The BBC reports that a drug cartel conflict has turned a Mexican city into a war zone, and that "fear is everywhere."

 

Members of the Sinaloa cartel have split into rival factions engaged in a deadly war (Image: Darren conway/BBC)

The president of Mexico has praised the special forces for "bringing down" Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, a drug lord and the most wanted man in the country. Oseguera, better known as "El Mencho", died in custody on Sunday, shortly after being captured amid a bloody firefight in Jalisco.

 However, as Quentin Sommerville of the BBC discovered in Culiacán, a Mexican cartel hotspot in the northern Sinaloa state, the vacuum created by the removal of a powerful cartel leader can lead to an increase in violence as rival groups fight for power.

As part of their work, paramedics Julio César Vega and Héctor Torres witness some of the bloody fallout from the violence (Darren Conway/BBC)

Warning: This article contains graphic accounts of cartel violence which readers may find upsetting.

"The fear is everywhere and the fear is constant," said paramedic Héctor Torres, 53, from the front seat of the ambulance in Culiacán.

 We had just returned from the scene of a shooting inside a downtown garage. The white tiled floor was covered in blood as the owner lay dead in his office. A woman ran in screaming as Héctor and Julio César Vega, a 28-year-old paramedic, entered the premises. Despite the fact that she was the man's wife, nothing could be done. Héctor checked for vitals and then placed a paper blanket over the corpse.

 After the son of one of the Sinaloa cartel's leaders betrayed another, the Sinaloa cartel—one of the largest and most feared drug gangs in the world—has been at war with itself for the past year and a half. Sinaloa has been ravaged by the removal of that cartel's leader, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, who is currently in prison in the United States. This serves as a warning of the dangers that the country faces. According to Héctor, the level and duration of the violence in Culiacán had never been higher. Last year, their number of call outs increased by over 70%.

 But in the week I spent with Héctor and Julio almost every incident they responded to ended the same way, with a dead body in a building or by the side of the road, and grief-stricken relatives nearby asking for answers.

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 Schools, hospitals, and even funerals have all been targeted by cartels, and few of their victims make it out alive. The Santos cartel was similar to a family. A single cartel unified the entire group. They shared a table and were friends, as Héctor explained. He stated, "They were like brothers, parents, uncles, sisters, and then suddenly they were fighting... and locked in a deadly feud." That family business grew into a billion-dollar business that produced the lethal drug fentanyl and flooded the streets of the United States with opioids, killing tens of thousands of people. US President Donald Trump declared the cartel, and others, terrorist organisations, and labelled fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction.  He's threatened Mexico with direct military action if it doesn't bring the drug and the traffickers under control.

The two paramedics are aware that tending to the wounded can make them a target (Image: Darren Conway/BBC)

Julio and Héctor were both covered in armor plate and 14 kilograms of Kevlar. "We don't know if the people responsible for the attacks are still at the scene or if they completed their objective and disappeared suddenly," Julio stated. As a result, we run the risk of being wounded and caught in an attack's crossfire." As we drove back to the paramedic base, the sun was beginning to set, and a city that had once been alive at night would soon be empty. Traffic moved slowly. The Mexican government has sent thousands of troops to Sinaloa, and they'd set up checkpoints on most of the roads.

 It turned out that three men were taken from the property at the same time as the garage owner was killed. Marines and soldiers with heavy weapons were searching cars for any sign of them.

Warning: The following paragraphs contain descriptions of violence and torture which readers may find upsetting.

 

Kidnapping in Culiacán can be a fate worse than death.

 A body had been discovered on the pavement in front of one of the major shopping malls earlier in the week. It was evident that the victim had been tortured from the state of his body. His body was unharmed, but his eyes and skull were missing. A sign was left with the corpse, in large lettering, a message from one cartel faction to another.  It accused the dead man of being a traitor and came with a warning: "We are coming for the rest of you."

 Culiacán is a prosperous city with a lot of nice parks, fancy car dealerships, and shopping malls. Outside the mall, a man in black cycling gear stopped in the rush-hour traffic to stare as the police placed the remains of the man into a body bag.

 The next day, the body of another victim - mutilated in the same way - was left by the main road heading north outside of the city.  The accompanying sign was hard to read when the forensic team lifted it; blood ran down its surface and puddled in the gravel verge. I would meet Ernesto Martnez, who has been covering the violence in this area for 27 years, at each new crime scene. A 16-year-old boy had been shot dead in the city's San Rafael neighbourhood; Emmanuel Alexander legs were still tangled in his bike frame as the police marked out the more than a dozen bullet casings around his body.

 A handgun had shot him and killed him at close range.

Children have also fallen victim to the violence wracking the city (Image: Darren Conway/BBC)

Martínez explained that "there used to be more police officers, there were more soldiers, there was more security".

 "Despite the fact that there was a checkpoint on every street corner, the number of homicides per day remained the same—five to six on average. And the same trend continues."

