Los Zetas: The Brutal Cartel Formed By Mexican Commandos
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Save on O'Reilly Brake Parts Cleaner. Get two cans of O'Reilly Brake Parts Cleaner for just $8. Valid in-store only at O'Reilly Auto Parts. 1997 in Mexico, long before the word cartel is synonymous with sheer brutality. OCL Cardenas Guillen is involved in a ruthless power struggle for control over the Gulf Cartel.

The year before, the leader of the cartel and nephew of the founder is arrested and sent to the U.S. Like clockwork, an internal battle for control has kicked off among the other leaders. This ain't succession, though. There's no documents and contracts here. Just bloodshed. See, the Gulf Cartel is one of the most powerful in Mexico at the time.

Just a few years earlier, the DEA estimates they're bringing in $10 billion a year in profit, and Forbes magazine using whatever alchemy they do to put their fortune estimate at $15 billion. In today's money, that equals a whole hell of a lot. But now that this war has kicked off, rival cartels sensing weakness are making a play. OCL is facing enemies at all points. The rival cartels, rival leaders in his own cartel, and the Mexican military. He needs some serious help.

So he turns to a cartel associate by the name of Arturo Guzman de Sena, otherwise known as Z1. He's a Mexican special forces soldier who had worked with the cartel for years, taking bribes before finally making it official that year. During his military career, Guzman received counterinsurgency training, rapid deployment training, ambush training, and intelligence collection from an elite combat group trained by the U.S. Special Forces.

Z1 says that means they need other men from the army. And over the next two years, through careful contact and negotiation, he convinces at least 38 men to leave the military, offering them way more money than they were earning. The men are from the Special Forces Air Mobile Group, elite Mexican special forces.

They receive code names modeled after their leader. They're Z2, Z3, Z4, and on and on. They call themselves the Zetas. And when they first form, they're merely the elite bodyguard unit for OZL as he takes power of the Gulf Cartel after having Z1 execute his partner when they leave his daughter's baptism, earning him the nickname the Friend Killer, which, you know, very direct.

As Cardenas becomes the undisputed leader of the Gulf Cartel, los Zetas begin to morph into the armed paramilitary wing of the Gulf Cartel before eventually splitting off and forming an entirely separate entity that would terrorize large parts of Mexico.

They would go on to war with every rival cartel, using shock and awe military tactics to gain new territory. At their peak, they would control the largest amount of territory in Mexico. And though the cartel was already known for its brutality, Los Zetas would escalate the violence and tactics to new, unseen levels.

They would usher in a new phase in the cartel wars. Beheadings, leaving bodies in the streets, and senseless killings of uninvolved civilians would become their calling card. This is the story of Los Zetas, and this is the Underworld Podcast. ♪

Welcome back to the Underworld Podcast, the radio broadcast program where two journalists who have reported all over the world and are this close to just giving up on all of it trade off telling you, the listener, stories of underground, underworld organized crime from the past, present, and future. I am Danny Gold. I am here with Sean Williams, who people are concerned that I'm too mean to on the pod because I sometimes don't care for his jokes. Yeah, I think we can agree that everyone on social media and the internet has great taste and is correct about...

absolutely everything. Should we plug the merch a bit in case everyone's after a t-shirt or a mug or a hat? I would sign up to our Instagram because Danny's bro made a bunch of cool vids and one day we're going to figure out how to monetize it. Yeah, the Don't Instagram Your Crime t-shirts everything is on underworldpod.com and as always bonuses which we do like every week now are available through paying iTunes or patreon.com slash the underworld podcast which I think you can link to Spotify now.

We just did one on the assassination that happened in Ecuador, and our audio guy Dale has one going up on the fentanyl bombings in Seattle, which are insane. So yeah, a lot going on up there. And as always this week, we are definitely not encouraging you to commit acts of vandalism like spray painting, listening to the Unworld podcast on billboards, bar bathrooms, everything like that. Where did this come from? Where did it come from?

I just think we need more promo, and I'm not encouraging anyone to promote us through illegal means, you know? But I think we should probably check with our lawyer on saying that every episode, because, I don't know. Maybe we're not... Whatever. Anyway, moving on. Vizetta's big one, big episode. You know, usually we try to stay away from narco stuff because it's so absolutely insane, and there's just so much out there on it, so many niche sites that really do a great job getting into the tiny details, but, you know...

Fuck it, right? This is a pretty infamous group, and my brother Noah actually did a lot of the research, so here we are. Also, a bunch of the sources on this, they contradict each other, you know, who chopped off whose head, numbers of soldiers, all that, so we kind of did what we could here. Yeah, I guess you're here for the storytelling as well, right? We don't need to know exactly how many people have been decapitated by exactly which cartel, um...

