Briefing Room 11.04.26: Mexico After the Cartel Violence, and the Taiwanese Opposition's Dangerous Game

Welcome back to The Briefing Room, the weekly show that quietly tugs on the sleeve of mainstream media and whispers in its ear, you know, the stuff happening in the world beyond the obvious headlines. Was that too quiet? Probably pick up.

This week, our trip beyond the headlines is taking us to two specific locations. First, we're off to Mexico, where the reverberations of the short-lived cartel uprising at the end of February continue to echo across the political landscape.

And then it's on to Taipei, where Taiwan's opposition is playing a dangerous game trying to court Beijing, even as China's rhetoric toward the island grows ever more harsh.

As always, thank you for subscribing. By joining Fronts.co, you allow us to not only keep producing these exclusive videos, but also occasionally dip into the more obscure topics over on the main channel as well, touching on stuff that's ignored by most media. And with that out of the way, let's get over to our first destination this week, Mexico.

Mexico after the Cartel Meltdown Now, the end of February of this year, just a few days before the start of the US and Israeli war with Iran, Mexico was plunged into a brief but deadly explosion of violence at the hands of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG.

Between affairs in Iran, Cuba, South Asia, and elsewhere, the eruption of the cartels in late February quickly became back-page news, but roughly a month and a half from the worst of the violence, the impact of that whole affair is still playing out.

To get our bearings and recall just what happened here, we'll turn back the clock to the 22nd of February, when a raid by the Mexican armed forces in the town of Tapala, Mexico's Jalisco state, killed a drug lord known as El Mencho.

Born Nemisio Ruben Oseguera Cervantes, El Mencho was the founder of the CJNG Cartel, who splintered off from his prior cartel, the Milenios, after several senior millennial leaders were arrested or killed.

Since the early 2010s, El Mencho has transformed the CJNG cartel into one of Mexico's most powerful criminal syndicates, and it's most ruthless, by a wide margin. By the late 2010s, expert analysis suggested that the cartel controlled assets worth more than US$50 billion.

Across his time in cartel leadership, El Mencho had evaded capture for more than a decade, with several near misses that have cumulatively left dozens of Mexican soldiers dead. But on February 22nd, the law finally caught up with El Mencho at a residence where he had been staying.

The authorities managed to identify and track El Mencho's romantic partner, tracing to a residence with only light security inside a gated community.

The Mexican government made its move quickly, and although Oseguera attempted to flee the scene, he was ultimately captured in a nearby forest. Badly injured, he was moved to a helicopter, but died while in transit to the state capital of Jalisco, alongside two of his bodyguards.

The violence of the following days were a direct response to El Mencho's death, with CJNG forces launching several coordinated retaliatory attacks across state lines.

Close to a dozen Mexican states were hit in total, and the city of Guadalajara in Jalisco state was hit especially hard. The cartels set up no fewer than 250 roadblocks across the country, carrying out hijackings and arson attacks against vehicles and businesses. They also set off bombs at several places. locations.

A jailbreak by its members saw 23 inmates freed from one location. In all, Mexico reported 25 members of the National Guard killed in the attacks, along with a state prosecutor's agent and a civilian. Luckily for Mexico, the fighting mostly wrapped up after that single explosive day.

The cartels had been caught off guard by Olmencho's death, and their initial response had been nearly completely uncoordinated. With whatever resources the cartels may have had on hand, small groups engaged in nearly simultaneous displays of rage, but with no real ability to make a bigger statement than that.

Unlike, say, an insurgent group like the Islamic State, a cartel like CJNG is predominantly concerned with watching over and cultivating a criminal empire, not engaging in armed conflict.

And as such, cartel members really don't spend much time preparing their responses to major outside threats. Just as important, the cartel doesn't appear to have coordinated a larger counterattack after the fact or engaged in any other act of mass violence in retribution for the killing of their leader.

Restraint from the cartels, especially from CJNG, was far from a guarantee even if Olmencho had survived his capture.

The attacks also revealed an important caveat around CJNG's show of violence where, despite immense social media interest in the attacks, Mexican civilians and international tourists were left largely unharmed.

At the time of the cartel reaction to Olmencho's death, viral videos showed large explosions across Guadalajara and other cities and civilians sprinting for safety through airports and shopping centers.

Drawing on comparisons to a group like the Islamic State known for similarly brutal tactics, it's entirely plausible that civilians could have been made to pay for Olmencho's demise.

But the CJNG didn't take that step, speaks to the group's evolved tactics since its more explosive early years, and suggests the CJNG's enduring interest in keeping the status quo in Mexico regardless of any involuntary changes in leadership.

And speaking of leadership, Olmencho's death meant that the CJNG would have to undergo new management at a time when Olmencho did not have a clear successor in Mexico.

His son, known rather fittingly as El Menchito, was his chosen successor, but he's been in custody in the United States since his extradition in 2020 and was sentenced to life in prison last year.

But in the near term, it looks like the CJNG will be able to avoid a bloody succession crisis, like the one that's taken hold of the Sinaloa Cartel over the past several years. According to several outlets, and most credibly El Pais, Olmencho's stepson will be taking over.

Known as El Trez, the cartel's new leader is thought to have spent the last several years at the head of Grupo Elite, a ruthless and very well-armed cartel death squad that focuses mostly on snuffing out rival criminal groups when they try and establish a foothold in CJNG territory.

