Chapo, Mayo, Mencho: another Mexican kingpin falls

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1:05Sarah Birke:The Economist

1:12Sarah Birke:Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

1:26Sarah Birke:After a look yesterday at the impact of four years of war on Ukraine, today we get a rare look inside Russia. And we have some surprising advice for runners. You might think that if you want a good marathon time, the simple aim is to get faster and faster when training. We dig into piles of data to find a more nuanced plan.

2:04Sarah Birke:First up, though.

2:13Sarah Birke:A Mexican journalist can't even get the question out before President Claudia Sheinbaum cuts in with the answer.

2:28Sarah Birke:What guarantees are there that the World Cup will happen at this venue? All of them. All the guarantees, she replies. It's a fair question. On Sunday, a notorious drug lord named Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, and known simply as El Mencho, was captured and mortally wounded. In scenes that Mexico has seen before, that sparked grotesque violence on the streets. Not the kind of press that one of the World Cup host countries wants right about now, and Ms. Sheinbaum wants to calm nerves. But even though things seem to have quietened down for the moment, experience suggests that the violence is not over.

3:10Ainslie Johnstone:Elmenger was the head of the Jalisco New Generation cartel, which is one of the two biggest cartels in Mexico. And it's in fact the one with the biggest national spread, most brutal and incredibly diversified in terms of what it's into.

3:24Sarah Birke:Sarah Burke is our Mexico City Bureau chief.

3:26Ainslie Johnstone:He was a 59-year-old former policeman who has headed this cartel since the start and probably Mexico's most wanted person. But this killing threatens to have a very long-term impact on the country for good or potentially for bad as well.

3:41Sarah Birke:Well, the for bad for now is that there seems to be widespread violence since his killing.

3:46Ainslie Johnstone:He was captured and died on Sunday and immediately violence broke out after that. So at least 15 to 20 states, there was roadblocks, there was torching of buses, airlines had to cancel flights. People who were visiting the tourist resort of Puerto Vallarta, which is in Jalisco state where he was captured, were told to shelter in place. So a huge amount of violence across the country. By Monday, things had calmed down quite a lot. And by Tuesday, things were getting somewhat back to normal. But the concern is this is not over yet, because what happens and we've seen in the past in Mexico and in other countries is that when you take out the head of a cartel, often you get fragmentation, internecine conflict, and that ends up generating more violence.

4:29Ainslie Johnstone:So while everyone thinks this is a huge success taking out Il Mencho, which undoubtedly it is, I mean, it's a huge coup for the Mexicans and also pleases the Americans, this could generate a lot more violence.

4:40Sarah Birke:And tell me more about the gang that El Mancho headed.

5:10Ainslie Johnstone:violence, incredibly well armed and equipped. It has things that can shoot down military helicopters from the sky. And it uses drones as well to dump explosives in areas. So this cartel is an amalgam of affiliated groups up to around 92 by some estimates. And it was a very vertical command structure because Almentra was very good at keeping everyone in order, particularly because of just his complete utter ruthlessness in terms of using violence. But that makes it also very prone to fragmentation. So if there is no succession plan, or if the people who were killed alongside him happen to be part of that succession plan, what you might see is this fragmentation.

5:49Ainslie Johnstone:Just to give you another idea of this group and the challenge it poses to the Mexican authorities, in 2020, it tried to assassinate in broad daylight in a very rich district of Mexico City, the then city security chief, who is now the federal Security Minister Omar Harfouche. It failed, but it was something that people didn't think could have happened before.

6:10Sarah Birke:And so if you say this is a group that's particularly prone to fragmentation, and it is that kind of fragmentation and inter-Necine fighting that leads to the violence, why take out El Mancho at all? Why go about it that way?

6:22Ainslie Johnstone:I think there are two reasons for that. Claudia Sheinbaum is very serious about security. Since she came to power around 18 months ago, she has really made it clear that she is going to do something about the dire security situation in the country, which is a break from her predecessor. So she's boosted intelligence capability. She's appointed a very professional, good security minister who she also worked with in the city. And the second thing is she's under a lot of pressure from her American counterpart, Donald Trump, to do more to tackle criminal groups in the country. And he's threatened to carry out unilateral American strikes if she doesn't do so.

6:56Ainslie Johnstone:So the Mexicans are under a huge amount of pressure on this. I also think this is a security team that knows what they're doing. So while they have taken out a kingpin and this might cause them immense problems, this isn't necessarily the start of a return to the kingpin strategy, which Sheinbaum herself has on numerous occasions criticised. And I think everyone within Mexico and beyond is aware of the dangers. But I think she might have been pushed into this because it was such a valuable target. It's one that the Americans were really after. And indeed, it shows the capabilities that the Mexican forces have.

7:27Ainslie Johnstone:Everyone across the political spectrum is very impressed by this operation.

7:31Sarah Birke:And you said what started as quite a sharp spike in violence has already kind of tailed off. Do you think that's the end of this episode or just the end of this chapter?

