Drug war instability in Mexico

A friend of mine has the bad luck to be vacationing in Puerto Vallarta at the moment, and reports that until about an hour ago the federal police were nowhere to be seen, as members of one or more drug cartels terrorized the city. This is all a result of today’s killing of arguably the nation’s top drug lord by the Mexican military, with what is being termed delicately “inter-agency assistance” from the USA.

The Mexican government said it killed the nation’s most wanted cartel boss on Sunday, setting off a wave of fires and violence across the country as cartel operatives sought to exact revenge in an unsettling show of force.

Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho,” was the longtime leader of one of Mexico’s most powerful cartels, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, and was widely regarded as one of the country’s most violent criminal figures. He presided over a criminal enterprise that has expanded rapidly over the past decade, producing and selling drugs, extorting local businesses and terrorizing communities across the country.

Mr. Oseguera’s killing plunged Mexico into a highly tense moment that could unleash a surge in violence. Past captures of cartel leaders have set off wars between the government and cartels, as well as between opposing factions jockeying for power in the beheaded criminal group.

Those fears were heightened on Sunday by a swift outbreak of violence across Mexico. In states around the country, armed groups blocked roads and set fire to supermarkets, banks and vehicles, in one of the most widespread eruptions of turmoil in the nation’s recent history.

Mexican security forces on Sunday captured Mr. Oseguera in Tapalpa, a town of about 20,000, in the western coastal state of Jalisco, where his cartel was founded and based, the government said in a statement. Mr. Oseguera was injured in the operation and died while in transport to Mexico City for medical attention, according to the government. At least nine other cartel members were killed.

Last week I just so happened to be teaching Sam Quinones’s fascinating book Dreamland, which is about among other things the intersection of the Oxycontin addiction epidemic set off by the Sacklers, and the extraordinary methods a highly idiosyncratic drug organization, the so-called Xalisco boys, employed to introduce cheap black tar heroin into cities and towns all across America, where desperate opioid addicts were looking for a less expensive way to deal with their addiction.

Between ICE raids in el gabacho and the fresh outburst of violent cartel chaos south of the border, it’s going to be an interesting summer for the hosting of the World Cup — one which no doubt will give Donald Trump a chance to truly earn his FIFA Peace Prize.

So far from God and so close to the United States.