Mexico caught between Donald Trump and powerful drug cartels after El Mencho killing

El Mencho was the biggest kingpin left.

The drug lord, whose real name was Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, had evaded capture for two decades, outlasting his rivals El Chapo and El Mayo and building his Jalisco New Generation Cartel into Mexico’s most powerful criminal organisation.

Then, over the weekend, his run came to an abrupt end, in part because of a romantic rendezvous.

The killing was a clear success for the Mexican authorities. The timing, however, seemed to be telling.

President Donald Trump has been loudly and repeatedly demanding that Mexican officials dismantle the cartels that have amassed fortunes by sending drugs across the border. If they don’t, he has threatened, the US military may do the job instead.

Those threats appear to be having an effect.

President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico has overseen one of the most aggressive offensives against the cartels in more than a decade.

On Sunday, weeks after Trump ordered a military intervention in Venezuela and warned that Mexico was next, Sheinbaum took another bold swing. She authorised Mexican forces to take out her nation’s most wanted criminal, using intelligence provided by the United States.

The killing of Oseguera Cervantes shows how the tense interplay between Trump and Sheinbaum — two leaders with starkly different styles but an unlikely camaraderie — has fundamentally reshaped the US-Mexico relationship, particularly on security.

“The pressure that Trump has put on her administration has been a force she’s taken advantage of,” said Carlos Bravo Regidor, a Mexican political analyst who studies US-Mexico relations.

“She wanted to change Mexico’s security, but Trump came at a very interesting moment to push her in that direction.”

Yet, Bravo added, Sheinbaum is also playing with fire.

“I don’t know if she wanted to go as far as she’s going,” he added. “This is clearly putting her administration under a lot of stress, and there is a big question now of what the Mexican state’s capacities are to govern the consequences of this operation.”

Like with the mythological monster the Hydra, cutting off one head of a cartel often spawns many more.

Killing Oseguera Cervantes unleashed a wave of shootings, arson and blockades across the country, and now Mexicans are bracing for even more violence ahead, as competing factions jockey for power and confront the government. It is a cycle Mexico has lived through many times before.

It is also the latest example of Trump’s growing impact on Latin America. Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Argentina, Honduras and others all can attest.

In her daily news conference on Tuesday, Sheinbaum pushed back on the notion that she was acting in response to Trump, calling any speculation about that “almost laughable to read.”

Sheinbaum has consistently sought to set boundaries with Washington. Just as Trump’s wish to strike Mexico has become a regular part of his rhetoric, so has her refrain about protecting Mexico’s sovereignty.

On Monday, she repeated the limits on the American role. “There is no participation of U.S. forces,” she told reporters. “The understanding with the United States is based primarily on the exchange of intelligence.”

Sheinbaum confirmed that US agencies provided intelligence for the operation against Oseguera Cervantes, and The New York Times reported Monday that critical information came from the CIA. The CIA declined to comment.

Mexico’s defence secretary also credited US agencies with assistance but said the break in the case came when Mexican intelligence officials identified an associate of one of Oseguera Cervantes’ lovers, who then led authorities to the cartel leader’s hideout.

It is clear that the two sides have improved cooperation. In January, the US military set up an intelligence-sharing task force in Arizona, about 20km from the Mexico border. The force has roughly 300 military and civilian staff members who study the cartels — their leadership, logistics and financial operations — to feed intelligence to Mexican authorities.

The task force aided the raid on Oseguera Cervantes, the Times reported.

From 2008 to 2023, the US spent $US3.6 billion on bilateral security with Mexico. But it was not always so collaborative.

One classified US intelligence program investigated top targets in Mexico but kept the information from Mexican authorities. That secretive approach was partly validated when numerous Mexican officials were shown to be corrupted by the cartels.

John Feeley, a top US diplomat in Mexico from 2009 to 2012, said it appeared the tides were shifting. “The big difference always was that we never had full buy-in from the Mexicans,” he said.

The recent successes, he added, “show that, with Mexico at least, the United States needed to bring more pressure to bear to create the moment of political will.”

Still, Mexican authorities had tried to catch Oseguera Cervantes before. In 2012, he escaped when his cartel blocked roads with burning vehicles. In 2015, his gunmen shot down a Mexican military helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade, killing three soldiers.

Those were under more conservative presidents. Under Sheinbaum’s leftist predecessor and political benefactor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Oseguera Cervantes appeared to face less pursuit.

López Obrador’s “hugs not bullets” approach to solving Mexico’s violence by addressing root causes led to rising violence.

It also badly fractured the US-Mexico security relationship.

Two cartel bosses were caught under López Obrador’s watch. The first — Ovidio Guzmán López, a son of El Chapo and a leader of the Sinaloa cartel — was promptly released after his followers wreaked havoc in response to his capture.

The second — Ismael Zambada García, or El Mayo, a co-founder of the same cartel — was captured by U.S. authorities when they persuaded his ally to turn on him and take him to the United States.

Sheinbaum has proved to be a far more willing partner in the fight against the cartels.

“The question always was: Is Claudia going to emerge from AMLO’s shadow?” Feeley said, referring to López Obrador by his initials. “She has not only emerged, she has cut a level of security engagement from a whole new cloth.”

Now that Sheinbaum has eliminated Mexico’s most wanted cartel boss, will Trump lay off the threats?

On Monday morning — less than 24 hours after arguably Mexico’s biggest achievement in its cartel war in years — Trump posted a message online for his neighbor: “Mexico must step up their effort on Cartels and Drugs!”