GUADALAJARA — Mexico’s most wanted drug trafficker, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes — known as El Mencho — was confirmed dead Thursday following a shootout with Mexican marines and U.S.-backed security forces in the western state of Jalisco, triggering an eruption of retaliatory violence that has left at least 37 people dead across five cities and paralyzed the states of Jalisco, Colima, and Nayarit.
The federal government announced El Mencho’s death in a televised address from Mexico City, calling it “the end of an era” for the CJNC, the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion. But within hours, cartel cells across the region went on a rampage: they torched 23 buses, set up roadblocks with burning vehicles on highways linking Guadalajara to the Pacific coast, and opened fire on a shopping center parking lot in Zapopan, killing 8 people. Schools across three states were ordered to close Friday.
The U.S. State Department issued an emergency travel advisory ordering American citizens to shelter in place in the affected states. The DEA confirmed it had provided intelligence support for the operation that killed El Mencho but said no U.S. personnel were directly involved in the shootout. Mexico’s president said the violence would be met with “the full weight of the state” and deployed 4,500 additional troops to the region.
El Mencho’s CJNC controlled the majority of methamphetamine production and trafficking routes into the United States and was responsible for the deaths of at least 180 Mexican law enforcement officers over the past decade. Analysts say the power vacuum his death creates could trigger a prolonged war among cartel factions for control of the Jalisco corridor — one of the most profitable smuggling routes in the Western Hemisphere.
Written by Diego Vargas
Written by Diego Vargas, Latin America Correspondent