![]() US overdose deaths, the lion's share due to fentanyl, surged to nearly 107,000 in 2021. One American dies from a fentanyl overdose almost every eight minutes, US Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said. The impact on US streets has been devastating. Within the cartel, the brothers have battled elders opposed to them assuming their father's mantle, including El Chapo's former right-hand man Dámaso López, according to US and Mexican security sources. "Before, they would interrogate and then kill you. "This new generation is more violent," said one retired Mexican police officer in Sinaloa. Soldiers captured Ovidio, the youngest of the four siblings, then quickly released him on the orders of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador after cartel foot soldiers fought troops in shootouts that killed 14 people, including several bystanders. ![]() The rapid ascendancy of Los Chapitos, many details of which are told here for the first time, shows how authorities may have underestimated the former party boys.Ī 2019 showdown with Mexico's Army in Culiacán, Sinaloa's capital, already has cemented their place in narco lore. The news agency also interviewed dozens of sources, including law enforcement, intelligence and government officials in Mexico and the United States, as well as local residents who have witnessed the changing of the guard. To chronicle the rise of this new generation of "Narco Juniors," as children of established traffickers are known in Mexico, Reuters spoke with four Sinaloa Cartel operatives and visited a house where gang members assembled pills stuffed with methamphetamine, another cash cow. US officials portrayed them as the face of a highly addictive poison that's killing nearly 200 Americans daily. Last month, US authorities laid out extensive new charges against the brothers in indictments filed in multiple jurisdictions, and upped bounties for two of the siblings to $US10 million ($14 million) apiece, cementing their status as some of the world's most powerful and wanted drug lords. Their early bet on fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin, helped supercharge an opioid epidemic that has placed them squarely in the crosshairs of American anti-narcotics agents. Yet, the brothers have resuscitated a drug empire teetering after their father was locked behind US bars, and diversified the business by embracing a new line of synthetic drugs. Collectively known as Los Chapitos - or "the little Chapos" - the four siblings were once mocked by adversaries as entitled princelings more concerned with flashing their wealth on Instagram than the grubby work of moving tonnes of cocaine into the United States.
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