One of the elements that sparked my interest in Los Zetas is their ambitious diversification–drug trafficking is only one component in their transnational business portfolio. Human smuggling is one of their more profitiable ventures.
In 2008 over 11,500 undocumented Cubans made their way through Mexico to the US border–an increase of 500%. At the going rate of at least $10,000 a head, that adds up to some attractive revenue
The earliest reporting on connections between the Zetas and Cubans came in a prescient bit of reporting in September 2006 from the Dallas Morning News estimable Mexico bureau chief, Alfredo Corchado. When Corchado filed his story almost no one in the United States had heard of the Zetas:
The Zetas even have a Cuban spiritual leader who performs Santeria rituals, U.S. authorities said, and they invest about 50 percent of their earnings in training, recruiting, intelligence-gathering and computer software.
More involved connections between Los Zetas/Gulf cartel and anti-Castro Cuban-Americans surfaced a year ago with La Jornada reporter Alfredo Mendez’s story:
Anticastristas contratan a Los Zetas para introducir cubanos al país
Mendez reported that the Mexican Attorney General’s office–the PGR–had evidence that the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) had been in a business relationship with Los Zetas/Gulf cartel for at least three years in order to smuggle Cubans across the Gulf to Central America and Qunitana Roo and then north across the border into the US. The operation came to light when Nairobi Claro and Noriel Veloz–two Cuban-Americans–were arrested in Cancun and charged with smuggling 33 Cubans into Mexico. According to Mendez’ judicial sources, Claro and Noriel said they were members of CANF and that the money they received was used to bribe officials, acquire forged documents for the Cuban migrants and to pay the Zetas to ensure the Cubans made their way north through Mexico and into the US. Following the La Jornada article came a formal denial and demand for retraction from CANF that can be accessed at the Miami Herald’s Cuban Colada blog.
During this period beginning in 2005, one of the Cubans smuggled via the Zetas route into Texas was the anti-Castro terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. 
The 81 year old Cuban-born Venezuelan and former CIA operative has a long and violent history, including the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 passengers. Declassified CIA and FBI documents on Carriles can be found at The National Security Archive at George Washington University. For more on Carriles and his connections to the Republican Party and John McCain, read A. L. Bardach’s piece from October 2008 at Slate. Carriles is currently awaiting a February 2010 federal court date in El Paso for a string of Cuban hotel attacks in 1997 that left one Italian visitor dead.
[to be continued]
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September 15, 2009 at 6:36 pm
[...] July posting on the Zetas Cuban-American connections here. [...]