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SINALOA CARTEL
Founders: Jaime Herrera Nevares; Ernesto "Don Neto"Fonseca Carrillo (captured April 8, 1985); Eduardo "El Lalo" Fernández; Jorge Favela Escobar; Pedro Aviles Pérez (killed September 9, 1978); Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo (captured April 8, 1989); and Héctor Luis "El Güero" Palma (captured June 24, 1995), who was extradited to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges (January 19, 2007).
Current Leaders: Arturo Beltrán Leyva and his brothers have not only broken with Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzman Loera and Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada García, but have declared war on their former allies. Another individual of significance, Juan José "El Azul" Esparagoza Moreno, is a murky figure who enjoys productive linkages with the Sinaloa cartel and other criminal bands because of his role as a "consiglieri," along with the respect he commands for his negotiating prowess.
Structure of Operation: The Sinaloa cartel was founded in the 1970s, and its power and wealth expanded a decade later, driven by the imperative for Colombians to ship cocaine through Mexico. The cartel's predominant areas of operation are in northwest Mexico, Sinaloa, Durango, Chihuahua, Baja California (Mexicali), Sonora (Nogales, Agua Prieta and San Luis Río Colorado), Tamaulipas (Nuevo Laredo), Nuevo León (Monterrey), Michoacán and Guerrero (Acapulco and other areas). The Sinaloa cartel moves cocaine, heroin and marijuana to American consumers. Guzman Loera claims to shun unnecessary violence, yet he unleashes his tough "Sinaloan Cowboys" and police protectors against foes. That he continually vanishes when efforts are made to capture him has invested El Chapo with an almost mystic quality like that enjoyed by revolutionary Francisco "Pancho" Villa in the first part of the twentieth century.
Background: Beginning in the late 1940s, Jaime Herrera Nevares, a former state judicial policeman, emerged as the patriarch of a potent criminal syndicate based in the mountaintop village of Los Herreras, Durango. The Herrera organization pioneered a farm-to-the-arm heroin structure that cultivated opium poppy, processed and packaged heroin and transported it to Chicago along what became known as the Heroin Highway. There it was either sold locally or distributed to other U.S. cities. This network proved extremely difficult to penetrate because family members controlled the entire heroin distribution scheme.
The Herrera family cooperated with Ernesto "Don Neto" Fonseca and Jorge Favela Escobar, who drew...