Mexico News Report

The February 22nd killing of Nemesio Ruben “el Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, cartel boss of the CJNG (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación) provoked a massive retaliation by the cartel.[See El Mencho Killed by Mexican Military; Reprisal Attacks Erupt ]

The raid was carried out by Mexican Army Special Forces, supported by the National Guard, the Mexican Air Force and intelligence personnel of the Mexican Attorney General’s department. There was also intelligence provided by the U.S. Joint Interagency Task Force-Counter Cartel (JITC-CC).

The operation sought to capture el Mencho when he was in the town of Tapalpa in the state of Jalisco. A firefight and pursuit ensued, in which Oseguera was wounded, after which he died in flight in a government helicopter enroute to Guadalajara (after which the flight was diverted to Morelia).

Not only el Mencho, but eight members of the CJNG were killed in the operation.

The retaliatory attacks by the CJNG began almost immediately.

Over 70 people died in the raid and the aftermath, including 25 National Guardsmen.

So what do we make of all this and what does it bode for the future? Let’s break it down:

THE POWER OF THE CJNG

The CJNG, now Mexico’s strongest cartel, displayed its might. Even with its leader eliminated, the cartel was able to perpetrate over 250 retaliatory attacks. As reported by  the Associated Press: “Cars burned out by cartel members blocked roads at more than 250 points in 20 Mexican states, authorities said, and left smoke billowing into the air.”

There were attacks on the National Guard, and on stores and banks.

Here’s a map of Mexico, with every state in which at least one retaliatory attack was carried out in red:

PRESIDENT CLAUDIA SHEINBAUM – President Sheinbaum spoke out about the operation the day it happened, and later, but she is also invovled in many other things. She doesn’t want it to appear that there’s a crisis.

WHO WILL RUN THE CJNG ? Often when a cartel boss is killed or captured, there’s a power struggle to see who will rule.

One possible successor is El Mencho’s stepson, California-born Juan Carlos Valencia Gonzalez, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Mexico.

THE U.S. ROLE – Both governments admitted that the U.S. provided intelligence for the operation, but that it was a Mexican operation.

That’s not the only U.S. security involvement in Mexico.

There was the detention of Ryan Wedding in Mexico City, for which FBI Director Kash Patel showed up.

Navy Seals are curently in Mexico to train personnel and the Green Berets are coming in too.

Obviously, there may be other operations we don’t know about.

WHAT ABOUT TOURISM? No Americans were harmed during the CJNG retaliation, but some American tourists were inconvenienced and told to “shelter in place”.

In the long term, will this greatly affect tourism to Mexico? Probably not unless things like this occur frequently.

THE WORLD CUP The world soccer championship, known as the World Cup, is scheduled for this June and July in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

One of the venues is Estadio Akron in Zapopan. That’s in the Guadalajara metro area, where some of the violence was. Is that going to be a problem?

Estadio Akron, Zapopan. Source: Nick Huerta

Not according to Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA, international soccer’s governing body. Infantino was in Colombia and said that “Of course, we are monitoring the situation in Mexico these days, but I want to say from the outset that we have complete confidence in Mexico, in its president, Claudia Sheinbaum, and in the authorities, and we are convinced that everything will go as smoothly as possible.”

Hopefully he’s right about that.

DISINFORMATION Besides its considerable real world damage, the CJNG also carried on a disinformation campaign online, to make it appear that thing were worse than they actually were (which of course was bad enough).

From OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project): “The cartel’s online response to the killing of their boss…was the most powerful example yet of how propaganda — and disinformation — can be spread by social media accounts that experts believe to be linked to Mexican criminal syndicates.  According to Alberto Escorcia, a Mexican journalist specializing in disinformation and artificial intelligence, it is common for these accounts to share fake, misleading, or AI-generated images of violence alongside real ones. ‘It was amplified to appear as though the whole country was on fire, and the truth is that it wasn’t,’ Escorcia said.”

“The gunfire in Puebla turned out to be a false alarm, as was the claim that armed men had taken over Guadalajara airport.  A widely shared photo of a burned-out passenger plane on a runway was debunked as fake, as was another of the main church ablaze in the beach resort of Puerto Vallarta…Escorcia immediately traced a significant number of these false images back to three X accounts that, through his years of research, he believes are connected to the cartel.” 

“ ‘What the Jalisco Cartel trolls do is generate a critical mass. They know how to game the Twitter [X] algorithm,’ Escorcia told OCCRP.”

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