As I’ve long believed, any arrests of Mexican cartel members is simply a ruse, part of the consolidation of power of Sinoloa leader Shorty Guzman, a testament to how high up the government food chain his corrupting influence is.
IOW, the only people who get busted by the Mexican gummint are rivals to Guzman.
From yesterday:
MEXICO CITY – Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, the notoriously brutal leader of the feared Zetas drug cartel, has been captured in the first major blow against an organized crime leader by a Mexican administration struggling to drive down persistently high levels of violence, a U.S. federal official confirmed.
Trevino Morales, known as “Z-40,” was captured by Mexican Marines in Nuevo Laredo, the Mexican media reported…
Trevino’s capture removes the leader of a corps of special forces defectors who splintered off into their own cartel and spread across Mexico, expanding from drug dealing into extortion and human trafficking.
Along the way, the Zetas authored some of the worst atrocities of Mexico’s drug war, slaughtering dozens, leaving their bodies on display and gaining a reputation as perhaps the most terrifying of the country’s numerous ruthless cartels.
The capture of Trevino Morales is a public-relations victory for President Enrique Pena Nieto, who came into office promising to drive down levels of homicide, extortion and kidnapping but has struggled to make a credible dent in crime figures…
Trevino Morales’ rise from the streets of Nuevo Laredo to the top of Mexico’s drug trafficking world was fueled by a brutality that stunned a population inured to violence.
He began his career as a teenage gofer for the Los Tejas gang, which controlled most crime in his hometown across the border from Laredo, Texas. He soon graduated from washing cars and running errands to running drugs across the border, and was recruited into the Matamoros-based Gulf cartel, which absorbed Los Tejas when it took over drug dealing in the valuable border territory.
Trevino Morales joined the Zetas, a group of Mexican special forces deserters who defected to work as hit men and bodyguards for the Gulf cartel in the late 1990s.
Stories about the brutality of “El Cuarenta,” or “40” as Trevino Morales became known, quickly become well-known among his men, his rivals and Nuevo Laredo citizens terrified of incurring his anger.
“If you get called to a meeting with him, you’re not going to come out of that meeting,” said a U.S. law-enforcement official in Mexico City, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.
One technique favored by Trevino Morales was the “guiso,” or stew, in which enemies would be placed in 55-gallon drums and burned alive. Others who crossed the commander who be beaten with wooden planks.
Around 2005, Trevino Morales was promoted to boss of the Nuevo Laredo territory, or “plaza” and given responsibility for fighting off the Sinaloa cartel’s attempt to seize control of its drug-smuggling routes. He orchestrated a series of killings on the U.S. side of the border, several by a group of young U.S. citizens who gunned down their victims on the streets of the American city. [Hmmm, I wonder what ethnicity the “U.S. citizens”, a term that has virtually lost all meaning, were… – Ed.] American officials believe the hit men also carried out an unknown number of killings on the Mexican side of the border, the U.S. official said.
In one attack in the U.S., the killers shot the intended victim’s stepbrother and fled the scene, according to testimony at one of the hit men’s trial. As the hit men fled, Trevino Morales called them from Mexico and ordered them to return and shoot the man he had originally wanted killed, who was accused of not paying the Gulf Cartel for drugs…
Trevino Morales’ brother, sister and mother lived in Dallas but he had many relatives around Nuevo Laredo and, while moving frequently to avoid authorities, he was believed to often return to his hometown, the U.S. official said.
Si! Se puede!
