Los Zetas
drug cartel
| Los Zetas link () | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Formation | 2000 |
| Founders | Arturo Guzmán Decena, Green Berets, CIA? |
| Mexican crime syndicate created as a "rouge" military unit | |
Los Zetas is a Mexican paramilitary crime syndicate created as a "rouge" military unit trained by US Green Berets, the School of the Americas and Israel. The cartel was part of the plan to destabilize Mexico and corrupting its politicians, while continuing the traditional CIA drug trafficking.
Background
The cartel traces its origins to a joint project between the United States and Mexico to create a Mexican commando unit modeled on the Green Berets, the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE). The original members of the GAFE, as were schooled in irregular warfare at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, as well as Fort Benning (Georgia), at the School of the Americas [1][2] and also received instruction from Israeli trainers. Los Zetas was a reference to the alphanumeric call sign used by the group's first boss, a Mexican special forces officer named Arturo Guzmán Decena.[3]
Around the year 2000, the majority of the unit defected from the Mexican army and went to work directly for the Matamoros-based Gulf Cartel, a powerful smuggling mafia that controlled the Texas border, working as its armed wing and enforcer corps, while learning how to operate. Not long after, the "rogue" commandos again betrayed their employers, struck out on their own, and formed a rival cartel.[4]
Trained in covert warfare and "shock and awe" tactics, Los Zetas used tactics such as such as beheadings, torture, and indiscriminate murder to consolidate control over most of the Texas border and the port of Veracruz, absorbing state and local police forces.
The cartel's business included stealing oil and gas from the state petroleum company, extorting mining operations and other industries, running prostitution rackets, smuggling migrants, and taxing legal businesses, in addition to trafficking drugs, which by 2010 included a higher-than-ever percentage of heroin.[5]
Since the mid-2010s the Zetas fragmented and have seen their influence diminish.[6]
Activities
Reports in 2010 highlighted that Mexico's Zeta cartel had a plan to destroy a dam along the Texas border, to get back at rival and former ally the Gulf cartel, which controlled smuggling routes from the reservoir to the Gulf of Mexico. The amount of explosives known to have been stolen by operatives of the cartel might have been sufficient to succeed.[7]
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References
- ↑ https://www.grunge.com/338237/the-messed-up-history-of-the-school-of-the-americas/
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20210308061814/https://web.archive.org/web/20170418211956/http://www.soaw.org/component/content/article/1/1994
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20140202154634/http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Library/Articles/Detail//?lng=en&id=97554
- ↑ https://insightcrime.org/mexico-organized-crime-news/zetas-profile/
- ↑ Seth Harp, The Fort Bragg Cartelpages 173-174
- ↑ https://warisboring.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-los-zetas/
- ↑ http://archive.today/2026.05.19-224823/https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/agents-feared-mexican-drug-cartel-attack-on-1617694.php