Golf Cartel

The Gulf Cartel is one of Mexico’s oldest criminal groups. In its heyday, its boss, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, was considered the most powerful leader of the country’s underworld. The group has lost ground and influence in recent years as it split into several rival factions.

But those factions still control key areas of the U.S.-Mexico border near the Gulf of Mexico. In recent years, factions of the group have profited greatly from smuggling growing numbers of migrants across the border. Moreover, their strategic position at several key border crossings has long given them an advantage in smuggling drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine into the United States, as well as high-powered weapons and cash back into Mexico.

History

The origins of the Gulf Cartel (Cartel del Golfo – CDG) can be traced back to 1984, when Juan García Ábrego seized control of his uncle’s drug business, at the time a relatively small marijuana and heroin operation. García Ábrego brokered a deal with the Cali Cartel, the Colombian megastructure that was looking for new smuggling routes into the U.S. market after U.S. law enforcement blocked their Caribbean routes. From a business perspective, it was an arrangement that proved irresistible to both the Cali Cartel’s leaders, the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers, and the Mexicans. García Ábrego would handle cocaine shipments across the Mexican border, assuming all the risk and up to 50% of the profits.

When García Ábrego was arrested and extradited to the United States in January 1996, the Gulf Cartel was reportedly making billions of dollars in cash each year, which it had to smuggle back across the border in suitcases, airplanes, and through underground tunnels. The drug trafficking organization built a sprawling delivery network across the United States, from Houston to Atlanta, New York, and Los Angeles, but its influence was most evident among its impersonators. Other leaders, such as Juárez Cartel leader Amado Carillo Fuentes, aka “El Señor de los Cielos” (Lord of the Sky), soon followed in García Ábrego’s footsteps and began demanding more control over distribution from their Colombian partners, rather than accepting a cut of the transportation costs. As a result, by the late 1990s Mexican traffickers had built a series of cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin networks that rivaled the Cali cartel’s operations in size, sophistication and profits. And by buying up government employees, ministers, federal police and even the attorney general’s office, the Gulf cartel soon matched the Colombian group in political corruption.

But it was García Ábrego’s heir, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, who developed the Gulf Cartel’s military wing in a way that neither the Cali nor Medellín cartels had imagined. Cárdenas recruited at least 31 former Mexican Special Forces soldiers to serve as security guards for at least triple their previous salaries. They were expert marksmen, trained to use weapons that were out of reach for most of their drug-trafficking rivals. They were able to deploy quickly in almost any environment and were a perfect fit for Cárdenas’s more brazen, confrontational leadership style. Cárdenas was arrested in 2003 after the U.S. State Department placed a $2 million bounty on his head. But the Gulf Cartel’s former armed wing soon began operating as an independent group known as the Zetas, eventually becoming the Gulf Cartel’s bloodiest and most influential legacy in Mexico’s drug war.

Today, the Gulf Cartel no longer exists as a unified organization. The group has split into many different factions, all of which vie for control of various criminal economies, primarily in Tamaulipas along the U.S.-Mexico border. The factions include the Scorpions, Cyclones, Rojos, Metros, and Panthers. These groups use their control of the border to engage in drug trafficking, arms trafficking, and migrant smuggling, among other criminal enterprises. While the Scorpions/Cyclones faction arguably holds the most power, the golden age of the Gulf Cartel, first under García Ábrego and then under Cárdenas, is long gone.

Leadership

After Cárdenas’ extradition to the United States in 2007, Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez, alias “El Coss”, was believed to have been in charge of the group’s day-to-day operations until his capture in September 2012. Cárdenas’ brother, Antonio Cárdenas Guillén, alias “Tony Tormenta”, had handled the cartel’s drug trafficking until he was gunned down in November 2010.

The arrest of El Coss left the Gulf Cartel without a clear successor, leading to a period of unstable leadership within the group.

In January 2013, one of the candidates to succeed El Coss, David Salgado, alias “El Metro 4,” was assassinated by unknown hitmen.

Mario Ramirez Treviño, alias “X20”, a hitman and internal rival of Salgado, briefly took the top position in the organization after the killing. He was later arrested in Tamaulipas in August 2013 during a Mexican army operation following the arrest of 24 members of his group a week earlier.

Like the arrest of the previous leader, his arrest created another power vacuum in the increasingly fragmented cartel.

