Treasury sanctions 8 drug bosses working for Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, calls them ‘kingpins’

Associated Press, 5/7/2013

The Obama administration has levied financial sanctions against eight drug gang bosses accused of working for Mexico’s powerful and violent Sinaloa Cartel. The government accused the eight regional bosses of managing drug smuggling operations for Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the purported head of the Sinaloa Cartel, the Treasury Department announced Tuesday. By declaring the men specially designated narcotics traffickers under the Kingpin Act, Washington has made it illegal for U.S. citizens to do business with them and freezes any assets they may have inside the U.S.

Seven of the men — Armando Lopez Aispuro, Guillermo Nieblas Nava, Felipe de Jesus Sosa Canisales, Raul Sabori Cisneros, Ramon Ignacio Paez Soto, Jesus Alfredo Salazar Ramirez and Jose Javier Rascon Ramirez — are believed to run smuggling operations in the Mexican state of Sonora, which borders Arizona. Cenobio Flores Pachecho is accused of being in charge of smuggling efforts in Mexicali, across the border from California.

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Femicide cases increase in 9 states (Spanish)

El Universal 2/14/2012

Las nueve entidades que registran una tendencia creciente de homicidios de mujeres son Chiapas, Chihuahua, Distrito Federal, Durango, Guerrero, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Sinaloa y Sonora, según un estudio presentado por la subsecretaria de Derechos Humanos de la Secretaría de Gobernación, Lía Limón, en el Senado de la República.

El estudio también analiza las particularidades de cada zona. En el noreste del país, por ejemplo, una mujer de 20 a 24 años tiene 39 veces más riesgo de morir por homicidio, que una mujer de la misma edad de la zona centro del país.

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Mexico’s Coppel Brothers Emerge With $16 Billion Fortune

Bloomberg BusinessWeek, 11/15/2012

Sinaloa

In 1970, Enrique Coppel Tamayo introduced a credit card that allowed his working-class customers to buy clothing and furniture at a handful of retail stores he owned in Culiacan, Mexico.

With Mexico’s economy rebounding from the 2009 recession, and unemployment declining, the country’s consumers have more cash to spend on household goods. Coppel’s department stores across the country give the poorer among them the chance to buy a sofa-bed or an iPhone in small payments over six to 18 months. The Coppel empire has expanded despite the surge in violence in their native state of Sinaloa, home to the cartel of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Mexico’s most-wanted druglord.

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Mexico Institute Event: Security and Economic Opportunity in Sinaloa

Please join the Mexico Institute for a 2 part discussion with Governor Lopez Valdez of Sinaloa on October 25th at 2:30. Governor Lopez Valdez will first dicuss recently implemented crime prevention strategies and their effects in Sinaloa. He will also discuss opportunities for cross border trade and economic cooperation with the United States. As Sinaloa is one of the largest exporters of vegetable produce to the U.S., this is expected to be a very interesting event.

Please RSVP here.

Mexican Navy says captures top drug boss “El Coss”

Reuters, 9/13/12

The Mexican Navy said on Wednesday it had captured one of Mexico’s most wanted drug bosses, the head of the Gulf Cartel, in what would mark a major victory in President Felipe Calderon’s crackdown on organized crime…

Islas said he expected Costilla to be extradited to the United States, and that his testimony could prove damaging to officials in Tamaulipas and neighboring Veracruz state, which has also been dogged by allegations of corruption…

With Costilla’s apparent capture, the cartel is looking increasingly weak, and bloody turf wars for control of the northeastern border with Texas would now intensify. “There will be an increase in violence there,” Islas said.

The stage was now set for increased hostilities in the region between Mexico’s two most powerful gangs, Guzman’s Sinaloa Cartel and the Zetas, he noted.

This could prove a headache for Pena Nieto, who has vowed to quickly reduce the number of beheadings and mass executions. There have been more than 55,000 drug-related deaths in Calderon’s six-year offensive against cartels.

