Police at ground zero for the Sinaloa cartel's battle of succession are outgunned and overwhelmed

Since once powerful Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was rearrested in January 2016, the cartel's home turf in Sinaloa state has been embroiled in a steadily escalating battle for succession.

The fight appears to be split among three factions vying for control of the cartel, which is considered one of if not the most powerful criminal organization in Mexico.

Much of that bloodshed is related to the three factions' struggle for primacy, and the police and soldiers in Sinaloa charged with bringing it to heel appear to be out manned and out matched.

One faction is led by the recently captured Damaso Lopez Nuñez, a former Sinaloa security official who was Guzman's right-hand man, who helped the Sinaloa chief escape from prison twice.

Two of Guzman's sons, Jesus Alfredo and Ivan Archivaldo, lead a second faction, fighting to assume the drug-trafficking throne to which they see themselves as heirs.

Guzman's brother Aureliano Guzman, aka "El Guano," leads the third faction and commands the area around the community of Badiraguato in the La Tuna municipality, a rugged area where Guzman and numerous other Mexican kingpins are from.

Sinaloa state, home to 3 million people, saw a 76% increase in homicides over the first five months of this year compared to last year (though there's reason to believe government data obscures some homicides).

The state has had 764 homicides through June this year, according to the state security secretariat. That's the highest rate in six years.

"It's terror. The word for what is happening in Sinaloa is generalized terror," Alejandro Sicairos, editor of local magazine Espejo, told AFP.

"This hasn't been the usual kind of shootout," Sicairos said. "They're coming with everything they've got: high-caliber weapons, full arsenals, vehicle-mounted artillery."

Sinaloa's deputy secretary for security, Cristobal Castañeda, told AFP that the state doesn't have the resources it needs to fight the criminal groups running roughshod over the area.

There are 5,700 police and soldiers in the state, but international standards say an area Sinaloa's size should have 9,000, Castañeda said.

Some of the soldiers are tasked with fighting illegal narcotics, including detecting and dismantling the synthetic-drug labs that are increasingly common in the state.

Local police forces, Castañeda added, have insufficient training.

Those nearly 32,000 police agents are 10% of the national total, up from 9%, or 30,922 police, who had failed those exams as of April 2016.

"If you are a governor or a mayor, why spend money and political capital on institutional reform if you can call on the Army and the Navy to rescue you when things get really bad (at almost no cost to you)?" Mexican political analyst Alejandro Hope wrote in April 2016.

Police at ground zero for the Sinaloa cartel's battle of succession are outgunned and overwhelmed

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