“He has a good repertoire of jokes, but he’s very explosive”: a look inside “Mencho”, the most dangerous drug lord in the world

Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes born in Aguililla, Michoacan, in 1966. Before dedicating himself to drug trafficking, he performed the most disparate jobs to survive: farmer, car thief and municipal police. Accusations weigh on him, in addition to large-scale drug trafficking, as serious as the murder of the former governor of Jalisco, Aristotles Sandoval, and attacks on high-level officials.

His criminal career began in 1986 in the United States, where he was arrested at age 20 for possession of a drug and was deported. After his failure, he tried again. In 1994, at the age of 28, he was arrested for selling heroin and returned to Mexico again.

Criminal life

The Mencho, as he is known in the underworld, was one of the founders of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), whose origin was the death of Ignacio Nacho Colonel and the fragmentation of Millennium Cartel.

In July 2010, after the assassination of one of the most important lieutenants in Joaquin the Chapo Guzman, the criminal structure of the Millennium Cartel, which depended on the Sinaloa criminal organization, split into two cells: The resistance and the CJNG, Founded by Erick Valencia Salazar, the 85 and the Mencho, both lieutenants of Nacho Colonel.

Then a war broke out between The resistance and the CJNG to take control of the trafficking of drugs through the Pacific, mainly through the port of Manzanillo, in Colima.

That same year, the criminal group, which would manage to defeat The resistance, continued its expansion to Michoacán, Morelos, Guerrero and Veracruz, where they called themselves the Mata-Zetas. In March 2012, Valencia Salazar was detained by elements of the Mexican Army, assuming the Mencho total leadership.

Today the four letters, as they are also known, have spread their tentacles to 23 states of the Mexican territory, becoming the most powerful criminal group. And to Mencho in one of the drug lords most wanted by the governments of Mexico and the United States, offering up to USD 10 million for his capture.

The famous drug dealer has managed to escape justice on different occasions. In 2015 he fled from a fence set up by the military police in Guadalajara (Jalisco), and shot down a military helicopter with a rocket launcher in an action more typical of a conventional war.

The most dangerous cartel in Mexico

The violence and the corruption Perpetrated by the “El Mencho” organization, they have been key to the rapid expansion of his criminal empire.

In 2015, the Treasury Department included Oseguera Cervantes on its blacklist of drug traffickers. Since then, he warned that the kingpin had taken advantage of the weakening of other cartels to expand.

Other causes of their incursion is that it has managed to collude with local authorities in the states where it has penetrated. In addition, we must add another factor: the neglect by the Peña Nieto government towards the cartel during the first years of his six-year term, and the benefit he obtained in the midst of the fight that the Mexican authorities undertook against other criminal organizations.

Released on October 2, 2018, the report Mexico: background and US relations remember that Enrique Peña Nieto’s presidential campaign was based on a promise to reduce violence in Mexico; however, insecurity grew considerably. Homicides related to organized crime increased in 2015 and significantly in 2016, but in 2017 they reached record levels.

Several factors explain why the strategy against crime was a total treasury. One of them is that the PRI government prioritized the capture of the main criminal leaders. From January to August 2017, security forces had killed or detained 110 of the targets of high value identified by the government. However, the analysis warns that only nine of those alleged criminals received a sentence.

Focusing efforts on leaders also contributed to the division of criminal groups and diversification of their illicit activities, thereby increasing violence rather than reducing it. It should be added that crime rates worsened day by day.