Who Is El Mencho: The Fentanyl Kingpin Whose Violent End Is Now Sending Shockwaves Across Mexico and the US

He was born in a farming village in Michoacán, left school before finishing the fifth grade, and spent part of his youth picking avocados. Decades later, the US Drug Enforcement Administration would describe the organisation he built as one of the 'most significant threats to the public health, public safety, and national security of the United States'. On Sunday, that man—Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, known across two continents as 'El Mencho'—was shot dead by the Mexican military during an operation in the mountains of Jalisco.

By nightfall, at least six Mexican states were in chaos. Burning vehicles blocked highways across Jalisco, Michoacán, Colima, Tamaulipas, Guanajuato, and Aguascalientes, the cartel's signature response to a leadership strike. The US State Department told American citizens in three of those states to shelter in place and stay off the roads.

A Childhood Far Removed From the Cartel World

Aguililla, the municipality in Michoacán where Oseguera Cervantes grew up on 17 July 1966, is remote, poor, and in recent decades one of Mexico's more violent flashpoints. As a boy he worked the land with his family and never finished primary school. By his teens, the path in front of him had very little to do with farming.

He eventually made his way to California, where records show he was arrested in 1986 for stolen property and carrying a loaded firearm. Three years later came another arrest, this time for selling narcotics in San Francisco. He was deported to Mexico, returned, and in 1992 was picked up again in Sacramento. A 1994 conviction for conspiracy to distribute heroin in the US District Court for the Northern District of California led to a sentence of nearly three years in prison, after which he was deported once more.

What he did next set him apart. He returned to Mexico and, for a time, joined local police forces in Jalisco. The man who would one day be hunted by every major law enforcement agency in North America once wore a badge.

How a Splinter Group Became Mexico's Most Feared Cartel

It did not take long for him to abandon law enforcement and re‑enter the criminal world he already knew. He moved up through the Milenio Cartel, attaching himself to powerful figures and learning the mechanics of large‑scale trafficking from the inside. When those bosses fell—arrested, killed, or both—he was positioned to move.

After the death of Ignacio 'Nacho' Coronel Villarreal in 2010, Oseguera Cervantes and Erik Valencia Salazar founded the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, initially known as 'Los Mata Zetas'. What began as a splinter group quickly expanded, taking on rivals such as the Zetas and the Knights Templar simultaneously.

Under El Mencho's direction, CJNG grew from a regional player to a sprawling criminal enterprise with a footprint in more than 40 countries. Fentanyl became its most lucrative and deadly product: precursor chemicals imported from China, processed in clandestine Mexican labs, and pushed across the US border in volumes that helped drive what American health officials describe as a public health catastrophe.

A 2022 US Justice Department indictment charged Oseguera Cervantes with conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine, cocaine, and fentanyl for importation into the United States, as well as directing a continuing criminal enterprise under the Drug Kingpin statute.

The Ghost Nobody Could Find

For a man blamed for so much visible destruction, El Mencho himself was rarely seen. He gave no interviews. There are few verified photographs. He communicated through encrypted channels, moved constantly between remote mountain compounds, and was reportedly protected by former military personnel hired to keep him alive and hidden.

The US State Department posted a reward of up to $15 million for information leading to his capture, while Mexico offered a matching 300 million pesos. For years, neither offer produced him.

Rumours of his death became routine. In early 2022, Mexican outlets reported he had been killed in a cartel confrontation. Other stories claimed kidney failure had finished him quietly in a Guadalajara hospital, a narrative his enemies reportedly helped spread. He had been battling kidney disease since at least 2020 and reportedly financed a private hospital in the village of El Alcíhuatl partly to manage his treatment. None of the rumours was true. Until Sunday.

What Happens to the CJNG Now

By the time the military caught up with him, much of El Mencho's family network had already been dismantled. His son Rubén Oseguera González—'El Menchito'—the cartel's former second‑in‑command, was sentenced in March 2025 in a US federal court to life in prison plus 30 years and ordered to forfeit more than $6 billion in drug proceeds. His brother, Antonio, was extradited to the US in February 2025. His son‑in‑law was arrested in California in November 2024. His older brother, Abraham, was recaptured by Mexican authorities in February 2025.

The question now is not whether CJNG survives his death—most analysts expect it will—but what form that survival takes. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has long criticised the so‑called 'kingpin strategy', warning that removing cartel leaders tends to fracture organisations and unleash new waves of violence rather than deliver lasting peace. The road blockades burning across six states on Sunday evening suggest that process may already have begun.

El Mencho's killing is being read in some quarters as a significant signal to Washington, where the Trump administration has spent months pressuring Mexico to hit fentanyl traffickers harder. Whether the timing was calibrated with that in mind is unclear. What is clear is that the cartel he built does not depend on him alone to function. Its infrastructure, networks, laboratories, and smuggling routes remain intact. The man is gone. The machine he designed is still running.

Originally published on IBTimes UK