Earlier this month, Chicago named El Chapo Guzman public enemy No. 1, the first to receive that title since the city's legendary crime boss, Al Capone.
Sinaloa's share in the drug market is titanic. Even by the most sober estimates, Mexican drug trafficking amounts to over $6 billion per year, with El Chapo's Sinaloa cartel controlling an estimated half of that market, raking in billions each year.
No wonder Forbes has listed El Chapo Guzman on its annual list of billionaires since 2009.
"The Sinaloa cartel certainly has the upper hand now," says Javier Valdez, co-founder of Rio Doce, a Sinaloa-based weekly magazine covering the drug war. "It's the only cartel that has grown over the years, extending its reach into Europe, Africa and South America, while all others have lost."
Some have accused the Calderon administration of collusion with El Chapo, claiming the government struck a deal by taking out its rivals. And last October, leaked emails from security analysis firm STRATFOR suggested that even the US government facilitated them.
Accusations of government collusion, however, are rejected by Malcolm Beith, a British-American journalist and author of "The Last Narco," a book about El Chapo Guzman. "Since 2009, the Sinaloa cartel has been hit very hard too, completely obliterating those criticisms," he contends.
Beith points out that Sinaloa's survival and recalcitrant power should instead be attributed to the way it operates.
"There is a level-headedness about the leadership that the other groups lack," he says. "To the authorities, first priority always has to be quelling violence. When other groups throw grenades into a crowd of innocents or behead[s] people, it's obvious what needs to be done. Sinaloa has perpetrated its share of violence, but by and large it did not cause disruption to the general well-being of the population."
The Sinaloa cartel's relatively low profile in terms of violence is partly due to its relatively long history - it's been around for 25 years. In Sinaloa itself the goup is deeply rooted in society. Not only do its senior leaders hail from the region, but the cartel reputedly funds hospitals and schools, thus winning support from locals who aid the "capos" in their never-ending struggle to escape arrest.
El Chapo and his cronies have also perfected the strategy of "bribe over bullet," preferring to corrupt authorities rather than fighting them into submission. Government officials on all levels in Mexico have been accused of being on Sinaloa's take, as have some of their US counterparts.
"El Chapo has an apparent ability to [allegedly] corrupt and infiltrate elements of law enforcement on both sides of the border and seemingly play the authorities' every move to his advantage," Beith says. "When the Mexican army moved into Juarez, so did El Chapo, seizing an opportunity. When the authorities took down the Arellano-Felix cartel, El Chapo was already poised to take Tijuana."
All things considered, El Chapo Guzman and his Sinaloa cartel seem to have been profiting rather than suffering from the drug war, Javier Valdez argues. "The drug war has helped them stay on top. While they continue to keep the heat away from their home turf, their rivals have been weakened."
The most recent National Drug Threat Assessment of the Justice Department (2011) suggests the same, by stating that overall drug availability in the US is increasing, as are production of marijuana, heroin and synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine. Those are all businesses in which El Chapo Guzman and his Sinaloa cartel have a large stake.
"The organization is particularly dominant because it is one of the few that can obtain multi-ton quantities of cocaine from South America, as well as produce large quantities of heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine," the report claims.
Felipe Calderen left office in December. His succesor Enrique Peña Nieto promises to cut the murder rate in half in the next six years, but most Mexicans doubt he is able to; during his first two months in office at least 1,500 people are estimated to have died in gangland violence.
All the while El Chapo Guzman continues to make a mockery of the drug war with every day he remains at large. His Sinaloa cartel has been around longer than any other crime group in Mexico, and it may just outlast everybody else.
