With the capture of Óscar Orlando Nava Valencia and the death of
Ignacio Coronel Villarreal, of the Sinaloa Cartel, a power vacuum emerged and the
Milenio Cartel (then loyal to the Sinaloa Cartel) broke into smaller factions. and
La Resistencia headed by Ramiro Pozos "
El Molca" who switched alliances to form a brief alliance with
Los Zetas (La Resistencia was founded by Sinaloa to counter Los Zetas), and started a
turf war for control of the region. Some members of the Milenio Cartel, then a Sinaloa Cartel branch, who splintered and formed the CJNG were Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes (
El Mencho),
Érick Valencia Salazar (
El 85) and
Martín Arzola Ortega (
El 53). Emilio Alejandro Pulido Saldaña, better known as "El Tiburón", was considered to be a co-founder as well.
First appearance members In June 2009, inside an abandoned truck in a residential neighborhood in
Cancún,
Quintana Roo, the Mexican authorities discovered the corpses of three men. Along with their remains was found the following message: These murdered men were then linked to individuals who had been shown in a video on YouTube while being interviewed by masked men armed with assault rifles. A number of videos online confirmed the existence of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which was dedicated at that time to kill
Gulf Cartel and Zeta members alike. In the interrogation videos done by the Mata Zetas, the captured cartel members confessed their criminal activities and gave out the names of police commanders and politicians who provided them with protection. According to
Terra Networks, the government agency of the
SEIDO received a phone call on 1 July 2009 from an unidentified man who said that the cartel members of Los Zetas were going to be "kidnapped and eliminated" from Cancún and Veracruz.
2011–2012 Veracruz massacres 2011 Veracruz massacres In spring 2011, the CJNG declared war on all other Mexican cartels and stated its intention to take control of the city of Guadalajara. However, by midsummer, the group appeared to have been reunited with its former partners in the
Sinaloa Cartel. In addition to maintaining its anti-Zetas alliance with the Gulf Cartel, the Sinaloa Cartel in 2011 affiliated itself with the
Knights Templar in Michoacán. To counter Los Zetas in the state of Jalisco, the Sinaloa Cartel affiliated itself with the CJNG. All of the corpses were alleged to be members of Los Zetas, but it was later proven that only six of them had been involved in minor crime incidents, and none of them were involved with organized crime. Some of the victims had their hands tied and showed signs of having been tortured. According to
El Universal, at around 17:00 an undetermined number of vehicles blocked a major avenue in Boca del Río. Once the traffic stopped, armed men abandoned two trucks in the middle of the highway. The gunmen then fled the scene. Consequently, the stunned motorists began to grab their cellphones and post messages on Twitter warning other drivers to avoid the area. Nonetheless, on 27 September 2011, the CJNG released a video claiming they had carried out these attacks. They apologized for the massacres in Veracruz but reiterated their efforts to fight off Los Zetas, who, they claimed, "are not invincible." In the CJNG video, five men wearing
balaclavas and completely black clothing are shown sitting behind a table. They also criticize the politicians who have protected Los Zetas. and that they are the "armed wing of the Mexican people." The Navy first discovered 20 bodies inside a house in a residential neighborhood. While searching at another house they found 11 more bodies. The third and final house contained one body. A day later, Reynaldo Escobar Pérez, the State Justice Attorney General, stepped down and resigned due to the drug-violence. And a day after his resignation, 10 more bodies were found throughout the city of Veracruz. The CJNG was also responsible for 67 killings in Veracruz on 7 October 2011. By 9 October 2011, in only eighteen days, the state of Veracruz reported 100 killings.
Operation Safe Veracruz In response to the multiple executions between the drug cartels, the federal government launched a military-led operation in the state of Veracruz, known in Spanish as
Operativo Veracruz Seguro. In October 2011, the state of Veracruz was a disputed territory between Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel and Sinaloa Cartel.
