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| Founded by | Armando Valencia Cornelio |
|---|---|
| Founding location | Uruapan, Michoacán,Mexico |
| Years active | 1970s–2010 |
| Territory | Mexico :Michoacán,Colima,Jalisco,Mexico City,Puebla,Nuevo León andTamaulipas United States :California,Oregon,Texas,Illinois,North Carolina,Maryland |
| Ethnicity | Mexican |
| Activities | Drug trafficking,money laundering,murder andarms trafficking. |
| Allies | Sinaloa Cartel La Resistencia[1][2] |
| Rivals | Gulf Cartel Knights Templar Cartel[1][2] |
TheMilenio Cartel, orCártel de los Valencia (Valencia family Cartel), was a Mexican criminal organization based inMichoacán. It relocated toJalisco in the early 2000s. TheJalisco New Generation Cartel was born from the splintering of the Milenio Cartel.
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 poppy in Jalisco and Michoacan and began selling these drugs to bigger cartels. By the mid 1990s they had close connections with Colombian traffickers likeFabio Ochoa Vásquez of theMedellin cartel and by the early 2000s they were working with synthetic drugs provided byZhenli Ye Gon. By this time the cartel had taken several hits from the government, like the 2003 capture of their leaderArmando Valencia Cornelio. In order to protect their structure the new leader,Óscar Orlando Nava Valencia, associated with theSinaloa cartel, theMilenio cartel became a branch of what was known asthe Sinaloa federation, under the direct orders ofIgnacio 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 producedmarijuana and heroin. Another relative and close associate was Oscar Nava Valencia.
On October 28, 2009, Oscar Nava Valencia (El Lobo) was captured after a gun battle withMexican Army troops in the municipality of Tlajomulco de Zuniga,Jalisco. Oscar Nava and his brother, Juan Nava Valencia, were responsible for the planning and smuggling of cocaine shipments from South and Central America to the port ofManzanillo, Colima from where it was smuggled into the United States.[9]
After the arrest of Oscar Nava Valencia, his brotherJuan Carlos Nava Valencia took over the leadership of theMilenio cartel until May 6, 2010 when he was arrested inGuadalajara during an operation by the Mexican Army.[9]
With the 2009 capture of Óscar Nava Valencia, leader of theMilenio cartel, and the death ofIgnacio Coronel Villarreal, of theSinaloa cartel federation, a power vacuum emerged. TheMilenio broke into smaller factions, most notablyLa Resistencia, headed by Ramiro PozosEl Molca, and theJalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), headed by Nemesio OsegueraEl Mencho, and started a turf war for the control of the region.[10][11][12][13][14]
La Resistencia formed a brief alliance withLos Zetas, the CJNG reunited with the Sinaloa cartel, and other remnants of themilenio that splintered from theSinaloa Cartel[1] went independent and reached a working agreement withLa Familia Michoacana.[15] However, when la Familia was disbanded in 2011,[16][17] the Milenio Cartel relocated toGuadalajara and forged a loose alliance with a faction ofLos Zetas Cartel.[2] Although some Valencia/Milenio factions were at war with the CJNG, the core of the Valencia family is related with El Mencho, the CJNG leader, due to El Mencho's wife being a Valencia, the remnants of the Milenio gang currently form under the CJNG wing known as "Los Cuinis".
On January 29, 2011, Oscar Nava Valencia was extradited to the United States to face charges of conspiracy and drug trafficking in theSouthern District of Texas.[9] He was sentenced to 25 years in prison on January 8, 2014.[18]
Se trató de una venganza de la alianza del cártel del Milenio y "Los Zetas", en contra de los llamados Matazetas o del cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación.