By Gary Grant May 14,2010
In the late 1990s, the Gulf Cartel leader, Osiel Cárdenas Guillen, wanted to track down and kill rival cartel members as a form of protection. He began to recruit former Mexican Army’s elite Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE) soldiers, originally trained in counter-insurgency and locating and apprehending drug cartel members. It is believed they were originally trained at the military School of the Americas in the United States[10][11] and by other foreign specialists of the United States, France and Israel. They were trained in rapid deployment, aerial assaults, marksmanship, ambushes, small-group tactics, intelligence collection, counter-surveillance techniques, prisoner rescues and sophisticated communications.
Cardenas Guillen's top recruit, Lieutenant Arturo Guzmán Decena, brought with him approximately 30 other GAFE deserters enticed by salaries substantially higher than those paid by the Mexican government. The role of Los Zetas was soon expanded, collecting debts, securing cocaine supply and trafficking routes known as plazas(zones) and executing its foes, often with grotesque savagery.[3][6]
Guzmán Decena (Z1) was killed by a rival cartel member on November 2002 in a restaurant,[12] while he was dining; his second-in-command, Rogelio González Pizaña (Z2) was captured on October 2004 and so Heriberto Lazcano (Z3) ascended to the leadership of the paramilitaries.
In response to such aggressive efforts on the part of the Zetas to defend and control its smuggling corridors to the United States, the rival Sinaloa Cartel established its own heavily armed enforcer gang, Los Negros. The group operates in a similar fashion to the Zetas, but with less complexity.
Upon the arrest of Gulf Cartel boss Osiel Cardenas Guillen in 2003, Los Zetas negotiated a collaboration pact with the Gulf Cartel and the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel to engage in their own drug shipments.[5][13][14]
In February 2010, Los Zetas (and its ally, the Betran Leyva Cartel) engaged in a violent turf war against its former employer/partner, the Gulf Cartel, in the border city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas,[15][16] turning some border towns to "ghost towns".[17] It was reported that a Gulf Cartel member killed a top Zeta lieutenant named Victor Mendoza. The Zetas demanded that the Gulf cartel turn over the killer. However the Gulf Cartel refused and an all-out war has broken out between the two gangs. [18]
Organization structure
Los Zetas have set up camps to train recruits as well as corrupt ex-federal, state, and local police officers.[19] In September 2005 testimony to the Mexican Congress, then-Defense Secretary Clemente Vega indicated that the Zetas had also hired at least 30 former Kaibiles from Guatemala to train new recruits because the number of former Mexican special forces men in their ranks had shrunk.[19] Current estimates place Los Zetas around 200 members.[citation needed] Los Zetas' training locations have been identified as containing the same items and setup as GAFE training facilities.
Los Zetas are primarily based in the border region of Nuevo Laredo, with hundreds more throughout the country. In Nuevo Laredo it is believed they have carved the city into territories, placing lookouts at arrival destinations such as airports, bus stations and main roads.[4] In addition to conducting activities along the border, they are visible throughout the Gulf Coast region, in the Southern states of Tabasco, Yucatan, Quintana Roo, and Chiapas, and in the Pacific Coast states of Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Michoacán, as well as in Mexico City.[20] Evidence also indicates that they may be active in Texas, other U.S. states[21] and in Italy with the 'Ndrangheta.[8]
Some of the original members are:[22] Arturo Guzmán Decena, Rogelio González Pizaña, Heriberto Lazcano, Jaime González Durán, Efraín Teodoro Torres, Raúl Hernandez Barrón, Óscar Guerrero Silva, Luís Alberto Guerrero Reyes, Jesús Enrique Rejón, Mateo Díaz López, Jorge López, Daniel Peréz Rojas, Sergio Enrique Ruiz Tlapanco, Nabor Vargas García, Ernesto Zatarín Beliz, Eduardo Estrada González, Flavio Méndez Santiago, Prisciliano Ibarra Yepis, Rogelio Guerra Ramírez, Miguel Ángel Soto Parra, Galindo Mellado Cruz, Gonzalo Ceresano Escribano, Daniel Enrique Márquez Aguilar and Germán Torres Jiménez.
