Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho” and head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, was buried Monday in a gleaming gold casket at a cemetery in Zapopan, a suburb of Guadalajara, federal officials said. Dozens attended the funeral procession, many carrying black umbrellas on a sunny day while a banda played regional Mexican music. A government source who was not authorized to speak publicly confirmed the interment; the Attorney General’s Office declined to disclose the site for security reasons.
Security was tightened around a funeral home since Sunday as large, anonymous wreaths arrived — some bearing a rooster motif, a reference to Oseguera Cervantes’s nickname, the “Lord of the Roosters.” A local reporter said so many flowers arrived that five trucks were needed to move them to the cemetery. Earlier in the day, eight people dressed in black, believed to be relatives, followed a white hearse in two cars to the graveyard.
Mexican army forces killed Oseguera Cervantes a little over a week earlier during an operation to capture him. He carried a U.S. reward of $15 million and, according to a death certificate obtained by The Associated Press, died of multiple gunshot wounds to the chest, abdomen and legs.
Authorities said they found a crucifix, religious candles and a handwritten psalm in his home after the operation, and that they tracked one of his romantic partners to the hideout. Defense Secretary Ricardo Treviño said Oseguera Cervantes and two bodyguards were seriously wounded in a firefight with soldiers outside a home in Tapalpa, Jalisco, and that all three died en route to a hospital.
The body was taken to Mexico City for an autopsy and returned to the family on Saturday, the Attorney General’s Office said. The death certificate records a burial, a common procedural entry in violent-death cases that can allow for additional forensic steps, but it did not specify the exact cemetery.
The leader’s killing set off retaliatory violence across roughly 20 states, with officials saying more than 70 people were killed in the period spanning the raid and the subsequent unrest. Authorities have said operations against other senior cartel figures are continuing.
High-profile drug trafficker burials in Mexico are often kept secret and can become occasions for supporters to aggrandize the dead. Within hours of El Mencho’s death, narcocorridos — ballads that celebrate cartel figures — began to circulate. In neighboring Sinaloa, some cemeteries are known for ornate crypts and mausoleums built for former kingpins such as Ignacio Coronel and Arturo Beltrán Leyva. Other cartel leaders have met unusual ends or seen their remains vanish: Nazario Moreno’s death was claimed twice, Heriberto Lazcano’s corpse was reportedly stolen in 2012, and Amado Carrillo Fuentes died during plastic surgery.
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.