Zetas (original) (raw)

Beginning as a group of deserters from an elite unit of the armed forces at the service of the Gulf Cartel, the Zetas would go on to become one of Mexico’s most powerful and feared armed groups before infighting and the loss of key leaders started the organization’s decline. The group’s advent detonated an arms race and a rise of the kind of brutal violence never seen before in Mexico’s crime wars.

The Zetas are now a fragmented force, held together by little more than a name and increasingly dependent on local criminal revenues rather than the transnational flow of drugs.

History

In 1997, 31 members of the Mexican army’s elite Airborne Special Forces Group (Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales – GAFES) defected and began working as hired assassins, bodyguards, and drug runners for the Gulf Cartel and its leader, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén. The original leader of the armed group, Lieutenant Arturo Guzmán Decenas, alias “Z1,” was killed in 2002. After the arrest and extradition of Cárdenas, the Zetas seized the opportunity to strike out on their own. Under the leadership of Heriberto Lazcano, alias “El Lazca” or “Z3,” about 300 Zetas members set up their own independent criminal network.

The Zetas’ logistical sophistication and military training helped catapult the group to power. They became known for their use of state-of-the-art weapons and communications technology, and for employing military-like discipline in planning operations and gathering intelligence. At one point, the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) described them as perhaps the most technologically advanced, sophisticated, and violent enforcement group.

Unlike other crime groups, the Zetas did not buy alliances so much as terrorize their enemies. They tortured victims, strung up bodies, and slaughtered indiscriminately. In August 2010, for example, the Zetas killed 72 migrants and dumped their bodies in a mass grave in Tamaulipas. The Zetas preferred to take military-style control of territory, holding it through sheer force and exploiting its criminal opportunities. Although their military training was diluted over time, their brutality was not. Rival groups struggling to dislodge the Zetas adopted some of their tactics and felt the need to arm themselves with the same military-style weaponry in order to compete, further ramping up violence in the country.

By 2010, the Zetas had established a presence in hundreds of municipalities across Mexico. They had also moved into Guatemala, seizing strategic drug trafficking territories with their trademark violence. However, they were in a near-constant state of conflict with the Gulf Cartel over control of the key border state of Tamaulipas, especially the cities of Matamoros, Reynosa, and Nuevo Laredo, as well as the key economic hub of Monterrey. The Zetas also became embroiled in numerous other crime wars across the country, including taking on the mighty Sinaloa Cartel.

During this time, the Zetas built up a network of international drug trafficking contacts, stretching through Central America to Colombia, Venezuela, Europe, the United States, and West Africa. The territorial control of each local faction also allowed them to profit from other criminal activity taking place on their turf. The group also began looking for political protection and would go on to infiltrate state governments in Tamaulipas and Veracruz.

Despite their rapid ascent, by 2012, the Zetas began to crack, sparking a process of fragmentation and atomization that continues today. The ultimate breaking point was the deteriorating relationship between the Treviño brothers, Miguel, alias “Z40,” and Alejandro, alias “Omar” or “Z42.” The brothers would eventually split into rival factions — the Northeast Cartel (Cartel del Noreste) and the Old School Zetas (Los Zetas Vieja Escuela).

The Zetas were further undermined by a steady series of high-profile blows to their leadership, the most serious of which was the loss of Lazcano, who was killed in October 2012. The Zetas also lost Miguel Treviño, who was arrested in July 2013, and then his brother Alejandro, who was arrested in March 2015.

With no clear national, centralized leadership, the Zetas have broken into splinter groups and largely independent local factions, each with its own operations, priorities, and alliances. The breakup of the organization’s national cohesion, in addition to a huge loss of influence in Central America, has made transnational drug trafficking increasingly difficult. Local factions now often rely more on profiting from crime in territories they control than from international drug trafficking. Still, smaller, more localized cells that once assumed the Zetas’ brand continue to operate throughout much of the Zetas’ former territory.

In February 2018, Mexican marines captured Zetas capo José María Guizar Valencia, alias “Z43.” Valencia allegedly operated in the states of Veracruz, Tabasco, and Chiapas, along with overseeing drug shipments through Central America. His capture caused further atomization within an already fractured and weakened organization.

The Zetas have since ceased to exist as a unified organization. There are now several splinter groups, some of which have a strong regional presence but none that are strong enough to expand further across Mexico.

The main factions are the Northeast Cartel, based primarily in Nuevo Laredo and the north of Nuevo León; the Old School Zetas, based in Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Coahuila, San Luis Potosí, Quintana Roo, and Zacatecas; and the Talibanes, another influential splinter group fighting for control of drug trafficking routes through San Luis Potosí, Zacatecas, and Tamaulipas.

Leadership

The Zetas are no longer a unified criminal organization. The group’s fragmentation into several smaller splinter cells has made it increasingly difficult to identify those in leadership positions.

In recent years, Z40’s nephew Juan Gerardo Treviño-Chávez, alias “El Huevo,” was the most powerful leader of the Northeast Cartel faction. He had founded the group’s network of hitmen known as the “Tropa del Infierno,” or Hell Troop, and became a prime target of both US and Mexican authorities.

However, Treviño-Chávez was arrested in Nuevo Laredo in March 2022, which provoked a wave of violence by Northeast Cartel forces. He was soon extradited to the United States where he is set to stand trial in November 2024 on drug trafficking charges.

Today it is not clear who leads the primary Zetas factions. Despite Treviño-Chávez’s arrest, the Northeast Cartel still maintains firm control over its original bastion in Nuevo Laredo. Graffiti referencing the group is scribbled all over the city in a show of its near-total control of this space.

Geography

The Zetas criminal empire was at one time present all across Mexico, with their stronghold stretching from Nuevo Laredo to Monterrey. Their reach also expanded into Central America, especially Guatemala. However, now the group’s factions are limited to Mexico and occupy a small patchwork of territory across the country.

The Northeast Cartel, its most formidable faction, has long controlled the US-Mexico border city of Nuevo Laredo and the north of Nuevo León. But in recent years, the group has also been trying to expand further south towards Monterrey.

Allies and Enemies

The Zetas had often relied on temporary alliances with groups such as the Familia Michoacana and the Beltrán Leyva Organization to wage war against its rivals. The group’s rivalry with its former parent organization, the Gulf Cartel, and with the Sinaloa Cartel, remain in place today.

Since at least 2019, the Northeast Cartel has battled several Gulf Cartel and Zetas splinter groups, parts of the Sinaloa Cartel, as well as the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG) and other independent groups.

In recent years, it’s been reported that the Old School Zetas have allied with the CJNG and a Gulf Cartel faction called the Metros in order to support the CJNG’s efforts to expand north through Tamaulipas to the US-Mexico border. That said, these alliances shift quickly and often.

Prospects

The Zetas’ days as Mexico’s most feared enforcement group and a drug trafficking organization with a vast transnational reach are over. However, the Northeast Cartel and the Old School Zetas will continue to operate and draw power from their hyper-local makeup and deep-seated historical roots in the cities in which they operate.