Sunday’s killing of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes by the Mexican military marks the greatest blow to the nation’s drug cartels in years, sparking a wave of violent retaliation.
Oseguera Cervantes, higher often called “El Mencho,” led the highly effective and lethal Jalisco New Era Cartel, which has earned a fame for brazen assaults towards Mexican safety forces whereas establishing itself as a prime distributor of cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl.
“He was brutal,” stated Alejandro Garcia Magos, an assistant professor at the College of Toronto who research Mexican politics, who referred to as Oseguera Cervantes’ death “excellent news.”
Oseguera Cervantes was going through a number of indictments in the United States, and the U.S. State Division had provided a US$15 million reward for data resulting in his arrest. Canada and the U.S. designated his cartel and others international terrorist organizations a yr in the past.
Right here’s what to find out about “El Mencho” and the cartel he fashioned and led till his death.
A prolonged prison historical past
Born in rural Michoacán in western Mexico in 1966, Oseguera Cervantes grew up in a poor household earlier than he reportedly illegally immigrated to the U.S. in the Eighties.
He settled in the San Francisco Bay Space, the place he was arrested a number of occasions on firearms and drug costs and deported again to Mexico, however managed to re-enter the U.S.
A Univision profile of Oseguera Cervantes claims he smuggled medication from Mexico into the U.S. a number of occasions, crossing the border underneath varied aliases.
In 1992, after settling in California as soon as once more, Oseguera Cervantes and his brother Abraham had been arrested on federal costs in Sacramento, three weeks after a heroin take care of undercover cops.
In accordance with Rolling Stone, Oseguera Cervantes pleaded responsible with a view to keep away from a life sentence for Abraham, who had acted as the vendor whereas “El Mencho” served as lookout.
Oseguera Cervantes was sentenced to 5 years in jail however was launched on parole after three years, after which he was deported again to Mexico.
Upon his return, “El Mencho” grew to become a Jalisco state police officer earlier than becoming a member of the Milenio Cartel. He quickly married Rosalinda González Valencia, whose household led the cartel.
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Oseguera Cervantes first served in an murderer squad that protected Milenio’s leaders and step by step rose by means of the cartel’s ranks to grow to be a prime lieutenant throughout a time when Milenio successfully merged with the highly effective Sinaloa Cartel.
“El Mencho” labored carefully with Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel, an ally of Sinaloa Cartel chief Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, to assist implement Sinaloa’s management of drug trafficking by means of Jalisco state and its capital metropolis of Guadalajara.
In a span of months between 2009 and 2010, Coronel was killed in a shootout with Mexican troopers and Milenio’s prime chief, Óscar Orlando Nava Valencia (“El Lobo”), was captured.
Out of the management vacuum, the Milenio Cartel fractured into two warring teams — one in every of them led by “El Mencho,” which received the struggle over management of the Jalisco drug commerce and adjusted its title to Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, or CJNG.
CJNG steadily expanded its management over drug trafficking throughout Jalisco and into different neighbouring states “with the political safety of governors” who had been corrupted, stated Edgardo Buscaglia, a senior scholar in regulation and economics at Columbia College.
“That’s big, when you may have the political safety of 9 governors — that lets you interact in native monopolies to make some huge cash by means of not simply medication, not simply human trafficking, not simply migrant trafficking, however you begin being profitable by means of the state, by means of public procurement,” he stated.
“So the Jalisco cartel was very a lot merged with the Jalisco state.”
Days earlier than Oseguera Cervantes was killed, the U.S. authorities accused him and CJNG of a timeshare fraud scheme in Puerto Vallarta as a further illicit income stream for the cartel.
CJNG’s belongings have been estimated to be round US$20 billion by state terrorism researchers at the College of Maryland.
González Valencia, “El Mencho’s” spouse, who was often called “La Jefa,” has led the cartel’s monetary and cash laundering operations, which included actual property and luxurious resort properties.
“There isn’t a single state in Mexico that doesn’t have the presence of both the Jalisco cartel or the Sinaloa Cartel in some form or kind, be that by way of boots on the floor or the monetary buildings of those organizations,” stated Deborah Bonello, the managing editor of InSight Crime, an organized crime suppose tank that has revealed a number of profiles and analyses of “El Mencho” and CJNG.
“El Mencho” successfully solidified his place as Mexico’s new prime drug lord in 2016, after the closing seize of “El Chapo” Guzman, when CKPG kidnapped two of Guzman’s sons whereas they had been vacationing in Puerto Vallarta. The 2 males had been finally freed after a negotiation with Guzman that concerned fee to CKPG in money and medicines.
Oseguera Cervantes evaded seize by Mexican forces a number of occasions earlier than his death on Sunday and maintained an especially low profile.
His cartel, in the meantime, developed a fame for brazen violence towards Mexican authorities and politicians, together with the 2013 homicide of Jalisco tourism secretary Jesús Gallegos Álvarez, which was believed to have been ordered by “El Mencho.”
In 2015, CJNG forces ambushed a police convoy travelling from Puerto Vallarta to Guadalajara, killing 15 officers. Just a few weeks later, throughout a retaliatory operation by Mexico’s army on “El Mencho’s” suspected compound, cartel troopers shot down a army helicopter, killing 9 Mexican military and police officers.
The cartel adopted that up by unleashing a wave of violence throughout Jalisco state much like the present unrest.
CJNG was additionally blamed for the tried assassination in 2020 of Mexico Metropolis Police Chief Omar García Harfuch, who’s now Mexico’s federal safety secretary.
The Canadian authorities says CJNG “is thought for his or her progressive use of rigging drones to drop explosives, a violent tactic adopted from rebel teams.”
The cartel has additionally used public executions and kidnappings in territories it controls to instill terror in communities, the Canadian terrorism itemizing for CJNG says.
Toronto police seized 835 kilograms of cocaine linked to CJNG in January 2025, marking the largest drug seizure in the metropolis’s historical past.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration introduced in September final yr it had seized 77,000 kilograms of medicine and over 1,000,000 counterfeit capsules throughout 5 days of operations in the U.S. and Mexico.
With Oseguera Cervantes now useless, it stays to be seen whether or not CJNG will be absolutely taken down.
“Until the political safety of the Jalisco cartel ends, the death of ‘El Mencho’ will imply nothing,” Buscaglia stated.
—With recordsdata from World’s Touria Izri, Uday Rana and Jackson Proskow
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