Claudia Sheinbaum has become Mexico’s first female president, taking over from her popular predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Amlo). However, she has inherited a country rife with violence and faces an uphill battle to rein it in.
Mexico’s 2024 election season was the country’s deadliest on record. Dozens of candidates, as well as their relatives and other party members, were assassinated in the run-up to polling day. And three further candidates were killed in the days following the vote after winning their respective races.
Now, the state of Sinaloa in northern Mexico is being rocked by a brutal gang war. More than 90 people have been killed over the past couple of months, with local media reporting that corpses have been found with sombreros on their heads or with pizza slices pegged onto them with knives.
The violence is believed to pit gang members loyal to Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, the imprisoned co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel, against others aligned with Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the cartel’s other founder.
Violence had been widely expected. Zambada was arrested by US federal agents in July near El Paso, Texas, together with El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López. Following his arrest, Zambada claimed that he had been abducted by the younger Guzmán and taken to the US against his will.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON THE CONVERSATION
TYT Newsroom