I guess they're a place you can go for that. Yeah, I mean, we try, but like I said, there's a mixture of sources with that sort of stuff. So to talk Zetas, you got to start with the founder of the group, who is Z1, who we mentioned in the cold open, Arturo Guzman de Sena. Again, I'll probably mispronounce a lot of the Spanish names here, but you know, it is what it is. Most of the reporting on Guzman comes from Owen Grillo, who's the founder of the group.

who you should all know we've had him on the show a ton and the book is fantastic I can't recommend it enough yeah we should be getting him again to talk about some of those new routes back like for coke around South America to like the Ecuador stuff because it's

It's really changing right now. I didn't really realize until I spoke to Dan Collins, who we're going to have a bonus in a bit. But yeah, there's some pretty seismic stuff going on around that way. Yeah. So quick backstory on the Gulf cartel. It started by Juan Nepomuceno Guerra Cardenas, a.k.a. Don Juan, which, you know, dope nickname. But he actually starts his criminal enterprise by smuggling whiskey over the border during Prohibition. And then that grows into another contraband stuff like weed, alcohol,

Of course, his prohibition was repealed, and sometime in the 70s or 80s, it's unclear, but he hands over leadership to his nephew, Juan Garcia Abrecho. Abrecho is the one who pushes the organization into cocaine smuggling, cutting a profitable partnership with the Cali cartel. So weed actually is a gateway drug then, but only if you're a narco.

Yeah, only for cartels and others. Anyway, the nephew, he gets arrested in 1996, like I said, in the cold open. And the Gulf cartel, which had been controlled by only two people for close to 60 years, is up for grabs. After a ton of infighting, Oseel Cardenas Guillen comes out on top.

And the Gulf Cartel home base is the Tamiulipas region, which is on the northeast of Mexico and borders the U.S., of course, through East Texas. That's where Nuevo Laredo is. It's the border city where tens of billions of dollars worth of goods, legitimate goods, flow through every year. So, you know, that's a good thing for traffickers to control because they can tax all that stuff and they can also send their own supply in through the, you know, tons and tons of goods going in. Way easier to hide your stuff that's coming in there.

So Guzman, who was Z1, he grows up poor in southern Mexico and he joins the military to escape poverty. One of the best and brightest recruits, he joins the Air Mobile Special Forces, aka GAIF, which some have said are the equivalent to the Green Berets here in the States. GAIF's motto is, quote, not even death will stop us, and if it surprises us, then it is welcome, which, you know, that's pretty tight.

These guys, they train with elite units around the world, including with the US elite units. I'm not sure. I mean, if I was their copyright, I would have cut out the second bit. Just stick to basically we're invincible. It's good enough, I reckon. Also, it's going to be funny listening to the script and seeing which names you miss out. It's always fun seeing all the Spanish names. I'm like, which one is he going to gloss over for the rest of the script? Yeah, just replace the name with he or they. Yeah, I do that.

I'm glad you appreciate my struggles with pronunciation. Z1 first sees action when he's called upon to put down the Zapatista uprising in 1994, which, you know, shout out to Subcomandante Marcos. I bought a book of your writings in college. Don't think I ever opened it, but the pet rooster and the balaclava on horseback look dope as hell, and the cover was sick, but...

After successfully putting down the uprising, Z1 is considered a rising star basically in the military, and he's sent to Nuevo Laredo. Initially, he starts accepting bribes from the Gulf cartel to look the other way as they operate, which was pretty common for soldiers at this time. You know, just skim some money off the top of the traffickers' profits, why not? Side note, I'm actually watching The Shield for the first time, and it just rules, but...

As Z1 is doing his best Big Mac-y thing, Cardenas actually gets the idea of creating a paramilitary force from the Arellano Felix brothers, who had been importing Chicano gangbangers from California into the ranks of their Tijuana cartel. Cardenas wants to take it one step further, just skip the gangbangers who usually, you know, can't shoot for shit, and why not one-up them and get a bunch of special forces soldiers?

He goes to work on Guzman and convinces him to switch it up and become a full-fledged narco, which at this point in Mexico, it's actually pretty unique. You know, you didn't see these elite special forces soldiers defect to the cartels that often. Now it's pretty common, and they're basically recruited from those places. You know, like when we did a prior episode on that Sicario for Los Chapitos in Sonora that I was going to go meet, he was an ex-highly skilled soldier, but that wasn't a common thing way back when.

