Who was ‘El Mencho, the Mexican drug lord whose death sparked the violence? – Nationally
Sunday’s killing of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes by Mexican soldiers marks the biggest blow to the country’s drug cartels in years, sparking a wave of violent retaliation.
Oseguera Cervantes, better known as “El Mencho,” led the powerful and deadly Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which earned a reputation for corruptly attacking Mexican security forces while posing as a leading distributor of cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl.
“He was cruel,” said Alejandro Garcia Magos, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto who studies Mexican politics, who called Oseguera Cervantes’ death “good news.”
Oseguera Cervantes was facing multiple charges in the United States, and the US State Department had issued a US$15 million reward for information leading to his arrest. Canada and the US designated his cartel and other foreign terrorist organizations last year.
Here’s what you need to know about “El Mencho” and the cart he founded and led until his death.
Long criminal history
Born in rural Michoacán in western Mexico in 1966, Oseguera Cervantes grew up in a poor family before reportedly immigrating to the US illegally in the 1980s.
He settled in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he was arrested several times on gun and drug charges and deported to Mexico, but was able to re-enter the US.
A Univision profile of Oseguera Cervantes says he smuggled drugs from Mexico to the US multiple times, crossing the border under various aliases.
In 1992, after settling in California again, Oseguera Cervantes and his brother Abraham were arrested on federal charges in Sacramento, three weeks after a heroin deal with the undercover police.
According to Rolling Stone, Oseguera Cervantes pleaded guilty to avoid a life sentence for Abraham, who once worked as a salesman while “El Mencho” worked as a security guard.
Oseguera Cervantes was sentenced to five years in prison but was paroled after three years, after which he was deported to Mexico.
Upon his return, “El Mencho” became a Jalisco state policeman before joining the Milenio Cartel. He soon married Rosalinda González Valencia, whose family ran the company.
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Oseguera Cervantes began working in the hit squad that protected Milenio’s leaders and gradually rose through the ranks of the cartel to become a top lawyer when Milenio collided with the powerful Sinaloa Cartel.
“El Mencho” worked closely with Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel, a friend of Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, to help enforce Sinaloa’s control of drug trafficking in the state of Jalisco and its capital Guadalajara.
In the months between 2009 and 2010, Coronel was killed in a shootout with Mexican soldiers and Milenio’s top leader, Óscar Orlando Nava Valencia (“El Lobo”), was captured.
Without a leadership vacuum, the Milenio Cartel split into two warring factions – one of which was led by “El Mencho,” who won the battle to control the drug trade in Jalisco and changed its name to the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, or CJNG.
The CJNG is slowly expanding its power to control drug trafficking throughout Jalisco and other neighboring states through “political protection of corrupt rulers,” said Edgardo Buscaglia, a senior law and economics professor at Columbia University.
“That’s huge, if you’re politically protected by nine governors – that allows you to participate in local monopolies to make a lot of money not just from drugs, not just from human trafficking, not just from immigration, but you start making money through government, through public procurement,” he said.
“So the Jalisco cart is very much integrated with the province of Jalisco.”
Days before Oseguera Cervantes’ murder, the US government charged him and CJNG with a fraudulent timeshare scheme in Puerto Vallarta as another form of illegal income for the company.
CJNG’s assets were estimated at $20 million by state terrorism researchers at the University of Maryland.
González Valencia, El Mencho’s wife, known as “La Jefa,” led the cartel’s financial and money-laundering operations, including luxury homes and resorts.
“There is not a single country in Mexico that does not have the presence of the Jalisco cartel or the Sinaloa Cartel in some way or shape, either in terms of the boots on the ground or the financial structures of these organizations,” said Deborah Bonello, managing editor of InSight Crime, a think tank on organized crime that has published several profiles and analyzes “ElJ Mencho”.
“El Mencho” successfully cemented his position as the new top drug lord in Mexico in 2016, after the last capture of “El Chapo” Guzman, when the CKPG kidnapped two of Guzman’s sons while he was visiting Puerto Vallarta. The two men were eventually released after discussions with Guzman regarding the payment of money and drugs to the CKPG.
Oseguera Cervantes evaded capture by Mexican forces several times before his death on Sunday and ended up in a very low profile.
Meanwhile, his cartel gained a reputation for brutal violence against Mexican authorities and politicians, including the 2013 assassination of Jalisco Tourism Secretary Jesús Gallegos Álvarez, believed to have been ordered by “El Mencho.”
In 2015, CJNG soldiers ambushed a police convoy traveling from Puerto Vallarta to Guadalajara, killing 15 policemen. A few weeks later, during a retaliatory operation by the Mexican military in the suspected area of El Mencho, the military shot down a helicopter, killing nine Mexican soldiers and police.
The group followed that up by unleashing a wave of violence throughout the state of Jalisco similar to the current unrest.
CJNG was also accused of trying to kill in 2020 Mexico City Police Chief Omar García Harfuch, who is now Mexico’s federal security secretary.
The Canadian government says the CJNG is “known for its innovative use of drones to drop explosives, a violent tactic taken from terrorist groups.”
The cartel has also used killings and kidnappings in areas it controls to instill fear in communities, says Canada’s CJNG terrorist watchdog.
Toronto police seized 835 kilograms of CJNG-linked cocaine in January 2025, marking the largest drug seizure in the city’s history.
The US Drug Enforcement Administration announced in September of last year that it had seized 77,000 kilograms of drugs and more than a million counterfeit pills during a five-day operation in the US and Mexico.
With Oseguera Cervantes dead, it remains to be seen if the CJNG can be completely removed.
“Unless the political protection of the Jalisco party ends, the death of ‘El Mencho’ will mean nothing,” Buscaglia said.
—With files from Global’s Touria Izri, Uday Rana and Jackson Proskow
