Guadalajara: The CJNG’s Operation

In *House Taken Over* (Casa Tomada)—the famous short story by Julio Cortázar—the occupants recount how they gradually lose rooms to enigmatic entities that never reveal their identities, yet possess sufficient power to seize control of the home. Much like in Cortázar’s story, the inhabitants of the Guadalajara metropolitan area have been steadily losing control of their living environment to a force that is amassing ever-greater power—a reality made starkly evident by the events of last February 22nd.

The violence unleashed by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) on that day was unprecedented, even if—due to cognitive dissonance—there is a tendency to downplay its gravity and view it merely as “just another narco-blockade” that paralyzed the city, much as others have done in the past. What was unequivocally demonstrated—when viewed through a realistic lens—is that the CJNG is a powerful paramilitary organization capable of bringing more than one state to the brink of collapse while destabilizing several others; capable of neutralizing security forces—resulting in the combat deaths of 26 of their personnel—and capable of instilling terror in millions of people.

Fifteen years ago—when it first emerged as an organization specializing in the production and distribution of methamphetamine—it would have been extremely difficult to attribute the events of that fateful day to it. What happened? How was such a transformation possible? The CJNG originated in that state, and it remains its primary base of operations; its organizational structure and operational methods are the result of a multi-year process, not a sudden innovation. In Jalisco, it found the necessary conditions and protection to evolve into what it is today, shrewdly exploiting the inhabitants’ deep-seated need for security and their punitive stance toward crime. Guadalajara is a spatially segregated and highly unequal society. This configuration serves the repressive model the group introduced to address insecurity, as it shifts the social costs—specifically, a vast number of disappeared persons—to the city’s periphery.

According to classic social contract theories, human beings transcend the “state of war of all against all” by relinquishing their right to use force and agreeing to cede that authority to an artificial entity—the State—which then assumes the responsibility of safeguarding their security. Broadly speaking, the strategy employed by Nemesio Oseguera, the leader of the CJNG, involved negotiating with state and municipal authorities to place this very function under his own control. He would appoint police commissioners and chiefs, pay off officers who collaborated with him, and deploy his armed wing—his *sicarios* (hitmen)—to serve as a shock force and extermination squad in the name of public safety. The CJNG thus transformed into a sort of private Leviathan, mobilizing in response to police emergencies while systematically murdering or “disappearing” the detainees handed over to it by law enforcement officers.

This organizational blueprint gradually spread across the municipalities of Jalisco, replicating itself downward to serve as a method of control at the level of individual towns, neighborhoods, and city districts. It is evident that this strategy afforded the CJNG a distinct strategic advantage over rival cartels and violent factions; it bolstered the security of its retail drug operations and enabled the group to cultivate a diverse portfolio of other illicit economies. It also granted him power and influence among political and business elites, as well as legitimacy in the eyes of the average citizen, thanks to the “pacification” he offers—a measure generally met with public approval.

The social costs of this macabre model of violent repression have been extraordinarily high. The number of missing persons began to skyrocket, propelling Jalisco to the top spot nationwide. The impact was felt immediately by those unfortunate enough to fit the criteria deemed “eligible” by police officers and hitmen; however, as the model took root both within and beyond Jalisco’s borders, the demand for hitmen began to be met by forced recruits—individuals who, in turn, became subjects of their own missing-person reports.

More than five million people reside in the Guadalajara metropolitan area—primarily in Zapopan, Guadalajara, and Tlajomulco de Zúñiga—the three most populous of the ten municipalities that comprise the region. It is a dynamic metropolis, boasting industrial and tourism sectors robust enough to rank it among the nation’s leaders, alongside a diverse array of educational, medical, and recreational services. By Latin American standards, it is a modern city. Yet, beneath its veneer of a peaceful and prosperous urban center, Guadalajara is a place dominated by violence—violence largely attributable to the CJNG. Statistics regarding intentional homicides and missing persons serve as a stark warning regarding the true scale of this crisis. Over the past eight years, 10,004 criminal investigations into intentional homicide have been opened; additionally, the whereabouts of 7,274 individuals remain unknown—accounting for nearly half of the missing persons across the entire state, where the total figure now exceeds 16,000. Almost all of the missing are men (nine out of every ten), and the majority are under the age of 35. But this represents only a fraction of the story. The violence is also starkly evident in the hundreds of clandestine graves discovered since 2018—most of them located within the metropolitan area—from which over 2,000 bodies have been exhumed. Identifying these remains can take years, thereby exacerbating a forensic crisis that has become deeply systemic. Extreme violence does not end there; it possesses “epidemic mechanisms of contagion and propagation,” as Bergman aptly notes regarding criminality. 1 In early 2023, in a town near Guadalajara, an armed individual murdered his partner and his mother-in-law inside a prosecutor’s office because they had gone there to report him for domestic violence. Femicides, gender-based violence, and sexual abuse have seen troubling surges in recent years—to which must be added countless cases of severe injury and torture. 

In Guadalajara, intentional homicides and reports of disappearances have shown a strong correlation over time (r ≈ 0.7513); that is, they rise or fall more or less in tandem. Their geographic distribution is not arbitrary, either: they tend to form hotspots of violence, sometimes spanning across several adjacent neighborhoods or districts. In the southern part of the city—specifically in Tlajomulco—the polygon formed by Hacienda Santa Fe, Villa Fontana Aqua, Chulavista, and Lomas del Mirador stands out. Meanwhile, to the southwest—in Zapopan—the cluster formed by Miramar, Santa Ana Tepatitlán, and Arenales Tapatíos is particularly prominent. To the east—in San Pedro Tlaquepaque—the neighborhood housing the *Nueva Central Camionera* (New Central Bus Station) is especially notable; this is a location where dozens of young people traveling from other states—often under deceptive criminal recruitment schemes—have vanished without a trace. Far to the west and northwest of the city—also in Zapopan—San Juan de Ocotán, Jardines del Valle, and Valle de los Molinos stand out as neighborhoods that, despite not bordering one another, account for a high concentration of cases. The first of these—San Juan de Ocotán—is a hotspot partly because individuals traveling to or from Puerto Vallarta, Nayarit, and Sinaloa have gone missing at the bus terminal located there.

