"So that morning of September 9, 2024, a Monday, Heidy and her sister Mariana were calmly having breakfast before going to work. The former at the institute that manages public school teachers' pensions; the latter at a downtown flower shop. It was around 6:45 a.m., the golden hour. The Mercadito neighborhood, rowdy, noisy, with streets lined with small shops and drug dens, decadent brothels and shady money exchanges, was waking up to a golden calm."
"At the end of July one of the factions, Los Chapitos, had organized the kidnapping of one of the historic leaders of the local drug trade, El Mayo Zambada. That was only the preamble to a greater betrayal: his captors put him on a small plane to take him north of the border, where they handed him over to U.S. authorities eager to get their hands on him."
Culiacan experienced escalating tension culminating in sudden, intense urban gun battles that shattered a fragile local calm. Longstanding violent episodes had conditioned residents to expect major incidents on Thursdays, linked to past events like the Culiacanazo and high-profile arrests and kidnappings. On September 9, 2024, residents woke to heavy gunfire as daily routines were interrupted and neighborhoods became battlegrounds. The violence followed an internal split after Los Chapitos kidnapped El Mayo Zambada in July and covertly flew him to U.S. custody. The handover intensified betrayal within cartel ranks; Zambada blamed his godson Joaquin Guzman Lopez.
Read at english.elpais.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]