An operation involving the Mexican Army, National Guard and members of the Sinaloa state Public Security Secretariat’s Special Operations Group arrested a regional cartel leader in southern Sinaloa in June 2026. The June 1 operation netted Gabriel Nicolás Martínez Larios, known as “Gabito” or “El 80,” who has been identified as the regional chief of the Los Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel. Gabito’s power extended across southern Sinaloa, according to a Mexican government news release.
The National Secretariat of Defense said investigators linked Gabito to the killing, kidnapping and extortion of 10 mining company employees in January. Authorities found weapons, ammunition, drugs, cash and a vehicle when they arrested Gabito, whose age was not listed in official documents. The Attorney General’s Office of Sinaloa will prosecute the cartel chief, the government said.
The murdered workers, all Mexicans, were kidnapped at gunpoint on January 23 from a silver mining project belonging to Vancouver, Canada-based Vizsla Silver, about 80 kilometers northwest of Mazatlán. The bodies, including two mining engineers and a geologist, were buried in clandestine graves. Authorities say Los Chapitos killed the men, who mistakenly believed they were members of the Los Mayos faction of the cartel, according to Agence France Presse.
The Cartel Insider, a news website focused on Mexican transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), said arrest documents list Mazatlán, along with El Rosario, a town which lies to the south, as where security forces apprehended Gabito. The Real del Valle neighborhood in Mazatlán is a fast-growing affluent neighborhood where round-the-clock security posts are common, according to local media sites.
Los Chapitos has been feuding with the Los Mayos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel since the July 2024 kidnapping of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. Zambada was lured to the United States by a son of the Sinaloa Cartel’s most notorious leader, El Chapo, Joaquín Guzmán López, who had already surrendered to U.S. authorities. El Mayo also was arrested.
El Chapo is serving a life sentence without parole in a federal prison in Colorado. The arrests sparked a massive wave of violence across northwestern Mexico that has killed hundreds and prompted a major security push by the Mexican government. Meanwhile, Los Chapitos has allied with Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion in its fight against Los Mayos.
In June 2025, the U.S. government sanctioned Los Chapitos for being at the forefront of fentanyl smuggling across the southern border. The faction “engages in drug trafficking, extortion, kidnapping and money laundering,” according to the sanction announcement by the Department of State. The Sinaloa Cartel has been designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S.
Gabito’s command included the towns and cities of Cosalá, Concordia, Escuinapa, Mazatlán, Rosarito, San Ignacio and Villa Unión in southern Sinaloa, according to the Mexican government.