A US citizen and El Mencho’s stepson: Washington crowns Juan Carlos Valencia as new leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel

After months of weighing the options, the United States has identified the successor to Rubén Nemesio Oseguera, alias “El Mencho,” at the head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). The U.S. National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) recently updated its Counterterrorism Guide, naming Juan Carlos Valencia González, alias “El 03,” as the new top leader of the criminal organization after the February killing of El Mencho by the Mexican army. After more than 20 years in crime and operating under the shadow of his stepfather, the new boss has consolidated his power within the CJNG while maintaining a virtually invisible profile to the public and authorities. Washington now says he is the new leader of a violent organization that generates $1 billion a year from drug trafficking and other illicit businesses, and commands roughly 15,000 to 20,000 members.

Since El Mencho’s death in a military operation in Tapalpa, Jalisco, the CJNG had been left in limbo over its future. Many feared the power vacuum Oseguera left behind would trigger a bloody internal battle among his lieutenants for the succession. Omar García Harfuch, Mexico’s federal security secretary, had already said in February that the authorities had identified four possible candidates to succeed the world’s most wanted criminal. Although Harfuch did not name them explicitly, the NCTC lists them in the document with El 03 at the top, followed by his lieutenants: Julio Alberto Castillo Rodríguez, alias “El Chorro,” who is also Mencho’s son-in-law; Hugo Gonzalo Mendoza Gaytán, known as “El Sapo;” and Audias Flores Silva, alias “El Jardinero,” who was arrested by Mexican authorities on April 27 in an operation in Nayarit.

A source familiar with cartel dynamics, consulted by The Wall Street Journal, said at least two high-ranking lieutenants agreed not to contest Valencia’s claim to the throne to guarantee continuity of the businesses. Among them was El Jardinero, who controlled extensive territory in the Mexican states of Zacatecas, Guerrero, Nayarit, Jalisco, and Michoacán. He also oversaw clandestine labs in central Jalisco and southern Zacatecas used to produce methamphetamine and other illicit drugs trafficked to the United States.

As soon as El Mencho was buried in a gilded coffin in early March, amid narco-ballads and surrounded by floral arrangements, and with his children Rubén and Johanna Oseguera González — known as El Menchito and La Negra, respectively — effectively sidelined from the reorganization after being sentenced to life in prison in the United States on drug- and weapons-related charges, succession for the third name on the list seemed obvious.

Valencia’s mother, Rosalinda González Valencia, and several of her siblings emigrated to California as teenagers. None went back to school in the United States. “I had to work from the age of 14… in the fields, in packing plants, cleaning houses, babysitting and in restaurants, all to get by,” she wrote in a letter that is part of a court file.

Her first son, Juan Carlos Valencia González — also known as “Pelón,” “El JP” or “Tricky Tres,” who has a $5 million reward on his head for his capture — is 41 and was born in Santa Ana, California, one of the first U.S. territories where the cartel operated freely for more than a decade. El 03 comes from a long narcotics lineage. His biological father, Armando Valencia Cornelio, alias “El Maradona,” founded the Millennium Cartel in the 1970s, a precursor to what would become the CJNG.

According to the United States, El 03 has influence in southeast Jalisco and Colima. He is said to lead the Grupo Élite, another armed wing of the CJNG. That unit emerged in 2019 and, at the start of its fight with the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, was responsible for the massacre of seven police officers in Guanajuato, according to military reports. Then–defense secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval confirmed in 2020 that the group also had a presence in Michoacán, Jalisco, and Zacatecas: “They seek to present Grupo Élite as the most capable force within the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, with mobility, armored protection, firepower, and military training.”

Several experts agree that one of El Mencho’s strengths — and what helped cement his organization — was close family ties. According to the NCTC document, the CJNG has a “hierarchical command structure in which regional leaders manage day-to-day operations for the group’s overall leader, U.S. person Juan Carlos Valencia González, a.k.a. El 03.” “CJNG uses a franchise model — an affiliation agreement between smaller, local cartels and CJNG — to facilitate expansion outside of its strongholds in Jalisco, Nayarit, and Colima,” the document details.

Valencia’s rise to the fore even prompted former U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Christopher Landau, to name him in a debate over birthright citizenship: “I don’t believe, for instance, that ‘El Pelón,’ apparent new head of the bloodthirsty CJNG cartel in Mexico, is a U.S. citizen simply because — as has been widely reported — he was born in California. Our Constitution is not a suicide pact.”

“Can the government kill a U.S. citizen abroad or even in its own country without prior trial if he is considered a threat to the United States?” asked Steven Cash, a former CIA official who also worked with former president Joe Biden as a senior adviser to the undersecretary for intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security. Now seated on the throne, and although his defining trait has always been his ability to stay out of the spotlight, it remains to be seen how El 03 will lead and what the next move will be for the criminal organization he has inherited.

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