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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Oscar Lopezin Mexico City

Mexico faces uphill battle to appease kingpin Trump after cartel boss’s killing

soldiers stand along a road
A soldier clears a roadblock leading to Tapalca, Mexico, on 23 February 2026, a day after the Mexican army killed Jalisco New Generation Cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera, known as ‘El Mencho’. Photograph: Marco Ugarte/AP

With schools still closed, flights cancelled and the charred carcasses of buses smouldering on streets across the country, Mexico was still reeling from the cartel backlash prompted by the killing of cartel kingpin Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, also known as “El Mencho”.

Defense minister, Ricardo Trevilla Trejo, was moved almost to tears on Monday as he offered his condolences to the families of soldiers felled in the operation to kill the country’s most-wanted drug lord. Mexican military personnel, he said, “fulfilled their mission”.

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