Culiacan, Mexico.- Culiacán, Sinaloa, has become the main source of fentanyl, according to records from the Ministry of National Defense (Sedena).
In that municipality, where “Los Chapitos” operate and where Ovidio Guzmán López was arrested on January 5, with a balance of 29 deaths, the soldiers have intercepted (between 2019 and September 2022) 919 kilos of powder and 2 million 650 thousand pills of that drug.
The report, the most up-to-date that Sedena has, states that the military – in coordination with the Attorney General’s Office – have found or secured in various operations in the country 2,626 kilos of fentanyl, which is up to 50 times more powerful. than heroin.
In addition, 8 million pills of that opioid were seized, responsible for more than 63 percent of the 96,779 drug overdose deaths in the US between March 2020 and 2021, according to official figures.
Of this total, 35 percent of the seized kilograms of fentanyl and 32 percent of the pills have been found only in the municipality of Culiacán, according to official figures.
Military sources consider that fentanyl is manufactured in that municipality and controlled by “Los Menores”, thus identified by the Sedena, the sons of the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, including Ovidio Guzmán.
The rest of the drug has been secured by the Army in border cities such as Mexicali and Tijuana, in Baja California; as well as at the vehicle checkpoints placed by the Sedena in Opodepe and San Luis Río Colorado, in Sonora, in the attempts by “Los Menores” to traffic fentanyl to the United States.
Fentanyl, it is established, have been located in rural and even urban areas of Culiacán.
For example, in July 2022, after reconnaissance and surveillance patrols in Colonia Las Palmas, the military and FGR personnel learned of a warehouse that was used as a space for drug storage, achieving the largest seizure of fentanyl in the history in the Country: 524 kilos.
In addition, they seized 555 kilograms of methamphetamine, 31 kilograms of cocaine, 19 kilograms of opium gum and almost 7 kilograms of heroin.
Colonia Las Palmas was one of the last homes of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, before being arrested on January 8, 2016, in Los Mochis, where the Navy located him after intelligence tasks.
What is striking is that 35 percent of the national seizures of fentanyl and 32 percent of the pills have been only in the Municipality of Culiacán, according to official figures.
One of the methods used by the sons of “El Chapo” to transport the opiate to the north of the country has been by parcel service, from the area of the Colonia Parque Industrial, in Culiacán. Last August, members of the Federal Ministerial Police were alerted to a shipment of 21,406 fentanyl pills.
Other ways of shipping are passenger buses to the border, as well as cargo trucks with various products. They have been intercepted on several occasions, mostly at the “Querobabi” Strategic Security Military Post in Opodepe, which has X-ray and Gamma Fulla Scan systems.
One of the most recent coups was on January 16. 714,000 fentanyl pills were seized at that checkpoint, that is, about 77 kilograms. The drug was traveling among a load of fruit.
According to ministerial testimonies, “Los Chapitos” have decided to mix fentanyl with cocaine and methamphetamine to obtain greater profits, although this causes greater damage to health. The decision, according to sources, has divided the criminal organization.
Sinaloan Laboratories
Culiacán is also a benchmark in terms of laboratories for the production of fentanyl.
Last November, the Army located in the town of El Portezuelo –with barely 120 inhabitants– more than a thousand liters of chemical precursors for the production of fentanyl, in addition to 43 kilos of that drug.
In rural areas towards El Dorado, Aguaruto, Los Algodones, Bacata, El Limón and Jesús María –where Ovidio Guzmán was located and detained– federal authorities have also located fentanyl “kitchens.”
Each kilo of this drug has an estimated cost between 5 and 7.5 million pesos, according to figures from the Sedena, a price that increases the more it travels north.
A week before US President Joe Biden’s visit to Mexico (January 9), the federal government boasted an increase of more than 1,000 percent in the seizure of fentanyl, the fight against which is considered a priority for the United States.
In the presentation of an annual report on drug seizure, in the National Palace, it was reported that in 2022 all the authorities made 2,263 kilos of fentanyl available to the FGR.
So far in the current Administration, a total seizure of 6 thousand 105 kilos has been reported, according to another report presented on January 17.
Military sources affirm that at least a third of the fentanyl has been found in Culiacán in clandestine laboratories, warehouses or homes, while the rest is on routes to the north for the transfer of that chemical.
