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El Parece

@ElParece

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This is Humberto Moreira, the former PRI Governor of Coahuila, Mexico. Moreira was governor of the state from 2005-2011. He's currently out on bail awaiting trial for money laundering charges.

During his term as governor, Coahuila was home to some of the worst violence in the years that Los Zetas, the former Mexican air-mobile infantry-turned-criminal organization, were active. Coahuila abuts the TX border from Hidalgo to Texas' Big Bend.

In 1985 during the Reagan Administration, the United States Geological Survey published the results of an assessment they had done of the natural hydrocarbon resources in northeastern Mexico in the states of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas.

The survey concluded that, as had already been known and confirmed with productive wells in the area, "giant" natural gas, coal and potentially oil deposits were present primarily in the Burgos and Sabinas basins throughout northeastern Mexico.

In 2003-2004, Pemex made several large discoveries of natural gas about 50-70 km north of Monclova, Coahuila. These findings attracted the interest of several international petroleum companies, including Repsol the Spanish-Argentine company and Petrobras, a Brazilian company.

In 2005, PRI party member and former mayor of Saltillo, Humberto Moreira, is elected governor of Coahuila and serves until 2011, when he is named president of the PRI party in Mexico.

The real story begins in 1946 immediately following World War II, when US foreign policy goal number one becomes the "containment" of the USSR. In 1946, the US begins a program known as the School of the Americas providing counterinsurgency training to Latin American forces.

The program is originally located in the Panama Canal Zone but is later relocated to Ft. Benning, Georgia in 1984. Skipping a lot, but fast forward to 1990 after the supposed end of the Cold War. US foreign policy priority number one becomes the War on Drugs.

Sometime in probably the early 1990s, the US hosts around 120 elite Mexican Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE) soldiers at the School of the Americas at Ft. Benning. The identities of these soldiers has yet to be officially and publicly verified.

In ~95-97, 350 GAFE soldiers are ordered in to Tamaulipas to combat the regional drug trafficking org. the Cártel de Golfo (CDG). The story goes that in 1999, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén (below), the head of the CDG, enlists the services of several GAFE soldiers to serve as enforcers.

Cárdenas wanted highly trained enforcers to help him maintain control over his organization and deter rivals. Four of the original core member of Los Zetas are known to be former GAFE soldiers, including Arturo Gúzman Decena (aka Z-1) and Heriberto Lazcano (aka Z-3)

From 1999-2009, Los Zetas expand in number and take territory throughout the country. In December 2006, PAN President Felipe Calderón begins a full-scale military offensive against drug trafficking organizations and all hell breaks loose. The number of homicides skyrockets.

In January 2010, LZ formally split ties with CDG and begin an offensive throughout Mexico, or so the story goes. The most violent years in Mexico's history up to that time follow, peaking in 2011. Some of the worst violence is in Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas.

Too many atrocities to list here, but one of the worst happens in Allende, a small town southwest of Piedras Negras. There's a long article about it by ProPublica that's worth reading. The story goes that after sharing intelligence with Mexican officials, the info leaks to Z-40.

Z-40 is this man, Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, one of the high ranking members of Los Zetas. He's a brutal leader and members of his family and smuggling network still control criminal activity in Nuevo Laredo but have since changed branding to Cártel de Noreste (CDN)

The story is that the DEA receives intel from a member of LZ that they bust, the guy flips and hands over the IMSI number (or something like that) for Z-40's phone. The DEA passes the intel along to the head office in Mexico City, who pass it along to Mexican law enforcement.

The police have problems with corruption, the information makes it's way to Z-40, who goes after the family and neighbors of the informant and his crew in Allende and the surrounding area. They bulldoze houses and an unknown exact number of people disappear.

In all, around 300 people are thought to have been murdered over the course of several days, their bodies destroyed in barrels filled with diesel fuel, and their houses looted and demolished. Dozens of calls to emergency services, firefighters arrive but are turned away by LZ.

The official story is that the police in the area were complicit, and the corruption in Mexico and impunity of the criminal organizations is perfectly illustrated by this example. The truth is we'll probably never know for certain what exactly happened.

From 2009-2013, very little information even made its way out to the rest of the world. Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas, where some of the worst violence of those years was, were virtual dead zones. A code of silence was brutally enforced.

In 2009, under the orders of Gov. Humberto Moreira, several special security forces are created in Coahuila, including Grupo de Armas y Tactical Especiales (GATE) Grupo de Reacción Operativa Metropolitana (GROM).

From 2009 until 2014, more than 8000 people disappear in Coahuila. Many are detained by GATE forces in front of there families never to be seen again. At least 49 cases of disappearances by GATE have been documented. These are only the few families brave enough to speak out.

But the distinction between criminal organization and State was anything but clear in Coahuila from 2009-2014. According to testimony from one high ranking member of Los Zetas, there was direct collusion with the government and police of Humberto Moreira. mexiconewsdaily.com/news/more-test…

According to testimony, Los Zetas conspired directly with the governor, other politicians, police, ranchers and businessmen. In exchange for $2 million US/month, Moreira permitted Los Zetas to operate with impunity.

According to testimony, "[t]he arrangement was: we protected them and we murdered, kidnapped, stole and extorted people they singled out. In exchange, we had the freedom to carry on with our activities throughout the state.”

Los Zetas in Coahuila acted as an extension of the State, carrying out targeted attacks on behalf of Moreira and his associates. Which brings us back to the Allende Massacre. This supposed retaliation against an informant was unlike anything seen before or since.

Between March and April of 2011, Los Zetas unleashed terror and destruction throughout Northern Coahuila in and around Allende. They killed entire families, demolished homes and displaced hundreds of people from where they had been living. In effect, they cleared the land.

That land happens to be worth millions to the landowners and billions to the companies with the capability of extracting the coal, natural gas and oil found in the deposits on those landowners' properties.

What is unique and innovative about the way that Los Zetas operated was that they were the first group to use advanced military techniques in weapons, small group tactics, communications, countersurveillance, PsyOps, and more which they had learned as GAFE soldiers.

Los Zetas used the training the GAFE soldiers had received at Ft. Benning and in Mexico to operate as a decentralized paramilitary force throughout the country to take over almost the entire eastern portion of the country.

The amount of territory they were able to take at the height of their power, according to some, made them the largest and most powerful criminal organization in Mexico at one point.

In addition to innovative tactics, Los Zetas were the first criminal org. to diversify their revenue sources into just about every legal and illicit business in Mexico, including illegal mining, fuel theft, human trafficking, illegal logging, and extortion.

The operational model that Los Zetas were the first criminal organization to use has since become standardized and is followed by almost every group in the country. The Los Zetas model is also one of the primary reasons Calderón started the militarized Drug War in Mexico.

Calderón's Militarized Drug War and the US and Mexican Kingpin Strategy of targeting the management and leadership of criminal organizations has resulted in dozens of smaller factions fighting for control over territory throughout MX, with new record levels of violence every year

In 2010 after the murder of the journalist Valentin Valdes, the third in northern Mexico in less than 3 weeks, the editor of the Coahuilan newspaper Zocalo announced it would no longer cover narco violence. There were 22 attacks against journalists and news orgs in the LZ years.

The violence and insecurity caused by the Los Zetas criminal paramilitary model, and the militarized Drug War that began in 2007, have been devastating for Mexico. For the security industry, arms manufacturers, transnational energy companies and others, it has been a windfall.