He said Osiel Cardenas, a suspected drug lord held at La Palma, "has made his presence felt, and has tried to exert his power not only inside the prison, but outside as well."
Organized crime prosecutor Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos acknowledged that Cardenas and accused trafficker Benjamin Arellano Felix had forged an alliance while locked up in La Palma to fight turf wars against interlopers like Guzman through gunmen acting on their orders on the outside.
Cardenas may have decided to fight inside the prison, as well.
For many years, authorities say drug lords continued to run their cartels from inside prison, either by using smuggled cell phones or passing orders through visiting lawyers and relatives.
Cell phone signals were recently blocked at La Palma. The signals are still possible at Puente Grande, though officials say blocking equipment is being installed there.
"These guys want to keep carrying out their criminal activities and their confrontations with other gang leaders" inside prison, Macedo de la Concha said.
The crisis has led Mexican authorities to revive an island penal colony 110km off Mexico's southern Pacific coast that had been scheduled for conversion to a nature reserve.
Now, experts like Luis Jose Hinojosa suggest Mexico must turn to even more remote prison islands, like the Revillagigedo Islands, over 650km off the western Pacific coast.
Public Safety Secretary Ramon Martin Huerta, who oversees Mexico's prisons, concedes that "given the problems of overcrowding, underfunding, and corruption, we have to urgently restructure the country's prison system."
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