Over the next several months, 38 soldiers would also defect and join Z1. I think this is actually fictionalized a bit in the show Zero Zero Zero, which, interestingly enough, accused plagiarist Robert Saviano, maybe fictionalized some of his nonfiction book that it's based on as well, or allegedly stole it, but I can't remember exactly what everything was. Wait, plagiarist and fantasist Roberto Saviano? I need to know a bit more about that. I thought he was like...

I thought he was revered. I don't really know a lot about him, but like zero, zero, zero is pretty, pretty like it's, isn't it a pretty like solid depiction of the Zetas or, or maybe not? I don't know.

Yeah. Gamora's a pretty revered book, but there's serious accusations about plagiarism and him poaching other people's work and fictionalizing stuff in 000. I think Michael Moynihan, who I know, who's one of the premier guys who exposes plagiarism, had a big article on it years ago. I can't remember the specifics, but...

Wasn't pretty, I should say. When I knew that we were going to be doing this one, I did what every, I guess, man does on the internet and just typed in all deaths 000 on YouTube. And yeah, I think I've got PTSD now. It's pretty nuts. I'm sure the rest of this script is going to be like a cakewalk, right?

Yeah, yeah, it's easy. But Cardenas, you know, he doesn't get to reap the benefits of his little army boys for too long. His downfall starts in November of 1999 when two DEA agents are with an informant in the Gulf Cartel territory. The agents are boxed in by eight cars and 15 armed men, including several Zetas,

Cardenas emerges, he demands the agents hand over the informant, and then the de-agents refuse, and this apparently leads to like a multi-hour standoff, which, you know, sounds completely insane. The agents plea with Cardenas and tell him if he kills the agents, he'll be done for, and they remind him of what happened with the Guadalajara cartel after killing Kiki Camarena, and eventually, they're able to leave with Cardenas shouting to them on their way out, you gringos, this is my territory, you can't control it, so get the hell out of here.

Shortly after, Cardenas goes straight to the top of the most wanted list. And until then, narcos who the Mexican government actually wanted arrested, they would usually negotiate and surrender or try to stay hidden. They weren't like out there fighting like insurgents do.

But Cardenas says, fuck that. He's not going down without a fight. He goes full narco insurgent. His paramilitary force, the Zetas, they recruit more soldiers and some police and gangsters to fill out their ranks. Now we start seeing pitched battles between the Zetas and the army happening on the streets all over. And the army, they get rattled by the fierce resistance. They're not used to it. And they send reinforcements and they go with the shoot first, ask questions later strategy. So gloves off.

In November of 2002, soldiers storm a restaurant where Z1 and the founder of the Zetas, he's eating. They go in there with guns blazing. 50 shots apparently hit him. He has zero chance to even return fire before he's killed. And then in March 2003...

Soldiers track Cardenas to a safe house, but he's ready at that point. The army troops, they have a spirited gun battle with the Zetas protecting Cardenas with thousands of rounds, grenades. Eventually, they're able to grab him, but long gone are the days of a narco going peacefully. The Zetas, they usher in a new era, not for the first time. After Z1 is gone, who takes over?

That's right. It's Z2. Sean, he probably thought it was Z12. Idiot. Anyway, he's captured a year later, and then who takes over? That's right. Z3. His name is Hedda...

His name is Heriberto Lazcano, but they call him the Executioner. And, you know, he's going to set the tone for the Zetas. I'm sure you can imagine why. Like the previous two Zeta heads, he was a member of Mexico's Special Forces. Under his leadership, they recruit even more soldiers and ex-police officers. They also bring in ex-troops from Guatemala who are known as... Sean, what's the word? You pronounce it for me. You know who I'm talking about. Caibiles. Caibiles.

Yeah. I mean, those guys have quite the reputation. They're elite special forces unit of the Guatemalan Army. They're just reviled all over as killing machines and just have a crazy reputation for human rights violations of all kinds. Yeah, those guys are...

I mean, they're as close to evil as you're going to get. I heard a lot about them in Belize last year, actually. The gangs in Belize City get all their weapons from these old guys from the civil war across the border. And they're the same guys who actually carried out a holocaust of indigenous people in Guatemala, like before the war, during the dirty war in that country. And that was all with the backing of the US, of course, because Cold War and stuff.

Yeah, I think they still get... That guy, the Sinaloan guy, still had Guatemalans he was showing me in his ranks. Oh yeah, they still have a lot of stuff. These guys are around. They have quite the reputation.

