THE BORDER REPORT

Culiacán, Sinaloa – There's an old saying that comes out of the banditry of the Sierra Madre, popularized in song, and now, in battlecries on those damned YouTube videos: "¡Pura gente de Sinaloa!"

It's never been more true than now. The frenzied battles shaping the drug war today are between the people of Badiraguato (Joaquín Shorty Guzmán) and nearby Navolato (Vicente Carrillo Fuentes).

There's a few ... interesting ... happenings that have culminated in the latest saga of Sinaloan barbarities.

The fight began last winter in Juárez between the Sinaloans and Vicente Carrillo Fuentes. Of the five Mexican cartels, the Sinaloan narco-syndicate, the Gulf, the Arellano Felix family, Milenio and Juárez, Carrillo's organization has been considered the weaker – and one of the oldest. It was his brother, Amado, who got the ball rolling after the murder of Pablo Acosta. But the Loved One really was loved; so much so that his brother was left alone in Juárez. Together with the Sinaloans, the Juárez Cartel formed The Federation, a kind of joint-operating agreement.

I keep one Justice Department report on hand that I've found useful over time. Under Vicente Carrillo, the parenthetical: "Carrillo is no longer very strong in the area and his two partners ignore him as they start to have some confrontation among themselves."

Last January, the Sinaloans, particularly Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada wanted to spread his operations toward Juárez. Carrillo and his people refused to play ball, they didn't even want to accept money from the Sinaloans; Carrillo wanted to keep the route isolated for his own operations.

Carrillo and El Mayo's associate, Shorty Guzmán, have never been at peace. This rivalry goes back to the Sept. 11, 2004 murder of Carrillo's brother, Rodolfo Carrillo Fuentes in Culiacán. It was as simple as Rodolfo and some of the other narco-juniors talking shit, telling Guzmán they could do the job better than he. Disrespect led to murder.

That murder led to Arturo Guzmán's death the following New Year's Eve. Arturo was wanted in Arizona on numerous drug trafficking charges, including a multi-ton cocaine trafficking operation that ran out of a tunnel in Naco.

It appears the score was settled with those murders and only now burned back to the surface. Since then, Juárez and Sinaloa existed in a relative peace only broken by fights between regional drug traffickers like the Salazars and Los Numeros in Sonora and Chihuahua.

While this fight goes on, the bigger question everyone is asking today is where Arturo Beltrán Leyva stands on all of this.

Who is he working for? Did he switch out from the Sinaloans and is he now working for the Juárez Cartel?

Talking to a federal source this morning in Culiacán, he believes the Beltrán dispute started with the January arrest of Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, El Mochomo. The way he calls it, Arturo deserted the Sinaloans for the Juárez people. The man who once helped Guzmán recoup his power after his 2001 escape from prison is now going against him. Maybe. Maybe not. Some trusted people I spoke with today don't think so.

Reporters are saying, though nobody's written anything yet, that Sinaloa Gov. Jesus Aguilar Padilla has been threatened. Ten investigators and federal agents have been murdered in the past 15 days.

The next big move's got to be Guzmán. He has a son, a nephew and a cousin to pay some people back for.

And the only thing small about Shorty is his stature.

-- Michel Marizco