Mexico’s cartel crackdown hits top ranks – but will it fuel Jalisco violence?

The golden coffin of “El Mencho”, the late leader of the Jalisco New Generation cartel (CJNG), had barely been lowered into the ground when the Mexican military dealt a second blow to the very top of the organisation this week.

As special forces descended on a ranch in the state of Nayarit, grainy drone footage showed El Mencho’s possible successor, Audias Flores, alias “El Jardinero”, being hauled from a drainage pipe he had tried to hide in, all without a shot being fired.

With two strikes in two months, the Mexican state is apparently intensifying its operations against high-profile targets just as Mexico prepares to welcome fans for the World Cup – and it has so far avoided the violent infighting that previous operations against such kingpins have triggered.

“We’re yet to see any fractures in the CJNG,” said Victoria Dittmar, a researcher for the Insight Crime thinktank. “But that is not to say they won’t happen.” “With the World Cup coming up, I want to believe that the Mexican authorities have a plan and are confident that this is not going to cause chaos.”

Since becoming president in 2024, Claudia Sheinbaum has pursued a more aggressive security policy than her predecessor and ally, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with official figures showing a leap in drug seizures and arrests, and much talk about using intelligence to dismantle criminal structures.

But as Donald Trump has piled pressure on Mexico to do still more, threatening tariffs and unilateral military action, the government has increasingly turned to the old method of targeting kingpins – even if it remains unclear that the removal of any individual can much affect the flow of drugs or other illicit activities.

“These blows will change the perception of the action by the Mexican state,” said Armando Vargas, coordinator of the security programme at México Evalua, a thinktank. “But they will not necessarily affect the operations of the CJNG.”

In Mexico, the fear is that removing such kingpins can fragment criminal organisations, which can in turn lead successor groups to fight among themselves for territory and business.

Experience has conditioned Mexicans to expect such violence. The latest example is the ongoing war between factions of the Sinaloa cartel, triggered by the betrayal and delivery of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada to the US by one of the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, his former partner at the top of the cartel.

But while the killing of El Mencho in February did lead to an immediate surge of violence as cartel gunmen lashed out at security forces, this quickly subsided, and no succession battle has yet broken out.

El Jardinero, who controlled CJNG activities in the state of Nayarit and the tourist town of Puerto Vallarta, was among the few considered as a possible next leader of the cartel.

It has since been reported that Juan Carlos Valencia González, the California-born stepson of El Mencho, might have already taken over – but in the press conference after El Jardinero’s arrest, Mexican authorities said their intelligence indicated he had been gathering the men and firepower to take power himself.

Cartel power politics are obscure, making it difficult to predict how El Jardinero’s sudden removal will affect the stability of the CJNG. But it would run against their economic interests to disrupt the World Cup.

“Criminal groups are businesses,” said Vargas. “I don’t think they are thinking about destabilising the country so much as how they’re going to fill their coffers with all the visitors.”

US authorities celebrated the arrest of El Jardinero, which was made with the help of American intelligence and may result in his extradition to face charges in the US – but they are already preparing their next demands.

Days before, Ronald Johnson, the US ambassador to Mexico, delivered a speech in Sinaloa in which he implied corrupt politicians could be the next target. Then on Wednesday, the US justice department accused the governor of Sinaloa and nine other high-level state officials of drug trafficking and weapons offences, requesting their detention and extradition.

“I think the idea is that after they finish with the kingpins on their wanted list, they’re going after politicians,” said Dittmar. “It’s part of this dynamic where, no matter how many operations you do – who you capture, who you kill – it’s never going to be enough for the US government.”