El Mencho History: The Rise, Power and Fall of Mexico’s Most Wanted Drug Lord

The Final Hunt for El Mencho

It was a quiet Sunday morning in western Mexico.

The mountain town of Tapalpa, in the state of Jalisco, is known for its forests, stone streets and tourist atmosphere. But on February 22, 2026, the calm surrounding this town was about to be shattered.

Before sunrise, Mexican security forces launched a carefully planned operation in a wooded area outside Tapalpa.

Their target was a man who had spent years disappearing into Mexico’s criminal underworld.

His name was Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes.

Most people knew him by another name:

El Mencho.

For years, El Mencho had been the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG an organization that U.S. authorities described as one of the most powerful and dangerous Mexican drug-trafficking organizations. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had placed a reward of up to $15 million for information leading to his arrest and/or conviction.

But despite the enormous reward, international attention and years of investigations, El Mencho remained remarkably difficult to find.

He avoided the public spotlight.

Unlike some famous cartel bosses who became media celebrities, El Mencho preferred secrecy.

For years, his exact location remained uncertain.

Then intelligence finally brought authorities close to him.

The Lead That Changed Everything

According to Mexican authorities, investigators developed information that eventually led them toward a rural property near Tapalpa.

Reuters reported that intelligence connected to one of El Mencho’s romantic partners helped authorities identify the location where he was staying. Mexican officials were then able to plan an operation around that information.

The timing was critical.

Once authorities believed they had located one of the world’s most wanted drug traffickers, they had to move quickly.

A delay could mean that El Mencho disappeared again.

And this was a man who had already escaped major operations in the past.

So, before dawn on February 22, Mexican special forces moved in.

The Mexican Defense Ministry confirmed that its special forces planned and executed the operation in Tapalpa.

What happened next was not a quiet arrest.

It became a gun battle.

The Final Gunfight

As Mexican forces moved toward the compound, armed members of CJNG resisted.

The confrontation quickly became violent.

Security forces fought cartel gunmen while attempting to reach El Mencho.

The operation then moved into the surrounding wooded area as the cartel leader and members of his security detail attempted to escape.

Eventually, Mexican forces located El Mencho.

He had been seriously wounded.

The authorities captured him, but his condition was critical.

He was placed in a helicopter for medical evacuation.

The destination was Mexico City.

But El Mencho never reached the capital alive.

According to Mexico’s Defense Ministry, he died from his injuries during the medical evacuation.

At the age of 59, one of Mexico’s most elusive criminal figures was finally dead.

But the story did not end there.

In many ways, this was only the beginning of the next chapter.

When the Cartel Struck Back

News of El Mencho’s death spread rapidly.

And almost immediately, parts of Mexico began experiencing violent retaliation.

Vehicles were set on fire.

Roads were blocked.

Businesses were attacked.

Security infrastructure was targeted.

The violence was particularly visible in Jalisco and neighboring states where CJNG had a strong presence.

Reuters reported that the retaliation spread across multiple states, with burning vehicles and road blockades creating major disruption.

But there was another important development that showed just how complicated the situation had become.

Not everything circulating online was real.

Social media was flooded with dramatic images and claims about airports being seized, cities being completely overrun and fires occurring in places where no such events had actually happened.

Reuters later documented how false and manipulated information spread rapidly following El Mencho’s killing, potentially amplifying fear and creating the impression that the cartel had more control than it actually did.

That distinction matters.

There was real violence.

But there was also misinformation.

And for a criminal organization, creating fear can itself be a weapon.

Who Was El Mencho?

To understand why his death caused such a major reaction, we need to go back decades.

El Mencho was born in 1966 in Michoacán, a mountainous state in western Mexico.

He came from a poor rural background.

His early life was connected to agriculture, and Reuters reported that he worked in the fields before eventually traveling to the United States.

But America did not become the new beginning he might have hoped for.

Instead, he became involved in the heroin trade.

In the early 1990s, he was arrested in California and later served time in a U.S. prison before being deported to Mexico.

And this is where his story takes an unusual turn.

After returning to Mexico, Oseguera became a police officer.

Yes a future cartel leader who had already been involved in drug trafficking ended up working inside law enforcement.

That experience would later become extremely valuable.

Working in the police gave him an understanding of how security institutions operated from the inside.

He could see how information moved.

He could understand investigative procedures.

He could observe the weaknesses that criminal organizations could exploit.

Eventually, he left the police and entered organized crime at a much higher level.

From Police Officer to Cartel Enforcer

Oseguera became involved with the Milenio Cartel, a criminal organization operating in western Mexico.

He eventually rose within its armed structure.

But Mexican organized crime was changing rapidly.

Government pressure was increasing.

Major cartel leaders were being arrested or killed.

Criminal organizations were fragmenting.

And when large organizations break apart, ambitious commanders can suddenly find opportunities to build something new.

That is exactly what happened with Oseguera.

Around the beginning of the 2010s, a new organization emerged from the remnants of the Milenio network.

It became known as the Jalisco New Generation Cartel CJNG.

And El Mencho would become its dominant leader.

The Rise of CJNG

CJNG did not become powerful simply because it had guns.

It became powerful because it built a network.

Drug trafficking was at the center of that network.

But the organization also became associated with other criminal activities, including extortion, kidnapping, money laundering and human trafficking.

U.S. authorities have repeatedly described CJNG as a major transnational criminal organization involved in trafficking cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl.

The organization also developed a reputation for extreme violence.

That reputation served a purpose.

A cartel does not need to fight everyone.

It only needs to convince enough people that resisting it will be dangerous.

Fear can become a form of control.

And CJNG increasingly used that fear to expand.

The 2015 Turning Point

One of the clearest demonstrations of CJNG’s power came in May 2015.

Mexican authorities launched a major military operation in Jalisco targeting the cartel and its leadership.

CJNG responded with extraordinary violence.

During the confrontation, cartel members used heavy weapons against Mexican forces and managed to bring down a military helicopter.

The incident shocked Mexico.

A criminal organization had effectively demonstrated that it could threaten a military aircraft.

Reuters described the helicopter attack as one of the most dramatic examples of the cartel’s ability to confront Mexican security forces.

But there was a bigger lesson.

