September, 2017 RollingStoneAus.com | Rolling Stone | 73
Inaway,kidnappingElChapo’ssons
served as Mencho’s coming-out party.
“Theplanwastokillthem,”aDEAsource
says.“[CJNG]weregoingtokidnapthem,
get the confessions they wanted, and then
whack ’em.”
Butatthelastminute,Chapo–atthe
timestilllockedupinMexico–wasable
tonegotiateadeal.Inexchangeforwhat
the DEA source calls “$2 million and a
whole lot of dope”, both sons were released
unharmed.
The ransom payment was largely cer-
emonial. “Mencho doesn’t need the money,”
thesourcesays.“Hewassendingamessage.
‘Youroldmanislockedupnow.Don’tthink
you’re untouchable.’ ” From Cancún to Cali-
fornia, the warning was clear. Mencho was
coming for the throne.
JALISCO IS, IN many ways, the quintes-
sential Mexican state. Mariachi music was
born there; so were tequila and sombre-
ros. The state’s motto is “Jalisco es Méxi-
co”. For decades the state was a neutral
zone for the cartels: Many wealthy narcos
kept homes in the capital, Guadalajara – a
picture-postcard colonial city nicknamed
“The Pearl of the West” – while beachside
resort towns like Puerto Vallarta were a fa-
vourite vacation spot not just for drug lords
but Mexican politicians as well.
But Jalisco is also, strategically speak-
ing, hugely important real estate for the
dr ug trade. A s Mexico’s second-largest cit y
and a major financial and transportation
hub, Guadalajara offers plentiful opportu-
nities for money-laundering and recruit-
ment. Jalisco also sits near Mexico’s two
largest seaports, Manzanillo and Lázaro
Cárdenas – which come in handy for ship-
ping out multiton drug loads. “If I had to
pick a major factor [that enabled Mencho’s
rise],” says Special Agent Kyle Mori of the
DEA’s Los Angeles field division, “it’s that
he had a huge geographical advantage.”
Mori, 35, is square-jawed and earnest,
with the friendly authority of a park ranger,
albeit one who carries a Glock. But he’s also
“a bulldog when it comes to investigations”,
says his supervisor, DEA Special Agent
in Charge James Comer. Prior to joining
the DEA, Mori worked as an L.A. County
sheriff ’s deput y on patrol in Compton. Now,
as the agency’s foremost investigator into
CJNG – and the agent who helped prepare
the 2014 indictment against Mencho – he
knows the cartel probably better than any-
one in America. “I’ve been working these
guys pretty much since I started,” Mori
says. “This is what I do.”
The first time Mencho popped up on
Mori’s radar was a f luke. Back in 2010,Mori was working on an unrelated money-
laundering case with a field agent in Gua-
dalajara who told him about a fresh target,
a new cartel: “They’re a huge problem down
here in Jalisco. When Chapo gets picked up,
these guys are gonna run the show.”
At the time, CJNG were billing them-
selves as saviours. Answering to the name
Mata Zetas – or Zeta Killers – they dressed
in black paramilitary gear and posted pro-
paganda videos in which they claimed to be
fighting the Zetas for the people of Mexico.
“We do not extort, kidnap, rob, oppress or
in any other way disturb the national well-
being,” one video said. “Our only objective
is to finish off the Zetas.”
But as Stratfor’s Stewart says of the
drug war, “There really aren’t any Robin
Hoods in Mexico.” It was soon revealed
that CJNG weren’t good guys at all, but
just another cartel trying to protect its na-
scent methamphetamine empire.
In a 2008 diplomatic cable (“Chemical
City: Guadalajara, Jalisco and the Meth
Trade”), a U.S. official detailed how Jalisco
had become Mexico’s capital for synthetic
drugs. Unlike heroin or marijuana, meth
didn’t require large plots of land or good
weather – just isolated areas in which to
build labs. Guadalajara also had a thriv-
ing pharmaceutical industry, with young
chemists full of technical know-how. And
then there were the Pacific ports, which“In mexico, you run into guys who’ve met chapo,” says
One DEA agent. “But not mencho. He’s kind of a ghost.”