Taking Down Mexico’s Miguel Treviño Morales: Los Zetos’ Second in Command Targeted for Character Assassination

Taking Down Mexico’s Miguel Treviño Morales: Los Zetos’ Second in Command Targeted for Character Assassination

Miguel Treviño Morales: A Founding Zeta 

Miguel Treviño Morales was born on November 18, 1970 in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico (CNS News, April 13, 2009). He is wanted in Mexico and the U.S. in connection with drug trafficking and murder-related charges. Legal processes against him are ongoing within several U.S. states, including New York, California and Texas (Open Borders, April 3, 2012). In 2009, the U.S. Treasury Department froze his assets under U.S. jurisdiction with regard to his alleged leadership within Mexico’s Los Zetas cartel (Stratfor, July 20, 2009). Widely recognized as the Zetas’ second in command after Herbierto Lazcarto Lazcarto, Treviño is the target of various attacks launched by his enemies. The campaigns against Treviño are intended to degrade his character in the eyes of society as well as to paint him as a traitor in the criminal underworld, including among Zetas. 

One of the recent attacks against Treviño involved a grainy video of carteloperatives arranging dismembered body parts of 49 victims for public display in Cadereyta, Mexico, accompanied by narco-messages dedicating the slayings to the Gulf Cartel, the Sinoloa Cartel, the military and the government. The messages were allegedly signed by Treviño, Lazcano and “El Loco”. The slayings stoked public outrage, prompting the arrest of the alleged third Zeta co-signatory, Jesus Elizondo Daniel Ramierez (a.k.a. El Loco) (Borderland Beat, May 21, 2012). According to Mexico’s organized crime division, Subprocuraduría de Investigación Especializada en Delincuencia Organizada (SIEDO), Elizondo confessed to having been ordered by Treviño and Lazcano to dump the bodies in Cadereyta with the intention of framing enemy organizations for the atrocity (Stratfor, May 23, 2012).  

Despite the Zetas known willingness to kill military and police officers, and Treviño’s history of publicly displaying mutilated bodies, some people doubted that experienced leaders like Treviño and Lazcano would have openly taunted the Mexican state in conjunction with an atrocity that wasn’t being framed as retaliation for state suppression. And following the slayings, narco-messages appeared which conveyed Zeta acknowledgement of other mass killings but denial of responsibility for the 49 victims. 

There were suspicions that it was the Gulf Cartel, not the Zetas, who mutilated the 49 victims and framed the Zetas for this act. The Gulf Cartel may have also been responsible for another narco-message that appeared on December 6, 2011 in Nuevo Laredo, which claimed Mexico lives under the Zeta regime and that the Mexican Army, Marines and security agencies were incapable of resisting Zeta dominance. [1] The message highlighted the Zetas’ ability to strike in enemy territories, Sinaloa and Guadalajara, as evidence of the cartel’s impunity. The messages were signed with Treviño’s name (Blog Drug Trafficker, December 2, 2011). 

Six days later, additional messages allegedly signed by Treviño denounced the original threats as the work of imposters attempting to provoke a violent response from the Mexican government. The newer messages claimed the Zetas are not terrorists, guerillas, or a regime, and are dedicated solely to their occupation (My San Antonio; Beyond the Border, December 13, 2011). They claimed respect for Mexican and U.S. state authorities, and condemned Zeta operatives who had set afire the Casino Royale in Monterrey, Mexico resulting in over 60 deaths and considerable public outrage (Borderland Beat, December 12, 2011; Blog del Narco, August 31, 2011). They expressed suspicion that someone was trying to ostracize Treviño, but did not state who or why. 

The Gulf Cartel has threatened Treviño directly and attacked his persona through messages signed by the Gulf Cartel as well as videos. In one video, disseminated in late December 2011, alleged Gulf operatives butchered live animals representing various Zeta leaders, including a pig bearing Treviño’s alias (Z-40). In another video, Treviño’s name and alias, as well as the words “killer of women and children,” were scrawled across the body of a captured Zeta who had been interrogated, beaten and garroted. There are also several interrogation videos produced by self-described Gulf Cartel operatives, in which prisoners appear coerced to denounce Treviño personally. 

