The emerging Zeta Region
Gordon Housworth
The implications of Grann’s ‘A Murder Foretold’ and Cirino’s ‘Latin America’s Lawless Areas and Failed States’ are part and parcel of why I pay attention to the Zetas, Zetas with gangs, Zetas in the Isthmus region, etc. Was in Guat decades ago when the military intelligence and commando units were ‘draining the sea’ by day and the guerrillas were terrorizing those still alive by night. The only worse mass horrors were Africa. (The Indios to this day are still fodder for abuse, forced relocation and predation at will.)
Zetas unlike their criminal competitors
The Zetas are unlike other criminal groups of interest; they think strategically in a manner that I do not see in other cartels. A group of such vision is not one to overlook the corrupt, cooperative partner at hand. Guatemala is already a near-narcostate and almost went that way in a formal sense in a recent presidential election.
The Zetas are also positioned adjacent to, and in, Guatemala with the assets and skills to exploit a cooperative partnership with Guatemalan establishment enablers.
At the low end, the Zetas are already removing indigenous Guat drug competitors while recruiting Guat nationals. The moneyed oligarchy at the top will provide protection and influence for a price. See my earlier F-L note on Zetas now being the superior force against a weak Guatemalan state.
An emerging Zeta Region
Zetas are solidifying an arc from the Texas plazas south thru PEMEX and its illegal oil bunkering bonanza, through Chiapas and into Alta Verapaz department of Guatemala and its routes east to the Pan Am Highway and the Caribbean. (The Zetas are sufficiently adroit to have also commenced an out-of-area op to stake a position on the west coast (Colima, et al) to have access to inbound Chinese weapons, meth precursors and other contraband.)
The Zetas are forming cooperative partnerships with Latin gangs in the Central American/Isthmus corridor, going so far as to train the more aggressive members of what have long been described as hyperviolent gangs.
I submit that the Zetas want nothing less than to solidify their control along the Central American corridor.
Such control would enable the Zetas to achieve a chokehold on the Isthmus drug pipeline, currently thought to be moving the largest percentage of cocaine into Mexico and then onto the US and Canada.
The Zetas will be able to control supply, either monopolizing and/or taxing transport to other buyers.
It is not unreasonable to suspect that other cartel groups understand the Zetas’ direction and looking at variations of planning a countermove, planning a shift in allegiance or wondering how much time that they have given the changes afoot.
Unless competing cartels achieve a heretofore absent operational grasp, or external intervention backstops the remaining functional Guatemalan and Mexican assets, I see little on the horizon to slow the Zetas’ advance.
John randolph
I will never in my heart of heart's believe that Calderon was or is not somehow connected to one or another cartel. Any thoughts about that?
What would the legalization of all drugs do to the Zeta's plan?
Thank you, John
Subject: [frontera-list] The emerging Zeta Region
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2011 12:53:58 -0400
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molly
I'd like to throw out a few thoughts in regard to this information on
the Zetas. The article by David Grann in the recent New Yorker (posted
here previously; available at this link:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/04/110404fa_fact_grann)
does not mention the Zetas or any specific drug cartel. In fact, the
article talks generally about the morphing of the Guatemalan state
into a network of various criminal enterprises such that it is
difficult to say where the state ends and the criminal elements begin.
I think that Guatemala is a more mature and compact form of what is
developing now in Mexico. It is not a war over any ideology or a war
to control territory--it is a war to control the goods of the economy
and to generate the biggest profits without regard to the social
obligations that a state generally takes on (education, judicial
system, social welfare, health care, national defense, etc.) It does
not seem that the criminal organizations in Mexico (those engaged in
narcotrafficking and/or other illegal businesses) would have much need
to control territory as long as they can arrange to do business
without interference from the state.
As for Zetas and their origins, Grann does mention the Guatemalan
Kaibiles and their elite special forces training, some of it provided
by US advisors in the 1970s and 1980s. The elite forces in Mexico who
deserted the army to become Zetas had received similar special
training.
The illegal economy in Guatemala has become the ACTUAL Guatemalan
economy and all government entities are direct players in criminal
enterprises or at the least, they are infiltrated by elements of
criminal organizations.