CJNG was no longer simply trying to survive.

It had become powerful enough to challenge the state directly.

And that power had a financial foundation.

The Drug Business Behind the Guns

The violence was only the visible part of CJNG’s power.

Behind the armed men were drug laboratories, trafficking routes, international suppliers and enormous profits.

One of the cartel’s most important businesses became methamphetamine.

Unlike traditional plant-based drugs, methamphetamine can be produced synthetically.

That means criminal organizations do not need to depend entirely on crops.

They need chemicals.

Laboratories.

Equipment.

Transport.

And access to markets.

This created an entirely different business model.

And eventually, another synthetic drug would become even more important.

Fentanyl.

Fentanyl would transform the economics of the illegal drug trade and become one of the biggest drivers of America’s overdose crisis.

CJNG would become deeply associated with that international market.

But to understand how El Mencho’s organization became so wealthy and powerful, we first need to understand the system around it.

Why was Mexico’s state apparatus vulnerable to criminal organizations?

Why did cartels become so deeply embedded in some regions?

Why did the war on drugs create new criminal groups instead of eliminating the problem?

And how did American drug demand, firearms and international chemical supply chains become connected to Mexico’s cartel economy?

These questions take us far beyond the life of one man.

They take us into the history of the Mexican drug war itself.

And that is where the real story of CJNG begins.

The Manhunt Was Over But the Cartel Wasn’t

El Mencho spent years avoiding capture.

The DEA had made him one of its highest-priority fugitives.

The reward reached $15 million.

His organization had expanded across Mexico and developed international trafficking networks.

Yet he remained hidden.

Then one intelligence lead brought Mexican forces to his hideout in Tapalpa.

One operation ended his life.

But it did not automatically destroy the organization he had built.

That is the central lesson of El Mencho’s story.

A cartel is bigger than its leader.

When one kingpin disappears, the network can collapse.

But it can also adapt.

A new commander can emerge.

Rival factions can fight for territory.

Smaller groups can break away.

And rival cartels can attempt to capture the abandoned routes.

So the death of El Mencho created a new question for Mexico:

Would CJNG collapse or would his death trigger another cartel war?

The answer would depend on what happened next.

And to understand that, we have to go back to the moment when El Mencho stopped being a cartel enforcer and began building an organization that would eventually become one of the most powerful criminal networks in the Americas.

How El Mencho Built the CJNG Empire

The death of El Mencho in 2026 may have ended the life of one of Mexico’s most wanted criminals.

But to understand why his death mattered so much, we have to understand what he built.

Because CJNG was not simply a group of drug dealers operating from a few hideouts.

Over roughly a decade and a half, it developed into a powerful transnational criminal organization with operations extending far beyond Mexico.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says CJNG emerged around 2011 from the remnants of the Milenio Cartel, which had been affiliated with the Sinaloa Cartel. It later became independent and expanded internationally.

And at the center of that transformation was El Mencho.

From a Regional Gang to a Transnational Organization

When CJNG first emerged, it was operating in an already crowded and violent criminal landscape.

Mexico was going through a period of cartel fragmentation.

Large organizations were being attacked by Mexican security forces, major leaders were being arrested or killed, and factions were constantly splitting from older organizations.

For El Mencho, that instability created an opportunity.

Instead of trying to rebuild the old organization, he helped create something new.

CJNG developed a reputation for speed, aggression and adaptability.

The organization expanded into drug production and trafficking, while also using violence and corruption to protect its interests.

According to the DEA, CJNG’s financial power came from multiple sources, including the manufacture and trafficking of methamphetamine and illicit fentanyl. The organization also used bribery and a flexible, franchise-like structure to expand its influence.

That structure was important.

Because it meant CJNG did not necessarily need every criminal operation to be controlled directly from one headquarters.

Different groups could operate in different territories while remaining connected to the wider organization.

And that made the cartel harder to dismantle.

The Power of the “Franchise” Model

Think about how a traditional criminal organization works.

One leader.

A few senior commanders.

Then smaller groups underneath them.

If authorities capture the leader, the organization can become confused.

CJNG developed a more flexible model.

The DEA has described the organization as using a franchise-based command structure.

That meant local groups could operate within a broader CJNG network while maintaining their own regional capabilities.

This gave the cartel an important advantage.

If one cell was destroyed, another could potentially continue operating.

If one commander was arrested, another could take over.

And if authorities closed one trafficking route, the organization could search for another.

This is one reason why modern cartels are so difficult to eliminate.

They are not always one organization in the traditional sense.

They are networks.

Violence as a Tool of Expansion

But money alone did not build CJNG.

Violence played an equally important role.

The organization became notorious for using intimidation against rivals, officials and people who interfered with its operations.

In 2020, a major DEA-led investigation called Project Python resulted in more than 600 arrests and hundreds of indictments connected to CJNG investigations. The DEA described the organization as one of Mexico’s fastest-growing transnational criminal organizations and one of the world’s major methamphetamine producers.

The scale of the investigation showed something important.

CJNG was no longer merely a Mexican problem.

Its networks were international.

Drugs could be produced in one country, transported through another and sold thousands of kilometers away.

Money could then travel in the opposite direction.

That created a global criminal supply chain.

And El Mencho was at the center of it.

The 2015 Helicopter Attack

Then came the event that permanently changed CJNG’s reputation.

May 1, 2015.

Mexican authorities launched an operation targeting the cartel.

The confrontation became one of the most dramatic episodes in Mexico’s modern cartel history.

CJNG gunmen attacked a Mexican military helicopter.

According to the U.S. Justice Department, the attackers used an Iranian-made rocket-propelled grenade and a .50-caliber belt-fed weapon. Eighteen soldiers and police officers were aboard, and at least nine people died.

For the Mexican public, the message was shocking.

This was not simply a gang shooting.

A criminal organization had demonstrated that it possessed weapons capable of attacking military aircraft.

And that told Mexican authorities something uncomfortable:

CJNG had developed the capability to fight the state directly.

But there was another reason the incident mattered.

The attack was connected to El Mencho’s son, Rubén Oseguera González, better known as El Menchito.

According to U.S. prosecutors, El Menchito ordered his armed followers to shoot down the helicopter to help him escape capture.

