KILLING FIELD OF THE CARTELS
Americans’ kidnap went down in historic hub of Mex. violence
When four Americans were kidnapped in the Mexican hot zone of Matamoros on Friday — with two of them ending up dead in the city bordering Brownsville, Texas — it was ultra-violence business as usual for the area where the Gulf Cartel and its rival Zetas often engage in bloody battle.
The Gulf Cartel, which has controlled the area since the 1930s, is suspected of being involved in the deadly incident.
“They live off of extortion, kidnapping and protection money,” Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, author of “Los Zetas Inc: Criminal Corporations, Energy and Civil War in Mexico,” told The Post.
“They used to be primarily a drug organization. Now they control a number of other activities.”
Soldiers of drug fortune
Violence is second nature for the cartel’s members, who learned their techniques from professionals: rogue members of the Mexican military.
During the late 1990s, when Gulf drug don Osiel Cárdenas Guillén — a former mechanic who rose up the food chain by taking out a powerful Gulf rival — was running the illegal activity in Matamoros, Mexico’s special forces were sent in to take down the cartel.
But the plan backfired. “Cárdenas Guillén admired the highly trained military personnel; so he recruited them,” said Robert Almonte, retired deputy chief of the El Paso Police department and former United States marshal, of the 1997 scheme. “They deserted the military, were named the Zetas, and the Gulf Cartel became militarized.”
As the new enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel, the Zetas helped the group to beef up its extortion and protection footprint.
But after a disagreement with Cárdenas Guillén, the Zetas broke away and formed their own cartel in 2010. The two groups became sworn enemies, Almonte said.
Nonetheless, even without its enforcers, the Gulf Cartel became even more gruesomely effective at perpetrating violence.
Around 2019, Almonte said, the Gulf allied with Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which also does business in Matamoros.
“CJNG is the most violent cartel,” said Almonte. “There is no doubt that Gulf Cartel has learned about torture from CJNG. That would include cutting out a person’s heart when they are alive and eating the heart.”
Heading up the current iteration of the Gulf Cartel is Jose Alfredo Cárdenas-Martinez, nicknamed El Contador, who was once reportedly the group’s accountant.
“He is in jail in Mexico, pending extradition to the United States,” said Almonte. “But there is no doubt in my mind that he is running the group from jail. With him in jail, there is no one true leader on the outside right now.”
Cárdenas-Martinez is the nephew of ’90s cartel big Cárdenas Guillén, who was once one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives before being captured in a shootout with the Mexican military in 2003 and extradited to the United States.
Now serving time at a maximum-security prison in Indiana for money laundering, drug trafficking and threatening US federal agents, he is due for release in August 2024.
For now, though, according to Almonte, “The lifestyle for Cárdenas-Martinez was lavish. He had a nice house, women, expensive jewelry. The cartel leaders expect that they will not lead long lives. So they enjoy it while they can. Then they get buried in mausoleums that cost $1 million.”
Decades of criminality
Despite the fact the Gulf Cartel ranks as the oldest cartel in Mexico, running such an enterprise is complicated.
It launched in the 1930s and exploited prohibition, earning big bucks by smuggling contraband liquor into the US. Over the decades, marijuana and cocaine followed.
Then person-to-person crime became the financial engine.
In November 2021, hand-printed signs appeared in a Tulum marketplace the day after two tourists were shot dead and three others wounded at an eatery in the bohemian Mexican resort town, apparently in cartel crossfire.
“Attention merchants of Tulum — this was a warning,” said the sign, which went on to threaten “managers and owners” of bars
and restaurants on the “Mini Quinta” tourist zone.
The message vowed death to merchants who refuse to fork over bribes and was signed by Los Pelones — “the bald ones” — an enforcer gang for the Gulf Cartel.
Mistaken-ID horror
As to why the kidnapping of Americans even happened, sources tell The Post that it was likely a case of mistaken identity.
As Correa-Cabrera put it, “They would not normally go after Americans. What happened is not rational. It’s weird that the usually silent Gulf Cartel would bring attention to itself.”
Benjamin Smith, professor of Latin American history at University of Warwick and author of “The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade,” agreed, and has a deeper theory as well:
“Gulf Cartel has some police officers on their payroll. They protect the cartel. When those poor Americans were shot and killed, it happened in broad daylight,” he said.
“The assassins were not concerned about the police showing up. They knew it wouldn’t happen. My belief is that the police knew they would be in that area. They were told to stay away. They protect the cartel by staying away.”
Meanwhile, authorities have arrested one Mexican national in connection with the kidnapping, 24-year-old Jose Guadalupe N., who was allegedly guarding the shack where the victims were held.