Narco terrorist El Mencho made his name chopping up drugs, but his daughter prefers grinding a more legal stimulant — coffee beans.
Nestled in a dusty, unassuming strip mall in Perris, California, sits El Rincon La Chulis, run by Laisha Oseguera Gonzalez, 24, youngest daughter of Nemesio “El Mencho” Cervantes.
When The Post visited Tuesday, people were friendly but shocked to hear the place is linked to a drug lord, noting they’d not seen Gonzalez since her father was executed in a Mexican military operation on Feb. 22.
“It’s a normal place, and she’s really nice. A normal, respectful person and she runs a good business, but she never mentions her family or her husband.
“I’d seen rumors online, but something like the cartel would never cross people’s minds. It’s a normal coffee shop,” a café regular told The Post.
Mexican media claimed Gonzalez attended the funeral of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel leader, posting a picture which they said showed her attending with dyed blonde hair and dark sunglasses. El Mencho was buried in a gold coffin in Guadalajara, Mexico, on Tuesday.
However, while Gonzales keeps a low profile, her life is worthy of a telenovela.
She is married to Cristian Gutierrez-Ochoa, 39, a high-ranking member of CJNG accused of kidnapping two members of the Mexican Navy, who then faked his death to escape the country via a tunnel from Tijuana into the US.
After resurfacing in California, he used a Social Security number under the name Luis Miguel Martinez to apply for a driver’s license in September 2023, authorities later claimed.
He also bought the five-bedroom home in Riverside, where Gonzalez is still believed to still live, for $1.2 million cash.
Gutierrez-Ochoa — known by his underworld moniker “El Gaucho” — was arrested in 2024, charged with trafficking cocaine and methamphetamines into the US and laundering millions in drug cash. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison last December.
The kidnapping he carried out was reportedly in retaliation for the 2021 arrest of Rosalinda Gonzalez Valencia — El Mencho’s estranged wife and Gonzalez’ mother — by the Navy in Jalisco. Valencia, known as “La Jefa,” was sentenced to five years prison in Mexico for cooking the books of a car wash business she was running, but released in 2025, according to reports.
However, there is no suggestion of any impropriety, financial or otherwise, by Gonzalez or at El Rincon La Chulis.
The café has a great reputation online, offering Iced Horchata Lattes, Mexican Mocha and Strawberry Matcha drinks as well as chilaquiles and fruit crepes on heart-shaped plates.
The café is decorated with signs in Spanish, reading “Love can wait, but food cannot,” a far cry from the beheadings, industrial-scale drug smuggling and terror offered by Mencho’s Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
However, a flash of Gonzalez’s family’s notorious temper was apparently on display shortly after she took over the café in 2018, according to one reviewer.
Laisha allegedly threw a drink at “an old lady across from my table,” according to the online review. “I don’t know why but the old lady fell and Laisha told her to get out because she fell and she doesn’t want to be sued,” the review claimed.
Another person at the café mentioned Gonzalez’s sister, Jessica, had visited last year.
That older sibling is Jessica Johana Oseguera Gonzalez, known as “La Negra.”
She was convicted in the US of laundering proceeds from the sale of fentanyl, cocaine and other drugs, siphoning the cash into businesses she operated in Mexico, including bars and sushi restaurants in Jalisco, Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara as well as tequila brand Onze Black.
Jessica — a dual US-Mexican citizen, born in San Francisco — pleaded guilty to five counts of money laundering and served 25 months of a 30 month prison sentence. She was released in March 2022, according to reports.
Her estranged husband, Julio Alberto Castillo Rodriguez, is a high-ranking member of the cartel, rumored to be in line to take over its leadership after El Mencho’s death.
Cartel violence sparked by the killing has led to at least 70 other deaths across Mexico so far.
