New Delhi: Mexico has broken into widespread chaos after the death of El Mencho, leader of one of the nation’s most powerful drug cartels, following a military operation in which he was fatally wounded Sunday. His death triggered a coordinated attack by the cartel across multiple states with members setting vehicles ablaze, and blocking roads and highways.
The residents of Guadalajara, the heartland of El Mencho’s organised crime syndicate, were reported to be in panic due to widespread arson. Schools were shut due to fire on the streets.
The military operation taking out El Mencho is being seen as a significant blow to organised crime in Mexico since Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, another notorious drug lord who led the Sinaloa Cartel, was recaptured and extradited to the US in 2017 where he was sentenced to life.
In an X post Monday, the Indian embassy advised Indian nationals in Jalisco, Puerto Vallarta, Chapala, Guadalajara, parts of Tamaulipas, Michoacán, Guerrero and Nuevo León to “shelter in place until further notice”. The US Department of State issued a similar alert for its citizens.
El Mencho or Nemesio Oseguera Cervante, founder of Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), was born in 1966 in a village in Michoacan, a western state in Mexico notorious for lawlessness. At an early age, he was involved in the cultivation of opium poppies and marijuana and later migrated to the US.
In 1994, the US tried him on charges of heroin trafficking, for which he served three years in prison before being deported.
Upon his return to Mexico, he joined Milenio Cartel, a group aligned with the powerful Sinaloa Cartel. However, after an internal split, he founded his own cartel in 2009.
Under his leadership, the cartel rapidly expanded by trafficking cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl to the US. During the expansion process, he diversified his operations into theft, extortion, abduction and migrant smuggling, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). With the rapid expansion, the group built a presence in more than half of Mexico’s states and established global supply chains.
CJNG also became notorious for extreme violence. In 2015, gunmen from the group reportedly shot down a Mexican military helicopter using a rocket-propelled grenade to obstruct an attempt to capture El Mencho.
The cartel was also blamed for a 2020 assassination attempt on Mexico City’s then police chief, Omar García Harfuch. Beheadings, mass killings and public displays of force were seen as hallmarks of its campaign to intimidate rivals and the state.
Due to his involvement in illicit drug trade to the US, Washington had offered a $15 million bounty for information leading to El Mencho’s arrest. However, he managed to evade capture for years and gained a reputation for being both elusive and ruthless.
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US pressure on Mexico
El Mencho’s killing comes amid heightened pressure from the Trump administration on Mexico to intensify its crackdown on drug cartels, particularly the trafficking of fentanyl into the US.
Washington has repeatedly described CJNG as a top national security threat, linking its synthetic opioid trade to tens of thousands of overdose deaths.
Sunday’s operation in Tapalpa was planned for months through intelligence cooperation between Mexico City and Washington. For the operation, the security forces moved in on a property in a mountainous region near Guadalajara to detain El Mencho.
In the retaliatory attack, the cartel tried to disrupt the military convoy and several suspects were left dead. El Mencho was captured alive but critically injured. He died while being flown to Mexico City for treatment, Mexico’s Defence Department said in a statement.
US authorities had long ranked El Mencho in the list of most wanted fugitives. Posting on X, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt acknowledged the intelligence support to the Mexican government.
“The United States provided intelligence support to the Mexican government to assist with an operation in Tapalpa, Jalisco, Mexico, in which Nemesio ‘El Mencho’ Oseguera Cervantes, an infamous drug lord and leader within the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, was eliminated. ‘El Mencho’ was a top target for the Mexican and United States government as one of the top traffickers of fentanyl into our homeland,” said the post.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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