The 10 WORST Things Mexican Cartel Leader “El Mencho” Did to Wreak Havoc in Mexico
Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, AKA “El Mencho,” was killed by Mexican special forces on February 22, 2026, in a raid in Tapalpa, Jalisco, ending a 15-year manhunt for the most wanted man in Mexico. He was 59.
He had a $15 million US bounty on his head and another $20 million offered by the Mexican government.
He had been indicted in the United States multiple times and formally designated a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.
The tributes — and the terror — tell the full story of why he was so feared. Here are the 10 worst things El Mencho did to terrorize Mexico.
1. The Veracruz Massacre — His Opening Statement to the Country (2011)
El Mencho didn’t ease his way into the national consciousness. He announced himself loudly.
In September 2011, CJNG gunmen dumped 35 bodies on a busy highway in Boca del Río, Veracruz.
This happened in broad daylight and in rush-hour traffic — alongside a narco-message declaring they had come to “cleanse” the state of Los Zetas.
The victims had been tortured and killed.
They were left in trucks parked in the middle of traffic, so that commuters going home from work would be forced to drive around them.
It was not just a massacre. It was a press release.
The message made every newspaper in the country. El Mencho had arrived, and he wanted Mexico to know it.
2. Ambushing and Killing 15 Police Officers in a Single Attack (April 2015)
By 2015, the CJNG had grown powerful enough to take on the Mexican military in open combat. El Mencho decided to prove it.
In April of that year, CJNG gunmen blocked a road in San Sebastián del Oeste, Jalisco, set a vehicle on fire to stop a state police convoy, and then opened fire on the trapped officers.
Fifteen police officers were killed. Five more were wounded. It was the deadliest single attack on Mexico’s police force since 2010.
The same day, CJNG hitmen also killed the police chief of a nearby municipality.
El Mencho had not just attacked law enforcement — he had dismantled it, temporarily, in an entire region.
3. Shooting Down a Military Helicopter With a Rocket Launcher (May 2015)
Two weeks after the police massacre, El Mencho escalated further.
On May 1, 2015, a CJNG convoy moving through the mountains of Jalisco spotted Mexican military helicopters conducting surveillance overhead.
One of the convoy’s vehicles was equipped with a Russian-made RPG-27 rocket launcher.
On El Mencho’s son’s orders (while acting under El Mencho’s command) they used it.
The helicopter, a Cougar EC725 carrying 18 passengers, was struck. At least nine soldiers died.
Both the rocket launcher and a .50 caliber belt-fed firearm used in the attack were painted with “CJNG” and a pixel camouflage pattern unique to El Mencho’s personal hitman unit.
It was the first time in the modern Mexican drug war that a cartel had shot down a government aircraft. No cartel before had done it.
Many analysts consider it the moment the CJNG went from a dangerous criminal organization to something closer to a paramilitary army.
4. Paralyzing Entire Cities With Roadblocks to Protect Himself From Arrest
El Mencho had a uniquely brazen way of responding whenever authorities got close to him: he held the nearest city hostage.
In August 2012, when federal police moved in on his location in Jalisco, CJNG gunmen set at least 37 vehicles on fire and placed them across strategic highways throughout the Guadalajara metropolitan area — blocking roads into and out of the city to prevent police reinforcements from arriving while El Mencho escaped.
He did it again in April 2015. And again in May 2015, the same day as the helicopter attack — that day alone, CJNG erected over 39 roadblocks across Jalisco.
After his death in February 2026, the cartel erected more than 250 roadblocks across 20 Mexican states simultaneously — cities turned into ghost towns, airports shut down, flights canceled, schools closed across multiple states — all within hours.
Even dead, El Mencho paralyzed a nation.
5. Assassination Attempt on Mexico City’s Police Chief — In the Capital (June 2020)
On June 26, 2020, Omar García Harfuch — then head of Mexico City’s police force, today Mexico’s national security secretary — was traveling in an armored SUV through a wealthy neighborhood of the capital when CJNG operatives opened fire.
They came prepared. The attackers used .50-caliber rifles, grenades, and body armor. They fired more than 400 bullets into the vehicle.
García Harfuch survived — barely — with three bullet wounds. Two of his bodyguards were killed. A passing civilian was also killed.
It was not a routine cartel hit.
It was a military-style ambush in the heart of one of the world’s largest cities, against the most senior law enforcement official in Mexico City, carried out in the open at 6:30 in the morning.
