Sinaloa Cartel Violence: Homicides Surge 400%
- August 10 was, for many in Mexico, a quiet Sunday like any other.
- It was the most violent day of the year in Sinaloa, even more than in any other entity in the country, According to data from the Government of...
- Since then, homicides in Sinaloa have increased more than 400%, according to a public data analysis by CNN.
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August 10 was, for many in Mexico, a quiet Sunday like any other. But in Sinaloa – that state of the northwest who looks in front of the Pacific – was not another Sunday. That day, 17 homicides were committed. One every 85 minutes.
It was the most violent day of the year in Sinaloa, even more than in any other entity in the country, According to data from the Government of Mexico. This figure adds to the statistics of violence that has been going through the State for a year, after the surprise detention of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, indicated by the authorities of being one of the historic leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the oldest and most violent criminal organizations in Mexico.
Since then, homicides in Sinaloa have increased more than 400%, according to a public data analysis by CNN.
This data analysis reveals discrepancies between the figures compiled by the Sinaloa Prosecutor’s Office, the Mexican federal authorities and the monitoring organization Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (Acledge). Historically, the Mexican authorities have surpassed the number of victims during periods of violence around the region.
Even behind closed doors, defense officials and the forces of the United States order distrust the homicide figures in Mexico, according to a source with knowledge of these conversations.
The capture of the drug trafficker on July 25, 2024 in El Paso, Texas, unleashed an internal war between rival features, according to analysts consulted by CNN, which has the Sinaloa Caras in the midst of a conflict that has affected their daily life, forcing great chains and family businesses to close its doors.
The rebound of violence in Sinaloa has its origin in the confrontations between rival factions of the Sinaloa Cartel, which exploded after the capture of “El Mayo”, according to Victoria Dittmar, researcher and head of projects in InsightCrime.
From this moment, intense clashes between their followers – known as the Mayitos – and the allies of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán began, in the midst of constant conflicts that have also involved smaller features. This trend is reflected in the data collected by ACLED.
In a letter released by his lawyer, May says he was deceived by one of the children of “El Chapo” and leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquín Guzmán López, who cited him under false pretexts. According to its version, the meeting was presented as a real estate investment opportunity, but ended up in its arrest in El Paso, Texas.
Zambada He said in his letter who was deceived, kidnapped and delivered by Guzmán López to the US authorities, a version that the indicated denied through his legal representation, which has also rejected the version of the voluntary delivery of the Son of the Chapo.
They are both accused of various positions in the Federal Court of the Eastern District of New York, where they declared themselves innocent.
Before the arrest of “El Mayo”, the clashes between the different features of the poster were sporadic. However, the circumstances that surrounded their capture further turned on tensions.
Dittmar explains that both the “Mayitos” and the “Chapitos” have intensified their clashes to snatch key areas. ACLED data show a significant increase in violence in early September, when analysts agree that the war officially began.
The governor of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha Moya, ordered The cancellation of classes on the 12th and 13th, as a preventive measure. The next day, and in the midst of the climate of insecurity, the celebrations for the cry of independence in several locations of the state, including Culiacán, were suspended.
“We have resolved that the celebration of the scream of September 15 will be suspended. There will be no celebration, neither public nor private,” he announced in a video published in his X account.
The figures of that month confirmed the scope of violence: 4 deaths per day were recorded, which is equivalent to one death every 6 hours, according to official data. According to ACLED, there were 2 daily deaths, or one every 12 hours.
Insight Crime researcher points out that the “misleading” way in which Zambada capture was captured not only tense the relations between the factions, but that he unleashed a wave of reprisals that has made Culiacan the main scenario of the conflict, something that “we do not see in any other Mexican city.”
Violence in Sinaloa transcends statistics and has interrupted the daily life of its inhabitants. In Culiacán, the constant fear of armed clashes has forced large chains and small family businesses to reduce their schedules or close completely.
“Sonia” says that his grandmother’s food business that operated for decades in the Sinaolense capital today is closed.
“There were days that there was a client, if perhaps … because people do not leave at night and to date do not go out at night,” says Sonia, that it is not his real name and agreed to speak with CNN on the condition that his identity was protected, since he said he was afraid for the situation of insecurity that is lived in the city.
Like many others in Culiacán, Sonia and his family have had to adapt to a new normality that has forced them to impose a “curfew”.
“We, the citizens, we decided for months to go out at certain times,” he explains. “At the beginning, between September and December, it was like an imposition of your own, because it was afraid to leave. Normally the nights and early morning were more violent … but in reality, all day it is. You go out at noon and you can touch a shooting leaving school, in a main street, between police, military, marina and hitmen. So, as if nothing. That is the reality of every day.”
Videos shared in social networks verified by CNN show scenes that have become increasingly frequent in Culiacán and other cities of the state: shooting in full daylight, clashes between armed groups and security forces and flame vehicles in residential areas.
The recordings show that the clashes have occurred largely in urban areas, a new trend that, according to Dittmar, has exposed hundreds of thousands of people who were previously outside the conflict.
Sonia says that some of these events have occurred near her grandmother’s restaurant. CNN corroborated this information with evidence of public access data. In May, the body of a man appeared hanging from a nearby bridge next to narcomsage; A month later, a human head was left near a tourist site in Culiacán; And two weeks later, several police officers were seriously injured after an ambush of hitmen.
The day that a year of the arrest of El Mayo was completed, the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, said her government has taken letters in the matter. “We are working and we are going to pacify Sinaloa,” he said at his daily press conference.
However, for Sonia that promise seems distant: “You see military convoys everywhere, but there is no real strategy. There are areas where there are shootings every day and authority arrives hours later. It is pure show. We would like to see a strategy … because it does not exist.”
Violence in Sinaloa, one year after May Zambada’s arrest
Sheinbaum reiterated the need to collaborate with US authorities and warned of foreign interference to combat traffic linked to cartels in Mexico.
His statements occurred days before the president of the United States, Donald Trump, signed a secret decree in which he orders the Pentagon to use military force against certain cartels in Latin America that his administration had designated as foreign terrorist organizations, according to a report by The New York Times.
It is not yet clear if the US Department of Defense plans to coordinate its efforts with the Mexican authorities, but the Sinaloa Cartel is one of the Eight designated criminal organizations as foreign terrorist organizations by the Trump government.
In the first year of his government, they show acledge data, Sheinbaum’s efforts, for containing violence they have generally coincided with a fall in attacks against civilians; Since January, violence against civilians has decreased in almost all Mexican states – except in four.
But Sinaloa remains, without a doubt, the weak point of Mexico’s security strategy, with 571 civilians killed there only in 2025. (In the other three states where civilians’ homicides increased, the accumulated total is 49 victims, until July 26).
The selective murders of civilians have already exceeded the total registered during all 2024, preparing the stage so that this year is one of the most lethal in the history of Sinaloa.
For many Sinaloenses that Sunday of August, it was another show of a war that does not give truce.
Methodology
CNN reviewed Shared data by the Sinaloa Prosecutor’s Office and Mexican federal authoritiesas well as independent figures compiled by the project Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (Acledge). The data obtained from ACLED were specifically filtered to include violence against civilians from January 2020 to July 25, 2025, exactly one year after the arrest of “El Mayo”. Together, these data illustrate the marked increase in violent deaths throughout Sinaloa during the last 12 months.