The Underworld Podcast - Los Zetas: The Brutal Cartel Formed By Mexican Commandos

Episode Date: August 22, 2023

Mexican Cartels have always had a penchant for violence, but the brutal tactics of Los Zetas plunged Mexico into never before seen levels of bloodshed. Originally formed by only a few dozen special forces soldiers who went rogue and became the enforcement wing of the Gulf Cartel, Los Zetas eventually broke away and ran roughshod all over Mexico, warring with everyone from the Sinaloa Cartel to the Mexican army at the same time. Gone were the days of gangbangers, instead Los Zetas would usher Mexico's cartels into a new era of paramilitary forces. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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1997 in Mexico, long before the word cartel is synonymous with sheer brutality. Oceles-Guien 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. Ocel 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 Descena, otherwise known as Z1. He's a Mexican special forces soldier who had worked with a cartel for years. taking bribes before finally making it official that year.

During his military career, Guzman received counter-insurgency 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 co-names model 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 all 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, or two journalists who have reported all over the world and are this close to just giving up on all of it. Tradeoff telling you the listener, stories of underground, underworld, organized crime from the past, present, and future. I am Danny Gold. I'm 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 with 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 Axivand, vandalism, like spray painting, listening to the N-World podcast on billboards, bar bathrooms, everything like that. Where did this 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, Vezeta'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. 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've got to start with the founder of the group, who is Z1, who we mentioned in the cold open, Arturo Guzman, Descena. 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, El Narco, who you should all know. We've had them on the show a ton. And the book is fantastic. I can't recommend it enough. Yeah, we should be getting on again to talk about some of those new routes. back for Coke around South America too, like the Ecuador stuff, because it's really changing right now. I didn't really realize until I spoke to Dan Collins, who were 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 Gera Cardenas, aka 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. 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, Abricio. Abricio 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 thing, but only if you're an arco.

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 have been controlled by only two people for close to 60 years, is up for grabs. After a ton of infighting, Osiel Cardenas-Gian comes out on top. And the Gulf Cartel home base is the Tommy Ulypas 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 is 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 GAFE, which some have said are the equivalent to the green berets here in the States. Gabe's motto is, quote, not even death will stop us, and if it surprises us, then it is welcome. which, you know, it'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 pretty, 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, like, gloss over for the rest of the script?

Yeah, just replace the name with he or, yeah, I do that. I'm glad. I'm glad you appreciate my, my struggles with pronunciation. Z1 first sees action when he's called upon to put down the Zapatista uprising in 1999, 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 balaclav 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 Nueva 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, it rules. But as Z-1 is doing his best Big Mackey thing, Cardenas actually gets the idea of creating a paramilitary force from the Aurelano 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 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 and Sonoma, 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, 0-0-0, 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 Seve, I know. 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 0-0-0 is pretty, pretty, like, isn't it a pretty, like, solid depiction of the Zetas or maybe not? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, Gimore is like a pretty revered book, but there's like serious accusations about plagiarism and him poaching other people's work and fictionalizing stuff in 00-0-0. I think Michael Moynihan. Who do I know who's like 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 like what every, I guess, man does on the internet and just typed in all deaths, zero zero zero 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 cake wall, 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 plead with Cardenas and tell him if he kills agents, he'll be done for. And they remind him of what happened with the Guadalajara cartel after killing Kiki-Kamarena. And eventually, they're able to leave with Cardenas shouting to them on their way out. You gringoes, 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 DA 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 pitch 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, siragogy. So gloves off. In November of 2002,

Soldiers storm a restaurant where Zyuan 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 tracked 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.

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only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. U-N? Must be 21 to enter. After Z-1 is gone, who takes over? That's right, it's Z-2. Sean, he probably thought it was Z-12. Idiot. Anyway, he's captured a year later,

and then who takes over? That's right. Z-2. His name is Herberto Las Cano, 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 Special Forces. Under his leadership, they recruit even more soldiers and ex-police officers. They also bring in ex-trups from Guatemala who are known as, Sean, what's the word?

You pronounce it for a friend. You know who I'm talking about. Kaibiles. Yeah. I mean, those guys have quite the reputation. Their 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, like that guy, the Sinaluan guy, still had, like, Guatemalans, he was showing me, like, in his ranks. Oh, yeah, they're still up a lot and stuff.

Yeah, these guys are around. They have quite their 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 are real piece of work.

This is from a Wall Street Journal article in 2012, quote, Mr. Lascano, I like how they call 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 other. 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 at 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.

