Mexican drug lord Nemesio Oseguera, generally identified as ‘El Mencho,’ notorious for the bloody path of our bodies he left behind in battles with authorities forces and rival gangs, died in a navy raid on Sunday (February 22, 2026). An ex-police officer, Oseguera, 60, was the shadowy chief of the highly effective Jalisco New Era Cartel (CJNG), a global felony enterprise extensively seen as one in every of Mexico’s strongest. Over a comparatively quick time frame, Oseguera masterminded the CJNG’s emergence as a felony empire rivaling his former allies within the Sinaloa Cartel. He managed to evade arrest for years regardless of a $15 million bounty from the U.S. for data resulting in his arrest or seize.
CJNG has been blamed for smuggling huge portions of medicine into the U.S., together with the artificial opioid fentanyl, which has been linked to tons of of 1000’s of overdose deaths lately.
“Other than the heads of the Sinaloa cartel, ‘El Mencho’ has been the most important prize for a lot of, a few years,” mentioned Vanda Felbab-Brown, a safety professional and senior fellow on the Brookings Establishment.
“And it’s actually gorgeous, identical to the heads of the Sinaloa cartel, how lengthy he managed to evade U.S. and Mexican regulation enforcement gunning for him.”
Beheadings
Arguably Mexico’s most influential crime boss after captured kingpin Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, now in a U.S. jail, Oseguera diversified into rackets resembling stolen gasoline, pressured labor and human trafficking.
However in contrast to Guzman, who turned a media movie star, El Mencho most popular to stay in relative obscurity. He achieved notoriety for expletive-laden recordings leaked on social media wherein he threatened enemies and officers. Oseguera was additionally identified for evading seize in spectacular trend. In Might 2015, as Mexican forces closed in on him, his tipped-off henchmen shot down a navy helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade to present their boss time to flee.
Targets of his hit males have been not often so fortunate. His gang routinely employed beheadings and different gory technique of intimidation.
In a single six-week interval in 2015, the gang killed two dozen police in western Mexico as a warning to authorities.
In 2020, Mexico Metropolis’s then chief of police Omar Garcia Harfuch survived an assassination try that killed two of his bodyguards in an assault authorities blamed on the Jalisco New Era Cartel. Harfuch is now the nation’s safety chief and helped oversee the operation towards Oseguera.
Oseguera was born in 1966 in a poor village within the mountains of the rugged and notoriously lawless western state of Michoacan. There, cultivation of opium poppies and marijuana have competed with avocado manufacturing for many years.
As a boy, he labored the fields, and later went to hunt his fortune within the U.S., the place prosecutors mentioned he received into the heroin commerce. After a couple of years, he was arrested and served time in a U.S. jail.
He was deported again to Mexico, the place he joined the police earlier than getting into the Milenio Cartel, a satellite tv for pc of the Sinaloa Cartel. Finally, he turned a high enforcer after stints as a sicario, or cartel murderer.
After a failed try at taking up the Milenio Cartel, he struck out alone, declared conflict on Sinaloa, and based the CJNG in alliance with a neighborhood gang of cash launderers.
The cartel is known as for the western state of Jalisco, house to 1 of Mexico’s largest cities, Guadalajara. The CJNG blended Sinaloa-style drug trafficking and group outreach with the ultra-violent strategies of the Zetas Cartel, a gang that used paramilitary techniques to diversify into felony enterprises resembling extortion and kidnapping.
For years, Oseguera paid off police to cowl his again as he operated with near-total impunity inside Jalisco. He additionally sought political safety.
“El Mencho’s Jalisco New Era Cartel was one of many largest patrons of politicians and political campaigns, which has given it an unlimited social base,” mentioned Edgardo Buscaglia, an organized crime professional at Columbia College.
Noting El Mencho’s potential to win public assist, Buscaglia pointed to footage broadcast in the course of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic of individuals lining up for CJNG-stamped meals packages handed out by cartel gunmen, not authorities employees, to assist cushion the financial blow of lockdowns.
“In comparison with the Mexican authorities,” mentioned Buscaglia, “he was the least unhealthy choice.”
Printed – February 23, 2026 06:39 am IST