Drug cartel cases in Chicago play disturbing role in surge of Mexico murders

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Drug cartel cases in Chicago are playing a disturbing role in the surge of murders in Mexico.

Federal cases targeting the sons and associates of notorious drug lord El Chapo are helping trigger the violence.

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El Chapo's two sons are known as "Los Chapitos," and they are being held by federal authorities in Chicago.

When Ovidio "The Mouse" Guzman was arrested in Mexico and extradited to Chicago, and then his brother Joaquin was also arrested with cartel founder El Mayo. The arrests were the beginning of a series of Chicago-centric criminal cases that would trigger a wave of a fire bombings, mass killings and terror through several Mexican states.

More than 150 people have been murdered in Mexico the past month alone, according to law enforcement officials there. They have attributed the explosion of violence to rival drug cartels trying to make moves on power gaps following the Chicago arrests.

"The numbers are appalling. I mean in political science, we think that we have, you know, definitions of civil war and what Mexico is enduring right now is far above those," University of Chicago political science professor Michael Albertus said. "Those thresholds are being classified as civil war. I mean, the violence is just stunning in terms of the levels and it affects, you know, everyday life, up and down in every aspect imaginable."

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One recent murder target was Alejandro Arcos Catalán, 43, who was recently sworn in as mayor of Chilpancingo, Mexico. He was beheaded Sunday during a spike in cartel violence.

Arcos is the latest of more than two dozen political figures in Mexico murdered during this year's election cycle.

"An organization like the Sinaloa Cartel is not an extremely tight knit, top down organization," Albertus said. "Instead, it's sort of a federation of a lot of different organizations at the ground level that act kind of collectively, in some sense, together. You know, divvy up territory, divvy up control, share things in certain ways. And so, you know, when there's the arrest of top leaders and there's a vacuum the leadership at the top, different people are trying to grab more of that territory, more resources, more control. And so it generates this conflict at lower levels."

Top Mexican officials, including its outgoing president, have disparaged the United States for this surge in murders and violence, claiming the Chicago cartel cases and El Mayo Zambada's arrest predictably triggered a turf war.

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The U.S. ambassador to Mexico has said Washington had nothing to do with how these cartel cases played out.