Analysts told USA TODAY that the current violence by the Jalisco New Generation cartel won’t last long, but civil and external wars are likely to continue.
Violence erupts after Mexican army kills cartel boss ‘El Mencho’
Americans were told to evacuate to designated areas after Mexican troops killed cartel leader El Mencho, sparking violence in several Mexican states.
The public violence in Mexico following the killing of drug lord Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes could last days or weeks, given his position within the Jalisco New Generation cartel and the group’s extraordinary military capabilities, veteran cartel watchers told USA TODAY.
In 2015, the cartel staged a similar nationwide show of force, shooting down a Mexican military helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade after the Mexican military attempted to capture Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho.”
In 2019, the rival Sinaloa cartel waged war on the Mexican government in an attempt to arrest one of the sons of leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
“If past is prologue, what we’re seeing is this kind of violent retaliation by the cartels will continue for at least a week, probably longer, and then things will turn inward,” Anthony Placido, a former U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency intelligence director, told USA TODAY.
Criminal violence has already erupted in parts of Mexico after troops killed Oseguerra Cervantes in a shootout on February 22 at the cartel’s stronghold in the west coast state of Jalisco.
The cartel’s response was immediate, spreading from Jalisco and abroad, plunging much of Mexico into chaos and violence. CJNG soldiers torched cars, buses and stores, blocked roads, and the violence spread to 20 states. Mexican authorities said at least 62 people were killed, including 25 members of the National Guard, and 70 people were arrested.
However, despite the deteriorating situation in Mexico following the death of Oseguera Cervantes, the CJNG appears to have stopped short of unleashing anything close to the violence it has shown in the past.
U.S. counternarcotics officials say the cartel has amassed so much firepower in recent years that it resembles the military of a small nation more than a transnational criminal organization.
The question now, experts say, is whether the CJNG will quell sporadic violence and regroup, or step up its attacks on Mexico’s government, people and rival cartels vying for vast amounts of cocaine, fentanyl, methamphetamine and other drugs trafficked into the United States.
Experts say the cartel is likely to train its rivals with sophisticated weaponry as it returns to its core business of generating billions of dollars a year in drug revenue, which the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officially calls “one of the five most dangerous criminal organizations in the world.”
“No matter what they do, they can’t bring Mencho back.”
Most analysts believe the CJNG will reorganize and focus on maintaining the global dominance in drug trafficking that it has long shared with the rival Sinaloa cartel.
“No matter what they do, they can’t bring Mencho back,” Placido said. “So the most important thing for them is who will take over the cartel and will the Sinaloa guys try to take their territory?”
“I don’t have a crystal ball,” Placido said. “But I think that rather than having a big public scene where they’re burning cars and doing all sorts of things to protest the government, we’re going to quickly see them getting into violence and wars between cartels. And it’s going to be more targeted.”
In the short term, the CNJG certainly has the ability to inflict even more deadly violence against the Mexican government and people, including American tourists who have been ordered to shelter in place.
Past uses of force by the CJNG have included mass arson campaigns known as “narcoblocks,” simultaneous roadblocks across more states than currently exist, and high-profile assassination attempts.
‘Nasty aftermath’ as cartel gets back to business
“Claims of being the top criminals do not absolve the government from troubling fallout,” David Mora, an analyst at the Mexico-based International Crisis Group, wrote in a Feb. 23 review.
Vanda Felbab-Brown, a Brookings Institution expert on non-state armed groups, including the CJNG, said the current violence mirrors that which occurred after the Mexican government tried to capture El Chapo’s son Ovidio Guzmán López in his Culiacan stronghold in 2019.
Within hours, heavily armed Sinaloa forces paralyzed the city and directly attacked the military, forcing the government to release him.
In this case, Felbab Brown told USA TODAY that the current violence is essentially a way of demonstrating the CJNG’s capabilities and is essentially an act of “retaliatory demonstrative violence against the state.”
“They’re saying, ‘Mexican government, we’re punishing you. We’re responding. You killed our leader. This shows what we can do,'” Felbab-Brown said.
“It’s pretty huge in geographic scope and scale,” she said. “But that will disappear in a matter of time.”
That could take days or weeks, she says.
“And once this immediate violence subsides, the question is: what further violence will erupt, both within CJNG factions and between CJNG and its rivals?” Felbab-Brown said. “And that violence will be more complex and more persistent.”
What happened after El Chapo was captured?
Once the initial outburst of public violence subsides, what happens next depends on many factors.
Mora said El Mencho had no clear successor and remaining leaders could vie for leadership.
Placido said if the CJNG does not quickly appoint a successor and reduce its ranks, infighting between rival factions within the organization could consume the organization.
Such was the case ten years ago after the arrest of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the leader of the rival Sinaloa cartel.
Since then, Sinaloa has been ravaged by infighting and internal power struggles between “El Chapo’s” sons, known as “Chapitos,” and factions loyal to Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, who is still in U.S. custody.
But much of that violence is cartel-on-cartel and will not cripple vast swaths of Mexico and its vital tourism industry, as the current situation does, Placido and Felbab-Brown said.
In the case of CJNG, removing El Mencho could slow the rapid expansion of his own cartel within Mexico and internationally. But it is also likely to weaken the Sinaloa cartel in some ways, potentially leading to a bloody turf war across Mexico and even the United States.
Less likely, but still possible scenario: all-out war
A less likely scenario is that the CJNG launches a long war against the Mexican government to avenge the death of its longtime leader.
For the past half-century, Mexican drug cartels and criminal organizations have been in protracted skirmishes over sporadic drug crackdowns. Colombian cartels did the same thing in the 1990s with car bombs, assassinations, and attacks on the military.
If that happens, the CNJG has heavy weapons and could cause significant damage., Many of the weapons were obtained from American gun manufacturers, according to an investigation by USA TODAY.
Most analysts predict otherwise. Because CJNG, like Sinaloa and other cartels before it, wants to de-escalate tensions with the government so it can focus on its global operations.
“In many ways, this is just a waste of resources. El Mencho is dead, so there is nothing to negotiate, as there was after the arrest of El Chapo’s son,” Felbab-Brown said.
To keep Mexican authorities at bay, she said, a degree of public violence is needed “to show how fearless they are and how they can act with more brazenness, more brutality, more violence than anyone else.”
But ultimately, Placido said, “It’s all about money. It’s always been about money.”
