When you spot a gap in the market, you have to go for it.

I guess that’s also true for drug cartels, and now that Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is set to spend the rest of his life behind bars, new players are already moving in on his turf.

Mexico’s Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, or CJNG, are said to be making some serious power plays, led by the fearless Nemesio Ruben Oseguera-Cervante, known simply as El Mencho (pictured above).

According to experts, CJNG is on its way to becoming the richest, and deadliest, cartel.

Here’s NewsAU with more on El Mencho:

He eventually left the force to work for the Millennium Cartel, which was allied with Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s own gang, the Sinaloa Cartel — but around 10 years ago, he set up his own criminal crew which quickly gained a reputation for especially brutal mass killings.

These days, Oseguera-Cervantes, 52, is widely believed to be a billionaire — and he’s got a $US10 million bounty on his head thanks to his position at the top of America’s Drugs Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) most-wanted list.

 His cartel dealt crystal meth, cocaine and heroin, with the drugs ending up across the world…

In the words of Paul Craine, who fronted the federal DEA in Mexico during El Chapo’s 2016 arrest, El Mencho is “public enemy number one” with an army of “thousands of bad guys”.

Narcos expert Daniel Solis says El Mencho needs to be feared because he runs his army like a paramilitary, and has the means to put the Mexican army to shame.

“He has publicly stated he will die ­fighting rather than be taken alive. He expects the same of all his men.”

Even more frightening was Mr Solis’ comparison between CJNJ and Islamic State.

“Its method of ­killing is more akin to ISIS than the ­cartels,” he said.

“Never ­before has how they kill, in the numbers that they kill, been seen in Mexico.”

In order to demonstrate his strength, both to the public and to any law enforcement agencies that may challenge him, El Mencho once ordered the dumping of 35 mutilated bodies in a busy city during peak rush hour.

In 2015, he ordered his henchmen to strap dynamite to a man and his son, before setting it off.

Are these drug lords in competition to find the most perverse ways to murder people? Sure seems like it.

A Rolling Stone article from a few years back details CJNJ’s rise:

CJNG have been around for only about half a decade, but with their dizzyingly swift rise, they have already achieved what took Sinaloa a generation. The cartel has established trafficking routes in dozens of countries on six continents and controls territory spanning half of Mexico, including along both coasts and both borders.

“[CJNG] have increased their operations like no other criminal organization to date,” said a classified Mexican intelligence report obtained by the newspaper El Universal. This past May, Mexico’s attorney general, Raúl Cervantes, declared them the most ubiquitous cartel in the country…

Thousands of these killings can be chalked up to CJNG’s push for territory. Vast burial sites have been discovered in states where the cartel has been most aggressive, like Veracruz, which the state attorney general recently described as a “giant grave”; in Colima, where CJNG and Sinaloa spent last year fighting for supremacy, the murder rate more than tripled.

Mencho has also displayed a savagery that’s extreme even by narco standards. For the admittedly brutal Chapo, killing was a necessary part of business. For Mencho, it seems more like sadism as public spectacle.

Perhaps most worryingly for those who hope to bring him to justice, DEA agents say that El Mencho is something of a ghost, and anybody who has come across him isn’t exactly likely to spill the beans, given the repercussions.

You can read more on that extensive El Mencho profile here.

[sources:newsau&rollingstone]