‘El Mencho’ and ‘Don Rodo,’ a life of evading justice: From small-time dealers to heads of the most powerful cartel in Mexico

One day in September 1992, two Mexican brothers entered the Imperial bar in San Francisco, California, to sell five ounces of heroin (about 140 grams.) Since 1986, the youngest of the two, Nemesio, had been crossing the Rio Grande with marijuana and other illegal substances on a regular basis. That year, he was arrested in possession of stolen goods and a gun. In the jails of the Californian city, the police took a mugshot in which he looks more like a teenager arrested for smoking pot than the man who will become the DEA’s most-wanted cartel boss. Before that day in the fall of 1992, he had been deported a couple of times, but he always managed to find a way to return. The one who negotiated the deal on that occasion was the elder brother, Abraham, who already had a hefty record. The buyers paid $9,500 for the drugs, but they were police officers and the bills were marked. Three weeks later, the Oseguera Cervantes brothers were arrested on federal charges. Nemesio, known as “El Mencho,” maintained his innocence. Prosecutors warned him: if he doesn’t take responsibility, Abraham will bear the brunt and could be sentenced to life. El Mencho ended up pleading guilty to protect his brother. He would spend a few years behind bars. In the cells, he met guys like him whom, years later, he would recruit for his nascent cartel, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).

Over 30 years later, the DEA is offering a $15 million reward for the head of El Mencho, who after the delivery to the United States of Rafael Caro Quintero, the historic boss of the Guadalajara Cartel, is the most coveted cartel boss by the U.S. authorities. His brother Abraham, alias “Don Rodo,” is once again the loose end through which the authorities are trying to reach the leader of the CJNG. Abraham Oseguera Cervantes is, once again, in the hands of the Mexican police. He was arrested on February 28, the day after an unprecedented mass transfer of 29 Mexican drug traffickers to the United States, including Caro Quintero himself, the leaders of Los Zetas, the last great heir to the Juárez Cartel and another of the Oseguera Cervantes brothers, Antonio, nicknamed “Tony Montana” after the character in Scarface, in one of those common cases in the world of the cartels in which reality imitates cinema.

The situation is unique: never before has Mexico handed the United States so many drug lords at once. Claudia Sheinbaum’s government tried to use them as a bargaining chip against Donald Trump, who threatened to impose 25% tariffs on Mexican products if Sheinbaum did not intensify the crusade against the cartels, paralyze fentanyl trafficking, and stem the flow of migrants crossing the border. Not even the 29 capos presented on a silver platter appeased the Republican magnate, who on Tuesday blew up the North American Free Trade Agreement by approving the tariffs. And in the middle was Don Rodo, castaway of the bilateral relationship and, possibly, one of the future aces up Sheinbaum’s sleeve, who still hopes to bring her American counterpart to the negotiating table.

Abraham Oseguera Cervantes, however, is an expert at toying with Mexican justice. For the moment, Mexico City district judge Juan Mateo Brieba de Castro has blocked any move by the federal government that could lead to Don Rodo ending up — like his 29 colleagues — north of the border. The next hearing in the case will be on March 10, where it will be decided whether the decision is upheld. Meanwhile, El Mencho’s brother is awaiting preventive detention, with several charges against him from the Mexican Attorney General’s Office (FGR).

This is the second time in less than a year that Don Rodo has ended up in jail. In April 2024, the Mexican National Guard captured him in Autlán de Navarro, a municipality of 65,000 inhabitants in rural Jalisco. In an unexpected twist, federal judge Rogelio León Díaz Villarreal released him after nine days, considering that there were contradictions in the police account of the operation that led to his arrest. In the early hours of April 30, Abraham Oseguera left a prison in the State of Mexico in a plaid shirt and guarded by three soldiers, was picked up by a vehicle, and then disappeared again into the Mexican criminal underworld. It was a scandal, one more in terms of the relationship between the judicial authorities and the cartels.

“A matter of state”

For then-president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the release was a “matter of state,” proof of the corruption of the judicial system, and Rogelio León, a “judge who favors alleged criminals.” The Autlán police officers even participated in the trial as defense witnesses, in favor of Don Rodo. The FGR announced that it would appeal the decision and denounce the agents for collaborating with the CJNG, but nothing more was ever heard. For the army, Don Rodo was, without a doubt, “one of the main coordinators of logistical and financial operations, dedicated to money laundering and in charge of drug trafficking and sales” in the cartel, and “one of the main generators of violence.”

Despite this, Don Rodo was at large, until this February, when his capture became useful to the authorities again. He was located not far from where they arrested him initially: in the town of Atajeas de Covarrubias, also in Jalisco, just over an hour from Autlán. Three other members of the CJNG, weapons, cash, and a stash of drugs were seized with him. Abraham Oseguera Cervantes played a key role in his brother’s criminal empire: laundering his fortune through “the purchase of ranches, land and properties, and also relying on public notaries from Ciudad Guzmán and Autlán to manage the name changes of the owners,” according to security sources. His wife, Virginia León Osornio, also participated in the scheme and invested on behalf of the cartel in gold mines in Michoacán and Nayarit, “with the aim of increasing the financial assets of her brother-in-law Rubén Oseguera.”

It is not difficult to trace the path that Don Rodo will follow, if the judge permits it: the strategy of the U.S. justice system is to harass El Mencho through his family. His brother, Antonio, “Tony Montana,” was arrested in 2022 and transferred to the United States last week. His son Rubén, “El Menchito,” was found guilty of drug trafficking last September in a Washington court (he too, like Don Rodo, spent time in a Mexican prison and was released before his definitive capture). His son-in-law, Cristian Fernando Gutiérrez, “El Guacho,” part of the CJNG leadership, was arrested last November in California after having faked his own death to circumvent the law.

The United States is tightening the noose around its prey, who, according to experts, remains hidden somewhere in the mountains of his native Michoacán. Even so, his influence does not seem to be diminished. On the same day that the 29 drug traffickers were transferred to the U.S., while the focus of the press was on Caro Quintero and company, El Mencho’s wife, Rosalinda González Valencia, accused of being a financial operator for the CJNG, quietly left a prison in Morelos after three years, despite the challenges of the Prosecutor’s Office.

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