There have been instances all through historical past when a single occasion is so vital that it snowballs into worldwide information. Consider the autumn of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the 9/11 terrorist assaults or the killing of Osama bin Laden a decade later.
For Mexico, the killing of drug lord Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, in any other case often known as El Mencho, in a Mexican safety operation within the state of Jalisco final weekend was definitely a type of moments. The profitable concentrating on of Mexico’s most violent and highly effective narcotrafficker is arguably the nation’s largest tactical success since safety forces recaptured the notorious Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán a decade in the past.
But in a merciless twist of irony, Mencho’s demise might additionally make the issue of narcotrafficking even worse than it’s as we speak.
Mencho was the definition of a brutal felony who took no mercy on his enemies. Like El Chapo earlier than him, Mencho grew up poor in a rural space. He migrated to america in the Nineteen Eighties, solely to be arrested 3 times on drug costs, jailed in a California penitentiary for 3 years and deported again to Mexico within the early Nineteen Nineties. Again in his house nation, he joined the native police power, rapidly connected together with his brother-in-law Abigael González Valencia, who was a significant participant within the drug commerce and rose up the ladder of the so-called Milenio Cartel.
After the cartel’s management was decapitated by Mexican safety forces, Mencho took issues into his personal palms by creating a brand new faction that may come to be often known as the Jalisco New Era Cartel (CJNG). In a couple of quick years, this felony group started to rival El Chapo’s Sinaloa Cartel, solely to surpass it after Chapo’s former group went to conflict towards itself in 2024.
Pyrrhic victory
As one would possibly anticipate, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is in a contented temper nowadays. Not solely is the nation’s most harmful felony neutralized, however the daring operation helps bolster her case that Mexico is heeding President Donald Trump’s calls for to behave extra aggressively towards the nation’s felony networks. Sheinbaum has gone to nice lengths to cater to the Trump administration’s expectations by green-lighting further CIA air surveillance in cartel-infested areas, permitting a small detachment of U.S. navy advisers into the nation for workouts and sending greater than 90 high-profile drug operatives to america for prosecution.
A type of operatives was none apart from Mencho’s brother. Cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico on counter-narcotics operations has additionally been beefed up; the White Home confirmed that america assisted the Mexican military with intelligence throughout Mencho’s tried seize.
That’s all excellent news. Nonetheless, it’s arduous to have a good time when information of Mencho’s dying was eclipsed by the CJNG’s retaliation, which was quick, chaotic and lethal. Cartel gunmen basically turned a major chunk of Mexico into conflict zones, blocking highways with the stays of charred automobiles, torching comfort shops, forcing vacationers within the picturesque metropolis of Puerto Vallarta into lockdown and introducing some mayhem in Guadalajara, one among Mexico’s largest cities. A minimum of 25 Mexican troopers had been killed within the ensuing retaliation. The U.S. Embassy in Mexico Metropolis suggested Individuals within the nation to shelter in place.
Unhealthy precedents
This isn’t the primary time Mexico has taken a drug lord off the sphere, solely to find in brief time that decapitating a cartel’s management doesn’t robotically translate into the group’s collapse. And even when it had been to, rival teams would search to use the scenario by filling the vacuum, cornering extra of the profitable drug commerce and carving out their very own empires. Therein lies the issue with a war-on-drugs mentality: Whereas this method can ship headline-grabbing wins for governments and supply politicians with some optimistic good points within the polls, the sense of victory lasts for under a short time. Ultimately, felony organizations will adapt to guard their equities in a billion-dollar market, use ever larger ranges of violence towards the state and additional fracture an already sophisticated cartel panorama.
One doesn’t have to look very far for an instance. After one among El Chapo’s sons conspired to kidnap Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a prime chief within the Sinaloa Cartel, in the summertime of 2024, your entire group descended right into a civil conflict that continues to this present day. With their chief detained, El Mayo’s sicarios, or hit males, declared conflict towards supporters of Chapo’s sons in an try and actual vengeance for the treachery and strengthen their very own place within the wider group. The end result has been a massacre within the state of Sinaloa, with hundreds killed, hundreds extra lacking and the violence reaching such heights that the Mexican authorities appears to be like hopeless, if not hapless.
The ethical of the story: If you lower off the pinnacle of the octopus, the tentacles go uncontrolled.
It’s far too early to foretell whether or not the CJNG will descend into civil conflict like its rival Sinaloa. Ordinarily, one among Mencho’s siblings or sons would take over to make sure a easy transition, however all of them are locked up. If the Mexican authorities had been good, it could put together for a scenario during which Mencho’s lieutenants flip their weapons on one another in a bid to change into the brand new boss. On this state of affairs, the CJNG would fracture into smaller, warring factions, producing extra obscene ranges of bloodshed as potential replacements attempt to show their mettle. This could be the precise reverse of what Sheinbaum and Mexico want proper now, significantly when Trump continues to deliver up the thought of deploying the U.S. navy to do the job.
How the Mexican authorities navigates this difficult interval might decide if the Mencho operation was a hopeful turning level or merely a momentary success.
Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Protection Priorities and a overseas affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune. ©2026 Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Tribune Content material Company.
