{"id":485732,"date":"2026-02-23T13:29:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T13:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/485732\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T13:29:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T13:29:12","slug":"who-was-nemesio-el-mencho-oseguera-cervantes-the-feared-leader-of-jalisco-new-generation-cartel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/485732\/","title":{"rendered":"Who was Nemesio \u2018El Mencho\u2019 Oseguera Cervantes, the feared leader of Jalisco New Generation Cartel?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Nemesio \u201cEl Mencho\u201d<\/a> Oseguera Cervantes was a feared Mexican drug lord and the leader of a ruthless cartel accused of masterminding efforts to push fentanyl into the United States.\n <\/p>\n

\n Once a police officer, Oseguera went on to become one of the world\u2019s most wanted fugitives, with the United States alone offering a $15 million bounty for information leading to his arrest.\n <\/p>\n

\n Oseguera, who formed and led the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), was an elusive figure who had been considered Mexico\u2019s most powerful cartel boss since Sinaloa kingpin Joaqu\u00edn \u201cEl Chapo\u201d Guzm\u00e1n was arrested last decade.\n <\/p>\n

\n Born in July 1966 in the western state of Michoac\u00e1n, Oseguera later moved to the US and was deeply involved in drug trafficking from the 1990s, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). In 1994, he was convicted in California for conspiracy to distribute heroin and served three years in a US prison.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n After he returned to Mexico, he worked as a police officer in the western state of Jalisco but soon resumed his criminal activities, building his influence in the shadowy world of narcotics and rising to become the head of one of the country\u2019s most powerful and ruthless criminal empires.\n <\/p>\n

\n Wanted by authorities in Mexico and the US, Oseguera or \u201cEl Mencho\u201d kept a low profile \u2013 so much so that only a handful of photographs of him exist.\n <\/p>\n

\n His death on Sunday <\/a>in a Mexican military operation in Tapalpa, in the western coastal state of Jalisco, has triggered widespread unrest across parts of the country.\n <\/p>\n

\n Oseguera had a long career in brutality before forming CJNG. For a time, he served as chief of hitmen, or key enforcer, for the Milenio Cartel, before overseeing security and operational violence for the famed Sinaloa Cartel, whose former leader Guzm\u00e1n is serving a life sentence in a US prison.\n <\/p>\n

\n According to the DEA, CJNG emerged in the 2010s from the remnants of the Milenio Cartel, which splintered amid a power vacuum after its leader \u00d3scar Nava Valencia was captured in 2009.\n <\/p>\n

\n Oseguera built the group with Abigael Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia, leader of Los Cuinis \u2013 a family-based cartel operating in Michoac\u00e1n, which served as the financial and logistical arm of CJNG and oversaw its \u201cdiverse network of money laundering operations,\u201d according to the DEA.\n <\/p>\n

\n But it was only through marriage to Abigael\u2019s sister, Rosalinda Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia, that Oseguera gained real influence in the new entity.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIn reality, El Mencho reached the cartel\u2019s leadership through a strategy of diplomacy via marriage,\u201d public security analyst David Saucedo told CNN en Espa\u00f1ol. \u201cHe was indeed the chief of hitmen for \u2018Nacho\u2019 Coronel (a Sinaloa Cartel leader), but he lacked the lineage that Rosalinda, his wife, possessed,\u201d Saucedo added.\n <\/p>\n

\n The burgeoning cartel quickly grew its sphere of influence to claim a significant presence across Mexico and became a key player in the global drug trade.\n <\/p>\n

\n It is a brutally violent operation responsible for assassination attempts on Mexican government officials and homicides against rival trafficking groups and Mexican law enforcement officers, according to the US State Department.\n <\/p>\n

\n The cartel demonstrated its firepower in May 2015, when it responded to a security operation with simultaneous roadblocks across several municipalities and shot down a military helicopter. Three soldiers were killed in the clashes.\n <\/p>\n

\n The following year, the gang was credited with a brazen kidnapping of Guzman\u2019s son<\/a> from a trendy restaurant in Puerto Vallarta. He was released a week later.\n <\/p>\n

\n It wasn\u2019t long before the DEA added El Mencho to its most wanted list.\n <\/p>\n

\"Nemesio<\/p>\n

\n CJNG is heavily involved in the production and trafficking of methamphetamine and fentanyl, with links to suppliers of chemical precursors in China, and controls several seaports for importing chemicals, according to US authorities.\n <\/p>\n

\n The cartel is \u201ca key supplier of illicit fentanyl\u201d to the US, reaping \u201cbillions of dollars in profit,\u201d as well being one of the main suppliers of cocaine, according to the DEA.\n <\/p>\n

\"National<\/p>\n

\n The group has contacts in over 40 countries, including the Americas, as well as in Australia, China and Southeast Asia, according to the US State Department.\n <\/p>\n

\n Mexico had been under pressure from US President Donald Trump to do more to limit the flow of drugs to the US.\n <\/p>\n

\n The US designated CJNG as a terrorist organization in February 2025, and Oseguera had already been indicted multiple times in the United States, including being charged in 2022 with conspiracy to manufacture and distribute methamphetamine, cocaine and fentanyl for importation into the United States.\n <\/p>\n

\n The death of \u201cEl Mencho\u201d on Sunday has created turmoil across the country. But it won\u2019t necessarily cripple the JNGC\u2019s multi-billion drug trade.\n <\/p>\n

\n The DEA says the gang is structured like a franchise business, and according to Eduardo Guerrero, director of Mexican consulting group Lantia Intelligence, it is composed of around 90 organizations.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThis fragmentation has meant that you\u2019ll need a more complex, more sophisticated strategy to weaken and dismember them,\u201d Guerrero told CNN earlier this year.\n <\/p>\n

\n The Mexican military and police, backed by US intelligence and equipment have tried taking out kingpins before. But others emerged to take their place, and tons of drugs continued to flow over the US border.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nemesio \u201cEl Mencho\u201d Oseguera Cervantes was a feared Mexican drug lord and the leader of a ruthless cartel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":485733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-485732","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}