Powder Keg: War between Gulf Cartel, Zetas marks one year
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March 07, 2011 1:07 PM
The Brownsville Herald

Situations of risk, caravans, blockades, banners.

Those terms became common refrains in the drug-war lexicon after two of the top criminal organizations in Northern Mexico went to war a year ago.

In late February 2010, the Gulf Cartel and its former ally, the Zetas, began a bloody struggle in northern Tamaulipas for the main drug trafficking routes into South Texas.

A year later, ICE agent Jaime Zapata was killed and fellow agent Victor Avila injured when they were fired upon — allegedly by Zetas — while traveling in the central Mexican state of San Luis PotosÃ*. The death of Zapata, a Brownsville native, triggered a crackdown on organized crime on both sides of the border.

It was a bloody exclamation point on the anniversary of the Zetas-Gulf split, which, according to various sources, was a powder keg waiting to explode.



HISTORY

According to a source with firsthand knowledge of criminal activity in Tamaulipas, the Zetas cartel — which began as the enforcement wing of the Gulf Cartel — broke away from its parent organization after Gulf leaders looked to form a truce with a former enemy: the Sinaloa Cartel.

The source said that by that time, the Zetas gang had strayed from its original objective of enforcement for the Gulf Cartel and had diversified into several criminal enterprises, including kidnapping, extortion and robbery.

In late 2009, Zeta bosses Heriberto “El Lazcaâ€