The Rise and Fall of the CJNG

When Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as El Mencho, was killed in February 2026 during a military operation in Jalisco, the reaction across western Mexico was swift. Highways were blocked with burning vehicles. Armed men halted traffic and forced drivers from their cars. Airports were attacked and shut down. Within hours, multiple states were disrupted. The response made clear that this was not the death of a lone criminal actor. It was the removal of a component within a much larger system. His killing marked a tactical victory. Whether it marked a structural turning point in the war on cartels remains far less certain.

For more than a decade, El Mencho led the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación, or CJNG, one of the two dominant Mexican transnational criminal organizations identified in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s National Drug Threat Assessments. By the time of his death, the U.S. State Department had offered up to ten million dollars for information leading to his capture under its Narcotics Rewards Program. He had become one of the hemisphere’s most wanted men.

His rise reflects the broader trajectory of Mexico’s modern drug war. Born in Aguililla, Michoacán in 1966, Oseguera Cervantes migrated to the United States as a young man and was later convicted in federal court in California on drug trafficking charges before being deported, according to U.S. Department of Justice records. Upon returning to Mexico, he entered organized crime through the Milenio Cartel, a regional trafficking organization that would later fracture under federal pressure.

Around 2009 or 2010, amid the splintering of older criminal alliances, he helped form the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación, or CJNG. The timing was pivotal. Mexico’s militarized crackdown on major cartels, intensified after 2006, weakened established hierarchies and destabilized the criminal landscape. The removal of senior leaders produced fragmentation rather than collapse. Lieutenants fought to control territory, regional cells broke away, and rival groups moved into vacuums. The state's action, therefore, did not eliminate control over profitable routes. Instead it merely rendered them fiercely contested, directly fueling the rise in violence.

CJNG proved particularly effective in this environment. It expanded rapidly across western and central Mexico, absorbing territory and recruiting aggressively. Unlike earlier cartels that depended heavily on plant-based drugs such as cocaine and heroin, CJNG invested heavily in synthetic drugs, especially methamphetamine and later fentanyl. Synthetic production offered clear advantages. It reduced dependence on agricultural cycles and international crop routes. It allowed greater scalability and adaptability. It shifted trafficking toward a manufacturing model.

The DEA’s National Drug Threat Assessments identify CJNG as one of the primary producers and traffickers of illicit fentanyl entering the United States. The synthetic opioid market reshaped the economics of the drug trade. Precursor chemicals used to manufacture fentanyl are sourced primarily from suppliers in China and other parts of Asia, then imported into Mexico, where CJNG and other cartels synthesize the finished drug in clandestine laboratories. Fentanyl is inexpensive to produce in small quantities yet extraordinarily potent, making profit margins immense. Roughly three thousand dollars’ worth of precursor chemicals can yield product that generates millions in retail value once pressed into counterfeit pills.

According to provisional data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, synthetic opioids have driven more than seventy thousand overdose deaths annually in recent years. While no federal agency attributes specific death counts to a single cartel, CJNG is repeatedly named in federal indictments and intelligence reporting as a central supplier within the cross-border distribution network.

This connection between Mexican production and American consumption intensified political pressure in Washington. Members of the U.S. government, including President Trump, called for stronger enforcement measures and renewed debate over designating major Mexican cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Policy institutions such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Americas Society analyzed the diplomatic implications of such a designation, noting that it would carry legal consequences for financial institutions and potentially alter the framework of bilateral cooperation.

Mexican officials, including President Claudia Sheinbaum, emphasized sovereignty concerns and resisted proposals that suggested unilateral U.S. action on Mexican soil. She framed cooperation as necessary but insisted it remain within constitutional and jurisdictional limits. Mexico’s Constitution restricts foreign military presence on national territory, making unilateral intervention politically and legally explosive.

Domestically, her approach has faced criticism from multiple directions. Opposition figures argue that distancing from overt “war on drugs” rhetoric risks appearing hesitant at a time of continued violence. Others warn that a return to indiscriminate militarization would reproduce the fragmentation and instability that followed earlier crackdowns. Sheinbaum has attempted to navigate between these pressures, expanding intelligence-driven operations and financial investigations while rejecting cross-border military escalation. Internationally, she has acknowledged the severity of the fentanyl crisis while emphasizing that U.S. demand, financial flows, and arms trafficking are integral to the problem.

