The ‘decapitation’ of the Gulf cartel has been followed by that of Los Zetas. This has left the Sinaloa/Pacífico cartel as the last big one still standing. It has also triggered a wave of speculation about what will happen next within the Zetas structure and, by extension, what will happen in the broader universe of the drugs trade and organised crime that President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto will be facing when he takes office on 1 December.
In September President Felipe Calderón announced the “decapitation” of the Gulf cartel and the capture of Iván Velázquez Caballero (‘El Talibán’ or ‘Z-50’), a regional Zetas boss who had defected as a result of a feud with the organisation’s second-in-command, Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales (‘Z-40’) [SSR-12-09].
The string of blows against the cartels continued into the following month. On 5 October, the navy ministry (Semar) announced the arrest of the man who has become one of the most notorious murderers in Mexico: ‘la Ardilla’ (Salvador Alfonso Martínez Escobedo), believed to have ordered the massacre of 72 Central American migrants in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, as well as another 100 or more “executions”. Martínez Escobedo was presented as the top Zetas leader in Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas.
On 7 October Semar announced that in Coahuila marines had cornered and killed the paramount Zetas leader, Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano (‘el Lazca’ or ‘Z-3’). Because of the reputation the Zetas have earned as the most violent of Mexico’s criminal organisations, this event was widely hailed as the most important coup in Calderón’s drive against organised crime. There was, however, a snag: the very next day a group of armed men broke into a funeral home in Sabinas, Coahuila, where Lazcano’s body had been deposited and made away with it. Inevitably, this has already led to speculation that it might not have been Lazcano.
Lazcano’s reported death came just after Calderón ordered the deployment of a1,500-strong contingent of soldiers, marines and federal police to Coahuila in response to the 3 October murder of José Eduardo Moreira Rodríguez, the son of former Coahuila governor and former Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) party president, Humberto Moreira, who also happens to be a close associate of President-elect Peña Nieto. This murder prompted rumours that the Zetas might have been involved, but there has been no confirmation that Lazcano’s killing was the result of the surge ordered by Calderón in Coahuila.
Striking at other cartels
On 14 October near Oso Viejo, Sinaloa, an army unit killed Manuel Torres Félix (‘el M-1’ or ‘el Ondeado’), a close associate of Ismael Zambada García (‘el Mayo’, second to Joaquín Guzmán Loera, ‘el Chapo’, in the hierarchy of the Sinaloa/Pacífico cartel) and reputedly close to one of Chapo’s sons, Ovidio Guzmán López.
On 31 October in Hidalgo de Parral, Chihuahua, the army captured José Salgueiro Nevarez (‘el Che’), together with another five men. Salgueiro was presented as ‘an important lieutenant’ of ‘el Chapo’, involved in growing cannabis in Chihuahua and exporting it to the US, retail drug trafficking in Mexico, and extortion of businessmen and entrepreneurs. Two of those arrested with him were leaders of gangs of gunmen affiliated with the Sinaloa/Pacífico cartel.
Aftermath
While there is widespread consensus that the Sinaloa/Pacífico has been left as the largest drug trafficking organisation in Mexico, there is no such agreement about what will happen to Los Zetas after Lazcano’s killing. On 11 October, Admiral José Luis Vergara, the spokesman for Semar, said, ‘From the information we have, we don’t believe there will be a struggle for power [within Los Zetas] since we believe that Z-40 will definitely take control.’ Others are not so sure that this will be the case.
One scenario is that Treviño (‘Z-40’) will not enjoy the same authority as Lazcano, mainly because he does not come from the founding group of former members of the military special forces – actually, only some of the military deserters recruited to form Los Zetas came from the elite Gafes. Treviño was recruited by the late Gulf cartel boss Osiel Cárdenas in 1999, the same year as Arturo Guzmán Decena, the army deserter who set up Los Zetas as the cartel’s ‘enforcer’ unit. Treviño had caught Cárdenas’s eye because of his skills as a smuggler; under the Gulf cartel umbrella he became the boss of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, one of the most important hubs of the US-bound drugs traffic.
The zeal and brutality with which Treviño defended his control over Nuevo Laredo were seen as an asset by Guzmán Decena and his successor as leader of the Zetas, Lazcano. Treviño is currently being portrayed as the man who fostered the Zetas culture of savage violence. However, his contribution to the Zetas split with the Gulf cartel was to persuade Lazcano that they could ‘graduate’ from their established role as ‘enforcers’ to trafficking drugs themselves.
Los Zetas were never a monolithic organisation. They operated as a network of cells, often drawn from existing criminal gangs, with local leader who enjoyed considerable autonomy, and paid Lazcano for the ‘franchise’. This gave the cells the leeway to engage in activities other than drug trafficking, such as kidnapping and extortion — which rely on intimidation and violence to ensure compliance.
One such cell has already openly declared war on Treviño. Calling themselves Los Legionarios, they have announced this on banners in Nuevo Laredo. Even before the announcement of Lazcano’s demise, Iván Velázquez Caballero (‘el Talibán’ or ‘Z-50’), reputed Zetas boss in Nuevo Laredo, had sought an alliance with the Gulf cartel and La Familia Michoacana in his feud with Treviño [SSR-12-09]. It should be recalled that Treviño is hardly averse to alliances: he and Lazcano struck one with the Beltrán Leyva organisation when they broke away from the Gulf cartel.
Much, therefore, depends on how much control Treviño manages to retain over the Zetas cells; what, if any, alliances he pursues; and how these cells respond to the shakeup at the top of the organisation — breaking away individually or loosely linked with other cells. What most analysts and commentators see as certain is that the cells are unlikely to abandon their other criminal pursuits.
William Brownfield, the US Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics Affairs, said in an interview published on 20 October in the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo, ‘In my view we are witnessing the beginning of the end with the decapitation of the [Mexican cartels] and the reduction of their operational capabilities. This is what we saw in Colombia in the 1980s and early 1990s, when the cartels felt the pressure of the authorities and responded with violence [...] My theory is that this is what we’re witnessing in Mexico today.’
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