SUMMARY
The Nueva Plaza Cartel was one of the major drug trafficking cartels in Mexico battling other cartels for control over territory and smuggling routes.
The Nueva Plaza Cartel was formed in 2017 as a splinter from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). This split can be traced to the 10 March the same year, when CJNG top hitman Carlos Enrique Sánchez “El Cholo” assassinated another influential member of the cartel. CJNG leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, “El Mencho”, ordered the murder of El Cholo as a response to the aforementioned assassination. In turn, El Cholo reacted by killing the hitman sent after him as well as establishing the Nueva Plaza Cartel with the people under his command. A video released on 18 March 2021 by the CJNG, showed a captured Carlos Enrique Sánchez telling his supporters to stand down. His fate after this video is unknown. Some sources also claimed that in 2017, another formerly high ranked CJNG member took on a leadership role within the Nueva Plaza Cartel. It was claimed that Erick Valencia Salazar, “El 85”, was released from a five-year long prison sentence in 2017 with a personal vendetta against Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, whom Salazar allegedly believed to have been behind his arrest by informing on him to the police in 2012 in order to assume sole control of the CJNG. Erick Valencia Salazar’s involvement with the Nueva Plaza Cartel was uncertain due to a lack of consensus among the sources, with some contending that he never left the CJNG and remains one of the top members of this organization.
The main area of operation of the Nueva Plaza Cartel was in the state of Jalisco, with its stronghold in the Guadalajara metropolitan area, including the towns of Tlaquepaque, Tonalá, Tlajomulco de Zuñiga, El Salto and Zapopan. Beyond Jalisco, there were indications that the Nueva Plaza Cartel had a presence in the Mexican states of Colima, Nayarit, Michoacán, and Guanajuato.
Beyond its leadership, many members of the Nueva Plaza Cartel appear to have been former lower ranked CJNG members who viewed the Nueva Plaza Cartel as an opportunity for personal advancement through the ranks. There also appears to have been a number of Colombian hitmen in Nueva Plaza’s ranks.
The Nueva Plaza Cartel received assistance from the Sinaloa Cartel, since April 2018, as well as La Nueva Familia Michoacana as part of a strategy meant to weaken their CJNG rivals.
The Nueva Plaza cartel has been involved in the non-state category of UCDP organized violence.
