EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS: Mexican Cartel Boss Leads Organization Despite Attempts on His Life

A regional cartel boss continues to operate his criminal organization in a Mexican border state despite attempts on his life, which killed several of his gunmen and associates.

Known in the criminal underworld as “El Gero or Jero,” Jeronimo Hernandez de la Rosa, is a regional boss with the Gulf Cartel who controls the area in and around Cadereyta, Nuevo Leon. El Gero oversees various interests including smuggling routes and fuel theft. In recent weeks, the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas performed attacks against El Gero to take over their lucrative territories.

Despite the attempts on his life, El Gero continues to run the CDG’s operations in Cadereyta with the help of corrupt city officials, law enforcement sources revealed to Breitbart Texas.

Last month, El Gero was driving an armored black GMC Sierra with Nuevo Leon license plates PS2216A when gunmen ambushed him. They fired numerous rounds at El Gero’s vehicle but he managed to escape on foot.

In the following days, two of El Gero’s gunmen died from CDN attacks. In January, Breitbart Texas reported on how El Gero and his network were using a drug rehab clinic to house Gulf Cartel gunmen. Authorities first learned of that tactic after CDN-Los Zetas gunmen carried out a shooting attack there on New Year’s Eve.

In Cadereyta, the fighting typically occurs with ambushes rather than large-scale shootouts. In March 2020, a group of CDN-Los Zetas gunmen shot and killed El Gero’s predecessor, Ulises “Ramses” Lozano, and another crime lord at a cockfight.

That attack was led by 19-year-old Ivan “Penita” Pena Hernandez, a Gulf Cartel member who switched sides while in prison and tried to take over Ramses’ turf. Months after that attack, Pena died in a shootout outside of a car lot in Cadereyta.

Gerald “Tony” Aranda is a contributing writer for Breitbart Texas.