🌍 Mexico gone wild?
Plus: A mysterious visit from Turkmenistan
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Today’s briefing: |
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Good morning Intriguer. My first time in Guadalajara (home to some of yesterday’s spectacular cartel violence) was days after landing in Mexico as a baby diplomat — the embassy sent me to fly the flag at Guadalajara’s famous film festival.
The main event was a documentary about one of Mexico’s most famous bands, Café Tacvba (often compared to Radiohead, btw). By the time the credits rolled, the entire theatre was on its feet singing, hands in the air until the screen withdrew to reveal… Café Tacvba themselves, rocking a surprise concert. Best gig I ever saw.
I share that light snippet by way of palate cleanser before we get to today’s briefing on the weekend’s raid against a top cartel boss.
You see, it was only miles from that same theatre, and a few weeks after my visit, that Mexican special forces nabbed a top Sinaloa boss (‘Nacho’), arguably setting off a chain reaction that just culminated in this weekend’s wild turn of events. More on that below.
And it was just weeks before my Guadalajara trip that something else happened which still shapes my view of cartels (part of my focus in Mexico) as pure evil today: in late 2009, Mexican marines stormed a luxury apartment and killed a top cartel boss, losing a soldier in the process. The then president (Calderón) praised the fallen hero, only for the cartel to then track down and kill that servicemember’s entire family in the hours after his funeral.
Forgive the uncharacteristically gloomy intro, but that’s why I’ve always felt you don’t negotiate with or accommodate that kind of evil. You confront it. Onwards.
Number of the day
$590M
That’s the value of the secret contract Iran has reportedly signed to buy thousands of shoulder-fired missiles from Russia, in an attempt to revive its air defences.
Cartel violence in Mexico
That’s El Mencho
Wild scenes erupted across Mexico yesterday (Sunday) after special forces killed the country's most-wanted cartel boss, 'El Mencho'.
Who?
After two US jail stints and deportations for trafficking in the 80s, El Mencho worked as a cop back in Mexico before joining the Milenio Cartel as a sicario (hitman), until something big happened: Mexico famously captured the Milenio boss (El Lobo) in 2009, then killed his allied Sinaloa kingpin (Nacho) in 2010.
Those hits created a big leadership vacuum, and Milenio then tore itself apart amid fears of a betrayal from within or above (Sinaloa). So El Mencho took one of those factions and founded the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG – Jalisco being its state stronghold).
He used extreme violence to then build CJNG into one of Mexico's top cartels, running fentanyl, meth, coke, and beyond into the US, and attracting bounties in both Mexico and the US amid bloody turf wars with Sinaloa that still shape the cartel landscape today.
So… how'd they get El Mencho?
It seems he was laying low near the charming old mountain village of Tapalpa (pop ~6,000), a popular getaway for yuppies from Guadalajara (pop 5.5m) two hours away.
So acting on US intel, and keeping Jalisco state authorities in the dark, Mexican special forces mounted a raid that left several of his bodyguards dead. As for El Mencho? The government wanted him alive, but he died of his wounds aboard a military chopper.
Anyway, that's when things somehow escalated even further, as CJNG members…
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torched buses and trucks to form 250+ highway bloqueos across a dozen states
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and burned countless businesses to the ground (a Costco got hit), while
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airlines cancelled flights in/out of tourist hubs like Puerto Vallarta amid the chaos.
Major cities like Guadalajara sheltered in place as the skyline resembled a warzone, dotted with flames and plumes of smoke amid the rattle of gunfire.
Why'd the cartel retaliate like that? While bigger than anything we’ve seen, it’s a classic show of strength to…
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signal cohesion and strength
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deter any more government or rival moves, and
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disrupt and distract the government while the cartel regroups.
So now what?
President Sheinbaum is urging calm, emphasising coordination among authorities, and praising Mexico's security forces for the hit. Ditto, the country’s 31 governors plus the head of Mexico City have all now closed ranks behind her.
But having just witnessed the biggest outbreak of disorder in Mexico's recent history, the country might need more than Sheinbaum’s trademark calm to move forward.
Intrigue’s Take
So zooming out a little, what does this all mean? Here are six observations:
First, seven years after Mexico’s left-leaning Morena party first took power with its famous abrazos no balazos (hugs not bullets), it’s now pivoting hard back to bullets. Why?
Second, that ‘hugs’ strategy (less military confrontation, more social programs) simply didn’t work. Sheinbaum’s predecessor (known as ‘AMLO’) presided over almost as many homicides as the previous two presidents combined — we’re talking ~200,000! But also…
Third, Trump 2.0 has piled unprecedented pressure on Mexico to take a harder line, using Mexico’s massive economic dependence (80% of its exports) as leverage.
And yet fourth, some might be over-egging the Trump factor here. The US has been sharing cartel info for decades, including for this hit (via a new taskforce). Plus El Mencho had it coming: he famously tried to assassinate Mexico City’s police chief (Harfuch) in 2020. Harfuch not only survived but went on to become Sheinbaum’s security minister, overseeing, yes… this hit on Mencho — ie, it was also personal for him, and for Mexico.
