Rafael Norma
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A helicopter crew member from the US Office of Air and Marine flies over the Rio Grande. The helicopters patrol day and night searching for drug and people smugglers. Photograph: John Moore/Getty
The Zetas are, accordingly, a brand new form of cartel – paramilitary, insurgent, ruthless and, unlike Guzmán, at war with the state rather than ready to do business with it. While Guzmán belongs to the old system of paternalistic capitalism, Los Zetas were born of the free market, with perfect understanding of the opportunist new forces that pertain in the supposedly “legal” economy. The Zetas operate hotels in Acapulco and Yucatan, they run prostitution and people-trafficking rackets, they run an oil exportation business into the energy hub of Houston, Texas.
They have all but taken over the smuggling of migrants from Central America into the US along the new crossing points of the Rio Grande valley. In October 2010 one of the worst massacres of the entire narco war had nothing to do with drugs. At a farm in the San Fernando region of Tamaulipas, the bodies of 72 people were found – all Central Americans aiming to cross into the US, who were summarily killed for, it seems, failing to pay extra extortion money.
While Guzmán nurtured his terrain and loyalty like a feudal lord beloved by his people, Los Zetas rule by brute, brazen terror. While the name of Guzmán is on everybody’s lips throughout Sinaloa and terrain under his control, sometimes in fear, often in praise, it is striking how in cities such as Ciudad Victoria and Veracruz – fortresses of the Zetas, entirely under their control – the cartel’s name is never breathed nor whispered.
During spring 2011, mass graves were found containing 167 bodies of those who had previously disappeared from all over Mexico, over weeks and sometimes months. Families of the missing were obliged to arrive at the morgue in Matamoros, on the border opposite Brownsville, Texas, give their DNA and hope in vain that they would not be matched to their lifeless loved ones. The authorities surmised that the victims were passengers on long-distance buses hijacked by the Zetas, and the people aboard press-ganged as part of a recruitment drive. The dead were, it was assumed, those who did not want to join as runners or whatever for the narco soldiers.
Most had been shot, but some were incinerated alive; women had been violated before being murdered. Most appalling and ominous, though, is that the vice-like grip of the Zetas on their territory means that these executions and mass burials had been carried out in open country, the byways heaving with bodies, without a word leaking out to police, authorities or military with a mind to investigate, nor any member of the public prepared to report them. Not even the bus companies, even though the unclaimed baggage of the dead was piling up at the terminus in Matamoros.
While Chapo will give generously to the church, mothers’ day, local schools, the Zetas are more brutal in their accounting. There’s an adage in Mexico that while Guzmán enjoys a good lunch with the politicians, and they come to an arrangement over what to do, the Zetas call the politicians and tell them what to do. The politicians obey, because they know the Zetas know where they live and their children go to school.
While the old-guard narcos might do business over lunch or in smart hotels, the new guard control the internet. The Zetas post their atrocities on YouTube, by way of recruitment posters; it is a matter of conjecture whether they got the idea from al-Qaida – recently inherited by Islamic State (Isis) – or the other way around. Patrick Cockburn, author of a recent book on Isis, reports that a recent video claiming to show a beheading by the jihadist group was in fact not their handiwork at all: it was shot in Mexico, an execution by the Zetas.
While the mafia old guard might hide a body in the concrete of a flyover, the new organisations make their brutality as public as possible. As the chief forensic examiner for the police in Tijuana, Hiram Muñoz, puts it so eloquently, as he searches for meanings and messages in the mode of mutilations: “The difference is this: in what I would call normal times, I kill you and make you disappear. Now, they are shouting it, turning it into a grotesque carousel around their territory. In normal conditions, the torture and killing is private, now it is a public execution using extreme violence, and this is significant.”
A helicopter crew member from the US Office of Air and Marine flies over the Rio Grande. The helicopters patrol day and night searching for drug and people smugglers. Photograph: John Moore/Getty
The Zetas are, accordingly, a brand new form of cartel – paramilitary, insurgent, ruthless and, unlike Guzmán, at war with the state rather than ready to do business with it. While Guzmán belongs to the old system of paternalistic capitalism, Los Zetas were born of the free market, with perfect understanding of the opportunist new forces that pertain in the supposedly “legal” economy. The Zetas operate hotels in Acapulco and Yucatan, they run prostitution and people-trafficking rackets, they run an oil exportation business into the energy hub of Houston, Texas.
They have all but taken over the smuggling of migrants from Central America into the US along the new crossing points of the Rio Grande valley. In October 2010 one of the worst massacres of the entire narco war had nothing to do with drugs. At a farm in the San Fernando region of Tamaulipas, the bodies of 72 people were found – all Central Americans aiming to cross into the US, who were summarily killed for, it seems, failing to pay extra extortion money.
While Guzmán nurtured his terrain and loyalty like a feudal lord beloved by his people, Los Zetas rule by brute, brazen terror. While the name of Guzmán is on everybody’s lips throughout Sinaloa and terrain under his control, sometimes in fear, often in praise, it is striking how in cities such as Ciudad Victoria and Veracruz – fortresses of the Zetas, entirely under their control – the cartel’s name is never breathed nor whispered.
During spring 2011, mass graves were found containing 167 bodies of those who had previously disappeared from all over Mexico, over weeks and sometimes months. Families of the missing were obliged to arrive at the morgue in Matamoros, on the border opposite Brownsville, Texas, give their DNA and hope in vain that they would not be matched to their lifeless loved ones. The authorities surmised that the victims were passengers on long-distance buses hijacked by the Zetas, and the people aboard press-ganged as part of a recruitment drive. The dead were, it was assumed, those who did not want to join as runners or whatever for the narco soldiers.
Most had been shot, but some were incinerated alive; women had been violated before being murdered. Most appalling and ominous, though, is that the vice-like grip of the Zetas on their territory means that these executions and mass burials had been carried out in open country, the byways heaving with bodies, without a word leaking out to police, authorities or military with a mind to investigate, nor any member of the public prepared to report them. Not even the bus companies, even though the unclaimed baggage of the dead was piling up at the terminus in Matamoros.
While Chapo will give generously to the church, mothers’ day, local schools, the Zetas are more brutal in their accounting. There’s an adage in Mexico that while Guzmán enjoys a good lunch with the politicians, and they come to an arrangement over what to do, the Zetas call the politicians and tell them what to do. The politicians obey, because they know the Zetas know where they live and their children go to school.
While the old-guard narcos might do business over lunch or in smart hotels, the new guard control the internet. The Zetas post their atrocities on YouTube, by way of recruitment posters; it is a matter of conjecture whether they got the idea from al-Qaida – recently inherited by Islamic State (Isis) – or the other way around. Patrick Cockburn, author of a recent book on Isis, reports that a recent video claiming to show a beheading by the jihadist group was in fact not their handiwork at all: it was shot in Mexico, an execution by the Zetas.
While the mafia old guard might hide a body in the concrete of a flyover, the new organisations make their brutality as public as possible. As the chief forensic examiner for the police in Tijuana, Hiram Muñoz, puts it so eloquently, as he searches for meanings and messages in the mode of mutilations: “The difference is this: in what I would call normal times, I kill you and make you disappear. Now, they are shouting it, turning it into a grotesque carousel around their territory. In normal conditions, the torture and killing is private, now it is a public execution using extreme violence, and this is significant.”
