Updated February 23, 2026 at 7:25 PM CST
TAPALPA, Mexico — A day after the Mexican army killed the country's most powerful drug lord, the picturesque town where it happened was a study in contrasts.
Tourist shops in Tapalpa were open Monday, and workers were on the job. But gunshots also rang out, and in the street was a dead man lying beside a bullet-pocked vehicle.
Meanwhile, heavily armed Mexican security forces kept up their battle with cartel gunmen following the killing that sparked a surge in violence and put the country on edge. Cartel fighters continued to block roads as smoke rose on the outskirts of the town in the state of Jalisco.
More than 70 people died in the attempt to capture Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes and the aftermath, authorities said Monday. Known as "El Mencho," he was the notorious leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of the most powerful criminal organizations in Mexico.
The body count taken by security officials included security forces, suspected cartel members and others. Officials did not offer details, and the circumstances of most of the deaths were unclear.
Fast-growing cartel
Oseguera Cervantes was the boss of one of the fastest-growing criminal networks in Mexico, known for trafficking fentanyl, methamphetamine and cocaine to the United States and staging brazen attacks against Mexican government officials. The organization responded to his death with widespread violence, including erecting more than 250 roadblocks across 20 states and setting fire to vehicles.
Oseguera Cervantes died after a shootout with the Mexican military. Mexican Defense Secretary Gen. Ricardo Trevilla said Monday that authorities had tracked one of his romantic partners to his hideout in Tapalpa.
The cartel leader and two bodyguards fled into a wooded area where they were seriously wounded in a firefight. They were taken into custody and died on the way to Mexico City, Trevilla said.
In a different location in Jalisco, soldiers killed another high-ranking cartel member who Trevilla said was coordinating violence and offering more than $1,000 for every soldier killed.
The dead included 25 members of the Mexican National Guard who were killed in six separate attacks, Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch said.
Harfuch said some 30 criminal suspects were killed in Jalisco, and four others were killed in the neighboring state of Michoacan. Also killed were a prison guard and an agent from the state prosecutor's office.
The White House confirmed that the U.S. provided intelligence support to the operation to capture the cartel leader and applauded Mexico's army for taking down a man who was one of the most wanted criminals in both countries.
Many fear more violence
Mexico hoped the death of the world's biggest fentanyl traffickers would ease Trump administration pressure to do more against the cartels, but many people were anxious as they waited to see the powerful cartel's reaction.
As the threat of more violence loomed, several Mexican states canceled school Monday, while local and foreign governments warned their citizens to stay inside.
Steve Perkins, 57, had been visiting Puerto Vallarta with his wife and friends. The couple was scheduled to return to Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, on Monday when their flight was canceled.
Perkins said he and his wife were having coffee on the terrace of their hotel room in downtown when they heard an explosion around 8:30 a.m. They saw a big plume of smoke, heard another "big boom" and then saw more smoke. Perkins and his wife heard gunshots and they realized "something was going on."
"At one point we had seven or eight plumes of black, thick smoke around us and the entire downtown in the bay was just covered in thick black smoke, pretty scary," Perkins told The Associated Press during an interview Monday over Zoom. "And then at one point, we heard screams. We heard a lot of screams … So then we started getting really worried."
Perkins said he and his wife became so concerned that they got out of their flip-flops and put on their running shoes in case "we needed to make a run for it."
"My wife called our kids to tell them goodbye if we were never gonna see them again, that kind of thing. It was fairly unsettling," Perkins said.
The U.S. Embassy said via X that its personnel in eight cities and in the state of Michoacan would shelter in place and work remotely Monday. It warned U.S. citizens in many parts of Mexico to do the same.
In Guadalajara, the state capital, there was light traffic Monday with the start of the workweek, a notable change from Sunday, when Mexico's second-largest city was almost completely shut down as fearful residents stayed home.
More than 1,000 people were stuck overnight in Guadalajara's zoo, where they slept in buses.
Luis Soto Rendón, the zoo's director, said many had been trapped there since Sunday morning, when violence broke out in Jalisco and the surrounding states. Families concluded they could not return home in nearby states like Zacatecas and Michoacan.
"We decided to let people stay inside the zoo for their safety," Soto said. "There are small children and senior citizens."
José Luis Ramírez, a 54-year-old therapist, was in a long line of people waiting outside a pharmacy, one of the few businesses that were open Monday in Guadalajara. Families were buying food, medicine, water, diapers and baby formula, from pharmacists through a chained door.
It was Ramírez's first time leaving the house since the violence erupted.
"We have to not think scared, but be cool-headed, like they say, and take things as they come," he said.
Those who had to work carefully made their way across the city.
Irma Hernández, a 43-year-old hotel security guard in Guadalajara, normally takes public transportation to her job, but buses were not running, and she had no way to cross the city. Her bosses organized a private car to pick her up. Her family, she said, was staying at home, too scared to leave.
"I am worried because I don't know how to get home if something happens," she said.
Trump has pressed Mexico to fight fentanyl
U.S. President Trump has demanded Mexico do more to fight the smuggling of fentanyl, threatening to impose more tariffs or take unilateral military action if the country does not show results.
The U.S. State Department had offered a reward of up to $15 million for information leading to the arrest of El Mencho. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel began operating around 2009.
In February 2025, the Trump administration designated the cartel as a foreign terrorist organization. It has been one of the most aggressive cartels in its attacks on the military — including on helicopters — and is a pioneer in launching explosives from drones and installing mines.
At a blockade Monday on the outskirts of Tapalpa, 25-year-old Joel Ramírez and two friends were waiting for soldiers to clear a blockade of tree limbs. He hauls things in his pickup for a living and had not been able to get home since Sunday's violence.
"Everything seems calmer, but we were almost there and got stuck," he said. "We're scared."
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