The bloody heritage of Los Zetas is resurrected with the capture of the last of them

The horror stories of the Zetas, the bloodiest Mexican cartel, who frightened the world with practices such as dissolving bodies in acid, have been resurrected these days with the capture of one of them.

Juan Gerardo Treviño, aka

, was arrested on Sunday by the federal government to send him expressly to the United States, accused of drug trafficking.

The arrest of the leader of the most important cell of the fragmented Zetas, the Northeast cartel, unleashed —as usually happens— a day of bullets and fire in Nuevo Laredo, the group's stronghold.

A demonstration that those who continue to rule in Tamaulipas, one of the most violent states in the country, continue to be them, with or without their leader.

And the capture dusted off the old surname, Treviño, which still causes chills in the north and reminds one of the darkest times of drug trafficking in Mexico.

El Huevo inherited a criminal organization already pulverized by the capture of former Los Zetas leaders.

A campaign that was undertaken with more ferocity by former President Felipe Calderón almost at the end of his mandate (from 2006 to 2012) and that Enrique Peña Nieto continued until he imprisoned two of the most bloodthirsty, Miguel Ángel Treviño (the Z40, arrested in 2013) and his brother, Omar (the Z42, in prison since 2014).

The terror of those who ordered and participated in massacres of the caliber of San Fernando, with 72 migrants murdered in 2010;

o Allende in 2011, an entire town of Coahuila riddled with bullets, tortured and dissolved in acid, with victims numbering in the hundreds, seemed to have dissipated with the imprisonment of its most sadistic leaders and the death of the main one, Heriberto Lazcano

in 2013. But the Treviño surname continued with his nephews.

Juan Francisco

Treviño took charge of the criminal group, but internal disputes eventually forced him to create his own cell: the Northeast cartel.

And with the arrest of El Kiko, El Huevo remained.

The last Treviño in charge of the family's criminal empire.

The federal government announced through its chancellor, Marcelo Ebrard, the capture of one of the most wanted criminals.

He came to describe it as “one of the most important of the last decade”.

The message was addressed to the Mexican people, although few had thought of Los Zetas for years as the threat they were, but who have breakfast every day with a massacre more terrible than the previous one - hanging in Zacatecas, cities taken over by drug traffickers in Colima, mines anti-personnel groups, a murdered mayor and a shooting in Michoacán, the unbridled violence among fans of a soccer match in Querétaro—.

It also had an important recipient: the Secretary of Security of the United States, Alejandro Mayorkas, visiting the country the next day.

For all of them, the narcos also had something to say:

Despite the fact that there are two powerful organizations that control drug trafficking throughout the country, Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación, the Northeast cartel is the third strongest criminal group.

Their presence in territories such as Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Coahuila, Tabasco and Veracruz, has consolidated them — more quietly than the big ones — as one of the main Mexican drug cartels.

According to security analyst Eduardo Guerrero, "those from the Northeast managed to bring together a large part of the cells that broke away from the former Zetas."

Its character, like that of the founders, is to impose force, terror, above any type of negotiation or red line.

And although, according to the security consultancy firm Lantia, they have been persecuted by the state government, led by Francisco García de Vaca,

The streets of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, after the confrontation on March 14.Cuartoscuro

The governor of Tamaulipas, now accused of organized crime and money laundering, became recognized for his security strategy against drug trafficking in the state.

After the fragmentation of Los Zetas, rival cells have been killing each other for years and the entity became a corner strewn with mass graves, executions in broad daylight and positioned itself as the most dangerous in the country.

Guerrero explains how the government designed state forces, trained in Texas (United States), that hit the cartels hard until they reduced the number of homicides by half.

The drug war moved to other areas that in the last year have become the real headache of the federal government: Guanajuato, Guerrero, Zacatecas, Colima, Jalisco, Baja California, Sonora and Michoacán.

El Huevo was fighting the squares of the northeast, especially through his corps of assassins, The Troop of Hell, against those who did not recognize the Treviño as heirs of the cartel, Los Zetas Vieja Escuela and a dozen cells that continue to impose terror in different cities of Tamaulipas.

One of the most recent events was the Reynosa massacre: a random killing of civilians, which killed at least 14 people in cold blood in June of last year.

As the Zetas' own history shows, the capture of the leader of a criminal organization has never brought peace in the history of Mexico.

Neither does the weakening of the organization.

Only the idea that if the Government wants, it can.

And that message, which should be taken for granted, does not happen that way given the context of a country scattered with cartels armed to the teeth, roaming freely and sowing terror in every corner.

Guerrero explains convinced that the capture of a single leader —"not even 10 or 20 plaza bosses, just one"— will not destroy the group's criminal capacity: "We have observed other times that this can have counterproductive consequences, because they only seized to an individual.

A struggle will break out between those who want that position and it could provoke a new wave of violence in the region”, he warns.

The heritage of the Treviño family in the criminal dynamics that Mexico has been experiencing for more than a decade has been fundamental, especially in the explosive nature of powerful cartels such as the Jalisco New Generation or that of the children of Joaquín

Guzmán,

.

The creation of Los Zetas, in the mid-1990s, meant a rupture in the way of operating, of negotiating, of dealing with certain ethical codes, red lines, commitments, that the new hitmen from the northeast blew up —literally— through the air.

The former Gulf Cartel, the oldest in the country, led by the capo of the old guard, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, designed a body of assassins made up of elite deserters from the Mexican Army who imported tactics and discipline that increased their effectiveness and dangerousness.

“Very volatile people, with sharp survival instincts, intuitive and full of contradictions.

They are not faithful to anything or anyone”, journalist Anabel Hernández wrote in one of her most controversial books,

(Grijalbo, 2010).

At the head of this group of assassins was Heriberto Lazcano, an infantry corporal who had become one of the bloodiest criminals in Mexican history.

Until 1995, experts say, that the word, respect or honor, were values ​​still insurmountable even for criminals.

The Zetas break with tradition, substitute respect for the word, discredit agreements and end trust by imposing brutal acts of violence, threats and intimidation.

“The only rule is that of vendetta and business above all else.

Thus, in the event that a group dismembers one lieutenant to another, the response of the attacked will be not to dismember one, but two.

In this way, the violence proceeds in an impulsive spiral until it is almost forgotten how it all started.

Respect for the word is an unknown value”,

Hernandez noted.

And that Zetas-branded spiral of violence is what Mexico is facing these days.

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