With his second escape, Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán can re-establish Sinaloa’s historic domination of narcotics trade and strengthen tactical alliances with other cartels in Mexico, boosting trafficking of drugs, people and weapons

After his last escape El Chapo plotted his cartel's rise. Now he could finish the job

Shortly after breaking out of one of Mexico’s most daunting high-security prisons in an escape that humiliated the country’s government, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán summoned 25 of the country’s most fearsome narcos to a summit meeting, where they set about redrawing the country’s criminal map.

According to a leaked government briefing, delegates at the secret conference – most of whom hailed from the Pacific state of Sinaloa – agreed to launch an offensive against a rival cartel based in the Mexican north-east, and re-establish the Sinaloa Federation’s historic domination of the narcotics trade.

That meeting reportedly took place in 2001, a few months after Guzmán absconded from the Puente Grande prison in Jalisco – either concealed in a laundry cart or escorted through the front door by corrupt policemen, depending on which account of the escape you read.

By the time he was recaptured in February 2014, most of Guzmán’s rivals – and many of his erstwhile allies – had also been arrested, or killed. But while their groups have withered, his own Sinaloa cartel has thrived.



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Now, after Guzmán’s spectacular second escape from another high security jail, well-informed security analysts and sources linked to Mexico’s underworld say they expect the trafficker to set about finishing the job he started.

“The Sinaloa cartel wants to be in charge of a criminal network of networks,” said Edgardo Buscaglia, an expert in international organised crime. “The model goes much further than what Chapo did before.”

The key difference, Buscaglia said, is that today’s expansion model is based on tactical alliances rather than violent competition. Years of bloody turf wars, he said, have left all the cartels more amenable to deals that minimise the personal and business costs that come with constant conflict.

“It’s a development that is completely compatible with the criminal game you see all over the planet,” Buscaglia said, drawing parallels with the Italian mafia and the Japanese yakuza.



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Buscaglia has long been a vehement critic of the military-led offensive against organised crime launched by President Felipe Calderón in 2006 and continued by his successor, Enrique Peña Nieto.

That strategy has pushed some criminal groups into disarray. But the failure to also pursue political corruption and money laundering underpinning cartel power has left the state weaker than it was beforehand, Buscaglia said.

The result, the expert said, is that the Sinaloa cartel now sees its chance to consolidate its dominance through cooperation rather than war. Such a strategy may lead to a reduction in spectacular violence, but would boost the trafficking of drugs, people and weapons, as well as economic crimes, Buscaglia said.



Anecdotal evidence of local truces suggests that the plan might already be in place, but its success depends on the physical presence of El Chapo Guzmán. “He has an astonishing practical intelligence,” Buscaglia said. “To complete the plan to create a real pax mafioso he needs to be there.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Police shows a reward notice for information leading to the capture of drug lord Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán on Thursday. Photograph: Marco Ugarte/AP

In Chapo’s native Sinaloa, news of the escape prompted parties and celebratory gunfire, and sources with personal links to the cartel said they were quietly optimistic.

“There’s a sense of contentment rather than joy,” said one source in the state capital Culiacán, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “People involved feel Chapo is going to bring the order necessary to get things ticking over without problems.”



The woman said that Chapo’s rearrest in 2014 had created tension in the region, because the son he had left in charge, Iván Archivaldo, lacked the necessary authority to command.

“People think that the father will return and everything will calm down” she said. “Nobody will dare to confront him.”

The younger Guzmán is also reputed to have clashed with other senior cartel figures with networks comparable to El Chapo’s, including Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and Rafael Caro Quintero. Caro Quintero was arrested in 1985 on charges including the murder of a DEA agent, but was released from jail on a technicality in 2013 and has since disappeared.

But tensions have never threatened to split the cartel, whose trade in marijuana, cocaine and heroin continued largely as usual while El Chapo was in jail, said Ismael Bojórquez, director of the Sinaloa-based investigative weekly Río Doce.

“The priority [for the cartel] is going to be to regroup and improve coordination – and to negotiate agreements with other groups and the government to end the war,” Bojórquez said.

Mike Vigil, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s former head of international operations, predicted the fallout from El Chapo’s escape will be far less peaceful. “This is going to mean more violence in Mexico and more drugs coming into the United States,” he told the Guardian. “This is the moment for him to try and expand into the territory of the weakened groups and, for the most part, he is going to do so violently.”

Vigil, who retired from the DEA in 2004, but maintains good relations with intelligence sources on both sides of the border, said that El Chapo’s leadership would now be undisputed.

And on Friday, a senior DEA official expressed confidence that the fugtive cartel boss would soon be recaptured. “I really do think we’ve got him on the run, he’s looking over his shoulder,” operations chief Jack Riley told the Associated Press. “We are going to make it as hard on him as possible.”



But Vigi was less optimistic. “Sure, it’s possible that he could be recaptured,” he said, of the massive manhunt launched in the capo’s wake. “But if he makes it into those mountains in Sinaloa – and he might already be there – it is going to be very difficult to get him out again.”