Mexican safety forces killed the nation’s most-wanted cartel chief Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes in a high-stakes operation on Sunday that set off a spiral of violence and chaos.
Oseguera was the leader and co-founder of the highly effective Jalisco New Generation Cartel, a legal group that has rapidly expanded its affect lately, turning into one of many most important traffickers of methamphetamine and fentanyl into the US.
The assault comes at a pivotal second for Mexico, as President Claudia Sheinbaum faces rising strain from her US counterpart Donald Trump to clamp down on drug trafficking.
It additionally comes simply months earlier than the Mexican metropolis of Guadalajara – which was rocked by violence following the drug lord’s seize – is about to host 4 group-stage matches of the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
After years of pursuing Oseguera, Mexican forces on February 20 obtained a concrete tip concerning the feared cartel chief’s whereabouts.
Their investigation into Oseguera’s community had led them to a key one who might help entry his hideout – a “trusted man” of one in every of Oseguera’s lovers, based on Mexican Defense Secretary Ricardo Trevilla Trejo.
The following day, the lover left Oseguera’s cabin complicated on the outskirts of Tapalpa, however the drug lord remained on the hideout with his safety element.
Mexico’s Air Force and the National Guard’s Special Immediate Reaction Force then swooped into motion, placing collectively a plan and launching a raid inside the subsequent 24 hours.
El Mencho was situated via monitoring a romantic accomplice, Mexico’s protection secretary says
To keep away from arousing suspicion, the mission was primarily carried out by floor forces with restricted air help from helicopters, Trevilla mentioned.
Several Mexican navy military items had been current in central Tapalpa on Sunday morning, based on NCS’s evaluation of social media video.
Sheinbaum mentioned the US shared intelligence that aided the operation however didn’t present floor forces.
The Mexican troops established a fringe across the complicated and then closed in. As they did so, they got here below fireplace from Oseguera’s lieutenants.
Using eyewitness video captured through the operation, NCS pinpointed El Mencho’s seemingly location in a wooded space which shelters a number of small, gated compounds simply over three miles southwest of Tapalpa. The web site, a trip rental referred to as Cabañas La Loma, is close to the Tapalpa Country Club down an extended, distant driveway.
Cabañas La Loma was sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2015 and once more in 2017 for offering “material assistance to the drug trafficking activities of (the Jalisco cartel).”
Eyewitness footage, first geolocated by on-line researcher Halipon and verified by NCS, reveals dozens of uniformed folks and armored automobiles advancing up a slope towards the positioning.
In different footage, filmed farther down the driveway, automated gunfire might be heard, whereas a 3rd video taken on the similar time reveals thick black smoke emanating from the positioning.
The trade of fireplace killed eight cartel members and wounded two troopers, Trevilla mentioned.
Oseguera and a number of of his deputies then fled to a wooded space close by, abandoning a bunch “with a large quantity of weapons” who continued to struggle.
While among the Mexican troops stayed to have interaction the group on the cabin, a staff of Special Forces personnel cut up off in pursuit of Oseguera, who they discovered hiding in an space of forest undergrowth.
After an extra firefight, the Special Forces staff captured the cartel chief and two of his bodyguards. All three had been significantly wounded and it was decided that they might have to be evacuated in the event that they had been to outlive, Trevilla mentioned.
Along with a wounded soldier, the three cartel members had been placed on a helicopter that was alleged to take them to a hospital within the close by metropolis of Guadalajara.
However, when all three died through the flight, authorities determined to reroute, fearing a violent response in Guadalajara, the place the cartel has a big presence. The helicopter was then diverted to Morelia International Airport, the place an Air Force fighter jet was ready to take them to Mexico City.
The information of Oseguera’s dying plunged giant swaths of Mexico right into a state of chaos as cartel forces carried out a frenzy of retaliatory violence.
Gangs arrange fiery blockades on the streets and engaged in shootouts with the navy.
Airlines suspended their flights to the area and the US urged its nationals to shelter in place through the dysfunction.
Amid the chaos, 25 members of the National Guard navy police had been killed.
On Monday, Sheinbaum made a plea for peace and tried to reassure her folks.
“The most important thing right now is to guarantee peace and security for the entire population of all of Mexico. And that is what is being done,” she mentioned. “People can be assured that peace, security, and normalcy are being maintained in the country.”
The operation comes at a consequential time for Mexico. With Trump threatening cross-border intervention, Sheinbaum could have been eager to point out she is clamping down arduous on the drug gangs.
However, it additionally represents a calculated threat, given the proximity of the World Cup to the cartel-fueled violence the drug lord’s dying has unleashed. Guadalajara will probably be internet hosting matches this summer time, in what’s anticipated to be an financial boon for the state of Jalisco, and Sheinbaum will little question be cautious of scaring off would-be vacationers.
‘Peace, safety, and normalcy are being maintained within the nation,’ Mexico’s President Sheinbaum says
It could also be that the chance to seize Oseguera – a person who the US has categorized as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist with a $15 million bounty on his head – was just too good to move up.
“It seems to me that the Mexican state made a calculation where the numbers worked out in its favor; there wasn’t a better opportunity to capture him,” Armando Vargas, a safety program coordinator on the assume tank México Evalúa, advised NCS.
Knowing that the retaliatory violence was prone to happen, the federal government decided that it had the capability to “contain the disruption and maintain governance and restore it in a short period,” Vargas mentioned.
Vargas added that the potential of the Jalisco cartel now splintering and descending into inner preventing appeared unlikely. “Much of their leadership remains free, operating through a kind of franchise system where local bosses have autonomy in decision-making,” he mentioned, however “despite the potential violence, I don’t foresee a short-term fragmentation of the cartel that would lead to excessively intense violence.”
Indeed, Oseguera had already needed to cede some organizational management over the group as a result of he was on the run from authorities, mentioned Gustavo López Montiel, a political science professor on the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education.
Choosing to get rid of Oseguera whereas a few of his lieutenants stay demonstrates that “this capture is obviously important, but it’s also symbolic,” López Montiel added.
David Mora, senior analyst on the International Crisis Group, mentioned the drug lord’s dying would possibly weaken the Jalisco cartel and open “the possibility of further violence within the group” – whereas additionally presenting different cartels with a chance to encroach on the Jalisco cartel’s territory.
Still, as Mora identified, regardless of the impact on the Jalisco cartel, Mexico will probably be hoping that one man particularly sees Oseguera’s dying as a significant improvement: Donald Trump.