The message was not subtle: El Mencho could reach anyone, anywhere, anytime. For this, he is considered one of the worst cartel bosses in Mexico.
6. The Uruapan Bridge Massacre and Mass Dismemberment (August 2019)
In August 2019, CJNG members entered Uruapan, Michoacán — a city of 300,000 people, known as the avocado capital of the world — and left a scene that made international headlines.
Nine bodies were hung semi-naked from a bridge in the center of the city, with a banner signed by the CJNG reading “Lovely people, carry on with your routines.”
At least 10 more dismembered bodies were found nearby. Nineteen people in total, killed and displayed in a public square like exhibits.
The banner’s message was the most chilling detail. El Mencho wasn’t asking the city to be afraid.
He was telling them this was now normal — that this was just Tuesday, and they should go about their day.
7. Building a Narco-Army of 20,000 Fighters — and Then Conscripting Civilians Into It
Most cartels recruit. El Mencho industrialized it.
Under his leadership, the CJNG grew into an estimated force of up to 20,000 armed fighters.
These were not loosely affiliated street criminals, but an organized paramilitary structure with specialized units, military-grade weapons, armored vehicles, and tactical training.
When the supply of willing recruits ran thin, the cartel used fake job advertisements to lure unsuspecting applicants, then forced them to join.
Those who tried to leave were killed. The cartel is alleged to have tortured or killed those who tried to resist or escape.
In March 2025, activists searching for missing relatives discovered the remains of hundreds of CJNG recruits at a training camp in Jalisco known as the Izaguirre Ranch.
Many had apparently been killed during training or disposed of when they were no longer useful.
El Mencho didn’t just build an army. He built a machine that consumed people.
8. Flooding the United States With Fentanyl — Killing Tens of Thousands
El Mencho was not the first cartel boss to traffic drugs into the United States, but he may be responsible for more American deaths than any of his predecessors.
Under his direction, the CJNG became one of the primary manufacturers and distributors of fentanyl in the Western Hemisphere — producing the synthetic opioid in labs across Mexico and shipping it north in quantities that helped fuel what US officials have called the deadliest drug epidemic in American history.
The DEA estimated that by 2019, the CJNG was responsible for at least a third of all drugs entering the United States by air and sea.
At his trial, El Mencho’s son testified that as early as 2013 he was making plans to manufacture counterfeit opioid pills — just before the fentanyl crisis began — and that by 2015 he was describing himself as “building an empire with fentanyl.”
That empire helped kill more than 70,000 Americans in fentanyl-related overdoses in 2023 alone.
9. Killing a Trial Witness in the United States — Reaching Across the Border
El Mencho didn’t stop at the Rio Grande.
When his son, El Menchito, was being tried in a US federal court, a witness named Iván Morales Coarrles had testified against him.
CJNG assassinated Morales Coarrles in apparent retaliation for his testimony.
The killing was a message to every potential witness, informant, and cooperating individual in every future case: El Mencho’s reach extended into the United States, and cooperation with American prosecutors was a death sentence.
It was one of the most direct attacks on the US justice system ever carried out by a Mexican cartel — and it worked, at least as intimidation.
10. Pioneering Weaponized Drones — and Exporting the Tactic Worldwide
El Mencho didn’t just terrorize Mexico with violence. He innovated it.
Under his leadership, the CJNG became the first cartel in the world to systematically deploy consumer drones fitted with explosives as weapons against law enforcement — dropping grenade-sized charges on police positions from above, a tactic previously associated only with battlefield warfare.
The innovation spread quickly. Other cartels copied it. These are the kinds of things that separate the Mexican cartels from the Italian mafia.
Within a few years, explosive drones had become a standard tool of cartel warfare across Mexico, used not just against police but against rival gang members and even civilians.
Reports in early 2026 indicated that CJNG operatives had traveled to Ukraine’s active war zones to train with FPV (first-person view) drone units, planning to bring those upgraded tactics back to Mexico.
El Mencho didn’t just terrorize a country. He changed the future of criminal warfare.
El Mencho is dead. The CJNG is not.
With an estimated 20,000 fighters, billions in assets, and operations in all 50 US states and over 40 countries, the organization he built is now leaderless — and likely more dangerous in the short term, not less.
For ongoing coverage, see InSight Crime’s CJNG tracker and the National Counterterrorism Center’s CJNG profile.