Carlos Beltrán Leyva

Who is Carlos Beltrán Leyva?

Carlos Beltrán Leyva is an incarcerated Mexican drug lord with the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel. The cartel was created by the four Beltrán Leyva brothers: Héctor, Alfredo and Arturo. Born in the Sinaloan countryside in the late 1960s, Carlos and his brothers worked closely with Joaquín "Chapo" Guzmán, the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, during decades of smuggling.

The organization, run mainly by Arturo and Héctor, formed as a splinter group of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, which was led by Joaquín Guzmán Loera. After Alfredo was arrested, the Beltrán-Leyva brothers blamed Guzmán Loera and retaliated by forming the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel, and killing one of the Sinaloa cartel chief's sons in a grenade attack on a Culiacán shopping center. This sparked a war between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel, which allied itself with the Gulf Cartel.