As violence ramps up in the Mexican border city of Culiacan due to a power struggle between two strong cartel factions, residents put their hopes of safety and peace behind the Trump administration, which has vowed to crack down their influence in U.S. territory.
Culiacan as once quiet and relatively tranquil thanks to total domination from the Sinaloa Cartel. But that was until September, more than a month after Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada— the Sinaloa Cartel's oldest leader— said he was kidnapped by one of the sons of former leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and taken to the U.S. where they were both arrested.
Since then, the two cartel factions— those loyal to Zambada, known as "Mayos" and those loyal to Guzman, known as "the Chapitos"— have unleashed terror in the city, which has a population of 1 million residents, in hopes to rule the cartel.
The conflict has led both factions to break the unwritten agreement to not attack residents uninvolved in the drug trade. From carjackings, to kidnappings, innocents caught in crossfires and cartel roadblocks where gunmen scan people's cell phones looking for any trace of contact with the other side, the dispute has led to more than 900 killings since September, according to government data.
"At no other time in the last 30 to 40 years that we have crime stats, have we had so many families with disappeared (relatives)," Miguel Calderon of the State Public Security Council, a citizen organization, told the Associated Press.
Former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who was leading the country when the quarrel started, expressed little interest in going after cartel leaders. He enacted a strategy nicknamed "hugs not bullets," which sought to reduce the escalating violence of drug cartels and "moralize" police forces widely seen as brutal and corrupt.
But that changed when U.S. President Donald Trump came into office and Mexico's new leader, Claudia Sheinbaum changed her country's strategy. Trump made shutting down illegal immigration and going after drug traffickers among his campaign priorities, threatening to impose 25% tariffs on Mexico if they didn't cooperate.
So far, Sheinbaum has shown herself to be open to dialogue, already taking a more aggressive hand with the cartels, especially Sinaloa, whose main business is fentanyl. Because of this, the number of security operations and arrests in Sinaloa have multiplied and now there is district federal supervision of all security action, the Associated Press reports.
"We have never seen such an overwhelming and daily operation against the cartels," said Ismael Bojorquez, a veteran Sinaloa journalist covering organized crime, who was critical of Lopez Obrador's hands-off approach.
Some residents have started to thank Trump for the increased operations.
"I never thought (Trump) would have so much power to do that... but I'm grateful," said the owner of a beer store stopped at a police checkpoint.
Last week, the Mexican government said it had begun sending to the United States more than two dozen cartel operatives wanted by the American authorities. It was a clear signal to the Trump administration that Mexico was eager to fight the cartels, though Trump said on the same day that he was still not satisfied with the government's efforts, according to The New York Times.
"Criminal groups have not felt this level of pressure in such a long time," said Jaime Lopez, a security analyst based in Mexico City.
Interestingly, experts agree that despite both governments' efforts to crack down fentanyl operations, a decline in production in Culiacan wouldn't necessarily affect the flow of fentanyl north, since the drug is easy to make and the cartel can move its labs elsewhere. At the same time, it won't make Americans specifically less dependent on the drug, one cartel leader told the Times.
"Demand will never end, the product is still being consumed," he said. "Addiction means demand never ends."
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