Mexican drug boss Dámaso López – who unleashed a bloody wave of violence when he tried and failed to take over the Sinaloa cartel – has been extradited from the border city of Ciudad Juárez to the US.



Known by his alias “El Licenciado”, which is a title for college graduates, Lopez was a former lieutenant of Sinaloa kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and helped him escape from a Mexican prison in 2001.



But after Guzmán’s arrest in 2016, he started a bloody battle with the capo’s sons for control of the cartel, entering into an alliance with the upstart Jalisco New Generation cartel and triggering a wave of violence in the Pacific coast states of Sinaloa and Baja California.

López faces US charges of conspiring to distribute cocaine and commit money laundering and could face life imprisonment if convicted.

López was arrested at an apartment building in Mexico City in 2017.

By then, his wing of the drug cartel appeared to collapse, and his son, Dámaso López Serrano, turned himself in at the US-Mexico border, becoming the highest-ranking member of a Mexican cartel to surrender to US authorities.

The son pleaded guilty to drug smuggling charges, saying he orchestrated the shipments of thousands of pounds of methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin to the United States.

The Sinaloa cartel is often described as a horizontal confederation of crime leaders in which Guzmán was seen as the ultimate authority to referee internal disputes.

With Guzmán in jail, control of the organisation has passed between Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García and Rafael Caro Quintero, two of the most traditional, old-school capos, as well as López and Guzmán’s sons, Iván Archivaldo Guzmán and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar.

Guzmán was extradited to the United States in 2017 to face drug trafficking, money laundering and other charges. He has pleaded not guilty.