Reputed Sinaloa drug lord
Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, accompanied by an army of sicarios (hit men), strolled into Juárez one day claiming the city’s lucrative smuggling corridor as his own, so the rumor goes.
Whether true or not, Juárez and other parts of the state of Chihuahua have become
ground zero in a battle over drug-trafficking routes that have been under the control of the
Carrillo Fuentes drug organization for more than a decade.
The violence, which has included kidnappings, car-to-car shootings on boulevards and victims pelted by machine guns in broad daylight, has left hundreds dead and has Juarenses looking over their shoulders as they try to go about their daily lives.
What sparked the bloodshed in Juárez is unclear, but somehow agreements between the
Sinaloa and
Juárez drug cartels apparently crumbled, leading to fighting among smaller organizations.
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It is difficult to gauge the size of each of the drug-trafficking organizations, although it is clear that the estimated $10 billion in drug money and weapons that flows into Mexico from the United States each year supplies traffickers with enough money to corrupt authorities and to buy weapons, equipment and technology.
The animosity between Chapo Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel and “
La Linea,” as the Juárez cartel is also known, is evident as the death toll mounts, including several corpses recently found with threatening notes aimed at Guzman’s associates.
“This will happen to those who keep supporting El Chapo. From La Linea and those who follow it,” stated a note found next to two men slain in the Loma Blanca area outside of Juárez.
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The suspected head of the Juárez drug cartel is Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, who is believed to have taken control of the organization after the 1997 death of his brother, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who was nicknamed the “Lord of the Skies” because of his use of airplanes to smuggle cocaine.
Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, 45, was indicted in 2000 by a U.S. federal grand jury on a long list of charges, including 10 counts of murder and the distribution of tons of cocaine and marijuana bound for New York, Chicago and other markets throughout the nation.
A Mexican federal police, or PGR, commander identification card bearing a photo of Vicente Carrillo Fuentes was recovered by the FBI from a West El Paso home in 2000, El Paso Times archives showed.