Freddie Ponton
21st Century Wire
A resort city under martial law. Thousands of tourists are trapped in hotel lobbies. The international airport shuttered as smoke rose from burning barricades. This is Puerto Vallarta in February 2026, not after a natural disaster, but after the Mexican state eliminated Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, the most wanted capo of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). The violence that followed his death did not erupt from nowhere. It was armed, trained, financed and mapped by a global security and weapons system that connects Arizona gun shows to Israeli military contractors, a new US military‑led task force in Colorado Springs to the mountain roads of Tapalpa, and the battlefields of Ukraine to the skies over Michoacán.
Street unrest and clashes between the federal government, public and CJNG have hit cities and tourist hubs up and down Mexico’s west coast, including Guadalajara, El Tuito, Tapalpa, Cancun, and others.
The people of the Jalisco region are not collateral damage in a distant war. They are the human cost of an international system that treats Mexico as a dumping ground for surplus arms, and the new global laboratory for privatised security.
The Architecture of Supply: How Legal Exports Become Cartel Weapons?
Between 2006 and 2018, European and Israeli arms manufacturers exported approximately 238,000 firearms to Mexico, including around 24,000 Israeli‑made weapons delivered by Israel Weapons Industries. Mexican police forces received 16,442 Galil and Tavor rifles and 7,398 Jericho pistols, along with sniper systems classified as arms for “military purposes.” The report “Deadly Trade” documents how Israeli rifles supplied to police in Veracruz, Tamaulipas, Guerrero and Jalisco later appeared in cartel arsenals and were allegedly used in death‑squad operations in Veracruz between 2011 and 2014, as well as being recovered from safe houses in Michoacán, Guerrero and Tamaulipas. The guns that were supposed to protect citizens from narco‑violence became instruments of that same violence, transferred through corruption, theft, or the simple indistinguishability of police and cartel operations.
SEE REPORT: “Deadly Trade” – How European and Israeli arms exports are accelerating violence in Mexico at stopusarmstomexico)
On the US side, the February 2026 report “Corridors of Violence” finds that 62% of US‑sourced crime guns recovered in Mexico with short “time‑to‑crime” intervals were bought in Arizona, and that 14 of the 15 US ZIP codes most frequently linked to trafficked weapons were in that state. Arizona and Texas’s loose regimes allow weapons like 50-calibre Barrett rifles, capable of downing helicopters and piercing armour, to be sold at gun shows with minimal oversight, while over 83% of traced guns seized in Mexico within a year of purchase originated in those two states.
The same study estimates that if seizure rates hold, more than 1,700 Barrett rifles a year could be flowing from US civilian markets into Mexico, meaning that a large share of the manufacturer’s output ends up aimed back at Mexican security forces. The armoured “monsters,” anti‑aircraft fire and spectacular convoys associated with CJNG are thus not anomalies, but the logical outcome of a border regime that polices people while letting this iron river run.
US Security Insiders in the Cartel’s Financial Engine
Historically, these are a number of examples of U.S. intelligence using Latin American drug cartels and criminal syndicates to perform various functions in aid of a broader geopolitical agenda. From the late 1990’s, core members of the notorious Zetas cartel comprised of former elite Mexican army soldiers, had initially received all of their arms anf specialised military and intelligence training from the Pentagon and the CIA, presumably to help the U.S. “fight the war on drugs” against the Mexican cartels. Later, when they began acting as the Los Zetas cartel, all of their skills and resources were then applied to organized crime. It would be naive to think that previous lines of communications and networking did not persist, despite their rebranding.
This brings us to the present day, after a recent US indictment against former DEA official Paul Campo and alleged ex‑CIA asset Robert Sensi shows how this same ecosystem which claims to be fighting CJNG can also sell its expertise. Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York allege that Campo, after 25 years at the DEA and a stint as Deputy Chief of the Office of Financial Operations, agreed to help what he believed was a CJING emissary move and conceal up to $12 million in drug proceeds, while providing advice on trafficking and on sensitive investigative information gained in office.
According to the complaint and subsequent reporting, Campo and Sensi allegedly began converting cartel cash into cryptocurrency, discussed routing funds through real estate, and structured transactions to evade banks and financial‑crime units. Prosecutors say they laundered around $750,000 as a test, including a $200,000‑plus crypto transfer presented as payment for about 220 kilograms of cocaine destined for New York, expecting roughly $5 million in resale value.
Critically, court documents and press coverage indicate the conversations did not stop at money and cocaine. The informant posing as a CJNG representative boasted of strapping explosives to drones, while Sensi speculated about C‑4 payloads capable of destroying entire facilities. The pair allegedly explored channels to acquire AR‑15‑style rifles, M4 and M16 rifles, grenade launchers and rocket‑propelled grenades, precisely the types of weapons visible in CJNG convoys and raids and that complement the Israeli‑made Tavors and Galils already documented on both police and cartel sides.
Both men have pleaded not guilty and are presumed innocent while the case proceeds. Nonetheless, the structure is revealing and has allowed CJNG to avoid penetrating the obscure corners of the American underworld, affording the cartel to sit down with the type of people who once briefed Congress on how to fight cartel finance and offered them a cut.
