Mexico said Friday the battle sparked by its arrest of Ovidio Guzman has resulted in at least 29 deaths, demonstrating the enduring might of his father's drug cartel. Gunmen with the Sinaloa cartel opened fire on troops in an armored convoy trying to arrest Guzman on Thursday with .50-caliber machine guns, Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval said. Under fire, the troops called in Blackhawk helicopter gunships, the Washington Post reports. As the fighting spread across the northern Sinaloa state, 10 soldiers and 19 fighters thought to be working for the cartel were killed.
"As we can see, the cartel has an enormous paramilitary organization with immense capabilities in terms of logistics and firepower," a former head of domestic intelligence agency CISEN tweeted. Guillermo Valdes Castellanos pointed out that the Mexican government had not done anything to impair the cartel's fighting force. Its gunmen appeared in many instances to be unimpeded by government security as they set up roadblocks, burned vehicles, and attacked the state capital's airport, per the Post. "The operation was a success in terms of the detention of Ovidio, but didn't signify a change in the government’s strategy," he posted.
Government forces put Guzman on a plane to Mexico City. He's now being held in the maximum-security Altiplano prison, where his father, Joaquín Guzman—"El Chapo"—once tunneled out. Ismael Bojorquez, director of a local newspaper in the region, said the armies of organized crime have added weapons and become more organized and formidable. "All of organized crime's armies have strengthened, not just the Chapitos, and this is the price that society is paying for this strategy of the federal government," he said, per the AP. (More Sinaloa drug cartel stories.)
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