The capture of Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada on July 25, 2024—allegedly orchestrated by Joaquín Guzmán López, a leader of Los Chapitos faction—shattered the Sinaloa Cartel's internal equilibrium and triggered Mexico's deadliest sustained urban conflict in years. Open warfare erupted in Culiacán on September 9 between Los Chapitos, the sons of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, and La Mayiza, loyalists to the imprisoned patriarch. At least 900 people have died since September, with some sources placing the toll above 1,800; homicide rates in Culiacán surged roughly 400 percent in the months following Zambada's transfer to U.S. custody, according to conflict-event data tracked by ACLED.
This is not merely a succession struggle within a criminal network. The collapse of Zambada's mediating authority has precipitated a governance vacuum across Sinaloa state, transforming Culiacán into a theater of running gunfights, narco-blockades, and indiscriminate predation against civilians. Schools have closed, businesses shuttered, and arterial highways to the Pacific port of Mazatlán have been intermittently seized by armed convoys. The violence reveals the structural fragility of a state that outsourced territorial order to criminal arbiters—and the human cost when that arrangement disintegrates.