How the U.S. Fights the Zeta Cartel, From Spies to Sanctions

By Robert Beckhusen

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The violence in the Mexican border state of Nuevo Leon began Tuesday morning and continued into Wednesday. By the end, 30 bodies had turned up around the state with bullet wounds or had been dismembered. The cause was attributed to a seemingly never-ending war between the Zeta drug cartel and their rivals. And that may only be a prelude. Miguel Angel Treviño, or "Z-40," has seized the leadership of the cartel from longtime chief Heriberto Lazcano, according to the Associated Press, which describes the new boss as a "brutal assassin" who favors cooking his enemies inside burning oil drums.
For those unnerving reasons, the Zetas have come to define the violence of the drug war, and have lead the U.S. and Mexican governments scrambling to fight them. Arguably Mexico's most powerful drug cartel, the Zetas are now estimated to operate in half of the country, if not more, and have expanded into Guatemala. Aside from unleashing violence, extortion and kidnapping across much of their territory, the Zetas are responsible for the February 2011 death of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata.
Earlier this month, the Pentagon deployed 200 Marines to Guatemala in a sign the U.S. is getting more direct in going after the Zetas. The Pentagon stresses that the Marines will play a secondary role to the Guatemalans and are limited to merely tracking drug traffickers. But still, that's a lot of Marines now operating in territory shared by the cartel. The U.S. also considers the operation to be only one part of a much larger strategy. Here are five aspects of that war.

Photo: Army

Hit Them at the Bank

Calling the Zetas a drug cartel isn't exactly false – drug trafficking is one of the Zetas' main sources of revenue. But it's a bit misleading. For one, the Zetas aren't just involved with drugs, and narcotics may not even make up a majority of the cartel's revenue. (Though it's still a lot.) In addition to drugs, the cartel extorts businesses, kidnaps people for ransom and steals oil from Mexico's state-owned oil company Pemex, among other tactics.
The Zetas also have to do something with all the millions of dollars in ill-gotten proceeds. They can't just stuff it all under a million mattresses. They have to make it legitimate, which means – like the mob – lots and lots of money laundering. The White House started to wake up to the problem last year, when President Obama signed an executive order authorizing sanctions against property associated with the Zetas, who "constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States."
On Wednesday, the White House slapped sanctions on Pemex subcontractor ADT Petroservicios for allegedly operating as a major money-laundering front business for the Zetas. The Veracruz-based company was controlled by a Mexican businessman named Francisco Antonio Colorado Cessa, who is allegedly "tied to the violent Los Zetas group," according to the director of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. Colorado Cessa is currently facing charges in the U.S. for his involvement in laundering money through the professional horse racing circuit.
That horse racing operation was shut down by high-profile federal law enforcement raids in June. Specifically, the feds – numbering in the hundreds and backed by helicopters – targeted several properties owned by Tremor Enterprises, which itself was run by José Treviño Morales, older brother of Zetas top boss Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales. The number of stallions owned by the company was estimated at 300, and included stables in New Mexico and a large ranch in Oklahoma. Tremor was estimated to launder $1 million of drug proceeds a month into the horse business.
Photo: rutlo/Flickr

Send in the Spies

Determining the extent of Washington's counter-cartel subterfuge is trickier. But the world got a sense of what the U.S. might be up to in Mexico this week after two suspected CIA agents were shot and wounded by Federal Police officers near Mexico City. Outgoing President Felipe Calderon apologized on Tuesday for the shooting, which is likely a case of mistaken identity after the agents fled from a police checkpoint in an armored SUV. The U.S. Embassy later confirmed the two "employees" were headed to a training camp for the Mexican navy. Mexico's marines, it should be noted, serve underneath the navy and act as the primary strike force against the cartels.
The CIA was also apparently sloppy about hiding the identities of their agents. The Washington Post reported that the name of one agent wounded in the attack, Stan D. Boss, was linked to a Virginia post office box tied to the CIA's rendition program – that program, we know, was used to abduct and torture terrorism suspects in secret overseas prisons. Former CIA officials have also told the press that the agency's role has expanded in Mexico, and in addition to sharing intelligence has "helped [Mexico's] elite counter-narcotics teams root out corruption and identify officers with ties to drug lords," the Post reported.
The Mexican Attorney General's Office believes there are more than 500 U.S. agents operating in Mexico, which is up from 60 in 2005. That's not all CIA, by any means, and includes the Drug Enforcement Administration, the ATF and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Many of those agents also may be operating out of this unassuming Mexico City compound, but the Pentagon says the building is used to implement training programs for the Mexican police.
Photo: Google Maps

