On Sunday, Mexican security forces killed 59-year-old Nemesio Ruben Oseguera Cervantes (also known as “El Mencho”), the leader of the notorious Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), based in the western Mexican state of Jalisco.
Mexico’s Ministry of Defense acknowledged that the deadly operation was carried out based on “complementary information” from the United States. US “pacifist” President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to attack Mexico to fight drug cartels.
Let me tell you, these organizations owe their very existence to American policy and drug consumption.
US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau greeted the news of El Mencho’s death with glee, declaring to X: “This is a great development for Mexico, for the United States, for Latin America, and for the world.”
But so far the situation is not so “great”.
As anyone who has paid any attention to world events might have expected, violence erupted in several Mexican states in the aftermath of this killing. This is generally what happens when you take out a key figure in a cartel.
Armed groups torched vehicles and blocked highways in various regions, while various U.S. media outlets sensationalized the plight of American tourists stranded in Mexican resort cities due to the chaos.
Shortly after his first frantic post, Landau returned to X with the message: “P.S. I am watching the scene of violence in Mexico with great sadness and concern.” But no matter what, “we must never lose our sense of urgency.”
At the end of the “PS”, the deputy secretary of state added the words “Animo Mexico!” in Spanish to encourage the Mexican people. (Good luck, Mexico!)
But then again, there is little room for rejoicing, given that in almost the entire history of the world there has never been a single instance in which killing a single cartel boss has solved a drug trafficking problem, or anything else for that matter.
Recall the case of Pablo Escobar of the Medellin cartel, who was murdered by Colombian police in 1993 with significant assistance from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Despite Escobar’s absence, the international drug trade continued at a rapid pace, and the following decades saw remarkable levels of violence in Colombia, much of it carried out by state security forces that coincidentally were heavily backed by the United States.
In one particularly memorable episode, members of the Colombian military massacred an estimated 10,000 civilians and passed off the bodies as left-wing “terrorists.”
To this day, Colombia remains the world’s largest producer of cocaine.
In other words, celebrating El Mencho’s death as a “great development” for Mexico or anyone else is at best a ridiculous delusion.
On Sunday, I called a Mexican friend in the southern state of Oaxaca, a supporter of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, for a much-needed discussion about the day’s events. In his view, the Mexican government was only “accomplishing its mission” in the “war on drugs” by eliminating El Mencho, and the United States had no real connection to it.
Indeed, like his predecessor and leader Andres Manuel López Obrador, Mr. Sheinbaum has perfected the art of doing the gringo’s dirty work while acting as a “sovereign” and even purporting to rebel against the imperial princes of the north.
Certainly, given the recent US kidnapping of Venezuelan head of state Nicolás Maduro, and the fact that President Trump is openly above the law at home and abroad, she doesn’t have much room for maneuver.
But while Sheinbaum may have thought he had no choice but to temporarily appease the American people and satisfy President Trump’s blood demands, Mexicans will pay a heavy price.
A brief review of Mexico’s modern history confirms this. As soon as then-Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched a “war on drugs” under U.S. leadership in 2006, murders and enforced disappearances began to skyrocket in the country.
Since then, well over half a million people have been killed or disappeared, many victims of militarized agents of the state, often in collusion with organized crime.
While the southward flow of American weapons continues unabated, the northward flow of drugs continues unabated.
Jalisco itself has the highest number of enforced disappearances in all of Mexico, and last year it made headlines when a secret crematorium was discovered on a ranch on the outskirts of Guadalajara, one of the host cities for the next World Cup.
The ranch was reportedly used by the CJNG as a recruitment and training center as well as an extermination site.
And removing El Mencho from the equation does absolutely nothing to calm the situation—just as the extradition of Sinaloa cartel leaders Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada to the United States merely precipitated an ongoing violent power struggle.
Contrary to the lofty claims of U.S. officials, the empire has no interest in eradicating either drug trafficking or violence south of its borders. This is because both phenomena provide eternal pretexts for U.S. interference inside and outside Mexico.
If gringos were actually serious about ridding “Mexico, the United States, Latin America, and the world” of the entire cartel problem, decriminalizing drugs would make drug distribution far less illusory and lucrative, and would go a long way toward nipping the business in the bud.
A moratorium on America’s persistent weapons production would also help.
Clearly, nothing resembling these potential solutions is even on the horizon. If so, it would truly be a “great development.”
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
