa Cartel has likely never been a tight pyramidal organization but more like a federation of drug traffickers. El Chapo was probably not the single supreme leader over this whole network, a charge his lawyers disputed at his trial in New York. But he was a figurehead for the cartel, a powerful gangster that others swore fealty to, and he had total domination of certain areas, like parts of his mountainous municipality of Badiraguato and chunks of Culiacán.


El Chapo left a sprinkling of children with various women, but the “Chapitos” tends to refer to four of them: Ivan Archivaldo, “El Chapito,” (39), Jesús Alfredo, “Alfredillo” (36), Joaquín “El Guero” (36) and Ovidio, “El Raton” (32). When El Chapo was extradited in 2017, some of the elders thought these privately educated “juniors” might not be as tough as the old-school campesino traffickers. But first they outmaneuvered and outgunned their father’s lieutenant Damaso López. Then they beat the Mexican army.


The so-called “Culiacanazo” of 2019 – when Mexican soldiers arrested Ovidio and hundreds of cartel gunmen took to the streets to force his liberation – was the real graduation for the Chapitos and consolidated their power in the city. A narco corrido, or drug ballad, about the incident was finally released last October. Assuming the voice of Ovidio, it apologizes for the disturbance but boasts that a Guzmán is not intimidated by the government. It seems impossible that the song could have been released without permission from its subject.


“Soy el raton” has over 23 million views on YouTube and can be heard in Culiacán along with other corridos blasting from pickup trucks, SUVs, and the now fashionable “buggies.” Pronounced in Culiacán like “boogies,” these are quad bikes with roof frames and colossal sound systems that Culichis speed around on dressed in flamboyant racer gear.

In June, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador remarked that Sinaloa has less murders because of the presence of a powerful cartel. “There are places where a strong group dominates and there are no confrontations between groups and so there are less homicides,” he said. “Sinaloa and Durango aren’t in the states with the most homicides because there is just one group.”


He is right at least that there are less murders in Sinaloa. Last year, there were officially 600 homicides, making it the 15th most murderous state in the country per capita. Back in the battles of 2010, it suffered more than 2,000 killings and was the second most deadly entity.


There are still tensions within the Sinaloan mob though. Rafael Caro Quintero, the infamous narco from the 80s who likely bribed his way out of jail, clashed with the Chapitos in Sonora. His rearrest in northern Sinaloa in July was celebrated by American agents furious about his role in the murder of the DEA’s Enrique Camarena. But by his final days on the run, Caro was probably a minor player without influence in Culiacán.



Caro Quintero, then and now.

More significant is the potential friction between the Chapitos and the old Sinaloan godfather Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, who many in Sinaloa claim was even more powerful than Chapo. I hear different versions of how bad this tension is. There are allegations that Mayo’s people were too slow coming to the Culiacanazo, or that he sided with Caro in Sonora. But in Sinaloa itself, both factions appear to be living side by side without major bloodshed, including in Culiacán.


Some call it a “cold war.” In Sanalona, a town that sits between the strongholds of the Chapitos and of El Mayo, I hear that gunmen from both factions party at a restaurant-bar on Sundays, but they stand on opposite sides staring each other down and firing shots in the air.

El Mayo’s core territory is to the south of Culiacán around the village where he grew up, an area of rough arid countryside that is not high mountains like El Chapo’s Badiraguato but is just as narco. I spend time there on various trips, talking especially to old musicians. Many of the men on the ranches snort cocaine as they sip their Tecate beers. One guy is still snorting at eighty years old, buying wraps of cocaine from his village grocery store.


They sell a variety of presentations of cocaine in Sinaloa. These include: “lavada,” which goes through an additional process to give it sweet flavors; “machaca,” which they admit is mixed down; “cuadrada,” which comes in a square, supposedly cut straight from the the brick it was forged in; and simply the classic “original.” Some wraps of cocaine bear the symbol of a scorpion, which they say is the brand of Los Chapitos.


The dealers I find offer cocaine and weed, but I hear the cartel has banned the selling of fentanyl in Sinaloa because of the harm it has been doing. Of course, the narcos have no such qualms trafficking huge quantities of the deadly substance to the gringos, and with a record of over 100,000 overdose deaths in the U.S. last year, this is spurring the drive of the DEA to go after them.


On one trip down a dirt path, my local producer’s car gets stuck in the mud. The two of us unsuccessfully try and push it out until an SUV drives up behind. I think we are about to get rescued until I see it is full of guys in combat gear with AK-47s.


I give them the same story about being a journalist just doing a project on music, and they try and drive past us. But then they get stuck too, pressed up against our vehicle. The boss looks to be in early twenties and his three gunmen could be late teens. He is laughing at the situation and radios for a guy to come in a pickup truck and pull us out the mud.


Mexico’s narco war is truly tragic. But sometimes it can be surreal.  


Bullets, beer and flowers. A tomb in rural Sinaloa.


