On the morning of February 22, 2026, Mexican Army special forces descended on a gated residential community in Tapalpa, Jalisco, acting on surveillance that had tracked a trusted associate to a property inside. The man they were looking for was Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes — known to the world as “El Mencho” — the founder and supreme commander of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the most wanted criminal in both Mexico and the United States, and the architect of what had become the most powerful and violent drug trafficking organization in the Western Hemisphere.
El Mencho was seriously wounded during the operation and died from injuries sustained while being transported to Mexico City for medical treatment. Within hours, his cartel — trained for exactly this contingency — responded with a show of force that paralyzed much of the country.
Cartel gunmen hijacked and burned vehicles, attacked gas stations and small businesses, deployed tire spikes on roadways, and engaged security forces in multiple armed confrontations across 22 Mexican states. Multiple airlines cancelled flights into Puerto Vallarta, Guadalajara, and Mazatlán. The violence killed at least 25 National Guard members in the first days alone.
The tactical operation had succeeded. The strategic question — what happens next — remains unanswered.
The Man Who Built an Empire
To understand the significance of El Mencho’s death, it is necessary to understand what he built and how.
Born into poverty in Michoacán, El Mencho dropped out of primary school before immigrating illegally to the United States in the 1980s. After multiple arrests and deportations, he returned to Mexico and worked his way up through the Milenio Cartel before founding the CJNG following the arrest and death of several of his superiors.
What he created was unlike any previous Mexican criminal organization. Where the Sinaloa Cartel under El Chapo relied on corruption, bribery, and tactical restraint to maintain power, El Mencho built the CJNG on spectacular violence — public executions, attacks on military helicopters with rocket-propelled grenades, drone warfare, and a brand of brutality designed to make the cost of resistance feel unsurvivable. From its origins, the CJNG relied on high-visibility, spectacular violence as a central branding and intimidation tactic. This reliance on spectacle was organizationally embedded, not incidental.
The results were staggering. The Mexican government estimates that El Mencho’s organization accumulated approximately $50 billion in total assets, and the killing of El Mencho is considered the most significant elimination of a cartel leader since Pablo Escobar.
A Broken Line of Succession
The central problem facing the CJNG in El Mencho’s aftermath is one he could not solve in life: there is no clear heir.
With his son Rubén Oseguera González — known as “El Menchito” — imprisoned in the United States for life on drug trafficking charges, the line of direct family succession was broken before El Mencho died. Security consultant David Saucedo told CNN that this left the CJNG with a major power vacuum, with no family member positioned to assume uncontested control.
The most discussed candidate is El Mencho’s stepson, Juan Carlos Valencia González, known as “El 03” — a 41-year-old California-born U.S. citizen who has served as a regional leader within the cartel and is the primary commander of the “Grupo de Elite,” the CJNG’s most heavily armed and militarily trained enforcement wing. The Wall Street Journal reported, citing U.S. and Mexican government sources, that Valencia González has emerged as the de facto leader following El Mencho’s death.
But analysts urge caution about treating that designation as settled. Saucedo has argued that Valencia González would have little incentive to publicly assume the top leadership role, since doing so would immediately make him the primary target of both U.S. and Mexican law enforcement. “A collective, temporary leadership would have been better so that the cap is not concentrated on one individual,” Saucedo told Anadolu Agency.
Mexico’s Security Minister Omar García Harfuch confirmed publicly that authorities had identified four “strong” regional leaders within the CJNG and were closely monitoring two of them as the most likely successors, without naming either.
The known candidates discussed by security analysts include Ricardo Ruiz Velasco, alias “El Doble R,” described as a generator of large-scale violence; Hugo Gonzalo Mendoza Gaytán, alias “El Sapo,” linked to forced recruitment and torture camps; Audias Flores Silva, alias “El Jardinero,” a powerful regional commander; and Heraclio Guerrero Martínez, alias “Tío Lako.”
The U.S. Director of National Intelligence has confirmed $5 million bounties on both “El Pelon” and “El Jardinero.”
Three Possible Futures
Security analysts tracking the CJNG’s trajectory have outlined three scenarios for the cartel’s future, each with distinct implications for Mexico, the United States, and the broader region.
