After chasing El Chapo through tunnels, mountains, and courtrooms, I learned that killing a cartel kingpin like El Mencho may make headlines, but it never ends the war.
On Sunday, in the western state of Jalisco, the man known worldwide as El Mencho was murdered by the Mexican army along with at least six alleged accomplices.
Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes had risen from rural poverty to become the most feared trafficker in the world. The 59-year-old was the architect of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the CJNG, a criminal enterprise that in less than a decade surpassed its rivals in cruelty, wealth and military-grade firepower.
The CJNG did not simply participate in the drug war in Mexico. He professionalized it. He understood the business. He understood the terror. He made both of them routine. The death of El Mencho should have been decisive. Instead, it has triggered something terrifyingly familiar. Within hours, roads in more than half a dozen states were paralyzed by burning trucks.
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Masked gunmen blocked roads, set vehicles on fire, opened fire on security forces and returned to the neighborhoods and bushes that have long protected them. The State hit the head; The network convulsed. And the shock waves traveled far beyond the cartels’ territory.
British tourists in Mexico have now been warned to stay home, exercise extreme caution and avoid all non-essential travel. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said: “On February 22, serious security incidents were reported throughout the state of Jalisco, including Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta, following a federal operation against organized crime in the municipality of Tapalpa.
“Puerto Vallarta authorities have issued a public advisory to stay indoors. Routes to airports may be blocked. Incidents are also being reported in other parts of the country. Use extreme caution, follow the advice of local authorities, including orders to stay indoors and avoid non-essential travel in affected areas.”
Resorts, Mexico’s carefully curated postcard image, suddenly exist in the same sentence as gunshots and roadblocks. Air Canada suspended flights to the area and other airlines are expected to do the same. Planes remain grounded while roads burn.
For those Brits on mid-term holiday, this will be their first encounter with the reality that has shaped Mexico for almost two decades. For some of us, it seems painfully familiar. Mexico has heard these shots before. Countless times. He has also endured the silence that follows: a breathless, almost suffocating pause when the echoes fade and people come out to measure what they have lost.
I’ve heard the snap of the cartel’s automatic rifles bouncing off a dusty Sinaloa street. I have smelled the death they inflict. And I have seasoned locals who lower their eyes, having already calculated the cost of speaking. Seeing the consequences of such barbaric bloodshed is unforgettable. Ammunition casings scattered like brass confetti, houses riddled with bullets, blood-stained sidewalks still sticky in the sun. The calm that follows a shooting is not peace. It’s suspension. The violence in Mexico does not end; he just regroups.
When El Mencho consolidated his power, he did so in the long shadow of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, a drug trafficker who provided me with my own understanding of how deep this war runs.
It all began in July 2015, when Guzmán escaped from the Altiplano Federal maximum security prison through a mile-long tunnel dug from a farm to directly beneath his shower. His path to freedom had it all. Rails, ventilation, lighting and a Scrapheap Challenge type motorcycle to travel with. Precision engineering under the nose of a state of maximum security.
24 hours after his escape, I went down into that tunnel: I was the first reporter to do so. Built for the now 5-foot-5 fugitive, it forced me, at 6-foot-2, to crouch and shuffle through its humid, stale air. It didn’t seem like a feat of ingenuity. It felt like a resignation on the part of the police and political leaders at the time, as it exposed a bribery network involving prison officials, police and bureaucrats that went far beyond the tunnel they allowed to be built.
The cartel had not limited itself to defeating the system. He owned it. For weeks, I crisscrossed Mexico chasing El Chapo. Rumors took us through the mountains and coastal towns of Sinaloa. But when his Rolling Stone interview with Sean Penn came out, it acted like a flash in the pan. Days later, a violent confrontation with Mexican marines suggested he was within reach.
Photographer James Breeden and I drove a small, beat-up rental car into the hills where he was believed to be hiding. The road collapsed into dirt and dust. The engine groaned. Then armed men emerged from the shadows: AK-47s held casually and grenades strapped to their vests. They didn’t scream. They did not threaten theatrically. We were simply told to back off or face the consequences.
We turned around.
Stubbornness – probably more stupidity – led us to a dirt landing strip. Four pilots refused to take us over the mountains. The fifth nodded, smelling strongly of tequila. As we ascended above the Sierra Madre, I heard a loud bang and assumed the plane was failing. James asked the pilot what it was. Shots fired, he responded.
They were shooting at us from below. At that moment, any foolish idea of going after cartel bosses dissolved. It seemed that we were not discovering a story but invading a conflict that can kill the reckless.
The hunt, in the end, proved elusive. For months we chased rumors through the mountains of Sinaloa, always close, never quite there. Then, on January 8, 2016, he ended up in Los Mochis. Guzmán was captured after a fierce firefight with Mexican marines in northwestern Mexico.
When he finally emerged, it was not in glory but in filth: covered in filth, emerging from a manhole after fleeing through the sewers. The most powerful drug trafficker in the world fighting underground, his legend dripping in dirty water. When we arrived, the gunshots had died down. They had captured him alive. The broader shooting that many feared would engulf the city never materialized.
Soldiers stood guard outside the buildings; Residents watched from behind the curtains. The drama had been quick and contained. After months of chasing, it all seemed strangely disappointing. The journey had been greater than the destination. The reality was a fugitive who had run out of options.
In January 2019, I was finally able to see him, not in Sinaloa, but in a New York court. Inside the Brooklyn federal courthouse, sitting in a dark suit, he listened through headphones as prosecutors detailed the empire he had built. Looking at him, he wouldn’t have inspired fear if he had walked into the local pub. Light, serene, almost ordinary. But behind their eyes was a man who had overseen the deaths of hundreds of people on his rise to become the world’s most feared trafficker.
Up close, the myth was dissolved. What remained was something more disturbing: the ordinariness of the power and the scale of the violence that had governed. That’s why El Mencho’s death feels less like closure than a continuation.
Neither the CJNG nor the Sinaloa cartel emerged solely because of the brutality of one man. It prospered because it adapted: franchising violence, embedding itself in local economies, exploiting corruption, capitalizing on demand that extends far beyond Mexico’s borders to our shores.
Airlines can suspend flights. Tourists can stay indoors. Governments can issue advisories. But the deeper infrastructure—the subsurface tunnels, the narco-submarines, the ships equipped with hidden warehouses—remains.
El Mencho is dead. El Chapo is locked up. But the warnings are real. And Mexico, although it must absorb the impact, will fill the void once again.
