Mexican authorities say El Tuli was killed after El Mencho’s death triggered cartel violence

# Mexican authorities say El Tuli was killed after El Mencho’s death triggered cartel violence

Event date: 2026-08-30

Mexican authorities say Hugo César Macías Ureña, known as El Tuli, was killed in a confrontation with security forces after the death of Jalisco New Generation Cartel leader Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, or El Mencho, triggered a wave of violence across western Mexico.

The supplied Guardian report makes clear that El Tuli was not an isolated figure. He was described as a close ally who coordinated the retaliation after El Mencho was killed and, according to the report, even offered a bounty for every dead soldier. His death therefore fits into a broader collapse in cartel command and response rather than a separate event.

The initial operation against El Mencho remains central to the story. Defence secretary Ricardo Trevilla Trejo said authorities tracked him down by following a romantic partner to a safe house near Tapalpa, in wooded country south-west of Guadalajara. During the raid, El Mencho’s bodyguards opened fire, a helicopter was forced into an emergency landing and fighting continued as he fled into a forest, where he was wounded and captured before dying during transfer for medical care.

That death immediately set off chaos. Cartel gunmen blocked almost 100 major roads, torched vehicles and attacked security forces across Jalisco and Michoacán. Schools were closed in many places, transport was suspended and flights into Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta were disrupted. The violence, the report says, was intense enough that residents struggled to tell verified information from AI-generated and misleading social media posts.

The scale of the response shows why El Tuli matters. A criminal organisation does not usually move that quickly unless it has both the capacity and the incentive to demonstrate power. The report says El Tuli was one of the people helping organise that response, making his death another blow to the cartel’s ability to retaliate in an orderly way.

Officials also framed the operation as a broader security victory. The White House said the United States provided intelligence support, and Washington has been pressing Mexico to hit groups trafficking fentanyl, methamphetamine and cocaine more aggressively. That external pressure is part of the backdrop to why the operation was carried out in the first place.

At street level, the effect was immediate fear. Residents in Guadalajara reported gun battles, smoke and empty streets. In Puerto Vallarta, tourists saw huge plumes of smoke, while local journalists documented hundreds of torched vehicles and widespread panic. The violence was so disruptive that even after authorities said blockades had been cleared, normal life did not return quickly.

El Tuli’s death does not mean the cartel is finished. But it does suggest that the chain of retaliation built around El Mencho’s fall has already taken major losses. What remains is a Mexican security landscape in which cartel violence can still shut down cities, disrupt travel and force the state to respond on multiple fronts at once.

The disruption went well beyond a single cartel confrontation. Residents described fear, smoke and empty streets, while local officials struggled to restore normal movement across a wide stretch of western Mexico. That matters because organised crime in Mexico often tries to prove it can control territory by making ordinary life impossible. In this case, the violence surrounding El Mencho’s death and El Tuli’s reported killing showed exactly that. Even after the barricades were cleared, the social aftershock remained visible in grounded flights, closed schools and anxious residents waiting for the next flare-up.