El Mencho's Death: Argentina in the Narco Spotlight

In the Federal Justice system, there are concrete precedents linked to the money laundering of the financial wing known as 'Los Cuinis', with ramifications in the City of Buenos Aires and the metropolitan area. In Buenos Aires, this news sparked an inevitable review: the face printed on the bricks from Zárate is not proof of direct command in itself, but it serves as a gauge of reach and a reminder that the CJNG has already left financial, logistical, and symbolic traces on Argentine territory. In fact, the presence of the CJNG network in the metropolitan area is not limited to just one such 'stamp'. In a nearly textbook turn of events, Ratkovic suspected an internal betrayal, blamed Sofía, and expelled him from the business: a preemptive 'Mexican' move before the operation could advance. Although Sofía was out of the main stage of 'Promesas del Este', his name returned to the scene shortly after. But the symbolic trail, combined with the regional map of production and trafficking, left a question that resurfaces today: was it a coincidence or a deliberate signal of presence and influence? The judicial case established a central conclusion: the cocaine belonged to an Eastern European criminal group, and its local contact in Argentina was a historic narco from Buenos Aires province, José Damián 'El Tano' Sofía. Authorities considered him practically immobile, but he managed to escape. They are pieces of the same puzzle: different routes, different roles, but a common message for investigators: the business recognizes no borders, and Buenos Aires—due to its infrastructure, real estate market, financial system, and location in the Southern Cone—remains an attractive hub for networks that combine export, money laundering, and, when necessary, firepower. It happened in the port of Zárate and left a message as direct as it is unsettling for Buenos Aires: part of a cocaine shipment bore the face of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, 'El Mencho', leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), as a 'quality' seal and a signal to buyers. The scene had a specific date: on March 31, 2022, five bags with 149 bricks totaling 165.61 kilograms of Bolivian-origin cocaine were detected, in an operation that sought to depart from Buenos Aires province bound for Europe. In Argentina, one of these gestures was recorded in a judicial file that, over time and with the recent commotion in Mexico, is being re-examined with new eyes. The merchandise would end up being seized in Tenerife after a controlled delivery coordinated by Federal Judge Adrián González Charvay, in a case that, due to its Balkan leadership, became known as 'Promesas del Este'. The data that turns that episode into more than a failed export case is the narco 'branding': approximately half of the bricks had El Mencho's photo printed on them. The first is the regional context: Bolivia has appeared for years as an attractive node for Mexican and Colombian cartels—due to proximity, costs, and 'cooking' and storage capacity—, as well as Brazilian organizations like the PCC. The shipment traveled on the 'Grande Francia' vessel, from the Grimaldi shipping company, with a final stop in Spain and a commercial destination in Belgium, a route that researchers describe as recurrent when logistics are aimed at the European market. The second, more immediate, is the tremor that El Mencho's death caused in Mexico and the violent response from his structure. Criminal cases associated with the 'Bobinas Blancas' plot were also registered, as well as episodes of violence connecting Mexico with Nuñez, a Buenos Aires neighborhood where a double homicide was judged and convicted. In parallel, the trial for 'Promesas del Este' concluded with convictions in 2024, handed down by the Oral Federal Court No. 4 of San Martín, with sentences of between 3 and 10 years for seven defendants. All of this is being re-signified today for two reasons. His interlocutor—unbeknownst to him—was Federal Police Argentina (PFA) undercover agent No. 23. At the time, investigators could not prove a direct link between that shipment and a CJNG operational structure. There, Sofía explained a supposed flour export business that, in reality, would serve as a cover to hide cocaine. On August 26, 2022, Judge González Charvay, in another investigation, detained a much larger shipment in two deposits in Rosario: 1,658.3 kilograms of cocaine distributed in 1,114 packages, ready to be exported to Dubai camouflaged in an animal feed shipment. Sofía ended up being sentenced in 2023 to 11 years in prison for that shipment, a case that fueled the hypothesis of networks capable of supplying large volumes with slick logistics and multiple contacts. The European-Balkan chapter of Zárate is completed with a detail that shows the level of professionalization: the Serbian Ratkovic, after suffering a stroke in the Ezeiza prison, obtained house arrest and set up with an electronic ankle bracelet in Villa Tranquila. Minutes later, Serbian citizen Bodo Ratkovic joined him, who would later discover that his SUV had been marked with a satellite tracker. The investigation also recorded that some bricks had another iconic image—Al Capone's—a detail that investigators read as part of a 'brand' code used by transnational networks to identify batch, supplier, or standard of the merchandise. In the reconstruction of the file, a key meeting appears on August 6, 2021, in the custody office of the then- AFIP in Zárate.