Mexico’s Top Drug Lord El Mencho Builds His Own Private Hospital 

El Mencho, the most-wanted drug lord in Mexico who recently made headlines after he attempted to murder Mexico City’s police chief, has reportedly built his own private hospital in the western state of Jalisco, Guadalajara

El Mencho, real name Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, is the boss of the Jalisco New Generation cartel currently operational in the regions of Jalisco. In June 2020, he attempted to get Mexico City’s police chief murdered through his assassins. And now, new reports have cropped up that the 54-year-old drug kingpin has invested in the construction of a private clinic in El Alcíhuatl, a village situated at a distance 250km to the south-west of Jalisco’s capital, Guadalajara.

While most of the Latin gangsters have been known to liaise with local clinics in order to avoid official hospitals in case of an emergency like if they were involved in a shoot-out with security forces, El Mencho decided to get his own hospital as he has kidney disease and doesn’t want to go to a place that falls outside of his rural hideout. El Alcihuatl is located in the municipality, Villa Purificación, one of the prominent strongholds of El Mencho’s cartel.

In February 2020, his son was extradited to the U.S. under drug trafficking charges, followed by the arrest of his daughter in Washington, but El Mencho is still at large.

Known as Mexico’s most powerful criminal organization, the Jalisco drug cartel was declared a “top priority” in 2018 by the U.S. authorities who announced a $10m reward for information that would aid in El Mencho’s arrest.

“The Jalisco cartel is the group that’s en vogue now,” said Chris Dalby, an organized crime expert studying Mexico’s cartel. Denoted by the Mexican government as “public enemy no. 1,” the cartel has been using the Covid-19 pandemic to “aggressively expand” across Mexican states such as Zacatecas, Veracruz and Guanajuato.

But as for El Mencho, not much is known as he reportedly “very secretive” and “does not show himself.”
“He’s not a man of the people like El Chapo, who cultivated that cult of personality, who was seen engaging with people, a little bit like Pablo Escobar. He’s part of an evolution of drug kingpins who want to keep themselves in the shadows,” added Dalby.