Over time, many of the original 31 have been killed or arrested, and a number of younger men have filled the vacuum, forming something that resembles what Los Zetas used to be, but still far from the efficiency of the original Zetas.[23]
Tactics
The group is extremely well armed, they wear body armor and some wear Kevlar ballistic helmets; their arsenal includes AR-15 and AK-47 rifles, MP5 submachine guns, .50 cal. machine guns, grenade launchers, surface-to-air missiles, dynamite and helicopters.[6] They are known to operate with modern wiretapping equipment. Los Zetas is known to operate with a higher tactical degree than the local authorities, often uniformed as Federal Preventive Police and driving similarly labeled vehicles. The group has been linked to monitoring and kidnapping of journalists, and the murder of rival cartel members and their families.[4] Los Zetas cartel has been known to hire local gangs such as the Texas Syndicate and MS-13 to carry out contract killings.[4][24]
In addition to the commandos, there is a hierarchy within the group, composed of:[25]
- Los Halcones (The Hawks) keep watch over distribution zones and use 2 meter radio band.
- Las Ventanas (The Windows) comprise bike-riding youngsters in their mid-teens who whistle to warn of the presence of police and other suspicious individuals near small stores that sell drugs.
- Los Mañosos (The Tricky Ones) acquire arms.
- Los Leopardos (Leopards) are prostitutes who slyly extract information from their clients.
- Dirección (Command) are approximately 20 communications experts who intercept phone calls, follow and identify suspicious automobiles, and even accomplish kidnappings and executions.[6][26]
Los Zetas are involved in a myriad of criminal activities. They have branched out into kidnapping, murder-for-hire, extortion, money-laundering, human smuggling, and oil siphoning.[27] For security purposes, Los Zetas have adopted a cell-like structure to limit the information that any one member of the organization knows about his associates.
Law enforcement raids
Following a joint investigation, titled Operation Black Jack, by the ATF, DEA, ICE and the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through the FBI, two Zeta safe houses were identified and raided, recovering more than 40 kidnapped individuals.[4]
On October 26, 2008, the Washington Times reported of an FBI warning that Los Zetas' cell in Texas were to engage law enforcement with a full tactical response should law enforcement attempt to intervene in their operations;[28] their cell leader was been identified as Jaime González Durán (The Hummer), who was later arrested on November 7, 2008, in the border city Reynosa, Tamaulipas.[29] In this operation, three safehouses in Reynosa were raided by elements of the Mexican Federal Police and Mexican Army, yielding the largest weapon seizure in the history of Mexico; it included 540 rifles including 288 assault rifles and several .50-caliber rifles, 287 hand grenades, 2 M72 LAW anti-tank weapons, 500,000 rounds of ammunition, 67 ballistic vests and 14 sticks of dynamite.[30][31]
In February 2009, Texas Governor Rick Perry announced a program called "Operation Border Star Contingency Plan" to safeguard the border if Zetas carry out their threats to attack U.S. safety officers. This project includes the use of tanks, airplanes and the National Guard "as a preventive measure upon the possible collapse of the Mexican State" to protect the border from the attack of the Zetas and receive an eventual exodus of Mexicans fleeing from the violence.[32]
Recent Activity
Over the last few years, the Zetas have carried out a series of violent strikes. Below is an incomplete list of some of the more horrific crimes perpetrated.
- In February of 2004, a large group of their commandos broke into a prison in Michoacán Mexico and freed 25 fellow Zetas.[33]
- In June of 2005, they killed Alejandro Coello, police chief of Nuevo Laredo, only six hours after he was sworn into office.[34]
- In March of 2006 they forced the resignation of Coello’s replacement by threatening to kill more and more people if he would not step down. The police chief finally broke after personally discovering three charred bodies on the side of a city street.[35]
- In February of 2007 several Zetas dressed in army uniforms, massacring five police officers and two administrative assistants and injuring countless others in the town of Acapulco.[36]
- In April of 2007, Los Zetas murdered Chilpancingo’s police chief while he was eating in a restaurant with his wife and family.[37]
- Also in April of 2007 the Zetas murdered the police chief in Veracruz by assaulting his house with mortars, killing his wife and four kids in the process.[38]
- In May of 2007 they kidnapped, tortured and murdered Jacinto Granada, a Mexican Infantry captain.[39]
- In June of 2007 Los Zetas robbed several major casinos in Nuevo Leon, Veracruz, Coahuila, and Baja California.[40]
- In the first eleven months of 2008, Los Zetas were directly responsible for the deaths of 5,300 people. This number includes soldiers, their own operatives, civilians, and rival drug traffickers, In those same eleven months, approximately 4,300 soldiers died in Iraq.[41]
