CJNG future remains uncertain after El Mencho's death

Reporting and context

El País México examines the six months since the death of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as El Mencho, the founder and longtime leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. The report says he died during a military operation in Jalisco on February 22 and that the operation caused road blockades and fatalities among civilians and authorities. Since then, the article describes a continuing government offensive against the CJNG and arrests involving figures considered important to the group's network.

The report traces Oseguera's background in Aguililla, Michoacán, where historian Enrique Guerra Manzo describes the growth of marijuana and poppy cultivation after the postwar period. Guerra says Oseguera later crossed into the United States, was imprisoned in Texas from roughly 1991 to 1997 in a drug-related case, and eventually returned to Mexico. The article says he worked as a police officer in Tierra Caliente before joining the criminal conflicts that reshaped Michoacán and later building the CJNG through alliances, absorption of local structures and expansion into multiple states.

El País México says authorities have since detained figures including Audias Flores, known as El Jardinero, and Ramón Álvarez Ayala, while pursuing others. The article says Juan Carlos Valencia, Oseguera's stepson, is widely assumed in Mexico and the United States to have taken a leadership role, but presents that as an expectation rather than a settled succession. It concludes that the CJNG's future organization remains difficult to determine amid arrests, pressure from authorities and continuing volatility in Mexico's criminal landscape.