Eventually, Julián Manuel Loisa Salinas, alias “El Comandante Toro,” took over leadership of the group, heading a network of hitmen in the border city of Reynosa in the Gulf Cartel’s traditional heartland of Tamaulipas. However, Loisa Salinas was gunned down by Mexico’s federal security forces in April 2017. The following month, the Mexican military captured another Gulf Cartel leader, José Antonio Romo López, alias “La Hamburguesa,” throwing the group’s leadership into uncertainty once again.

José Alfredo Cárdenas Martínez, aka “El Contador”, the nephew of former cartel capo Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, was the only leader of the group left standing. However, his term was also cut short by authorities. Mexican forces arrested him in 2018 and again in 2019, but a judge released him both times after ruling there was not enough evidence to charge him. In 2022, the Marines arrested him for the final time. The United States later requested his extradition to face drug trafficking charges in Texas.

These constant changes in leadership went hand in hand with the fragmentation of the group. In order to project its influence and control territory, the Gulf Cartel often formed relationships with local gangs. Amid pressure from law enforcement, leadership gaps, and constant violence, local groups became more independent and maintained their control over illicit economies.

It is unclear where the group’s leadership now stands, as fragmentation has made its leaders harder to identify. In January 2024, the Mexican Navy captured José Alberto García Vilano, alias “La Kena,” who was the leader of the Gulf Cartel’s Scorpions faction in Matamoros. U.S. and Mexican authorities have identified Armando López Garcés, alias “El Pajarito,” as the likely successor to La Kena in Matamoros to lead the Scorpions, the group’s most formidable criminal faction, largely because of an alliance they have maintained with the Cyclones.

In the United States, the notorious former leader of the Gulf Cartel, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, will be released from prison on August 30, 2024. However, his departure is unlikely to have any impact on the group’s activities in Mexico.

Geography

The Gulf Cartel’s traditional center of operations is in the northeastern border state of Tamaulipas, with its main operational bases in the border cities of Matamoros and Reynosa. Control of these cities is crucial from an operational and financial perspective, and facilitates the group’s control over the flow of weapons, drugs, and migrants.

As it fragmented, the group’s reach within Mexico became more limited, with factions based primarily in Tamaulipas. However, some splinter groups also maintain a presence in parts of San Luís Potosí and Nuevo León, although they have a very limited presence elsewhere in Mexico.

In recent years, the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG) has expanded into Tamaulipas, threatening the Gulf Cartel’s control in key municipalities in the north of the state, such as Miguel Alemán, Camargo, Diaz Ordaz and Reynosa, as well as in San Fernando and Victoria.

Allies and enemies

In April 2010, the Federal Police confirmed that an alliance existed between the Familia Michoacana and the Gulf Cartel against their common rival, the Zetas, who were aggressively advancing on the Gulf’s traditional stronghold of Tamaulipas.

It was no surprise to crime watchers in Mexico. The Gulf Cartel has a violent history of former allies turning against it. An earlier alliance brokered in prison between Cárdenas and Benjamín Arellano Félix, one of the leaders of the Tijuana Cartel, lasted about a year before the agreement fell apart in 2005, leading to a new outbreak of killings along the border. Another temporary split of territory with the Sinaloa Cartel fell apart in 2007, causing chaos across the country.

Today, factions of the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas often engage in open warfare in Tamaulipas. The multitude of groups are constantly forming shifting alliances and developing new rivalries, making it difficult to distinguish the leadership structures of each group. That said, the Scorpions and Cyclones have maintained an alliance in recent years to fend off incursions from other offshoots of both the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas. But the CJNG has attempted to expand into the area, leading to concerns about increased violence as it challenges remnants of the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas.

The reality on the ground, however, is less clear. While some analysts and security experts believe that the CJNG invasion of Tamaulipas is almost certain, despite the Gulf Cartel’s deep historical roots here, others say the situation is more nuanced and warn that the home team almost always has the upper hand.

Outlook

The Gulf Cartel is far removed from the organization it once was. Yet, despite being highly fragmented and divided, the Gulf Cartel still wields a great deal of power and control.

This power was established decades ago, and one family, the Cárdenas, has helped maintain it. Even after several grueling arrests in recent years, the family still pulls the strings. However, internal power struggles continue to plague the group. The Gulf Cartel also faces significant pressure from U.S. authorities due to its presence along the border and its involvement in drug trafficking and migrant smuggling. Additionally, in March 2023, four U.S. citizens were kidnapped in Matamoros by suspected members of the Gulf Cartel’s Scorpions faction. Two of the four were killed, sparking outrage in the United States.

As two senior members of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told InSight Crime, the Gulf Cartel is still public enemy number one on the U.S.-Mexico border.