The incident became one of the clearest examples of the extraordinary level of violence associated with CJNG.

The Family Behind the Organization

El Mencho’s power was not based entirely on weapons.

Family connections also mattered.

Members of the González-Valencia family became closely associated with CJNG through blood and marriage.

The financial organization known as Los Cuinis became particularly important.

The DEA has described the González-Valencia organization as a money-laundering network connected through family relationships to CJNG.

This created something larger than a conventional cartel.

It was a combination of:

Drugs + money laundering + family networks + corruption + violence.

And that combination made CJNG extraordinarily difficult to dismantle.

A cartel can survive the arrest of a gunman.

It can even survive the loss of a commander.

But when criminal networks become connected to businesses, financial systems and family structures, dismantling them becomes much more complicated.

The Methamphetamine Business

Then there was the drug that helped transform the economics of the cartel:

methamphetamine.

Meth has an important advantage for criminal organizations.

Unlike cocaine, which depends heavily on coca cultivation in South America, methamphetamine is synthetic.

It can be manufactured wherever criminal groups can obtain the necessary precursor chemicals and equipment.

That changed the supply chain.

CJNG could become involved not just in trafficking drugs but in their production.

The DEA has described CJNG as one of the world’s most prolific methamphetamine producers.

And this business generated enormous profits.

Those profits could then be reinvested into the organization.

More money meant more logistics.

More logistics meant more trafficking capacity.

More trafficking capacity meant more revenue.

And more revenue meant the ability to recruit and arm more people.

It became a cycle.

The International Supply Chain

This is where the story stops being purely Mexican.

Modern synthetic-drug production depends on an international supply chain.

Chemical precursors can originate in one country.

They can be shipped through legitimate commercial channels.

Criminal organizations can acquire them through intermediaries.

The chemicals can then reach clandestine laboratories.

The finished drugs can be moved across borders.

And finally, they can reach consumers in the United States and other markets.

The DEA’s current assessment identifies CJNG as a major supplier of illicit fentanyl to the United States and describes its international reach as extending well beyond Mexico.

That means El Mencho’s organization was not simply fighting for control of Mexican territory.

It was competing in a global market.

Fentanyl Changes Everything

And then came fentanyl.

If methamphetamine helped CJNG expand, fentanyl became part of an even bigger transformation in the illegal drug economy.

Fentanyl is an extremely potent synthetic opioid.

Its potency means that very small quantities can contain enormous amounts of active drug.

That makes it particularly attractive to criminal networks from a purely economic perspective.

But it also makes mistakes and contamination potentially deadly.

The DEA now identifies CJNG and the Sinaloa Cartel as two major Mexican-based organizations driving the illicit synthetic-drug crisis in the United States.

And the U.S. government has increasingly focused its investigations on the entire fentanyl supply chain.

Not just cartel leaders.

But laboratories.

Chemical suppliers.

Money launderers.

Transporters.

Distributors.

And corrupt facilitators.

That is because removing one cartel leader does not necessarily stop production.

The network can adapt.

The Money Behind the Cartel

This brings us to one of the biggest misunderstandings about cartels.

People often imagine them as groups that make money from drugs and then simply spend it.

The reality is much more complicated.

Large criminal organizations need to move and disguise their money.

They need legitimate-looking businesses.

Financial intermediaries.

Front companies.

Real estate.

Cash-based businesses.

International transactions.

And people willing to help hide the origin of the money.

This is where money laundering becomes critical.

The DEA has repeatedly linked CJNG to financial networks designed to move and disguise criminal proceeds.

And that creates another challenge for law enforcement.

You can seize a shipment of drugs.

But if the financial system supporting the organization remains intact, the organization can potentially rebuild.

You can arrest a gunman.

But if the cartel can still pay hundreds of recruits, more gunmen can appear.

You can capture a laboratory.

But if precursor chemicals and trafficking routes remain available, another laboratory can be established.

That is why financial investigations are so important.

The Cartel’s Global Reach

By the late 2010s, U.S. authorities were describing CJNG as one of the most powerful criminal organizations in Mexico.

A 2018 DEA announcement said the organization had expanded internationally, with significant illicit activity reported across the Americas as well as in Europe, Asia and Australia. At that time, U.S. authorities estimated CJNG controlled drug routes in numerous Mexican states.

That is a remarkable transformation.

A network that emerged from the remains of a regional cartel had become a transnational criminal organization.

And its influence was not dependent on one drug.

Methamphetamine.

Cocaine.

Heroin.

Fentanyl.

Different drugs.

Different routes.

Different markets.

That diversification helped protect the organization.

If one market was disrupted, another could generate revenue.

The War Against CJNG

The United States did not simply wait for CJNG to become stronger.

American law-enforcement agencies launched increasingly large investigations.

One of the most significant was Project Python, announced in March 2020.

The operation involved multiple U.S. agencies and international partners.

More than 600 CJNG associates were arrested.

There were more than 350 indictments.

And authorities seized money and drugs connected to the organization.

But even operations of that scale did not destroy CJNG.

That is because the organization was already too decentralized.

Its networks were too large.

And the market was too profitable.

The lesson was becoming obvious.

You could hit CJNG hard without necessarily killing it.

El Mencho Becomes the Target

By this point, El Mencho had become one of the most wanted men in the world.

The United States offered a reward of up to $15 million for information leading to his arrest and conviction.

But he remained elusive.

He rarely appeared publicly.

There were relatively few confirmed recent photographs.

He avoided the lifestyle of some previous cartel leaders who surrounded themselves with celebrities and displayed their wealth.

Instead, El Mencho’s greatest asset was secrecy.

He understood that visibility created vulnerability.

The less the outside world knew about his movements, the harder it was for intelligence agencies to locate him.

For years, that strategy worked.

Until it didn’t.

The Biggest Problem With the Kingpin Strategy

By now, Mexican and American authorities had learned something important.

Removing cartel leaders can disrupt an organization.

But it can also create fragmentation.

And fragmentation can produce something even more violent.

Imagine a large cartel controlled by one powerful leader.

Remove that leader.

Now several commanders suddenly have an incentive to compete.

One wants the territory.

Another wants the trafficking routes.

