These are the top ten distressing facts about Los Zetas you dont want to know. Whatever the motivations, the mass killings show just how little control the federal government exerts over Tamaulipas. Then come the Zetas, with no background in narcotics, and they start chopping peoples heads off, Grayson said. Learn more about Friends of the NewsHour. 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You have to keep up with the Joneses. With Americans running the organization, winning the war against Los Zetas would be much more difficult. He said that cartel members kidnapped him again and held him captive for 13 days until he found the money. The rescue was made possible by an anonymous tip about gunmen bringing victims into a house in the Villas de la Fe neighborhood. Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano (aka The Executioner) In April 2015, the group killed 15 police officers just weeks after killing five federal officers, which involved the use ofmachine guns and grenade launchers. WebMultiple witnesses have testified that Millan-Vasquez controlled the region of Piedras Negras for Los Zetas and is responsible for hundreds of killings and disappearances. In August 2017, the cartel kidnapped 17 people and kept them in a stash house in Nuevo Laredo. There have been several arrests of purported Zeta members in the region but no trials. Photos, illustrations and other art may be available for syndication but must be confirmed. Who knows what is going on in American Samoa. Rogue policemen are believed to have played a role in the deaths of 193 people, whose bodies were found in hidden graves in San Fernando in 2011, and 49 in Cadereyta in the state of Nuevo Leon in 2012. De Leon is now cooperating with authorities. One official said, "The valley is the most dangerous region in Colombia in terms of drug violence. While police arrested 76 suspects, including senior Los Zeta member Martin El Kilo Estrada, there was no victory there. Traditionally, Mexican cartels like Los Zetas only grew and manufactured drugs in Mexican territory and other less advanced countries where government officials were collaborators or incapable of disrupting their operations. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless, Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican, A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California, A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho, Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open, Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally, A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. Only in 2014 was this dynamic officially exposed in a memo from the Mexico Attorney Generals Office on the 2010 San Fernando Massacre, the 2011 San Fernando Massacre, and the recovery of 49 human torsos in 2012. Elizabeth Shell. The gunmen murdered a young girl by the name of Estefania Martinez Diaz, a woman by the name of Mara Campillo Mata and a man by the name of Miguel Angel Mendoza. However, the Gulf remains entrenched in theirTamaulipas stronghold, which provides steady revenue from narcotics and migrant smuggling (via Insight Crime). They told me to stop doing that," Reyna said in court. Reyna discovered that his son's co-worker and girlfriend were also missing. [10] The authorities havent succeeded in shutting down the cartels sophisticated radio communication due to two reasons: The first is that the radio equipment is easy to replace; the second is that the gang relies on free forced labor to build and maintain its radio equipment. Melissa is a 2016-17 Lannan Fellow at The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. Aside from manufacturing illegal drugs and trafficking them, the gang is also into kidnapping and extortion. Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican, A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. The most dramatic episode of the weekend carnage took place on Saturday morning when gunmen with one faction of the Los Zetas cartel known as the Cartel Del Noreste burst into a home in order to murder four children, five women and two men. The heartless drug lord is claimed to have personally killed 2,000 people, in addition to ordering and supervising thousands of other murders. With the suspects revealing what they had done, excavations began. SAN ANTONIO, Texas - In San Antonio today, a federal judge sentenced 34-year-old Marciano Millan Vasquez, a high ranking member and a former sicario for the Los Zetas drug cartel, to seven consecutive life imprisonment sentences for committing and aiding and abetting the commission of numerous murders and other acts of violence, To set the records straight, Los Zetas was formed by Mexican ex-military men. She was known for being the crazy white one. Groups like Los Zetas have also been known to operate abroad, buying raw materials from Argentina and operating in Asian countries like Malaysia. It would occur to many as an unacceptable surprise that Los Zetas recruits members in the United States. He also won territory from the Tijuana and Juarez cartels during the Mexican government's war on drugs, which brought new levels of violence to the region (via Britannica). From the mid-1980s to his death in 1993, Pablo Escobar was the "King of Cocaine," earning an estimated $420 million a week, according to Insider. Colombian National Police/Wikimedia Commons, ShareAlike 4.0 International/BaptisteGrandGrand. Lazcano died in a shootout with the Mexican Navy. De Leon said that Millan-Vasquez would smile and laugh as he performed these killings. How could such a tragedy occur in San Fernando not once but repeatedly? If you dont pay them, they will take your merchandise, he says. Multiple witnesses have testified that Millan-Vasquez controlled the region of Piedras Negras for Los Zetas and is responsible for hundreds of killings and disappearances. A rival of the Sinaloa cartel, the Juarez group has been responsible for thousands of murders across its territory, which included 21 states at the height of its power. They recovered deleted material, which included death threats from the defendant and information regarding Zetas operations. Few rivals could hope of matching Escobar as his cartel controlled80% of the cocaine trade, which involved daily 15-ton shipments to the United States, as detailed in Escobar'sInsight Crimebiography. The Times wrote how Escobar had always dreamed of being