The Human Terrain: What Occupation Looks Like in a Beach Resort?
When El Mencho was killed on 22 February 2026 in an Army operation in Tapalpa, the response was immediate. According to the special forces from the Mexican Army, supported by Air Force aircraft and a National Guard rapid‑reaction unit from the Mexican Secretariat of National Defense account (SEDENA), they engaged CJNG gunmen, killing four on site, wounding three (including El Mencho), who died while being airlifted to Mexico City. Reportedly, they detained two CJNG fighters alive, and left three soldiers wounded, while seizing armoured vehicles and rocket launchers “capable of downing aircraft and destroying armoured units.”
IMAGE: Puerto Vallarta, a city renowned for its Los Muertos beach, its long Malecón promenade and its parties (Source: Villa Experience)
Within hours, CJNG operatives hijacked buses and cars, set them ablaze and blocked roads across Highways 200 and 15D and other routes into and out of Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara. The Puerto Vallarta airport effectively shut down as carriers cancelled almost all flights, and access roads became unpassable, even though authorities said the terminal itself remained secure under military and National Guard protection. Travellers were ordered to shelter in place, classes were suspended in multiple municipalities, and Jalisco declared a “código rojo” security emergency. Yesterday, our Editor in Chief, Patrick Henningsen, reported directly from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico:
By 22–23 February, airport authorities and foreign embassies were explicitly advising tourists not to attempt to reach Puerto Vallarta or Guadalajara at all, as airlines cancelled international flights and roads remained blocked by CJNG barricades and burned vehicles.
This is what arms proliferation looks like on the ground. The Israeli Tavor rifles that appear in CJNG propaganda videos were originally sold to Mexican federal forces. The 50-calibre Barretts used to down military helicopters in states like Michoacán were purchased at US gun stores by straw buyers. The uniforms, armour and hardware on both sides of a Jalisco roadblock often come from the same global suppliers.
VIDEO: CJNG propaganda videos – El Mencho’s personal army, the Special Forces Elite Group, of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG)
Mexican intelligence reports cited by the Mexican outlet Milenio describe a CJNG drone wing called “Operadores droneros,” an emblem‑bearing unit of roughly ten fighters operating in coordinated squads. One fighter, sometimes a woman, directs manoeuvres over the radio while five gunmen provide cover and four operate two explosive‑laden drones at a time, advancing and withdrawing in pairs. Helmet cameras and edited videos turn each mission into propaganda and psychological warfare.
VIDEO: CJNG deploys new specialised drone cell for operations (Source: Milenio)
These units rely on civilian DJI platforms such as the Matrice 300 RTK and Mini 3, modified to deliver explosives, with endurance of up to 55 minutes, payloads of around three kilograms, thermal imaging and optics able to observe targets beyond 20 kilometres. In the hills of Michoacán and the outskirts of Jalisco’s cities, this translates into vertical, stand‑off attacks that bypass checkpoints and render any convoy a target from above.escenariomundial+2
According to the same Milenio investigation and other Mexican analyses, some CJNG fighters were sent to Ukraine to learn drone and urban‑warfare tactics on an active front, before bringing those skills back to Mexico. Combined with US allegations that Campo and Sensi discussed acquiring drones and explosives for CJNG, the picture is of a cartel that treats the Donbas and US weapons markets as parts of a single training and acquisition circuit.
The US Targeting Apparatus: Intelligence Support with Plausible Deniability
The Tapalpa operation was not purely a Mexican intelligence success. The White House and Pentagon have acknowledged that the United States “provided intelligence support” to Mexico for the raid. The US Embassy in Mexico City stressed that the mission was “planned and executed by Mexican special forces,” while Mexican authorities repeated that there were no US troops on the ground. Sedena’s own statement admits that “within the framework of bilateral coordination and cooperation with the United States, supplementary information was obtained from the US authorities.”
In the first hours after the raid, several Mexican outlets pointed out that there was still no full written communiqué from the federal Security Cabinet and that key details, including precise death toll, identity confirmation and exact coordinates, were slow to emerge, creating a brief window of uncertainty even as images of burning vehicles spread nationwide.
By the time US satellites and “complementary information” helped Mexico kill the father, the son groomed to replace him was already locked away in a supermax prison in Colorado. Rubén Oseguera González, “El Menchito,” born in San Francisco in 1990, was extradited from Mexico to the US in 2020 and tried in Washington, D.C. as a co‑leader of CJNG’s international trafficking arm. Witnesses at his 2024 trial described him as the de facto second‑in‑command, coordinating multi‑ton cocaine and meth shipments, directing hitmen, and, according to testimony, approving the 2015 downing of a Mexican helicopter in Jalisco.
Former traffickers and ex‑officials told the jury that he boasted of ordering more than a hundred murders, used uniformed police to move drugs and cash, and even signed off on allegedly hiring a “Russian with a military background” to train CJNG gunmen. In March 2025, a US judge sentenced him to life plus 30 years and ordered forfeiture of $6.26 billion; by September 2025, he had been transferred under Special Administrative Measures to ADX Florence, the federal supermax known as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.”
