Chapo, Mayo, Mencho: another Mexican kingpin falls

The Economist. Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. After a look yesterday at the impact of four years of war on Ukraine, today we get a rare look inside Russia. And we have some surprising advice for runners. You might think that if you want a good marathon time, the simple aim is to get faster and faster when training. We dig into piles of data to find a more nuanced plan. First up though A Mexican journalist can't even get the question out before president Claudia Schoenbaum cuts in with the answer. What guarantees are there that the World Cup will happen at this venue? All of them. All the guarantees, she replies. It's a fair question. On Sunday, a notorious drug lord named Nimesio Ruben Oseguera Cervantes and known simply as El Mencho was captured and mortally wounded. In scenes that Mexico has seen before, that sparked grotesque violence on the streets. Not the kind of press that one of the World Cup host countries wants right about now, and miss Schoenbaum wants to calm nerves. But even though things seem to have quietened down for the moment, experience suggests that the violence is not over. El Mincho was the head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which is one of the two biggest cartels in Mexico. And it's, in fact, the one with the biggest national spread, most brutal, and incredibly diversified in terms of what it's into. Sarah Burke is our Mexico City bureau chief. He was a 59 year old former policeman who has headed this cartel since the start and probably Mexico's most wanted person. But this killing threatens to have a very long term impact on the country for good or, essentially, for bad as well. Well, the for bad for now is that there seems to be widespread violence since his killing. He was captured and died on Sunday, and immediately violence broke out after that. So at least 15 to 20 states, there was roadblocks, there was torching of buses, airlines had to cancel flights, people who were visiting the tourist resort of Puerto Vallarta, which is in Jalisco state where he was captured, were told to shelter in place. So a huge amount of violence across the country. By Monday, things had calmed down quite a lot. And by Tuesday, things were getting somewhat back to normal. But the concern is this is not over yet. Because what happens, and we've seen in the past in Mexico and in other countries, is that when you take out the head of a cartel, often you get fragmentation, internecine conflict, and that ends up generating more violence. So while everyone thinks this is a huge success taking out El Mencho, which undoubtedly it is, I mean, it's a huge coup for the Mexicans and also pleases the Americans, this could generate …