The Journal. · The Wall Street Journal & Spotify Studios

Inside Mexico's Decision to Take Down a Drug Lord

February 25, 2026·19 min·1 clip

After Mexican authorities killed drug lord El Mencho, his cartel retaliated with fires and roadblocks, killing over 50 people.

El Mencho, whose legal name was Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, built one of the world's most powerful drug organizations over roughly two decades. A former Mexican police officer who had lived illegally in the United States before deportation, he married into a cartel family and rose through the ranks. By the early 2010s he led the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), which operated in roughly two-thirds of Mexico's states and about 30 foreign countries, moving cocaine by the ton from Colombia and Ecuador northward via speedboats and semi-submersibles. The Sinaloa cartel's fracture after El Chapo's 2016 arrest created the opening El Mencho needed to become Mexico's dominant narco power. The Trump administration's designation of cartels as terrorist organizations and repeated threats to send US troops into Mexico put intense pressure on President Claudia Sheinbaum's government to act. US intelligence agencies cooperated with Mexican authorities to track El Mencho's movements. The breakthrough came when surveillance identified an associate transporting one of El Mencho's mistresses to a cabin complex about two miles from the colonial mountain town of Tapalpa in the Sierra Madre range of Jalisco. Dozens of soldiers, armored vehicles, drones, and combat helicopters conducted a predawn raid; the firefight lasted five hours and left 25 Mexican soldiers dead alongside El Mencho and two others who were wounded and died en route to hospital. The cartel's immediate response was coordinated and nationwide: 252 car fires and roadblocks across 20 states, more than 50 civilian deaths, forced evacuations, and school and business closures. Mexico's defense minister visibly wept describing troop casualties at a press conference — an unprecedented display that de Cordoba says captured the national mood. Sheinbaum publicly credited the operation as solely Mexican and praised US intelligence support while explicitly rejecting any US troop presence, threading the needle of keeping Trump satisfied without conceding sovereignty. Trump cited the operation in his State of the Union address. De Cordoba expects a violent succession battle among three rival CJNG lieutenants, drawing a parallel to the Sinaloa civil war triggered by El Mayo Zambada's capture, which produced 2,000 killings and 3,000 disappearances. He is skeptical of the strategic logic of the kingpin approach, calling it whack-a-mole that produces Netflix scripts but not lasting reduction in drug supply, because US demand — the fundamental driver — has not changed.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Journal.