So Z3, he gets them. He also sets up training camps of 15 to 80-year-olds to learn military tactics and just create even more psychos. He's really big on military culture. He gives everyone ranks like lieutenant and commander, you know, that type of stuff. And you already know that with a nickname like the executioner,

Guys, a real piece of work. This is from a Wall Street Journal article in 2012, quote, Mr. Lascano, I like how they called him Mr. Lascano, became known for a punishment called La Paleta or the lollipop in which victims would be stripped naked and beaten repeatedly with a board until nearly dead. And this is kind of where you see the violence in the cartel world get taken to a whole nother level.

He would also decapitate victims and put them in acid baths. He owned a ranch with lions and tigers and would have them eat his victims. One time he apparently tied a guy to a tree, beat the crap out of him, broke his legs, and then just left him there for a few days until he died. He would dump his victims or their children in barrels of burning oil, boiling oil. Yeah, I mean, that's literally saying the Nazis did it in Eastern Europe. There's a grandfather of one of my best friends. They experienced it in Poland firsthand.

He reportedly cut the hearts out of some of his victims. Finally, one witness said he would literally starve captured rival drug lords to death because he, quote, liked the process of watching the victim starve to death. I mean, just a real nasty piece of work. You kind of got to wonder how people like this come to be. But during this time... Let's take a moment. Yeah, take a deep breath here. I might just like sit my tea while we all take that in.

At this moment, the Zetas, they're rising up the ranks of powerful cartels, and with those sort of tactics, they're making enemies. After Cardenas is captured and Z1 killed, the Sinaloa cartel, which by this time has been on a hot streak of beating their rivals and controlling much of the border, they now want the Gulf cartel's peace, and they sense some weakness. So they hold like a narco summit of sorts. El Chapo, Arturo Beltran, Leiva are there among other top Sinaloa figures, and

They decide that they're going to take over Gulf Cartel territory, and this all kicks off sometime in 2004 when the Sinaloans start trying to tax every local drug dealer and smuggler in Nuevo Laredo. Now, some of the Sinaloan recruits are gangbangers from places like El Salvador and Honduras, people with a fearsome reputation. And they're going to go to war against Los Zetas, but as imposing as gangbangers are, they don't stand a chance against special forces soldiers and the recruits that the Zetas have trained.

One story goes that five bodies of these guys, they're dumped in a Cinalo and safe house with a message written as narcos do, quote, Chapo Guzman and Beltran Leyva, send more pendejos like this for us to kill, end quote. And the violence spirals to a point where Mexican President Vicente Fox sends in hundreds of troops. They round up some Zeta hitman and they send them to jail, but when Z3 learned that prison guards weren't allowing luxuries to be smuggled into the prison...

He kidnaps six guards and leaves them in a Ford Explorer outside a prison. Each one had been blindfolded, handcuffed, and shot in the head.

And this, again, was relatively new in the drug war, where at this point, the cartels mostly just paid off police and military, right? And Los Zetas, of course, they have a different approach, which is terrorizing the authorities. Yeah, I mean, this is basically the darkest shit in the entire world, like the absolute worst. I can kind of see why you get those super hawkish people saying, why don't we just bomb these guys? They're basically terrorists. And they are terrorists, right? I mean, this is way beyond anything before. Yeah, I mean, for sure. And it's kind of like the Zetas were instrumental in...

in getting the cartel assassination world, cartel murder, cartel terrorism world to where it is right now. They were the ones who kept pushing the envelope as I am detailing here right now.

So a government official who was speaking out against the violence is named the city police chief. And when the six hours he's gone down, the Zetas start assassinating police officers all over the town. It gets so bad that federal and city police officers, they just start shooting at each other because they have no idea who's on whose side and who's on the take. You know, in the old days, like I said, they just take bribes. But now you have rival police stations start working for either the Zetas or the Sinaloans. And it's just total anarchy.

By the fall of 2005, violence starts to spread to other parts of Mexico. With the turf war going on in Nuevo Laredo, the Zetas are on the defensive protecting their own turf. So Z3 decides that the best defense is a strong offense. And he's going to go up to Sinaloa territory across the country.

He's like putting out job ads that are written on blankets that the Zetas would hang under bridges that say, quote, the Zeta operations group wants you, soldier or ex-soldier. Another one said, quote, join the ranks of the Gulf cartel. We offer benefits, life insurance, a house for your family and children. Stop living in the slums or riding the bus, a new car or truck, your choice, which, you know, is actually a pretty good pitch, better than most journalism jobs. And, you know, there's no surprise that with their new reputation as being the kind of scariest, baddest cartel in Mexico, they're not going to be able to do that.

