CJNG Regional Boss ‘Tío Lako’ Evades Capture Once More

News that an alleged high-ranking Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG) boss slipped through the Mexican military’s net this week cast a spotlight on Heraclio Guerrero Martínez, alias “Tío Lako,” one of the organization’s most prominent regional power brokers in Michoacán.

Mexican army special forces reportedly raided the communities of Tinaja de Vargas and Colesio, in the municipalities of Tanhuato and Ecuandureo, Michoacán, on August 19 in an operation targeting Tio Lako. He escaped, but soldiers detained 12 members of his group, including his current romantic partner and daughter. 

The CJNG responded by setting up narco blockades and burning vehicles across nearly a dozen municipalities, according to local reporting, dynamics that echo those that took place on a larger scale after the February 2026 killing of the CJNG’s former top boss, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias “El Mencho.”

Who is Tio Lako?

Tío Lako belongs to the long-standing Guerrero crime family based around Tinaja de Vargas in the northern part of Michoacán near the state’s border with Jalisco. The group evolved from cattle barons into a criminal organization straddling both sides of the Jalisco-Michoacán border. 

SEE ALSO: CJNG Criminal Profile

He is the father of Rubén Guerrero, alias “El R1,” who died in the government operation that killed El Mencho earlier this year, as well as the uncle of a top CJNG lieutenant, Adrián Alonso Guerrero Covarrubias, alias “El 08.” 

El Tio Lako allegedly oversees a significant share of the CJNG’s fuel theft operations. His two nephews are said to be deeply involved in the trade, which has grown into a major transnational racket over the past two decades.

The Guerreros

The Guerrero family has operated in the Tinaja de Vargas area for more than three decades. In the 2000s, brothers Javier and Heraclio Guerrero Martínez were its central figures, expanding across a large swath of Jalisco and Michoacán with the backing of El Mencho. The brothers worked closely with the former CJNG leader to block the Knights Templar from expanding along the Jalisco-Michoacán border, particularly around Ecuandureo and Tanhuato.

Tío Lako assumed leadership of the Guerreros after his brother Javier was killed in a 2011 gun battle with the Knights Templar near Tinaja de Vargas. 

In November 2015, he was arrested with six gunmen in Ecuandureo in connection with the May 2015 murder of Enrique Hernández Saucedo, a former local self-defense group leader who was running as the National Regeneration Movement (Movimiento Regeneración Nacional – Morena)  party’s candidate for mayor of Yurécuaro. Tío Lako was later released from custody under circumstances that authorities never publicly explained, according to Mexican press reports, and remains a high-ranking figure within the Guerreros. 

Tío Lako reportedly leads the group alongside his nephew, Adrián Alonso Guerrero Covarrubias, alias “El 08,” the son of Javier. El 08 and his brother, Javier Guerrero Covarrubias, were sanctioned by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in June 2023. Authorities labeled them both senior CJNG members involved in trafficking high-caliber firearms from the United States, fuel theft, and money laundering. 

El 08 was arrested in April 2019 in Zapopan, Jalisco, on organized crime and kidnapping charges, but Mexican media reported he is currently free and leading his own armed faction within the Guerreros known as the Panthers. The circumstances of his release are unclear. 

CJNG Power After El Mencho

Tío Lako has not been sanctioned by the US Treasury Department and faces no criminal charges in the United States, according to an InSight Crime review of state and federal court records. His failed capture takes place against a backdrop of questions around the CJNG’s leadership following the killing of El Mencho. 

Authorities in the United States have named El Mencho’s stepson, Juan Carlos Valencia González, alias “El 03,” as the next “supreme leader” of the CJNG. There was no direct heir to El Mencho because his son, Rubén Oseguera González, alias “El Menchito,” is serving a life sentence in the United States for drug trafficking, which made his stepson the next logical pick on paper. 

SEE ALSO: Juan Carlos Valencia González, alias “El 03,” Criminal Profile

But InSight Crime research points to a more nuanced power structure within the CJNG. Valencia González is far from the only regional leader with the standing to make a push for control. Among the most influential lieutenants remaining are Tío Lako and Ricardo Ruíz Velasco, alias “Doble R,” who reportedly leads one of the CJNG’s elite armed wings in its home state of Jalisco, putting him at the more militarized end of the organization’s internal spectrum. 

Both are influential figures in an organization that is less monolithic than implied by the US  crowning of Valencia González suggests. Rather, the CJNG contains an extensive series of largely autonomous cells operating under the CJNG label, connected through familial or other ties to top leadership, via a franchise-style model that grants regional operators substantial autonomy over local operations, according to InSight Crime research. 

Indeed, this regional complexity was visible in Michoacán when the failed operation to capture Tío Lako triggered narco blockades and violence similar to the reaction to El Mencho’s killing in February.