Source: Ioan Grillo Substack

41 comments:

  1. I should really switch to edibles

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    Replies
    1. Dabs and edibles are the best

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    2. Good'll Acapulco gold is the best, no need for crazy weed with crazy names!

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    3. Flower is always king 6:20. Dabs are garbage your taking out all the good cannibanoids. If you dab and you like getting high as fuck but don't want to dab no more buy a volcano vaporizer

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    4. 12:20 To defend that other commenter; dabs are pretty nice actually and were my preferred way to use THC when I was like 19/20. It has less encompassing effects for sure but that’s part of the attraction in some ways. It felt like a more ‘clean’ and clearheaded high in a lot of ways because the cannabinoid ratios are different. It’s less inebriating than flower. I’ve been into flower for years since though and dry pipes. Even water pipes like bongs don’t give me the full effects of weed and remind me of dabs in some ways. Lately though I’ve also been into smoking California charas (temple balls).

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  2. AMLO sabes que si pasas por Sinaloa tines que saludar a la madre del Patron,que no se te olvide Guey.

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    Replies
    1. Seguramente la mama del chapo es la que lleva el control del cartel...

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  3. There is no war ! Chapiza🍕 and Sombreriza 🤠are blood brothers

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    Replies
    1. What about El ruso and El nini?? Who killed chino and his sister??

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    2. Ruso is not related to Mayo nor is nini to Chapo. Its like at your job.. maybe you dont like your co worker but you work for the same company..

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    3. @7:50 you Sir/Maam have a high IQ level.

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  4. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  5. Ya no más mencionan a los chapitos y nunca falta a que se les moje el yoyo a sus fans. Pero eso si. Hay andaba la marrana gorda en su video llorando y sudando en que apoyamos a los sinaloas. Pobre estupida. No estas más pendeja no más por que tu puta madre ya no pudo. Jaja. Les recomiendo a todos que escuchen su video para que oigan como de su propia boca le salió decir que es dedo.

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    Replies
    1. I saw that video.lara pretty much confesses to being a fuckin rat.

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    2. Sol it always seem like you are envious of Sinaloa

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    3. La marrana flaca.

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    4. @4:06 you barley finding this info out didn’t take me long at all to know he is. After everything he talks about all the info he has and gets the contacts he has with commandos from jng you don’t think he is a 🐀

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    5. Frankly my Dear:
      Arriba la chapiza y qué!!!
      Pinchis zetas y sus herederos pura infanteria guarachuda corrompiendo a los pobres pendejos.

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    6. 7:54 lla cabiaste de probeedores SIR? 🤣🤣

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  6. blood brothers!!??? wth

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  7. Those dumirs will fall again soon
    They will be caught slipping like always
    Damn goof balls

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    Replies
    1. They won't fall that easy quit hating

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    2. 4:11 why is 3:25 hating maybe your just bootlicking

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    3. 4:51 Straight up hate borderline envy

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    4. 7:47 no I am already a millionaire so why would I care.

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    5. 12:21 yea you are a millionaire in Venezuelan money

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    6. 5:22 actual no I bought a bunch of real estate in 2005 to 2011. I worked my ass off to get it now here I am. Always wanted to go to Venezuela but definitely not Venezuelan dollars

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    7. I can tell you what I am envious of is a lot of these Narcos juniors could have gone to any university that wanted I never had that option

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  8. Sinaloa cartel needs to stop with the Fentanyl... Try n crippling that buis. So it can go back to Heroin...real H

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    Replies
    1. It’s too easy to make fentanyl. H is a very long CULTIVATION process compared to a few days and you have enough fentanyl to make millions. Drug trafficking is only about 1 thing. Easy money.

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    2. 7:36 True but all the heat from law enforcement for fent trafficking at the end of the day will also probably hurt the flow of the dollars significantly.

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    3. 3:46 They are just supplying what customers is requesting.

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    4. It's too late to go back. if they go back to H then some other cartel will step in to fill the void increasing their wealth bc fentanyl is cheaper than heroin, and there is more demand for it. once that happens it's only a matter of time before they challenge CDS for territory in MX

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  9. One of their greatest moments was getting kidnapped by jaliscas. Thats how smart this guys are. Theyre lucky they didnt end up chopped up in a video.

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    Replies
    1. They were taken by a rogue cell having been given permission. Fuck them, but they aren't all stupid. Spoilt and greedy and brutal maybe, but they are alive, and the idiots who kidnapped them ended up in the river.

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  10. "Puntero" not to be confused with "puñatero," but one could be both.

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  11. Correction, Beltran was first cousin , not his blood brother

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  12. ''Ioans free substack''? I thought BB had sold out! To get your interest free loans click here, here and here. Ioan Grillo is great, never heard of this though. Thanks BB.

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  13. @6.43 Most of these narco juniors do go to university, so the only envy you should have is that their dads are rich bastards. Don't forget the ''bastards'' part though. Mayos son Serafin went to college, but lost half his family in the process. Besides, have you met the kinds of people who get to choose exactly which college they want cos their dads are rich? I'd rather meet you than them.

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