Francisco Blake Mora,
Secretary of the Interior at the time, said that the operation was implemented to serve the following goals: • Deploy the Armed Forces and the
Federal Police throughout the Veracruz to "recover the areas controlled by the cartels." • Establish intelligence agencies to not only capture the cartel members, but to also dismantle their financial and operative networks; On 22 December 2011, three public buses were attacked by drug cartel members on
Federal Highway 105 in Veracruz, leaving 16 dead. Three U.S. citizens were among those dead. Soon after the shootouts, which happened in the early morning, the authorities carried out an operation to find those responsible, killing five gunmen. The U.S. Consulate in
Matamoros asked Americans to avoid traveling on highways between cities in the late hours of the night. In
Tampico Alto, Veracruz, on 23 December 2011 the Mexican authorities found 10 dead bodies after an anonymous call from a citizen. The corpses were dumped on a dirt road, and all of them were handcuffed and presented signs of torture. Nine out of the ten bodies were decapitated. Earlier in February 2011, Saturnino Valdés Llanos, the mayor of the municipality of Tampico Alto, was kidnapped in February 2011; his body was left in a garbage dump with 10 more bodies a week later. On 25 December 2011 near
Tampico, Tamaulipas, a city on the border with Veracruz, 13 bodies were found inside an 18-wheeler truck. According to officials, the truck had license plates from Veracruz. On 9 February 2012, the Mexican authorities exhumed 15 bodies from clandestine mass graves in
Acayucan, Veracruz. According to government sources, by March 2012, the homicide rate in Veracruz and its surrounding territories had decreased. President
Felipe Calderón attributed the low homicide rates to the Operation Veracruz, the military-led open implemented in October 2011. On 3 May 2012 in Boca del Río, Veracruz, three photojournalists who covered the crime events in Veracruz were slain and dumped in several plastic bags in a canal. Press freedom groups indicated that the three journalists had "temporarily fled Veracruz after receiving threats [in 2011]." Over eighteen months, seven journalists had been killed in Veracruz alone. There are only a few journalists reporting on crime-related stories in the state.
2011 Sinaloa massacre On 23 November 2011, a total of 26 bodies—16 of them burned to death—were located in several abandoned vehicles in
Sinaloa. The incident began at early hours of the morning in
Culiacán, Sinaloa with the discovery of a vehicle on fire. When the police forces managed to put down the flames, they found inside the vehicle a dozen bodies burned to death, and with wood remains on top of them. All of the victims were handcuffed.
Stratfor believes that this major move by Los Zetas into the territory of the Sinaloa Cartel demonstrates the Zeta's ability to attack the "heart of those cartels' territories."
2011–2012 Jalisco massacres 2011 Guadalajara massacre . On 24 November 2011, three trucks containing 26 bodies were found in an avenue at
Guadalajara, Jalisco. All of them were male corpses. At around 7:00 pm, the Guadalajara police received numerous anonymous calls from civilians reporting that "several vehicles with more than 10 bodies had been abandoned" in a major avenue. Upon the arrival of the police forces, they found a green
Dodge Caravan in the middle lane of the highway, along with a
Nissan Caravan just away; In addition, in November 2011, three men from the Milenio Cartel were arrested and linked to the massacre of the twenty-six people. The authorities concluded that only six of the twenty-six that were killed had criminal records, and another ten of those dead were reported as disappeared by their family members. Among those killed were small-business entrepreneurs; a cook; a mechanic; a dentist; a truck driver; and a house painter, among others. The family of one of the kidnapped victims claimed that their loved one was "a teenager without vices or problems", and that the versions of him being part of a cartel are unjust and false. When asked if they had tortured them, the cartel members replied that they did not. and investigators mentioned that this massacre is a response to the killings done by the
Matazetas against Los Zetas in the state of Veracruz.
2012 Jalisco massacres The dismembered remains of 18 bodies were found inside a
Toyota Sienna and
Ford EcoSport near the U.S. retiree communities in
Chapala, Jalisco, just south of the city of
Guadalajara. Eighteen heads were found along the dismembered bodies; some had been frozen, others were covered in lime, and the rest were found in an advanced state of decomposition. An anonymous call alerted the police to the abandoned vehicles, which were found by the side of a highway early in the morning on 9 May 2012. They were consequently towed to government offices to unload the bodies. The authorities confirmed that a message was left behind by the killers, presumably from Los Zetas and the Milenio Cartel. In addition, 25 people were rescued after being kidnapped in
Tala, Jalisco on 8 May 2012; the killers had plans to kill and "throw" them for public display. Upon the arrest of the four alleged killers, one of the cartel members confessed that they had plans to "repeat" what had happened in the 2011 Guadalajara massacre, where 26 bodies were dumped in a major avenue for public display. According to
Proceso magazine, Los Zetas were planning to kill 50 people on 9 May 2012, a day before
Mother's Day.