They're able to quickly recruit thousands of young men into their ranks and former officers. And this is where the Guatemalan mercenaries are mentioned above and to the picture, those commandos who tore through rebel villages during the country's brutal civil war and were responsible for killing many thousands of rebels and their children and civilians. To quote Grillo, the hardened... Say it again, John. KB this.

The hardened Kybillies made the Mexican Special Forces look like Boy Scouts with their motto, if I retreat, kill me. They were trained to cut bullets out of their own bodies in combat.

Yeah. I mean, that's better copywriting, to be honest. But they were inducted into the battalion by killing their own dogs and drinking their blood. And they're still, like we said, they're still out there today. I think they're serving as UN peacekeepers. They were in Central Africa a while ago. When I saw this, I read this really cool tablet magazine feature from last year called Bienvenidos al Infierno. And it's really, really good. It's like a first-hand account of experiencing these guys. It's pretty...

dark as you might imagine but uh we'll throw it on the reading list for the patreon subscribers i'm thinking now like maybe we should do a whole episode on them yeah maybe we should actually because these guys are insane

Yeah. So this is when numerous massacres and violence erupts all over Mexico. April 2006, two heads of Acapulco policemen are dropped off by City Hall after a firefight where several Zetas were injured. If you guys want to read more or listen more about Acapulco, I did an episode on Acapulco's descent into madness and violence.

maybe a year ago, two years ago. I'd spent some time there reporting on cartels. Actually, just now thinking about it, this is how many bonus shows we've done. But I did a show right back when we started with a Guatemalan guy who had survived the Kabylis, I think. And he had been kidnapped by them. But that just goes to show you how many of these shows we've done. Just a wealth of material waiting for you all to listen to it. Really beautiful back catalogue.

waiting for advertisers to jump on the train, waiting for producers to pay us money for the IP. It's all just ready and waiting for all that. Anyway, this, again, the heads being cut off, that's something new in the cartel at the time. Observers point to either the influence of the Guatemalan soldiers, where head chopping off was a common practice to scare people, or the rise of the Al-Qaeda decapitation videos, which were really having their moment at the time.

In a famous incident, La Familia gang, who had started to work with Los Zetas, rolled five human heads on a nightclub floor, just terrifying the people who were in their, this is like during waking hours, like they're partying. Like imagine you're in a nightclub, you know, having an incredible just trip. You're on, I don't even know what they do in Maximali Academy, who knows? And just a bunch of heads roll out onto the dance floor. Yeah, that's not nice. Sean, are you remembering your Berlin days right now? Yeah.

Yeah, this happened all the time. You ever have any heads ever roll out on the dance floor when you were in your Burghine days? Yeah, I mean, unless that's a euphemism for some of the shit I saw at Burghine, then no. By the end of 2006, there were dozens of decapitations. By the following year, there were hundreds.

Yeah, I mean, we should do a funny, like, con man episode next week. Actually, actually, I think we are going to do a funny con man episode next week, so that's pretty good. Also, we're applying, like, Rose and I are applying to go to Mexico on posting, and this is making me wonder a tiny bit whether this is still going on, but who knows? Might have to rework some of the back catalog if you're going to be based in Mexico for a while. We'll see what happens. Yeah.

So the style is that as the way they operate, again, they're more like a paramilitary group than what the previous cartels had operated like, had acted like. In response to this,

The rival cartels, obviously, they start forming their own groups of lunatics that do the same thing. The bodies start piling up across Mexico as violence rages across half a dozen states. Both sides chop off heads. They make the videos of people being tortured, blah, blah, blah. We already talked about the torture aspect enough. We don't have to go into that in more details. Shockingly, in August 2007, the Zetas Golf Cartel, they reach a ceasefire with the Sinaloa Cartel. And while the ceasefire has been confirmed by DEA agent and multiple Mexican officials, including the Attorney General,

We turn to an old friend who, after being captured, told him what happened in a video confession for the authorities. And that is LaBarbie, who, again, we did an episode on him, the American-born cartel boss. Actually, I think he's in the Acapulco episode a lot. Yeah, yeah. He's a pretty insane character. Yeah. Yeah. According to LaBarbie, there's a narco peace summit in the city of Monterey where the two cartels decide on a redrawn map of who gets what territory. Okay.

The Gulf cartels, Zetas, they keep Nuevo Laredo and some other areas of their territory. Sinaloa keeps Acapulco and their other territories, but they also gain the Monterey suburb of San Pedro Garza, the richest suburb in all of Mexico. Arturo Beltran-Leva, he's made a Sinaloa appointment to keep peace with Los Zetas. So as 2007 is drawing to a close, the violence in Mexico is starting to actually tick down, but that, of course, doesn't last for long.

