The six-year term of Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador ended in September 2024 amid a surge of violence in the state of Sinaloa — a crisis he blamed on the United States. Just a few months earlier, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the longtime leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, had been captured by U.S. authorities under murky circumstances.
© GOBIERNO DE MÉXICO
In July 2011, a 22-year-old woman arrived at the Calexico checkpoint on the Mexico–California border carrying a U.S. passport with a navy-blue cover. Her eight-month pregnancy and Sinaloa accent were hard to hide. A customs agent asked routine questions: where she had come from, where she was headed, and what she was carrying. Despite her answers and the document she presented, he sent her for a secondary, more thorough inspection. Other federal officers meticulously searched her belongings and the contents of her cellphones. Minutes later, once the rigorous procedure was complete, they allowed her into the country.
© Mary Altaffer (AP)
It was all thanks to a small metal screw – an orthodontic mini-screw, to be precise – that was placed in the jawbone underneath José Antonio Jiménez’s gums. His wife, Priscila Murrieta, waited in the hallways of the Attorney General’s office in Mazatlán, a city in the south of the Mexican state of Sinaloa. Meanwhile, the forensic dentist went in and out of a room. Of the bodies recovered from the mass graves in the small town of El Verde, Jiménez could be one of them. With moles and tattoos ruled out, only two bodies remained with similar characteristics. Both of the victims wore braces on their teeth.
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