Another wants the money.

Another wants control of the armed wing.

The organization can split.

And when that happens, violence can increase.

This is why the history of Mexico’s drug war is filled with organizations that disappeared only to be replaced by new ones.

CJNG itself emerged from that very process of fragmentation.

And now, decades later, the same question would eventually return after El Mencho’s death.

The Man Who Built a Criminal Machine

El Mencho’s greatest achievement as a criminal leader was not simply becoming powerful.

It was building an organization capable of surviving pressure.

He helped turn CJNG into a network with international trafficking connections, financial structures, armed groups and regional operations.

The DEA’s current assessment says the cartel continues to pose a major threat even after El Mencho’s death. In August 2026, the agency announced new charges and rewards targeting senior CJNG leaders and said intelligence indicated that Juan Carlos Valencia González, El Mencho’s stepson, had taken over the cartel’s leadership.

That development tells us something important.

El Mencho’s death did not automatically end CJNG.

The organization adapted.

And that is exactly why his story cannot be understood simply as the rise and fall of one criminal.

It is the story of an organization that learned how to survive.

But there was another force that helped make this entire system possible.

And this is where the story becomes much bigger than CJNG.

Because Mexico’s cartels did not become powerful in isolation.

There was a huge market waiting for their drugs.

There were weapons flowing south.

There were international financial networks.

There were precursor chemicals moving through global trade.

And there were decades of political and institutional problems inside Mexico itself.

So the next question becomes even more uncomfortable:

How did Mexico’s drug trade become powerful enough for criminal organizations to challenge the Mexican state and what role did the United States play in creating the conditions for that war?

That is where the history of Mexico’s drug war takes us next.

How Mexico’s Drug War Created a New Generation of Cartels

To understand how El Mencho became so powerful, we have to move away from one man.

Because CJNG did not emerge in a vacuum.

Its rise was connected to a much larger transformation inside Mexico one that involved politics, organized crime, corruption, the American drug market, firearms trafficking and the collapse of older cartel structures.

And one of the most important turning points came long before CJNG existed.

The Old Political System

For most of the twentieth century, Mexican politics was dominated by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, better known as PRI.

The party governed Mexico continuously from 1929 until 2000.

That does not mean Mexico was simply a country run by drug cartels during those 71 years.

The reality was much more complicated.

Mexico had functioning government institutions, elections and law-enforcement agencies.

But organized crime developed relationships with parts of the political and security establishment.

One of the ideas often discussed by historians and researchers is the “plaza” system.

Under this arrangement, different criminal organizations could operate within particular territories while maintaining relationships with corrupt officials.

The exact nature of these arrangements varied by region and changed over time.

But the broader principle was important:

The state and organized crime were sometimes competing, and sometimes corrupt individuals inside the state were cooperating with criminals.

That relationship helped keep violence relatively controlled in some periods.

But it also allowed criminal organizations to accumulate wealth and influence.

And when the political system changed, the balance began to collapse.

The Political Change of 2000

In 2000, something historic happened.

The PRI lost the presidency.

Vicente Fox of the National Action Party, or PAN, became president.

For Mexico, it was a major democratic transition.

But politically destabilizing the old arrangements had an unexpected consequence.

Criminal organizations that had previously operated within informal territorial understandings suddenly faced a more fragmented political and security environment.

Different cartels began competing more aggressively.

At the same time, Mexico was becoming increasingly important as a transit route for cocaine and other drugs destined for the United States.

And the money involved was enormous.

The War Begins

Then came December 2006.

President Felipe Calderón launched a major military campaign against organized crime.

Thousands of soldiers were deployed across Mexico.

The strategy was straightforward:

Find the major cartel leaders.

Capture or kill them.

Destroy their organizations.

And restore government control.

At first, the strategy appeared successful.

Major cartel leaders were captured or killed.

But then something unexpected happened.

The organizations began breaking apart.

The Kingpin Effect

Imagine a large cartel as a pyramid.

At the top is one powerful leader.

Under him are commanders.

Below them are local cells.

If the leader is removed, the government expects the pyramid to collapse.

But criminal organizations do not always work that way.

Instead, the commanders underneath can begin competing for control.

One faction takes one territory.

Another faction takes another.

A third group creates an entirely new organization.

And suddenly, instead of one large cartel, the government has several smaller ones.

This phenomenon became known as cartel fragmentation.

And it changed Mexico’s security landscape.

CJNG itself emerged from this environment.

The organization was born from the remains of older criminal networks and eventually became more powerful than many of the groups it replaced.

This is one of the great paradoxes of the Mexican drug war:

A government can successfully destroy one cartel and unintentionally create several new ones.

Why Smaller Cartels Can Be More Dangerous

A large cartel can sometimes behave like a corporation.

It needs stability.

It needs predictable trafficking routes.

It needs corrupt relationships.

It needs businesses to function.

But smaller groups may have fewer incentives to maintain stability.

They can survive through extortion, kidnapping, local drug sales, fuel theft and territorial violence.

That can make fragmentation particularly dangerous for ordinary people.

The drug war therefore became more than a fight over cocaine and heroin.

It became a fight over territory.

Who controlled the highway?

Who controlled the port?

Who controlled the police?

Who controlled the local government?

Who controlled the businesses?

And who had the power to decide who could operate in a particular city?

That was the environment in which CJNG expanded.

The Economics of the Drug Trade

But violence alone cannot explain the rise of Mexican cartels.

The real engine was money.

The United States is one of the world’s largest illegal drug markets.

That demand creates enormous financial incentives for criminal organizations.

A kilogram of cocaine or methamphetamine can be worth dramatically more after crossing into the American market than it was closer to the point of production.

That price difference creates an incentive for trafficking networks to take enormous risks.

Mexico’s geographic position makes it particularly important.

It sits directly next to the United States.

That means Mexican criminal organizations can move drugs toward one of the world’s largest consumer markets without crossing an ocean.

And once a trafficking route becomes established, it can generate enormous profits.

Those profits then finance everything else.

Weapons.

Bribes.

Vehicles.

Safe houses.

Recruitment.

Corruption.

And violence.

The drug trade therefore becomes a self-reinforcing system.

**Money creates power.

Power protects the money.

