IMPRISONMENT OF EL CHAPO FAILS TO IMPACT SINALOA CARTEL OPERATIONS

Despite the imprisonment of its leader, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the Sinaloa Cartel continues to operate unabated

Cut off the head of a snake and the body will die. Not so with Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel. According to Al Laurita, head of the DEA’s Tucson office, the imprisonment of top boss El Chapo a year ago has not impeded the operations of the notorious drug organization. Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada is now the cartel’s top boss.

Laurita told Mexico’s Proceso magazine:

“We have not seen any significant change in the Sinaloa Cartel. We continue to see the same ways of operation that they had before the capture of El Chapo, the same control of operations; keeps the same people in charge of drug trafficking departing for the United States and territorial control in Mexico. The only change we have seen is between people who controlled the Nogales (Sonora) plaza and whoever controlled the western part of the Sonoran desert, and who had a relationship with Indian Reservation of the Tohono O’odham Nation in southwestern and central Arizona.”

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto told anyone who would listen that the Sinaloa Cartel would “crumble” with the arrest of El Chapo. Was he ever wrong! The cartel goes merrily on its way shipping pot, meth, heroin and coke to Chicago and other American cities. And the Sinaloa Cartel continues to supply Colorado’s flourishing black market in pot, even though the state legalized marijuana a year ago.