On Tuesday, June 22, New York Times‘ readers were greeted with this scarifying headline: “Mexican Cartels Lure American Teens as Killers”–a profile by reporter James C. McKinley, Jr. of a Laredo, Texas kid who claims to have been recruited as a sicario (hit man) by Los Zetas when he was 13 years old.
Such recruitment is not startling news.
Last February the Foreign Military Studies Office at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas released a report The Recruitment of Assassins by Mexican Drug Cartels that detailed the methods the narcos–especially the Zetas/Gulf cartel–have used over the past two years to enlist hard luck young men and women into their ranks.
Rosalio Reta–now 19 and serving a 70 year prison sentence– is pictured in the Times with a phone to his ear, a big smile and his face tatted up like an Insane Clown Posse fan. Despite the grin and whimsically menacing inkwork, neither Reta or his grim story shed much mirth. But McKinley’s nifty “get” opens one more window into Los Zetas ever-expanding global business. Over the past eighteen months the ambitious Zetas have diversified their portfolio beyond the drugs to include human trafficking,extortion, kidnapping, oil pipeline theft and diesel distribution, production and marketing of pirate CDs and DVDs–each with Zetas-brand holographic stickers,even their own brandy in a Z-shaped bottle.
In April Miguel Angel Maldonado Almarez, leader of the
PRD (Party of Democratic Revolution) in Tamaulipais, was arrested in Reynosa and charged with siphoning oil from state-owned Pemex pipelines and smuggling it across the border in tanker trucks where it was sold to several of the 26 refineries in Texas. Payments from the oil sales–$46 million– were triangulated through 149 bank accounts. Federal police commissioner Rodrigo Esparza said that the operation was run by Los Zetas.
A Brief Zetas Backgrounder
In December 2008 the PGR (Procuraduria General de La Republica)–the Mexican attorney general’s office–released a report on Los Zetas.
According to the PGR, some 40 to 60 deserters from the Mexican army special forces–Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFES)–formed the core of Los Zetas in 1999, offering their highly skilled services to Osiel Cardenas and the Gulf Cartel. After Cardenas was extradited to US two years ago, one of the original ex-GAFE, Heriberto Lazcano AKA “El Lazca” gained full control of Zetas. 
Lazcano and this cadre are known as Zetas Viejos. They have complete command and control of all Gulf Cartel trafficking corridors from the plazas in Nuevo Laredo to Matamoros. Their reach extends to Guatemala, Honduras and the Caribbean and across the Atlantic to Spain and west Africa.
Miguel Trevino, AKA “ El 40” runs the Nuevo Laredo plaza, considered by some Mexican authorities to be the most lucrative drug trafficking corridor in the Americas. Trevino is allegedly the man who recruited Rosalio Reta and his Texas friends into the killing life.
The Cobras Nuevos, or El Nuevos, are the next level down. They serve the Zetas Viejos as bodyguards. When the Zetas Viejos travel, the Cobras Nuevos travel with them. They include military deserters, former cops, family members of Zetas and the Kaibiles, trained Guatemalan Special Forces.
(There will be more on the military background of the Zetas and Kaibiles, including their training here in the US at the JFK Special Warfare School and elsewhere in a later post.)
Younger recruits down the chain are called Zetas Nuevos, who sometimes function as drivers to back up the Cobra Nuevos. All are armed with at least one assault rifle and sidearm. Zeta paramilitary training camps for their raw recruits are scattered across the rural areas in Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon. More camps are believed to be in place deeper south in northern remote Guatemala under the watch of rogue kaibiles.
Below them is the Zetas money-laundering network. Each Zeta Viejo has his own group of business owners and accountants for this function, known as productividad.
At the bottom are los halcones–the falcons– the street-level eyes and the ears for the Zetas. They work in business, politics, in bars, in hospitals—just about anywhere, everywhere. As example, halcones will stand on overpasses noting traffic flows on major highways in and out of the city.
In addition to the thousands of halcones and productividad, there are police commanders, politicians, high-level businessmen, judges, lawyers, mid-to-high level military commanders and soldiers on the Zetas payroll.
The Zetas are the most innovative of Mexican drug trafficking organzations. There is a women’s division of the Zetas–Las Panteras. They are young –age 18 to 30–and are recruited, like their male counterparts, from poor neighborhoods and high schools. Federal prosecutors say this is a first among Mexican criminal organizations. 
Ashly Narro Lopez–”Comandante Bombon”
Commander Blossom, who was arrested in Cancun in April, led an outreach program for the Zetas where young Panteras approached state and municipal authorities with bribes and then handled the payoffs once the officials were recruited. Some of the Panteras moonlighted from this day-job and served as sicarios having gone through the same Zetas weapons training as their male compadres. In the course of their work, the Panteras go through fashion makeovers–changing hairstyles and haircolor, reshaping eyelashes, dressing down in rebozos and plastico sandals or upscaling Selena-style, depending on assignments. More in Narco News report on Las Panteras March 27 (en espanol).
All information collected–whether collected off the corners of the plazas, in barber shops and discos or in government offices, army barracks and high-rise office buildings –is funneled through the Zeta intelligence network. The PGR report concluded that the Zetas’ counter intelligence organization is “without equal in the Americas.”
2 Comments
June 24, 2009 at 4:45 pm
[...] New at NarcoGuerra Times Jump to Comments Zetas: Everywhere on Everything.. [...]
August 26, 2009 at 9:55 am
Terror is what this beast have brought to our lives, all of us living south of the Border Knoe that the governor of Tamaulipas is the best actor when it comes to display an image of peace in our state and he is the political arm for this beasts, please if someone reads this tell the FBI that they need to act on their relatives, because the hide money and smugle arms in to Mexico.