Sinaloa vs Juárez: The Battle for the World's Deadliest City

Between 2008 and 2012, Ciudad Juárez became the deadliest city on earth — not because of war, but because two cartels decided the border crossing beneath it was worth any price in blood. The Sinaloa Cartel under El Chapo Guzmán moved to take the plaza from the entrenched Juárez Cartel under Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, triggering a conflict so savage it produced over 10,000 murders in four years and turned a city of 1.3 million people into a killing ground. Police were assassinated, journalists were silenced, and entire neighborhoods emptied as the two organizations fought block by block for control of the most lucrative drug smuggling corridor on the US-Mexico border.