Word: ganging
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Violent urban legend has always swirled around Mexican drug traffickers, but few of them have ever set out to build a reputation as vicious as that of Heriberto Lazcano, 28. As leader of the Zetas, a new and ruthless drug gang situated along the U.S. border, Lazcano has perpetrated crimes that range from the brutal to the bizarre. In one instance last summer, Mexican officials say, Lazcano murdered a prominent Tijuana publisher in his car in broad daylight as his two young children watched horrified from the backseat. In January the Zetas attempted a raid on a federal prison...
That is causing alarm among U.S. officials, who see signs that the violence is spilling across the border. About 30 U.S. citizens have been kidnapped or killed in Nuevo Laredo since last summer. A clash there between local police and gang members last month culminated in a shoot-out on the Gateway to the Americas Bridge, which spans the Rio Grande and connects the town to Laredo, Texas. U.S. officials fear that recent drug slayings as far north as Dallas have involved Zeta triggermen. Last September the Zetas allegedly kidnapped Yvette Martinez, 28, a Laredo woman, along with a friend...
...more than 30 other members of the special forces began working for drug lord Osiel Cárdenas, head of the Matamoros-based Gulf cartel, which at the time controlled almost one-third of the Mexican drug trade. As Cárdenas' enforcers, protecting drug shipments and rubbing out foes, the gang members--who dubbed themselves Zetas after the radio call name of their original leader, who was killed in 2002--were paid as much as $15,000 a month, compared with their $700 army salary. Zeta bosses like Lazcano wore Rolex watches and ostrich-skin boots and imitated other famous drug...
...their own. They launched a lethal campaign against Mexican authorities and rival traffickers gunning for control over Cárdenas' former trafficking routes. Mexican officials insist that half the original Zetas have been arrested or killed, but because of intense recruitment and training of hundreds of Zetitas (Little Zetas), the gang has cells scattered around Mexico. They engage in ransom kidnappings and the extortion of businesses, from convenience stores to car dealerships. "The Zetas now victimize the general population," says Art Fontes, an FBI agent in Laredo. "Honest businesspeople are coming here from Nuevo Laredo out of fear...
Some U.S. officials privately complain that many Mexican police aid the Zetas. And other potential microcartels are proliferating on the U.S.'s doorstep: in the Tijuana--San Diego corridor, police are dealing with a gang known as Narco-Juniors, a group of affluent juvenile delinquents recruited as hit men in the 1990s by the Tijuana drug cartel. Authorities in the Juarez--El Paso corridor, meanwhile, report a growing presence of the Mara Salvatrucha, a machete-wielding gang that has terrified Central America in recent years. The threat from groups like the Zetas may persist for years. "This is like...