1 year ago
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MEXICO CITY (AP) — The prima wasn’t yet up successful Culiacan erstwhile David Téllez and his household began making their mode to the city’s airdrome for a instrumentality formation to Mexico City aft their vacation. But not agelong aft they acceptable retired they encountered the archetypal crude roadblock, an abandoned conveyance obstructing their way.
Téllez turned to societal media to find retired what was going connected and saw that Sinaloa’s authorities capital, a stronghold of the cartel by the aforesaid name, was filled with roadblocks and gunfire.
It would beryllium hours earlier Mexico’s defence caput would corroborate that the subject had captured Ovidio Guzmán, a lad of the notorious erstwhile Sinaloa cartel brag Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, connected Thursday successful a pre-dawn cognition northbound of the city.
Just similar that, Culiacan was thrust into a time of panic dissimilar immoderate its residents had experienced since October 2019 — the past clip authorities tried to seizure the young Guzmán.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has railed against his predecessors’ assertive efforts to seizure cause lords, but his medication bagged the high-profile cartel fig conscionable days earlier hosting U.S. President Joe Biden, and astatine slightest successful the abbreviated word locals were paying the price.
Culiacan residents posted video connected societal media showing convoys of gunmen successful pickup trucks and SUVs rolling down boulevards successful the city. At slightest 1 convoy included a flatbed motortruck with a mounted weapon successful the back, the aforesaid benignant of conveyance that caused chaos and mayhem successful the 2019 unrest.
All entrances to the metropolis were blocked and akin acts were playing retired successful different parts of Sinaloa.
Rev. Esteban Robles, spokesperson for the Roman Catholic diocese successful Culiacan, said that “there is an ambiance of uncertainty, tension,” and that those who could were staying wrong their homes.
“A batch of the streets are inactive blocked by the cars that were burned,” Robles said.
The Culiacan municipal authorities warned: “Don’t permission home! The information of Culiacan’s citizens is the astir important.” Schools, section authorities and galore backstage businesses closed.
Oscar Loza, a quality rights activistic successful Culiacan, described the concern arsenic tense, with immoderate looting astatine stores. On the southbound broadside of the city, wherever Loza lives, radical reported convoys of gunmen moving toward a subject base, but Loza said streets astir his location were eerily quiet. “You don’t perceive immoderate traffic,” helium said.
Téllez pressed connected trying to get his household backmost to Mexico City, circumventing respective much abandoned vehicles blocking roads and yet making it to the airport.
There the household hurriedly checked successful for their formation earlier employees of an airdrome edifice urged them to structure successful a bathroom. Gunmen were arriving astatine the airdrome to forestall authorities from flying Guzmán out.
Juan Carlos Ayala, a Culiacan nonmigratory and Sinaloa University prof who studies the sociology of cause trafficking, said Ovidio Guzmán was an evident people astatine slightest since 2019.
“Ovidio’s destiny had been decided. Moreover, helium was identified arsenic the biggest trafficker of fentanyl and the astir disposable Chapos leader.” Asked however locals were reacting to the arrest, Ayala said “People person differing views, but I deliberation the bulk are with them” — the Sinaloa cartel.
That whitethorn beryllium due to the fact that of the wealth the cartel brings to the region, but besides due to the fact that locals cognize that adjacent aft national troops withdraw, the cartel volition inactive beryllium there. As atrocious arsenic it is, the cartel has ensured comparative stability, if not peace.
Guzmán was indicted by the United States connected cause trafficking charges successful 2018. According to some governments, helium had assumed a increasing relation among his brothers successful carrying connected their father’s business, on with long- clip cartel brag Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.
Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard confirmed that the authorities had received a petition successful 2019 from the United States for Guzmán’s apprehension for purposes of extradition. He said that petition would person to beryllium updated and processed, but helium added that archetypal an unfastened lawsuit successful Mexico awaits Guzmán.
Ismael Bojorquez, manager of the section quality outlet Riodoce, which specializes successful sum of the area’s cause trafficking, said the convulsive absorption had to bash with the president’s little assertive stance toward organized crime.
“They (cartels) person taken vantage of these 4 years to signifier themselves, limb themselves, fortify their structures, their finances,” helium said. “I judge determination are much weapons than 3 years ago. All of organized crime’s armies person strengthened, not conscionable the Chapitos, and this is the terms that nine is paying for this strategy of the national government.”
At Culiacan’s airport, a Mexican subject formation was capable to tone Guzmán distant to Mexico City. Téllez’s commercialized formation waited for its accidental to instrumentality disconnected arsenic 2 ample subject planes landed with troops arsenic did 3 oregon 4 subject helicopters, and marines and soldiers began deploying on the perimeter of the runway.
When the hose formation was yet preparing to accelerate, Téllez heard gunshots successful the distance. Within 15 seconds the dependable was abruptly much aggravated and overmuch closer, and passengers threw themselves to the floor, helium said.
He did not cognize the level had been deed by gunfire until a formation attendant told them. No 1 was injured, but the level hastily retreated to the terminal.
Samuel González, who founded Mexico’s peculiar prosecutor’s bureau for organized transgression successful the 1990s, said Guzmán’s seizure was a “gift” up of Biden’s visit. The Mexican authorities “is moving to person a calm visit,” helium said.
He called the shots that deed the commercialized airliner “without a uncertainty an enactment of planetary terrorism” and suggested it could pb to precise superior discussions betwixt the 2 governments astir the implications of these actions.
By evening, Téllez remained successful the terminal. The authorities had unopen down the airport, arsenic good arsenic airports successful Los Mochis and Mazatlan for information reasons.
Asked if the effort to seizure Guzmán was worthy different time of hostility and uncertainty successful Culiacan, Téllez said, “If they caught him, it was worthy it.”
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Associated Press writers Fabiola Sánchez and Christopher Sherman contributed to this report.
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