Behind this sits a new US military‑led fusion node. In January 2026, US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) announced the creation of the Joint Interagency Task Force–Counter Cartel (JIATF‑CC), commanded by Air Force Brigadier General Maurizio Calabrese. Officially, JIATF‑CC brings together the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and elements of the US Intelligence Community to “map networks of cartel members on both sides of the US–Mexico border.” In practice, defense officials have told reporters that JIATF‑CC “played a role” in the hunt for El Mencho by providing specialised cartel intelligence and coordinating with Mexican military counterparts. A former US official described Washington assembling a detailed “target package” on El Mencho, built from DEA investigations and US intelligence, and handing it to Sedena.
Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has praised the Army, National Guard and Security Cabinet while urging calm and referring to “absolute coordination” with state governments, implicitly including international partners. Mexican Defense Ministry’s communiqués never name JIATF‑CC, but their references to “complementary information” and bilateral coordination sit comfortably with this structure.
The weekend of fires and roadblocks was pure cartel retaliation. It was CJNG’s way of telling the Mexican state and every business and family in Jalisco that decapitating the organisation would carry a territorial price, including closing of airports, cutting highways and shelter‑in‑place orders, for a raid planned with US help.
El Mencho’s death is sold as a turning point. Officials describe CJNG as Mexico’s most powerful and fastest‑growing cartel, and acknowledge that killing its founding leader is a major symbolic blow. But analysts note that the organisation has a deep bench and a franchise structure designed to survive decapitations. As of 23 February, no authority has named a formal successor; instead, law‑enforcement leaks and expert analysis sketch a shortlist: his stepson Juan Carlos Valencia González (“El 03”), plaza bosses such as El Jardinero, El Sapo and El Doble R, synthetic‑drug strategist Audias Flores Silva, and members of the González Valencia financial clan. The likely outcome is not peace but mutation. Analysts anticipate succession struggles, splinter factions and localised wars that keep the market for guns, drones and financial laundering very much alive.
The Political Economy of Impunity: Why the Trade Continues?
Israeli officials respond to questions about rifles recovered from cartel scenes by citing confidentiality and “security concerns,” even as export permits repeatedly go to states like Veracruz and Guerrero with well‑documented records of collusion and abuse. There is no effective mechanism to track end‑use or to follow a Galil rifle from a factory in Israel to a municipal armoury in Jalisco and finally to a clandestine grave in the hills.
In the US, the arms industry is protected by federal law, most notably the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which shields manufacturers from most civil liability. In 2020, the Trump administration shifted many firearms export controls from the State Department to the Commerce Department, easing handgun exports—the Biden administration pulled some of that back before the current administration reversed key controls again in late 2025. The “Corridors of Violence” report notes that Florida exporters quickly resumed shipments to Guatemala after the rollback, knowing how easily those weapons can be diverted north to Mexican cartels.
SEE REPORT: The Corridors of Violence at Stop US Arms to Mexico
Recent US sanctions packages against CJNG and associated entities do not just cite drug trafficking and money laundering but also fuel theft, crude‑oil smuggling and timeshare fraud, underscoring how deeply the cartel’s networks are embedded in Mexico’s energy sector and tourist economy. The same structures that launder drug money can launder proceeds from tapping pipelines or scamming foreign retirees in Jalisco resorts.
The Mexican state is locked into this architecture. Security forces need rifles and armoured vehicles to face cartels that wield rifles and armoured vehicles originally sold to other security forces or leaked from US markets. Each crackdown requires more equipment, which leaks again, requiring further crackdowns, in a self‑fueling cycle that benefits arms dealers in Tel Aviv, Miami and Vienna while turning Mexican cities into militarised zones. Analysts also point out that with the 2026 FIFA World Cup approaching, Mexico has strong incentives to stage high‑profile blows against cartels, regardless of civilian blowback, to reassure international audiences.
Aftermath and Accountability: The View from Ground Zero
By late February 2026, Puerto Vallarta sits in a fragile truce. The airport has reopened to limited international traffic, but hotel occupancy has collapsed, and foreign governments are still warning their citizens to avoid travel to Jalisco, explicitly naming Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara in their advisories. Military patrols and checkpoints have multiplied, deepening the sense that a tourist city is now under rolling occupation rather than protection. For communities that remember the Ayotzinapa disappearances, carried out with many of the same types of weapons and under the same impunity architecture, the sight of soldiers with Israeli rifles is not reassuring.
El Mencho’s killing, the Campo–Sensi indictment, and the creation of JIATF‑CC will be cited in Washington and Mexico City as proof that the system is working. The capo is dead, the corrupt insiders are exposed, and the new task force is generating results. However, for civilians in Jalisco, the boundary between the agents who claim to defend them and the brokers who quietly facilitate the arms, money and training that threaten them is dangerously thin. Sadly, the same flows that armed El Menchito’s rise, equipped CJNG’s drone wings and fueled Puerto Vallarta’s lockdown remain in motion.
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https://21stcenturywire.com/2026/02/23/mexico-the-hidden-transnational-war-behind-el-menchos-death/