The Jalisco New Generation Cartel has become Mexico’s fastest-rising criminal organization, with a reputation for ruthlessness and violence unlike any since the fall of the old Zetas cartel.
In parts of the country it is fighting medieval-style battles, complete with fortified redoubts, to expand nationwide, from the outskirts of Mexico City, into the tourist resorts around Cancun, and along the northern border across from the US.
The Jalisco New Generation Cartel likes violence and heavy armament. US prosecutors said its operatives tried to buy belt-fed M-60 machine guns in the United States, and once brought down a Mexican military helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade.
But transnational criminal organization is also mounting a propaganda campaign, using videos and social media to threaten rivals while promising civilians that it won’t prey on them with extortion and kidnappings.
The Jalisco New Generation Cartel has become Mexico’s fastest-rising criminal organization, with a reputation for ruthlessness and violence unlike any since the fall of the old Zetas cartel
It is a promise that cartels in Mexico have long made, and always broken. But the cartel’s onslaught is so powerful that it appears to have convinced some Mexicans, especially those who are tired of local gangs, to accept control by one large, powerful cartel.
The reality of life under the Jalisco cartel is terrifying: the cartel has made the city of Guadalajara and surrounding suburbs into a giant clandestine grave site.
Hundreds of bodies have been found in the last year, dumped in drainage canals, buried in fields and the patios and yards of homes.
Bodies have been found dissolved in acid or lye and bodies have been found in plastic bags.
So many bodies have been found in Guadalajara that authorities ran out of space at the morgue and took to moving rotting bodies around in refrigerated trucks until neighbors complained about the smell.
Experts say the killings skyrocketed after the cartel lost control of its local organization in Guadalajara, and has been battling that splinter group.
Jalisco is accustomed to attacking law enforcement directly. The cartel is blamed for two of the worst attacks in recent memory: in October, cartel gunmen ambushed and killed 14 state police officers in Michoacán, and there are indications they executed some with gunshots to the head.
Jalisco is accustomed to attacking law enforcement directly. Mexico City police chief Omar García Harfuch (left) was attacked last month and blamed the cartel for an elaborately planned attempt on his life
A burned bus (photographed October 16, 2019) sits on the side of road in El Aguaje, Mexico, where Jalisco New Generation Cartel gunmen ambushed and killed Michoacan state police agents
In 2015, cartel gunmen trying to protect their leader shot down a Mexican military helicopter with an RPG.
Jalisco controls the south bank of the Rio Grande river, while the north bank remains in the hands of the rival New Michoacán Family cartel and its armed wing, the Viagras.
The cartel has littered the streets of Cancun with the bodies of its victims, but the violence hasn’t really hit the tourist zone, except in the resort of Playa del Carmen, to the south.
While extreme violence is hardly new in Mexico, Jalisco is more fearsome than other cartels, more worrisome than even the notorious Zetas, who left piles of as many as 50 bodies on roads, kidnapped hundreds of people and forced them to fight each other to the death with sledgehammers, and burned their victims alive in gasoline drums.
The Zetas were never particularly good at carving out new drug routes or laundering money; Jalisco, with years of experience in methamphetamine production through their allies, the ‘Cuinis’ gang, is in a prime position to capitalize on new synthetic drugs like fentanyl.
And the cartel has been able to branch out into new regions of the world, turning to India when China cracks down on fentanyl shipments, and establishing connections with Chinese and other Asian gangs to launder drug proceeds that help wealthy Chinese get around their government’s currency flow limits and move their wealth abroad.
Under the command of Nemesio ‘El Mencho’ Oseguera Cervantes – who is now the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s most-wanted fugitive, with a $10million price on his head – the Jalisco cartel has a more unified leadership than Sinaloa, whose command structure was fractured after the arrest, extradition and conviction of Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, who he was once tied to.
Jessica Johana Oseguera (left) and Rubén ‘El Menchito’ Oseguera González are being held by the US government. Their father, Nemesio ‘El Mencho’ Oseguera Cervantes, is the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and is wanted by the DEA
Given that Jalisco has moved into hotels and restaurants, shopping centers, real estate companies, agricultural companies, and a music promotion business, experts believe that they are ‘more sophisticated than other [gangs] at laundering money’
El Mencho’s two oldest children are currently under the custody of the US government facing money laundering and drug trafficking charges.
Jessica Johana Oseguera, 33, was arrested last February 26 inside a DC federal courthouse while appearing at a hearing for her brother Rubén ‘El Menchito’ Oseguera, 30, who was extradited from Mexico on February 20 to face drug charges.