{"id":201572,"date":"2026-02-25T13:37:33","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T13:37:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/far-more-complicated-violence-for-mexico-after-cartel-leaders-death-usa-today\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T13:37:33","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T13:37:33","slug":"far-more-complicated-violence-for-mexico-after-cartel-leaders-death-usa-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/far-more-complicated-violence-for-mexico-after-cartel-leaders-death-usa-today\/","title":{"rendered":"'Far more complicated violence' for Mexico after cartel leader's death – USA Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

The public display of violence in Mexico<\/a> after the killing of drug lord<\/a> Nemesio Rube\u0301n Oseguera Cervantes could continue for days or weeks given his stature within the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the group’s extraordinary military-style capabilities, veteran cartel watchers tell USA TODAY.
The cartel produced a similar nationwide show of force in 2015, even using a rocket-propelled grenade to shoot down a Mexican Army helicopter after the Mexican military tried to capture Oseguera Cervantes, commonly known as “El Mencho.”
In 2019, the rival Sinaloa Cartel waged war on the Mexican government when it tried to arrest one of the sons of its leader, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
\u201cIf past is prologue, what we’ve seen is that there will be at least a week, maybe more, of these sort of violent reprisals by the cartels. And then things will turn inward,\u201d Anthony Placido, former head of intelligence for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, told USA TODAY.
Already, criminal violence has engulfed parts of Mexico after troops killed Oseguera Cervantes in a shoot-out Feb. 22 in the cartel\u2019s stronghold in the western coastal state of Jalisco.
The cartel\u2019s response was immediate, spreading outward from Jalisco and plunging much of Mexico into chaos and violence. Cartel soldiers set cars, buses and businesses on fire and blockaded roads in violence that spread<\/a>\u00a0to 20 states. Mexican authorities said at least 62 people were killed, including 25 National Guard members, and 70 people were arrested.
But as bad as things are in Mexico after Oseguera Cervantes’ death, the cartel appears to have stopped short of unleashing anything close to the kind of violence it has shown it is capable of in the past.
U.S. counternarcotics officials have said in recent years that the cartel has amassed so much firepower that it resembles more of a small nation-state\u2019s army<\/a> than a transnational crime syndicate.
The question now, experts say, is whether the cartel will de-escalate the sporadic violence and regroup or ramp up its attacks on the Mexican government, the public and rival cartels fighting over the lucrative trafficking of cocaine, fentanyl, methamphetamine and other drugs into the United States.
Experts say the cartel probably will train its sophisticated arsenal of weapons on its rivals in an effort to get back to its main business: earning billions of dollars in annual drug revenue as what the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration calls \u201cone of the five most dangerous criminal organizations<\/a> in the world.”
Most analysts say the cartel will regroup and focus on maintaining the global dominance over the drug trade it has long shared with the rival Sinaloa Cartel.
\u201cNothing they do is going to bring Mencho back,\u201d Placido said. \u201cAnd so the most important thing for them is: Who’s going to take over the cartel, and are the Sinaloa guys going to try and take their territory?
\u201cI don’t have a crystal ball,\u201d Placido said. \u201cBut I would think that instead of these big public manifestations where they’re burning vehicles and doing all kinds of stuff to protest against the government, they\u2019re going to rapidly become involved in sort of inter-cartel violence and warfare. And that will be more targeted.\u201d
In the short term, the cartel certainly has the capacity to wreak much more lethal violence on the Mexican government and the public \u2013 including American tourists who have been told to shelter in place.
Some past demonstrations of force have included mass arson campaigns known as \u201cnarcobloqueos,\u201d even more simultaneous roadblocks across multiple states than it has currently \u2013 and high-profile assassination attempts.
In an assessment Feb. 23, Mexico-based International Crisis Group analyst David Mora wrote that \u201cclaiming a top criminal scalp will not spare the government from a messy aftermath.\u201d
Vanda Felbab-Brown, a Brookings Institution expert on nonstate armed groups including the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, said today’s violence echoes the unrest after the Mexican government\u2019s attempt to capture Ovidio Guzma\u0301n Lo\u0301pez<\/a>, a son of El Chapo, in its stronghold of Culiaca\u0301n in 2019.
Within hours, heavily armed Sinaloa forces paralyzed the city, directly assaulted the military<\/a> and forced the government to release him.
The violence now, Felbab-Brown told USA TODAY, is essentially the cartel\u2019s way of showing its capabilities, essentially an act of \u201cretaliatory, demonstrative violence against the state.\u201d
\u201cThey are saying, ‘Hey Mexican government, we are punishing you. We are responding. You killed our leader. This is showing you what we can do,’\u201d Felbab-Brown said.
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty enormous in geographic scope and scale,\u201d she said. \u201cBut it will die off in a matter of time.\u201d
That could take just a few days or a few weeks, she said.
\u201cAnd once this immediate violence settles, then the question is, what kind of other violence will break out within factions of CJNG and between them and their rivals?\u201d Felbab-Brown said. \u201cAnd that violence will be far more complicated and far more lasting.\u201d
Once the initial explosion of publicly directed violence dies down, what happens next depends on a number of factors.
El Mencho left no clear heir, Mora said, and the remaining leaders could dispute control.
If the cartel doesn\u2019t quickly appoint a successor and close ranks, infighting among rival factions could consume the organization, Placido said.
That was the case after the capture of Guzman, leader of the Sinaloa Cartel a decade ago.
Since then, Sinaloa has been racked by infighting and internal power struggles between the sons of \u201cEl Chapo\u201d \u2013 known as the \u201cChapitos\u201d \u2013 and factions loyal to Ismael \u201cEl Mayo\u201d Zambada, who is now in U.S. custody, too.
Much of that violence is cartel-on-cartel, though, and would not paralyze huge swaths of Mexico \u2013 and its important tourist industry \u2013 like today’s upheaval, Placido and Felbab-Brown said.
In the case of the New Generation Cartel, taking out El Mencho could slow his own cartel’s rapid expansion within Mexico and internationally. But it is also likely to leave it weakened against the Sinaloa Cartel on several fronts that could lead to bloody turf battles throughout Mexico and even in the United States, they said.
A less likely scenario is that the cartel will launch a long-term war against the Mexican government to avenge the death of its longtime leader.
Over the past half-century, Mexican drug cartels and criminal gangs have engaged in protracted skirmishes<\/a> over its sporadic counternarcotics crackdowns. Colombian cartels did the same thing in the 1990s with car bombs, assassinations and attacks on the military.
If that happens, the cartel is capable of inflicting significant damage, given its arsenal of heavy weapons, many of them obtained from U.S. gun manufacturers, according to a USA TODAY investigation<\/a>.
Most analysts predict that won\u2019t be the case because the New Generation Cartel, like Sinaloa and other cartels before it, would prefer a de\u0301tente with the government that allows it to focus on its global business operations.
\u201cIn many ways, it\u2019s just a waste of resources. El Mencho is dead, so there is nothing to bargain for\u201d like there was after the arrest of El Chapo\u2019s son, Felbab-Brown said.
Some public violence is needed, she said, \u201cto show how fearless they are, how they can act with more brazenness, more brutality, more violence than anyone\u201d to keep Mexican authorities at bay.
But in the end, Placido said, \u201cit\u2019s all about the money. It\u2019s always been about the money.\u201d<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The public display of violence in Mexico after the killing of drug lord Nemesio Rube\u0301n Oseguera Cervantes could continue for days or weeks given his stature within the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the group’s extraordinary military-style capabilities, veteran cartel watchers tell USA TODAY.The cartel produced a similar nationwide show of force in 2015, even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":201573,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-201572","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}