GUADALAJARA — The notorious drug kingpin was sick, his kidneys failing.
To ensure the proper management of his multi-billion dollar car while operating, Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho,” has delegated day-to-day control to a few top executives.
Each ruled a different region, had his own group of hot men and developed his fearsome reputation.
Mexican soldiers killed Oseguera on Sunday when they raided his mountain hideout. Soon, his appointed commanders ordered a campaign of terror across the country: terrorists set fire to and blocked roads in more than ten states and ambushed security officials, killing 25 members of the National Guard.
The bus that was burned by cartel operatives after the assassination of the kingpin known as “El Mencho.”
(Armando Solis/Associated Press)
The fires are now out, but important questions remain.
What will happen to the Jalisco New Generation organization and its fragile alliance of ruthless leaders?
Will they agree to share power? Or promoted one man as head honcho?
Many Mexicans fear a troubling third scenario: a bloody power struggle that splits the cartel, opening new sides of conflict in an already volatile crime scene.
Photo of Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, center, known as “El Mencho,” given by federal prosecutors.
(US District Court)
“What follows will not be like a clean succession,” Ghaleb Krame Hilal, a former security adviser in the state of Tamaulipas, wrote in the online magazine Small Wars Journal. “It’s going to be a battle over who holds the center of power within the organization, and that outcome is not predetermined.”
The situation is strange because Oseguera’s only son, Rubén Oseguera González, known as “El Menchito,” is serving a life sentence on drug charges in the United States.
Juan Carlos Valencia González, seen in a wanted photo released by the US State Department in 2021. He is one of those who may follow “El Mencho” as the leader of the Jalisco New Generation cartel.
(US Department of State)
That leaves Oseguera’s group of regional bosses as potential heirs to his drug empire.
Perhaps the most powerful among them is Oseguera’s son, Juan Carlos Valencia González, known as 03. Other monikers include El Pelon, El JP and Tricky Tres.
Valencia, 41, is the commander of the paramilitary Grupo Elite and belongs to a money laundering group.
His mother, Rosalinda González Valencia, was arrested in Guadalajara in November 2021 and accused by Mexican authorities of being a “financial worker” of a Jalisco company. His biological father was the founder of the defunct Milenio cartel, where Oseguera started.
Valencia was born in the Orange County town of Santa Ana, one of the many sons and daughters of high-profile people born in the United States in recent decades. After Valencia’s father was imprisoned, Oseguera married her mother.
The US State Department is offering a reward of up to $5-million for information leading to Valencia’s arrest.
A group of Jalisco New Generation cartel fighters.
(Juan José Estrada Serafín / For The Times)
Here are the other contenders:
Ricardo Ruiz, nicknamed RR, is known for producing cheap propaganda, including a social media video showing dozens of cartel soldiers in fatigues alongside a column of armored vehicles and homemade tanks. “We are Mencho’s men!” they shout as they fire automatic weapons into the sky.
Authorities have blamed Ruiz for the death of Valeria Márquez, a 23-year-old beauty model who was shot dead last year while live-streaming on TikTok.
Audias Flores Silva, the leader known as “El Jardinero,” controls methamphetamine factories in Jalisco and Zacatecas, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. He has dozens of planes and tractor-trailers used to smuggle drugs from Central America to the United States, US officials said.
Flores is believed to have formed the Jalisco cartel’s latest alliance with the Sinaloa militant group, led by two sons of jailed drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
Then there is 29-year-old Abraham Jesús Ambriz Cano, who goes by the name “El Yogurth.” Ambriz has built a small force of foreign soldiers, most of whom are former soldiers from Colombia with experience in bomb-making and counter-insurgency tactics. Some of those soldiers said they were lured to Mexico under false pretenses and forced to fight.
Together the men help lead one of the most powerful and feared companies in history – a criminal enterprise that transports tons of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl to the United States but also profits from extortion, fuel theft, illegal mining and logging and time fraud inside Mexico.
Avocado fields in the Mexican state of Michoacán, where the Jalisco New Generation cartel and other criminal groups tax producers and own their crops.
(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)
Security analysts say the group’s horizontal, franchise-like structure allowed it to respond quickly to Oseguera’s killing — and will allow it to conduct business as usual in the coming months.
Many believe that the remaining leaders of the cartel will try to cooperate – for now.
“Right now they see a big common enemy: the Mexican government,” said David Saucedo, who advises local and state governments on security policy.
But, Saucedo warned, “it is possible that the wagon will break down at some point as conflicts arise over control of profits, methods of smuggling and connections with political officials.” Personal conflicts and interference by rival groups can also cause problems, he added.
The inner workings of cartels are deliberately invisible to the outside world.
To understand the changes within gangs, analysts and officials track conversations on social media, changes in the flow of drugs and outbreaks of violence. Many pay close attention to narco corridos, or drug ballads, that talk about cartel politics.
Saucedo noted that many songs recently described Flores as Oseguera’s replacement. Another song honors Valencia (“Born in Orange County, where the sun shines differently,” it begins.)
It is not clear if there are any leaders who will influence Oseguera, who had an unquestionable authority even as his health was so fragile that he was forced to live on the run. That is partly due to his unwavering willingness to violently punish anyone who threatens or crosses him.
He was accused of the 2020 assassination attempt of Omar García Harfuch, then Mexico City’s police chief and now the top public security officer under President Claudia Sheinbaum. In the government’s previous attempt to capture Oseguera, in 2015, cartel fighters used rocket-propelled grenades to shoot down a military helicopter, killing nine soldiers.
Last year, in a farm near Guadalajara apparently used to train people from Jalisco, activists found the remains of hundreds of missing people.
Born to farmers in the state of Michoacán, Oseguera immigrated to the United States illegally as a teenager. He was first arrested at the age of 19 in San Francisco for selling methamphetamine. His stature grew as he rose from a temporary hoodlum to a seemingly invincible legendary king operating in many Mexican states and countries in South America, Asia and Europe.
Mexico’s recent history is littered with tales of once-powerful syndicates — gangs in Guadalajara, Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, among them — imploded, attacked by other mobs or driven out as the big boys were caught or killed. The famous Colombian cartel from Medellin was another mob that withered after the death of Pablo Escobar in 1993.
Linthicum reported in New York, Hamilton in Guadalajara and McDonnell in Mexico City.
