The Gulf Cartel is a criminal syndicate and drug trafficking organization in Mexico, and perhaps the oldest organized crime group in the country. It is currently based in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, directly across the border from Brownsville, Texas. Their network is international, and are believed to have dealings with crime groups in Europe, West Africa, Asia, Central America, South America, and the United States. Besides drug trafficking, the Gulf Cartel operates through protection rackets, assassinations, extortions, kidnappings, and other criminal activities. The Gulf Cartel is known for intimidating the population and for being "particularly violent."
Although its founder Juan Nepomuceno Guerra smuggled alcohol in small quantities to the United States during the epoch of Prohibition, it was not until the 1970s that the cartel was formed and shifted to drug trafficking — primarily cocaine — under the command of Juan Nepomuceno Guerra and Juan García Ábrego.
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| Old School Abrego is standing as his uncle Jaun N Guerra sits at left |
By the 1980s, García Ábrego began incorporating cocaine into the drug trafficking operations, and started to have the upper hand on what was now considered the Gulf Cartel, the greatest criminal dynasty in the US-Mexico border. By negotiating with the Cali Cartel, García Ábrego was able to secure 50% of the shipment out of Colombia as payment for delivery, instead of the $1,500 USD per kilo they were previously receiving. This renegotiation, however, forced Garcia Ábrego to guarantee the product’s arrival from Colombia to its destination. Instead, he created warehouses along the Mexican’s northern border to preserve hundreds of tons of cocaine; this allowed him to create a new distribution network and increase his political influence. In addition to trafficking drugs, García Ábrego would ship cash to be laundered, in the millions. Around 1994, it was estimated that the Gulf Cartel handled as much as "one-third of all cocaine shipments" into the United States from the Cali Cartel suppliers. During the 1990s, the PGR, the Mexican attorney general's office, estimated that the Gulf Cartel was "worth over $10 billion US dollars."
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| Juan García Ábrego |
After the apprehension of García Ábrego in 1996, a power vacuum was left and several top members fought for leadership until Osiel Cárdenas Guillén became the undisputed leader. As confrontations with rival groups heated up, Osiel Cárdenas sought and recruited over 30 deserters of the Mexican Army’s elite Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE) to form part of the cartel's armed wing. Los Zetas, as they are known, served as the hired private mercenary army of the Gulf Cartel. Nevertheless, after the arrest and extradition of Osiel Cárdenas, internal struggles led to a rupture between the two.
In 1997 the Gulf Cartel began to recruit military personnel whom Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, an Army General of that time, had assigned as representatives from the PGR offices in certain states across Mexico. After his imprisonment a short time later, Jorge Madrazo Cuéllar created the National Public Security System (SNSP), to fight the drug cartels along the U.S-Mexico border. After Osiel Cárdenas took full control of the Gulf Cartel in 1999, he found himself in a no-holds-barred fight to keep his notorious organization and leadership untouched, and sought out members of the Mexican Army Special Forces to become the military armed-wing of the Gulf Cartel.
His goal was to protect himself from rival drug cartels and from the Mexican military, in order to perform vital functions as the leader of the most powerful drug cartel in Mexico. Among his first contacts was Arturo Guzmán Decena, an Army lieutenant who was reportedly asked by Osiel Cárdenas to look for the "best men possible." Consequently, Guzmán Decenas deserted from the Armed Forces and brought more than 30 army deserters to form part of Cárdenas’ new criminal paramilitary wing. They were enticed with salaries much higher than those of the Mexican Army. Among the original defectors were Jaime González Durán, Jesús Enrique Rejón Aguilar, Miguel Treviño Morales, and Heriberto Lazcano.
The creation of Los Zetas brought a new era of drug trafficking in Mexico, and little did Cárdenas know that he was creating the most dangerous drug cartel in the country. Between 2001 and 2008, the organization of the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas was collectively known as La Compañía (The Company). One of the first missions of Los Zetas was to eradicate Los Chachos, a group of drug traffickers under the orders of the Milenio Cartel, who disputed the drug corridors of Tamaulipas with the Gulf Cartel in 2003. This gang was controlled by Dionisio Román García Sánchez alias El Chacho, who had decided to betray the Gulf Cartel and switch his alliance with the Tijuana Cartel; however, he was eventually killed by Los Zetas.
Once Osiel Cárdenas Guillen consolidated his position and supremacy, he expanded the responsibilities of Los Zetas, and as years passed, they became much more important for the Gulf Cartel. They began to organize kidnappings; impose taxes, collect debts, and operate protection rackets; control the extortion business; securing cocaine supply and trafficking routes known as plazas (zones) and executing its foes, often with grotesque savagery.
In response to the rising power of the Gulf Cartel, the rival Sinaloa Cartel established a heavily armed, well-trained enforcer group known as Los Negros. The group operated similar to Los Zetas, but with less complexity and success. There is a circle of experts who believe that the start of the Mexican Drug War did not began in 2006 (when Felipe Calderón sent troops to Michoacán to stop the increasing violence), but in 2004 in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, when the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas fought off the Sinaloa Cartel and Los Negros.