And the cycle continues.

America’s Drug Demand

This is where responsibility becomes complicated.

It is tempting to describe the Mexican cartel crisis as a Mexican problem.

But that would ignore the enormous demand coming from the United States.

At the same time, it would also be inaccurate to claim that America “created” Mexican cartels.

Mexican organized crime has its own history, political conditions and domestic causes.

The reality is shared.

American demand creates the market.

Mexican criminal organizations supply a significant part of that market.

International chemical and financial networks help facilitate production and movement.

And weapons from the United States frequently find their way into the hands of Mexican criminals.

That makes the crisis fundamentally transnational.

The Firearms Flow From the United States

There is another side to the drug trade that is often overlooked.

Drugs move north.

Money moves through financial networks.

And weapons move south.

Mexico has strict gun laws compared with the United States.

Yet Mexican criminal organizations have access to large quantities of firearms.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has repeatedly documented the trafficking of firearms from the United States into Mexico.

ATF’s eTrace system is used to trace recovered firearms and identify patterns that can help investigators detect trafficking networks.

But tracing a weapon does not necessarily mean proving exactly how it entered Mexico.

That distinction matters.

A firearm may have been legally purchased in the United States and later illegally transferred.

It may have been stolen.

It may have been purchased through a straw purchaser.

Or it may have moved through a trafficking network.

So when statistics are quoted about the percentage of Mexican crime guns that originated in the United States, the methodology behind those numbers matters.

The issue is real.

But the numbers need to be interpreted carefully.

Operation Fast and Furious

One of the most controversial chapters in U.S.-Mexico firearms history was Operation Fast and Furious.

The operation was conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives as part of an investigation into firearms trafficking.

Investigators allowed suspected straw purchasers to acquire firearms with the intention of tracking the weapons to higher-level traffickers.

But the operation failed badly.

Many firearms were not successfully tracked.

Some later appeared at crime scenes.

The controversy became especially serious after one of the firearms linked to the operation was found at the scene where U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in 2010.

A U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General investigation later criticized the operation’s tactics and management.

The episode became a major political controversy in Washington.

It also demonstrated how attempts to infiltrate criminal networks can produce unintended consequences.

But it is important not to confuse Fast and Furious with a policy of intentionally arming Mexican cartels.

The documented objective was to identify higher-level trafficking networks.

The operation failed to achieve that goal effectively.

The NAFTA Question

Another claim frequently made in discussions about Mexico’s cartel crisis concerns NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which entered into force in 1994.

The argument is sometimes presented very simply:

NAFTA increased cross-border trade.

More trucks crossed the border.

Therefore, drug trafficking became easier.

But reality is more complicated.

NAFTA dramatically increased legitimate trade between Mexico, the United States and Canada.

That created enormous economic benefits in many sectors.

It also created a huge logistical challenge for border authorities.

Millions of legitimate commercial shipments cannot simply be physically inspected one by one.

Criminal organizations can attempt to exploit legitimate trade infrastructure.

But there is no credible basis for saying that NAFTA was simply a plan to “open the border for drugs.”

That would confuse a genuine security challenge with an unsupported conclusion.

The same applies to another common claim: that NAFTA directly caused millions of Mexican farmers to become cartel recruits.

Mexico’s agricultural sector experienced major changes after trade liberalization, and corn prices and rural employment were affected by multiple economic forces.

But recruitment into organized crime cannot be attributed to NAFTA alone.

The reality involved poverty, inequality, migration, local labor markets, weak institutions and the expanding profitability of criminal organizations.

The Dark History of U.S. Counter-Narcotics Policy

There is, however, a genuine and complicated history of U.S. policy in Latin America that deserves examination.

During the Cold War, Washington often viewed left-wing movements in Central America through the lens of the conflict with the Soviet Union.

One of the most controversial examples involved the Contras in Nicaragua.

The U.S. government supported Contra forces fighting the Sandinista government.

At the same time, allegations emerged that individuals connected to the Contra network were involved in drug trafficking.

The issue became the subject of congressional investigations and later extensive controversy.

The U.S. Senate’s Kerry Committee investigated allegations concerning drugs, the Contras and U.S. government relationships with anti-Sandinista forces.

The committee’s 1989 report documented numerous instances in which individuals connected to the Contra network were involved with drug trafficking or drug traffickers.

But an important distinction must be made.

The existence of Contra linked traffickers does not prove that the CIA deliberately created the Mexican cartel system or intentionally built the modern Mexican drug trade.

That claim goes beyond what the evidence establishes.

History is more complicated than that.

There were documented relationships, intelligence failures, allegations and cases of individuals involved in trafficking.

But turning those facts into a single conspiracy that explains the entire Mexican cartel system would be historically misleading.

The Birth of the Fentanyl Crisis

Then the drug market changed again.

Traditional trafficking networks had already made enormous profits from cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

But synthetic opioids introduced a new economic model.

Fentanyl is extraordinarily potent compared with heroin and morphine.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, synthetic opioids primarily illicitly manufactured fentanyl have played a central role in the American overdose crisis.

The economics are extremely attractive to criminal organizations.

A relatively small quantity can represent a large number of doses.

Production does not require agricultural land.

And precursor chemicals can be moved through international commercial networks.

For cartels, that creates a potentially enormous profit opportunity.

For communities, the consequences can be devastating.

The International Chemical Supply Chain

Fentanyl production also reveals why the modern drug war is no longer simply a Mexico-U.S. problem.

The supply chain can involve multiple countries.

Chemical manufacturers and exporters may operate in Asia.

Precursors can be shipped internationally.

Mexican criminal organizations can obtain them through brokers and intermediaries.

Production can occur in clandestine laboratories.

The finished product can then move toward the U.S. market.

This is why U.S. authorities have increasingly targeted companies and individuals involved in the illicit precursor trade.

In 2024, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Chinese chemical companies and individuals accused of supplying precursor chemicals used in the production of illicit fentanyl and methamphetamine.

The important point is that legitimate international trade and criminal trafficking can overlap.

A chemical itself may have perfectly legal industrial uses.

The criminal activity can occur later in the supply chain.

Why Fentanyl Became So Important to CJNG

CJNG recognized the changing economics of synthetic drugs.

