Gente Nueva (English: New People), also known as Los Chapos, in reference to their drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera, is a large group of well-trained and experienced gunmen that function as one of the elite armed wings of the Sinaloa Cartel, created to counter, battle and destroy the Juárez Cartel's influence in the Mexican north-west, as well as to battle and destroy La Línea which is currently the Juárez Cartel's largest remaining cell.

Gente Nueva dates back to 1995 when El Profe begun his criminal career in the Mexican state of Chihuahua under the Sinaloa Federation. Gente Nueva has served as the main branch of the organization in Ciudad Juárez and in the rest of the state, where they have engaged in a four-year war with the Juárez Cartel and its enforcer wing, La Línea, for the control of the smuggling routes to the United States. Amid the internal struggles and infightings in the Juárez cartel, Gente Nueva began to recruit the cartel's members.

By 2012, U.S. intelligence indicated that the Sinaloa cartel and Gente Nueva have emerged victorious and successfully relegated the Juárez cartel to the sidelines. The El Paso–Juárez corridor is a lucrative route for drug traffickers because the DEA estimates that about 70% of the cocaine that enters the United States flows through that area.

The war between the Juárez Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel for the control of the smuggling routes in Ciudad Juárez broke out on 5 January 2008, when five men were shot dead with AR-15s in a matter of hours; within a few days, several policemen and nearly two dozen civilians lay dead. The Juárez cartel used La Mafia and Los Muertos to fight off the forces of the Sinaloa cartel, which had employed the gangs known as Artistas Asesinos and Los Mexicles, along with its armed wing, Gente Nueva. The turf wars between them have left more than 10,000 dead in four years.

When Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, jumped into the territory of the Juárez organization in 2007, he attempted to split his rival organization and recruit the dissidents into his own invasion force – Gente Nueva.

Gente Nueva is responsible for a number of crimes, including but not limited to extortions, kidnappings, tortures, and assassinations.

Masked gunmen stormed the El Cristal Military education center in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua on 3 September 2009, gathered all of the patients together against a wall at a central patio, and then opened fire at them with AK-47 rifles. 18 patients were killed in the attack and two others were left wounded. When the Mexican authorities removed the dead bodies, a thick layer of blood was left at the concrete floor of the clinic, from the entrance to the sleep quarters. Local newspapers stated that the gunmen were plotting to kill members of Los Muertos, a rival gang at the service of the Juárez Cartel. In February 2012 in León, Guanajuato – José Antonio Torres Marrufo – a leader of Gente Nueva, was arrested and found responsible for ordering the attack. Gente Nueva had killed 8 people at the 7&7 Bar in Ciudad Juárez just a few weeks before the rehab center attack.

The attack was materialized within sight of the U.S.-Mexico border and is one of the worst single mass shootings in the history of Ciudad Juárez.