GUADALAJARA, Mexico – Sometimes the beheaded bodies hang from bridges. Other times, the mutilated torsos are simply discarded on the street. Often, the carnage comes with a business card: “CJNG” in scribbled letters.
Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación likes to send a message.
For those who have followed the resurgence of the Mexican drug war in recent years, the rise of the cartel is particularly worrying – it is as blatant as it is relentless. The Drug Enforcement Administration now believes that the CJNG is responsible for tons of methamphetamine and fentanyl that flow to the United States each month.
“CJNG is our # 1 priority right now,” said Bill Bodner, the special agent in charge of the DEA field division in Los Angeles, who oversees a group of agents with the specific task of tracking the cartel leader.
Still, that man – Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho” – has so far managed to deceive US federal authorities.
Several American and Mexican police officers told NBC News that the head of the CJNG filled the void after the capture in 2016 of the notorious “El Chapo” Guzmán – who led the rival Sinaloa cartel. The CJNG has invaded, these sources say, and is now considered Mexico’s deadliest cartel.
“The Zetas were very feared,” said Bodner. “But they found their match.”
Hunting a ‘ghost’
The DEA announced a $ 10 million reward for information leading to the arrest of El Mencho. But so far, the authorities have not worked.
The CJNG has only been around for a decade, but it came to power much more quickly than the rival Sinaloa cartel. Its influence now spans six continents and 28 of Mexico’s 32 states. Major cities in the United States – including Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta and New York – are all affected by CJNG drugs, DEA officials said.
El Mencho was indicted in federal court in the United States on charges of drug trafficking, corruption and murder.
But following his trail was difficult. At one point, the DEA believed he could be hiding in the mountains, but it was a challenge to arrest him.
In many ways, he is a “ghost,” said a source.
The cartel leader was born in the tiny Mexican city of Naranjo de Chila in 1966 and lived for a time in California; he was arrested in the United States in the 1980s for selling drugs. He ended up returning to Guadalajara and started working for the Milenio cartel, a subsidiary of the Sinaloa cartel. He rose through the ranks, before splitting into his group around 2010. The resulting group, the CJNG, would quickly unleash a new wave of violence against its rivals. After 2016, when El Chapo was captured, bloodshed intensified.
The dark history of El Mencho does not reveal much – except perhaps because it has been so difficult to find.
“El Mencho seems to be much more disciplined than Chapo,” said Bodner. “El Chapo liked to live a flashy lifestyle – cars, women, good restaurants, alcohol. El Mencho is content to stay away from these things, work out, eat right, stay off the radar. “
One of his few known vices: his supposed love for cockfighting, which earned him another nickname – “The Lord of the Rooster”.
Family ties
El Mencho’s American son, Ruben Oseguera González, was arrested in 2015 and is now being held in a maximum-security prison in Mexico while US authorities ask for his extradition for possession of drugs and weapons.
According to the Mexican newspaper El Universal, in 2019 González’s lawyers accused a DEA agent of bribing a local magistrate to intervene and speed up the process – a claim the agency vehemently denies.
“They are trying to slow down [the agent] in this case, ”said Bodner. “This is a tactic by a defense attorney trying to slow down an investigation into a cartel that is trying to put up barriers to prevent us from extraditing a person – who is an American citizen, by the way.”
The battle between the DEA and the cartels in Guadalajara lasts for decades. He recently appeared on Netflix’s Narcos: Mexico series, which told the story of agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, who was kidnapped and murdered in 1985.
‘We are in war “
With his face obscured by darkness, the man vividly remembered the last time he spoke to his son.
That was over a year ago. Almost 400 days of agony followed: the excruciating pain of a father who knows that his son has been murdered – but cannot find the body.
“I didn’t believe that human beings could do that,” he said in an interview. “We are in war.”
For security reasons, he asked that his face not be shown, nor his name disclosed. This is a common request in Mexico, where the government has just announced that more than 61,000 people have disappeared in the midst of the ongoing drug war – and where homicides reached 31,000 in 2019, the deadliest year in memory.
He wore a cap, a mustache and a tired smile. He worked as a chiropractor, but his family owned a ranch in rural Mexico, which had been passed down from generation to generation. Until, he said, dozens of cartel members seized him to produce meth.
“The government cannot deal with them,” he said.
On all social media, the CJNG has published horrific demonstrations of beheadings and executions. Other posts are advertising videos designed to recruit new members. A former Mexican intelligence officer said the cartel has been preparing potential recruits from an early age – in their early teens – with easy access to drugs, promises of money and jobs. CJNG business cards with popular logos, such as Louis Vuitton, are distributed openly. In some neighborhoods, cartel members employ Robin Hood-type tactics, distributing food and other supplies to poor communities. Young people who are attracted to membership are immediately tortured and forced to become hit men, or murderers, of the cartel. When they get older, they are willing to torture and behead their own victims.
The cruelty of the attacks drew comparisons to the Islamic State militant group.
“In terms of violence, yes,” said Bodner, the DEA agent. “They may not have a religious ideology, but the violence is the same.”
‘Bloodstain’
The DEA gave NBC News rare access to one of its secret labs that analyzes drug seizures in an undisclosed location. The agency is seeing more methamphetamine cross the border – and much of that is attributed to the CJNG. Unlike marijuana or heroin, meth does not require large tracts of land or good weather. Laboratories can be built in isolated areas – and the synthetic drug can be much more profitable.
In the DEA lab, technicians combed the chemical composition of methamphetamine.
“It’s much more pure (than before),” said Bodner, the DEA agent.
In Mexico, the security commissioner for the state of Guanajuato said in an interview that Americans’ drug addiction fuels demand – which in turn fuels cartels and their violence.
“Unfortunately, with each dose consumed, the blood stain appears,” said Sophia Huett. “And it is something that we cannot deny.”