7:40Ainslie Johnstone:We should not read anything into the fact it's tailed off or not too much. What you see is often there's a lull of a few weeks, sometimes even months, as groups figure out what they're going to do, arm themselves, make the alliances they need. We saw this when one of the big leaders of the Sinaloa cartel was arrested and taken to the US in summer 2024. And there was a bit of violence and then there was a calm or more or less a calm. And then in September, war in Sinaloa state broke out between the two factions of the cartel. And that violence continues to this day. And the government, despite having sent thousands of troops, is unable to quell it.

8:17Ainslie Johnstone:So there is still a huge risk of this, one that in fact, the security minister mentioned in a press conference a couple of days ago. And they're going to have to be very alert to any sense of anything breaking out, because if you don't immediately tamper down the flames, that can threaten to become an epidemic of violence. And this all matters and comes at a very crucial time for Mexico. This is not just about Ms. Sheinbaum and her legacy, which she has staked on security, but it's also about the economy. Jalisco Estate is an extremely important business hub and investment hub. But moreover, or more interestingly, the World Cup is going to be co-hosted by Mexico, the US and Canada in just four months time.

8:56Ainslie Johnstone:And one of the matches at least is scheduled to be played in Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco. So if there is any form of huge, violent fallout from this, it's very likely to affect Mexico in many, many different ways, including affecting the World Cup. So what happens between now and then is really crucial. And not just Mexico, but the world's eyes will be on it.

9:20Sarah Birke:Sarah, thanks very much for joining us.

9:22Ainslie Johnstone:Thanks for having me, Jason.

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10:27Jason Palmer:Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done.

10:46Sarah Birke:The narrative in a country that's been invaded is clear-cut. Terrible, but clear. The narrative for the invading country can be a lot more subtle. In Russia, no one voted for the war in Ukraine. They were told it would be quick and righteous and, in its way, glorious. They now know better. Our Russia editor, Arkady Ostrovsky, has been speaking to people on the ground, including a network of local reporters, to get a sense of how the war is affecting day-to-day life and how that has changed over four long years.

11:20Tim Cross:If you're in a big city like Moscow or St. Petersburg or Yekaterinburg in the Urals, you have a very strange experience. experience. On the one hand, you see posters, advertising, recruitment, but on the whole, you don't see any presence of the war. But you experience it and life has changed in the way people travel, in the way people communicate, in the way people fear, in the way they cover up their phones. So actually look closer and the war is everywhere.

11:51Sarah Birke:Let's talk about people who live in the cities who are being told to pretend as if the war isn't happening. What ways has the war changed life for them?

12:02Tim Cross:Most Russian people are trying to live their normal life because they never chose this war. They never wanted this war. The vast majority wants this war to end as soon as possible. So they're kind of trying not to let it impinge on their life. And war is impinging. Let's say you get into a car and you have to drive somewhere and you have a set nav in your car. You can't really use it because the spoofing, which is aimed to confuse Ukrainian drones, makes it impossible to use navigation. So your navigator might show you you're 50 miles away from where you are. Airports do get shut down a lot because of the drone threats.

12:41Tim Cross:Flights get cancelled. Travelling to Europe, which is what a lot of urban middle class Russians used to do, is now really a forgotten experience. There are no direct flights. You can get to Turkey, you can get to Georgia, Armenia, you can fly to Dubai, but you can't fly to Paris and you can't fly to Berlin. And even flying within Russia can be hazardous and risky because sanctions means that servicing and maintenance and spare parts are hard to get. And of course, perhaps the most immediate thing is communicating with each other. When I was in Moscow before the war, very few people used VPN. Now for socially mobile, Russians, VPN is just a fact of life.

13:24Tim Cross:But all these things, of course, create the sense of isolation and create the sense of abnormality, even if you've adapted to them.

13:33Sarah Birke:And what about on the business side of things? How have things changed there?

13:37Tim Cross:Russian economy effectively consists now of two parts, money that's been thrown at war and into military industrial sector. That's what generates growth that you see in the figures, although that growth has now slowed down. That part of the economy produces stuff that is designed to be destroyed. All that stuff which shows up in the increased output and therefore in economic growth figures is not something that is useful for ordinary Russians or that's something that can be counted as investment in Russia's future. The second part of the economy, it's the services, it's the restaurants, it's the clothing, it's timber, it's metal constructions.

14:20Tim Cross:That part of economy is doing a lot worse now. Because what's happening is that the first part of the economy, the military industrial sector, is sucking out resources from the civilian economy. Now, the resilience of Russian business is quite extraordinary. It lived through crisis to crisis, It's learned to deal with a corrupt legal system, learned to navigate in all sorts of ways. But what's been happening lately, I think, exceeds all of this. The biggest problem is complete lack of property rights. Russia, since the beginning of the war, has been going through one of the biggest redistribution of assets in its modern history.

15:01Tim Cross:And it started with foreign companies that left Russia and their assets been just grabbed and redistributed to cronies and to people close to Putin and close to the war. And then it went on to Russian businesses. Some 500 Russian companies have been effectively expropriated under all sorts of excuses. You know, something can be strategic. The Domodedovo airport I used to fly in and out of, that's been grabbed from its owner. In that environment, investment just doesn't make any sense.

15:31Sarah Birke:And one thing we haven't talked about, which must be very present for people on the ground in Russia today, is the veterans, the people who are coming back from the front as much as the ones who are not.