The cartel sicario that Charles Bowden and I interviewed describes a
similar system in Mexico. This man says that ALL of the law
enforcement academies in Mexico – the municipal and state police, the
investigative police, the military police, and the army – have been
infiltrated by the narco-trafficking organizations to be used as
training grounds for their future employees. This is the system that
trained him. He speaks a little bit about Zetas and their special
training and abilities and he admires their tactics and learns from
them—they don’t need weapons, but are trained to kill with their bare
hands, for example. But he does not see them as an organization
seeking control of territory. He describes the cartels in Mexico as
controlling and growing their profits from drug production, transport
into the US and sales in the domestic Mexican market. He also says
that none of the violence and government actions since Calderon
launched his "war" have reduced the quantity of product being produced
and shipped, nor the profitability of the business. He says the
violence provides a smokescreen for the real business.
I think it is more likely that the Zetas are similar to other military-
trained entities that act in many countries and when there is no
longer an ideological battle to be waged, they sell their services to
the highest bidder. That may be a powerful government like the USA
(think of the Blackwater contractors in Iraq and elsewhere) or it may
be a narco-trafficking organization in Mexico or Guatemala.
What I see is the spread and adoption of killing tactics that work in
any country or society experiencing conditions of a failing legitimate
economy, geographic access to desirable goods (cocaine, heroin,
marijuana, oil, diamonds, precious metals) and the ability to make use
of weak governments to operate without restraints. For instance, in
Gomorrah, Roberto Saviano's excellent book about the Camorra crime
organization in Naples, the gangs deal in drugs, but these groups also
exert their control over many businesses (construction industry,
cement manufacturing, the high fashion industry, leather, textiles,
etc.) and they prosper.
The main difference in what has happened in Italy vs. Mexico and
Central America is that there is a stronger economy to corrupt...there
are many more profitable industries in Italy for the criminal groups
to take control of. In Mexico and Central America it is mainly drugs.
I think that is why kidnapping and extortion and murder are so much a
part of the Mexican and Guatemalan phenomenon. Murder itself becomes a
commodity--bought and sold. The gangs of hired killers work for
cartels, they work for government, they work for whoever pays for the
work that they do. The way the killer gangs operate in Guatemala is
described very well in Grann's article and many of the details are
exactly as described to me by the Mexian sicario I interviewed.
Another important difference in the description of the Italian scene
(Naples primarily) in the book Gomorrah, is the scale of the violence
used to control the illegal enterprises. Saviano counts 3,600 murders
between 1979 (year he was born) until 2005 (when he wrote the book)—26
years. Again, an example of
how Mexico and Guatemala completely DWARF the murder numbers in other
violent and criminal-controlled areas of the world. In Mexico alone,
we have witnessed 40,000+ murders in just 4 years. Molly Molloy
The book on the sicario's life will be out soon (shameless self-
promotion):
El Sicario: The Autobiography of a Mexican Assassin
1st Edition
Molly Molloy (Translated and edited by), Charles Bowden (Editor)
May 2011
Not Yet Published
Trade Paperback · 224 Pages
$15.99 U.S. · $18.50 CAN
ISBN 9781568586588
Nation Books
http://www.perseusacademic.com/book.php?isbn=9781568586588
On Apr 6, 10:53 am, "Gordon Housworth" <ghi...@icgpartners.com> wrote:
> The implications of Grann's 'A Murder Foretold' and Cirino's 'Latin
> America's Lawless Areas and Failed States' are part and parcel of why I
> pay attention to the Zetas, Zetas with gangs, Zetas in the Isthmus
> region, etc. Was in Guat decades ago when the military intelligence and
> commando units were 'draining the sea' by day and the guerrillas were
> terrorizing those still alive by night. The only worse mass horrors were
> Africa. (The Indios to this day are still fodder for abuse, forced
> relocation and predation at will.)
>
> Zetas unlike their criminal competitors
>
> The Zetas are unlike other criminal groups of interest; they think
> strategically in a manner that I do not see in other cartels. A group of
> such vision is not one to overlook the corrupt, cooperative partner at
> hand. Guatemala is already a near-narcostate and almost went that way in
> a formal sense in a recent presidential election.
>
> The Zetas are also positioned adjacent to, and in, Guatemala with the
> assets and skills to exploit a cooperative partnership with Guatemalan
> establishment enablers.
>
> At the low end, the Zetas are already removing indigenous Guat drug
> competitors while recruiting Guat nationals. The moneyed oligarchy at
> the top will provide protection and influence for a price. See my
> earlier F-L note on Zetas now being the superior force against a weak
> Guatemalan state