Organized Crime
He served in the Army for seven years and eventually deserted on 27 March 1998, when he was recruited by Osiel Cárdenas Guillén and Arturo Guzmán Decena to form part of Los Zetas, originally set up by former soldiers of the Mexican Army working on the behalf of the Gulf Cartel. After Cárdenas Guillén was arrested and extradited to the United States in 2007, Los Zetas broke relations with the Gulf Cartel in 2010 and rose to become the strongest criminal organization in Mexico, alongside the Sinaloa Cartel. Lazcano was placed as third in command (Z-3), and after the death of Guzmán Decena (Z-1) in 2002 and the capture of Rogelio González Pizaña in 2004, he became the commander.
Under the tutelage of Lazcano, Los Zetas recruited more gunmen into their ranks, many of them former soldiers of the Mexican military and ex-Kaibiles, the Special Forces squadron of the Guatemalan military, former police officers, and street thugs. Lazcano is also accredited for strengthening Los Zetas and creating regional cells that specialized in other crimes besides drug trafficking. Due to his military background, Lazcano instilled a "military culture" in his squadron, designating new recruits with the titles of "lieutenant" and "commander," and training them in military tactics.
By 2008, Lazcano forged an alliance with the brothers of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel and with Vicente Carrillo Fuentes of the Juárez Cartel. Since early 2010, Los Zetas broke relations with their former employers, the Gulf Cartel, causing a violent turf war throughout the border states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo León in northeastern Mexico. The war between these two criminal organizations has left thousands of dead.
Lazcano is suspected of killing hundreds of people, including the journalist Francisco Ortiz Franco, who was assassinated in 2004 in front of his two children as he was leaving a clinic. Lazcano played a particular role in Los Zetas; with his military training, he was able to combine "military precision with stone-hearted criminality." When he was in power, Lazcano would go with his organization into several regions of Mexico, find out who was in charge of the local kidnapping, human trafficking, and extortion rings, and kill them to take over their business. The rest were then told to join or die.
In its peak era, Lazcano's criminal empire consisted of about 10,000 gunmen stretching from the Rio Grande all the way into Central America.
Read more about this topic: Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano
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