Under his leadership, CJNG is likely to continue and improve upon its growing use of kamikaze and surveillance drones, as well as artificial intelligence to aid in the turf battles where the cartel is at its strongest. According to El Pais, however, the upheaval in CJNG territory may not yet be over.

In a recent analysis by expert Pablo Ferri, the outlet explained that many of the details of the late February violence are still unknown.

The nature of the deaths of Mexico's 25 National Guard troops, the locations of Mexico's where some 35 alleged cartel members are thought to have been killed throughout the day, the circumstances around the many roadblocks that went up across the territory, or what happened after the firefight at El Mencho's temporary residence.

According to one reporter who told the property, there was at least one envelope still present at the site where El Mencho was found stuffed with sensitive information on the cartel, laying around at a site that several journalists confirmed to have been unguarded in the days following the violence.

Documents that Mexican authorities are believed to have collected are now thought not to have been authentic, and according to conflicting reports in the Mexican outlet Reforma, El Mencho's stepson hasn't taken over our right.

Instead, we'll be sharing the throne with Gonzalo Mendoza, a high-ranking veteran, creating the possibility of an imminent internal battle to either establish the true hierarchy between the two men, or see that one of them can push the other out.

Taiwanese Opposition Courts Beijing All across global geopolitics, there are few rivalries quite so heated or quite so enduring as the rivalry that pits Taiwan against mainland China.

But this week, the leader of Taiwan's main opposition party, the Kuomintang, traveled to China at the invitation of Xi Jinping himself on what the Kuomintang describes as a, quote, journey for peace.

Now, it's not unusual for the Kuomintang party to engage with Beijing. In fact, delegations from the party, known as the KMT, travel to China relatively frequently. But, for the KMT's chairperson to visit China personally is much less common, and right now, the move carries an even greater weight than it otherwise would.

The current chairperson of the KMT is Cheng Li-huan, who's been in charge of the party since 2025. And to understand why she matters, we've got to start by talking about the man who leads Taiwan today, Li Qingtei.

After he was elected president of the Republic of China in 2024, Li has made a name for himself as a staunch opponent to Beijing, banning a major Chinese social media app, seeking large weapons packages and sped-up deliveries from the United States, and labeling mainland China a, quote, foreign hostile force.

Li has led anti-corruption crackdowns against the opposition, KMT, and other relatively pro-Beijing political parties, and he's reaped the rewards of a recent regional dispute between China and Japan, where Japan's new leader, Sunai Takaichi, has raised the possibility that Japan would defend Taiwan directly in the case of an attack from Beijing.

Li's party maintains that Taiwan is an independent sovereign nation in all but name, whereas the KMT in Beijing both regard Taiwan as part of, quote, one China, with deliberate ambiguity on what exactly that means. So the KMT leader, Cheng Li Wang, to be visiting the mainland today is a much more politically relevant act than it usually would be.

Cheng arrived to the mainland on the 7th of April, and although our production schedule at France means that we've got to have a bit of latency between the time we write these episodes and the time that they're published, we do know that Cheng is expected to meet with Xi Jinping personally during her visit.

She's made a high-profile visit to the tomb of Sun Yat-sen, the KMT party's founder, and will be traveling to Shanghai to highlight the economic advantages of cooperation with the mainland. have several opportunities to address the public, and while the nature of her remarks has not yet been confirmed, as the time of writing, it's likely that she could

Choose to highlight themes of reunification with the mainland.

For Beijing, the timing couldn't be better, and both Xi Jinping and Cheng herself clearly know it.

Taiwan is headed into a contentious set of local elections this November, where the KMT is expected to do quite well, and if the party can expand those gains in its 2028 presidential contest, there's a good chance that Cheng, or one of her close allies could take Taiwan's top job.

Already, Cheng is part of an opposition coalition that's been able to block or slow down arms imports from the U.S., and she's been working to consolidate power within her own party as she deals with a rival faction that's more open to the United States than she is.

Right now, Cheng's intentions, if she can recapture the presidency, are unclear and could include anything from a return to the status quo under the ambiguous one-China arrangement or an active effort to place Taiwan under Beijing's authority.

What Cheng has argued, however, is that Taiwanese residents, quote, feel that America is abandoning Taiwan, end quote, and will be more willing to establish positive relations with Beijing as the guarantee of U.S. protection starts to fade away. For Washington, it seems the feeling's mutual.

U.S. leaders under the Trump administration are growing more and more skeptical of Cheng as she pursues Beijing's support and gets in the way of immensely lucrative arms deals with one of America's most faithful customers.

The U.S. has hosted Cheng's main rival within the KMT as recently as last month and appears likely to try and drive a wedge through the party before November's election cycle, but in this case, Washington itself is the final variable to consider.

Cheng is visiting Beijing ahead of a direct summit between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, scheduled to take place next month after it was pushed back due to the Iran war.

During that meeting, Xi is expected to advocate for Cheng directly in conversations with Trump, while explaining Beijing's view of Taiwan's current leadership as a dangerous, destabilizing separatist government.

Whether Trump will come around to Beijing's perspective is an open question, but considering Trump's general willingness to entertain overtures from relatively personable authoritarian strongmen, there's real chance that Xi's efforts could lead to a second look for Cheng.

If that's the case, and Taiwan's government and its allies in Tokyo can't overcome a swing in Trump's preferences, then the KMT party could find itself enjoying Washington's direct support in advance of that 2028 contest. And with that, thank you for watching.