On Tuesday, the State Department formally designated him as a top leader of the CJNG and announced a multi-million dollar reward for information leading to his arrest.
Juan Carlos Valencia González, alias “El 03,” is the new leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG); a 41-year-old drug trafficker, U.S. citizen, and fugitive, his personal history encapsulates three generations of organized crime in Mexico.
He was born on September 12, 1984, in Santa Ana, California, granting him dual citizenship. His mother, Rosalinda González Valencia, had emigrated to that state as an undocumented minor at age 14 and worked in agricultural fields. Years later, the family returned to Mexico and became directly linked to the consolidation of the drug trade.
His biological father, Armando Valencia Cornelio—nicknamed “El Maradona”—was a founder of the now-defunct Milenio Cartel and a major supplier of cocaine to the United States. He worked as a subordinate to Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and later with Amado Carrillo Fuentes, “El Señor de los Cielos” (The Lord of the Skies), from whom he inherited connections to Colombia. He was arrested in Jalisco in 2003; according to the Mexican government, he was transporting at least one-third of the drugs entering the neighboring country at the time.
His mother belongs to the “Los Cuinis” clan—the 18 González Valencia siblings from Aguililla, Michoacán—who for years served as the financial brains behind the CJNG. One of his uncles, Abigael González Valencia, was identified by the U.S. Department of the Treasury as a key figure in that structure.
Rosalinda met Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, “El Mencho,” in California when Juan Carlos was just two years old. Oseguera—a street-level drug dealer, ex-convict, deportee, and former police officer—rose through the ranks under the umbrella of the Sinaloa Cartel and, following the 2010 assassination of Nacho Coronel, founded the CJNG alongside Erick Valencia, alias “El 85.” The boy who grew up in that environment would, decades later, become his stepfather’s successor.
