{"id":1475,"date":"2026-04-11T11:01:49","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T11:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/1475\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T11:01:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T11:01:49","slug":"juan-carlos-valencia-gonzalez-emerges-in-power-vacuum-at-the-head-of-the-jalisco-new-generation-cartel-international","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/1475\/","title":{"rendered":"Juan Carlos Valencia Gonz\u00e1lez emerges in power vacuum at the head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel | International"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps the history of Mexican drug trafficking is written in the story of Juan Carlos Valencia Gonz\u00e1lez<\/a>. His father was a pioneer in drug smuggling, trading avocado farming in Michoac\u00e1n<\/a> for cocaine shipments; his mother and uncle transformed a family name into a criminal enterprise; and his stepfather was the world\u2019s most wanted drug lord, founder of an international empire. Of undeniable criminal lineage, Valencia Gonz\u00e1lez is also known as \u201cEl Pel\u00f3n,\u201d \u201c03,\u201d \u201cR3,\u201d or \u201cJP.\u201d The Mexican government says he leads an elite armed group, and the United States is offering $5 million for any information leading to his capture. Both consider him, after the fall of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes<\/a>, \u201cEl Mencho,\u201d the likely successor at the head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). At 41, Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia is entering the criminal front line for the first time, a path he inherited from his family.<\/p>\n

\u201cPure Mencho\u2019s people!\u201d chant nearly 100 men dressed in tactical gear, armed with assault rifles. \u201cPure the Lord of the Roosters\u2019 people!\u201d one insists, and the next adds, \u201cWe\u2019re giving it our all here,\u201d \u201cLong live R3,\u201d \u201cPure Elite Group, gentlemen.\u201d It\u2019s a convoy of 22 armored vehicles, customized with turrets and a dozen machine guns, along with Barrett rifles and grenade launchers. A logo on the door of these trucks distinguishes them from a regular army: they are the CJNG\u2019s Elite Group Special Forces. They all have the four letters emblazoned on their chests. They all answer to R3. \u201cIt\u2019s the only identified armed group of this nature,\u201d acknowledged the then-secretary of national defense, Luis Cresencio Sandoval, in 2020: \u201cAnd it\u2019s led by Juan Carlos Valencia Gonz\u00e1lez.\u201d<\/p>\n

This elite unit emerged in 2019 and was responsible \u2014 at the beginning of its fight with the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel<\/a> \u2014 for the massacre of seven police officers in Guanajuato, according to military reports. Sandoval, who confirmed that the group also had a presence in Michoac\u00e1n, Jalisco, and Zacatecas at that time, admitted: \u201cThey intend to portray the Elite Group as the most capable force within the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, with mobility, armored protection, firepower, and military training.\u201d That was the force commanded by Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia.<\/p>\n

\"AguilillaMembers of the CJNG in Aguililla, Michoac\u00e1n, in July 2021.Cuartoscuro<\/p>\n

The propaganda video was recorded on the border between Jalisco and Michoac\u00e1n on July 17, 2020, El Mencho\u2019s birthday. The military believed it was a kind of birthday greeting for the drug lord, who was Valencia Gonz\u00e1lez\u2019s stepfather, at a time when his father, Armando Valencia Cornelio, was battling cancer after being released from a U.S. penitentiary, and his mother, Rosalinda Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia<\/a>, was incarcerated in a maximum-security prison in Mexico. <\/p>\n

Three months later, Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia would become a top U.S. priority target for being \u201cone of the alleged leaders of the most violent drug trafficking organization currently operating in Mexico\u201d: \u201cA DEA investigation revealed he was responsible for the manufacturing, transportation, and distribution of tons of quantities of narcotics, as well as for organizing numerous crimes of violence,\u201d the State Department said<\/a>. That\u2019s when a manhunt began that has only intensified since then.<\/p>\n

The Valencias<\/p>\n

The family started out like so many others: large and made up of immigrants. Originally from Aguililla, in the Tierra Caliente region of Michoac\u00e1n, the Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia family consisted of 18 siblings. Some, like Rosalinda, left very early \u2014 in the late 1970s \u2014 for the United States, where they became involved in drug trafficking. In a letter to a judge, she stated that she arrived in California when she was only 14 years old. On September 12, 1984, in Santa Ana, she had her first child: Juan Carlos Valencia Gonz\u00e1lez. The alleged father is another Michoac\u00e1n native, somewhat older than her, Armando Valencia Cornelio. Armando \u2014 who was born in Uruapan in 1959, but whose father was also from Aguililla \u2014 had settled in Redwood City, on the outskirts of San Jose, in the 1980s, where there was a community of his fellow Michoac\u00e1n natives.<\/p>\n

Valencia Cornelio\u2019s criminal record began shortly after his son\u2019s birth, and through him emerged some of the legends of Mexican drug trafficking. He was initially just another subordinate of Miguel \u00c1ngel F\u00e9lix Gallardo<\/a>, \u201cThe Boss of Bosses,\u201d and later, after Gallardo\u2019s arrest, he worked with Amado Carrillo Fuentes, \u201cThe Lord of the Skies,\u201d from whom he inherited the connections in Colombia that allowed him to reach the big leagues of drug trafficking.<\/p>\n

