El Mencho: Is Sheinbaum’s kingpin strategy pivot for Trump’s fentanyl war despite Mexico cartel bloodshed risk

On February 22 Mexican special forces captured a powerful drug lord. The government said that Nemesio Rubén “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, the boss of Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of the country’s two biggest gangs, later died from wounds sustained during the shoot-out.

The 59-year-old former policeman was perhaps Mexico’s most wanted person. Yet the operation to seize him, though successful, risks throwing the country into turmoil.

That is because it harks back to a discredited approach to fighting gangsters: going at any cost after their bosses.

The violence following El Mencho’s death was almost immediate, though more to do with gangsters expressing anger than the start of internecine conflict. They carried out attacks in at least 15 states, torching buses and banks. Airlines cancelled flights. Mexico, the United States and other foreign governments issued shelter-in-place orders for the affected areas.

The nature of the Jalisco cartel increases the chances of continuing violence. As an amalgam of 92 groups operating across Mexico, the gang is more prone to fragmentation, says Eduardo Guerrero of Lantia, a security outfit in Mexico City. It is not clear whether El Mencho had a succession plan—nor whether the six other gangsters killed during the firefight with special forces were members of the cúpula, Jalisco’s top brass, or mere bodyguards.

The group’s brutality is well known. In its early years it worked with the Sinaloa Cartel to fight the Zetas, another gang. Since then it has expanded to work in all 32 states in Mexico. Today it combines the Sinaloa Cartel’s ability to corrupt politicians and businesspeople with the Zetas’ violence.

To spread terror its sicarios — ‘dagger men’ or hired assassins — have hung bodies from bridges or scattered them, dismembered, into the street. In 2020 it carried out a brazen attempt to assassinate Mexico City’s security minister, Omar Harfuch, who is now Ms Sheinbaum’s security minister.

A diverse portfolio, from drug trafficking to fuel theft, has made the gang extremely rich, too. That raises the incentives for violence. It has also allowed the gang to accrue immense firepower, including mines, and drones that carry explosives.

Mexican officials say that among the weapons they found in El Mencho’s safe house were rocket launchers that can shoot down aircraft and destroy armoured vehicles. The group also manufactures its own weapons.

“We don’t know what the cost of his arrest will be, but we know there will be one,” says Cecilia Farfán-Méndez of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, a think-tank in Geneva.

Since coming to power a year and a half ago, Ms Sheinbaum has made security a priority. She appointed a serious security minister in Mr Harfuch, and boosted intelligence capabilities. But the decision to go after El Mencho was almost certainly taken, at least in part, to please Donald Trump, says Mr Guerrero.

Mr Trump has put increasing pressure on Ms Sheinbaum to do more to dismantle gangs—or risk the United States doing the work itself with unilateral military strikes. In January the United States said it needed to see more than “incremental progress” in Mexico.

The operation to take out El Mencho was supported by American intelligence. He was a top target for the United States because he trafficked drugs into the country, including deadly fentanyl. The Drug Enforcement Administration had offered a $15m reward for information leading to his capture.

For a sense of how this intervention might play out, look at the Sinaloa Cartel. Its leader, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, was taken into American custody in July 2024. (Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, its other former leader, is also serving a life sentence in the United States.)

Sinaloa state, the gang’s heartland, has been soaked in violence since his capture, even as murder rates have dropped in some other parts of the country. The Mexican security apparatus has been unable to temper the violence despite sending hundreds of troops.

The case of Sinaloa shows that violence that is not quickly contained can spread. Flare-ups become “an epidemic that can take years to temper,” says Mr Guerrero. The government, he says, will need to take out the Jalisco cartel’s regional bosses to prevent them waging local campaigns.

If violence does spread, it could reverse Ms Sheinbaum’s modest success in reducing Mexico’s murder rate. It also threatens the economy.

Jalisco is an important hub for businesses and tourism. In just four months Mexico is due to co-host the World Cup, with matches scheduled in Guadalajara, the state capital. What comes next may overshadow not just the triumph of the operation to seize El Mencho, but Ms Sheinbaum’s entire presidency.