Americans should consider canceling their spring break plans to Mexico after cartel violence engulfed Puerto Vallarta following the killing of the country’s most brutal drug lord “El Mencho” last weekend, according to a top travel security expert.
The violence could even impact the World Cup this summer — with games scheduled for Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco, and the home base of El Mencho’s Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), William Ruiz, Senior Security Manager for Latin America at International SOS, told The Post.
So far there is also little evidence that the chaos is spreading to other tourist hotspots like Mexico City; Cancun, which is on the other side of the country on the Yucatán; or Cabo San Lucas, which is 350 miles across the water on the Baja California Sur peninsula.
However, it remains to be seen whether a bloody and unpredictable cartel civil war will erupt in the aftermath.
“My advice is if the spring break destination is in those affected areas, and they already have the tickets purchased, they should strongly reconsider the travel plan for now — until officially informed that the security environment has improved significantly,” Ruiz said.
The situation in Mexico remained “extremely fluid” on Monday, hours after more than 250 coordinated blockades were set up in 20 of the nation’s 32 states, said Ruiz, speaking from Mexico City.
The spasms of violence — which saw thousands of tourists trapped and forced to take shelter in the picturesque Pacific resort town of Puerto Vallarta — came in response to a Mexican commando raid that killed Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, 59, on Sunday.
At least 25 Mexican national guard members have been killed by cartel fighters in retaliation, while 30 cartel members were also killed, according to officials.
The government appears to be taking back control, Ruiz said.
However, the real danger is the power vacuum that now exists in the Mexican underworld. El Mencho was a feared and violent figure, who ran his cartel like a private militia.
His guards were equipped with armored vehicles and rocket launchers.
He ordered a hit in the heart of Mexico City on bothersome local official Omar García Harfuch in 2020. Harfuch survived and he is now President Claudia Sheinbaum’s Secretary of Security, lauded as the “Batman” behind the raid on El Mencho.
El Mencho has also been fighting a war for control of neighboring Michoacán state.
Now that he is dead — and his brother is in the US facing federal drug trafficking charges — Mexico risks descending into a mass cartel war for control of CJNG’s territory and drug smuggling business.
There is already a cartel civil war in Sinaloa. The Jalisco war could be even bigger and deadlier, Mike Burgoyne, a retired US military attaché in Mexico, told The Wall Street Journal.
“The Mexican government will have to fill that vacuum or the organization will fracture,” Burgoyne said.
“There will be infighting and more violence.”
Much of the violence has been concentrated in Jalisco state, home to Mexico’s second-largest city, Guadalajara, which is one of the venue cities for the World Cup.
Mexico has the highest concentration of American expatriates in the world, far outpacing any other country.
Some 1.6 million Americans currently live in Mexico, according to US State Department figures, including retirees in the coastal resorts, and increasing numbers of “digital nomads” working remotely in Mexico City.
Highlighting how unusual Sunday’s “shelter in place” order issued by the US for visitors in Puerto Vallarta was, Ruiz called for Americans currently in Mexico to “stay aware and vigilant, and follow alerts from the US Embassy, which is very accurate, and avoid the high-risk areas,” as well as staying off the road where security operations are active.
Along with hundreds of affected flights, Ruiz warned of the “possibility of sudden roadblocks, and the unpredictability of cartel retaliation in those states.”
Regarding the World Cup, “it is too early to tell” if the weekend’s violence will impact safety at the tournament, Ruiz said.
“In Guadalajara, we will expect a more consistent and proactive security approach from the local authority and also getting reinforcement ahead of the World Cup to make sure that the venues will be safe,” Ruiz said.
“It doesn’t mean that there won’t be any violence. But it will all depend on the interest of the cartel to take over or sabotage that specific event,” he added.
However, he insisted that Mexico, as a “large and diverse” country, has many safe areas, and added that the goal of the cartels was more about sparking general unrest rather than targeting tourists and foreigners.
“They wanted to show the Mexican government and other cartels, ‘Hey, we have control here. This is our muscle. This is what we’re capable of,'” he said. “Not only in Jalisco but in other surrounding states.”
For Ruiz, the next few months will be crucial.
“I don’t think in the short term the violence will be escalated to the whole country,” he said.
“But right now, given the scale of the cartel response, and the uncertainty of who is going to fill that vacuum that El Mencho left, there is still great uncertainty,” he said.
“Will they take more violent action? Does the cartel have the capability to take over again, or will a rebel cartel take its place?”
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