Mexican president blames US for cartel killings as violence escalates in Sinaloa after leaders arrested

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Thursday blamed the United States in part for a surge in cartel violence that has terrorized the northern state of Sinaloa and left at least 30 people dead in the past week.

Two warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel have been clashing in Culiacán, the state capital, in what appears to be a power struggle since two of its leaders were arrested in the United States in late July. Teams of gunmen have fired on each other and security forces.

Meanwhile, bodies continued to appear all over the city. On a busy street corner, cars drove past pools of blood leading to a body in a garage, while heavily armed, black-masked police charged at another body lying on the ground on a side street in Sinaloa City.

Asked during his morning press briefing whether the U.S. government was “co-responsible” for the violence in Sinaloa, the president responded: “Yes, of course… for having carried out this operation.”

The recent outbreak of cartel warfare was expected after Joaquín Guzmán López, son of former Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, landed near El Paso, Texas, on July 25 in a small plane with Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.

Zambada was the cartel’s dean and lone leader. After his arrest, he said in a letter released by his lawyer that he had been kidnapped by the younger Guzmán and taken to the United States against his will. Zambada pleaded not guilty last week in New York to a drug trafficking case that accuses him of participating in murder plots and ordering torture.

On Thursday afternoon, another military operation covered the north of Culiacán with military and circular helicopters.

Soldiers cordon off a neighborhood during an operation in Culiacan, Sinaloa state, Mexico, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. Eduardo Verdugo/AP

Traffic was heavy in Culiacán, and most schools were open, though parents still weren’t sending their children to class. Businesses continue to close early, and few people venture out after dark. While the city has slowly reopened and soldiers patrol the streets, many families continue to hide, with parents and teachers fearing they’ll be caught in the crossfire.

“Where is the safety for our children, for ourselves, for all citizens? It's so dangerous here that we don't want to go out,” a mother from Culiacán told The Associated Press.

The mother, who declined to be named for fear of cartels, said that although some schools have recently reopened, she has not allowed her daughter to attend for two weeks. She said she was afraid to do so after gunmen stopped a taxi she was traveling in on her way home, terrifying her daughter.

“Hugs, not bullets”

In his morning press briefing, López Obrador said that U.S. authorities had “carried out this operation” to capture Zambada and that “it was totally illegal, and that agents from the Justice Department were waiting for Mr. Mayo.”

“If today we are facing instability and clashes in Sinaloa, it is because they (the US government) made this decision,” he said.

He added that there can be no “cooperative relationship if unilateral decisions” are made. Mexican prosecutors have said they are considering bringing treason charges against those involved in the plan to arrest Zambada.

President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum echoed his remarks, saying later in the day that “we can never accept that there is no communication or collaboration.”

It is the latest escalation of tensions in U.S.-Mexico relations. Last month, Mexico's president said he was putting relations with the U.S. and Canadian embassies “on pause” after the ambassadors criticized his controversial plan to reform Mexico's judicial system by requiring all judges to be elected.

Zambada’s capture, however, has fueled criticism of López Obrador, who has refused throughout his term to confront the cartels, adopting a strategy he calls “hugs, not bullets.” He has repeatedly falsely claimed that the cartels respect Mexican citizens and fight mainly among themselves.

While the president, who is set to leave office at the end of the month, has promised that his plan would reduce cartel violence, such clashes continue to wreak havoc in Mexico. The cartels are using an increasingly diverse range of tactics, including pipe bombs, trenches, homemade armored vehicles and bomb-dropping drones.

Last week, López Obrador publicly called on Sinaloa’s warring factions to act “responsibly” and said he believed the cartels would listen to him. But the bloodshed has only continued.

In a strange turn of events, Mexican prosecutors last month said they were filing charges against Guzmán for apparently kidnapping Zambada — but they also cited another charge under a section of Mexico's penal code that defines what he did as treason.

Nowhere in the affidavit is there any mention that the younger Guzmán was a member of the Chapitos — “little Chapos” — a faction of the Sinaloa cartel, made up of El Chapo’s sons, which smuggles millions of doses of fentanyl, a deadly opioid, into the United States, causing an estimated 70,000 overdose deaths each year. According to a 2023 indictment by the U.S. Justice Department, the Chapitos and their cartel associates used corkscrews, electrocution and hot peppers to torture their rivals while some of their victims were “fed dead or alive to the tigers.”

El Chapo, the founder of the Sinaloa cartel, is serving a life sentence in a maximum-security prison in Colorado after being convicted in 2019 of crimes including drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons offenses.

Last year, El Chapo sent an “SOS” message to the Mexican president, saying he had been subjected to “psychological torment” in prison.

More information on CBS News

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