The last time a relative of El Mencho was arrested, two marines were kidnapped in revenge and a military siege using tanks and helicopters was unleashed that turned one of Guadalajara’s most exclusive neighborhoods into a war zone. This Tuesday, following the arrest of the kingpin’s brother Antonio Oseguera, aka Tony Montana, the authorities of Jalisco, Colima and Michoacán declared “maximum alert” with military and police reinforcements guarding almost every corner. After all, the thing did not arise from some burned-out car. But the extreme zeal in the authorities’ response is further evidence of the extent to which the conflict between the state and Mexico’s most powerful mafia has escalated.
El Mencho, head of the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel, is the number one target, and not just for the Mexican authorities. The Justice Department is offering up to $10 million for leads that will help catch America’s most wanted criminal for two years. Despite the fact that so many focuses on the same person, the hunt for Nemesio Oseguera, as his real name is, resembles a game of chess under the logic of tearing between the two sides. An endless series of attacks and revenge.
As late as 2015, when he was already beginning to establish himself in the global imagination of organized crime as the heir to the almost mythical figure El Chapo, the death of one of his men at the hands of the army was ambushed by a military convoy and 15 agents killed. The arrest of several of the suspected killers was followed by drug blockades across Jalisco and a military helicopter being shot down with a bazooka. Three years later, the first arrest of Oseguera’s wife, the mafia’s financial mastermind, was read as a response to the attempted assassination of a former prosecutor. And the second arrest of La Jefa last year led to the two kidnapped sailors. His brother’s arrest this week has also been interpreted as a response to the cartel’s disappearance of a colonel.
Alejandro Hope, a security expert, believes there is no evidence linking Antonio Oseguera’s arrest to the December 10 kidnapping of Colonel José Isidro Grimaldo by the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel. For the analyst, the security forces were preparing the operation to capture the capo’s brother long before the colonel was kidnapped. “There may be temporary coincidences or the abduction of the military has given the matter more urgency.” Hope also rules out that there was an attempt to negotiate with the CJNG to release his military command. It is not known with certainty what position or role Tony Montana played in the structure of the criminal organization. “What we can say is that this doesn’t change the equation for the CJNG,” he adds.
Aside from the media coups, the recent leaking of millions of emails from the Mexican military leadership – Guacamaya Leaks – demonstrated the intense intelligence work of the Ministry of Defense (Sedena). For example, the hack revealed close monitoring of one of the CJNG tentacles already present in virtually every corner of the country in the small state of Aguascalientes. The secret operation didn’t work. Rather, it ended in one of the Army’s biggest fiascos that year with a failed attempt to arrest a major kingpin. The attack on the Mafia again resulted in Jalisco and Guanajuato being burned by the crime.
The focus is on the big bosses
“How intelligent is the army?” asks Guillermo Valdés, head of the old CNI during Felipe Calderón’s six-year tenure (2006-2012). “From what we’ve seen in this week’s clean and effective operation and the Guacamaya Leaks documents, they have a lot of information, but they’re not using it. These sporadic arrests do not break the policy of hugs and no bullets. Despite the consolidation of the militarization imposed by López Obrador with the creation of the National Guard and the massive deployment of the army in the streets, the government’s strategy focuses more on containing than attacking the organized crime mafia. The figures on violence, on the other hand, hardly give a breather.
CIDE researcher Carlos Flores, a security specialist who has studied the CJNG in depth, points out that the government’s strategy lacks “appropriate synergy” with other bodies such as the Financial Intelligence Unit or the prosecutor’s office itself to prosecute these organized gangs prosecute crimes. “You should focus on networks and not individuals,” he says. The difference that Flores distinguishes between López Obrador’s actions against drug trafficking in relation to other governments is mainly rhetorical and perhaps a little less offensive. “There are fewer stocks, but when they are, they have the same cut,” he says. The approach hasn’t changed, he stresses, because “there remains a tendency to give continuity to the ‘kingpin’ strategy,” he comments on the practice of prosecuting criminal leaders.
The strategy of beheading the cartels by arresting their bosses was particularly relevant during the government of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018). Some movements that in large part paved the way for the emergence of El Mencho and his CJNG to the top of a highly atomized criminal map. For Guillermo Valdés, who led the agency during the previous six-year tenure that in turn launched the militarized policy known as the war on drugs, “there is no general strategy for taking down criminal organizations. Only eventual arrests of big bosses”.
The current analyst cites as an example the device that at the time managed to reduce the Zetas almost to the quota: “First we focused on the operational cells, the killers, the regional bosses, the accountants, the financial operators. We undermined the organization from below to weaken it. And even with the emptiest shell we were able to catch up with the leaders.” At any rate, Valdés recognizes a difference from back then: “It’s true that this group is much more aggressive against the state. Sinaloa, for example, hardly made any attacks. They were different codes.
Of all the attacks on the police, military, politicians and judges perpetrated by El Mencho’s mafia, the attempted assassination of Mexico City’s police chief Omar Harfuch two years ago was certainly the most impactful. More than 20 hitmen fired 414 bullets from assault rifles at him in the midst of an ambush in one of the capital’s most exclusive areas.
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