The organization was already heavily involved in methamphetamine.

Fentanyl provided another high-value market.

U.S. authorities have repeatedly identified CJNG as one of the major Mexican organizations involved in illicit fentanyl trafficking.

That made El Mencho’s organization a major target of American law enforcement.

The cartel’s power was therefore not simply based on controlling Mexican territory.

It was based on controlling connections.

Connections to suppliers.

Connections to traffickers.

Connections to corrupt officials.

Connections to financial networks.

Connections to international distributors.

And connections to the American consumer market.

That is why eliminating one leader could never be the entire solution.

The “Hugs, Not Bullets” Debate

In 2018, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, commonly known as AMLO, became president of Mexico.

He promised a different approach to organized crime.

His government popularized the phrase:

“Hugs, not bullets.”

The idea was that Mexico needed to address the social conditions behind criminal recruitment.

Poverty.

Unemployment.

Lack of opportunity.

And inequality.

Instead of relying primarily on military force, the government emphasized social programs and economic development.

The argument was simple:

If young people have legitimate opportunities, criminal organizations will have a harder time recruiting them.

But critics argued that social programs could not replace effective law enforcement.

Cartels had become heavily armed organizations with international financial networks.

They were not simply groups of unemployed young people.

The reality is that both sides of the argument contain part of the truth.

Social development can reduce vulnerability to criminal recruitment.

But criminal organizations also need to be confronted through intelligence, policing, prosecution and financial investigations.

The challenge is finding the correct balance.

Why Mexico Still Struggles

After decades of military operations, arrests and cartel leadership changes, one question remains:

Why haven’t the cartels disappeared?

Because the system keeps reproducing itself.

A leader is arrested.

Another leader emerges.

A trafficking route is closed.

Another route opens.

A laboratory is destroyed.

Another laboratory appears.

A cartel is fragmented.

A new cartel is created.

The names change.

The people change.

The routes change.

But the market remains.

And that is the fundamental weakness of a strategy focused entirely on kingpins.

The Kingpin Strategy Has a Limit

The Mexican government can capture a cartel leader.

The United States can impose sanctions.

The DEA can dismantle trafficking cells.

Authorities can seize millions of dollars.

But none of those actions automatically eliminates consumer demand.

As long as the illegal market remains profitable, criminals have an incentive to rebuild.

That does not mean law enforcement is useless.

Quite the opposite.

Arrests and seizures can save lives.

They can disrupt organizations.

They can prevent drugs from reaching communities.

But they are only one part of the solution.

El Mencho’s Final Chapter

And this brings us back to El Mencho.

The man who began life in rural Michoacán eventually became the leader of CJNG.

He built an organization that survived military pressure, international investigations and the arrests of senior commanders.

The United States placed a $15 million reward on his head.

Mexico spent years trying to locate him.

And finally, intelligence led security forces to his hideout near Tapalpa.

The operation ended his life.

But it did not erase the economic system that had allowed CJNG to become powerful.

And that is why his death is historically important.

Not because one criminal was finally eliminated.

But because it gives us an opportunity to ask a much bigger question:

What happens when the world’s most powerful drug market meets weak institutions, international trafficking networks, corruption and an enormous supply of money?

The answer, over decades, has been the rise of organizations like CJNG.

And after El Mencho, the next question is even more important.

Who Takes Control of CJNG?

By 2026, the answer was already beginning to emerge.

El Mencho’s death created a leadership vacuum.

His son was already serving a life sentence in the United States.

Other members of his family had faced arrests and prosecutions.

That left CJNG’s remaining senior commanders facing an extraordinary decision:

Fight for control.

Or find a way to maintain the organization under new leadership.

According to the U.S. DEA, by August 2026 investigators identified Juan Carlos Valencia González, El Mencho’s stepson, as the cartel’s new leader and announced a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to his arrest and conviction.

That development demonstrated something that had happened repeatedly throughout Mexico’s drug-war history.

The kingpin had fallen.

The organization had not.

And now the new leadership had to decide whether to fight, negotiate, fragment or rebuild.

But there was another problem.

The United States was becoming increasingly aggressive in its approach to Mexican cartels.

And Washington was no longer treating these organizations simply as drug-trafficking groups.

It was beginning to describe them as national security threats.

That change would have enormous consequences for the future of Mexico-U.S. relations.

Can Mexico Finally Break the Cartel Cycle?

On February 22, 2026, Mexico finally caught the man it had been hunting for years.

Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, better known as El Mencho, was dead.

But within hours, a new reality became clear.

Mexico had removed the leader.

It had not removed the organization.

And that distinction may determine what happens next.

The Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG, had spent years building a network that was much larger than one individual. So when El Mencho disappeared, the organization did not simply vanish.

Instead, the question became:

Who would take control?

And would that transition weaken CJNG or make the organization even more dangerous?

The Man Who Replaced El Mencho

By August 2026, U.S. authorities had already reached an important conclusion.

According to the DEA, Juan Carlos Valencia González, El Mencho’s stepson, had assumed control of CJNG after El Mencho’s death.

And Washington was treating him as a major target.

On August 5, the U.S. Department of Justice and DEA announced new charges against senior CJNG figures and more than $100 million in combined reward offers for information leading to the arrests or convictions of eight fugitives.

The reward for Valencia González was increased to up to $25 million.

That is an extraordinary development.

Because it means the death of El Mencho did not create a leadership vacuum that simply destroyed CJNG.

Instead, another member of his family stepped into the organization’s leadership structure.

And that tells us something very important about modern cartels.

They are networks, not just personalities.

El Mencho’s Death Did Not End CJNG

DEA Administrator Terrance Cole said in August 2026 that El Mencho’s death had not ended CJNG and described the organization as resilient.

The DEA said its intelligence indicated that Valencia González had taken control after El Mencho’s death.

At the same time, American authorities were targeting other senior commanders.

One of them, Audias Flores Silva, known as “Jardienero,” had been considered a potential successor to El Mencho.

But in April 2026, Mexican authorities captured him.

The U.S. Justice Department later expanded the charges against him.

That creates an extraordinary situation.

The old leader is dead.

A potential successor is in custody.

Another successor has emerged.

