ElMencho
76 | Rolling Stone | RollingStoneAus.com September, 2017
so-called superlabs in cities like Fresno
and Bakersfield. It was there, along with his
wife’s brother Abigael Gonzalez Valencia,
that Mencho learned what would become
the family business.
By 1989, Mencho was back in San Fran-
cisco,wherehewasarrestedagain,this
timeforsellingdrugs.(Inthatbooking
photo,hesportsanacid-washedjeanjack-
etandawrysmile;hedoesn’tlooklike
amaneagertoberehabilitatedanytime
soon.) He was deported a few months later,
butbySeptember1992,hewasbackinthe
BayAreayetagain,wherehewasbust-
ed once more – this time on federal
charges.
Accordingtocourtrecords,here’s
how it went down. Mencho’s older
brotherAbrahamwasataSanFran-
ciscobarcalledtheImperialtodoa
heroin deal: five ounces for $9,500.
Mencho,whowas26atthetime,
tagged along as a lookout. But though
hewastheyoungerbrother,Men-
cho was savvy enough to recognise
thatthebuyerspaidnotinloosebills,
butwithaneatstackofhundreds.In
a wiretapped conversation that fol-
lowed, he warned Abraham that the
menwereundercovercopsandsaid
he wouldn’t deal with them anymore.
But once was enough: Three weeks
later, Mencho and his brother were
arrested.
Twenty-five years later, neither
the prosecutor nor Mencho’s court-
appointed defense attorney can re-
call many details about the case. But
court transcripts portray Mencho as a
shrewd defendant, by turns combative
anddeeplyloyaltohisbrother,even
displaying occasional flashes of dark
humour. (At one point Mencho grumbled
abouthislawyer,“WheneverItalktohim,
he tells me the same thing....So I try to talk
withhimaslittleaspossible.”)
Mencho insisted he was innocent, that
he had nothing to do with the deal and
thattheagentswerelyingaboutseeing
himhandlethedope.Buttheprosecutor
said the brothers were a package: If Men-
cho didn’t plead guilty, then Abraham –
with two felony drug convictions already
to his name – would be facing a possible
life sentence. Mencho went back and forth
on what to do. “Given a jury trial, I think
I would be able to win it by myself,” he
told the sceptical judge. But in the end,
he decided to plead guilty to protect his
brother. During sentencing, he asked the
judge to please “give me the least possible”.
Her response: “I would suspect you would
do that.”
Mencho was sentenced to five years at
Big Spring Correctional Center, a private
prison in West Texas that housed mainly
undocumented immigrants. (According
to Univision, some of the gang members he
metinprisonhewouldlaterrecruittojoin
CJNG.)Hehadservedthreeyearswhen,
in January 1997, he was released on pa-
role.U.S.marshalsdeportedhimbackto
Mexico–ahardenedfelonat30yearsold.
Thenextfewyearsarefuzzy,butac-
cording to Mexican and DEA reports,
Mencho washed up in a Jalisco town
called Tomatlán, where – improbably – he
becameanofficerwiththeJaliscostate
police. (It wouldn’t be the first time a narco
had infiltrated the Mexican state police,
which – unlike their federal counterparts
–arewidelyviewedascorrupt.)Eventu-some reports, he even led his own network
of sicarios, or assassins.
One of Coronel’s nicknames was “The
King of Crystal”, for his dominance of the
meth trade, which – following a U.S. crack-
down – had, like so many industries, shift-
ed south of the border. As a result, meth
production was flourishing in the rugged
mountains around Jalisco. Thanks to his
experience in the States, Mencho was well-
positioned to take advantage.
By 2009, Mencho had risen through the
cartel’s ranks to become a top Milenio lieu-
tenant. Then, in October, one of Milenio’s
leaders was arrested, and nine months
later, Coronel himself was killed, shot
during an army raid on his Guada-
lajara mansion. The top two bosses
in Jalisco had suddenly been taken
off the table. An ambitious Mencho
stepped up to take their place.
But the cartel’s leadership had other
ideas. After one of his colleagues got
the nod instead, Mencho – like a cor-
porate vice president upset about being
passed over for CEO – broke off and
started his own splinter group, which
promptly declared war on Milenio
and Sinaloa. The fighting raged in the
streets of Guadalajara, destroying the
city’s long-standing truce, and Jalisco’s
murder rate more than doubled. “The
guys who were loyal to Milenio were
killed,” says Mori. “Everyone else was
forced to flee. And Mencho won – that
was the beginning of CJNG.”TWO HOURS SOUTH of Puerto Vallar-
ta, on a glittering stretch of the Pacific
called the Costalegre (or “Happy Coast”),
there’s a five-star eco-resort called the Ho-
telito Desconocido – “the Little Unknown
Hotel”. Two dozen thatched-roof bunga-
lows nestled amid a UNESCO bird para-
dise, the property has been written about
in Architectural Digest and The Wall Street
Journal and has cultivated an air of lux-
ury and discretion: Previous guests have
reportedly included Hollywood A-listers
such as Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts and
Blake Lively.
Unfortunately for the Hotelito’s owners,
in August 2015, it was seized by the Mexi-
can government after American officials
declared it a cartel front. According to
U.S. investigators, the property had deep
ties to CJNG and their sister organisation,
Los Cuinis – an affiliated trafficking group
led by Mencho’s brother-in-law Valencia.
The cartels reportedly used the hotel to
launder money and hold secret meetings;
as it turns out, the property is near Tomat-
lán, the same town where Mencho served
as a cop. The Hotelito’s owner – Mencho’s
sister-in-law – was later arrested in Uru-ally,MenchomadehiswaytoGuadalajara,
where he fell in with the Milenio Cartel –
the group that would ultimately catapult
him to power.
Milenio had once been their own organ-
isation, but by the turn of the century they
were essentially a subsidiary of Sinaloa,
under the leadership of Nacho Coronel –
a Sinaloa co-founder and the uncle of El
Chapo’s wife. Coronel was a ruthlessly bru-
tal capo who ran the Guadalajara plaza,
or trafficking zone, for Sinaloa. Mencho
joined his protection detail – as, Strat-
for’s Stewart says, “basically a bodyguard-
slash-enforcer-slash-hitman”. With his
law-enforcement background, Mencho
would have been trained to handle secu-
rity and counter intelligence. According toAbove: The arrest of El Chapo in 2014
may have opened the door for someone
worse in Mencho. Right: A Mexican soldier
stands by a placard displaying images of
arrested drug cartel members. Despite such
shows of strength, one Tijuana journalist
believes that “at this point... the
authorities have lost control”.