The Drug War in Full View

A profile of El Mencho. Plus: An incredibly long State of the Union that no one will remember; history repeats, nastily, in Georgia.

On Sunday, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes—the nation’s most feared cartel leader, known as El Mencho—was killed in a dramatic military raid. The killing of El Mencho, who led the powerful and brutal Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), sparked retaliatory violence across the country.

Much of the coverage in the United States focused on the impact of the unrest on American tourists and retirees. The Los Angeles Times, by contrast, has taken a more thoughtful approach, publishing several deeply reported pieces, including an insightful profile of El Mencho from Keenan Hamilton that traces Oseguera’s rise from small-time California drug dealer to the head of CJNG.

Hamilton, a senior editor at the Times, has covered the Mexican drug trade and cartels extensively. He returned to reporting and writing for this story, building on his previous work at Vice News, where he hosted an excellent podcast on El Chapo and secured unprecedented access to the CJNG for this report from the front lines of Mexico’s drug wars. “It is super important to hear from cartel members themselves,” Hamilton told me when I spoke with him this week. “Hearing what they have to say about why they do the things they do, understanding where they came from. I think that really gets to the root causes of the violence in Mexico and provides a perspective that isn’t often heard.”