Image source, Anadolu via Getty Images
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- Author, Writing
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Reading time: 8 min
It is the most powerful cartel in Mexico, and one of the most violent criminal organizations in the world.
After its maximum and only leader, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias “El Mencho”, died this Sunday in an operation by the Mexican army, the cartel that controls the most money, weapons, men and drugs in the country, now faces a period of readjustment that risks a dangerous wave of violence.
The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) managed to become a powerful machine in less than a decade whose criminal ties extend throughout America, displacing other historically dominant organizations such as the Sinaloa Cartel.
Its main business has focused on the illegal market of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl to the United States, according to Washington. He is also accused of dealing amphetamines in Europe and links to the drug trade in Asia have been detected.
The CJNG is not only the most powerful in military terms and in territorial presence in Mexico, where it continued to expand, but it is also “extremely powerful in terms of the criminal markets it operated: not only drug production and trafficking, but extortion markets in the agricultural and mining regions of Mexico,” as David Mora, senior analyst in Mexico for the International Crisis Group and researcher on organized crime, explained to BBC Mundo.
How the CJNG was born
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The CJNG has its origins in a local armed wing of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, which became known for the first time in 2007, and whose mission was to protect its areas of influence in Jalisco.
The group had been created by Ignacio Coronel, “El Nacho”, one of the main financial operators of the Sinaloa cartel and partner of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who had also welcomed another group known as the “Millennium Cartel” under his arm in the region.
Image source, US Department of State
The Zetas were, at that time, their main rivals in the region, a violent group (which also emerged as the armed wing of another cartel, the Gulf cartel) that was fighting to settle in Jalisco.
But they came across this armed wing created by “El Nacho”, who earned the name of the “Matazetas” based on blood.
Its public revelation occurred in September 2011, when 35 bodies appeared on the main avenue of the tourist town of Boca del Río, in Veracruz. The group claimed responsibility for the massacre in a video broadcast on social networks.
By then, in reality, the group had already broken with its allies in Sinaloa.
“El Nacho” had died a year earlier in a confrontation with security forces, a moment that “El Mencho”, who until then had been part of the Millennium Cartel, took advantage of to fill that power vacuum and confront his former ally in the mountainous region of Sinaloa.
How “El Mencho” gained control
“El Mencho” managed to climb to the top of drug trafficking in Mexico from one of the lowest ranks.
In the beginning, he was part of the protection circle of drug trafficker Armando Valencia Cornelio, “El Maradona”, a boss of the Millennium Cartel, also known as the Valencia Cartel. Later, he established his position in the group by marrying one of the clan chief’s sisters.
Previously, Oseguera Cervantes, born in the area known as Tierra Caliente de Michoacán, had been a police officer in a municipality in Jalisco.
His entry into the security forces occurred after being deported by the United States – where he had migrated with his family in the 1980s – for involvement in drug sales.
Image source, Susana Gonzalez/Bloomberg via Getty Images
When the leader of the Millennium Cartel was arrested, the group divided into two opposing branches. “El Mencho” led one, known as “Los Matazetas”, which managed to prevail and which years later was renamed Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
The CJNG went from being a local band from the states of Jalisco and Colima to an organization with a presence in more than half of the Mexican territory.
What surprised experts the most is how he managed to rise to the top in a relatively short time. In just five years he displaced the powerful Knights Templar cartel in control of southern Michoacán.
He evicted the Los Zetas cartel from northern Jalisco and part of its territory in the neighboring state of Zacatecas.
It was the beginning. In the following years, it expanded its presence to the rest of the country and, most importantly according to specialists, managed to compete for the synthetic drug market with larger and older groups, such as the Sinaloa cartel.
This organization suffered an internal dispute after the third capture and extradition to the United States of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, “El Chapo.”
The process was used by the CJNG to dispute the market with its adversaries, and the group even kidnapped two of “El Chapo’s” sons in Puerto Vallarta, Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, who were released in a few hours.
From that moment the CJNG was born. And the criminal career of “El Mencho” accelerated.
How CJNG grew
There are several reasons behind the group’s explosive growth.
One of them is the capture of many of the main leaders of rival cartels, which caused them to split in some cases or some to become extinct, such as Los Templarios in the state of Michoacán. The CJNG filled the gaps in the market left by rivals.
Another key is that the CJNG recruited financial experts and chemists who design new mixtures to manufacture synthetic drugs.
Cartel violence has been another key.
In the last decade, the authorities had pointed out “El Mencho” as a very dangerous character, with a great capacity for fire. Some specialists on the subject claimed that Oseguera Cervantes grew precisely at the expense of “crushing” his rival groups.
The interests of the CJNG and its leader were not limited to drug trafficking.
He took advantage of the economic boom in livestock, agriculture and construction in Jalisco to create businesses in those areas and have avenues in them to launder money from drug trafficking.
Image source, EPA
The CJNG has also stood out for its corrupting power of local authorities and customs. This has facilitated the entry of precursors or initial substances to produce synthetic drugs in the ports of Manzanillo, in Colima, and Lázaro Cárdenas, in Michoacán, both on the west coast of Mexico, according to drug trafficking experts.
Another of his sources of income has been extortion of small and medium-sized businesses in western Mexico.
The group has managed to expand not only through most of the Mexican states, where it has its own presence or alliances, but also through many countries.
According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), New Generation has a presence in more than 40 countries.
The group also maintains, according to the DEA, a vast money laundering operation through its financial branch, “Los Cuinis”, led by his brother-in-law Abigael Sánchez Valencia.
This group would be dedicated to supervising “the cartel’s diverse network of money laundering operations to repatriate illicit profits obtained from drugs worldwide to Mexico,” according to the US agency, which assures that to do so they use “Chinese money laundering networks, cryptocurrency exchanges, bulk cash smuggling, trade-based money laundering and other methods to launder illicit drug-related profits.”
What can happen now without “El Mencho”
The disappearance of the group’s maximum and only leader now opens numerous questions about who could succeed him or if other groups will take advantage of the power vacuum to try to take his place.
“The big question is, in a few weeks and months, how the cartel is going to rearrange itself in itself and in the battles it has against smaller local groups in different states. The cycles of violence in Guanajuato, Michoacán and others are explained by these conflicts,” acknowledges researcher David Mora.
Since 2022, rumors have emerged about Oseguera Cervantes’ health condition, and it was even reported on a couple of occasions that he had died. Some experts believe that “El Mencho” was probably no longer directly in charge of CJNG operations when he was killed this Sunday.
But he had no clear successors either.
One of his sons, Rubén Oseguera González, considered second in importance in command of the group and known as “El Menchito”, was extradited in 2020 from Mexico to the United States in what was described as one of the hardest blows against the organization until the death of his father.
Other lieutenants he had are imprisoned or were killed in different confrontations.
“El Mencho” never allowed any of the multiple alliances and criminal cells with which Jalisco operated to be strong enough to challenge his central power, explains David Mora.
“So there is no absolute clarity, neither by blood, nor by family, nor by ties that allows us to see who is next. This rearrangement of Jalisco is a great unknown. And these processes usually come with not only tension, but violence,” says the International Crisis Group expert.
While the wave of violence that is being seen these days in the streets of Mexico could “pass quickly”, in the opinion of the expert, it is possible that in the next two months we will see how rival organizations react to the Jalisco process and how the organization itself rearranges the disappearance of “El Mencho”, which could unleash an internal struggle.
“And if history is indicative of anything, simply the beheading of a cartel does not mean the extinction of the organization,” warns David Mora.
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