Two members of the Navy personnel have been kidnapped by the men of Laisha Oseguera, daughter of one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the country, Nemesio Oseguera, alias The Mencho, and his partner Christian Gutiérrez, as confirmed by the Secretariat to EL PAÍS. The disappearance occurred a few hours after the strong Army operation deployed in the city of Zapopan, on the outskirts of Guadalajara (Jalisco) to arrest El Mencho’s wife, Rosalinda González Valencia, and Laisha’s mother. The blow to the family heart of the leader of the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel has claimed its first two victims. Authorities have located the truck in which the naval personnel were traveling, but its whereabouts remain a mystery.

The intelligence information of the Navy indicates that they disappeared on Monday afternoon, while Zapopan continued to be surrounded by one of the most important arrests against the drug trafficker this year, that of González Valencia. The disappeared are a driver and an administrative worker who were waiting in the parking lot of a Walmart in the municipality for the captain to leave – they did not want to reveal his name. The three were doing time, according to sources from the Secretariat, to be able to return to the naval base, as the military siege prevented it. Inside the establishment, through security camera videos and other intelligence data, there was also Christian Gutiérrez, Laisha’s partner.

Gutiérrez’s presence in the place where they were last seen connects the kidnapping directly with the only free daughter from the marriage between El Mencho and Rosalinda González. After the capture of Rubén Oseguera, The Menchito, in 2015 and her extradition to the United States in 2020, in addition to the arrest in Washington of her sister, Jessica Johanna Oseguera in that same year, the only blood heir to the criminal empire of the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel is Laisha. And it is she who the Navy accuses of ordering the kidnapping of its personnel, hours after her mother was arrested.

Rosalinda González Valencia was arrested shortly before the kidnapping at the Walmart by Army personnel, in an operation in which the Navy did not participate, according to official information. The reason for executing the arrest warrant against him was that he had broken the protocol for his parole: he had repeatedly missed his appointments to sign in the prison. A judge has ordered preventive detention on Wednesday. In addition, he has been facing a process since 2018 for organized crime and money laundering.

Given the possible reprisals that the powerful Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel could take after the capture of the wife of its leader and alleged head of the group’s financial arm, the municipality of Zapopan woke up on Tuesday surrounded as if it were a war front. Armored trucks and dozens of soldiers patrolling one of the most exclusive areas, the residence of the most powerful in Guadalajara, the third most important city in the country. In this corner of shopping centers and luxury subdivisions, it has also been the bastion of the cartel that bears the name of the State.

Those of Jalisco Nueva Generación, since its founding in 2010, and its meteoric success to become one of the most powerful criminal groups – it only competes with Sinaloa in firepower – have sown terror in the country. The escalation of violence that Mexico has suffered for more than a decade, with a record number of homicides that are fought each year (almost 100 a day), is largely attributed to the war for control of routes, squares and new territories in Mexico. this cartel that has managed to extend its tentacles to practically the entire national territory, except the historical bastions of those of Sinaloa.

The kidnapping of two members of the Navy personnel once again shows the power of drug trafficking in Mexico. Like a state within a state. With the ability to threaten and intimidate one of the country’s best valued institutions, which for years has been in charge of fighting organized crime and the beheading of its leaders. The silence of the Ministry of Defense and of the president himself, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in the face of the drug’s latest affront to a public institution is also a reflection of the success of the terror strategy to which drug trafficking has subjected the country for decades.

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