And American authorities are simultaneously targeting several other senior commanders.

This is exactly the kind of instability that can determine whether a cartel fragments or consolidates.

The Battle for CJNG’s Future

CJNG’s leadership structure is not based only on family.

The U.S. Justice Department’s August 2026 indictment described several senior figures responsible for different parts of the organization’s operations.

Some allegedly controlled territories.

Others were involved in armed groups.

Others were linked to weapons procurement, drug trafficking, precursor chemicals and financial operations.

One group, known as Grupo Elite, was described by U.S. prosecutors as a heavily armed enforcement wing of CJNG.

This matters because it shows why removing one leader is not enough.

Imagine an organization with:

A leader.

Regional commanders.

Armed units.

Drug-production networks.

Financial operators.

Traffickers.

Corrupt facilitators.

If the leader disappears, the rest of the network can potentially continue.

That is exactly what appears to have happened after El Mencho.

Mexico’s Biggest Test

For Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, El Mencho’s death was a major security achievement.

But it also created a difficult test.

The government now has to prove that it can do something more difficult than capturing a cartel leader.

It has to prevent the organization from rebuilding.

That means intelligence operations.

Financial investigations.

Targeting weapons networks.

Protecting local officials.

Strengthening prosecutors.

And preventing cartel commanders from converting criminal profits into political influence.

Because if CJNG survives the loss of El Mencho, then the government will have demonstrated something very different.

It will have shown that the cartel was bigger than the man who led it.

Why the Old Strategy Keeps Failing

This brings us back to one of the biggest lessons of Mexico’s drug war.

For years, governments have focused heavily on kingpins.

Find the leader.

Capture the leader.

Kill the leader.

Then destroy the organization.

The problem is that criminal organizations can adapt.

When one leader disappears, another can emerge.

When a large cartel is destroyed, smaller factions can appear.

And those smaller groups can become even more violent because they have to compete for territory and revenue.

CJNG itself is partly a product of this process.

It emerged from the fragmentation of older criminal networks.

So if CJNG fragments now, history could repeat itself.

A new generation of criminal organizations could emerge from the pieces.

The Fentanyl Economy Has Changed the Game

There is another reason this problem is so difficult.

The drug market itself has changed.

Synthetic drugs have transformed the economics of trafficking.

Fentanyl does not require vast agricultural fields.

It can be produced synthetically using precursor chemicals.

That means criminal organizations can potentially move production closer to trafficking routes and markets.

The DEA identifies CJNG as a major organization involved in trafficking methamphetamine and fentanyl into the United States.

This is why simply destroying one cartel laboratory does not solve the problem.

If precursor chemicals remain available, another laboratory can be established.

If consumers remain willing to pay, another supplier will eventually appear.

And if profits remain enormous, criminal organizations will continue taking extraordinary risks.

America Has a Problem Too

This is where the story becomes a shared crisis.

Mexico has a cartel problem.

But the United States has a huge drug-demand problem.

American consumers create the market that makes trafficking so profitable.

At the same time, firearms frequently travel south from the United States into Mexico.

And international chemical supply chains help make synthetic-drug production possible.

So the supply chain does not belong to one country.

It crosses borders.

Drugs move north.

Weapons move south.

Money moves internationally.

And the consequences are felt on both sides of the border.

That is why cooperation between Mexico and the United States is unavoidable.

But cooperation is not the same thing as military intervention.

And that distinction is becoming increasingly important.

The U.S. Wants a Harder Line

The Trump administration has taken a much more aggressive approach toward Mexican cartels.

The United States designated CJNG as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in February 2025.

That designation gave Washington another legal and political framework for targeting the organization.

But by 2026, American pressure had expanded beyond traditional drug-trafficking investigations.

The United States was increasingly describing major cartels as national-security threats.

The DEA’s August 2026 announcements used the term “narco-terrorist” and emphasized the administration’s intention to dismantle CJNG’s leadership and infrastructure.

For Washington, the argument is straightforward.

If a criminal organization is responsible for trafficking deadly drugs, uses extreme violence and operates across international borders, the United States should use every available legal tool against it.

But Mexico has its own concerns.

Mexico Does Not Want to Lose Sovereignty

Mexico has consistently been sensitive about foreign military involvement on its territory.

That is understandable.

Mexico is not a failed state.

It has its own military.

Its own intelligence agencies.

Its own police forces.

Its own courts.

And its own elected government.

So when Washington talks about military action against Mexican cartels, the question in Mexico is not simply whether cartels are dangerous.

Everyone already knows they are.

The question is:

Who gets to decide how Mexico’s territory is policed?

If American forces were to conduct unilateral military operations inside Mexico, it could create a diplomatic crisis.

It could also produce a dangerous political reaction.

Cartels could use the presence of foreign troops as propaganda.

Criminal organizations could present themselves as defenders of Mexican sovereignty.

And ordinary Mexicans could become caught between criminals and two governments.

That is why intelligence sharing and joint law enforcement may ultimately be more sustainable than unilateral military action.

The World Cup Test

There was another reason 2026 became such an important year for Mexico.

The country hosted matches during the FIFA World Cup 2026.

And Guadalajara one of the cities most closely associated with CJNG’s home state of Jalisco was one of the tournament’s host cities.

The Guadalajara Stadium hosted four World Cup matches, including Mexico’s match against South Korea on June 18.

That made the security situation particularly significant.

The irony was impossible to ignore.

One of Mexico’s most important cities was preparing to welcome football fans from around the world while the country’s most powerful cartel had just lost its leader.

And only months earlier, the violence following El Mencho’s death had already affected sporting events around Guadalajara.

Reuters reported that several football matches were postponed after the violence and that FIFA remained in communication with Mexican authorities.

But the World Cup ultimately went ahead.

Guadalajara hosted all four scheduled matches, with attendance averaging around 99.1% of stadium capacity.

That is important because it demonstrates something that can easily get lost in the headlines:

Cartel violence does not define every part of Mexican life.

Millions of people continued living, working, traveling and attending major sporting events.

The security challenge was real.

But Mexico did not collapse into chaos.

What Happens to CJNG Now?

The future of CJNG is still uncertain.

There are several possibilities.