These highly violent enclaves did not emerge by chance. They are inextricably linked to far-reaching processes of spatial segregation. One such process is the divide separating the city’s eastern sector from its western sector in terms of income levels, urban infrastructure, and social status.3 Residents of the western sector generally enjoy a higher quality of life and inhabit safer environments. In areas where the frenzy of real estate development has not yet encroached upon established middle-class residential zones, a distinct area persists where the incidence of disappearances approaches zero and the rate of other crimes remains low. The situation is starkly different in the eastern sector of the city—east of Calzada Independencia—where violence becomes increasingly concentrated as one moves outward toward the periphery. This urban divide is not new; it can be traced back to the city’s founding in the 16th century and persists today as a lingering ripple of structural violence. Yet, it is not the only one. Superimposed upon this ancient social fissure is a new one—one that generally aligns with the perimeter avenue encircling the city. Starting from the city center, one need only cross this vehicular artery to observe—at many points along the way—abrupt shifts in the intensity of violence. The setting for this phenomenon consists of housing developments that sprang up at the turn of the century—many of them the result of disastrous urbanization and housing policies. Tlajomulco stands as a dramatic case in point.

In the early 2000s, within the “Valle” zone of this municipality, thousands of tiny social-interest homes were built in just a few years—without any guarantee of essential services such as water, electricity, transportation, education, or public safety. Many people purchased these homes due to their low cost, access to soft loans, and the dream of homeownership. However, they soon realized they had fallen victim to a large-scale scam and began to leave. The number of abandoned homes multiplied, which, in turn, accelerated the exodus. Over the years, the total has swelled to more than 70,000 abandoned units—many of which have been turned into garbage dumps, criminal hideouts, or clandestine burial sites. Poverty, overcrowding, school dropout rates, unemployment, precarious work conditions, addiction, and violence define the daily lives of many residents there—creating what Göran Therborn terms a vast “extermination field of inequality.” It comes as no surprise that one of the driving forces behind the violence fueled by the CJNG is rooted in this very place. Many of the cartel’s hitmen hail from this area—as do their victims. Of the 228 clandestine graves discovered in Jalisco over the past eight years, 91 were located in Tlajomulco. Not all of them, however, can be attributed to the CJNG. Murder and forced disappearance have become routine practices serving many purposes—even trivial ones. On March 3rd, for example, the collective *Guerreros Buscadores de Jalisco* reported that they had located buried remains inside an abandoned home. They belonged to an Uber driver who had ventured out to provide a ride four years earlier and subsequently went missing.

The disappearance of individuals is not confined to the city’s outskirts; it extends throughout the entire urban sprawl, driven by various economic and political objectives. It is important to note that many disappearances go unreported—either because families are pressured not to file a report, or because the victim is released after a few hours or days. The CJNG has resorted to both of these tactics extensively in order to seize control of—and expand—various illicit economies. A significant number of cases are concentrated around the distribution and sale of narcotics. By the mid-2010s, this cartel had secured a monopoly on retail drug sales within the city—insofar as such a monopoly is ever truly attainable—and has since defended it with brutal force, particularly against incursions by rival cartels. Disappearances have also been documented in connection with the theft and illicit trade of fuel; the dispossession of real estate assets; the fraud and extortion of timeshare owners in coastal areas; the theft of vehicles and other goods under the guise of purchasing them; and—though this list is by no means exhaustive—to safeguard the operation of slot machines, which are now ubiquitous throughout the city.

The disappearance of individuals has also been employed to eliminate or intimidate political opponents. Regarding the disappearance of approximately eighty protesters demonstrating against the murder of Giovanni López and against police brutality in June 2020—an incident perpetrated by agents of the Attorney General’s Office—one must not rule out the involvement of the CJNG, as alleged by then-Governor Enrique Alfaro. While the exact figures remain unknown, there have undoubtedly been instances of unlawful detention that did not result in the permanent disappearance of politicians, but rather in their forced abandonment of their political careers. This is the method allegedly utilized by the now-incarcerated former mayor of Tequila to influence the outcome of the 2021 elections—a fact suggesting that this tactic has been in use for some time. Through a review of judicial proceedings, formal complaints, and interviews, it has been documented that disappearances also serve to intimidate or eliminate individuals who commit theft, abuse their partners, engage in child abuse, or simply disturb the public order. In a historic neighborhood in central Guadalajara, an armed squad raided a home in 2021 and forcibly abducted a 42-year-old man along with three of his children—one of whom was a minor. When I investigated the site three years later to uncover the motives behind the disappearance, the case pointed to the sale of drugs unauthorized by the CJNG, but also to the neighbors’ exasperation with the family’s behavior. One neighbor even expressed great satisfaction regarding their disappearance.

It remains uncertain how the CJNG will reorganize following the killing of its leader, though it is unlikely that this event will alter the manner in which the cartel has operated within the city of Guadalajara. The repressive model that “El Mencho” established there as the core of his operations is highly profitable for the cartel; furthermore, despite the humanitarian crisis it has unleashed, there appears to be no firm opposition—whether from the government or the citizenry—to its continued existence. As long as the social costs of this violence continue to be absorbed by the marginalized neighborhoods on the city’s periphery, the average resident of western Guadalajara will likely remain indifferent; and should they take notice, they may well conclude that if someone disappears, it is simply because they deserved it.

Source: nexos