‘El Mencho’: From California drug dealer to cartel kingpin

Long before he had a $15-million bounty on his head as the leader of Mexico’s ruthless Jalisco New Generation cartel, Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes was a scruffy-haired kid trying to eke out a living on the streets of San Francisco.

He crossed the border illegally sometime before he turned 20, making the migrant’s journey north from the avocado and lime orchards that surround his family’s small town in the state of Michoacán. He was picked up first on meth charges on May 14, 1986, according to news reports and a San Francisco police booking photo, which shows him in a blue hoodie scowling into the camera. He was arrested twice more, finally for selling $9,500 worth of heroin to two undercover officers at a bar in 1992.

He went to prison, got deported and, despite his record, became a local police officer back home.

So began the criminal career of one of the most infamous figures in the world of international drug trafficking. It ended in spectacular and violent fashion Sunday, with Mexican authorities announcing that the kingpin nicknamed “El Mencho” had been killed in a shootout with government forces in Jalisco, the state his group, known as the CJNG, has long dominated.

The killing unleashed shock waves of violence across the swaths of Mexico where the CJNG holds sway. Flights into some Jalisco airports were grounded and cartel gunmen blockaded highways by setting fire to vehicles in 20 states, according to Mexican authorities. The country’s top security official said 25 members of the National Guard were killed Sunday in reprisal attacks. President Claudia Sheinbaum called on the public to remain calm and maintained that most territory in the country was in a state of “complete normality.”

The discord between the president’s remarks and the images circulating on social media of torched cars billowing dark plumes of smoke — along with swirling rumors over the degree of U.S. involvement in the operation — has added a murky coda to Oseguera’s violent and tumultuous life. He rose from small-time California drug peddler to the head of an organized crime group with tentacles that stretch around the globe, an ascension that tracks with the broader evolution of Mexico’s cartels.

Once almost solely dedicated to moving illicit substances to meet the demand of American consumers, the groups have diversified their business to include human smuggling, extortion, fuel theft and even, according to recent U.S. Treasury Department filings against the CJNG, a timeshare fraud scheme that targeted tourists in Puerto Vallarta.

The narco-blockades that have upended life in parts of Mexico since Sunday also reflect the CJNG’s fearsome power as a paramilitary organization. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration estimated in 2023 that the cartel employs nearly 20,000 “members, associates, facilitators and brokers” in various countries. Cells in Mexico are armed to the teeth with military-grade weaponry, including drones that drop explosives, improvised land mines and .50-caliber rifles that fire carrot-sized armor-piercing bullets. The Trump administration designated the CJNG as a terrorist group last year, escalating the pressure that U.S. officials have long exerted on Mexican authorities to dismantle the group and take out its founder.

Although experts said his death was a major blow to the CJNG, they also cautioned that Oseguera’s creation has metastasized beyond the point where decapitating the primary head will cause the hydra-like infrastructure to collapse.

Paul Craine, the former head of the DEA in Mexico, said Oseguera pioneered a sort of franchise system, where local criminal groups are co-opted and allowed to fly the CJNG banner — as long as they pay tribute.

With various factions controlled by key lieutenants, some of them close relatives, Oseguera’s moniker has been invoked to instill terror and keep subordinates in line, Craine said. The group — accused of assassinating politicians, journalists, environmental activists, police officers and anyone else who dares stand in their way — has frequently issued menacing communiques, usually delivered by masked gunmen who say they are speaking on behalf of El Mencho.

“Mencho’s name and Mencho’s aura carried a lot of legend, it sowed fear,” Craine said. “He was the end-all, be-all figurehead.”

Oseguera’s connections to California extend beyond his early days in the Bay Area. The DEA’s office in Los Angeles has led the agency’s case against him and his close relatives, and the family’s ties to the region have spilled out in court filings.

In 2024, federal authorities arrested a suspected high-ranking cartel member who was accused of faking his death and hiding out in Riverside, where he enjoyed a life of luxury. Authorities said Cristian Fernando Gutierrez-Ochoa began working for the CJNG around 2014, and later married El Mencho’s youngest daughter, identified in court records as a U.S. citizen who owns a coffee shop in Riverside. Gutierrez-Ochoa pleaded guilty last year to money laundering conspiracy charges and was sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison.

It’s unclear exactly when Oseguera left his job as a local police officer and continued his life of crime, but at some point in the 1990s, Mexican authorities have said he began working as an enforcer for Los Cuinis and what was then known as the Milenio cartel. He gained a reputation for his love of cockfights, also calling himself “El Señor de Los Gallos” — the lord of the roosters.

Pedestrians walk past a bus burned on the highway in Cointzio, Michoacán, on Sunday after Mexico’s president announced the death of Oseguera.

(Armando Solis / Associated Press)

A former cartel associate, Margarito “Jay” Flores, who grew up in Chicago and, along with his twin brother, Pedro, became a high-level trafficker moving large drug shipments from Mexico, recalled his first encounter with El Mencho in 2007 in Puerto Vallarta. Flores, who eventually left the cartel life and has since cooperated extensively with U.S. authorities, told The Times that he and his brother, along with their wives, were detained by Mexican federal police officers after a night out partying.

Flores said he dropped the names of several top capos trying to secure his release, but it wasn’t until he mentioned knowing El Mencho that his captors showed any reaction.

“When I said that name, all their eyes lit up,” Flores said.

Flores said that after a series of phone calls, El Mencho and a large contingent of cartel gunmen arrived and ordered the Mexican authorities to release their captives. Oseguera was small — standing barely 5 feet 6 with “the build of a jockey,” Flores said, but “confident and fearless.”

In a brief standoff with Mexican law enforcement, Flores said, Oseguera had told the chief Mexican official: “We’re all going to do this the right way, or we’re all going to die.”

The twins were released, and Oseguera sent them on their way with a convoy of sicarios — hitmen — for safekeeping. At that time he was only a local chieftain, but Flores said was not surprised that Oseguera later went on to form his own cartel.

“He ruled with violence and fear,” Flores said. “He didn’t just want to be the boss, he wanted the world to know he was the boss.”

Times staff writers Kate Linthicum and Patrick McDonnell contributed to this report.

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