Rosalinda Gonzalez Valencia, alias “La Jefa,” is an important financial operator for the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG) and helped build the group into one of the most powerful and violent criminal organizations in Mexico.
Though her infamous and now deceased former husband, Nemesio Oseguerra Cervantes, alias “El Mencho,” was often recognized as the face of the CJNG, González Valencia’s lineage and financial connections supplied the origins and structural backbone for the group’s rapid expansion.
In this profile
What Is Rosalinda González Valencia’s Story?
Rosalinda González Valencia was born in 1963 in the rural community of El Naranjo, Aguililla, Michoacán, and was the eldest of 18 siblings. Originally avocado farmers, the Valencia family began cultivating marijuana and opium in the 1970s, marking their shift into illicit markets.
In the 1990s, González Valencia’s uncle Armando Valencia González, alias “La Maradona,” founded the Milenio Cartel. Under his leadership, the Valencia family evolved from a regional supplier for criminal groups in Michoacán and Jalisco into a more international force, establishing direct relationships with Colombian cocaine traffickers and expanding into synthetic drug production.
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During this period, González Valencia and her siblings, collectively known as the Cuinis, developed a sophisticated transnational money laundering and drug trafficking network. They moved cocaine, methamphetamine, and eventually fentanyl into the United States before laundering the proceeds through a web of front companies and incorporated businesses.
González Valencia had her first son, Juan Carlos Valencia González, alias “El 03, before partnering with El Mencho. The father of her first son was extradited and convicted of drug trafficking and money laundering. Gónzalez Valencia married El Mencho in 1996. He allegedly began as a hitman that protected La Maradona before becoming a drug trafficker and marrying Gónzalez Valencia.
Their marriage was a strategic alliance that fused the financial infrastructure of Los Cuinis and El Mencho’s operational force and ambitions. One of the founders of the Cuinis, González Valencia’s brother, Abigael González Valencia, alias “El Cuini,” was arrested in Puerto Vallarta in 2015 on international drug trafficking charges. He was extradited, along with other Valencia family members who were part of Los Cuinis, to the United States in February 2025. He is currently awaiting trial.
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Throughout the 2000s, the Cuinis and El Mencho operated alongside a Sinaloa Cartel boss named Ignacio Coronel Villareal, alias “Nacho Coronel.” Nacho Coronel, who is the uncle of Emma Coronel, the last wife of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, alias “El Chapo,” was killed in a military raid in 2010, which officially severed the Milenio Cartel’s ties to the Sinaloa Cartel and allowed El Mencho to formally establish the CJNG, with Los Cuinis serving as its financial backbone.
González Valencia and El Mencho had three children: Rubén Oseguera González, Jessica Johanna Oseguera González, and Laisha Oseguera González. Jessica Johanna, alias “La Negra,” was convicted in 2021 for financial dealings with businesses sanctioned by the US Treasury Department for drug trafficking. And in 2024, Rubén, alias “El Menchito,” was convicted for trafficking cocaine and methamphetamine into the United States.
In 2018, González Valencia was arrested by the Mexican navy on money laundering charges in Zapopan, an exclusive part of Guadalajara, the state capital of Jalisco. The US government also intensified its campaign against other CJNG members in 2018, indicting and arresting key figures and driving El Mencho further underground.
A day after González Valencia’s arrest, two Mexican Navy officers disappeared, with Mexican authorities alleging that her daughter Laisha planned the kidnappings in retaliation for her mother’s arrest.
González Valencia was quickly released on bail for insufficient evidence.
She was recaptured in November 2021 for defying bail conditions and this time charged for undocumented transactions for a car wash she owned in Puerto Vallarta.
In December 2023, González Valencia was sentenced to five years in Mexican federal prison for her concealed car wash transactions. She was released in February 2025.
What Crimes is González Valencia Involved In?
González Valencia was at the center of a money laundering network operating across Jalisco, which included her daughter, Jessica Johanna Oseguera González, other female Valencia family members within Los Cuinis, and several wives of high-ranking CJNG figures.
Before the CJNG and Cuinis partnership, the Valencias worked with the Sinaloa Cartel contributing to the boom of Asia-to-Mexico methamphetamine trafficking. They allegedly partnered with figures such as Zhenli Ye Gon, a Chinese businessman who imported nearly 100 tons of pseudoephedrine and ephedrine into Mexico through his pharmaceutical company between 2004 and 2006.
The Valencias also maintained supply lines south—working with the Huistas in Guatemala since at least the early 2000s—who remain key transporters for the CJNG.
Prior to her 2018 arrest, Mexican prosecutors accused González Valencia of serving as the CJNG’s chief financial operator, overseeing a network of 73 front companies that allegedly laundered 1.1 billion pesos ($63.3 million USD) between 2015 and 2016.
The only crime she was convicted of was related to transactions at the car wash under her name in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco.
Who Are Rosalinda González Valencia’s Allies and Enemies?
González Valencia’s allies and enemies were, to a large extent, those of the Cuinis and the CJNG.
The Valencia family was first displaced from Michoacán to Jalisco in 2003 by an armed offensive mounted by the Zetas against the Milenio Cartel, which had the backing of the Gulf Cartel.
In Jalisco, the Valencias strengthened ties to the Sinaloa Cartel through Nacho Coronel, who supervised some of Sinaloa’s cocaine and synthetic drug operations. This put the Valencias in contact with the precursor chemicals trade in China and the methamphetamine market in the United States.
After the CJNG split from the Sinaloa Cartel following the death of Nacho Coronel in 2010, the two organizations engaged in intense conflicts across multiple trafficking corridors in the west of the country, including Baja California, Colima, Chiapas, Zacatecas, and parts of Nayarit.
Coronel’s death left the power vacuum that El Mencho and Erick Valencia Salazar, alias “El 85,” would fill by creating the CJNG. But the partnership turned sour. After El 85’s first arrest in 2012, he was convinced that El Mencho helped secure his capture. When he was released from prison in 2017, he founded a rival group called Nueva Plaza with the intent of fighting the CJNG.
In 2025, amid an internal war within the Sinaloa Cartel, the CJNG allegedly forged an alliance with the sons of El Chapo —collectively known as the Chapitos—to fight the Mayiza faction, led by the son of Ismael Zambada García, alias “El Mayo.”
The CJNG has also been involved in sustained confrontations in Michoacán, where it has sought to expand its presence in the Tierra Caliente region and gain access to Pacific ports. Its main rival there are the United Cartels, a loose coalition of local criminal groups and self-defense organizations.
Another key rival is the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, which operates primarily in Guanajuato, where the CJNG competes for control over fuel theft and trafficking.
Where Does Rosalinda González Valencia Operate?
González Valencia’s activities were primarily concentrated in Jalisco, where she and the rest of the Valencia clan are believed to have relocated in the early 2000s from Michoacán amid escalating tensions involving the Gulf Cartel and the Familia Michoacana.
For several years, she resided in an upscale residential area of Zapopan, Guadalajara, where she was eventually arrested in 2018, before being released and subsequently recaptured in 2021.
Where Is Rosalinda González Valencia now?
González Valencia was released on good behavior in February 2025 from a Mexican federal prison in Morelos after serving part of her five-year sentence for money laundering.
Her current whereabouts are unknown.