You can't keep these guys from trying to murder everyone. They love murdering and expanding. So they're definitely not on sort of zen, be happy with what you have type of deal. You move fast and you break things, right? Right. They're disruptors. They're the real disruptors when it comes to any industry. To have a sit down with these guys. Fucking hell. Yeah, I would actually pay to have that happen.

In 2008, the violence ramps up to near unprecedented levels. Remember, this is just right after a peace treaty, but that's how it works. The Sinaloans, who are led at that point by the infamous El Chapo and El Mayo, they decide they're going to go to war on multiple fronts against the Tijuana cartel, the Juarez cartel, all the big names. And Chapo does a secret deal with the Mexican government to free El

the now leaders of Los Chapitos and his son, Ivan, from jail. I think we actually talked about that in the Acapulco episode as well. But to do so, to make this deal, he gives up an ally, the head of the Beltran Leyva organization, Alfredo, and the other brothers. They kind of catch on to this really quickly, and they are less than pleased. So they decide to go to war against Sinaloa. So Mexico at this point is just a bloodbath, but Sinaloa does end up winning all those wars.

Meanwhile, in the northeast of the country, East Texas, that border area where the Gulf Cartel and Zetas hold control, it's actually relatively peaceful, all things considered. So they start expanding again as all the other key cartels are warring with each other and the army and the police, and it's just a free-for-all. The Zetas recruit thousands more. They start forming up cells in lots of towns and villages. Now they're getting into extortion, robbing, killing, and just terrorizing people all over.

There's an interesting research paper from the Brookings Institute, which goes into detail on how cartels extort people. It mostly focuses on Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels, but occasionally references the Zetas. And it describes the Sinaloa cartel as pretty professional when it comes to extorting people. You know, it has dudes dressed in suits, they're coming in, they're taking their money payments, and even sometimes helping the businesses out with keeping away local crime and stuff like that so the businesses can keep running and make more money. You know, the usual sort of mafia tactics we don't think of the cartels as doing.

The Zetas, on the other hand, would extort by waving a gun in the business owner's face, threatening to kill them, and then taking way too much money so that the businesses would just die out. You know, just real goon shit. And also, not only did they not dissuade local crimes like stealing, they also participated in them. So it's not a very good way to conduct your affairs, even as a criminal organization. But they're just like savages at this point. And they're

you know, the old guard of the Gulf cartel, they no longer have any control over these new, like, lunatic Zetas guys. Yeah, I mean, at this point, surely they're designated as a terror group, right? And then the state's going in and blasting the crap out of them because...

Apart from production value on the execution videos, I don't really see a lot of difference between them and ISIS, really. No, I mean, it's tricky with that designation, right? Because it means things. I believe there's ideology involved. There was a lot of conversations about MS-13 and Boutio 18 in El Salvador being classified as terrorist groups, which I think they did in 2016 or 2015, maybe even 2017. But, um...

But you've got to believe in something, right? These guys don't really believe in anything other than getting bigger. I don't know. I mean, it's...

Yeah, I've read into it before. I haven't really kept abreast of what the... Because what does it mean, the definition? I guess it employs different laws, international laws, when it comes down to it. But the bottom line is they're killing a lot of people and terrorizing civilians all over. I mean, at that point, obviously, the U.S. wasn't classified. I don't think the U.S. is classified. The cartels is terrorist right now, but I could be wrong. But it's not something... I don't think so. You know, the terminology is not something I've spent a lot of time on, besides that brief moment in El Salvador. Yeah.

But, you know, these groups, the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel, like I said, the Gulf was losing basically control, and they have a divorce in 2010. Zetas by now pretty much have eclipsed the Gulf Cartel in membership, money, power, all that. And they also weren't crazy about Ozeal Cardenas-Guilin's brother, who was the one in charge. He was the original boss we mentioned at the beginning. By 2010, his brother was running things because he had been...

You know, Cardenas had been, Guillen had been, OCL had been, going through all his names, had been extradited. And the Zetas, they want their boy Z3 to be the guy in charge. So what had happened was like a sort of triumvirate of sorts had been formed with Z3, the brother, and another couple running things. And that held for a while. And the Zetas basically just, they had enough. Yeah.

