Long well-written article, a taste: [San Diego UT] CULIACAN, Mexico ‐ Culiacan has long been a city of open secrets.
Elaborate shrines to fallen drug traffickers dot the streets, and bouncy ballads chronicling the lives of gangsters boom from restaurants, bars and luxury cars.
Behind City Hall, black-market money changers make a living turning dollars into pesos, while at a nearby cemetery, sprawling narco tombs boast marble floors, air conditioning and satellite television.
For decades, drug trafficking has dominated the economy, culture and sometimes the politics of this city of nearly a million people tucked between the Sierra Madre and the Pacific.
And it used to be mostly at peace, thanks to an unspoken pact between residents and the Sinaloa cartel, the group that controls trafficking in the region:
Civilians looked the other way -- as long as the narcos kept their fights off the streets.
That social contract shattered one afternoon two weeks ago when in the span of minutes hundreds of cartel fighters appeared in the middle of the city wielding high-powered weapons.
The assailants were responding to an army operation to capture Ovidio Guzman Lopez, a leader of the Sinaloa cartel and the son of famed drug boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
To pressure the army to release its leader, the cartel took hostage the city it had always claimed to protect.
"It was a rupture," said Isaac Guevara Martinez, a social psychologist who studies violence at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa. "This had never happened before. And now nobody knows what to think."
In other parts of Mexico, criminal groups often prey on residents. In Tamaulipas, Guerrero and Michoacan, cartels routinely kidnap civilians and levy hefty "protection" payments on businesses.
But the Sinaloa cartel had always behaved in a different manner. Though cartel members appear to have no qualms about breaking laws ‐ or killing anybody who gets in their way ‐ the group’s founders fostered an almost paternal relationship with locals.
Related:
Culiacan: 2019-10-22 The Mexican State Is Collapsing
Culiacan: 2019-10-22 Mexico sends in troops after failed 'El Chapo' son arrest
Culiacan: 2019-10-19 Mexico admits freeing Chapo's son after badly planned operation
Culiacan: 2019-10-22 The Mexican State Is Collapsing
Culiacan: 2019-10-22 Mexico sends in troops after failed 'El Chapo' son arrest
Culiacan: 2019-10-19 Mexico admits freeing Chapo's son after badly planned operation
Related:
Sinaloa: 2019-10-22 The Mexican State Is Collapsing
Sinaloa: 2019-10-22 Mexico sends in troops after failed 'El Chapo' son arrest
Sinaloa: 2019-10-20 The hand of “Mayo” Zambada
Sinaloa: 2019-10-22 The Mexican State Is Collapsing
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Tamaulipas: 2019-08-27 Calls to Label Mexican Cartels as Terror Groups as They Grow Stronger, More Violent
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Tamaulipas: 2019-01-12 Mere Hours After ‘Reporter' Jim Acosta Labels The Border A Utopia, 20 Charred Dead Bodies Are Found