Fight against Knights Templar . On 21 March 2012, the
Matazetas uploaded a video on the
Blog del Narco. The recording, which is slightly over four minutes, shows several men dressed in black, with ski-masks and heavily armed; some of them (apparently the leaders) were sitting down at a table—as has been observed in other videos of the CJNG. In the communiqué, the men said that they will "clean up the states of
Guerrero and
Michoacán", and informed the
federal government, the Armed Forces and the Federal Police that the CJNG has no problems with them. Then they went on to say that the CJNG was going to start a turf war "against the Knights Templar Cartel, who were reportedly "abusing innocent people" and operating through "kidnappings, extortion, protection racketeering, property theft, and rape." Consequently, both the
autodefensas and CJNG are mutually benefitting as CJNG offers greater protection to victims of the Knights Templar while receiving support from the community in combatting a regional rival.
2012 Michoacán massacres Following the message of the
Matazetas to eradicate the Knights Templar Cartel in the state of Michoacán, 21 bodies were found throughout several municipalities of the state as of 12 April 2012. At the location of the executions, authorities discovered cardboard signs written by CJNG. All of those killed were between the ages of 30 and 35. Officials stated that they found a "message signed by a criminal group", but they did not release the content of the note, nor if those killed were members of Los Zetas or of the Gulf Cartel.
CNN en Español stated that the message left behind by the criminal group said that they were going to "clean up Nuevo Laredo" by killing Zeta members.
The Monitor newspaper, however, said that a source outside of law enforcement but with direct knowledge of the attacks stated the 14 bodies belonged to members of Los Zetas who had been killed by the CJNG, now a branch of the Sinaloa Cartel. Following the attacks, the Sinaloa cartel's kingpin, Joaquín Guzmán Loera—better known as
El Chapo Guzmán—sent a message to Los Zetas that they will fight for the control of the Nuevo Laredo plaza. The message read the following:
Nuevo Laredo is considered a stronghold of Los Zetas, although there were incursions by the Sinaloa Cartel in March 2012. Consequently, Los Zetas responded two days later with incursions to Sinaloa, the home state of the Sinaloa Cartel. The Sinaloa Cartel's first attempt to take over Nuevo Laredo happened in 2005, when Los Zetas was working as the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel.
Kidnapping of Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar and Iván Archivaldo Guzmán In August 2016 in an upmarket restaurant called La Leche in the resort city of Puerto Vallarta, the CJNG kidnapped two sons of Joaquin Guzmán Loera (El Chapo), Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar and Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, along with friends and then released them after negotiations. The event happened shortly after the incarceration of Joaquín Guzmán and was seen as a humiliation for the powerful Sinaloa cartel.
InSight Crime analysis The "40" in the message is a reference to
Miguel Treviño Morales, a top leader of Los Zetas based in Nuevo Laredo, and longtime adversary of Joaquín Guzmán. The "H" is presumably
Héctor Beltrán Leyva, the last remaining brother of the
Beltrán Leyva Cartel. The Beltrán Leyva organization, unlike the Zetas, has presence in Sinaloa state, and would probably have an easier time attacking the Sinaloa Cartel on its own turf. The message does not mention the fact that the Gulf Cartel is probably supporting the Sinaloa Cartel in carrying out the executions. Nuevo Laredo is the fourth-busiest border crossing in terms of passenger vehicles.
2018 American consulate bombing On 2 December 2018, at approximately 7:30 CST, two grenades were thrown onto consular grounds in Guadalajara, with one of them exploding and causing a 16-inch (approximately 40 cm) hole in the wall of the building. At the time of the bombing, the consulate general office was closed and no injuries were sustained. It is unconfirmed if the attack was carried out by a cartel.
