Gerardo González Valencia, popularly known as ‘Lalo’ or ‘Silverio’, the head of the Los Cuinis organization and brother-in-law of Nemesio Oseguera “El Mencho” of the notorious Jalisco Cartel (CJNG), is no more sentenced last Friday (July 21st) to life imprisonment in the United States of America.
For two decades prior to his sentencing, Valencia and his cartel had been leading a bloody battle for supremacy an impossible three-way fight between the State, its law enforcement agents and ‘Lalo’ Valencia and his associates.
The 45-year-old, commonly known as ‘Lalo’, was involved in some of the most infamous cartel activity in Mexican history. Among them were shipments of tons of cocaine from South America to the United States, some of which were intercepted by US and Mexican security forces, with nearly one-thousand kilos seized in a single incident involving frozen shark carcasses in 2009.
This war began in 1998 when Valencia was arrested for methamphetamine distribution and was sentenced to four years in prison. Subsequently, he escaped from the correctional facility in Oakland, California in 2001 and was at large till his capture in Uruguay in 2016. The news of his escape made ‘Lalo’ Valencia a fugitive for 15 long years.
Valencia may not have been apprehended or sentenced had it not been for the arrest of his brother Abigael in Mexico in 2015. This enabled the U.S. authorities to finally understand the full magnitude of the network that Valencia was managing the growing Los Cuinis organization and the nefarious CJNG.
Since then it has been a relentless battle for justice, with a number of testimonies and evidence being presented on both sides of the coin. One notable piece of evidence presented in the case was the ‘2009 Shark incident.’ Despite these efforts, Valencia stayed silent until he eventually pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges in 2022.
“Gonzalez-Valencia’s sentence sends a clear message to drug cartel leaders that the DEA will stop at nothing to dismantle criminal networks that threaten the safety and health of the American people,” said Anne Milgram, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Deputy Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division echoed these sentiments, saying that the sentence “reflects the magnitude of the harm these drug trafficking organizations cause in our communities.”
It remains to be seen if the life sentence handed down to Gerardo Gonzalez Valencia will lend any degree of deterrence to those involved in drug trafficking, though it certainly represents a major triumph in the war against the cartels.
With information from AFP