The Zetas: gangster kings of their own brutal narco-state [View All]

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Source: The Observer (UK)


In his final dispatch from the drug-fuelled war along the US-Mexican border, our correspondent profiles the deadly army which rules its territory through murder and ruthless intimidation of public officials – with the multibillion-dollar narcotics trade as its prize

Ed Vulliamy The Observer, Sunday 15 November 2009

Gabriela was riding the Number 20 bus into Reynosa in north-eastern Mexico when the gang struck. Heavily armed men, faces hidden under ski masks, stormed on board, ordered its passengers off and swung the bus around to block a bridge, sealing off the route into the city.

"Although they wore ski masks, everyone knew who they were with their machineguns and uniforms," said Gabriela. This brazen display of strength was carried out by the Zetas, originally established as an enforcement wing of the narco-trafficking Gulf Cartel, but now a paramilitary militia in its own right, highly trained in combat and probably the most powerful drug-trafficking organisation in the world.

The cartel was founded in the 1970s but emerged in its modern form in the mid-1980s, led by Juan García Abrego (now in a Colorado jail) and thereafter Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, who founded the Zetas and who is now awaiting trial in Houston, Texas. The Zetas are now led by Heriberto Lazcano – "El Lazco" or "Z3" – wanted in both Mexico and the US. It is Lazcano and the Zetas who control the cartel's drug operations and exercise the savagery with which its power is enforced and its terrain expanded. Estimated by US intelligence to number about 4,000, its soldiers were recruited from the Mexican army's special forces units, some reportedly trained in the US, though this has never been proved. What has been proved time and time again is their deadly cogency. The cartel is the only one against which the Mexican president, Felipe Calderón, has thrown his army's full might. So far, thanks to the Zetas, the cartel is winning....

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/15/zetas-drugs-mexico-us-gangs

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This article is pretty grim reading, the Gulf Cartel is the de facto government in much of the border area of Northeastern Mexico.