[imagesource: Rolling Stone / Illustration by John Ritter]

The powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG, is led by a notorious kingpin known as El Mencho.

Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes enjoyed a brutal rise to the top, leaving a trail of dead bodies in his wake.

His cartel became synonymous with mass killings, often carried out in public. In 2019, a $10 million bounty was slapped on his head by America’s Drugs Enforcement Administration (DEA).

The CJNG can now lay claim to being Mexico’s deadliest narco empire, and its leader sits atop the DEA’s most-wanted list.

However, reports VICE, there are rumours swirling that El Mencho has been killed and the cartel’s future could be at risk:

In 10 years the Jalisco New Generation Cartel have come from nothing to become the deadliest rising power in Mexican drug trafficking.

They have achieved this by applying unprecedented levels of organised, paramilitary-style violence – even using tanks and drone warfare against other cartels and the Mexican military…

Could this be the beginning of the end for this brutal cartel empire?

When rival cartels smell weakness they are usually quick to pounce.

El Mencho’s battle with the Sinaloa Cartel, which came under fire after leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was locked up, led to what prosecutors described as “giant graves” and “killing fields” outside towns where battles for power ensued.

Image: Rolling Stone

In Colima, where CJNG and Sinaloa fought for supremacy, the murder rate more than tripled.

The CJNG can expect no mercy from rival cartels. While El Chapo was known to be merciless, his body count was seen as being necessary to keep control.

For El Mencho, his savagery was extreme by narco standards and his killing “seems more like sadism as public spectacle”.

[source:vice]