Okay. Finally, one witness said he would literally starve captured rival drug lords to death because he, quote, like the process of watching the victim starve to death. I mean, just a real nasty piece of work. You kind of got to wonder, like, how people like this come to be. But during this time, Zeta's... Take a moment. Yeah.

Yeah, take a deep breath here. I might just, like, sit my teeth while I... 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 cartels piece, and they send some weakness. So they hold like a narco summit of sorts. You know, El Chapo, Arturo, Beltran, Leva are there among other top

Senalo figures. 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 their recruits that the Zetas have trained. One story goes that five bodies of these guys, they're dumped in a Sinalo and Safehouse with a message written as Narcos do.

Quote, more Pandejos 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 in the jail. But when Z3 learned that prison guards weren't allowing luxuries to be smuggled into the prison, he kidnapped six guards and leaves them in a fort explorer outside of prison. Each one had been blindfolded, handcuffed, and shot in the head. And this was kind of, this again, was relatively new in the drug war. We're at this point, the cartels mostly just paid off police the 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 like 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 getting the cartel assassination world, cartel murder, cartel terrorism world, to where it is right now. They were the ones who like 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 gunned down, the Zeta 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, the violence starts to spread to other parts of Mexico. With the turf war going on in Nueva 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 badge 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 and riding the bus. A new car or truck, your choice, which is actually a pretty good pitch, better than most journalism jobs. And there's no surprise that with their new reputation as being the kind of scariest, baddest cartel in Mexico, 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 enter 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? Kaibilis. The hardened Kaibilis. Hillbillies. Made 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, like, 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're in Central Africa a while ago. When I saw this, I read this, like, really cool tablet magazine feature from last year called Bienvedos Al infiano.

And it's like, it's really, really good. It's like a firsthand account of experiencing these guys. It's pretty dark, as you might imagine. But 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, like, descent into madness and violence. Maybe a year ago, two years ago, I'd spend some time they were reporting on cartels. Actually, I 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 Kaibilius, I think. And he had been like 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.

Back catalog. Waiting for advertisers to jump on the train. Waiting for producers to pay us money for. for the IP. It's all just ready, ready and waiting for all that. Anyway, this, again, the heads being cut off. That's something new in the cartel while at the time. And observers point to either the influence of the Guatemalan soldiers, or head chopping off was like a common practice to scare people, or the rise of the Al-Qaeda decapitation videos, which are 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 for 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 Maxi, Molly, Can I mean, 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, this happened all the time. You ever have any... You ever have any heads, any ever heads ever roll out on the dance floor when you were in your, uh, any of your brigandes? Yeah, I mean, unless that's a euphemism for some of the shit I saw at Bergheim, then, uh, 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 post. posting and this is making me wonder a tiny bit whether this is still going on, but who knows? You 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 power military 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.

They 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 Gulf Cartel, they reached 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 turned to an old friend who, after being captured, told them what happened in a video confession, of the authorities, and that is LaBarby, who again, with 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 La Barby, 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. The Gulf cartels slash Zetas, they keep Nueva Laredo and some areas of their territory, some other areas of the territory. Sinoloa keeps Acapulco and their other territories,

but they also gain the Monterey suburb of San Pedro Garza, the richest suburb in all of Mexico. Marturo Beltran Lava, he's made a similar appointment to keep peace with Los Zetas. So as 2007 is drawn 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 just love murdering and expanding. So they're definitely not on, you know, sort of Zen behalf. happy with what you have type of deal.

You move fast and you break things, right? Right. They're just, what's the, they're disruptors. You know, they're like the, they're the real disruptors when it comes to any industry. To have a sit down with these. Fucking hell. Yeah, I would actually, I would pay to have that happen. In 2008, the violence ramps up to near unprecedented levels.

So remember, this is just right after a peace treaty, but that's how it works. The Senaloans, 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 the now leaders of Los Chapitos and his son, Yvonne, 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 Lava 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 Sinolawa does end up winning all those wars. Meanwhile, in the northeast of the country, East Texas, that border area with 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 waring 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 Halisco 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 is 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 affair, even as a criminal organization. But they're just like savages at this point. And then, 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, this point, surely they're designated as a terror group, right? And then the states going in and blasting the crap out of them.

