Mexico arrests son of ‘El Chapo’: Why don’t citizens feel safer?

Lizbeth Angüis, a programmer in her late 20s, grew up in Sinaloa – the Mexican state with a storied history of organized crime, sometimes referred to as the cradle of Mexican drug cartels – hearing messages that drug traffickers are untouchable and that if you support them, they’ll take care of you.

But that myth has been shattered for her – and residents across the northwestern city of Culiacán – as the government has sought to crack down on the Sinaloa cartel.

Last week, after the Mexican government captured Ovidio Guzmán, son of the Sinaloa kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, his supporters set cars, trash trucks, and public buses ablaze in broad daylight. Nearly 30 soldiers and alleged criminals were killed in gunfire, a grim echo of a deadly revenge attack by cartel members in 2019.

“They don’t care about citizens; they will always take care of themselves first,” says Ms. Angüis.

As President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gather with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador this week for the so-called Three Amigos summit, the recapture of Mr. Guzmán is an international victory for Mexico. But if it was a moment of redemption for the government, for citizens in Culiacán it reaffirmed a shifting sense of their own security.

Three years ago, the government dramatically botched an attempted arrest of the younger Mr. Guzmán, releasing the Sinaloa cartel heir after his detention sparked gunfights in central plazas, catching unsuspecting civilians in the crosshairs.

Ultimately the government let him go to restore peace. That day, referred to as the “Culiacanazo,” marked a turning point for many here, waking citizens up to the reality that neither the cartel nor the government was prioritizing their safety. And so this month, amid a second attempt that unleashed another wave of violent retribution, many are left more convinced of the precariousness of their own safety – and that the root causes of drug violence must be addressed.

The Culiacanazo “had important effects on society here, because it was the first time in the history of narcotrafficking in Sinaloa when the narcos faced off against civilians,” says Isaac Tomás Guevara Martínez, founder of the Laboratory of Psychosocial Studies of Violence at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa. “They threatened, shot, and killed citizens that had nothing to do with the detention of Ovidio [Guzmán]. ... I can’t say all people hate the cartels now, but I think the number of people ... thinking that organized crime is a scourge – that has gone up since 2019.”

For many, déjà vu

On Jan. 5, many in Culiacán, the verdant capital of Sinaloa, woke to text messages and news reports simply telling them to stay home. It immediately surfaced dark memories of 2019, when families were separated for hours – barricaded in their offices without access to food or water, shut into clinics that weren’t letting patients in or out, or driving in reverse down one-way streets in an attempt to avoid smoldering roadblocks or armed youths on street corners.  

Inés Arce, a local teacher in her early 50s, says the first thing she did this time was to check on her children in their rooms – since her family was separated in 2019 during the violence, a trauma that has stayed with her.

“On both occasions I felt helpless,” says the teacher of the failed arrest in 2019 and last week’s successful early morning operation, which brought Mr. Guzmán to a maximum-security federal prison in Mexico City. “I felt kidnapped in my own city, in my own home ... and to know that my rights as a citizen were trampled because the government needed to detain someone,” she says. “We, the citizens, are the collateral damage. It is us who suffer.”

Indeed, if drug cartels are increasingly distrusted, so too are authorities, especially as a U.S.-backed emphasis on capturing drug kingpins has taken hold over the past 15 years.

Mexico is consistently under pressure to keep drug trafficking organizations, which move billions of dollars in illicit substances across the U.S.-Mexico border each year, in check. But citizens and experts alike question the effectiveness of the most relied-upon policies, such as arresting cartel leaders and deploying the armed forces to halt organized crime.

Over the past decade, the very nature of organized crime has changed, with many groups diversifying their income beyond drug trafficking, and large cartels splintering into smaller, oftentimes more nimble groups.

“With the change in how cartels operate, it’s increasingly unclear what it means to capture a kingpin,” says Jane Esberg, assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. But, she says, “there’s pretty robust evidence that it doesn’t work. Making weaker cartels doesn’t solve the problem.”

Mr. Guzmán, along with his brothers, is part of a faction of their father’s cartel that emerged after El Chapo’s extradition to the United States in 2017. They’re known as “Los Chapitos,” or The Little Chapos. Ovidio Guzmán’s organization is believed to produce upward of 2,000 kilograms of methamphetamine a month, according to the U.S. State Department.

Mexican officials deny timing last week’s raid to show the U.S. that it’s an active partner in halting the flow of drugs and lethal synthetic opioids across the border. But the U.S. continues to pressure Mexico to take necessary steps to tackle organized crime.

The operation this year was noted for its planning and coordination. Instead of carrying out the arrest in the middle of the city, as in 2019, the government made its move in the town of Jesús Maria, about 27 miles outside Culiacán. And conducting the raid in the early morning meant fewer civilians were on the street, putting them at lower risk.

Nationally, some 42% of Mexicans say the most recent arrest of Mr. Guzmán makes them feel safer, according to an Enkoll poll carried out by El Pais and W Radio. But zooming in on Culiacán, the figures are far lower, with only 17% of the population reporting feeling safer and almost 50% of respondents saying they feel less safe than before the operation. 

No longer Robin Hood 

This sense of feeling less safe may be a reflection of the difficult memories of what happened in 2019 and being forced to live through that uncertainty again, says Dr. Guevara. But there are also Sinaloans who still look at the presence of the cartel as a sign of security, so losing a leader is nerve-wracking.

“There are still a lot of people [in Sinaloa] who have a little place in their hearts for the cartels. If you look at the situation in Mexico, organized crime groups across the country behave very differently than in Sinaloa. The Sinaloa cartel has a reputation of protecting society and protecting their territory,” he says, unlike newer groups like the Jalisco New Generation, which have a reputation for aggression and violence at any cost.

This idea of the Sinaloa cartel serving as a “Robin Hood” figure – funding schools and health clinics, and even handing out boxes of food and vital supplies during the toughest days of the COVID-19 pandemic – started to break down in 2019.

“People started to look at the cartel in a new light – as a group that threatens the peace,” Dr. Guevara says.

Mr. López Obrador, often referred to as AMLO, took office in 2018 pledging to shift Mexico’s approach to combating organized crime, promising “hugs not bullets.” The only other high-profile arrest during his administration was of Rafael Caro Quintero, who was detained last July – just ahead of a meeting between AMLO and President Biden in Washington.

There are other, effective ways to combat organized crime, argues Dr. Esberg, but they aren’t short-term solutions, which tends to make them politically unappealing.

“The long-term plan, which is hard to implement, is dealing with why people join these groups in the first place. The fact that they can recruit or force an unlimited number of people to join in their fight gives them enormous benefit over the state,” she says. That means dealing with local economies so there are alternative opportunities, and reducing impunity and corruption – no simple tasks.

“The highest cost” of not getting at the root causes behind the power of the cartels, says Dr. Esberg, “is to the people of Mexico.”