Álvaro Arandas was approaching the check-in counter at Culiacán International Airport when the pandemonium began.
“You could hear the shooting – big explosions, so much noise,” said the Mexican businessman, who had planned to board a flight to the eastern city of San Luis Potosí.
Instead, Arandas found himself scrambling for cover as security forces and cartel gunmen battled for control of an airfield that had become the latest frontline in a Latin American drug conflict that tens of thousands of lives every year.
“There was panic… people abandoned their bags and their phones, they abandoned everything to take refuge,” the 32-year-old recalled the clashes at eight in the morning this Thursday.
Ovidio Guzmán Photo: FBI/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock
Twenty-four hours later, Arandas remained stranded inside the airport as Mexican troops battled to regain full control of the Sinaloa state capital after the arrest of one of the country’s most wanted men , Ovidio Guzmán, unleashed a day of blood and chaos.
At least 29 people were killed, including 10 members of the army and 19 suspected cartel shooters, while 35 soldiers were injured.
And Guzmán, the 32-year-old son of former Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, was behind bars in Mexico City after the latest bloody chapter in the history of the northwest his family
Map of Mexico showing the state of Culiacán and Sinaloa
“No one is above the law,” Mexico’s security chief, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, declared Friday as she celebrated Guzmán’s arrest on the eve of Joe Biden’s visit next week.
Rosa Icela Rodríguez during a press conference in Mexico City after the reconquest of Ovidio Guzmán Photo: Gerardo Vieyra/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock
Culiacán’s day of drama began around 4:40 a.m. this Thursday, according to local newspaper Noroeste.
Thirty-five miles north of the capital, near a rural fishing community called Jesús María, security forces claimed to have spotted a convoy of about 25 cartel vehicles believed to be their target, also known as “El Ratón” (The Mouse), he was traveling.
Seven soldiers died in the ensuing shootout between troops and gangsters with .50-caliber machine guns desperate to avoid the arrest of Guzmán, a suspected cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine trafficker for whose capture the United States had offered a $5 millions of dollars.
A Black Hawk machine gun hit a target with a six-barrel 3,000-round-per-minute machine gun similar to the one used by US troops in Vietnam.
Guzmán was eventually arrested, but the worst was yet to come as the cartel’s gunmen rampaged through the state of Sinaloa, burning vehicles, blocking roads and attempting to take control of the Culiacán airport to prevent the authorities to extract their leader.
“We ask citizens not to go out,” tweeted Sinaloa’s security secretary, Cristóbal Castañeda, as the chaos spread. “We will give you more information when we can.”
Former Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) chief Mike Vigil said Mexican authorities were partly responsible for the cartel’s response to Guzmán’s arrest.
When the drug lord was briefly detained in October 2019, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador controversially ordered troops to release him after gangsters paralyzed the city on a day known as “Black Thursday”. from Culiacán.
Soldiers stand guard near burning vehicles on a street during the operation to arrest Guzman Photo: Juan Carlos Cruz/AFP/Getty Images
“We don’t want war,” López Obrador, better known as Amlo, said at the time.
Vigil said Amlo’s decision had sent a clear message to the leaders of Mexico’s two most feared organized crime groups, the New Generation Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels, “that if a leading member of the cartel was caught and you majority violence, there was a good chance that they would be released.”
So it was that on Thursday morning, the Sinaloa gunmen decided to raise hell.
“Obviously, they’ve developed a plan to shut down the entire city if they need to,” Vigil said. “The reaction is equivalent to that of any well-trained military. They know exactly what they have to do. Everyone has responsibilities.”
Mexican cartel targets airport, blocks roads after El Chapo’s son captured: video
Part of his plan appears to have been to seize the airport in Culiacán and prevent military planes from landing there to expel his high-profile prisoner.
When Arandas arrived at the check-in, gangsters opened fire on military and civilian planes, some still in flight, as well as airport buildings, Mexican Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval told reporters on Friday.
“Two Air Force planes … had to make emergency landings” after being hit by “a considerable number” of cartel bullets, Sandoval admitted in a stunning official account of war violence.