Because apart from, like, 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, like, I believe. There's ideology involved. You know, 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 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 don't want, like, you know, I've read into it before. I haven't really kept abreast of like 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 don't, I mean, at that point obviously the U.S. wasn't class. 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 think so. You know, the terminology is not something I've spent a lot of time on, besides that that brief moment in El Salvador. But... It's only getting every customer's order right. It's only a point of sale system connected by Spectrum fiber-powered business internet helping you track hundreds of secure transactions. And it's all backed by 24-7 U.S.-based

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Or really admired vehicle? Oh, or really awesome vehicle. It really is the recreational activity vehicle. The stylish 2026 Toyota RAP4 Limited. What's your Rav for? You know, these groups, the Zeta is in the Gulf Cartel, like I said. The Gulf was losing, losing basically control. and they have a divorce in 2010.

Zetas by now pretty much have eclips the Gulf cartel in membership, money, power, all that. And they also weren't crazy about Oseille Cardenas Geelan'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 be, Gien had been, Oseel, had been extradited, and the Zetas, they want their boys E-3 to be the guy in charge. So what had happened was

a sort of triumvirate of sorts had been formed was Z3 the brother and another couple running things and that held for a while and the Zetas basically just they had enough. 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 and other theories that the Zetas wanted to form an alliance with the Belatron Lava 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 lines and breakdown because they switch sides like every fucking two months. 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 Zeta's back, things really go off the rails. Wait, they were on the rails? I mean, it's all relative, right? Like, that's the thing with everything. So things get, 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 hijacked 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 that is now as this like psycho-antisocial movement that just needs to be wiped out, like no holds bar. 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, you know, 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 in a Loa 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 Dombas from 2014. to 21. I looked it up and

I mean, that's that's war, that's not even a small war. That's like a reasonable sized war of these guys. That's active, that's like active, active war front lines, combat sort of stuff. You know, it's insane. And then in February of 2011,

Zetas make a big mistake and they gun down a US ice agent and then, you know, they're really on the radar then. The agent and his partner surrounding the SUV in their SUV, the guy points with diplomatic plates, and one of the Zeta 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 know, you've got the U.S. on them,

which is not a great place to be for a cartel. You really want to, you 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 Z-40. 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, you know, climbing the corporate ladder as one does. In 2005, he's appointed regional boss of Los Zetas Nueva Laredo, which is a pretty big promotion, considering how important the city is the trafficking cocaine into the U.S. He has some success fighting off Senalo there, then gets another promotion.

He becomes the state boss of Aura Cruz. He takes a business trip to Guatemala to fight off some Zed of 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, douse 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 Z-40, you know, attempting to

one-up his boss, Z3, who would not only cut out his victim's 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, you know, 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, 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 what we can go. I mean, we're getting close to the end here. So I don't think, I don't think how is going to break loose again. But we'll see. So Z40 is also the guy who officially starts the one. 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 Rettel. 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 moderate Meyer Lansky is in that situation. By 2012, there's a whole bunch of articles coming out saying Z40 is actually usurped Z3

and is now running the Zetas. Just blow Z4 to Z-39 out of the water, although I guess most of them are dead, takes control. They've been saying for years that he'd 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 needed a, maybe they should have had a Slack channel. Yeah. Yeah, seriously. It kicks off in 2011 when a top-ranking Zeta is arrested and morale is accused of portraying him. Following that, presumably someone in Z3's camp releases a narco-corrito music video on YouTube portraying Morales Z-40 as the new Judas and accuses him of setting up the arrest and deaths of other commanders within the criminal organization and being disloyal to Z3. Yeah, that is a pretty balsy disc track. I mean, I would like to see Chief Keith trying to knock down Mexican narcos in his tunes. It is amazing like the Naco 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 going to boil babies in oil barrels and shit like that. Yeah, with a chording, just recording like the grimy, like singing beautifully,

just recording the grimyest stuff ever, that you would have no idea what it meant 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, that awful shit. At this point, lots of top Zeta's leaders are being killed or arrested.

Rival factions are riding 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. 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 Zeta's blood. Somehow, somewhere between 2010-2012, the Zetas are set to have to have to 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, Z40 himself, he's arrested in the summer of 2013 by the Mexican Navy without a shot being fired. He's currently imprisoned in Mexico. His brother, 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. There are various groups, factions of other cartels. One example is there's like a Zeta faction of the cartel del Norte, Sidyan, 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 have 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, a festival podcast, 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. The shop floor on the Chicago Merck. Yeah, I think I'm going to go outside and touch some grass now. Maybe watch a couple episodes of Pepper 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 hurts my soul. That hurts yourself. Yeah, how does that it? It's fine. Maybe Dale can play us out with some really upbeat mariachi or something like that. But it's probably going to have some accordion. Yeah, bloody lyrics. Scott, I hadn't done this in a while.

I hope that works for all of you. And until next week, you know, be safe. Stay happy.