In 2002, there were three main divisions of the Cartel, all ruled over by Osiel Cardenas and led by: Jorge Eduardo "El Coss" Costilla, Ezequiel “Tony Tormenta” Cárdenas Guillén, and Heriberto “El Lazca” Lazcano. Upon the arrest of the Gulf Cartel boss Osiel Cárdenas Guillen in 2003 and his extradition in 2007, the panorama for Los Zetas changed—they began to become synonymous with the Gulf Cartel, and their influences grew greater within the organization. Los Zetas began to grow independently from the Gulf Cartel, and eventually a rupture occurred between them in early 2010.
It is unclear which of the two — the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas — started the conflict that led to their break up. It is clear, however, that after the capture and extradition of Osiel Cárdenas, Los Zetas had become so powerful that they outnumbered and outclassed the Gulf Cartel in revenue, membership, and influence. Some sources reveal that as a result of the supremacy of Los Zetas, the Gulf Cartel felt threatened by the growing force of their own enforcer group and decided to curtail their influence, but eventually failed in their attempt, instigating a war. In addition, from the perspective presented by the Gulf Cartel, the narco-banners placed by them in the cities of Matamoros, Tamaulipas and Reynosa, Tamaulipas explained that the reason for their rupture was that Los Zetas had expanded their operations not only to drug trafficking, but also to extortion, kidnapping, homicide, and theft. These were actions that the Gulf Cartel disagreed with. Unwilling to stand for such abuse, Los Zetas responded and countered the accusations by posting their own banners throughout Tamaulipas. They pointedly noted that they had carried out executions and kidnappings under orders of the Gulf Cartel when they served as their enforcers, and they were originally created by them for that sole purpose. In addition, Los Zetas mentioned that the Gulf Cartel also kills innocent civilians, and then blames them for their atrocities.
Los Escorpiones, also called Grupo Escorpios, (The Scorpions), was believed to be the mercenary group that protected Antonio Cárdenas Guillén, the former leader of the organization. According to reports by the Mexican government, Los Escorpiones was created by Antonio Cárdenas (Tony Tormenta) and is composed of over 60 civilians, former police officers, and ex-military officials. According to El Universal, there are several music videos on Youtube that exalt the power of this armed group through narcocorridos. After the rupture between the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas (which until then had served as the cartel's armed wing), Los Escorpiones became the armed wing of the entire Gulf organization. The first mention of Los Escorpiones on the media was in 2008, when El Universal wrote an article about some "protected witnesses" from the Gulf Cartel who denounced the alliance between the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel and Los Zetas to the Mexican authorities, and that the Gulf Cartel had created Los Escorpiones to stop and balance the growing hegemony of Los Zetas.
However, his brother Osiel Cárdenas Guillén disapproved the existence of this mercenary group, since he had created Los Zetas, the parallel version of Los Escorpiones, and they had turned against the organization. El Universal reported that Mexican authorities identified the gunmen that where engaging in confrontations with the troops in Matamoros, Tamaulipas as members of the Los Escorpiones group. Along with Antonio Cárdenas Guillén, the following members of Los Escorpiones were killed: Sergio Antonio Fuentes, alias El Tyson or Escorpión 1; Raúl Marmolejo Gómez, alias Escorpión 18; Hugo Lira, alias Escorpión 26; and Refugio Adalberto Vargas Cortés, alias Escorpión 42.The arrests of Marco Antonio Cortez Rodríguez alias Escorpión 37 and of Josué González Rodríguez alias Escorpión 43—the two who were hospitalized after the shootout of 5 November 2010—allowed for the Mexican forces to understand the structure of Los Escorpiones.
Presence in Africa
The Gulf Cartel and other Mexican drug trafficking groups are active in the northern and western parts of Africa. Although cocaine is not grown in Africa, Mexican organizations, such as the Gulf Cartel, are currently exploiting West Africa's struggling rule-of-law caused by war, crime and poverty, in order to stage and expand supply routes to the increasingly lucrative European illegal drug market.
The rupture from Los Zetas left Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez and Antonio Ezekiel Cárdenas Guillén in full control of the Gulf Cartel. However, Ezekiel died in a shooting with the Mexican Marines in Matamoros, Tamaulipas in 2010, and Costilla Sanchez became the sole head of the cartel until his arrest in September 2012. Mario Cárdenas Guillén, brother of both Osiel and Ezekiel, became one of the top lieutenants in the organization after his release from prison in 2007. In addition, within the Gulf Cartel there is believed to be two groups—the Rojos and the Metros. The modus operandi ("mode of operation") of the Gulf Cartel changes whenever the United States attempts to strengthen their domestic policy in reinforcing the borders. When drug trafficking tightens, they usually invest in more sophisticated methods to smuggle drugs, recruit new members, corrupt more officials, seek new ways to remove obstacles that impede the immediate success of the organization, along with many others.