Cartels in fight for control
Kidnapping of Guzman’s son believed to be latest move in Mexican power struggle
With drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman locked up and facing US extradition, his enemies are starting to pick apart his oncemighty empire.
Mexican officials said yesterday that one of Guzman’s sons, Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar, was among the six men kidnapped by an armed gang a day earlier from a swanky cafe in Puerto Vallarta.
Eduardo Almaguer, the attorney general in the state of Jalisco where Puerto Vallarta is located, told reporters that investigators have confirmed Guzman Salazar, 29, was part of the group abducted in a raid on the upscale restaurant La Leche.
Guzman Salazar and his older brother Ivan Archivaldo — called “El Chapito” (Little Shorty) — have reportedly been trying to take over the family business from their jailed father, clashing at times with his former associates in the Sinaloa Cartel, Mexico’s more powerful trafficking organisation.
Like his father, Guzman Salazar is wanted in the United States on drug smuggling charges.
It’s unclear how the gunmen grabbed him, as no shots were fired in the raid. Authorities said nine female companions of the victims were not taken by the kidnappers.
Officials said earlier yesterday that they believed the older Guzman son, Ivan Archivaldo, had been taken captive, but Almaguer said authorities now believe it was younger sibling Jesus Alfredo. Both are viewed in Mexico as “narcojuniors”, aspiring drug lords brought up in a luxury world of guns and cash.
Guzman Salazar’s kidnapping is the latest setback to his father’s hopes of keeping rivals at bay and the family business running from behind bars.
In June, a large convoy of drug commandos attacked his tiny home town of La Tuna in the Sierra Madre, forcing their way into the house of the kingpin’s elderly mother. They shot up the town’s highway sign and torched several homes and vehicles, though 86-year-old Consuelo Loera de Guzman was reportedly unharmed.
Mexican news reports attributed the raid to upstart gangster Alfredo Beltran Guzman, 24, aka “El Mochomito” (the Little Desert Ant). He is the son of Alfredo Beltran Leyva (the Desert Ant), a former business partner of Joaquin Guzman’s turned mortal enemy, who blames his 2008 arrest on a betrayal by Guzman.
It’s a blood feud, literally: The Little Desert Ant and El Chapo are cousins.
The Beltran Leyva clan has battled the Sinaloa cartel for dominance of the lucrative drug trade in Mexico’s western Sierra Madre ever since. In 2008, Guzman’s 22-year-old son Edgar was killed in a hit blamed on Beltran Leyva gunmen in the parking lot of a tyre shop in the Sinaloa capital of Culiacan.
The Guzmans have a long list of enemies, but authorities hinted yesterday that the kidnapping was believed to be carried out by the Jalisco-based New Generation cartel that is challenging the Sinaloa organisation for supremacy along Mexico’s Pacific coast smuggling routes.
Joaquin Guzman, who has escaped twice from Mexico’s toughest prisons, is locked up at a facility just south of the US border. His lawyers claim he has been the victim of “cruel and unusual punishment” from prison authorities, who allegedly keep him in solitary confinement and interfere with his sleep.
Guzman faces a slew of drug trafficking charges in several US federal courts.
Mexico’s Foreign Ministry has given the green light to his extradition, but Guzman’s legal team is fighting his transfer across the border.
According to Guzman’s lead lawyer, the world’s most notorious drug lord has been “depressed”.
But Mexican officials insist that his health is fine.