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| Known collectively as Los Chapitos, the men are believed to control a prominent faction of the Sinaloa Cartel. JOAQUÍN “EL CHAPO” GUZMÁN LOERA’S SONS JESUS ALFREDO GUZMAN-SALAZAR (L), OVIDIO GUZMÁN LÓPEZ (C), AND IVÁN ARCHIVALDO GUZMÁN SALAZAR (R), EACH HAVE A 5$ MILLION BOUNTY ON THEIR HEADS, AS DOES A FOURTH - JOAQUÍN GUZMÁN LÓPEZ - NOT PICTURED. PHOTOS: DEA AND MEXICAN GOVERNMENT. |
MEXICO CITY—The U.S. government just offered a $5 million reward to anyone with information that could lead to the capture of each of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera’s sons.
Commonly known as Los Chapitos, the men are infamous for their brash and ostentatious behavior and displays on social media. One of them—Ovidio Guzmán López—was captured but released by the Mexican government in 2019 in an incident that proved a national embarrassment for the administration of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The announcement from the Biden administration came on the heels of a similar bounty placed on the head of El Chapo’s brother, Aureliano Guzmán Loera aka Guano, and the tripling of the reward for his former Sinaloa Cartel partner Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada to $15 million. After El Chapo’s arrest and extradition in 2017, his sons—Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, Ovidio Guzmán López, and Joaquín Guzmán López—are believed to have become prominent leaders of a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel. The fresh bounty on each of their heads puts the young Guzmáns in a tier with some of Mexico's other most wanted criminals. “All four are high-ranking members of the Sinaloa Cartel and are each subject to a federal indictment for their involvement in the illicit drug trade,” said the U.S. Department of State when announcing the reward. The eldest brother, Iván Archivaldo, first made headlines in the early 2000s after the death of a Canadian exchange student in Guadalajara. Kristen Deyell left a nightclub with a man named César Pulido who had reportedly been involved in a fight inside the club over the Canadian student. The two were ambushed outside and shot to death. Iván Archivaldo was the prime suspect and spent the next few years in and out of prison battling charges over the murder, along with money laundering and organized crime allegations. He was eventually freed in 2008 and Deyell and Pulido's murders remain unsolved Both Iván Archivaldo and his younger brother Jesús Alfredo started making waves for their use of social media, with unverified accounts linked to the brothers regularly posting photos and videos of guns, money, and women. But as the hunt for El Chapo increased during the mid-2010s, the sons tempered their social media use as they reportedly became more involved in the family business. The original accounts have been removed from Twitter. El Chapo escaped prison in 2001, allegedly in a laundry cart, and ran the business while on the lam until finally being arrested in 2014. He escaped prison again in 2015, and was recaptured six months later. The kingpin was soon extradited to the U.S. and found guilty in 2019 in a New York court. El Chapo is currently serving a life sentence on drug, weapons, and money laundering charges at a Colorado supermax penitentiary. |
With El Chapo's January 2016 arrest and extradition on the horizon, the power vacuum began to cause conflict between different factions within the Sinaloa Cartel, and other cartels also tried to take advantage of the situation. The fighting directly hit the brothers when Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo were kidnapped in August 2016 by members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG for its Spanish acronym). The brothers were released within a week after members of the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG reportedly brokered their release in exchange for guaranteeing the protection of the incarcerated son of Nemesio Oseguera, alias El Mencho, the boss of the CJNG.
But Los Chapitos truly entered the public consciousness after the arrest of a third Guzmán brother, Ovidio, in October 2019. Mexican soldiers attempted to arrest Ovidio in a house in Culiacán, the capital of the state of Sinaloa and family stronghold, but were soon fought off by cartel gunmen. Ovidio's brothers reportedly sent hundreds of cartel foot soldiers onto the streets of the city who engaged in hours of gunfights with state forces that left at least eight people dead and many injured. Cartel gunmen also entered a military housing complex and threatened the families of Mexican soldiers stationed in Sinaloa.
Mexican President López Obrador promptly ordered the release of Ovidio to stop the bloodshed, but his capture and release was seen as a sign of the state's inability to combat organized crime.
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