The theme of Treviño’s treachery has surfaced in narco-ballads; songs that glamorize the narco lifestyle while advertising or insulting reputed crime lords and their organizations. One widely circulated song challenges Los Zetas’ leader Herbierto Lazcano to analyze the puzzle of why so many of Treviño’s subordinates have been captured without a shot while he remains free. It warns Lazcano that Treviño is a Judas who has protected himself by betraying subordinates to authorities, and that he would betray Lazcano to lead the Zetas. Like most drug war propaganda, it is of unknown origin. Lazcano cannot afford to turn a blind eye to Treviño’s activities, nor could he afford to ignore the implications should loss of confidence in Treviño become widespread within Los Zetas. Given that reality, propaganda engineered to damage Treviño’s reputation may not have to be based entirely upon verifiable facts to endanger him within his own organization. 

Violence between Cartels 

Treviño is an original Zeta—one of 31 Mexican Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE) personnel who were bribed by the Gulf Cartel in the late 1990’s to desert their posts in the Mexican Special Forces. Originally the Zetas served as the elite armed wing for the Gulf Cartel and were assigned duties such as intelligence gathering, assassination, torture, and extortion using their military expertise. Gradually however, the Zetas developed organizational independence from Gulf command. Zetas began to recruit elite military personnel from Mexico and Guatemala and ventured into profit-generating activities such as narcotics trafficking, human trafficking, extortion, murder-for-hire, and others without approval from Gulf leadership. 

The arrest of Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cardenas Guillén in 2003 and his eventual extradition to the United States in 2007 triggered a leadership succession, which facilitated the Zetas’ separation from the Gulf Cartel to form their own organization in 2008. Following the split, a vicious struggle ensued for dominance of the Tamaulipas region, which borders Texas and the Gulf of Mexico and hosts key trafficking routs thereby affording disproportionate power to the cartel that controls it. The region, which was previously shared, and which both the Zetas (based in Nuevo Laredo) and the Gulf Cartel (based in Matamoros) consider their home territory, is currently dominated by the Zetas, though warfare continues. 

For the Gulf Cartel, the Zetas’ separation, as well as the humiliation of being overpowered throughout most of their former territory by a treacherous group they founded, created animosity toward the Zetas. The animosity has been expressed through the ongoing Gulf-Zeta conflict has seen extraordinary levels of cruelty, far exceeding what is tactically required to secure a plaza for profit generation. Treviño’s ultra-violent approach, encouraged by the combination of brutality and bribery required to maintain Nuevo Laredo, a key entry point for licit and illicit trade across the U.S.-Mexican border, has contributed considerably to the Zetas’ reputation for preferring bullets of bribes. The Gulf Cartel’s shared proclivity for violence has made the conflict abhorrent. For example, the cartels often produce propaganda aimed at each other, such as publically displayed messages typically accompanied with the bodies of mutilated victims. 

Though his drug trafficking prowess is supported by social and familial networks throughout Eastern Mexico and Texas, Treviño has enemies besides the Gulf Cartel. [2] He is often a contributor to propaganda efforts against other cartels, Mexican government officials, and even civilians blogging about Zeta activities.  

His persona is also a target of similar efforts originating from his other enemies such as the Sinoloa Cartel which has been producing narco-banners directed against Treviño, especially since the rise in violence between the two cartels that began in spring 2012. Although it is in Sinaloa’s long-term interest that the Gulf and Zetas remain occupied with each other, the Sinaloa and Gulf Cartels are currently allied against the Zetas. Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán would have strategic and personal motivation to eventually strike at both organizations, which occupy key territories and have been complicit in murders of his family members. Nevertheless, the Sinoloa Cartel has left mutilations and narco-messages, accusing Treviño and the Zetas of betraying pacts. Allegedly signed by Guzmán, the messages further advertised Treviño’s infamy by stating that Guzmán didn’t get to where he is by being a traitor (U.S. Open Borders, April 3, 2012). 

Implications for Treviño 

While it is impossible to determine the origin of any of the accusations, the troubling aspect for Treviño is that they appear to originate from numerous enemies whose alliances are ephemeral at best, perhaps including the Mexican state, which claims to oppose all cartels. The Zetas have collectively made enemies with the Mexican state and with other cartels. Treviño is an easy target to frame because he has a legacy of violence. The attacks paint Treviño as a traitor in the criminal underworld, including among Zetas which could eventually compromise his ability to lead, or maybe even to survive. 

Notes 

1. Mexican cartels typically seek impunity in their profit-generation, not revolution per se. It is unlikely the Zetas would intentionally represent themselves as a regime.

2. Lisa Campbell, “Los Zetas: Operational Assessment,” Small Wars & Insurgencies, 21:1, 55-80.