the President of Colombia, and this ambition showed in his twisted flair for governance. A staff writer for All Thats Interesting, Marco Margaritoff has also published work at outlets including People, VICE, and Complex, covering everything from film to finance to technology. The Juarez cartel is another relatively old organization dating back to the early 1980s (via Insight Crime). Mainly, Grayson notes a Zetalisation starting to occur among the other cartels. In1997, PBS described the Tijuana drug cartel as "one of the most powerful and aggressive drug trafficking organizations operating from Mexico," adding that it is "undeniably the most violent." As part of the threats, the Vieja Escuela faction has ordered that the relatives of the CDN leadership leave Ciudad Victoria or face a sure death. Please notify us by email that the article will be republished at, Abbott Wants to Deny Undocumented Kids a Public Education, Border Security Is a Financial Black Hole that Will Consume Us All, Two Executions, Many Questions about Mental Health, Innocence, Remembering a Social Justice Lawyer Extraordinaire. They were the victims of a brutal new evolution in Mexican cartel violence. There is a huge consensus that Mexican drug cartels are responsible for the drug epidemic in the United States. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st, The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The traditional cartels buy off politicians, establish traffic routes for smuggling and make money. WebCIUDAD VICTORIA, Tamaulipas -- Gunmen with the Los Zetas cartel butchered close to 20 victims over the weekend, three of those victims were Texas residents who had been Led by the Beltran Leyva brothers Marcos Arturo, Carlos, Alfredo, and Hctor, the Beltran Leyva Organization (BLO)was a vicious drug cartel in the Mexican state of Sinaloa (via Insight Crime/Wilson Center). A depressing fact about Los Zetas is that they are sometimes aided by Mexican police in the commission of unspeakable crimes. By 2020, the once leading cartel was wounded and facing competition from old rivals and new cartels, such as the Jalisco New General Cartel, often referred to as CJNG. An 18-year old Ecuadorian migrant who survived the massacre told officials that it was Los Zetas, a brutal drug cartel, that had kidnapped the group of Central and South American migrants. Editors Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon and Coahuila to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. Los Zetass status as the largest drug cartel in Mexico carries additional implications. He holds dual bachelor's degrees from Pace University and a master's degree from New York University. This gang violence occurs in their stronghold of Ciudad Jurez, where 1,200 people were murdered in 2018. Thats bad for the bottom line., Drug cartels have famously eluded capture by the Mexican government as the problem has crossed the border and headed north: 1,000 U.S cities reported the presence of a Mexican cartel in 2010, according to this graphic by the National Post. Human smugglers often use buses to transport migrants north to the Texas-Mexico border. During a particularly emotional testimony on Wednesday, a former worker for Los Zetas said that he was kidnapped twice by the cartel and was forced to witness several violent acts. All of the Texas Observers articles are available for free syndication for news sources under the following conditions: You can chip in for as little as 99 cents a month. Notifications can be turned off anytime in the browser settings. Los Zetas control a wide swathe of territory ranging from the Texas border to Guatemala. According to information provided to Breitbart Texas by the Tamaulipas government, the children have been identified as Galilea Garcia Amaya, Mariana Garcia Amaya (both from Texas), Maria Pizana Carrizales and Estephania Guadalupe Pizana Carrizales. Mostly Central American immigrants, they were traversing the state of Tamaulipas to cross into Texas. Like Los Zetas, their bitter rivals, CJNG is known for terrible violence. Jair Cabrera/NurPhoto/Getty ImagesTributes to the 2011 San Fernando Massacre. Sadism was their brand. Authorities had been notified of missing passengers from Highway 101 on May 24 and May 29, with soldiers following a tip that led them to the La Joya ranch a few miles off the road. In 2014, years after the conviction of the Orejuela brothers, the US government declared that the Cali cartel was no longer a threat, lifting sanctions that had been imposed by the Clinton administration in 1995 (via ABC news/Insight Crime). He said that they spoke over the phone every day. He was arrested by the Mexican Navy in 2012. 330 76 comments Best Add a Comment ComfortableSoup5 2 yr. ago With countless reports emerging of mayors and cops across Mexico collaborating with the cartels, it appears tragically unsurprising that many who knew the truth were either put into hiding or killed to keep them quiet. Outlets must also tag the Observer in all social media posts. The two men who were also gunned down have been identified as Cruz Felipe Pizana Saldivar and Angel Carrizales Amaya. Jesus Gonzalez/AFP/Getty ImagesFollowing the 2011 San Fernando Massacre, Federal Highway 101 was colloquially dubbed the highway of death or the devils road.. By the early 1990s, Medellin was the most violent city not just in Colombia but the entire world, and much of that was because of the Medellin cartel's war with the government (via Rapid Transition). It was one of the deadliest attacks ever on Mexican The 2011 San Fernando Massacre was both disturbing and, tragically, far from a one-off occurrence. Captured: Sept. 26, 2012 There were only a few bullet casings at the scene, but one sledgehammer and bodies showing blunt trauma to the head. Moraless most preferred method of killing was to stuff victims in oil barrels and set them ablaze. Initially, the group was led by Osiel Crdenas Guilln, who recruited around 30 alumni from Mexico's special forces. The 34-year-old, known as "Chano", was a regional boss in the Mexican border town of Piedras Negras. Media speculation on the motives for the kidnappings range from the cartels need for new recruits to fight its turf battles to the notion that passengers are being extorted for money. The Los Zetas cartel gunmen even executed the family dog. Rather than prioritizing corruption like its competitors, Los Zetas has