No one knows why and when exactly the formal split occurred, but some of the theories are that the brother was allegedly addicted to sex and drugs and viewed as a threat to the overall leadership. Another theory is that the Zetas wanted to form an alliance with the Beltran-Leva organization, whereas the Gulf cartel wanted to form an alliance with the Sinaloa cartel, you know, when those two organizations were warring against each other. I think this one eventually happens anyways, but we can't get into, like, every cartel alliance and breakdown because they switch sides, like, every fucking two months. That's crazy.

Yeah. And finally, another theory points to an incident where a Gulf Cartel member kills a Zeta over a dispute over a drug trafficking route, and the Gulf guys refuse to hand him over. Honestly, we may never know, but the bottom line is that in 2010, they split up, and of course, they start fighting each other. And at this point, without the Gulf elders who had just attempted to hold the Zetas back, things really go off the rails. Wait, they were on the rails? Yeah.

I mean, it's all relative, right? Like, that's the thing with everything. So things get worse. These guys, they just get even more bloodthirsty. They kill 72 migrants for barely any reason, which sickens even other cartel bosses. I mean...

If those guys are like, what the fuck is going on? Then like, you know, you know, it's bad. Another massacre occurs in 2011 where the Zetas hijack passenger buses and kill close to 200 people. And by this point, the other cartel bosses across the country are fed up to the point where they almost want to team up and do something.

People both in the Mexican security services and the other cartels, they see the Zetas now as this psycho, anti-social movement that just needs to be wiped out, like no holds barred. So the rival cartels start leaving messages on banners and posting on websites that a national effort needs to be made to eliminate them. And then, I mean, I feel like I've said this phrase 15 times already, but it is what it is.

All hell breaks loose. The military, other cartels, everyone is going to go to war against the Zetas. We're talking six-hour shootouts in the streets, 15,000 cartel murders in 2010. During the previous height of the Zetas-Sinaloa feud, there was like 1,500 to 2,500 a year. Yeah, I feel like the figures often wash over people. So that 15,000 is...

carnage like that is the same number of deaths as they were in seven years in the donbass from 2014 to 21 i looked it up and i mean that that's that's what that's not even a small war that's like a reasonable sized war of these guys that's that's active that's like active active war front lines combat sort of stuff you know it's it's it's insane and then in february of 2011 the

The Zetas make a big mistake, and they gun down a U.S. ICE agent, and then they're really on the radar then. The agent and his partner are surrounded in their SUV. The guy points to his diplomatic plates, and one of the Zetas responds, I don't give a fuck, and they just light up the car. The guy's partner survives with two gunshots, but now you've got the U.S. on them, which is not a great place to be for a cartel. You really want to avoid that as much as possible. So now we get to

Another sociopath, psychopath, whatever you want to call it, Miguel Trevino Morales, who is otherwise known as Z40, he starts off his career not in the Mexican Special Forces, but as part of a local criminal organization. He's recruited into the Gulf Cartel in the late 90s, and he starts moving up the ranks, climbing the corporate ladder as one does. In 2005, he's appointed regional boss of Los Etas Nueva Laredo, which is a pretty big promotion, considering how important the city is to trafficking cocaine into the U.S.,

He has some success fighting off Sinaloa there, then gets another promotion. He becomes the state boss of Veracruz. He takes a business trip to Guatemala to fight off some Zeta rivals there. And Z3, who's still CEO at this point, is so impressed he names him the national commander, which is, again, a big deal considering he doesn't actually have military experience like a lot of the other Zetas leaders do.

What he does have, though, is experience being just absolutely deranged. His go-to torture method is when his victims will be dumped into oil barrels, doused with gasoline or diesel fuel, and burned alive. Remember those two massacres we referenced earlier? The one of 72 people and the other one that was like 200? The Zeta responsible for that and who orchestrated that is Z40, attempting to one-up his boss, Z3, who went

would not only cut out his victims' hearts, but also eat them, allegedly. You know, sometimes I have trouble believing these sort of, like, completely insane stories, but I feel like with the cartel guys, you know, there's more truth than fiction in these stories. So...

A lot of times you research, you report on these sort of figures, you hear exaggerated shit about how deviant they are, how they're psychopaths. But I mean, you see that in war too, right? But sometimes it's true. People really do this sort of like sick and twisted shit. And this is likely one of those cases. Yeah, I'm wondering how much worse it can be when you next say that all hell breaks loose. Maybe, I don't know, like they're going to start eating the babies perhaps. I really don't know where we can go.

