To ensure smooth management of his multibillion-dollar cartel while on dialysis, Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, known as ‘El Mencho’, delegated daily control to several top lieutenants.
Each controlled a separate region, had its own group of assassins, and developed its own fearsome reputation.
Mexican soldiers killed Oseguera on Sunday in an attack on his remote mountain hideout. Immediately, his appointed commanders ordered a nationwide campaign of terror: cartel fighters carried out arsons and blocked roads in more than a dozen states and ambushed security agents, killing 25 National Guard members.
(Armando Solis/Associated Press)
The fires have now been extinguished, but the most important questions remain.
What will happen to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and its fragile coalition of ruthless leaders?
Will they agree to share power? Or elevate a single man to head honcho?
Many Mexicans fear a disturbing third scenario: a bloody power struggle that fragments the cartel and opens new fronts of conflict in an already volatile criminal landscape.
A photo of Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, center, known as “El Mencho,” provided by federal prosecutors.
(US District Court)
“What comes next will not look like a clean succession,” said Ghaleb Krame Hilal, a former security adviser in Tamaulipas state. wrote in the online magazine Small Wars Journal. “It will be a battle over who has the center of gravity within the organization, and that outcome is not predetermined.”
The scenario is complicated because Oseguera’s only son, Rubén Oseguera González, known as “El Menchito,” is serving a life sentence for drug abuse in the United States.
Juan Carlos Valencia González, seen in a wanted photo released by the U.S. Department of State in 2021. He is one of the possible successors to ‘El Mencho’ as leader of the Jalisco New Generation cartel.
(US Department of State)
That leaves Oseguera’s cadre of regional commanders as the most likely heirs to his drug empire.
Perhaps the most powerful among them is Oseguera’s stepson, Juan Carlos Valencia Gonzálezknown as 03. Other names include El Pelon, El JP and Tricky Tres.
Valencia, 41, is the commander of the paramilitary Grupo Elite and belongs to a clan that runs the cartel’s money laundering operation.
His mother, Rosalinda González Valencia, was arrested in Guadalajara in November 2021 and accused by Mexican authorities of being a “financial operator” for the Jalisco cartel. His biological father co-founded the now-defunct Milenio cartel, where Oseguera got his start.
Valencia was born in the Orange County city of Santa Ana, one of several sons and daughters of high-ranking cartel figures born in the United States in recent decades. After Valencia’s father went to prison, Oseguera married his mother.
The U.S. 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)
These are the other contenders:
Ricardo Ruiz, aka RR, is known for producing slick cartel propaganda, including a viral video on social media that showed dozens of cartel fighters dressed in fatigues next to a column of armored vehicles and homemade tanks. “We are the men of Mencho!” they shout as they fire automatic weapons into the air.
Authorities blamed Ruiz for the death of Valeria Márquez, a 23-year-old model and beauty influencer who was shot dead last year while broadcasting live on TikTok.
Audias Flores Silva, a ringleader commonly known as “El Jardinero,” controls methamphetamine factories in the states of Jalisco and Zacatecas, the Drug Enforcement Administration said. He has a fleet of planes and tractors used to transport drugs from Central America to the United States, U.S. officials say.
Flores is believed to have brokered the Jalisco Cartel’s recent alliance with a faction of the warring Sinaloa Cartel, which is led by two sons of jailed drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
And then there is 29-year-old Abraham Jesús Ambriz Cano, aka “El Yogurth.” Ambriz has built a small army of foreign mercenaries, mostly former soldiers from Colombia with experience in bomb-making and counter-insurgency. Some of these fighters say they were lured to Mexico under false pretenses and forced to fight.
Together, the men help run one of the most powerful and feared cartels in history: a criminal enterprise that smuggles tons of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and fentanyl into the United States, but also profits from extortion, fuel theft, illegal mining and logging, and timeshare fraud in Mexico.
The avocado fields in the Mexican state of Michoacán, where the Jalisco New Generation cartel and other criminal groups tax producers and have their own 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 could return to normal in the coming months.
Many believe that the cartel’s remaining leaders will try to work together for the time being.
“Right now they see a huge common enemy: the government of Mexico,” said David Saucedo, who advises local and state governments on security policy.
But, Saucedo warned, “it is possible that the cartel will break up at some point as conflicts arise over control of profits, smuggling routes and contact with political officials.” Personal conflicts and the rise of rival cartels could also cause problems, he added.
The inner workings of cartels are deliberately opaque to the outside world.
To understand shifts within the gangs, analysts and officials monitor social media communiqués, changes in drug flows and outbreaks of violence. Many keep a close eye on narco-corridos, or drug ballads, detailing cartel politics.
Saucedo noted that Flores was recently described as Oseguera’s successor in several issues. Another song honors Valencia (“He was born in Orange County, where the sun shines differently,” it begins.)
It is unclear whether any of the current leaders would possess the gravitas of Oseguera, who wielded unchallenged authority even as his health deteriorated and he was forced to live on the run. This is partly due to his unwavering willingness to punish with violence anyone who threatened or obstructed him.
He was blamed for the 2020 assassination attempt on Omar García Harfuch, then Mexico City’s police chief and now the top public security official under President Claudia Sheinbaum. During a previous government attempt to capture Oseguera, in 2015, cartel fighters used rocket-propelled grenades to down an army helicopter, killing nine soldiers.
Last year, activists discovered the remains of hundreds of missing people at a farm near Guadalajara, apparently used to train Jalisco recruits.
Born to farmers in the state of Michoacán, Oseguera illegally immigrated to the United States in his teens. He was first arrested at age 19 in San Francisco for selling methamphetamine. His status grew as he rose from a small-time gangster to a myth-shrouded leader of a seemingly invincible cartel active in most Mexican states and in countries in South America, Asia and Europe.
Recent Mexican history is steeped in stories of once-powerful syndicates – including gangs in Guadalajara, Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez – that fell apart, were swallowed up by other gangs or faded away as the big boys were captured or killed. Colombia’s legendary Medellin Cartel was another gang that disappeared after Pablo Escobar’s demise in 1993.
Linthicum reported in New York, Hamilton in Guadalajara and McDonnell in Mexico City.
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