Mexico after El Mencho

To the casual observer, Mexico’s cartel wars might fit into the category of intractable problems that countries must manage but can never fully resolve. For decades, successive generations of kingpins with a dizzying array of cartel names and alliances have brought illicit drugs to US soil and terrorised the Mexican people in pursuit of profit and fame. The successful Mexican operation to kill Nemesio ‘El Mencho’ Oseguera Cervantes, the leader of the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) could mark a new phase in this story.

With the assistance of US intelligence and planning, the Mexican military took the most notorious kingpin off the board on 22 February. Under El Mencho’s firm control, CJNG became the most powerful cartel in Mexico, extending its reach from Jalisco and the Bajío to nearly every corner of the country. That is why the cartel’s violent response to El Mencho’s death hit so many parts of Mexico. According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), CJNG’s reach extends to nearly every US state and more than 40 countries around the world. This is transnational crime in its most pernicious form.

Over the past 15 years, El Mencho and CJNG have earned their US narco-terrorist designation many times over. The group’s henchmen and sicarios have littered their country’s agave fields, the very same that gave the world tequila, with mass graves and brutal massacres. In battles against rival cartels and the Mexican military, CJNG regularly uses improvised explosive devices to attack vehicles. These military-like capabilities are a significant threat to the Mexican government.

El Mencho’s brazenness is legendary. In 2020, CJNG gunmen attempted to assassinate Mexico City’s police chief near Chapultepec Park in the beating heart of the capital. Six years later, the survivor of that attack, Omar García Harfuch, leads Mexico’s security cabinet. This time, Harfuch approved the operation that ended in El Mencho’s demise. One could call it poetic justice.

For the United States, the rise of powerful, transnational narco-terrorist organisations in Mexico is a significant strategic challenge. CJNG, the Sinaloa Cartel, and their ilk traffic deadly fentanyl into American communities, a drug responsible for the deaths of more than 400,000 Americans due to overdoses since 2016. Mexican cartels rely on Chinese chemical precursors arriving on the Pacific coast to synthesise fentanyl and Chinese criminal groups to launder proceeds back to Mexico from US streets. This supply chain creates a major national security vulnerability in America’s backyard – valuable leverage that the Chinese Communist Party has exploited in negotiations with US leaders.

Moreover, Mexico is arguably the most important country for the future security and prosperity of the United States. Since 2023, Mexico has been the largest US trading partner, and total annual trade with Mexico is now more than double US trade with China. This is a direct illustration of how critical Mexico is to supply chains across the US economy, facilitated by the US-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement, the USMCA.

At the same time, the downside risks for the United States in Mexico are enormous. By controlling large swaths of territory, corrupting powerful politicians, and extorting key industries, the cartels threaten the long-term viability of the Mexican state if left unchecked. Given a nearly 2,000-mile land border and population of 132 million, a collapse of Mexican institutions would be a nightmare scenario for Washington.

The Trump administration’s pressure campaign on the Mexican government is an overdue recognition that allowing cartels to grow into powerful narco-terrorist paramilitaries next door was strategic malpractice. Additionally, President Trump now has a Mexican counterpart, President Claudia Sheinbaum, who takes the cartel threat more seriously than her predecessor and mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). By empowering Harfuch and responding to US pressure and, at times, demands for action, Sheinbaum has taken Mexico from AMLO’s rather complacent ‘Abrazos, no balazos’ – ‘hugs, not bullets’ – to a more serious, yet still incomplete, security strategy.

Taking down kingpins alone will not reduce drug trafficking or criminality in Mexico. This is not the first time that Mexico has captured or killed powerful cartel leaders. Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada, and two of El Chapo’s sons all sit in US prisons. Much like America’s experience in the War on Terror, new leaders and groups emerged to take their place, drawn to the same opportunities for profit and fame that motivated those who came before them.

Until Mexico improves its criminal justice system at the state and federal levels, criminal groups will continue to terrorise communities to support their illicit activities. Mexico is a country where nationwide impunity for crimes exceeds 95 per cent. More than 130,000 Mexicans are considered missing or disappeared, and annual disappearances have increased by 200 per cent in the past decade.

Corruption feeds this impunity. There is evidence linking far too many current Mexican officials, including governors, senators and mayors, to criminal groups. In 2023, American prosecutors convicted former Mexican Public Security Minister Genaro García Luna on charges of taking bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel. US authorities arrested Mexico’s former secretary of defence, General Salvador Cienfuegos, in 2020 for money laundering and drug trafficking. After significant backlash from AMLO, however, the US dropped the charges and returned Cienfuegos to Mexico, where he was never prosecuted. President Sheinbaum must hold politicians, including in her own ruling party, Morena, accountable for corruption that supports criminal groups.

With assistance from the United States, Mexico now has a golden opportunity to degrade cartel networks across the country. In addition to an uncertain CJNG leadership succession, the Sinaloa Cartel is in the middle of a violent civil war sparked by the capture of El Mayo in 2024. With both cartels weakened, the United States and Mexico should press the advantage. Violence will probably increase in the short term, but that is the result of allowing the cartels to gain strength over the past decade. For communities on both sides of the US-Mexico border scarred by drug cartels, this cannot come soon enough.