SUMMARY
The outbreak of fighting between different drug-trafficking gangs in Mexico can be understood against the background of changes in the Mexican political landscape during the previous decades. During the 1980s, there was a loose network of drug smugglers who controlled separate territories, known as "plazas", which they used primarily for drug trafficking. Governmental authority was highly centralized under PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, Institutional Revolutionary Party) rule and by bribing high ranking officials the drug smugglers could conduct their operations largely uninterrupted by the authorities.
Since the former President Felipe Calderon launched his offensive against the drug cartels in 2006, many important leaders have been arrested or killed. However, the elimination of top leaders has not always resulted in less violence and weaker cartels. The previously well-organized, centralized organizations have often experienced in-fighting between groups trying to fill the power vacuum when a prominent leader has been removed. A constant shift of alliances has made the situation in Mexico extremely lethal and hard to handle.
The Sinaloa Cartel has become more decentralized in the years past, following the general development that the other major drug cartels in Mexico have gone through. However, this development has not been as profound within the Sinaloa Cartel as in for instance the Gulf Cartel. One indication for this is how the organization has handled the arrest and imprisonment of their leader, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman between February 2014 and July 2015, where command structures and drug-related activities seemed to have continued to the same extent as before.
Nevertheless, a process of decentralization has commenced and this development has been visible outside of the Sinaloa Cartel’s stronghold in the Sinaloa state. In the southwestern part of the Chihuahua state two factions of the Sinaloa Cartel fought each other for the control over different drug routes in 2014, the Sinaloa Cartel – Los Chavez Matamoros faction and the Sinaloa Cartel – Los Salgueiro faction.
The non-state conflict between the Sinaloa Cartel – Los Chavez Matamoros faction and the Sinaloa Cartel – Los Salgueiro faction is first included in UCDP data in 2014. In late September of that year, fighting between the two groups had resulted in more than 25 battle-related deaths when eight people died in a clash between the two groups in Guachochi municipality, Chihuahua.
