Sinaloa cartel hitman explains the unwritten rule that gets you dismembered

Former cartel hitman Ali Gonzalez says life inside the Sinaloa cartel’s armed wing operated through a mixture of rigid hierarchy, fear, territorial control, and violence, but one rule stood out even in that world: killing someone who had not been approved as a target could bring severe punishment from the organization itself.

Speaking with Johnny Mitchell on the podcast The Connect, Gonzalez described how he entered cartel life as a young man, how criminal groups divided territory into plazas, and why violence was used not only against rivals but also as a way to intimidate officials and maintain control.

At the same time, he said cartel gunmen were not necessarily given free rein to kill anyone around a target. According to Gonzalez, striking an innocent person or killing someone without authorization could create unwanted attention and, in some organizations, lead to brutal retaliation against the shooter.

Gonzalez Says He Chose to Become a Hitman

Gonzalez told Mitchell that after returning to Mexico, he eventually found himself around people connected to the Sinaloa cartel while working a technical support job in Mexicali.

He said Mexican Americans who return from the United States can sometimes become attractive recruits because they may speak English, understand American culture, and have few opportunities after arriving in Mexico.

Gonzalez said he grew frustrated with his office job and began contacting people he knew were working for the cartel, eventually being sent to Sonora to work under a regional figure in the organization.

He described the hierarchy as layered, with local lieutenants controlling individual plazas or small areas while higher-ranking regional figures oversaw several territories and answered to more powerful bosses.

Mitchell compared the structure to a company with regional managers, an analogy Gonzalez said was fairly accurate.

The comparison is useful because cartel organizations, despite their criminal purpose, often depend on logistics, chains of command, local partnerships, and clear divisions of responsibility just as much as they depend on violence.

Territory Was About More Than Moving Drugs

Mitchell asked Gonzalez what people actually mean when they say cartels fight over drug routes.

Gonzalez said taking over a plaza meant disrupting an entire local network rather than simply controlling one road or border crossing.

That could involve targeting street-level dealers, communications networks, suppliers, rival gunmen, and local leaders who helped maintain control over the area.

He said violence was used as psychological pressure, with rival groups trying to demonstrate that they could impose more fear than the organization already in control.

Gonzalez also claimed that corruption and intimidation of officials played an important role in maintaining that control, arguing that some local authorities could be bribed while others were threatened into cooperation.

Mitchell pressed him on whether government officials sometimes became part of the system, and Gonzalez said that, in his experience, criminal groups often relied on officials either looking away or actively working with one faction.

Those claims are based on Gonzalez’s own account of cartel life and should be understood as his description of how he says those networks functioned.

He Says Cartel Violence Had Its Own Internal Rules

Gonzalez’s most striking claim came when Mitchell asked him about his first assignment as a gunman.

Without going deeply into the mechanics of the killing, Gonzalez said he had been sent after a specific person involved in drug distribution and that the target was clearly identified beforehand.

He said the expectation was that only that person would be attacked.

According to Gonzalez, some criminal organizations would severely punish a gunman who killed someone who had not been authorized as a target, and he claimed he had personally seen people dismembered for violating that rule.

Mitchell found that surprising, noting that cartel violence is often associated with indiscriminate brutality.

Gonzalez said the reality could be more calculated because killing bystanders brought unwanted pressure from law enforcement and the public.

In his telling, harming a rival cartel member might be tolerated or ignored by corrupt officials, while killing an uninvolved child, woman, or other civilian could create far greater scrutiny.

That does not make cartel violence restrained or legitimate, and Gonzalez himself described a system built around fear and coercion. It simply suggests that even violent criminal groups may impose internal rules when indiscriminate killing threatens the organization’s interests.

Training Was Designed to Test Loyalty and Control

Gonzalez said recruits were often evaluated first on whether they were willing to carry out orders under pressure.

He described being sent with other men to a location while others tracked the intended target, after which the group could receive instructions at almost any time to move.

The purpose, he said, was not only to see whether a recruit would use violence but also whether he could follow orders and remain composed.

Gonzalez further claimed that some cartel groups brought in people with military backgrounds to train gunmen, mentioning former soldiers and elite military personnel among those who could be hired.

Mitchell reacted with surprise at the level of organization Gonzalez described.

The larger point was that cartel armed wings did not necessarily rely only on impulsive street violence. According to Gonzalez, they tried to develop shooters who could operate under pressure, obey a chain of command, and later supervise others.

He said advancement depended on qualities such as intelligence, leadership, organization, and whether other men would follow someone’s orders.

Young Recruits Could Rise Quickly

Gonzalez said he was around 18 or 19 when he began working as a hitman.

He told Mitchell that even younger teenagers could be drawn into cartel violence, claiming he had seen children around 12 or 13 already involved in killings.

After proving himself, Gonzalez said he was eventually moved to another state and given responsibility over a group of men so higher-ranking figures could see how he handled leadership.

The organization, he explained, could send armed personnel far from its home territory in northwestern Mexico to support allied groups elsewhere.

Smaller local organizations might lack enough money, weapons, or manpower to defend themselves, so a larger cartel could provide support in exchange for loyalty or cooperation.

That kind of alliance system helps explain how a cartel associated with one part of Mexico can develop influence across distant states without directly controlling every local operation itself.

Mitchell Presses Him on How Cartels Expand

Mitchell asked how Sinaloa could maintain influence thousands of miles from its traditional strongholds.

Gonzalez said the answer was often partnerships.

Local criminal groups already had people, knowledge of the area, and existing infrastructure, while a larger organization could bring resources, money, weapons, or personnel.

In return, those smaller groups became part of a wider network.

Gonzalez described cartel expansion as less like one organization physically occupying every location and more like a chain of alliances connecting regional groups under a more powerful name.

That structure also makes conflicts harder to understand from the outside because two groups operating under the same larger cartel umbrella may still have different loyalties, bosses, and local interests.

The Rules Were About Protecting the Organization

The most revealing part of Gonzalez’s account was not that cartel violence could be extreme; that is already well understood.

What stood out was his claim that the violence was governed by internal rules designed to protect the organization from consequences it did not want.

According to Gonzalez, killing the wrong person could bring more heat from authorities, damage local relationships, and create problems for bosses who depended on a certain level of control.

That is why, he said, a gunman who ignored orders and killed an uninvolved person could face punishment from his own side.

Mitchell’s questions repeatedly returned to the contradiction at the heart of that system: organizations capable of extraordinary brutality still depended on rules, discipline, and calculated restraint when it served their interests.

Gonzalez’s account portrays cartel life not as random chaos, but as an organized criminal structure in which violence was used strategically, loyalty was constantly tested, and even those carrying out killings could face deadly consequences if they acted outside the boundaries set by the people above them.