Juan Carlos Valencia González Emerges In Power Vacuum At The Head Of The Jalisco New Generation Cartel

Perhaps the history of Mexican drug trafficking is written in the story of Juan Carlos Valencia González. His father was a pioneer in drug smuggling, trading avocado farming in Michoacán for cocaine shipments; his mother and uncle transformed a family name into a criminal enterprise; and his stepfather was the world’s most wanted drug lord, founder of an international empire. Of undeniable criminal lineage, Valencia González is also known as “El Pelón,” “03,” “R3,” or “JP.” 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, “El Mencho,” the likely successor at the head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). At 41, González Valencia is entering the criminal front line for the first time, a path he inherited from his family.

“Pure Mencho’s people!” chant nearly 100 men dressed in tactical gear, armed with assault rifles. “Pure the Lord of the Roosters’ people!” one insists, and the next adds, “We’re giving it our all here,” “Long live R3,” “Pure Elite Group, gentlemen.” It’s 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’s Elite Group Special Forces. They all have the four letters emblazoned on their chests. They all answer to R3. “It’s the only identified armed group of this nature,” acknowledged the then-secretary of national defense, Luis Cresencio Sandoval, in 2020: “And it’s led by Juan Carlos Valencia González.”

This elite unit emerged in 2019 and was responsible — at the beginning of its fight with the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel — for the massacre of seven police officers in Guanajuato, according to military reports. Sandoval, who confirmed that the group also had a presence in Michoacán, Jalisco, and Zacatecas at that time, admitted: “They 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.” That was the force commanded by González Valencia.

The propaganda video was recorded on the border between Jalisco and Michoacán on July 17, 2020, El Mencho’s birthday. The military believed it was a kind of birthday greeting for the drug lord, who was Valencia González’s 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 González Valencia, was incarcerated in a maximum-security prison in Mexico.

Three months later, González Valencia would become a top U.S. priority target for being “one of the alleged leaders of the most violent drug trafficking organization currently operating in Mexico”: “A 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,” the State Department said. That’s when a manhunt began that has only intensified since then.

The Valencias

The family started out like so many others: large and made up of immigrants. Originally from Aguililla, in the Tierra Caliente region of Michoacán, the González Valencia family consisted of 18 siblings. Some, like Rosalinda, left very early — in the late 1970s — 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 González. The alleged father is another Michoacán native, somewhat older than her, Armando Valencia Cornelio. Armando — who was born in Uruapan in 1959, but whose father was also from Aguililla — had settled in Redwood City, on the outskirts of San Jose, in the 1980s, where there was a community of his fellow Michoacán natives.

Valencia Cornelio’s criminal record began shortly after his son’s birth, and through him emerged some of the legends of Mexican drug trafficking. He was initially just another subordinate of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, “The Boss of Bosses,” and later, after Gallardo’s arrest, he worked with Amado Carrillo Fuentes, “The Lord of the Skies,” from whom he inherited the connections in Colombia that allowed him to reach the big leagues of drug trafficking.

The documents from the U.S. justice system state that in Michoacán, “four out of every five or six people have the last name Valencia, and they also marry among themselves.” This, the documents say, “generates confusion,” 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’t know his second surname and there were dozens of Armando Valencias. Straddling the U.S. and Mexico, by 1999, these two men from Michoacán had already bought dozens of houses, ranches, and packing plants in Michoacán, and had a fleet of ships at their disposal.

Armando Valencia sealed the pact at a ranch outside Medellín, Colombia, that would make him one of the major drug suppliers to the United States and ultimately land him in prison. In April 1999, “El Maradona” unloaded 8,650 kilos of cocaine from a tuna fishing boat owned by Colombian Alejandro Bernal, known as “Juvenal,” and transferred it to one of his own vessels. He sailed it to Mazatlán, then headed to Juárez, 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 “smuggling at least a third of the drugs entering the United States.”

The empire

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 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 González and had three children with her (Jessica Johana, Rubén, and Laisha). A drug dealer, ex-convict, deportee, former police officer, and gunman — in that order — El Mencho was part of the so-called Zeta Killers. It was following the murder of Nacho Coronel (the Michoacán cartel’s 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 — now under the leadership of El Mencho and Erick Valencia, “El 85” — a new group of members: the Jalisco New Generation Cartel was born.

After a brutal statement of intent — the massacre of 35 people in Boca del Río, Veracruz, in 2011 — 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 González Valencia, Rosalinda’s brother, who was already imprisoned: “These 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.”

At that time, they also broke off links with the Sinaloa Cartel, led by “El Chapo” Guzmán and “El Mayo” Zambada. “According 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,” 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.

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 Tío Lako, who was one of his main partners, but among them all, one name always stands out: Valencia González. After all, from the very beginning, this has always been a family affair.

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