Scenario One: Consolidation

Juan Carlos Valencia González could successfully consolidate the leadership structure.

If that happens, CJNG could remain a powerful centralized organization.

The cartel could attempt to maintain existing trafficking routes and financial networks.

Scenario Two: Fragmentation

Senior commanders could refuse to accept the new leadership.

That could produce competing factions.

And this is potentially the most dangerous scenario for local communities.

Because competing factions often fight over territory.

Scenario Three: Government Pressure Breaks the Network

Mexico and the United States could exploit the leadership transition.

If authorities simultaneously target the leadership, finances, laboratories, weapons and logistics networks, CJNG could lose its ability to operate at the same scale.

This would not necessarily eliminate organized crime.

But it could significantly weaken CJNG.

Scenario Four: A New Organization Emerges

And this is the possibility history warns us about most.

If CJNG collapses into several factions, one of those factions r a completely new organization could eventually become the next major cartel.

The name might change.

The leader might change.

The territory might change.

But the underlying business could survive.

The Real Battle Is the Money

This is perhaps the most important point in the entire story.

Cartels need money.

Without money, they cannot maintain large armed groups.

They cannot purchase vehicles.

They cannot pay corrupt officials.

They cannot recruit.

They cannot maintain laboratories.

They cannot move drugs internationally.

They cannot replace weapons.

That means financial investigations are potentially more important than simply capturing individual gunmen.

If governments can identify where cartel money goes, they can attack the organization at its foundation.

Bank accounts.

Front companies.

Real estate.

Businesses.

International transfers.

Money-laundering networks.

And criminal investments.

The U.S. government has already demonstrated that this is part of its strategy.

The August 2026 CJNG action involved not only drug-trafficking charges but allegations involving money laundering, weapons and financial schemes.

That approach is significant.

Because you are not simply chasing criminals.

You are trying to make the criminal business model impossible to sustain.

What Mexico Needs

There is no single solution.

Mexico needs stronger local institutions.

Professional police forces.

Better-paid and better-trained investigators.

Independent prosecutors.

Protection for witnesses.

Financial intelligence.

Anti-corruption investigations.

And stronger security for journalists and local officials who investigate organized crime.

But Mexico also needs economic opportunities.

A young person should not have to choose between unemployment and joining an armed criminal group.

That does not mean poverty automatically creates criminals.

Most poor people never join cartels.

But criminal organizations can exploit economic vulnerability.

And prevention can reduce their recruitment pool.

What the United States Needs to Do

The United States also has responsibilities.

The country needs to reduce demand for dangerous illegal drugs.

It needs to address addiction and overdose.

It needs to strengthen firearms-trafficking enforcement.

And it needs to work with Mexico on intelligence and financial investigations.

The American side of the equation cannot simply be:

“Mexico must stop the drugs.”

Because the market exists on both sides of the border.

And the weapons problem cannot simply be:

“Mexico has cartels.”

Because the firearms supply chain also crosses the border.

The crisis is interconnected.

So the response must be interconnected too.

The End of El Mencho’s Story

El Mencho’s life is a remarkable example of how an individual can rise through a criminal system and eventually become the symbol of an entire organization.

He began in rural Michoacán.

He entered the drug trade.

He went to the United States.

He was arrested and deported.

He returned to Mexico.

He worked as a police officer.

He entered organized crime.

He helped build CJNG.

He became one of the world’s most wanted fugitives.

And finally, after years of evading authorities, Mexican forces found him in Jalisco.

His death closed one chapter.

But it did not close the book.

By August 2026, American authorities were already pursuing his successor and other senior CJNG commanders.

The DEA had announced more than $100 million in combined rewards for eight CJNG fugitives, including up to $25 million for Juan Carlos Valencia González.

That fact alone tells us everything we need to know.

**El Mencho was one man.

CJNG is a system.

So, Can Mexico Finally Defeat the Cartels?

The honest answer is:

Not by killing one leader.

Mexico can weaken CJNG.

It can destroy laboratories.

It can seize weapons.

It can arrest commanders.

It can dismantle trafficking cells.

But if the market remains profitable, someone will attempt to rebuild.

That is why the long-term solution has to attack several problems simultaneously.

Drug demand.

Illegal firearms trafficking.

Money laundering.

Corruption.

International precursor-chemical networks.

Weak local institutions.

Criminal recruitment.

And most importantly, the enormous profits generated by the illegal drug market.

The Final Lesson of El Mencho’s History

The history of El Mencho is not simply the story of a drug lord.

It is the story of what happens when enormous criminal profits meet political instability, corruption, international demand and weak institutions.

It is also a warning against simple explanations.

It would be wrong to say Mexico alone created the cartel crisis.

It would be equally wrong to say America alone created it.

The Mexican government has its own responsibility.

American consumers create enormous demand.

U.S. firearms can enter the Mexican criminal market.

International chemical supply chains support synthetic-drug production.

And criminal organizations exploit weaknesses wherever they find them.

Every part of the system matters.

That is why the solution has to cross borders too.

El Mencho Is Gone. The Cartel Economy Isn’t.

The manhunt ended in the mountains of Jalisco.

But the drug war continues.

The leader changed.

The organization adapted.

And the United States has already identified a new target at the top of CJNG.

That means history is now entering another uncertain chapter.

Maybe CJNG will eventually collapse.

Maybe it will fragment into smaller organizations.

Maybe a new leader will transform it again.

Or perhaps Mexico and the United States will finally find a way to attack the economic foundations that have allowed these organizations to survive for generations.

We do not know yet.

But one lesson from Mexican history is difficult to ignore:

When one cartel falls, the market does not automatically disappear.

And when the market survives, someone will always be tempted to fill the gap.

That is why the real story of El Mencho does not end with his death.

It ends with a question.

Can Mexico break the cycle that created men like El Mencho in the first place?

Because if it cannot, then the next cartel leader may already be waiting somewhere in the shadows.

And one day, the world may learn his name too.

Source note for the final article: The current 2026 section has been checked against U.S. DEA/DOJ material and FIFA’s official World Cup records. The DEA’s August 2026 documents specifically identify Juan Carlos Valencia González as the alleged new CJNG leader after El Mencho’s death and list the current reward as up to $25 million.

According To BBC