The fentanyl crisis thus linked local manufacturing networks in western Mexico to public health emergencies in American cities. It deepened the perception in the United States that cartel activity is not confined to foreign territory but materially affects domestic stability.

Inside Mexico, CJNG’s expansion corresponded with a period of record homicide levels. According to Mexico’s national statistics agency INEGI, the country recorded more than thirty four thousand homicides annually between 2018 and 2020, the highest totals in its modern history. Mexican authorities do not assign killings to specific criminal organizations in official tallies, making precise attribution impossible. However, security analysts and federal prosecutors consistently identified CJNG as one of the principal drivers of violence in regions where it sought territorial control.

U.S. Department of Justice indictments describe organized campaigns of violence linked to CJNG operations, including targeted assassinations of rivals and attacks on law enforcement. Public displays of armed convoys and paramilitary-style formations reinforced the group’s image as both a trafficking organization and an enforcement apparatus.

Yet CJNG’s influence extended beyond overt violence. In several regions, criminal groups have exercised forms of economic control that blur the line between organized crime and governance. Analysts from International Crisis Group and Mexican research institutions such as México Evalúa have documented how cartels extract revenue not only from drug trafficking but also from extortion, fuel theft, illegal mining, and local agricultural sectors. In some municipalities, criminal groups influence political candidates, intimidate local officials, and regulate informal markets.

This embedded presence complicates simplistic narratives about state versus cartel. In many areas, criminal organizations operate in the gaps of uneven governance. Weak municipal institutions, corruption, and limited economic opportunity create space for parallel authority structures. The result is not a replacement of the state, but an overlap with it.

El Mencho’s leadership capitalized on that overlap. CJNG’s structure combined centralized strategic control with regional autonomy. Local cells operated semi-independently while remaining connected to broader distribution networks. That flexibility allowed the organization to expand quickly and absorb enforcement shocks. It also means that removing a single leader does not automatically dismantle the operational core.

His son, Rubén Oseguera González, known as El Menchito, was sentenced to life in prison in the United States in 2024 following a federal conviction. With both the founder and his heir effectively removed, questions about succession have intensified. Historical precedent suggests that kingpin removals often lead to temporary instability. The fragmentation of groups such as Los Zetas and the Beltrán Leyva Organization followed similar leadership disruptions.

Whether CJNG consolidates under new leadership or splinters into competing factions remains uncertain. The rapid and coordinated retaliation after El Mencho’s death indicates that the organization retains operational discipline. At the same time, decentralized structures can produce internal rivalries once a dominant figure is removed.

The broader question extends beyond CJNG itself. Mexico’s security strategy since 2006 has focused heavily on high-value targets. Numerous senior cartel leaders have been arrested or killed. Yet national homicide rates remained elevated for years following those removals. El Mencho’s death is not simply another case. It is a live test of whether the kingpin strategy can produce durable change or whether it once again destabilizes criminal ecosystems without addressing underlying incentives.

Those incentives remain largely intact. U.S. demand for synthetic opioids continues. Precursor chemicals remain accessible through global supply chains. Economic inequality in rural Mexican regions persists. Municipal institutions vary widely in capacity and integrity.

El Mencho’s death represents both a tactical success and a structural test. It demonstrates the reach of coordinated Mexican military operations and international intelligence cooperation. It also exposes the durability of the economic networks that sustained his organization.

For a general American audience, the temptation may be to regard this moment as a decisive turning point. A major trafficker has been removed. The most wanted fugitive is gone. Yet the conditions that enabled his ascent did not disappear with him. They were built over decades through market demand, fragmented enforcement, and uneven governance.

The fires that followed his death were signals of continuity as much as rupture. They revealed how deeply one organization had embedded itself in regional economies and supply chains that stretch across borders.

If there is a turning point here, it will not come from the elimination of a single figure. It will depend on whether enforcement strategies evolve beyond leadership removal toward broader institutional reform and economic stabilization.

El Mencho’s rise was not inevitable. It was the product of structural forces converging at a given moment. His fall closes one chapter in Mexico’s ongoing conflict with organized crime. Whether it opens a new one depends less on the identity of his successor and more on whether the system that produced him begins to change.