Fifth, the breadth and scale of the cartel’s response is a stark reminder Mexico will struggle to reach its economic potential so long as organised crime flexes that kind of parallel power: those images out of Puerto Vallarta will spook tourists, while the footage out of Guadalajara will rattle FIFA, which is meant to be running World Cup matches there this June! Plus foreign investors already price a degree of insecurity into their Mexico decisions, but this will still be one heck of a wake-up call.
Then finally, it’s worth pondering what options Mexico might have next. Going full El Salvador doesn’t seem realistic, not just politically for Sheinbaum, but also practically: El Salvador is way smaller, its criminal structure way simpler, and its dark money maybe 2% of Mexico’s.
Meanwhile, there’s the risk things now get worse before they get better: Mexico’s history of criminal fragmentation (including El Mencho’s own story) suggests we could now see a power vacuum filled with smaller, more violent, and more elusive splinter cells.
Sound even smarter:
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The nickname ‘El Mencho’ doesn’t have a meaning the way (say) ‘El Chapo’ means ‘shorty’. Rather, Mencho is a folksy contraction of his name, Nemesio.
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Meanwhile, elsewhere…
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🇺🇸 UNITED STATES – Tarrific news. Comment: So this historic ruling has now blunted Trump’s key leverage just before this week’s India trade talks (now postponed), his April visit to China, plus the big trade talks with Canada and Mexico from July. Meanwhile, one of Trump’s own appointees (Gorsuch) went the extra mile to reiterate a broader point amid a relatively impulsive and unilateral presidency: "Yes, legislating can be hard and take time. And, yes, it can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design. Through that process, the Nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not just that of one faction or man." |
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🇮🇷 IRAN – Rekindled protest. Comment: It’s still anyone’s guess, but it’s worth noting there’s never been this much US air power assembled against a foe without then being used. |
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🇺🇦 UKRAINE – Energy standoff. Comment: It’s all reviving debate around the need for the EU to shift from unanimity to qualified majority voting. That’d avoid this situation of a small, Putin-friendly administration (which might lose April’s election) holding the broader bloc hostage on such an existential issue. But realistically any shift to that kind of veto-busting approach would itself need unanimous approval, which seems unlikely for now. |
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🇺🇸 UNITED STATES – Gunman down. |
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🇺🇬 UGANDA – One side sit-down. Comment: There’s nothing to suggest the civil war is any closer to ending, though this meeting itself has drawn criticism given a UN fact-finding mission argues the RSF’s siege of Al-Fasher city last year bears “the hallmarks of genocide”. We covered those atrocities at the time. |
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🇮🇳 INDIA – Rare earth deal. Comment: It’s quite a neat pairing: Brazil has the world’s second-largest rare earth reserves, while India has solid midstream processing capabilities via its main state-run producer, and they’re both (like everyone else) trying to curb their over-dependence on China’s processing bottlenecks. |
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🇨🇺 CUBA – Kicked out of Venezuela. Comment: Maduro’s 32 dead Cuban bodyguards gave the lie to long-running claims from both Havana and Caracas that Cuba’s local role was only ever humanitarian. To the contrary, the whole arrangement (including a Cuban-advised surveillance apparatus focused on Venezuela’s own generals) left many in Venezuela feeling as though their country had been held hostage by Cuba’s communists. |
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🇹🇲 TURKMENISTAN – Phantom visit. Comment: The most plausible theories are a) he was pitching US investors on his efforts to diversify his massive gas reserves, including via the new TAPI pipeline to India; or b) it could be related to US actions against Iran, which borders Turkmenistan. We might never know. |
Extra Intrigue
🤣 Your weekly roundup of the world’s lighter news…
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A Brit has copped a $50k cellphone bill due to his daughter’s TikTok use during a family trip to Morocco.
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Thai police have gone undercover as traditional lion dance performers to catch a serial burglar.
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The organisers of India’s big AI Summit in Delhi have ousted an Indian university for claiming to have built a robot dog that had actually been made in China.
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British actor Jason Statham will soon star as Jason Statham in the upcoming movie, Jason Statham Stole My Bike.
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And a dog has wandered onto Italy’s Olympic cross-country ski race track, crossing the finish line in front of a roaring crowd.
Gift of the day
Credits: Osaka Municipal Waterworks Bureau
The best gifts are the ones you aren’t expecting. And if you’re a waterworks bureau in the Japanese city of Osaka, what could you ever expect less than 21 kilograms in solid gold?
An anonymous donor just delivered $3.6M in gold to the city on the sole condition it fund repairs and upgrades to Osaka’s ageing water pipes. Incredibly, local outlets are saying it’s not this donor’s first such stunt, with reports he earlier donated $3.5k to the same bureau.
Today’s poll
If you were the president of Mexico, what would you prioritise *first* to tackle organised crime? |
Yesterday’s poll: Who do you think will 'win' this standoff?
🎖️ The Pentagon (68%)
🤖 Anthropic (30%)
✍️ Other (write us!) (2%)
Your two cents:
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🎖️ D.J.S: “Lots of AI providers out there, but only one Pentagon checkbook.”
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🤖 M: “If Anthropic doesn’t win this fight, it risks losing the differentiation between itself and OpenAI that is one reason many of us choose Claude over ChatGPT.”
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✍️ S.S: “Nobody. They will compromise.”