2025-11-08
51 分钟The Economist In Culiacan, the capital of Mexico's Sinaloa state,
a new slogan has become popular, artfully painted on walls.
No hay camino haci la paz.
La paz es el camino.
Words attributed to Mahatma Gandhi.
There is no path to peace.
Peace is the path.
Culiacan is not on that path, not near to it.
Hundreds and hundreds of people have been brutally murdered or disappeared in the past year.
You probably know the name Sinaloa, not the state, but the drugs syndicate whose epicenter is there.
In Culiacan,
stories about Mexico's drug gangs are littered with the cinematic violence that happens between them,
competing for turf or markets or supply chains.
In Culiacan, the current savagery has come about from a split within a gang.
In July last year, one of the Sinaloa syndicate's head honchos, Ismael El Mayo Zambada,
was reportedly kidnapped there, piled into a small plane,
flown north and handed over to American authorities.
El Mayo blamed the betrayal on Joaquin Guzman Lopez, his own godson,
the son of Joaquin El Chapo Guzman, the syndicate's other co founder, now behind bars in America.
Suspicions quickly became a rift between factions aligned with El Mayo and with El Chapo,