Mexican Forces Kill Nation's Most-Wanted Cartel Boss

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/22/world/americas/jalisco-new-generation-cartel-leader-killed.html

by downboots • 5 months ago

97 37 5 months ago

F7F7F7• 5 months ago

I imagine that if the U.S. assisted in any meaningful way ala the search for Escobar in Columbia we probably would have heard it by now.

nsvd2• 5 months ago

From TFA:

The Mexican government said the United States had contributed intelligence that aided the operation against Mr. Oseguera.

Gualdrapo• 5 months ago

Colombia*

testfrequency• 5 months ago

The US confirmed they’re involved. They provided intel, and there’s speculation the Mexican Army was also using american weapons.

joshcsimmons• 5 months ago

Puerto Vallarta is on fire - seeing tons of videos on my timeline.

TacticalCoder• 5 months ago

Apparently as "retaliation" from the cartel because their boss was killed. Where do you draw the line?

At what point do you decide to go full El Salvador / Bukele on violent cartel members who are willing to put cities on fire when they cannot human and drug traffic at will?

When is enough enough?

nradov• 5 months ago

Deciding is one thing, carrying out the decision is another. The Mexican government and security forces have been heavily compromised by the cartels for years. Some of the smaller law enforcement actions are a form of "kayfabe". Even if President Sheinbaum gives the order, there may not be enough honest and loyal personnel to carry it out.

Mexico is a failed state. We can argue about who bears responsibility but that is the reality today.

hattmall2• 5 months ago

I don't think that's possible in Mexico. There's too much power in the logistical networks that move things into the US. The demand is too great. Even if you kill every drug trafficker and gang member alive today and create huge prosperity the void will be filled by someone and they will be adversarial to the government and they will have to use extra judicial violence to enforce their position.

The cartel's presence in Mexico is extremely muted relative to their power.

SilverElfin• 5 months ago

They’re overdue. Sheinbaum and other administrators probably didn’t act until now because they’re serving at the cartel’s pleasure. Now with America pressuring them, they’ve finally acted. But if they can’t bring the country under control, it’s going to sink the country and its legitimacy. You can’t have criminals burning airports, school buses, and grocery stores (things I saw videos of earlier).

rayiner• 5 months ago

At what point do you decide to go full El Salvador / Bukele on violent cartel members who are willing to put cities on fire when they cannot human and drug traffic at will?

The point for doing that was some time ago. It's like Islamists. They're so sophisticated that it makes more sense for governments to treat them like foreign military threats than domestic police issues. Don't listen to the "human rights" people in developed countries that became safe and stable by doing these exact same tactics hundreds of years ago.

In Bangladesh in 2016, there was a terrorist attack in a cafe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2016_Dhaka_attack. The government then went full Bukele on the Islamists. There hasn't been a significant terrorist attack in the country since then.

ZeroGravitas• 5 months ago

Part of Bukele’s truce is to allow gangs to run their networks within the prisons, while their wealth and power remain untouched. In exchange, they have to keep homicides and violent crimes down. The leader of Barrio 18, one of the country’s two most powerful gangs, also alleges that they helped Bukele rise to power directly.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/bukele-trump-gangs/

m4rtink• 5 months ago

How does this usually work - they just set some cars on fire to prove a point and demonstrate they are "doing something" and then just switch to the next boss that comes out of the secession fight ? Or is it more complicated or nuanced ?

ocruzv• 5 months ago

Hi! I live in Guadalajara (City that was also on fire that day). They burn cars and big trucks to complicate the transit for the authorities and try to make more complicated to send reinforcements

At least that is what the people that is supposed to be more "informed" says

foogazi• 5 months ago

Most-Wanted Cartel Boss so far

downboots• 5 months ago

Horror vacui

NewJazz• 5 months ago

Honestly probably not even that. Past most-wanteds were probably more querido.

JasonADrury4• 5 months ago

And thousands more will die due to the fully predictable and justified retaliation that follows. This doesn't meaningfully weaken the cartels, but forces them to respond in order to not compromise future safety.

Prioritizing showy executions over actual progress, words that should describe the cartels, not the government.

echoangle2• 5 months ago

justified retaliation

I don’t see how it would be justified. Do you think the cartels are in the right here?

djohnston• 5 months ago

He probably sees them as marginalised POC bravely feeding their families under the thumb of American imperialism.

JasonADrury4• 5 months ago

Do you think the cartels are in the right here?

Of course not, none of the sides are at all in the right here. But from the cartels perspective, they're almost certainly in the right.

Drug cartels are entirely the result of poor policies, and the blame for all the harms caused by them rests primarily on the shoulders of those perpetuating those policies. Surely the politicians that vote for laws that directly enable drug cartels to exist in the first place must be worse than the leaders of any individual drug cartel?

Any kind of serious analysis of who's more right would end up being a work at the scale of Rising Up and Rising Down, that's probably best avoided.

If we oversimplify cartels into innocent businessmen just looking to sell drugs, with governments being the ones that introduced violence into the equation in their effort to stop them? Surely it must be the cartels

If we oversimplify cartels into evil criminals just looking to wield power over other human beings, with governments just trying to liberate people from cartel tyranny? Surely it must be the governments

tibbydudeza• 5 months ago

As long as Mexico shares a border with the US the biggest consumer of such recreational drugs and poverty in Mexico there will always be drug cartels.

It is basically whack-a-mole killing or imprisoning cartel heads - there will be splinter factions and you will just get three just as nasty ones in it's place.

quickthrowman• 5 months ago

Agreed, it’s a demand-side problem. The profit potential is so great that someone will smuggle drugs into the US, no matter the risk.

roger1104• 5 months ago

There's always huge demand for illegal things, doesn't mean a such a powerful market forms

Mexican Forces Kill Nation's Most-Wanted Cartel Boss

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