The death of Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, the leader of the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), on February 22 was immediately framed as the fall of a narco kingpin. Images of gun battles, torched vehicles and retaliatory violence dominated headlines. Commentators spoke of a power vacuum, of fragmentation, of the possible weakening of one of Mexico’s biggest cartels.

It was presented as the removal of a singular, hyper-violent male figure at the apex of a criminal empire. But this framing tells us more about how we imagine organised crime than about how it actually works.

The obsession with kingpins rests on a dramatic understanding of cartel power: a gun in one hand, territory in the other, masculinity performed through brutality. El Mencho embodied that image.

Yet cartels are not sustained by spectacle alone. They endure because someone moves the money, launders the profits, manages the assets, cultivates legitimate fronts and binds networks of loyalty through family. In the case of CJNG, that figure was not only El Mencho. It was also, allegedly, his wife Rosalinda González Valencia.

González has often been described as “La Jefa” (the Spanish feminine form of “the boss”). It’s a label that gestures toward authority while still situating her in relation to her husband. But she was not simply the spouse of a drug lord. She came from the Valencia family, historically linked to Los Cuinis, a network deeply embedded in CJNG’s financial operations.

Authorities have alleged that she oversaw dozens of businesses, property holdings and shell companies tied to the cartel’s laundering apparatus. Arrested multiple times and jailed for........

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