Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, the powerful leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, was recaptured on January 8 in a town not far from where he was born in Sinaloa state.
While its leader appears to be out of commission yet again, the Sinaloa cartel is still arguably the largest drug-trafficking organization in the world, and the deep ties to Colombia it uses to influence the global cocaine trade have become more apparent over the last year.
According to a summer 2015 report from from Colombian newspaper El Tiempo, the Sinaloa cartel controls 35% of the cocaine exported from Colombia — the largest producer of the drug in the world, which saw a 30% increase in potential-pure-cocaine production from 2013 to 2014, according to the DEA. DEA analysis also found that 90% of the cocaine consumed in the US was of Colombian origin.
Born in the mountains of Sinaloa state on Mexico’s west coast, Guzmán’s cartel has expanded throughout the country and around the world over the last several decades.
According to Spanish newspaper El País, the cartel’s marijuana and poppy fields in Mexico cover more than 23,000 miles of land, an area larger than Costa Rica. It has operatives in at least 17 Mexican states and operations in up to 50 countries, Insight Crime reports.
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