A big FUBAR happened in Culiacan Mexico yesterday as Mexican police and narcotics officers captured Ovidio Guzman, aka “Chapito”, the heir of drug kingpin El Chappo and current head of the Sinaloa cartel.

We watched via social media yesterday as a war broke out in Culiacan between the police/military and the cartel.  After authorities captured Chapito, hundreds of Sinaloa cartel members came down from the mountains and cut off the city.  The cartel began executing and capturing anyone who was assisting the arrest.  The city shut down.

To save themselves, the surrounded Mexican officials released Chapito back to the cartels and now the world has more evidence that Mexican President Lopez-Obrador has no control over the peace and security of Mexico.  The cartels are in charge.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican officials on Friday admitted they had bungled the arrest of kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s son, who they let go during shootouts with drug gangs in the streets of a major city, but the president insisted his security strategy was working.

Cartel gunmen surrounded around 35 police and national guards in the northwestern city of Culiacan on Thursday and made them free Ovidio Guzman, one of the jailed drug lord’s dozen or so children, after his brief detention set off widespread gun battles and a jailbreak that stunned the country.

The chaos in Culiacan, a bastion of Guzman’s Sinaloa Cartel, turned up pressure on President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who took office in December promising to pacify a country weary of more than a decade of gang violence and murders.

Lopez Obrador came under heavy criticism on social media and from security experts, who said that authorities risked encouraging copycat actions by caving in to the gang, and that the retreat from a major city created the impression that the cartel, not the state, was in control.  (read more)

LAST NIGHT: