The Mexican army has killed the country’s most powerful cartel leader and one of the United States’ most wanted fugitives, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, sparking a wave of retaliatory violence across the nation.
The death of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) boss, during an attempt to capture him in Jalisco state on Sunday, marks the most significant blow against organised crime since the recapture of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán a decade ago.
Following Oseguera Cervantes’s demise, cartel members unleashed widespread unrest. Roads in 20 Mexican states were blocked by burning cars, sending plumes of smoke into the air. Residents in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city and Jalisco’s capital, were forced to shelter indoors, while schools in several states cancelled classes on Monday.
Security forces across the country were placed on high alert, and even neighbouring Guatemala reinforced its border security with Mexico in response to the escalating situation.
The killing could give the government a leg up in its dealings with the U.S. Trump administration, which has been threatening tariffs or unilateral military action if Mexico does not show results in the fight against the cartels.
But the long-term effect on Mexico’s security landscape remains unclear.
Here’s what to know:
Oseguera Cervantes, better known as “El Mencho,” was 59 years old and originally from the western state of Michoacan. His ties to organized crime went back at least three decades.
In 1994, he was tried for trafficking heroin in the U.S. and sent to prison for three years. Upon returning to Mexico, he quickly rose through Mexico’s drug trafficking underworld.
Around 2009, he founded the CJNG, which became Mexico’s fastest-growing criminal organization, moving cocaine, methamphetamines, fentanyl and migrants to the United States, and innovating in violence with the use of drones and improvised explosive devices.
The cartel earned a reputation for brazen attacks on Mexican security forces, including downing a military helicopter in Jalisco in 2015 and attempting a spectacular, but unsuccessful, assassination of Mexico City police chief Omar García Harfuch, who is now Mexico’s federal security secretary.
It recruited aggressively, experimenting with new ways to reach potential members online, and generated revenue through fuel theft, extortion and timeshare fraud, among other activities.
Oseguera Cervantes was killed during an attempt to capture him, as his followers attempted to fight off Mexican troops.
Mexico’s Defense Department said in a statement that the army launched an operation in the southern part of Jalisco state to capture Oseguera Cervantes, involving the Mexican Air Force and special forces.
