The leader of Mexico’s Jalisco New Generation Cartel had a lot of names. His formal name was Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes. That was often shortened to simply Nemesio Oseguera. But a lot of people knew him by his nickname, El Mencho. And he was killed on Sunday in a raid.

Journalist León Krauze has followed El Mencho’s rise for years.

“All of these people that join this business, let’s call it a business, know that they are in it for a likely exhilarating, if that sort of thing excites you, but very short ride,” he says. “Only very, very few have managed to escape the long arm of the law for a long time.”

To be fair, El Mencho’s ride was longer than most. He was active for nearly two decades—which made him a kind of mythical figure, bigger than even drug lord El Chapo. In the past few days, it’s become clear just how brutal El Mencho’s organization could be: Businesses were set on fire. Members of the Mexican national guard died.

This reaction was not unexpected, Krauze says. When other cartel bosses have been captured or killed, public violence has followed, as deputies and rivals try to sort out who is running things now.

On a recent episode of What Next, host Mary Harris spoke to Krauze about El Mencho’s death, Mexico’s crackdown on cartels, and what role the United States is playing in all of this. This transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Mary Harris: I want to do some table-setting for my listeners who might not have any idea what this cartel is about or who El Mencho was. How long has this cartel been a major player in the narco wars?

León Krauze: I would say it’s been growing over the last 20 years, but especially during the López Obrador administration, which was so controversial with regards to its management of the cartels.

You’re referring to Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the former president of Mexico, who talked about having this “hugs, not bullets” approach to the cartels. Did that allow something like Jalisco New Generation to flourish?

Absolutely. He was very respectful of the cartels and very respectful of the leaders, explaining that cartel members are also part of the people. It really made no sense, but more than psychoanalyzing our former president, one should look at the consequences, which are dramatic. Cartels grew stronger, and the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación grew stronger than any other cartel. And so they specialized, still, in meth and fentanyl but also into extortion, human trafficking, and are a constant threat to avocado growers in that region of Mexico.

There’s one region of Mexico where the avocados come from, and so it’s part of the cartel. Americans don’t necessarily understand that.

El Mencho himself comes from Michoacán and grew up in poverty, like so many people do in that area of Mexico and in Mexico in general. And he, as a young boy, was part of the avocado trade before emigrating to the United States. He committed a number of crimes, then he was deported. He became a police officer briefly in Jalisco. I imagine that is where he learned the tricks of the trade and how to corrupt not only the police force but beyond.

There’s a new president in Mexico now, Claudia Sheinbaum. She took a strong approach to the rival Sinaloa Cartel. But folks you’ve interviewed have basically said, about four or five weeks ago, there was some indication that more might be happening. There were some statements that came out after a meeting between the United States and Mexico that made it clear that the United States was demanding more action from Sheinbaum. Can you lay out what happened? What do we know about the operation as it unfolded on Sunday? 

Well, what we know from the account of the Mexican government is they got a lead that pointed to the presence of El Mencho in an area of Jalisco called Tapalpa. He was not supposed to be killed, but the cartel responded with heavy gunfire that led to the death of at least 25 Mexican servicemen. He was wounded and died en route to a hospital. This operation involved different areas of Mexican security forces, from the army to the national guard, and there was substantial U.S. intelligence support, and the immediate retaliation, as we saw, were roadblocks, arson attacks, disorder, and chaos in various states and cities in Mexico.

It was certainly a war, because that’s how they are armed. These are not just old-fashioned gangs with handguns and knives. We’re talking about armies that have gained firepower through the illicit gun trade from the United States.

It is clear from the reporting we’ve seen after this attack, the killing of El Mencho, that the United States was key in some ways to what happened here. The reporting is that the CIA was instrumental in allowing Mexican forces to locate El Mencho via a girlfriend who is visiting him. Of course, there’s been extensive reporting about the fact that the CIA has expanded a program to use drones over Mexico. How deep is the involvement at this point between Mexico and the United States, and how much of this operation was Mexican versus American? Do we even know? 

This current phase of the war against these organizations is using American eyes in the sky and Mexican boots on the ground. Its collaboration has deepened, and that is extraordinary news. Especially after the very sour, unproductive years of AMLO, in which distrust was the main variable in that equation, in the bilateral relationship.

There’s a big debate in Mexico as to whether or not President Trump has been a positive, disruptive actor in the bilateral relationship. I think he has not. I think he has been brutal with the one-third of Mexico, or one-fourth of Mexico, that resides in the United States. I think that he has been a threat on trade, not only with Mexico but elsewhere.

But you still think that Mexico and the United States need to collaborate. 

One has to admit that when it comes to the security agenda that was paralyzed and dormant during the López Obrador years, the pressure that the U.S. government has applied since President Trump came back to power has been very productive. And people in Mexico are fed up with the cartels, fed up with corruption, and so that’s why you would find that many people in Mexico also welcome this collaboration. That should be the word.

Donald Trump’s administration seems keen to do quick targeted interventions and then leave, like what we saw in Venezuela. They don’t want to stay somewhere, which would maybe bolster your idea of the U.S. collaborating but not intervening in any forceful way. On the other hand, the Trump administration likes to own the win. You know what I’m saying? Collaboration doesn’t often come without an ask from the Trump administration. And I don’t know what those asks are.

Absolutely. Do you think it’s not a coincidence that Trump loves Sheinbaum so much? Can you name me another leader whom he praises publicly?

Trump is intensely transactional. So of course there’s some quid pro quo going on. But the problem won’t be solved by the decapitation of a singular cartel, sadly. Mexico’s troubles go deeper.

That speaks to a kind of consistent presence and intervention that highlights the deeper work that has to be done. There’s so much here in terms of a financial superstructure that you need to begin to break down in this cartel that El Mencho ran. That’s a lot of work. And that’s not as easy as running in with some guns and getting a guy. 

Popular in News & Politics

Clarence Thomas Just Created a Dangerous New Threat to Mail Voting

Exactly. I know for a fact that the Trump administration has put in front of President Sheinbaum a list of Mexican politicians with suspected ties to organized crime. Many of them from her own party, governors, members of, if not her inner circle, certainly the next circle of influence. We haven’t seen one arrested, one processed. Sheinbaum’s willingness to collaborate with the United States has one limit there. She hasn’t shown any willingness to go after those politicians suspected of corruption and links to organized crime. And then there are structural challenges in Mexico. The Sheinbaum administration recently passed deep judicial reform that was incredibly pernicious, incredibly toxic, erasing the previous Supreme Court and substituting it with judges who were elected with the support and the thumbs-up of the executive itself. Mexico faces deeper structural challenges that go well beyond the dramatic killing of this one particularly vicious cartel leader.

How optimistic are you at this moment? 

It’s a tough question. We are in a better place than we were two years ago, for sure. López Obrador was criminal in the way he coddled organized crime. But when you listen to people who go through this at the local level, when you listen to our colleagues in Sinaloa, in Tamaulipas, in Michoacán, in Guanajuato, even in Jalisco, and you see the fear on their faces, and then you talk to the people of Culiacán, and see how ingrained this is, how powerful these people are, how deep their tentacles go into politics, business, you name it, then the gravity of the situation really, really hits you. It’s going to take a long time for this to change.

Get the best of news and politics

© Slate