From selling record levels of new drugs to splitting rival gangs, the Sinaloa cartel is growing while its iconic founder goes to court. When heavy floods struck Mexico’s Sinaloa state earlier this year, damaging communities and local infrastructure, help was quick to arrive. But not from the government. Residents of the small town of El Ranchito de los Angulo, not far from the Pacific Coast, were pictured by the local media receiving new mattresses, stoves and blankets packed up with caps and stickers bearing the initials JGL. Townsfolk were filmed sending blessings to their benefactor, Joaquin Guzmán Loera, aka “El Chapo,” arguably the world’s most famous drug lord. This is the birthplace of the Sinaloa cartel he once controlled. For decades, poor countryfolk have seen him and his associates as providers who buy their product and give them work compared to a government that has, in their eyes, consistently failed them. But that isn’t the only part of Guzman’s legacy that looks set to outlive him. As he faces the early stages of his trial in a maximum-security prison in New York on drug trafficking and homicide charges, business is booming for the Sinaloa cartel. | 