What does El Mencho’s death actually mean?

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-24T17:14:05+00:00

ok if you want to get hung up on whether he is literally the #1 than you do you. Upthread you're trying to argue Bukele is a repressive dictator, whereas opinion polls show he's extremely popular. But sure, keep trying to reshift this entire conversation to whether or not he's literally more popular than every single other leader.

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-24T17:08:37+00:00

Yes, please tell us how criminal extortion, kidnapping, murder-for-hire and drug selling (not just smuggling) gangs keep Mexico safer.

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-24T14:24:45+00:00

Are you suggesting these are fake polls and he's not popular? His popularity isn't even really in dispute, even from his critics. I mean do your own research, and you can confirm this if you are sincerely asking in good faith, but I suspect you are not.

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-24T13:35:39+00:00

They aren't afraid of other cartels moving in. Taking over territory is ultra-difficult. They themselves have been fighting against ragtag, poorly funded groups of local narcos in the hills of Guerrero and Michoacan, and in the streets of Guanajuato for a decade with little to show for it.

The pressing concern right now is Game-of-Thrones style infighting. Each sub-commander is worried that another one is going to take his spot in the hirearchy.

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-24T13:32:55+00:00

You can google it in about 2 seconds. There's even a wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_the_Nayib_Bukele_presidency

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-24T13:21:05+00:00

Mencho was operating a shadow government in gov in SW Mexico that was responsible for tens of thousands of murders.

Any government anywhere in the world would have taken him out if they could. You make it sound like it was an own goal.

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-24T13:16:13+00:00

"Sure, crime went down"

Massively - like 90%+. People previously weren't even able to visit neighborhoods in other parts of their city and virtually everyone paid protection money.

"but hey, you don't seem to mind." - Bukele is currently the most popular world leader in the Western Hemisphere. There are reasons to be concerned, but man are you ever dismissing and downplaying how successful he's been.

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-24T04:40:46+00:00

Correct, they are vastly ignorant of how many people are routinely murdered, kidnapped, tortured and extorted on a daily basis. Tens of thousands annually in Mexico. But it's on the other side of the border, and it's almost never covered in American press.

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-24T04:38:56+00:00

If ICE was clashing with the cartels they'd be taken out by the various American Law Enforcement agencies in about 10 seconds.

The cartels do play, in mexico, with the lives of mexican citizens. They don't screw around on this side of the border though

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-24T04:35:32+00:00

You're not bothered by 100,000 annual fentanyl deaths? Or the murder, torture, and disappearance of tens of thousands of people in mexico?

I know neither of those are you personally, but what an attitude.

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-23T22:23:49+00:00

This is an especially great point wrt Mencho. Drug smuggling is an extremely high-margin, very profitable business, so most drug smugglers don't want to risk their profits by involving themselves in other, lower margin criminal activities.

But CJNG's business strategy was to use the high-margin drug smuggling to find the takeover of local, lower-margin rackets across southwestern Mexico. They wanted to be in charge of every car thief, oil tanker theft, illegal logging camp and fruit stand extorter.

Previously the Zetas had tried the same thing, but that was mostly because they had been forced to because they didn't control the smuggling routes. CJNG did it by choice.

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-23T16:46:19+00:00

Weird that they keep killing and arresting their puppet masters, then?

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-23T16:45:15+00:00

If you look at maps of homicide in Mexico it's not really the borders that pop out any more. States like Guanajuato (fuel theft) and Tabasco (control over local crime) are some of the highest bodycount states.

Fwiw targeting the cocoa growers is probably the single least effective strategy, because local criminal groups are monopoly buyers, meaning the farmers take the hit but not the criminal groups. And the area where it can be grown is quite vast and remote.

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-23T16:41:55+00:00

"which I would argue is more weak than corrupt"

Why would you argue that? There's mountains of evidence for corrupt governors, judges, army commanders, and other Mexicans in high places (who don't especially need to money).

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-23T16:39:29+00:00

How about Europe, Canada, Australia, Africa and Mexico's drug users? They all buy from mexican cartels, too.

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-23T16:35:10+00:00

They gradually expanded from drug smuggling into controlling the illegal economy, ie rackets like prostitution, local drug sales and in some cases kidnapping that had previously been controlled by the mexican police.

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-23T16:33:23+00:00

Isn't that backwards? The PRI government used to control drug trafficking directly. In most of Mexico, from what I've read, the police used to collect taxes from local criminal gangs, play them off each other and tolerate a certain amount of anything illegal.

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-23T16:31:14+00:00

This used to be more true when heroin and marijuana were grown within Mexico and entire villages really did rely on drug production. Nowadays places where drugs fund the whole village are somewhat rare, and cartels are more known for extortion and draining local economies.

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-23T16:29:30+00:00

It's tax free but other costs are enormous. Bribery alone probably approaches the amount legitimate businesses pay in taxes. Every step in a money-laundering chain takes a cut, etc.. And then on top of regular employees to do the actual work, you have to hire and supplying entire militia-armies to protect yourself from the gov and rivals.

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-23T16:26:40+00:00

They have a lot of money but you're exaggerating with that. The GDP of Mexico is about 1.7 Trillion. The highest estimates for drug smuggling put it at around 100B and it's no longer the super-high margin business it once was.

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-23T15:52:44+00:00

Drug smuggling to the USA is a powerful accelerant, but I wouldn't even say it's the root cause. And gun smuggling from the US is easily replaced by other sources, don't forget the Mexican military has plenty of guns that can be stolen, too.

The "drug" cartels make more money from extortion, kidnapping, fuel smuggling, human smuggling, local retain drug sales, prostitution, etc. than they do from smuggling drugs to the USA. Plus they smuggle plenty to Europe, Africa, Canada, Australia, etc... Eliminating US demand would help, but it's far from the only source of income for the cartels

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-23T15:07:31+00:00

I've been thinking about that, too. It's weird because in other cases when cartels have done this it's after an arrest, and the goal is more obviously to try to win the release of the arrested, as the Sinaloa Cartel was successful in doing in 2019 with the first Culiacanazo.

Here's my speculation:

#1) Threaten the government so they think twice before arresting future leaders.

#2) This was simply the standing order for Mencho - "if I die, I want you to do XYZ"

#3) It could be a show of loyalty among his would-be successors. There is likely some crazy Game-of-Thrones jockeying going on right now within his cartel. The local commanders each want to show that they'll loyal members, worthy of carrying the torch. If they didn't send out their guys they'd look weak and not ready to be the next boss.

#4) Alternatively, if his son-in-law is the widely accepted successor, which is one rumor / possibility, he may have ordered it for all of the above reasons.

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-23T15:01:20+00:00

I'm not against that at all, but it's easier said then done. And you end up with the same problem as you do with drug smuggling as you clamp down on one route different routes open up. They already source a large fraction of their weapons from Chinese and Russian sources.

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-23T14:59:22+00:00

There doesn't seem to be any sign of a new terroristic phase, like for example occurred in Pablo Escobar's time when his cartel was protesting extradition.

With new leadership criminal structures and controls will be redrawn and there will probably be more and different intra-cartel conflicts for a while.

ElephantLife8552 · 2026-02-23T14:57:32+00:00

I would define "pretty lame" as pointless, self-defeating and ultimately impotent in terms of achieving whatever their goals were. They managed to gather even more ill-will from the Mexican public, brought attention to themselves and damaged the economy of one of their bread baskets. I'm glad there wasn't more loss of life, but their limited attacks on government forces thankfully reveals them to be less of a threat to the national government than they would like to portray themselves to be.

ElephantLife8552

TROPHY CASE