Well ....... before they killed el padrino!! ....pablo escabor !!!......the number one drug dealer ever!! .....he did warn the FBI.....CIA ,,,,,that mexico was not like colombia .....they have mayan blood ....and that is different kind of evil .....but they went ahead...... and killed him anyways ....and look now at mexico....... right on americas doorstep!!!!......annihilating ...people in a drug war .....the mexican cartels are a hyerbreed of evil .....they are not like old school rules....... like colombia they are just pure cold as ice ......colombians are just different culture .....oh well ....they were warned !!!!!!!!........
Dismembered bodies, kidnapped beauty queens & teens forced to eat victims’ hearts…Inside El Mencho’s evil Mexican cartel
CUDDLING his two children as he happily gazed into the camera, Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes appears like any doting father.
But the man pictured is one of Mexico’s most ruthless and barbaric drug lords, responsible for mass graves of dismembered rivals, shooting down military helicopters and forcing teen recruits to eat human hearts in a sick pledge of allegiance.
These are but a few of ultra-violent acts that characterised the 17 year reign of El Mencho, who was killed in a “clan decapitating” execution on Sunday.
The kingpin, 59, was fatally shot during a “planned and executed” operation to capture him by special forces backed by US intelligence in Tapalpa, Jalisco.
The reclusive head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), which were designated a terrorist organisation last year, had an £11.1million bounty on his head in the US.
The Mexican gang are a “key supplier of illicit fentanyl” in America as well as cocaine, methamphetamine and synthetic drugs and rake in “billions of dollars” annually according to the DEA.
Since the killing, scenes have been described as like a “warzone” with the CJNG conducting a series of “revenge attacks” for the hit.
More than 250 road blockades – obstructed with burning cars – have been reported, shops and petrol stations set alight, at least 20 bank raided and mass pillaging and looting continues.
A ‘code red’ warning has been issued in Jalisco meaning public transport has been paused, mass events cancelled and tourists have been warned to stay in their hotels.
It’s even feared the World Cup, which is due to be partly held in Guadalajara, may not be hosted in Mexico due to the increasing danger.
The escalating violence is a clear message according to Elijah Glantz, research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute – the UK’s leading independent defence and security think tank.
The CJNG are showing they are still in power, still in control and furious that authorities would dare to take such a step against them.
He tells us: “This violence means two things, one that the CJNG – that El Mencho was at the head of – are defending against external or internal pushes to seize their operations.
“There will be continued typical shows of forces, using the extreme violence they have used for the last decade in their rise to deter rivals, competitors or parties wishing to capitalise on their perceived weakness.
“Secondly, this will be a very interesting and violent dialogue – violence over words – with Mexican authorities for crossing the line by killing a cartel leader.
“This will either continue to spiral or they will find some sort of truce, that is yet to be seen. The wild card is that President Trump will be putting a lot of pressure to continue these types of operations.”
El Mencho founded the CJNG back in 2009 after the top leader of the Milenio Cartel, Óscar Orlando Nava Valencia, was arrested, along with other key figures.
What followed was a bloody battle to take the reins of Mexico’s drug trafficking. His ascension to the top took decades.
El Mencho became involved in crime aged 14, when he started guarding marijuana plantations – a mere four years after dropping out of primary school.
In his late teens, he was an illegally immigrant in the US, where he was known under at least five different aliases, and became more deeply involved in the drugs trade and production of methamphetamines.
Aged 19, El Mencho was convicted of handling stolen property and carrying a loaded gun in San Francisco and sentenced to three years in prison. After his release, he was deported.
Back on Mexican soil, he had a brief stint working for two police forces before returning to crime and becoming involved in the Milenio Cartel.
With a clear propensity for violence, he served as the ‘chief of hitmen’ for the gang – which had heavy ties to Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman’s Sinaloa Cartel.
35 bodies on busy highway
El Mencho had aspirations to rise and reached cartel leadership with “a strategy of marriage of diplomacy”, according to public security analyst David Saucedo.
In 1996, he married Rosalinda González Valencia, the sister of the Milenio Cartel’s leader, which brought him “the lineage he lacked” to rise up the ranks.
El Mencho would go on to oversee security and operational violence for the clan before reaching the top.
By 2009, following the arrest of Oscar Orlando, the Milenio faction had split into two. El Mencho, who ran ‘Los Mata Zetas’ – The Zeta Killers – would win the battle for dominance.
From that group, he formed the CJNG and this new cartel would become Mexico’s most violent in recent history.
