Mexico’s Cartel Fight Is a Terrifying High-Wire Act

Mr. Grillo is a contributing Opinion writer who has covered organized crime in Latin America for two decades. He wrote from Mexico City.

Early on Sunday, drug cartel operatives in Mexico’s western state of Jalisco began hijacking trucks, positioning them horizontally across highways and setting them ablaze. The attacks spread quickly across the country, with thugs also stealing cars and buses for their narcobloqueos — narco blockades — on roads from Mexico’s Texas border to its Caribbean beaches.

Gangsters set fire to pharmacies, grocery stores and banks. Gunmen ambushed security forces and left their bullet-ridden corpses on the streets. Residents cowered in their homes, embassies issued warnings, and airlines canceled flights. At an airport in Guadalajara, people rushed for cover amid a false alarm that it was being stormed by gunmen.

Behind this wave of terror was the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, whose abbreviation in Spanish is C.J.N.G., a sprawling crime mob that traffics cocaine, meth and fentanyl and runs other rackets including oil theft and extortion. After Mexican security forces killed the cartel’s leader, Nemesio Oseguera, on Sunday, cartel operatives unleashed the narco blockades in 20 of Mexico’s 32 states. Its gunmen effectively shut down large swaths of the country, killed at least 25 members of the National Guard and showed the world that Mexico’s cartels are not just a public safety problem but a debilitating national security threat.

In many ways, the killing of Mr. Oseguera was a clear victory for President Claudia Sheinbaum. The gangster, known as El Mencho, was no doubt the mastermind behind many of Mexico’s mass graves, disappearances and shakedowns. Mothers of murdered children and shop owners facing extortion have called on Ms. Sheinbaum to do more. The killing may have also bought her time with President Trump, who has been threatening to order unilateral military strikes against cartel targets on Mexican soil since returning to office. (U.S. intelligence was pivotal in locating Mr. Oseguera before Mexican troops swept in.)

But that achievement was overshadowed by the brutal attacks that followed, as images of violence and chaos were broadcast to the globe just months before Mexico is set to host World Cup matches this summer. The violence underscored a central conundrum facing the Mexican government: If you allow cartel kingpins like Mr. Oseguera to roam free, that breeds impunity, but taking them down can unleash more bloodshed as the entrenched cartels hit back against soldiers and civilians and their lieutenants battle among themselves for the spoils of their empires.

The term “narco blockade” entered the vocabulary of Mexicans in the mid-2000s, part of a grim lexicon that emerged to describe rising cartel violence, along with other words like “narcofosas” (narco graves) and “narcopolíticos” (narco politicians).

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