Infighting and break-up In March 2017, infighting within the CJNG showed when Oseguera ordered the murder of high-ranking CJNG member Carlos Enrique Sánchez, alias "El Cholo". Valencia and Sánchez also began a war with their former cartel as well. They also were still waging war against the CJNG and had even formed an alliance with the Sinaloa Cartel. In January 2020, senior CJNG hitwoman María Guadalupe López Esquive, alias "La Catrina" died following a shootout with police. In March 2020, it was announced that a secret six-month DEA operation known as "Operation Python" resulted in the arrest of 600 CJNG operatives and the seizure of $20 million in cash. The number of arrests was revised to 750, though it was still thought the CJNG could still partake in trafficking within the U.S. so long as it keeps its base of operations in Mexico. The move came after armed assailants stormed a live CJNG-provided concert on 29 May 2020 in the Veracruz city of Tierra Blanca, injuring two and killing six. Those killed included the regional CJNG leader, and also owner of the local El Sol de Tierra Blanca newspaper, Francisco Navarette Serna and the full lineup of La Calle, the band Serna was performing with. On 3 June, it was reported the amount of CJNG-linked assets which were frozen totaled $1.1 billion. On 11 June 2020, Insight Crime journalist Victoria Dittmar dismissed media hype that the CJNG was Mexico's "dominant cartel" and stated that the CJNG was now in fact losing influence and popularity to smaller cartels. Despite unleashing numerous CJNG attacks,
Los Viagras and the
Cartel del Abuelo were reported as having a "profound advantage" over the CJNG in Tierra Caliente. It was also revealed that the CJNG was struggling to gain influence in territory controlled by the
Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel. The same day, it emerged that the CJNG still controlled organized crime in Jalisco, Guanajuato, Querétaro, Hidalgo, but no longer was listed as having such control in any municipality in Veracruz and still was unable to take away territory in other parts of southeastern Mexico controlled by the Sinaloa Cartel, Los Zetas and the so-called Los Pelones group. Sánchez was later murdered, with his body being discovered stabbed and wrapped in plastic on a park bench in downtown Tlaquepaque on 18 March 2021. Emilio Alejandro Pulido Salazar would surrender to Mexican authorities the same month. In February 2022, leading CJNG operator in Michoacán and trusted El Mencho associate Miguel Ángel Fernández, known as "El M2", was found murdered in the town of Cansangüe, located in the municipality of Tepalcatepec El 85 was later captured by Mexican authorities in September 2022. By November 2021, El Mencho and his wife Rosalinda's younger sisters were the only CJNG members to remain at large who were also among the cartel's original founders. In May 2022,
Insight Crime reporter Peter Appleby reported that El Mencho's poor health, and also rumored death, accelerated break-ups and infighting in the CJNG. Another notable CJNG defection was self-proclaimed El Mencho loyalist José Bernabé Brizuela Meraz, alias "La Vaca", who was presumed to now be head of the smaller Mezcales, also known as Cartel Independiente de Colima.
Death of El Mencho and impact On 22 February 2026, El Mencho was killed by the
Mexican military in
Tapalpa, Jalisco. Widespread violence erupted in Mexico as a result of retaliation attacks from the CJNG. Mexico City-based security consultant David Saucedo informed CNN that due to El Mencho's son
Rubén Oseguera González ("El Menchito") being jailed in the United States, the line of succession "has been broken," with no clear family successor. Saucedo stated that was "likely that one of four or five top commanders will emerge as the next leader," and named CJNG leaders Ricardo Ruiz Velasco ("El Doble R"), Audias Flores ("El Jardinero" or "The Gardener"), Hugo Mendoza Gaytan ("El Sapo") and a fourth figure – El Mencho's former head of security – about whom little is known, as the most likely candidates to succeed El Mencho. The U.S.
Director of National Intelligence's (DNI) National Counterterrorism Center has stated that El Pelón was the "de facto second-in-command" to El Mencho, with $5 million bounties being issued each for El Pelon and El Jardinero. David Mora, an expert at the Crisis Group analysis center, noted to AFP that due to his lack of direct succession, with his son being held in the United States, El Mencho's death created a power vacuum in the CJNG, with this power vacuum also being a major reason for the escalation in violence, stating "in the absence of a direct succession, a power vacuum is created that opens the door to violent realignments within the organization." Former DEA Chief of International Operations Mike Vigil stated to CBS News that El Mencho's death was prominent and that Mexico could seize on the moment to launch "an effective frontal assault based on intelligence," while also acknowledging that "This is a big opportunity for Mexico and the United States if they work together."
El Mencho successor named On March 18, 2026, the
Wall Street Journal reported that a
US Citizen named
Juan Carlos Valencia González ("El Pelón"), who also uses the aliases "El Pelon" “El Tricky Tres,” “03,” “El 3,” and “Pelacas,” was now the CJNG's new leader. On April 6, 2026,
El Pais would confirm that Valencia Gonzalez, El Mencho's stepson through his marriage to
Rosalinda González Valencia, had successfully worked his way through the power vacuum created by El Mencho's death to succeed him as head of the CJNG as well. ==Arrests==