 What then might stop the violence? To inquire about that, I met with one of the Sinaloa factions. I was told not to bring my phone or any tracking devices to the meeting. They are ruthless criminals with little remorse and a straightforward plan for the killings. The government ought to get out of the way and let them kill each other until only one group remains, regardless of the danger to bystanders. After insisting that their identities be concealed, they showed up to the meeting armed and wearing face masks for the interview. "Yes, it's true because a lot of times innocent people die," replied "Marco," who wasn't his real name, when I asked him if he was guilty. Children die.  Numerous innocent people are killed." "A lot of people will keep dying because the cartel is still fighting, and it keeps getting worse," Miguel said as he sat next to him. The war will continue.  Until there's only one faction left, nothing will change. The violence of the cartels is not only increasing the number of bodies that are discovered but also the number of people who are reported missing. Reynalda Pulido's son, Javier Ernesto, disappeared in December 2020.  She is the leader of the group Mothers Fighting Back and continues to look for him as well as other people. On a chilly morning, at a petrol station not far from Culiacán, Pulido and a group of other mothers hugged each other before setting out on a search.

 Nearly all of the more than a dozen women were decked out in white T-shirts bearing the names and images of their departed loved ones. They began by fixing the pictures of some of the missing to lamp posts, the sound of their tape tearing across the noise of neighbourhood dogs which barked aggressively when they passed by homes.  Their convoy consisted of an armored truck and pick-up truck with a top-mounted gunner, a military escort, and six heavily armed soldiers. They looked for remains with metal probes, pick axes, and shovels in a field where buzzards were flying overhead. They were looking for stricken soil, holes in the ground, and any evidence of a temporary grave. They smelled the dirt as they dug into the ground, searching for the distinctive scent of human remains.

Reynalda Pulido is one of the women still searching for her missing son (Image: Darren Conway/BBC)

Reynalda Pulido told me during a break in the search that whenever she wakes up, she asks God, "Tell me why I'm here?" Realizing that no one else will search for them gives me strength. Because no one is moving to search for the missing in Sinaloa, I am aware of it. And a mother will always look for her child, even if it means traveling to the ends of the earth. The women had received several tip-offs that a body may have been disposed of in the field, but after hours in the midday sun, they found nothing but animal bones.

 Reynalda was asked gently if she believed she would ever locate her son. She said, wiping tears from her eyes, "It's something I ask myself very often." "But I've already found my son in the 250 bodies I've located, and in the thirty-something people I've found alive.  They are my children, too.  Additionally, I adopt the children of each and every family that approaches me for assistance. Every single one of them has my son present. All of them carry a little piece of my son."

 The root cause of Culiacán's misery is the fentanyl trade.

 In a cartel-owned basement, "Román" (not his real name), who produces the drug, tells me to follow him.

 More than half a dozen tightly packed white powder packages of the drug had just been packed for his most recent shipment to the United States. He wore a face mask and gloves while handling the deadly bundles.

 He found the number 300 indented into the surface of one of the sealed packages when he opened it. They used to send pills to the US, but now they send powder because they think it's easier to get around US Customs. Each package weighs a kilo and is worth $20,000 (£14,800).  But Román explained that depending on the city it is sent to, it can fetch more.  "If we take it to New York, it can go as high as $28,000 or $29,000.  The price goes up, and so does our profit, the higher it goes up." He has no shame or responsibility for the business he is in. And he says that whatever the Mexican and United States governments think, the fentanyl will keep flowing.

 He stated, "Yes, they're coming after us more and getting closer, even though the government has intensified the search." "But when it comes to production, we've never stopped.  When things get heated or the government gets too close, we sometimes have to cut back. Therefore, we rest for a few days, but once the issue is resolved, we either continue or relocate to other locations." The US has labelled you terrorists, we tell him.  "Well, even though President Donald Trump refers to us as terrorists, I would just remind him that as long as there are consumers, we're going to keep doing this but that doesn't necessarily make us terrorists," he responds blithely. As long as people want to consume it, they are free to do so.  They are not being coerced. No one forced them to start this vice, to start using this stuff."

 The Mexican government has said it is making progress in its fight against drug trafficking.  It claims to have reduced the supply of fentanyl to the US by fifty percent. From Culiacán I travelled to Mexico City.  The capital's airport was noisy with the sound of drilling and plaster being pulled from walls, preparations for World Cup 2026.

 I questioned President Claudia Sheinbaum about the steps necessary to bring the violence in Sinaloa under control during one of her regular news conferences, which took place prior to the murder of "El Mencho" on Sunday. She insisted that her government was "trying to avoid harm to civilians, to the people" and attributed the increase in violence in the northern state to the internal power struggle within the Sinaloa cartel.

Claudia Sheinbaum said her government was making progress in its fight against drug trafficking(Image: Darren Conway/BBC)

Back in Sinaloa, I'd had a final call out with the paramedics, Héctor and Julio, to another shooting downtown.  We passed through the crime scene tape and discovered a man on the pavement bleeding from a chest bullet wound as a police helicopter flew overhead. He continued to breathe and yelled for assistance. Julio raced to another man who was critically injured and was not responding as Héctor began treating him. Even though we were surrounded by soldiers and marines, the men's work took on greater urgency because they were concerned that the cartel might return. After being patched up, the two victims were rushed to a hospital nearby. It turned out that they were just bystanders caught in the crossfire. However, in the event of an attack, the military still established an armed cordon around the hospital. We would find out later that the men made it through. Héctor and Julio shared a cigarette after taking off their blue rubber medical gloves, which were still stained with blood. Héctor stated, "These are the first victims we've found alive since November."

Source: BBC