The scene behind the curtain in Sinaloa
While life in Culiacán continued its course, another act of the eternal drama between authority and organized crime unfolded among the hills and towns. The so-called “Operation Search, Locate and Destroy Clandestine Laboratories” was not just a pompous name in a press release. It was a day of raids that exposed the chemical infrastructure of the illicit business.
In different parts of the municipality, federal and state forces located two storage centers. The loot: 1,500 liters of various substances ready to become bigger problems.
The authorities reported that in said operation, 550 liters of acetone, 700 of ethyl alcohol, two hundred of thinner, 50 liters of methylene, thirteen drums, five drums and a tub were seized.
But the show had more scenes. The searches were extended to the town of Los Brasiles. There, among the Sinaloa landscape, they found a different scenario: a marijuana plantation that measured 150 meters long by 10 meters wide. A green and illegal rectangle under the sun.
Along with the crop, the packaged evidence: four plastic bags with dry green weed, with the characteristics of marijuana. Each one weighed six kilos. As if someone had interrupted the harvest just before distribution.
The final discovery was symbolic: a twenty-liter drum containing seeds, apparently from the same forbidden vegetable. An approximate weight of 12 kilos of potentially illicit future.
Everything found—the chemicals, the grass, the seeds—was placed at the disposal of the Attorney General’s Office. Now it is up to the researchers to connect the dots, to follow the thread from these warehouses and fields to the characters behind the curtain.
This operation is another chapter in the ongoing fight in Sinaloa. A state where cultivation and trafficking have written tragic stories for decades. Every laboratory destroyed, every plantation eradicated, is a blow to an underground economy that continues trying to take root.
The show continues. Only the actors and locations change.
