Jalisco New Generation Cartel
Cartel
CJNG retains coercive territorial grip and transnational drug infrastructure but is entering a post-kingpin degradation cycle with mounting multilateral legal pressure.
PF Score
29
▼3Authority
33
Reach
25
Under construction
CJNG retains coercive territorial grip and transnational drug infrastructure but is entering a post-kingpin degradation cycle with mounting multilateral legal pressure.
El Mencho's killing in February 2026 triggered coordinated reprisals across twelve states, demonstrating organizational resilience but accelerating succession fragmentation and rival predation, pulling authority slightly below the previous 36 toward Sinaloa's neighborhood.
Cross-border fentanyl networks and transit corridors sustain meaningful external projection, but the FTO designation coalition now includes Argentina alongside the U.S., compressing financial and logistics infrastructure and trimming reach from 28 to 25.
No allied relationships
The U.S.-Mexico bilateral relationship has crossed a structural threshold: Washington's operating assumption has shifted from Mexico as a struggling security partner to Mexico as a potentially unwilling one, a perception change that fundamentally alters the coercion-cooperation calculus and cannot be reversed by tactical successes alone.