Arm Mexico and Train Their Troops

That America trains and supplies Mexico's police and military is no secret. The largest share of U.S. counter-drug aid comes through the $1.6 billion Mérida Initiative, which has provided U.S. aid, training and equipment to police and military forces in Latin America since 2007. Monitoring group Just the Facts, a project of the Washington Office on Latin America and the Center for International Policy, recorded more than $100 million in military and police aid to Mexico in 2011, and $113 million in aid to economic and social development programs. Since 2006, the U.S. has trained more than 9,000 members of Mexico's police and military. Mexico's marines are also being trained in counter-insurgency and urban combat tactics. The program has also includes giving Mexico surveillance aircraft and Black Hawk helicopters.
Mexico City will absolutely not allow foreign agents to carry guns – it's against the law – or assist Mexican troops in the field, but there's no prohibiting agents from assisting the interrogation of captured traffickers. Last year, in fact, the New York Times revealed that the U.S. sent civilian Defense Department employees to an undisclosed Mexican army base to help gather information on the cartels. And compared to Mexico's police, the U.S. has more advanced surveillance tools and the training to use them. That could be wiretaps, but also unarmed drones, which are being flown not only along the border but over Mexican territory. The U.S. has also let Mexican commandos launch helicopter assaults on cartel troops from temporary staging areas on American soil.
Photo: Secretariat of National Defense

Send in the Marines

The Zetas are not just in Mexico. The cartel is a "transnational criminal organization," in the parlance of governments and think tanks. One of those nations is Guatemala, which has experienced a surge in drug violence as the Zetas moved in to secure more trafficking routes and bases far away from the Mexican military. Guatemala's president, retired military officer Otto Pérez Molina, has been sympathetic to drug decriminalization, but also campaigned on a promise to deploy an "iron fist" against criminal organizations.
That iron fist now has helping hand from Washington. This month, the Pentagon announced it sent 200 Marines to help the Guatemalans search for smugglers carrying drugs and weapons. The Marines landed in the country in early August, and are beginning to use four UH-1N Huey helicopters to hunt for drug-smuggling boats sailing along Guatemala's waterways. The Marines are armed, a USMC spokesman told Danger Room, but he wouldn't discuss whether the Marines could use their weapons except in self-defense. At the most, the Marines are officially there to spot traffickers carrying guns, drugs or even human beings. After detecting the cartels, the Marines are tasked with calling their Guatemalan counterparts, who move in to make the arrests.
At the same time, we're already trading shots with the cartels, which comes with a set of new dangers. In June, an agent with the DEA shot and killed an alleged drug dealer during a helicopter raid on an airstrip in Honduras. A DEA spokesperson said it was the first time the agency killed someone since the White House boosted counter-drug aid to Central America. In May, four passengers aboard a boat were mistakenly killed during a joint operation with Honduran troops and the DEA. Officials have insisted the agents were only providing technical support to the Honduran troops and were not involved in the shooting itself.
Photo: Navy

Wire the Border – And Put Gunboats on the Rio Grande

If you can't beat the Zetas in Mexico and Guatemala, then you can at least try to stop them from coming into the United States. That's tough. But it hasn't stopped the U.S. from pressing ahead with sensor systems on the border – which haven't worked very well. In addition to boosting border drones, we've spent $1 billion on a "virtual border fence" of fixed sensor towers that was eventually canceled last year after being plagued with interference, cost overruns and equipment malfunctions. A follow-up program called the Arizona Border Surveillance Initiative then took criticism from government watchdogs over its failure to compensate for unexpected costs. U.S. Customs and Border Protection is also putting money down on solar-powered ground sensors to track foot movement, and radars to track ultralight smuggling planes.
Meanwhile, Texas is building a navy. Along the Rio Grande, Texas state police have deployed armored gunboats to patrol the Rio Grande. This was after an American citizen was shot and killed in September 2010 by "pirates" while vacationing on the Falcon Lake reservoir, which shares a border with Mexico. State police also fear that shootouts between the army and the Zetas on Mexico's side of the border risk spilling over.
That's a bit of an exaggeration. The homeland is much more secure when compared to the porous Mexico-Guatemala border which the Zetas learn to exploit, and the relative weakness of Guatemala's police and legal institutions that allowed a major crime wave to thrive. The odds of the Zetas roaming around in Oklahoma in convoys of armored trucks, where they would quickly be found out, is a poor strategy. Selling drugs, though, and laundering the millions of dollars in proceeds through front businesses – well, that's a lot harder to spot.