JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Mexico's most powerful drug lord is dead. Mexico's military says they killed the man known as El Mencho during an operation to capture him. His death sparked chaos across the country as armed men set banks, businesses and vehicles on fire. And today, even as the situation has calmed, schools are closed and people are staying indoors. NPR's Eyder Peralta joins us from Guadalajara, which is one of the cities at the center of all of this. Hi there.
EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: Hey, Juana.
SUMMERS: Eyder, just start by telling us what you're hearing and seeing there.
PERALTA: I mean, the city's calm. Eerily calm. Nearly all businesses are closed. From the air, as I landed, I saw a haze over the city because there's still a few burning vehicles outside the city. The airport was a mess because a lot of people missed their flights yesterday. They were canceled. So they're sleeping on the floor, trying to find a way out. The U.S. has told its citizens to keep sheltering in place, and the State Department is operating a hotline for anyone stuck here.
A little bit ago, I was at the zoo because about a thousand people spent the night there. They were too afraid to take to the roads. And I spoke to the zoo director. He hadn't slept. The last bus of visitors had just left. But he was smiling and proud. He said that as the city was burning yesterday, they were focused on keeping the kids busy. They had the zoo to themselves. They fed the animals. They rode the cable car. And he says that, luckily, they had no idea what was going on...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
PERALTA: ...Outside the gates.
SUMMERS: Just incredible. Tell us...
PERALTA: Yeah.
SUMMERS: ...Eyder, who is El Mencho? Why is he so important?
PERALTA: So his name was Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, but he was known as El Mencho. He was 59 years old, and within the past 10 years, he turned the Jalisco New Generation Cartel into one of the biggest organized crime groups in the world. They took over a whole lot of territory in Mexico and began operating outside the country in Europe and the U.S. The U.S. says El Mencho's cartel trafficked billions of dollars' worth of cocaine and fentanyl into the U.S. El Mencho has been indicted several times in American courts, and the U.S. had put a $15 million bounty on his head.
SUMMERS: Well, what do we know at this point about how he was captured?
PERALTA: The Mexican military says their intelligence, along with U.S. intelligence, identified someone they called a romantic partner. El Mencho met up with that person at a cabin in the state of Jalisco, and the Mexican military sent its special forces there to capture him. There was an intense firefight. El Mencho was injured, and the Mexican military says he died while he was being transported by air. Twenty-five members of Mexico's National Guard were killed. Thirty members of the cartel were killed. This morning, during a press briefing, General Ricardo Trevilla Trejo, Mexico's defense minister, got emotional as he gave his condolences to the families of the fallen soldiers.
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RICARDO TREVILLA TREJO: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: And what he's saying there is clearly they had accomplished their mission, and what did they prove, he asked. They proved the strength of the Mexican state.
SUMMERS: And to that point, Eyder, President Trump has often threatened to use force against cartels in Mexico. We've heard him called the Mexican state weak and run by cartels. Does this change things?
PERALTA: I think it at least undermines President Trump's arguments and his vision of the Mexican government as either too compromised or too scared to take action against the cartels. This is one of the deadliest operations for Mexico's military in recent memory, and experts I've talked to say that this is likely just the beginning. We know that when the government takes out a big cartel leader like this, there's a power vacuum and violence spikes. After Ismael Zambada was captured a year ago...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
PERALTA: ...A whole war erupted. Almost 3,000 Mexicans have been killed in that fighting. So these types of operations have serious costs, and this is hard proof that the Mexican president is willing to make tough decisions to fight organized crime. And that image is exactly the opposite of the one that President Trump has painted.
SUMMERS: NPR's Eyder Peralta, thank you.
PERALTA: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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