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Cocaine Incorporated

6/15/12, NYT Magazine

Known as El Chapo for his short, stocky frame, Guzmán is 55, which in narco-years is about 150. He is a quasi-mythical figure in Mexico, the subject of countless ballads, who has outlived enemies and accomplices alike, defying the implicit bargain of a life in the drug trade: that careers are glittering but brief and always terminate in prison or the grave...

The Sinaloa cartel can buy a kilo of cocaine in the highlands of Colombia or Peru for around $2,000, then watch it accrue value as it makes its way to market. In Mexico, that kilo fetches more than $10,000. Jump the border to the United States, and it could sell wholesale for $30,000. Break it down into grams to distribute retail, and that same kilo sells for upward of $100,000 — more than its weight in gold. And that’s just cocaine. Alone among the Mexican cartels, Sinaloa is both diversified and vertically integrated, producing and exporting marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine as well…

By most estimates, though, Sinaloa has achieved a market share of at least 40 percent and perhaps as much as 60 percent, which means that Chapo Guzmán’s organization would appear to enjoy annual revenues of some $3 billion — comparable in terms of earnings to Netflix or, for that matter, to Facebook.

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PRI candidate Ulises Alberto Grajales accused of murdering PAN candidate [in Spanish]

Nuevo Excelsior, 6/12/12

In Villaflores (Chiapas) the PRI candidate for presidency of the municipality, Ulises Alberto Grajales Niño, has been detained because he is accused of murdering his rival Édgar Hernández Corzo (PAN).  He supposedly chased him in his truck and shot him to death after three members of Corzo’s campaign team vadalized some of his campaign propaganda.  After he was accused the PRI removed Grajales Niño’s candidacy.Read More…

Mexico drug war displaces families in Sinaloa highlands

Los Angeles Times, 6/01/2012

Sinaloa

In Mexico, at least 1,500 Sinaloa families in the Sierra Madre highlands have fled fighting between the Zetas gang and the Sinaloa drug cartel in the last month.

Reluctantly, the state government of Sinaloa began counting its displaced in May. Gov. Mario LopezValdez traveled to the battle zone between the Sinaloa cartel and the Zetas, today a string of veritable ghost towns. He announced he would deploy more troops to “restore security,” not exactly the cure sought by many of the hiding farmers. For them, more men with guns only seem to exacerbate the problem.

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Sinaloa cartel, Zetas push Mexico’s drug violence to new depths

Los Angeles Times, 5/27/2012

State of Sinaloa

The cartel henchman nicknamed “El Loco” was reported behind the latest atrocity in Mexico’s ever-more-depraved drug war: mutilating 49 people and piling their bodies — heads, hands and feet missing — by the side of a road leading to the U.S. border. 

In Mexico’s eight most violent states, the battle has essentially boiled down to a no-holds-barred fight between two cartels: the Sinaloa network, Mexico’s oldest and traditionally most powerful gang, and the newer and exceedingly vicious Zetas.

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Mexican army raids bulletproofing auto shop, arrests 10 in Sinaloa state

The Washington Post, 10/25/11

Sinaloa

The Mexican army have found an auto shop used to bulletproof vehicles for drug gangs. Ten people were arrested and soldiers confiscated 10 cars or SUVs that were being bulletproofed, as well as six other vehicles in a warehouse in the northern state of Sinaloa, said the army in a late-Monday statement.

Authorities did not say which cartel managed the shop, but it was in the home state of Mexico’s most-wanted drug lord Joaquin Guzman, who is known as “El Chapo.” In border states such as Tamaulipas, soldiers have raided similar bulletproofing auto shops and found freight trucks completely covered in steel. The army’s operation in Sinaloa took place Sunday.

In Acapulco, federal police caught a young woman and a young man as they were getting off a car near a shopping mall with an ice chest, and inside a decapitated head and other human remains, authorities said Tuesday. Police followed them because the car matched the description in a kidnapping report.

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