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 the world knew as El Mencho was killed by the Mexican army alongside at least six alleged accomplices.
Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes had risen from rural poverty to become the world’s most feared trafficker. The 59-year-old was the architect of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the CJNG, a criminal enterprise that in less than a decade outpaced its rivals in ruthlessness, wealth and military-grade firepower.
The CJNG did not simply participate in Mexico’s drug war. It professionalised it. It understood the business. It understood terror. It made both routine. El Mencho’s death should have felt decisive. Instead, it has triggered something grimly familiar. Within hours, highways across more than half a dozen states were paralysed by burning trucks.
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Masked gunmen blocked roads, torched vehicles, opened fire on security forces and slipped back into the neighbourhoods and scrubland that have long shielded them. The state struck at the head; the network convulsed. And the shockwaves travelled far beyond cartel territory.
British tourists in Mexico have now been warned to remain indoors, exercise extreme caution and avoid all non-essential travel. The Foreign Office said: “Serious security incidents have been reported on 22 February across the state of Jalisco, including in Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta, following a federal law-enforcement operation against organised crime in the municipality of Tapalpa.
“Authorities in Puerto Vallarta 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. You should exercise extreme caution, follow local authorities’ advice, including orders to stay indoors and avoid non-essential travel in affected areas.”
Holiday resorts – the carefully curated postcard image of Mexico – suddenly exist in the same sentence as gunfire and roadblocks. Air Canada has halted flights to the area, and other airlines are expected to follow. Aircraft sit grounded while highways burn.
For those holidaying half-term Brits, this will be their first brush with the reality that has shaped Mexico for nearly two decades. For some of us, it is achingly familiar. Mexico has heard this gunfire before. Countless times. It has also endured the silence that follows – a breathless, almost suffocating pause when the echoes fade, and people step out to measure what has been lost.
I have heard the crack of the cartel’s automatic rifles ricocheting down a dusty street in Sinaloa. I have smelt the death they inflict. And I have experienced locals who lower their eyes, having already calculated the cost of speaking. Seeing the aftermath of such barbaric bloodshed is unforgettable. Ammunition casings scattered like brass confetti, houses punched through with bullets, pavements stained in blood still tacky beneath the sun. The calm that follows a firefight is not peace. It is suspension. Violence in Mexico does not conclude; it simply regroups.
When El Mencho consolidated his power, he did so in the long shadow of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, a drug lord who provided me with my own understanding of how deep this war runs.
It began in July 2015, when Guzmán escaped from the Altiplano Federal máxima-security prison through a mile-long tunnel dug from a farmhouse to directly beneath his shower. His path to freedom had it all. Rails, ventilation, lighting and a Scrapheap Challenge-like motorbike to ride away on. Precision engineering under the nose of a maximum-security state.
Within 24 hours of his escape, I climbed down into that tunnel – the first reporter to do so. Built for the 5ft 5in now fugitive, it forced me, at 6ft 2in, to crouch and shuffle through its stale, damp air. It did not feel like a feat of ingenuity. It felt like resignation by police and political leaders at the time, as it exposed a web of bribery involving prison officials, cops and bureaucrats that went far deeper than the tunnel they allowed to be built.
The cartel had not simply beaten the system. It owned it. For weeks at a time, I criss-crossed Mexico chasing El Chapo. Rumours led us through Sinaloa’s mountains and coastal towns. But when his Rolling Stone magazine interview with Sean Penn surfaced, it acted as a flare. Days later, a violent clash with Mexican marines suggested he was within reach.
Photographer James Breeden and I drove a battered, tinny hire 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 cradled casually, grenades clipped to their vests. They did not shout. They did not threaten theatrically. They simply told us to turn back or face the consequences.
We turned back.
Stubbornness – probably more stupidity – took us to a dirt airstrip. Four pilots refused to fly us over the mountains. The fifth agreed, smelling strongly of tequila. As we climbed above the Sierra Madre, I heard a sharp popping noise and assumed the plane was failing. James asked the pilot what it was. Gunfire, he replied.
We were being shot at from below. In that moment, any foolish notion of chasing cartel bosses dissolved. It felt like we were not uncovering a story but trespassing in a conflict that can kill the reckless.
The hunt, in the end, proved elusive. For months, we chased rumours through Sinaloa’s mountains, always close, never quite there. Then, on 8 January 2016, it was over in Los Mochis. Guzmán was captured after a fierce shootout with Mexican marines in north-west Mexico.
When he finally emerged, it was not in glory but in grime – caked in filth, hauling himself from a manhole after fleeing through sewers. The world’s most powerful drug baron scrambling underground, his legend dripping away in dirty water. By the time we arrived, the gunfire had faded. He had been taken alive. The wider firefight many feared would engulf the city never materialised.
Soldiers stood guard outside buildings; residents watched from behind curtains. The drama had been swift and contained. After months of pursuit, it felt strangely anticlimactic. The journey had been greater than the destination. The reality was a fugitive who had run out of exits.
In January 2019, I finally laid eyes on him – not in Sinaloa, but in a New York courtroom. Inside the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, he sat in a dark suit, listening through headphones as prosecutors detailed the empire he had built. To look at him, he would not have inspired fear had he walked into your local pub. Slight, composed, almost unremarkable. But behind his eyes sat a man who had overseen the deaths of hundreds in his rise to become the world’s most feared trafficker.
Up close, the myth dissolved. What remained was something more unsettling: the ordinariness of power – and the scale of the violence it had commanded. That is why the death of El Mencho feels less like closure than continuation.
Neither the CJNG nor the Sinaloa cartel rose solely because of one man’s brutality. It thrived because it adapted – franchising violence, embedding itself in local economies, exploiting corruption, capitalising on demand that stretches 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 tunnels beneath the surface, the narco submarines, the ships equipped with hidden holds – remains.
El Mencho is dead. El Chapo is locked up. But the warnings are real. And Mexico, although left to absorb the shock, will fill the void once again.
