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 last decades. During the 1980s, there was a loose network of drug smugglers controlling their own "plaza" for drug trafficking. Governmental authority was highly centralized under PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, Institutional Revolutionary Party) rule and by bribing high officials, the drug smugglers could control their businesses without getting interrupted by the authorities. When single-party rule started to give way to local opposition these networks and relationships were transformed, to the advantage of some actors but to the disadvantage of others. The drug cartels started to fight each other for control over territory and previous alliances fell apart.
The imprisonment of the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, in February 2014, left his close associate Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada as the acting leader over the large cartel. This created tensions within some parts of the Sinaloa Cartel. A high ranking leader within the cartel called Dámaso "El Licenciado" López Núñez, together with Dámaso "El Mini Lic” López Serrano, challenged Zambada for the control over the cartel’s operations in La Paz, Baja California Sur, beginning in July 2014.
A number of killings took place in the La Paz area in 2014, but it was not until the beginning of 2015 that the fighting intensified between the Sinaloa Cartel. The Sinaloa Cartel mainly used its enforcement gang in the area called Los Antrax to defend its positions. Both of the groups used hitmen to target and kill members from the rival group. Many of those killed in this spike of drug-related violence was questioned and tortured before being executed, pictures and videos of this were later spread to inflict fear in the other group.
The non-state conflict between the Sinaloa Cartel was first included in UCDP data in 2015. By the end of July that year more than 25 people had been killed in clashes around the towns of La Paz and Los Cabos in Baja California Sur.
