Members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), one of the most powerful and feared criminal organisations in Mexico, have unleashed a wave of violence across 20 Mexican states.
They torched businesses and erected burning blockades in retaliation for the killing of their leader, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, better known as “El Mencho”, who died in custody on Sunday shortly after being captured by Mexican special forces. El Mencho, Mexico’s most wanted man, was seriously injured in a firefight between his bodyguards and the military commandos deployed to capture him. He died while the military was transporting him from the town of Tapalpa, in Jalisco state, to the capital, Mexico City.
At least six of El Mencho’s security guards were also killed in the operation, while three members of the Mexican military were injured, the defence ministry said. As news of El Mencho’s death spread, members of his cartel launched attacks in many towns and cities where the CJGN is active. In some towns, they blocked roads by throwing spikes and nails onto the tarmac – in others, they commandeered buses and other vehicles, and then torched them in the middle of the road.
Cartel members also set alight dozens of banks and local businesses, such as pharmacies. Footage recorded by locals showed plumes of smoke rising above several towns and cities, including the beach resort of Puerto Vallarta, which is popular with tourists. In Guadalajara – one of the host cities of the forthcoming FIFA World Cup – travellers at the airport could be seen running and crouching on the floor in panic.
News site Milenio reported that the panic spread when a group came running into the airport to seek shelter after they had heard gunshots ring out from the nearby highway. Their reporter said that he had seen a burnt-out car on the highway, but that rumours that shots had been fired inside the terminal had been dismissed by the authorities.
In many towns, streets were deserted as local authorities told residents to seek shelter in their homes. The scenes that unfolded on Sunday reminded many of the violence that erupted in the state of Sinaloa after the capture of another notorious drug lord – Ovidio Guzmán López – in 2019.
The street battles between members of his Sinaloa cartel and the security forces were so fierce that the Mexican authorities decided to free Guzmán López, who is the son of jailed drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, to prevent further bloodshed. While Guzmán López was re-arrested in 2023 and extradited to the US, where he has pleaded guilty to drug-trafficking charges, retaliatory attacks by cartels have since become the norm following high-profile arrests.
In Puerto Vallarta, on Mexico’s Pacific coast, tourists were told to shelter in place on Sunday. Videos showed black smoke billowing from burning cars in several neighbourhoods, with one tourist describing the scene as looking “like a war zone”. Around 300 visitors were stuck at Puerto Vallarta’s airport after flights were cancelled due to the violence. To ensure their safety, they were transferred to the city centre in a convoy with a heavy police escort.
The UK Foreign Office asked visitors to the town to “exercise extreme caution” and follow local authorities’ advice, including orders to stay indoors. Sara Morales, who is on holiday in Puerto Vallarta with her children, said that they had been asked to leave Las Glorias beach. “I was very afraid because I didn’t know what was happening,” she told Mexican newspaper El Economista.
The US state department has urged its nationals to shelter in place until further notice in the states of Jalisco, Baja California, Quintana Roo, and areas of Guanajuato, Guerrero, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas. The governor of Jalisco, where Puerto Vallarta is located, declared a “code red”, halting all public transport and cancelling mass events and in-person classes. El Universal newspaper said that more than 250 incidents of roads being blocked had been reported across the affected Mexican states.
Security officials say that 90% of the blockades have been lifted, but tension remains high, especially in the CJGN’s stronghold of Jalisco. They added that 25 people had been arrested, 11 for their alleged participation in violent acts and 14 more for alleged looting and pillaging.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum urged people to stay “calm and informed”. She added that “in most parts of the country, activities are proceeding normally”. She praised Mexico’s security forces for the operation in which “El Mencho” was captured. The Mexican president has come under pressure from the Trump administration to do more to combat the powerful transnational drug trafficking groups, which are based in her country.
US Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said late on Sunday night that El Mencho was a “top target for the Mexican and United States government as one of the top traffickers of fentanyl into our homeland”. The Mexican Ministry of Defence said that the raid aimed at capturing El Mencho had been carried out by the Mexican army, with support from the country’s National Guard and Air Force. It added that “complementary information” provided by the US had helped seize the drug lord.
The US State Department had offered a $15m (£11.1m) reward for information leading to his capture. Mike Vigil, former chief of international operations for the US Drug Enforcement Administration, described the operation as “one of the most significant actions undertaken in the history of drug trafficking” to CBS, the BBC’s US news partner.
