Who was ‘El Mencho,’ the Mexican drug lord whose death sparked violence?

Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes led the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which has earned a reputation for brutal violence while consolidating its power.

Sunday’s killing of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes by the Mexican army marks the biggest blow to the country’s drug cartels in years, sparking a wave of violent retaliation.

Oseguera Cervantes, better known as “El Mencho,” led the powerful and deadly Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which has earned a reputation for brazen attacks against Mexican security forces while establishing itself as a top distributor of cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl.

“He was brutal,” said Alejandro Garcia Magos, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto who studies Mexican politics, who called Oseguera Cervantes’ death “good news.”

Oseguera Cervantes was facing multiple indictments in the United States, and the U.S. State Department had offered a US$15 million reward for information leading to his arrest. Canada and the U.S. designated his cartel and others foreign terrorist organizations a year ago.

Here’s what to know about “El Mencho” and the cartel he formed and led until his death.

Born in rural Michoacán in western Mexico in 1966, Oseguera Cervantes grew up in a poor family before he reportedly illegally immigrated to the U.S. in the 1980s.

He settled in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he was arrested multiple times on firearms and drug charges and deported back to Mexico, but managed to re-enter the U.S.

A Univision profile of Oseguera Cervantes claims he smuggled drugs from Mexico into the U.S. multiple times, crossing the border under various aliases.