The documents from the U.S. justice system state that in Michoac\u00e1n, \u201cfour out of every five or six people have the last name Valencia, and they also marry among themselves.\u201d This, the documents say, \u201cgenerates confusion,\u201d such as the fact that for more than a decade in the United States, people thought Armando Valencia Cornelio and his cousin Luis Valencia Valencia were the same person, instead of the two leaders of the Milenio Cartel, or that Armando managed to avoid his first arrest warrant because a judge didn\u2019t know his second surname and there were dozens of Armando Valencias. Straddling the U.S. and Mexico, by 1999, these two men from Michoac\u00e1n had already bought dozens of houses, ranches, and packing plants in Michoac\u00e1n, and had a fleet of ships at their disposal.<\/p>\n

Armando Valencia sealed the pact at a ranch outside Medell\u00edn, Colombia, that would make him one of the major drug suppliers to the United States and ultimately land him in prison. In April 1999, \u201cEl Maradona\u201d unloaded 8,650 kilos of cocaine from a tuna fishing boat owned by Colombian Alejandro Bernal, known as \u201cJuvenal,\u201d and transferred it to one of his own vessels. He sailed it to Mazatl\u00e1n, then headed to Ju\u00e1rez, and finally crossed into Texas. This lucrative relationship ended in 2003 when he was arrested in Jalisco. At that time, according to the Mexican government, he was \u201csmuggling at least a third of the drugs entering the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Michoac\u00e1nBurned-out vehicles on the highway that connects Apatzingan and Aguililla, in Michoac\u00e1n, in April 2021.Monica Gonzalez (El Pa\u00eds)The empire<\/p>\n

The Milenio Cartel continued without Armando, despite what authorities on both sides of the border believed. Also known as the Valencia clan, this family business, comprised of cousins, brothers, and nephews, allied itself with the Sinaloa Cartel<\/a> in its deadly struggle against Los Zetas. It is under this umbrella that all the stories converge. Because in that fight, El Mencho also rose to power. He had already married Rosalinda Gonz\u00e1lez and had three children with her (Jessica Johana, Rub\u00e9n, and Laisha). A drug dealer, ex-convict, deportee, former police officer, and gunman \u2014 in that order \u2014 El Mencho was part of the so-called Zeta Killers. It was following the murder of Nacho Coronel (the Michoac\u00e1n cartel\u2019s main ally with Sinaloa) and the surrender of Lobo Valencia (due to an alleged betrayal) that the family-run cartel split apart, eventually bringing together \u2014 now under the leadership of El Mencho and Erick Valencia, \u201cEl 85\u201d \u2014 a new group of members: the Jalisco New Generation Cartel<\/a> was born.<\/p>\n

After a brutal statement of intent \u2014 the massacre of 35 people in Boca del R\u00edo, Veracruz, in 2011 \u2014 the CJNG rose to power hand in hand with Los Cuinis, its financial arm. One cannot be understood without the other. In 2015, the U.S. government outlined the alliance between Oseguera Cervantes and Abigael Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia<\/a>, Rosalinda\u2019s brother, who was already imprisoned: \u201cThese two organizations have rapidly expanded their criminal empire in recent years through the use of violence and corruption. They are currently among the most powerful drug trafficking organizations in Mexico.\u201d<\/p>\n

At that time, they also broke off links with the Sinaloa Cartel, led by \u201cEl Chapo\u201d Guzm\u00e1n<\/a> and \u201cEl Mayo\u201d Zambada<\/a>. \u201cAccording to the DEA, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel is an offshoot of the Sinaloa Cartel. For the U.S. Treasury Department, it is an offshoot of the Milenio Cartel. Both versions are correct,\u201d wrote security expert Carlos Flores in the 2016 Atlas of Security and Defense of Mexico. In the last decade, the CJNG has established a presence in every Mexican state and in some 20 countries, surpassing the now-defunct Zetas and gaining ground on the Sinaloa Cartel, which is currently embroiled in a fratricidal battle between its factions.<\/p>\n

Behind that meteoric rise was always El Mencho. It is only now, after his death during an army operation in Tapalpa, that, after 15 years, one can speak of successors. The Mexican government has named some, such as El Jardinero, who controls the clandestine laboratories; El Sapo, who manages forced recruitment; and El T\u00edo Lako, who was one of his main partners, but among them all, one name always stands out: Valencia Gonz\u00e1lez. After all, from the very beginning, this has always been a family affair.<\/p>\n

Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a> to get more English-language news coverage from EL PA\u00cdS USA Edition <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Perhaps the history of Mexican drug trafficking is written in the story of Juan Carlos Valencia Gonz\u00e1lez. His…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1290,1285,1291,1287,1288,1286,1284,1283,1289,95],"class_list":{"0":"post-1475","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-valencia","8":"tag-chapo-guzman","9":"tag-dea","10":"tag-ismael-el-mayo-zambada","11":"tag-jalisco","12":"tag-los-zetas","13":"tag-medellin","14":"tag-michoacan","15":"tag-nemesio-el-mencho","16":"tag-sinaloa","17":"tag-valencia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}