The killing of Jalisco Cartel New Generation leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias “El Mencho,” in Mexico has raised questions about the future of the regional cocaine trade, but a patchwork of strategic alliances means his death is unlikely to disrupt the flow of cocaine to Central America and the United States.
The Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG) does not have an established presence in any other country beyond Mexico, where it is one of the most powerful criminal groups. It has, however, forged strategic alliances with important criminal networks in Colombia, Ecuador, and Guatemala to facilitate cocaine trafficking into Mexico and eventually the United States.
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To manage these relationships, the CJNG relies on emissaries sent to negotiate cocaine shipments, supervise production and ensure quality, and oversee trafficking routes. If the future of the leadership of the CJNG after El Mencho’s death remains unknown, the criminal alliances used to facilitate cocaine flows will likely only be impacted temporarily.
CJNG Alliances in Colombia
The CJNG has sought alliances with Colombian criminal groups since it first emerged in 2010. Over the years, those relationships have evolved to further the interests of both the CJNG and their Colombian counterparts.
Colombia is the top cocaine producer in the world. In 2024, it recorded 262,000 hectares of coca crops, the raw ingredient needed to produce cocaine. Although the government has refused to publish official data on potential cocaine production recently, El País reported in November 2025 that the country’s production capacity topped 3,000 metric tons.
Colombia’s main drug trafficking networks negotiate with different criminal cells from all over the world, but Mexican organized crime groups have long been one of their trusted clients. Initially, Mexican groups like the CJNG sent emissaries to Colombia to establish contact with Colombian trafficking groups.
“The relationship involved negotiating shipments with emissaries who came and ensured the transport of cocaine, especially through the Pacific,” said Gerson Arias, an investigator with the Ideas for Peace Foundation (Fundación Ideas para la Paz – FIP) think tank in Colombia. “With that, the CJNG started to understand what was possible in Colombia.”
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These representatives developed a more permanent presence in the country around 2016 following the demobilization of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC). Until that point, the FARC controlled about 70% of coca crops there, as well as cocaine production in the areas they dominated, making them the main point of contact for Mexico’s drug trafficking groups.
In the FARC’s absence, control over cocaine production and the quality of that production entered a state of flux. That was when the CJNG began sending representatives directly to coca-growing regions to supervise production quality in the cocaine production line.
Today, the CJNG has strong alliances with Colombia’s most dominant criminal groups, primarily the Gaitanistas, also known as the Gulf Clan, Urabeños, and Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia – AGC), as well as dissident factions of the former FARC. Through these connections, the Mexican group monitors production and quality, with their Colombian allies providing the supplies, drug laboratories, and the corruption necessary to ensure cocaine flows.
While the death of El Mencho may bring some instability to the group, according to Arias, this will be temporary, as the alliances the CJNG maintained with Colombian trafficking networks under his leadership should endure.
Colombian criminal groups maintain connections with a variety of Mexican drug trafficking networks, including different factions of the Sinaloa Cartel, which will help fill any temporary disruptions to the cocaine trafficking chain left by the upheaval within the CJNG.
Emissaries Ensure Cocaine Flows in Ecuador
The CJNG’s strategies in Ecuador and Colombia are similar, with the group maintaining a fluid presence in the country by using dispatched representatives to establish strategic links with local Ecuadorian partners, a modus operandi that ultimately limits the impact of El Mencho’s capture.
While not a cocaine producer, Ecuador is central to the cocaine trade. Some of Colombia’s most productive coca fields lie right along its southern border with Ecuador in the departments of Putumayo and Nariño. Trafficking networks move shipments across the porous border, crisscrossing Ecuador’s highway system before reaching the country’s Pacific coast. From there, fleets of go-fast boats and fishing vessels carry cocaine towards the coasts of Central America and Mexico.
The Sinaloa Cartel was the first Mexican group to forge trafficking routes through Ecuador in the 2000s, setting up its own transportation networks and money laundering infrastructure. After arrests of its operators in Ecuador, the group changed tack in the mid-2010s. Instead of having its emissaries try and control every step in the trafficking chain, it turned to contracting Ecuadorian groups that would manage the logistics of trafficking through Ecuador, including transportation, storage, export, and local corruption.
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Their primary partner was the Choneros, a powerful player in the coastal province of Manabí that quickly became Ecuador’s strongest criminal organization. But after the December 2020 death of Choneros leader Jorge Luis Zambrano, alias “Rasquiña,” the Choneros fragmented.
It was at this point that the CJNG’s influence in Ecuador took off, General Freddy Sarzosa, the former director of the Ecuadorian police’s investigations unit, told InSight Crime. The CJNG looked to Choneros offshoots like the Lobos, Tiguerones, and Chone Killers to oversee their cocaine shipments in Ecuador, Sarzosa added.
But in 2024 and 2025, the leadership structures of Ecuador’s main criminal organizations were weakened by state security operations that landed most of the top leaders in prison. Large criminal organizations like the Choneros and Lobos have struggled to remain unified, while smaller gangs have split off from the larger conglomerates.
In this more fragmented landscape, the CJNG likely works with a number of Ecuadorian networks, constantly shifting their connections to adapt to high leadership turnover and evolving territorial control. For these dispersed Ecuadorian groups, the death of El Mencho may mean a temporary reshuffling of partnerships, but ultimately will not impact their ability to provide services to drug trafficking networks, whether run by the CJNG or otherwise.
“[Reconfiguration and violence] is more likely to happen because of the arrest of alias ‘Pipo’ [Lobos leader], or because of the arrest of alias ‘Fito’ [Choneros leader],” said Luis Córdova Alarcón, a local security expert and professor at the Central University of Ecuador.
“They are local leaders who have a real impact on their organizations.”
Business as Usual in Guatemala
Guatemala is another hotspot of CJNG activity outside of Mexico. There, the group has made alliances with local drug trafficking networks to control the flow of drugs entering Mexico through its southern border.
With both Caribbean and Pacific coasts, and a vast shared border with Mexico, Guatemala is an important cocaine transit country. Disperse trafficking networks receive cocaine shipments arriving by boat and plane from South America. That cocaine is then moved to the border, where various groups like the Huistas have historically managed smuggling routes, striking up alliances with Mexican groups like the Sinaloa Cartel, Gulf Cartel, and more recently, the CJNG.
In the late 2000s, Mexico’s Zetas drug trafficking group began to make violent incursions into Guatemala, seeking wider influence over these routes. They targeted security forces, rival drug traffickers, and civilians in a series of public displays of force. These days, however, Mexican groups and their Guatemalan allies have chosen a lower profile, trying to stay off authorities’ radar, according to Alan Ajiatas, former sub-director of the anti-narcotics unit at Guatemala’s Attorney General’s Office.
“They have sought this shift to peaceful coordination to a certain extent,” he told InSight Crime, though he added that the CJNG have used some of the same aggressive tactics as the Zetas to assert their dominance over the border region.
However, local Guatemalan trafficking networks remain intact, and these groups have historically worked with a number of different Mexican groups, not just the CJNG.