There have been occasions 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 called El Mencho, in a Mexican safety operation within the state of Jalisco final weekend was actually a type of moments. The profitable concentrating on of Mexico’s most violent and highly effective narcotrafficker is arguably the nation’s greatest 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 the USA in the 1980s, solely to be arrested thrice on drug fees, jailed in a California penitentiary for 3 years and deported again to Mexico within the early Nineties. Again in his house nation, he joined the native police drive and rapidly attached along 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 arms by creating a new faction that will come to be often called the Jalisco New Technology Cartel (CJNG). In a number 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 struggle towards itself in 2024.
As one may anticipate, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is in a contented temper as of late. 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 greenlighting extra 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 the USA for prosecution. A kind of operatives was none other than Mencho’s brother. Cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico on counternarcotics operations has additionally been beefed up; the White Home confirmed that the USA assisted the Mexican army with intelligence throughout Mencho’s tried seize.
That’s all excellent news. Nonetheless, it’s onerous to have fun when information of Mencho’s loss of life was eclipsed by the CJNG’s retaliation, which was quick, chaotic and lethal. Cartel gunmen primarily turned a big chunk of Mexico into struggle 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 in every of Mexico’s greatest cities. A minimum of 25 Mexican troopers had been killed within the ensuing retaliation. The U.S. Embassy in Mexico Metropolis suggested People within the nation to shelter in place.
This isn’t the primary time Mexico has taken a drug lord off the sector, solely to find briefly time that decapitating a cartel’s management doesn’t mechanically translate into the group’s collapse. And even when it had been to, rival teams would search to use the state of affairs 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 strategy can ship headline-grabbing wins for governments and supply politicians with some optimistic features within the polls, the sense of victory lasts for under a short time. Ultimately, criminal organizations will adapt to guard their equities in a billion-dollar market, use ever higher 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 in every of El Chapo’s sons conspired to kidnap Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a prime chief within the Sinaloa Cartel, in the summertime of 2024, the whole group descended right into a civil struggle that continues to this present day. With their chief detained, El Mayo’s sicarios, or hit males, declared struggle towards supporters of Chapo’s sons in an try to precise 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 seems to be hopeless, if not hapless.
The ethical of the story: Once you reduce 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 struggle like its rival Sinaloa. Ordinarily, one in every of Mencho’s siblings or sons would take over to make sure a clean transition, however all of them are locked up. If the Mexican authorities had been good, it will put together for a state of affairs wherein Mencho’s lieutenants flip their weapons on one another in a bid to turn out to be the brand new boss. On this situation, the CJNG would fracture into smaller, warring factions, producing extra obscene ranges of bloodshed as potential replacements attempt to show their mettle. This may be the precise reverse of what Sheinbaum and Mexico want proper now, notably when Trump continues to deliver up the concept of deploying the U.S. navy to do the job.
How the Mexican authorities navigates this difficult interval could decide if the Mencho operation was a hopeful turning level or merely a momentary success.