The first is consolidation. A single successor — most likely Valencia González — unifies the cartel’s regional commanders under a new central leadership structure, preserves existing trafficking agreements, and maintains operational discipline. Violence subsides to pre-February levels after a period of internal adjustment. This is the scenario most favorable to stability, and also the one that would allow the CJNG to continue operating largely as it did under El Mencho.
The second is fragmentation. Without a figure of El Mencho’s personal authority to hold the cartel’s semi-autonomous regional factions together, the CJNG fractures along geographic and factional lines. Unlike the Sinaloa Cartel, which fractured along family lines, El Mencho led an organization with a large number of high-ranking figures who lack blood ties. Powerful commanders such as El Jardinero and El Doble R each control highly capable, geographically separated factions that do not necessarily rely on one another for operational survival.
Fragmentation would likely produce a sustained wave of internal violence as factions compete for territorial control, route access, and the cartel’s financial infrastructure.
The third scenario, outlined by analysts, is the most strategically significant. President Claudia Sheinbaum, emboldened by the success of the operation against El Mencho, could leverage the military forces already deployed across multiple states and press the operational advantage against a momentarily disorganized CJNG. While risky, continuing to press ahead in a window of cartel vulnerability could yield important territorial gains that a simple kingpin removal would not.
This scenario carries the highest short-term risk of violence but the greatest potential for durable disruption to the cartel’s structure.
What History Suggests
Mexico has been here before — not with El Mencho specifically, but with the fundamental question of whether removing a cartel’s leader produces lasting security gains or simply reshuffles the criminal hierarchy.
The removal of El Chapo produced a catastrophic internal war within the Sinaloa Cartel between the Chapitos and the Mayiza factions — a conflict that is still ongoing and has killed thousands. The arrest of El Mayo Zambada in 2024 deepened that rupture rather than resolving it. The death of Arturo Beltrán Leyva in 2009 produced a similarly violent succession crisis that reshaped criminal geography across multiple states.
The most important variable in each historical case was whether the state used the moment of leadership disruption to assert territorial control, or whether security forces simply declared victory and withdrew.
Mexico’s long-term response to organized crime must remain multidimensional — combining targeted operations against leadership with sustained territorial presence, judicial reform, and the kind of anti-corruption work that prevents cartel networks from simply reconstituting themselves around new leadership.
Removing a single leader, no matter how notorious, is not sufficient to unwind a group as wealthy, well-armed, and brutal as the CJNG. Up to 99% of violent crimes in Mexico go unsolved — a figure that reflects the depth of institutional corruption and impunity that cartels exploit to survive leadership transitions.
The Stakes for the Region
The CJNG’s succession crisis does not stop at Mexico’s borders. The cartel’s operational network stretches across more than 40 countries, with active cells in at least 20 U.S. states.
The death of El Mencho could trigger a domino effect in Latin American countries that are part of the CJNG’s cocaine production, transit, and export network — particularly Ecuador and Colombia, where competition over routes and port access could intensify as the Sinaloa Cartel and its regional partners seek to reconfigure territories left vulnerable by CJNG’s internal disruption.
For U.S. border security, the short-term risk is clear: when a cartel like the CJNG feels cornered, it typically increases smuggling activity to fund internal conflicts and distract authorities. Splinter groups emerging from succession battles tend to act more unpredictably than centralized command structures, raising the risk of fentanyl shipment spikes and armed confrontations near the border.
For the diaspora communities across Miami and South Florida who maintain deep ties to Mexico, Central America, and the broader region, the CJNG’s power vacuum is not an abstraction. It is the force that determines whether communities in Jalisco, Michoacán, Guanajuato, and beyond experience a period of reduced violence — or whether the next few months bring the kind of factional bloodletting that followed every previous major cartel leadership transition.
El Mencho is buried in a golden casket in Zapopan. His cartel is still standing. Who commands it next will shape the security landscape of the Americas for years to come, if the organization withstands dismantlement at the hands of regional governments.
Sociedad Media will continue to track developments in the CJNG succession and the broader regional security implications of Mexico’s cartel landscape. For tips or story leads, contact the outlet at info@sociedadmedia.com