In 2011, their first major ‘statement’ was dumping 35 bodies on a busy highway during rush hour. The victims, members of a rival gang, had been severely tortured.
The following year, the CJNG torched 37 cars to create blockades and allow El Mencho to evade an attempted arrest by police.
In 2015, violent warfare erupted as they took on authorities in response to another botched attempt to arrest El Mencho – leaving five police officers and three civilians dead.
In the subsequent attacks that same year, 15 cops were killed in the single deadliest attack on Mexico’s police since 2010 and his forces downed a military helicopter with a rocket propelled grenade launcher.
El Mencho ruled with an iron first and was unafraid of displays of extreme violence against rival gangs. In 2019, came the horrific discovery of 19 bodies.
Nine of the dead had been hung from a bridge, others were dismembered, decapitated and dumped nearby. A chilling note beside them read: “Be a patriot, kill a Viagra (the name of a rival gang)”.
Then in 2020, the CJNG carried out a daring assassination attempt on the-then chief of police using sniper rifles and grenades. Remarkably, the officer survived despite being shot three times.
The brutality even extended to El Mencho’s own recruits – some as young as 16 reported being ordered to eat the hearts of rivals they had killed as a test of their loyalty.
Meanwhile, the cartel continued to rake in billions from the drug trade – supplying to most South America and the US, where it’s known they have presence in all 50 states.
Beauty queen kidnap
In Ecuador, where the CJNC were at war with rival gang Los Choneros – headed by Jose ‘El Fito’ Macias – they resorted to a strong display of dominance to reassert their authority.
Under direct orders from El Mencho, the gang kidnapped El Fito’s beauty queen daughter, Michelle Macias, 19, and his niece Maria Villavicencio, 21.
The CJNC claimed responsibility for the attack and declared themselves the most powerful drug gang in leaflets distributed at a prison known to be ruled by Los Choneros.
The women, who were taken in 2021, were released after four days held captive in the mountains. Michelle later told reporters: “I thought they were going to kill us but thank God we are alive.”
In recent years, it would seem the net was closing in on El Mencho after a series of high-profile arrests – targeting the financial and operational side of his operation.
His brother Antonio, nicknamed ‘El Tony Montana’ after Scarface’s cocaine-loving villain, was extradited to the US last year.
Arrested during an army raid in 2023, he was the logistics operation – supplying weapons, laundering money and coordinating attacks against other cartels.
Then El Mencho’s son-in-law Cristian Gutiérrez, who had previously faked his own death, was jailed in California and his brother Abraham was recaptured in Mexico.
Both were key figures in money laundering, often using shell companies, estate transactions, buying properties and businesses to hide their ill-gotten gains.
Years earlier, in 2018, El Mencho’s ex wife Rosalinda, known as ‘La Jefa’ meaning ‘The Boss’, who was the financial chief of the CJNG, was arrested.
She’s faced numerous charges since relating to money laundering – including having helped to clean £37million for the cartel through 70 different firms in just over a year.
Kingpin strategy
Now Mexican special forces have cut off the head of the snake by killing El Mencho, but that doesn’t mean the drug trade will decrease – nor that the CJNG will fold.
But we’re likely to see a big increase in the already-violent scenes on the streets, according to Drugs expert Tony D’Agostino, TD Training & Consultancy LTD.
He tells us: There will certainly be a power vacuum. Without a clear successor, internal fights within the CJNG, rivalry with other groups and revenge attacks are likely in the coming weeks.
“What to watch for next is whether a successor emerges quickly or whether rival cartels try to carve up the territory and how far the government can exploit this moment to weaken the CJNG’s infrastructure.”
The CJNG, which the DEA believes consists of at least 90 organisations, has tentacles in many facets of Mexican life and has a hierarchy ready for if something goes wrong.
It’s not only involved in the drug trade but illegal mineral extraction, racketeering, runs scores of businesses to clean its money and has corrupted politicians, who are offered “money or lead” – meaning they comply with demands or die.
Elijah tells us: “I think unequivocally, all experts say this will not stop or stem the flow of drugs.
“We may see a week of slowing down in the supply lines to Europe and the Americas while there is reorganisation in the cartel and the violence in Mexico continues.”
“But by no means is the removal of a kingpin effective for reducing the drug trade. We have seen this with Mexico and South America before during the previous four decades.
“The kingpin strategy – if you remove the head of the snake, you get rid of the entire organisation, has long been heralded. However over many decades it has not yielded results.
“The ‘war on drugs’, militarised operations in Mexico and Colombia have all happened and the broad consensus is that it has not got us anywhere.”