The planes targeted included the 8.24am Aeroméxico flight to Mexico City, whose distraught passengers were filmed crouching for cover between their dark blue seats as the assault unfolded around them. “Because?” a frightened child can be heard asking a parent.
Some analysts believe Guzmán’s arrest was intended as a gesture to Biden, with whom Amlo plans to meet Monday in Mexico City to discuss issues such as migration and security, including Mexico’s role in the U.S. fentanyl crisis. USA
“From Amlo’s playbook,” a former senior US law enforcement official in Mexico told Vice. “He plays us like a violin.”
Security expert Óscar Balderas said the capture would allow Amlo to signal to the United States that Mexico was capable of dealing effective blows to organized crime. Guzmán was also a domestic “trophy” that Amlo could use to claim that his “abrazos no balazos” (hugs not bullets) security policy – which puts the fight against the social roots of crime above violent confrontation – was working. “It is a demonstration that the strategy of their hugs, not bullets, is not a strategy that means impunity.”
Quick Guide
The evolution of Mexico’s war on drugs
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Calderón sends the army
Mexico’s “war on drugs” began in late 2006 when then-president Felipe Calderón ordered thousands of troops into the streets in response to an explosion of horrific violence in his home state of Michoacán.
Calderón hoped to crush the drug cartels with his heavily militarized attack, but the approach backfired and took a catastrophic human toll. As Mexico’s military went on the offensive, the body count soared to new levels and tens of thousands were forced from their homes, disappeared or died.
Kingpin Strategy
Simultaneously, Calderón also began to pursue the so-called “head strategy” by which the authorities sought to decapitate the cartels by targeting their leaders.
This policy resulted in some high-profile scalps, most notably Arturo Beltrán Leyva, who was gunned down by Mexican marines in 2009, but also did little to bring peace. In fact, many believe these tactics only served to pulverize the organized crime world, creating even more violence as new, less predictable factions fought for their share of the pie.
Under Calderón’s successor, Enrique Peña Nieto, the government’s rhetoric on crime softened as Mexico sought to shed its reputation as home to some of the world’s deadliest mafia groups.
But Calderón’s policies largely survived, with authorities targeting prominent cartel leaders such as Sinaloa’s Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
When “El Chapo” was arrested in early 2016, Mexico’s president boasted: “Mission accomplished.” But the violence continued. When Peña Nieto left office in 2018, Mexico had suffered another record year of murders, with nearly 36,000 people killed.
“Hugs Not Bullets”
Left-wing populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador took power in December, promising a dramatic change in tactics. López Obrador, or Amlo as most call him, pledged to attack the social roots of crime, offering vocational training to more than 2.3 million disadvantaged youth at risk of being caught by the cartels.
“It will be practically impossible to achieve peace without justice and [social] welfare,” Amlo said, promising to reduce the murder rate from an average of 89 murders per day with his “hugs not bullets” doctrine.
Amlo also pledged to chair daily 6am security meetings and create a 60,000-strong “National Guard”. But these measures have yet to bear fruit, as the new security force is mainly used to hunt down Central American migrants.
Mexico now averages about 96 murders a day, with nearly 29,000 people killed since Amlo took office.
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Vigil called the capture of Guzmán, who was flown to Mexico City by helicopter, “a victory for justice and the rule of law.”
But he said the Sinaloa cartel was such a vast and horizontally directed organization that its arrest was unlikely to make much of a difference to its illegal operations.
“They operate on six of the seven continents. The only continent they don’t operate on is Antarctica because the penguins don’t have money to buy drugs,” Vigil joked, adding: “[This is] it will have no impact on the violence in Mexico or the drugs coming into the US, especially fentanyl, which is the big crisis we have.”
By Friday afternoon, the violence appeared to have subsided in Culiacán. The city’s ghostly streets began to fill up as roadblocks were dismantled, although the state’s safety secretary told locals to drive with their windows rolled down if they were tinted.
Few expect the calm to last long. Some fear a power struggle between a weakened Sinaloa cartel and its rivals in Jalisco. Others suspect a showdown is brewing between El Chapo’s four sons, known as Los Chapitos, and gangsters loyal to legendary cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.
Vigil warned that while normality may…