A previously unseen photograph of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes—alias “El Mencho”—has begun circulating on social media. It shows him decades before he founded the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and became a high-priority target for Mexican and U.S. authorities.
The image, which bears the visual characteristics of an analog photograph from the late 1980s or early 1990s, shows a group of young men wearing plain white t-shirts in a covered area featuring columns and long tables—resembling a prison dining hall or recreation area.
Various accounts on social media suggest the scene dates back to his time at the Big Spring Correctional Center in Texas. There, the kingpin served a sentence for conspiracy to distribute heroin; he was sentenced to five years in prison in 1994 and served three of them before being deported to Mexico in 1997.
During that period on U.S. soil, official Department of Justice records indicate that Oseguera Cervantes operated under several aliases, including “Rubén Ávila,” “José López Prieto,” and “Roberto Salgado.”
The discovery of this visual record is significant given the long-standing secrecy surrounding the criminal leader; previously, only a handful of official images existed, such as booking photos from his arrests in San Francisco (1986 and 1989), a photograph released by the DEA, and U.S. State Department wanted posters.
