Sinaloa Cartel
Cartel
PF Score
39
Authority × 0.6 + Reach × 0.4
Authority Score
42
Capacity to coerce
Reach Score
35
Influence projection
Score Trajectory
The Sinaloa Cartel exercises effective quasi-governmental control across significant portions of Sinaloa, Sonora, and other Mexican states — including taxation, enforcement, and parallel governance — …
The Sinaloa Cartel exercises meaningful quasi-governmental control across significant portions of Sinaloa and adjacent Mexican states — taxation, parallel justice, economic coercion — placing its Auth…
Score Reasoning
The Sinaloa Cartel exercises meaningful quasi-governmental control across significant portions of Sinaloa and adjacent Mexican states — taxation, parallel justice, economic coercion — placing its Authority well above the non-state baseline and peer actors like TTP or RSF who operate in more contested or fragile environments, but below formal state actors given ongoing internal faction warfare (the Chapitos vs. Mayo Zambada split) that has degraded cohesion since mid-2024. Reach reflects demonstrated cross-border influence into U.S. drug distribution networks, money laundering infrastructure spanning multiple continents, and corrupted supply chains into Central America, but without a patron or proxy network this influence is commercially transactional rather than geopolitically structural, capping it below actors with ideological or state-backed external mobilization capacity. Calibrated between the Tier 7 Yemen floor (PF 10) and Tier 5 Hezbollah pre-2024 baseline (PF 46), the Sinaloa Cartel sits closer to mid-range non-state actors — above RSF on Authority given deeper institutional criminal governance, but below RSF peers on the political-military dimension.