On its heyday, the Medellín Cartel led by Pablo Escobar was characterized by its use of money and power to stock private zoos and residences with exotic animals such as lions, tigers, hippos and venomous snakes.
A few decades later, Mexican cartels have seemingly picked up the same habit. And that is why, as the Mexican government led by President Claudia Sheinbaum's conducts its strategy to combat drug cartels, authorities have been finding an increased number of exotic animals being held captive.
According to Ernest Zazueta Zazueta, president of "Ostok," Mexico's largest animal sanctuary, the rescue of big cats such as lions and tigers has increased exponentially since "Los Chapitos" and "La Mayiza" began their turf war for control of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Zazueta said such rescues have increased fourfold since September. Last year, authorities in Culiacán rescued 4 felines that were being held captive by drug cartel members, but between January and November of this yea, that number has increased to 17, with 11 of the rescues taking place in the last three months.
Just last year, Mexican authorities seized a massive collection of exotic animals in the township of La Barca, Jalisco, that included 10 tigers, six jaguars and five lions.
Eight tigers confiscated by law enforcement in Sinaloa
According to officials, the majority of the animals confiscated in the state of Sinaloa have been tigers. Eight of them have been rescued in Culiacán since September, along with three lions less than a year old.
The latest rescue took place on Dec. 5, when two white Bengal tigers were found by military personnel during an operation in the Culiacán neighborhood of Barrancos. Besides the two felines, authorities seized drugs, firearms and armored vehicles during the operation.
In a separate operation, military personnel found another Bengal tiger chained to an abandoned pickup truck.
According to Zazueta, most of the animals rescued show signs of dehydration as well as physical and phycological stress due to being held in small spaced at a very young age. He added that drug cartel members take their claws and their fangs off in order to coexist with the animals, making it impossible for animal rescuers to release them into the wild as they are left defenseless in their natural habitats
"They can't exercise, they can't develop as they should," Zazueta told El Sol de Sinaloa. "More often than not, the animals are held inside warehouses where they don't get sunlight. The animals experience a lot of traumas when they held in such small cages," he added.
"Los Chapitos" used to feed victims to their tiger pets
An indictment unsealed in April 2023 revealed that two of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán's sons, Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, raised and kept tigers as their pets.
Prosecutors said that victims of "Los Chapitos" were at times fed dead or alive to the tigers they kept as pets. A few months later, that version was corroborated by Dámaso López Serrano alias "El Mini Lic," former ally of "Los Chapitos" until his arrest in 2017.
The former Sinaloa Cartel member told investigative journalist Anabel Hernández that "Los Chapitos" used to throw people inside the tigers' cages.
"They threw him inside the cage...the animal teared off one of the hands and his genitals," López Serrano said in the interview. "The lifeless body was then thrown to one of Culiacán's major streets where the victim's mother lived," he added.
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