By the time Ramón Soto reached the crime scene, the wounded man was twitching, bloody and barely alive. A woman nearby collapsed to her knees, wailing, and a poster lay on the ground with a drug cartel’s warning: “You know who is next.”

Mr. Soto, though, showed no trace of emotion as the man went still. “He is dead,” he said. “He is dead.” Then he asked the sobbing woman if she was family and needed funeral services.

For a quiet fraternity of funeral workers in Mexico’s Sinaloa State, each day begins and ends with death. But what was once a dignified profession, they say, guiding the bereaved through the disorienting maze that follows a death, now puts them at the center of the carnage engulfing their state.

Warring factions of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the world’s most powerful criminal groups, are vying for control of its multibillion-dollar empire. The Mexican government, under intense pressure from the Trump administration, has begun an aggressive crackdown on the cartel, too.

The battle has sown chaos in the state, leaving more than 1,900 dead and 2,000 missing over the last year, according to official data.

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