Feuding members of the world’s most-feared fentanyl cartel, reeling from internal war and a crackdown by Mexico and the United States, have forged a desperate alliance with a rival gang, threatening to transform the criminal underworld across dozens of countries.
The cartel, the Sinaloa Cartel, has for years run a global empire built through alliances with criminal groups and affiliates from the Americas to New Zealand — reaping millions of dollars from smuggling drugs like fentanyl at a devastating toll, especially in the United States.
But the cartel has for months been torn by violence between two main factions, as Mexico, under pressure from the Trump administration, has moved aggressively against it.
In that turmoil, a faction of the cartel led by sons of the drug lord known as El Chapo have allied with an old and powerful adversary, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, according to four people familiar with the matter. The risky move by El Chapo’s sons could ultimately turn the Jalisco cartel into the world’s biggest drug trafficker — a shift that could potentially redraw alliances and power structures across international drug markets, analysts say.
“It’s like if the eastern coast of the U.S. seceded during the Cold War and reached out to the Soviet Union,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, an expert on nonstate armed groups at the Brookings Institution. “This has global implications for how the conflict will unfold and how criminal markets will reorganize.”
