Zetas' next boss may be worse than the one just killed

A tomb that was allegedly built by Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, leader of the Zetas, stands at a cemetery in the neighborhood of Tezontle in Pachuca, Mexico, Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2012. The tomb is a small scale copy of a church in Tezontle, which at one point had a plaque naming Lazcano as the donor. Mexico's Navy says fingerprints confirm that cartel leader Lazcano, an army special forces deserter, was killed Sunday, Oct. 7, 2012 in a firefight with marines in the northern state of Coahuila on the border with the Texas. (AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini) less A tomb that was allegedly built by Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, leader of the Zetas, stands at a cemetery in the neighborhood of Tezontle in Pachuca, Mexico, Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2012. The tomb is a small scale copy ... more Photo: Alexandre Meneghini, Associated Press Photo: Alexandre Meneghini, Associated Press Image 1 of / 11 Caption Close Zetas' next boss may be worse than the one just killed 1 / 11 Back to Gallery

The killing this week of Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, leader of the Zetas drug cartel, could be the biggest victory in Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s war against the narcos.

But Lazcano’s death is surrounded by controversy, a cartel commando unit apparently stole Lazcano’s body from a mortuary, and it paves the way for another killer to assume control of one of the country’s largest and most ruthless criminal organizations.

The Mexican navy said Monday that Lazcano, a former Mexican special forces soldier who helped found the Zetas in the late 1990s, likely was one of two people killed over the weekend in the border state of Coahuila.

Citing fingerprint matches, officials confirmed early Tuesday that marines had killed Lazcano in a firefight Sunday afternoon.

The Mexican government has taken down two dozen of its 37 most-wanted narcos, but none as powerful or as high-profile as Lazcano, who for years was the Zetas’ top commander, said Mike Vigil, former chief of international operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

“I think, without question, Lazcano is the crown jewel of Calderón’s efforts against the drug trade,” Vigil said.

But the victory faces scrutiny, coming less than two months before Calderón leaves office and after his party lost this year’s presidential election amid accusations that his use of the military against the cartels was ineffective, resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and created widespread human-rights abuses.

Armed men stole Lazcano’s body early Monday from an unguarded funeral home in the town of Sabinas, a coal industry community in the high desert country southwest of Eagle Pass. Officials didn’t offer an explanation of why the body was left unattended, but published photos Tuesday were said to be those of Lazcano’s body.

“There’s something weird about the narrative,” Alejandro Hope, a former senior analyst at Mexico’s equivalent of the CIA and an expert on organized crime, wrote Tuesday on his blog, Plata o Plomo (Silver or Lead). “Why was El Lazca almost alone and badly armed?”

Meanwhile, another powerful figure wanted on murder charges in Texas and known for his brutality is in a position to take over the cartel.

Miguel Treviño Morales, known by his radio call number “El 40,” is the Zetas second-in-command. He’s now primed to step into the top seat, Vigil said.

Lazcano’s “death means that the next in line will be without question Miguel Treviño ... and he will be the heir apparent,” Vigil said. “Now Lazcano was a brutal task master and extremely violent. However Miguel Treviño is 100 percent more violent than Lazcano ever was.”

The assassin squad

Known by his call sign “Z-3” and the nickname “El Verdugo,” Spanish for “the executioner,” 37-year-old Lazcano was from the central Mexican state of Hidalgo. He donated large amounts of money to a church there and built a massive mausoleum for himself, according to Mexican news reports.

Lazcano was wanted in the U.S. for drug distribution, part of a 2008 indictment that charged all the top leaders of the Zetas and Gulf Cartel.

The indictment details how the two organizations, together known as “The Company” over two years paid millions of dollars in bribes and smuggled tens of thousands of pounds of cocaine. The U.S. government had posted a $5 million reward for him, and the Mexican government had put up $2 million.

Lazcano joined the Mexican army’s special air group, known as GAFES, as a teenager, Vigil said. He was one of about 30 GAFES recruited by then-Gulf Cartel boss Osiel Cárdenas Guillén to be his personal assassin squad.

As the Zetas leaders were killed off, Lazcano rose to the top, Vigil said.

The disappearance of his body is not unprecedented. In 2002, when Mexican soldiers killed Arturo Guzmán Decena, the gang’s original leader, the Zetas made off with his body.

Cárdenas was arrested in 2003. In his absence, the Zetas became a powerful criminal organization engaged in drug trafficking, extortion and kidnapping, but still was part of the Gulf Cartel. That changed in 2010 when the two gangs, which shared territory along the Texas border from Brownsville to Del Rio, split.

“It was under Lazcano’s leadership that he separated or splintered away to the Gulf Cartel, which led to a lot of conflict,” Vigil said.

In the past year, the Mexican military has taken down a series of Cardenas’ successors. As the Gulf Cartel has dwindled, the Zetas have moved in to take their territory.

Internal strife has split the Zetas this year as well, and they’ve been cast by Mexico’s government as the country’s bogeymen. After Zetas killers slew the family of a marine killed in the takedown of another cartel boss in 2009, the gang has been a target of the navy.

The marines, particularly the 1,800-strong 7th Brigade, have become perhaps Washington’s most trusted allies among Mexico’s security forces, often acting on U.S.-supplied intelligence to nab top gangsters.

The navy said Lazcano and a lone companion had attacked a marine patrol that happened upon them as they left a baseball field in the town of Progreso, near Sabinas. Lazcano and the other man opened fire on the marines with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. The marines responded, killing both, officials said.

Lazcano’s companion, who was driving the small pickup in which they were riding, was killed at the wheel, Coahuila state prosecutor Homero Ramos said at a news conference. Lazcano tried to escape but was shot dead about 300 yards from the vehicle, he said.

Next in line

Waiting in the wings to take over is Treviño, a 41-year-old who, unlike every previous leader, never served in the military. He came up through the Nuevo Laredo underworld.

The transition should be smooth, with little violence or impact on the Zetas drug trafficking, Vigil said. The gang brings cocaine into Mexico through the porous border with Guatemala and at the port of Veracruz. Its most valuable crossing point into the U.S. is Laredo, where thousands of commercial trucks go north and south every day.

The Zetas also use the international crossings at Del Rio and Eagle Pass, and in the past have relied on Falcon Lake as a smuggling corridor.

A series of high-profile arrests from the Zetas’ middle management have helped make it unlikely Treviño will face a serious challenger for control of the organization, Vigil said.

Last month, marines in San Luis Potosi arrested a childhood friend of Treviño’s who had posed perhaps the biggest threat to him. Iván Velázquez Caballero blamed Treviño for the arrests of top-level Zetas, and the two capos went to war over the lucrative Nuevo Laredo crossing point. But that ended when Velázquez was arrested along with two bodyguards in a safe house.

Although he appears to have consolidated power, Treviño has other problems. For one, his brother José is in jail in Austin, awaiting trial on money laundering charges.

He’s charged with ordering five murders in Laredo in 2005 and 2006. Police there have tied him to nearly a dozen killings.

And according to a search warrant for José Treviño’s horse training facilities in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, another brother, Omar, bragged to an informant that Miguel Treviño has personally killed more than 2,000 people, nearly 400 of them U.S. citizens.

Not many other top cartel bosses have that sort of baggage, said Alonzo Peña, the former deputy director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“He’s the one that the big bull’s eye’s on right now,” Peña said. “It had been Lazcano ... because he was one of the originators (of the Zetas).”

jbuch@express-news.net

Houston Chronicle Staff Writer Dudley Althaus contributed to this report.