You can also listen to the article in audio version.
Nor thorough mapping of drug supplies or tracking of arms transport, nor sophisticated wiretapping or monitoring of electronic communications.
El Mencha, one of the most feared drug lords, was caught by the Mexican authorities thanks to the surveillance of his lover. According to The New York Times, Mexican Defense Minister General Ricardo Trevilla Trejo said this on Monday.
The undercover operation that resulted in the death of a criminal named Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes on Sunday began on Friday. At least since then, El Mencho has been holed up in a log cabin in the mountain forests of Jalisco state in western Mexico.
A meeting in a mountain cabin
Table of Contents
Mexican intelligence agencies on Friday began tracking a man close to a woman General Trevilla described as El Mench’s “romantic partner.” The man took the woman to follow the boss to an area believed to be a stronghold of the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (CJNG) drug cartel, which the slain boss led.
On Saturday, the woman left the cabin, but El Mencho remained there. At that moment, according to Trevilla, the security forces started planning to capture him.
Who was the drug lord “El Mencho”
Foto: State Department/Handout, Reuters
The US has offered a $15 million reward for the capture of Cervantes.
Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes was the founder and leader of the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (CJNG), one of the most feared criminal groups in contemporary Mexico. American authorities have offered a $15 million reward for his capture.
He came from the Tierra Caliente region in the western state of Michoacán, where he grew up in a poor family of avocado pickers. He crossed the US-Mexico border illegally in the 1990s and soon after was involved in drug dealing in the US. In 1994, the US District Court for Northern California sentenced him to three years in prison for conspiracy to distribute heroin. After his release, he returned to Mexico, where he worked as a police officer in his native state of Jalisco. He eventually left the police force and joined the Milenio cartel.
In the cartel, he was part of a group of hitmen that protected the drug lord Armando Valencia Cornelius, known by the nickname “El Maradona”.
El Mencho later became a drug lord himself when he assumed leadership of the CJNG cartel, which gained control of criminal operations in 28 of Mexico’s 32 federated states. The cartel traded in cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and fentanyl, but it also made money through oil theft, human trafficking and migrant smuggling.
On Sunday morning, soldiers and guardsmen moved to the town of Tapalpa. Once the cartel members found out, El Mencho fled, according to the general, and fighting began between the soldiers and the boss’s security.
The cartel had “a large number of weapons” at its disposal, including two rocket launchers. According to Trevilla, criminals used one of them to shoot down army helicopters in 2015. This time, the cartel was said to be unable to use the rocket, but it nevertheless damaged a nearby military helicopter, which had to make an emergency landing.
Photo: Liberto Urena, Reuters
Mexican soldiers in the area where the operation to capture El Mencha was taking place.
Meanwhile, Mexican special forces chased El Mench and a group of his cronies into a nearby forest. “They found him hiding in the bushes,” Trevilla claims. The drug lord was seriously injured during the shootout and died on the way to hospital. Two members of his security met the same fate.
Tapalpa Mayor Antonio Morales Díaz said in an interview on Monday that he had no idea of the drug lord’s whereabouts in the area. According to him, the city is a popular destination, many tourists come to the surrounding forests.
What happened in Mexico:
According to the authorities, 70 people suspected of being members of the cartel were arrested during the entire operation, 34 others died. According to the DPA agency, the total number of victims during the intervention and subsequent violence in Mexican cities exceeded 70, including 25 members of the Mexican National Guard.
The power of the Mexican state
“They accomplished their mission,” General Trevilla said to the dead. He cried when he talked about them. “What have we shown? The power of the Mexican state.”
Mexico cooperated with US authorities throughout the operation. But according to President Claudia Sheinbaum, American forces were not directly involved in the intervention, only providing intelligence information.
The administration of President Donald Trump is pushing hard for the neighboring country to fight drug cartels. The head of the White House even threatened in the past that he could deploy the American army on the territory of Mexico.
After the operation, the CJNG cartel caused riots in much of Mexico, burning buildings and cars. Authorities say the chaos was planned by El Mench’s right-hand man, the cartel’s financial chief known as El Tuli. According to Reuters, he also died during an arrest attempt.
Context for the fight against drug cartels:
The violence stopped during Monday, President Sheinbaum announced. But the government instead sent two thousand more soldiers to the state of Jalisco and is tracking another cartel leader.
According to political scientist and Latin American expert Jaroslav Bílek from Charles University, even the CJNG is not interested in continuing the riots. “The old rule says that war hurts business. So I would assume that they would rather try to come to an agreement and keep operating to keep the money flowing,” he said on the Seznam Zpráv 5:59 podcast.
At the same time, Bílek doubts that killing El Mench will somehow limit the power of the cartels. “In general, it turns out that removing the heads of the cartels is not enough, because usually someone replaces them very quickly,” he pointed out and reminded that Mexico has been waging an intense war with the cartels since 2006.
