Mexico races to prevent cartel war after the killing of top drug boss

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. MEXICO CITY—For many drug-enforcement officials in North America, there was one cartel boss who was too big and too dangerous to ever try to take down—Nemesio “El Mencho" Oseguera, the head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

Now that Oseguera is dead, after a firefight Sunday with Mexican security forces, Mexico is bracing for a civil war among his top lieutenants for control of a cartel that quickly rose to be the country’s most powerful and deadly organized-crime syndicate. Mexico is already struggling with another cartel civil war in the state of Sinaloa, where clans have been fighting for more than a year after one faction affiliated with former drug boss Joaquin “El Chapo" Guzman betrayed the head of another family clan.

That conflict has left more than 2,000 people dead and another 3,000 missing, likely kidnapped and killed. The risks of a Jalisco cartel war carries broader risks because of its wider territorial reach, former security officials say.

Oseguera exerted control over so-called “plazas" and smuggling routes that spanned from Mexico’s border with Guatemala to the Gulf Coast state of Tamaulipas neighboring Texas and the Baja California peninsula in the Pacific. “This is the biggest blow that the government has ever struck against a criminal group in Mexico," said Eduardo Guerrero, a leading security consultant in Mexico City.

“It has national implications, given the vast number of states where the cartel operates, and it’s too early to tell whether it turns into a great war." Guerrero said a second narco civil war in western Mexico would upend security of the World Cup this summer, as the international soccer tournament is played in Mexico, the U.S. and Canada.