Los Zetas

The Los Zetas cartel is one the most violent cartels in Mexico. Their tactics include violent intimidation and torture of their rivals and those who refuse to collaborate with them. Los Zetas is also infamous for its beheading tactics. Cartel enforcers from Los Zetas have been known to dump body parts from their victims to public places like schools and bars. Los Zetas used to be a mercenary armed wing of the Gulf Cartel, but Los Zetas got ambitious and turned on its former ally. Currently, the Zetas are now a bitter rival of the Gulf Cartel. The Los Zeta's structure is made of ex-special forces from Guatemalan units known as Kaibiles (their has been cases of the cartel hiring US marines for contract killers). The Los Zetas cartel even has a military based training camp for potential recruits. This makes the cartel a formidable threat to the Mexican government. The Los Zetas are also almost unbelievably heavily armed. One police raid found 540 rifles, 287 hand grenades, 2 anti-tank weapons, and 500,000 rounds of ammunition. Los Zeta attacks have been known to include operatives armed with RPGs, rocket launchers, and even improvised armored fighting vehicles. Their is evidence to suggest that Los Zetas has connections with Hezbollah of Lebanon. Other criminal activities of Los Zetas include Sex trafficking, pirated DVDS, and extortion. One aspect that complicates combating the cartel is that several Mexican policemen often collaborate with the cartel. The History Channel show Gangland episode "to Torture or to Kill" covered a case when Mexican policemen abducted some young American women, and the policemen then sold the girls to some leaders of the Cartel.  As of the airing of the episode, the girls were never recovered. In fact, many of the cartel enforcers in the horrific execution videos are often in police or military uniforms (which I put a gallery in a future post). All in all, the Los Zetas are a homeland threat that the DEA must struggle to deal with the next few decades.