The government’s killing of “El Mencho” on February 22 provoked a spasm of violence by his cartel that has been, in some ways, unprecedented. But previous displays of force by aggrieved criminal groups have proven to be largely temporary and, in most instances, a last gasp before sputtering and atomizing.
Violence cut across at least 20 Mexican states and included widespread blockades along main city arteries following the army’s operation that left eight alleged members of the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG) dead on February 22, including Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias El Mencho, the presumed leader of the group. At least 25 members of the National Guard were also killed during the incident.
The CJNG’s rapid response and its geographic reach were unprecedented. In total, the government registered 252 blockades in 20 different places, but the total was likely much higher.
SEE ALSO: What’s Next for Mexico’s CJNG After the Killing of ‘El Mencho’?
“This is not just one state blowing up,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a Brookings Institution scholar who has written extensively about Mexican organized crime. “Essentially, much of Mexico’s territory is experiencing some faction, some cell of CJNG reacting.”
It illustrated how there are more connections between the different regional parts of the organization, she added, and that “the franchise was much tighter” than many analysts previously surmised.
Still, the group is far from an insurgency. As Jaime López-Aranda, a former intelligence official-turned organized crime researcher, told InSight Crime, CJNG henchmen mostly avoided directly confronting government forces and did not launch attacks on hard targets like military installations or police stations.
“This was not the Tet Offensive,” he said, referencing the famous Vietcong attack on US and South Vietnamese forces in 1968. “That is not the business they are in. They are not a real paramilitary force. They just play one on TV.”
A History of ‘Narcobloqueos’
Mexico has seen this before. In 2010, in the aftermath of the government’s killing of Antonio Ezequiel Cárdenas Guillén, alias “Tony Tormenta,” pitched battles broke out between Tormenta’s Gulf Cartel and government forces. Following the killing of Alfredo Beltrán Leyva in 2009, the Beltrán Leyva Organization killed family members of marines who’d allegedly participated in the takedown of the “Boss of Bosses.”
But perhaps the group most renowned for its public displays of power was the Zetas. A former armed wing of the Gulf Cartel whose origins lie in Mexico’s Special Forces, the Zetas once set up dozens of “narcobloqueos” in Monterrey after the arrest of one of its leaders. By then, they had made the practice commonplace.
SEE ALSO: Profile of the Zetas
The narcobloqueos served a number of purposes. They distracted people and authorities. They shut down main traffic arteries, so criminals could mobilize their people or escape an area. They sent a message that the government was not in control, and that the Zetas were. And while they could be set up by relatively few members, they gave the impression that they were far more numerous and present.
For a while, the Zetas’ tactics worked. They seemed to be one step ahead of authorities and their rivals. Between 1998 and 2010, the Zetas expanded to 33 new municipalities per year, far more than any other group. Part of their expansion came down to lore: The group seemed invincible, in part because of their public shows of force.
Yet, just as they seemed to be peaking, they fell apart. Some of this was related to their structure, some of it was because their leaders were captured. But within a few years, the group was atomized and a shell of what it once was. The Gulf Cartel and the Beltrán Leyva Organization also largely atomized and faded.
The CJNG is Not the Zetas
The CJNG is a lot like the Zetas. Its core is made up of former security personnel – Mencho himself was a former policeman. It has expanded quickly and efficiently, employing a Zetas’ moniker: o te alineas o te mueres (you align with us or you die). It is involved in multiple criminal economies, from drug trafficking to gasoline theft and resale to human smuggling.
The result is a franchise model where local bosses, rather than national ones, run the show on the day-to-day level. That franchise model was part of the demise of the Zetas, who found they could not control their own members once they had established their own criminal enterprises, especially ones that were predatory in nature and had very low barriers to entry, like extortion.
From its inception, the CJNG tried to avoid that fate. One of its first public acts was to place 35 dead and mutilated bodies of alleged Zetas under a bridge in Veracruz. The statement was implicit and later explicit: We are a parallel state that can protect you from predatory criminals like the Zetas. They later employed social media campaigns, sent text messages, and put up posters to reinforce that image.
“I do think we can say this is a cartel that has consolidated both its real and symbolic power through very visible displays of firepower — whether in real life, in videos, or on social media,” said Lisa Sánchez, the executive director of Mexico United Against Crime (México Unido Contra la Delicuencia).
But while they established a federation, CJNG showed after Mencho’s death that they can still mobilize quickly, efficiently, and across a large part of the country. What is not clear is if they will still be able to do it going forward, now that their leader is gone.
They will face challenges, some of them of their own making. The CJNG is more flexible than the Zetas ever were. Depending on the area, they have an alliance, a pact, or they dominate the area. That flexibility has allowed them to expand into territories and criminal economies they might not have otherwise. But as the Zetas found it, that comes with its own risks.
But analysts InSight Crime spoke to see the CJNG as stable and resilient. Sánchez and López Aranda noted the group’s economic diversification.
“The network is as profitable and vital as ever: Decentralized leadership with multiple revenue streams,” López Aranda said.
Felbab-Brown agrees.
“We are nowhere near the cusp of CJNG just disappearing from the map and collapsing the same way that the Zetas did a decade ago.”
Featured Image: Collage of the highway between Guadalajara city and its local airport in the state of Jalisco, the day after the killing of CJNG leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias ‘El Mencho,’ by the Mexican army, and government photos of Oseguera Cervantes. Credit: InSight Crime./ Isabella Soto Vallejo.