‘No respect for anything’: Life in the shadows of a Mexican cartel war

World Eight bullet holes in a tight pattern are spread across the passenger window of an SUV where a man was found dead inside on Dec. 9 in Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico.(Jason Burles/CBC) Mexican federal police secure a house on Dec. 11 in Culiacancito, Sinaloa, which sits on the outskirts of Culiacán. A man was found dead on the floor next to his bed with two gunshot wounds.(Jorge Barrera/CBC) A view of Culiacán, Sinaloa, from above a large statue of Jesus Christ at the Parish of Divine Mercy, which towers over the city.(Tania Miranda Perez/CBC) The chief nurse from a local health-care centre was found dead, with a gunshot wound to his head, on Dec. 11, in a cornfield south of Culiacán, Sinaloa.(Jorge Barrera/CBC) The entrance of a gated and walled ranch house where a fratricidal war within the Sinaloa cartel began.(Jorge Barrera/CBC) Maj.-Gen. Julices Julián González Calzada, who oversees the National Guard in Sinaloa, said the Secretariat of National Defence, along with Mexico’s national security cabinet, have been launching 'high-level' operations throughout Sinaloa.(Jorge Barrera/CBC) Carlos Castro, left, and his wife, Elisabeth Lizarraga, right, enjoy a Tomateros baseball game on Dec. 10 in Culiacán, Sinaloa.(Tania Miranda Perez/CBC) María Guadalupe Rodríguez said she fled her home in El Tepuche, which sits about 17 kilometres north of Culiacan, last October after armed men appeared.(Jorge Barrera/CBC) Fear, death and hope in a city under the shadows of a Mexican cartel war In the city of Culiacán, fears a civil war within the Sinaloa cartel could become deadliest ever A mule grazed on a recent Thursday afternoon at the end of a quiet dirt road near the entrance of a gated and walled ranch house on the outskirts of Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa state in northwestern Mexico. Notices attached to the gates indicated that the property had been seized and sealed by the Mexican Attorney General’s office. This is where a fratricidal war within one of the world’s most powerful transnational criminal organizations began. Not far from here, down a secondary highway, headed east toward Culiacán, federal police agents unfurled yellow tape across a driveway leading to a home where a man in his early 20s was found dead on the floor by his bed. He was shot once in the head and once in the chest. Later, on this same Thursday, Dec. 11, in a cornfield south of Culiacán, the chief nurse from a local health-care centre was found dead with a gunshot wound to his head. As the man’s body was loaded into the back of a forensics van for transport to the morgue, smoke billowed on the horizon. A car was burning in a nearby village after an armed attack that left one man dead near a municipal office. The multiple deaths are another round of suspected salvos from the war within the Sinaloa cartel, one of the biggest suppliers of cocaine, methamphetamines and fentanyl in the world that is consumed by a crisis coursing through its heartland. No one in...

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