Mexico’s narcos election

17 October 2019 will forever be etched in the memory of Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa in northwest Mexico, as Black Thursday. That afternoon, two convoys of soldiers knocked on the door of a safehouse hiding Ovidio Guzmán López, son of drug baron ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán and scion of the Sinaloa Cartel, to execute an arrest warrant.

‘The boss has fallen! The boss has fallen!’ crackled the walkie-talkies.

Within minutes, heavy gunfire erupted as mobsters arrived with machine gun turrets mounted on the back of their pick-up trucks. They took over the neighbouring streets and then the rest of the city, seizing roads and bridges and setting buses alight to act as burning barricades. 

‘The city was taken hostage,’ remembered Gecko, a 35-year-old schoolteacher. ‘I was eating and my girlfriend texted me, “don’t come out, because there’s something going on.” My dad was trapped at his job; he had to spend the night there. People were trapped in banks, supermarkets.