I mean, we're getting close to the end here, so I don't think Hal is going to break loose

Again, but we'll see. So Z40 is also the guy who officially starts the war with the Gulf Cartel, according to one of those theories. Remember how I said one was that Zeta was killed over a drug route dispute with a Gulf Cartel member? The Zeta who was killed happened to be a good friend of Morales. So when the Gulf Cartel refuses to hand him over, hand over the shooter, Morales kidnaps and kills 16 Gulf Cartel members in January of 2010, sets off the war with the Gulf Cartel,

And I think it should also be said by 2011, only 10 of those original 38 guys who joined are still alive. So not the greatest longevity plan for guys in the Zetas. Not a lot of many people retire peacefully there. Not a lot of Meyer Lanskys in that situation.

By 2012, there's a whole bunch of articles coming out saying Z40 has actually usurped Z3 and is now running the Zetas. Just blow Z4 to Z39 out of the water, although I guess most of them are dead. Takes control. They've been saying for years that he's been transferring assets and just getting more loyalty than Z3 did because Z3 had been on the run at that point. He was in Costa Rica and Germany, just hiding out and all that.

So what happens, of course, in fighting? Honestly, it's a miracle the inter-office politics with these guys was kept at bay for so long. Yeah, maybe they should have had a Slack channel. Yeah, seriously.

It kicks off in 2011 when a top-ranking Zeta is arrested and Morales accuses members of betraying him. Following that, presumably someone in Z3's camp releases a Narco Corrito music video on YouTube portraying Morales' Z40 as the new Judas and accuses him of setting up the arrests and deaths of other commanders within the criminal organization and being disloyal to Z3. Yeah, that is a pretty ballsy diss track. I mean...

I would like to see Chief Keef trying to knock down Mexican Narcos in his tunes. It is amazing, like, the Narco Caritos, because it's like dudes with accordions who just record, like, the hardest shit imaginable. You know, just like...

harder than any heart like any drill any gangster rap thing about murdering people you've ever heard it's a bunch of Mexican dudes like strumming guitars and I'm gonna boil babies in oil barrels and shit like that yeah with accordions just recording like the grime like singing beautifully just recording the grimiest stuff ever that you would have no idea what it meant if you didn't if you didn't speak Spanish

So yeah, this infighting is going on. We get the heads getting cut off again, the banners on bridges, bodies hanging from them, all that awful shit. At this point, lots of Top Zeta's leaders are being killed or arrested. Rival factions are ratting each other out to the police, to rivals, to things in the organization are just kind of falling apart. And then on October 7, 2012, Z3 dies in a shootout with the Mexican Marines and

The Zetas start to fracture into various offshoots. One splinter group was known as the Legionnaires, and their number one goal was apparently to kill Z-40. Another one was called Zetas Blood. Somehow, somewhere between 2010 and 2012, the Zetas are said to have controlled the most territory, as all this is just kind of like falling apart.

But as we said, at this point, they're almost like a bunch of franchises, barely the same cartel. And once the group starts fighting each other and splintering, the title of the biggest cartel becomes almost meaningless. Morales, Z-40 himself, he's arrested in the summer of 2013 by the Mexican Navy without a shot being fired. He's currently in prison in Mexico. His brother is Z-42. He was captured in 2015, and he's basically the last of anyone who had to do with the original structure of the organization.

So, what are the Zetas up to today? They don't really exist as they once did. You know, there are various groups, factions of other cartels. One example is there's like a Zeta faction of the Cartel del Norte, CIDIEN, whatever that means. But they are basically dunzo, you know, like so many cartels before them, but maybe even more so. But yeah, I mean, they definitely...

as we said, had a lasting impact through upping the brutality to levels that never really had been seen before. And the whole recruiting for the military special forces type thing, you know, they just paved the way for a whole bunch of just new awfulness. And yeah, that is the story of the Zetas. Hopefully you weren't eating while you were listening to this. And like we said, bonuses, patreon.com, ZetasInTheWorldPodcast.com,

fentanyl bombings in Seattle, Ecuador assassination. I think, Sean, you've got a bootlegging one coming out soon. We've got a couple other exciting ones too. Bootlegging one, the stuff about the shop floor and the Chicago Merc. Yeah, I think I'm going to go outside and touch some grass now, maybe watch a couple episodes of Peppa Pig or something. Yeah, I think maybe next week we can do a syrup show about someone who stole someone's puppy and then gave it back and they all became friends or something.

I actually get really, I get really disheartened about puppy thievery. That like, that hurts my soul. That hurts you so much. Zeta's fine. Maybe Dale can play us out with some like really upbeat mariachi or something like that. Some accordion? Yeah, bloody lyrics. Scott, I haven't done this in a while. I hope that works for all of you. And until next week, you know, be safe. Stay happy. Stay happy.