GUADALAJARA, Mexico — Mexican security forces located the drug kingpin known as “El Mencho” in part by tracking one of his girlfriends to a secluded cabin in his home state of Jalisco, authorities said Monday.
In the cabin in Tapalpa, a scenic weekend getaway destination some 80 miles from Guadalajara, Mexican special forces and National Guard troops found Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, the 59-year-old leader of Mexico’s most powerful cartel, authorities said.
Intelligence provided to Mexico by the CIA was instrumental in allowing Mexican security forces to locate Oseguera, two people in Washington familiar with the matter said.
“It was CIA intelligence that made this happen,” one of the people said. Both declined to provide details of the information shared with Mexico, such as whether it involved human sources or electronic intercepts. The New York Times first reported the use of CIA intelligence.
General Ricardo Trevilla Trejo, secretary of national defense, confirmed in a news conference Monday that the United States provided information that helped the Mexican military find the precise location of the cartel leader.
Under President Donald Trump, the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies have significantly increased the resources they devote to countering narcotics. CIA Director John Ratcliffe expanded a program, begun under President Joe Biden, in which unarmed Predator drones overfly Mexico, surveilling the cartels.
As security personnel advanced on the property early Sunday, Oseguera’s bodyguards opened fire, according to Trevilla. He tried to flee, Trevilla told reporters Monday, but security forces captured him in a wooded area nearby.
Wounded by gunfire, Oseguera was taken by helicopter with two wounded bodyguards and a wounded soldier for treatment, Trevilla said, but died en route to the hospital. Eight members of Oseguera’s heavily armed Jalisco New Generation were killed in the operation, authorities said.
Omar García Harfuch, Mexico’s top security official, called Jalisco New Generation the “principal” organization responsible for violence in the country, “including homicide, human trafficking, extortion, kidnapping, and armed attacks against authorities.” He praised security forces for “debilitating an organization with international reach.”
The killing provoked violence across the country. Beginning Sunday, cartel members blocked highways, burned vehicles and attacked gas stations and banks, García Harfuch said. Authorities reported 85 blockades and 27 other acts against authorities. Thousands of troops were deployed to Jalisco, the cartel’s base on Mexico’s Pacific Coast.
More than 25 security personnel and a female civilian were killed in the violence, García Harfuch said. More than 30 suspected cartel members were killed and 70 people detained, García Harfuch said.
Mexican troops “accomplished their mission,” Trevilla said tearfully, and demonstrated the “strength of the Mexican state, without a doubt.”
Authorities urged communities to stay indoors. The U.S. Embassy issued alerts covering parts of 18 of Mexico’s 31 states, and warned Americans in eight cities, including popular tourist destinations Puerto Vallarta and Cancún, to shelter in place.
President Claudia Sheinbaum told Mexicans Monday morning that the country was under control and returning to normalcy.
Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco state, was among the cities hit hardest in the initial violence. Schools, public transit and nearly all businesses were closed Sunday; tourists were forced to dine from vending machines when one hotel’s restaurant closed. Hundreds of people were stranded overnight in a zoo.
On Monday, as most businesses remained shuttered, Guadalajara residents were just beginning to emerge from their homes. They walked by convenience stores that were burned and others with their windows shattered. Workers towed four burned vehicles from a strip mall parking lot where a grocery store entrance was destroyed in a fire. A street sweeper cleaned up charred debris on the side of the road. And a few shops, pharmacies and tortilla stands began to reopen to long lines from residents that had spent the past 24 hours waiting in their homes in a paralyzed city.
Narco violence has become a part of life for many residents of Jalisco, which has had the most disappearances in Mexico as the Jalisco New Generation cartel has expanded and fortified. The cartel has strengthened its territorial control in Mexican towns and neighborhoods, extorting residents.
“Mexicans are used to this,” said Armando, a manager at one of the city center’s few open taco restaurants on Monday morning, who asked to be identified by only his first name out of fear of reprisals. He compared Sunday’s narco violence to the normalization of mass shootings in the U.S. But nothing about Sunday was normal for Guadalajara, where a local news channel said the city had not been this empty since the pandemic.
Guadalajara, a host city for four matches of this year’s World Cup, was preparing for a year in the international spotlight. The metropolis of 5 million people is known as Mexico’s Silicon Valley and is famous for its tequila and mariachis. It’s a city brimming with art and UNESCO World Heritage sites.
Some residents recalled a similar wave of narco blockades in 2015, after a failed operation to capture El Mencho. But Sunday’s violence felt far more widespread.
“The devil is on the loose,” a 78-year-old woman, Margarita, said as she stepped out of her home to buy meat and saw a burned car on the side of a road in her neighborhood. She first noticed something was off Sunday when her noon Mass was nearly empty. She turned on the news and locked herself in her house for the rest of the day. In all her years living in Guadalajara, she’s never lived through something like this.
Across town, Sara Carillo, 52, looked inside a convenience store that was completely burned and left unattended, with no police guarding against looters. She had walked by the store a day earlier when firefighters had just extinguished the flames. The store’s sole worker was distraught; he recalled how men shouted at him to leave just before they poured gasoline on the storefront and lit it ablaze.
“What else will happen next?” Carillo asked.
Under Oseguera, Jalisco New Generation grew into a major criminal power. Noted for its violence, the cartel took control of lucrative drug routes trafficking heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl into the United States to eventually eclipse the rival Sinaloa cartel of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán as Mexico’s largest.
The arrests and killings of Mexican cartel leaders typically spur spikes in violence as those left behind retaliate against authorities and battle among themselves for territory. The deadly violence sparked by the 2019 capture in Culiacán of Ovidio Guzmán López, El Chapo’s son, led authorities to release him back to his cartel after just three hours. And when U.S. forces arrested his fellow Sinaloa cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada in 2024, murders in that state exploded.
“Here in Mexico, the narco is in charge,” said Gerardo Pérez Rodríguez, a 58-year-old public servant.
He’s tried to reassure his friends in the U.S. that it’s safe here — and was proud that his city was selected as a World Cup host city. Guadalajara is preparing to broadcast games on large screens across town.
“Foreigners are going to be too afraid to come,” he said, wearing a Chicago T-shirt with an American flag as he looked at a destroyed grocery store. “This crossed the line. It was too much for Jalisco, too much for Guadalajara.”
Strobel reported from Washington and Sands from London.
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