7 days ago
World's most violent cartel operates like corporate business to run global drug-smuggling empire
How murder and kidnapping has made the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel the most feared and powerful drugs cartel in the world.
Dealing vast quantities of cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl – a drug 100 times more potent than heroin - is all in a day's work for the the most violent cartel in the world.
Add in weapons trafficking, money laundering, gun battles, kidnapping and murder, and it's clear that few groups are as brutal as Mexico's feared Sinaloa Cartel.
The organisation traces its roots to the city of Culiacan, capital of Mexico's western Sinaloa state, in the 1960s when Pedro Aviles Perez – known as El Leon de la Sierra, or The Mountain Lion – became one of the first traffickers to use aircraft to smuggle drugs into the US. The modern incarnation evolved in the late 80s, the cartel emerging from the remains of others dismantled by law enforcement in the region.
A boom period in the demand for narcotics, particularly cocaine and heroin in the US, provided the opportunity for vast profits. Rivals or anyone who stood in its way were ruthlessly dispatched. The group also systematically corrupted officials, realising that a pay-off was the best way to ensure the drugs reached the market. Once an official was on the payroll, there was no way out.
Via its ruthless but effective leadership, willing footsoldiers and the never-ending demand for drugs, the Sinaloa grew throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Law enforcement estimated that Mexican cartels were responsible for 90 per cent of the cocaine smuggled into the US.
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The Sinaloa became the dominant cartel, expanding into neighbouring states of Mexico such as Baja California, Sonora and Chihuahua. Crucially, these states in the north shared direct land borders with the US, thereby providing even more direct routes into that market. The successful battle for supremacy with the Tijuana Cartel in Baja California in particular brought with it increasing dominance for the Sinaloa.
Tijuana founder Ramon Arellano Felix had been responsible for the murder of two key Sinaloa figures in the 90s, a move which sparked all-out war between the two cartels. Arellano Felix was shot dead by law officers in Sinaloa state in 2002 after being stopped for traffic offences, a move said to have been initiated on the instructions of Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin ' El Chapo ' Guzman.
Arellano Felix's older brother Francisco, another key Tijuana figure, was arrested weeks later. The Tijuana ended up effectively becoming absorbed into the Sinaloa. As far back as the 90s, the Sinaloa had been estimated by law enforcement to have become as large and powerful as the Medellin group, founded in Colombia by the legendary Pablo Escobar.
Further expansion by the Sinaloa in the years since suggests it has now usurped even the Medellin cartel in its prime, with annual drugs shipments in the billions of dollars. The Sinaloa has perfected the advanced use of tunnelling to smuggled its drugs. In 2011, one 'super tunnel' was uncovered under the runway of Tijuana Airport, adjacent to the Mexico-US border. The 1800-foot excavation was fitted with lifts and rail cars used to ferry drugs across the border.
The Sinaloa cartel operates a 'management' structure akin to that of any multinational company. A hierarchy chart compiled from intelligence sources two years ago shows 'departmental heads', including five bosses in the chemical supply section, four clandestine lab managers, four chiefs in its fentanyl trafficking section, four in security and weapons trafficking, and three 'illicit financiers'.
At the top were three chiefs claimed to be the overall leaders, including Ovidio Guzman Lopez, 35, who was captured in 2023. The son of Sinaloa founder El Chapo, he pleaded guilty in July 2025 to charges linked to drug trafficking and running a cartel.
Also among those captured was glamorous Gucci-loving Sinaloa chief Ana Gabriela Rubio Zea, 35, a Guatemalan national accused in relation to supplying fentanyl into the US. Despite these setbacks, the Sinaloa remains active and hugely powerful, its number of members and associates running into the tens of thousands spread across dozens of countries. Such is the dominance of the Sinaloa, it has even taken over trafficking cocaine from Colombia to worldwide markets.
For years now, the Sinaloa has been thought by many to be the biggest and most powerful drug cartel in the world but that has not stopped it linking up with fellow groups. Experts have long since believed the group has global links, including to Ireland's Kinahan cartel.
Mammoth drug seizures in recent years, including £135million of cocaine uncovered off Cork two years ago, suggest that region has been identified as a point of entry for drug shipments. As far back as 2016, one former Peruvian anti-narcotics chief said it was 'without question' that the Kinahan group was working with the Sinaloa.
Other allegiances are understood to have been formed by the Mexican cartel with mafia groups in north African and southern Europe. Despite inroads by law enforcement in recent years against the Sinaloa – particularly in the US – it remains to be seen whether this powerful and vast cartel can ever be fully dismantled.
