Unrest in Mexico has made headlines after the killing of one of the country’s top crime bosses led to buildings being set alight, roadblocks being set across 20 states and cartel violence in the streets.
Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho”, was killed by authorities on Sunday, leading to uproar from his loyalists.
Oseguera was killed by Mexican special forces during a military operation to arrest him in Talpapa, southern Jalisco, on Sunday. Military forces were sent in to capture El Mencho, and his allies attempted to fight them off. He was killed during the operation, authorities confirmed.
In the wake of his removal, chaos and violence have flooded the streets of eight different states, from tourist spots Puerto Vallarta to Guerrero, Tamaulipas, Mexico City and crucially, in Jalisco’s capital Guadalajara – one of the venues for the upcoming Fifa World Cup.
Mexico will host four group matches of the upcoming tournament at the Estadio Akron, the stadium home to Mexican club Chivas de Guadalajara.
But since the death of El Mencho, traffic on the streets leading to the stadium are in disarray, from roadblocks to burning buses and taxis being commandeered. Commercial stores of all sizes have also been targeted by cartel destruction and arson attacks, from corner shops to Costco in Puerto Vallarta. This is a common tactic known as “narcobloqueos”.
The chaos has been met with questions about how Mexican authorities will keep football fans safe this summer. Football matches in the region have already been affected by the violence: both Sunday’s Clásico Nacional match, and a men’s Liga MX contest over 200 miles away in Querétaro were postponed.
Last November, Jurgen Mainka, Fifa’s executive director in Mexico addressed the topic of World Cup safety: ”Fifa’s Mexico office has been working for three years with the federal government, and all levels of the government, on the topic of security,
“We’re very sure, very confident that all the protocols and all the plans that are being implemented for the World Cup will give us the security framework necessary for all fans, all teams and all referees in 2026.”
In the wake of Sunday’s unrest, the city launched a red alert protocol, alongside a security alert from Washington, warning tourists from the US to shelter in place.
Who was El Mencho and how was he killed?
Oseguera, 59, was the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which operates from the western state of Michoacán and is notorious for its huge, military-style arsenal of weapons.
The kingpin, who was born in rural Michoacán in the 1960s, would go on to climb the ranks of Mexico’s drug-trafficking industry in the 1990s.
In 1994, he was convicted in the US of trafficking heroin and spent almost three years in prison before returning to Mexico.
Oseguera became known for his ruthless methods of exercising control over his patch. It was reported that he once sent a severed pig’s head in an ice box as a threat to a Mexican lawyer, according to Rolling Stone magazine.
A phone call was recorded in which Oseguera threatened to kill a police officer, “and even your dogs,” if they did not cease their investigation of him. Surprisingly, he signed off the call saying, “Sorry for the bad language”, Al Jazeera reported.
As El Mencho climbed the ranks, he went on to sink significant amounts of financial resources into submarines, which he used to traffic drugs from South America to the US , Rolling Stone reported. According to the DEA agent who spoke to the magazine, Oseguera hired naval engineers from Russia to design the submarines.
He would go on to become one of the US’s most wanted men, and a $15 million reward was up for grabs for anyone who could provide information leading to his arrest.
In 2009, El Mencho founded the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, and quickly, it grew in influence. He coordinated online recruitment measures and diversified its financial portfolio through fuel theft, extortion and timeshare scams, among others.
The Jalisco cartel was identified as one of the primary sources of fentanyl - alongside the Sinaloa Cartel – in the US, with a reported presence in all 50 US states.
Jalisco has become known for its attacks on Mexican security forces, such as shooting down a military helicopter in Jalisco in 2015. In 2020, it attempted to kill the former Mexico City police chief Omar Garcia Harfuch, who is now the federal security secretary.
Last February, Mexico handed over El Mencho’s brother, Antonio Oseguera Cervantes, who previously held a senior position in the cartel, to the US.
This was just days after eight Latin American criminal organisations and drug cartels, including the Jalisco Cartel, were listed as “global terrorist organisations”.
