The arrest of Ovidio Guzman, the son of former Sinaloa cartel leader “El Chapo,” sparked speculation he could be extradited to the United States to join his father in an American prison. Guzman, thought to be one of the leaders of the Sinaloa organization, was captured in northern Mexico in a bloody operation that led to the deaths of at least 29 people. Now there are concerns that the violence in Mexico could expand into the U.S. Straight Arrow News contributor Peter Zeihan warns that the group, which has filled the power vacuum for the fractured Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico, could bring its hyper-violent methods across the border.

Excerpted from Peter’s Jan. 6 “Zeihan on Geopolitics” newsletter:

We all know the story of El Chapo’s capture and escape…and capture. But the lesser known – and perhaps more important story – is the disarray he left behind. The Sinaloa Cartel, once the world’s most powerful organized crime group, owes its success to a business-first approach (violence was just a means to an end). The power struggle caused by El Chapo’s vacancy has changed everything. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel, emerging as the new big-dog, has settled on a shoot-first-ask-questions-later approach…and while effective, it has garnered some unwanted attention for the cartel’s operations.

Basically, the enforcers of El Chapo are now working there, and they have a very different outlook. Their leader is a guy by the name of El Mencho and he is former Mexican military and hyper violent. And when his group moves into a town, they don’t try to kind of lay low and win over people. They just shoot the place up. Their general position is that we are drug smugglers, yes, but drug smugglers is an outcome of our violence, whereas El Chapo and the Sinaloa was like, you know, we are drug smugglers, and that is a business. And so violence is a means to an end. 

El Mencho sees the violence as the point because it underlines to everyone who is in charge immediately. And so they do everything that the Sinaloa doesn’t. And their violence in their expansion has been successful in gaining territory and eliminating rivals, but at a huge cost. And they are now the most powerful drug trafficking organization within the Mexican state and they are challenging the other cartels for control of each and every one of the transfer plazas on the border. 

Now to this point, they have not succeeded in crossing the border. But if they do, their own penchant for violence, the whole idea that the shit is the point of being a cartel, is going to change the political discussion within the United States and between Washington and Mexico City, almost overnight. Now I’m not saying that is how this is going to go. That is a possibility. El Chapo led a dis-aggregated organization with a light touch. El Mencho is almost hierarchical. And if he were to slip in the shower and fall in some bullets tomorrow, his whole organization might disintegrate. But that hasn’t happened yet and there’s no reason to think that it has to happen. 

Anyway, that is the risk moving forward, that the Mexican drug war actually comes north of the border. And considering that the Jalisco New Generation is so hyper violent, and has now overtaken the Sinaloa as the largest organized crime group in Mexico, it’s something we honestly should be preparing for.