Milenio Cartel
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United States: California, Oregon, Texas, Illinois, North Carolina, Maryland
| Founded by | Armando Valencia Cornelio |
|---|---|
| Founding location | Uruapan, Michoacán, Mexico |
| Years active | 1970s–2010 |
| Territory | Mexico: Michoacán, Colima, Jalisco, Mexico City, Puebla, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas United States: California, Oregon, Texas, Illinois, North Carolina, Maryland |
| Ethnicity | Mexican |
| Activities | Drug trafficking, money laundering, murder and arms trafficking. |
| Allies | Sinaloa Cartel La Resistencia[1][2] |
| Rivals | Gulf Cartel Knights Templar Cartel[1][2] |
The Milenio Cartel, also called Cártel de los Valencia[a] was a Mexican criminal organization based in Michoacán. It relocated to Jalisco in the early 2000s. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel was born from the splintering of the Milenio Cartel in 2010.
Fracture
The Milenio Cartel first appeared in the late 1970s when the Valencia family, an avocado farmer family from Tamaulipas, started to grow cannabis and opium poppies in Jalisco and Michoacán and began selling these drugs to bigger cartels. By the mid 1990s they had close connections with Colombian traffickers like Fabio Ochoa Vásquez of the Medellín Cartel and by the early 2000s they were working with synthetic drugs provided by Zhenli Ye Gon. By this time the cartel had taken several hits from the government, like the 2003 capture of their leader Armando Valencia Cornelio. In order to protect their structure, their new leader, Óscar Orlando Nava Valencia, associated with the Sinaloa Cartel. As a result, the Milenio Cartel became a branch of what was known as the Sinaloa Federation, under the direct orders of Ignacio Coronel Villarreal.[3][4][5][6][7]
Luis Valencia Valencia and Óscar Nava Valencia took control of the cartel after the arrest of Armando Valencia Cornelio on August 15, 2003.[8] The cartel operated in at least six Mexican states: Michoacán, Colima, Jalisco, Mexico City, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas, where it produced marijuana and heroin.
On October 28, 2009, Óscar Nava Valencia (El Lobo) was captured after a gunfight with Mexican Army troops in the municipality of Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, Jalisco. Óscar Nava and his brother, Juan Nava Valencia, were responsible for the planning and smuggling of cocaine shipments from Central and South America to the port of Manzanillo in Colima, from where it was smuggled into the United States.[9]
After the arrest of Óscar Nava Valencia, his brother Juan Carlos Nava Valencia took over the leadership of the Milenio Cartel until May 6, 2010 when he was arrested in Guadalajara during an operation by the Mexican Army.[9]
In November 2021, it was reported that Rosalinda González Valencia, the wife of then-Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes ("El Mencho"), was in fact the niece of Armando Valencia Cornelio.[10][11] Valencia Cornelio and González are also acknowledged to have at one been point been married, before separating in the 1990s, and to have conceived at least one child together: future CJNG leader Juan Carlos Valencia González.[12][13][14] In spite of their family relationship, Armando's age difference with Rosalinda was acknowledged to be small.[15]
With the 2009 capture of Óscar Nava Valencia, leader of the cartel, and the death of Ignacio Coronel Villarreal of the Sinaloa Cartel federation, a power vacuum emerged. The Milenio broke into smaller factions, most notably La Resistencia, headed by Ramiro Pozos El Molca, and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), headed by Nemesio "El Mencho" Oseguera, and a turf war for control of the region started.[16][17][18][19][20]
La Resistencia formed a brief alliance with Los Zetas to oppose CJNG, who were initially called the matazetas ('zeta-killers'). Meanwhile, CJNG reunited with the Sinaloa Cartel. Other remnants of the Milenio that splintered from the Sinaloa Cartel.[1] went independent and reached a working agreement with La Familia Michoacana.[21] However, when La Familia disbanded in 2011,[22][23] the former Milenio Cartel members relocated to Guadalajara and forged a loose alliance with a faction of Los Zetas Cartel.[2] Although this meant that some Valencia/Milenio factions were at war with CJNG, the core of the Valencia family was aligned with El Mencho, the leader of CJNG, due to Mencho's wife, Rosalinda González Valencia, being from the Valencia family. The remnants of the Milenio Cartel are currently part of the CJNG wing known as "Los Cuinis".
On January 29, 2011, Óscar Nava Valencia was extradited to the United States to face charges of conspiracy and drug trafficking in the Southern District of Texas.[9] He was sentenced to 25 years in prison on January 8, 2014.[24]
Despite being released from release from prison early by July 2020, Armando Valencia Cornelio was confirmed by that point in time to be suffering from cancer.[15] By March 2026, Armando was still described as having only been a leader in the Milenio Cartel.[25] In April 2026, it was also confirmed that his "lucrative relationship" with drug trafficking ended following his arrest in 2003.[15]