Are Baby Cartels the Future of Drug Trafficking After El Mencho's Death?

Colombian security experts are warning that the death of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, "El Mencho," the leader of the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) may not weaken organized crime in Mexico as much as many expect. Instead, they say it could speed up the rise of smaller, more agile criminal groups, the kind Colombia came to know as "baby cartels" after the collapse of its own drug empires.

The argument, laid out by specialists interviewed in Colombia by Mexican magazine Proceso, is that the death of a cartel boss rarely ends the criminal business behind him. It changes its shape. In Mexico, that could mean the fragmentation of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG, into multiple regional factions that compete, cooperate, and reassemble with relative ease while continuing to profit from drug trafficking, extortion, fuel theft and migrant smuggling.

Former Colombian police intelligence chief Jairo Delgado said that when a leader with Mencho's weight is taken out, what follows is usually "una dispersión," or dispersion. He said the organizational model that allowed Mencho to turn CJNG into one of the most powerful criminal groups in Mexico "necessarily is going to disappear" but added that there will still be "continuity" in its criminal operations.

That is precisely what happened in Colombia after the downfall of Pablo Escobar and the Cali and Medellín cartels in the 1990s. The giant structures they built did not survive intact. In their place came smaller organizations such as the Norte del Valle cartel and La Oficina de Envigado, followed later by other groups with less centralized leadership and a stronger ability to adapt to law enforcement pressure. Even as the old cartels collapsed, the cocaine business remained strong and in some cases expanded.

Political scientist Andrés Cajiao, co-author of a study on how crime in Colombia evolved from cartels to a network model, said this kind of transformation makes criminal organizations more resilient. Smaller groups, he said, are more likely to fracture and fight among themselves, but they are also better at surviving state crackdowns because they are less dependent on one visible kingpin. He warned that these networks can "recompose themselves very easily" after major blows.

Cajiao also argued that Mexico may already be moving in that direction, not only because of Mencho's reported death but also because of the fracture inside the Sinaloa cartel after Joaquín Guzmán López allegedly kidnapped and handed over Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada to U.S. authorities in July 2024. In his view, the weakening of large, vertically controlled organizations opens the door to looser criminal federations with strong territorial reach and growing international connections.

Fernanda Zuluaga Gómez, a specialist in drug trafficking and hemispheric security, drew a direct comparison between Mencho and Escobar. "The two capos were heads of the most powerful drug cartels in the world, each in his own time," she said, arguing that Escobar's death marked the end of the age of giant Colombian cartels and that Mencho's fall could do something similar in Mexico.

But the experts warn that a post-Mencho Mexico could be more dangerous, not less.

Unlike the old Colombian cartels, CJNG is described as a criminal machine with diversified income streams and heavy firepower. Delgado said the group's military capacity and sophisticated weapons make it look at times like a "small army," a level of force that he said Colombia did not see even at the height of its cartel era.

That is why the analysts insist that removing a capo is only one part of the battle. Delgado said Colombia learned that authorities had to go after the entire support structure, including finances, gunmen, logistics networks and corrupt protection systems. Cajiao added that corruption remains one of the biggest obstacles because it allows organized crime to infiltrate politics, security forces and public institutions while weakening citizen trust.

Their warning for Mexico is stark. If authorities fail to dismantle the political and institutional networks that helped sustain CJNG, the result may not be the end of Mencho's legacy, but its mutation into something even harder to fight: a decentralized criminal map built on smaller groups, local alliances and a talent for survival.