Gulf Cartel OG Osiel Cárdenas Released From U.S. Prison

The United States has released Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, the former leader of the Gulf Cartel who founded the Zetas and launched the ultra-violent wars against organized crime that have plagued Mexico since the turn of the century.

After his arrest in Mexico in 2003, he was extradited to the United States in 2007. He eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2010 for drug trafficking and money laundering. He was released on August 30, 2024.

As leader of the Gulf Cartel (Cartel del Golfo – CDG) from approximately 1997 until 2003, when he was captured by Mexican security forces, Cárdenas was one of Mexico’s most powerful drug lords.

SEE ALSO: Osiel Cárdenas Guillén profile

During his leadership, the CDG controlled a massive cocaine and marijuana trafficking empire that rivaled those of other legendary Mexican organized crime groups, including the Sinaloa Cartel. Based in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, the CDG used the 230-mile border with the United States to smuggle tons of drugs into Texas and beyond.

But perhaps Cárdenas’ most significant act as CDG leader was the creation of the Zetas, an armed force made up of deserters from an elite unit of the Mexican military. The group, which began as an armed wing of the CDG, professionalized Mexico’s gangland warfare by unleashing an arms race and introducing a kind of brutal violence never before seen in the country.

SEE ALSO: Golf Cartel Profile

“He’s probably the most influential, but not the most famous, narco-leader in Mexico,” Michael Deibert, who wrote a book about the CDG, told InSight Crime.

It is still unclear what exactly will happen to Cárdenas after his release. If he is deported to Mexico, he will likely face charges related to organized crime in Mexico.

He no longer has any links to the CDG, which has fragmented into smaller groups since his imprisonment. However, the Cárdenas family remains a powerful force in the Tamaulipas criminal arena.

InSight Crime Analysis

Cárdenas’ extreme ambition fueled the growth of the CDG into one of Mexico’s most powerful criminal organizations. But his founding of the Zetas changed Mexico’s criminal landscape—and perhaps the country itself—forever.

“He was the architect of extreme violence… His methods became the blueprint for other cartels in Mexico,” Mike Vigil, a former senior official with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), told InSight Crime.

In 1997, Cárdenas began building the Zetas to protect the CDG’s criminal empire from violent rivals and to expand the group’s territory. He hired 31 members of the Mexican Army’s Airborne Special Forces Group (Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales – GAFES), some of whom had trained with the U.S. military.

Originally led by Arturo Guzmán Decenas, alias “Z1,” the Zetas brought a military capability to the war effort in Mexico and popularized shock tactics including beheading, flaying, and torturing victims.

SEE ALSO: Zetas Profile

Tamaulipas became significantly more violent during his administration and the creation of the Zetas.

Cárdenas’ leadership of the CDG marks “a before and after in organized crime in Tamaulipas,” Marisol Ochoa, an academic and security expert, told InSight Crime.

Although Cárdenas reportedly maintained control of the group while in custody in Mexico following his arrest, the Zetas broke up after his extradition in 2007. Under Heriberto Lazcano, alias “Z3,” the armed wing grew to more than 300 highly trained members.

The height of the Zetas’ power—and their most horrific violence—came after Cárdenas lost control. In August 2010, the group kidnapped and murdered 72 mostly Central American migrants in San Fernando, Tamaulipas.

Less than a year later, authorities discovered another 192 bodies, again in San Fernando, after several buses were hijacked in the area. Zetas members later told authorities that they had forced the victims to fight to the death in gladiatorial combat, forcibly recruiting those who survived.

The escalation of violence sparked by the arrival of the Zetas led other major criminal organizations in Mexico to form their own paramilitary forces, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of violence. The Zetas quickly expanded across much of Mexico and into neighboring Guatemala, but have since collapsed. Some factions of the original group remain, including the Metros and Cyclones, and are fighting with other Zeta factions and CDG descendants for control of criminal markets, primarily in Tamaulipas.

Main photo: Osiel Cárdenas Guillen, the former leader of the Gulf Cartel, handcuffed with agents from the now defunct Federal Bureau of Investigation of Mexico (Agencia Federal de Investigación – AFI). Source: Netnoticias.mx