That was the testimony of a top lieutenant, given during a recent sentencing hearing in a Plano federal courtroom. The hearing, after which an ex-Zeta was sentenced to life in prison, provided a rare look into the violent cartel responsible for much of the border violence and cocaine that flowed into North Texas between and Several former top Zetas leaders testified over two days under deals cut with prosecutors in exchange for lighter sentences.
The men, some now living quiet lives in the U. Their presence required heavy security inside and outside of the small federal courthouse on Preston Road. In addition to mass murder, he is responsible for criminal racketeering, drug trafficking and the corrupting of Mexican authorities, law enforcement officials say. As head of the Zetas, one of the largest cartels to operate in Mexico, he controlled drug networks extending from Central America to cities throughout the U.
The Zetas were probably the most hated cartel in Mexico, said Howard Campbell, a border anthropologist and drug expert at the University of Texas at El Paso. Known for their theatrical, over-the-top acts of violence, the cartel killed innocent civilians in very public massacres to instill fear in the populace. And one of the worst atrocities the cartel committed in Mexico turned out, for Chavarria, to be an exceptional opportunity, witnesses said. Although little is known about this part of his life, it was here that he first encountered the confines of a jail cell.
In the thenyear-old was charged with evading arrest after running from police in a red and pink Cadillac. He paid a small fine and was released, but in Dallas he developed a cynical outlook on power, money and the demand for illegal drugs, experts have said. After returning to Mexico, his descent into the criminal underworld quickened, first with odd jobs for street gangs, and then as a foot soldier helping cartels smuggle drugs before ultimately becoming a Zeta.
The Zetas were mostly former Mexican military commandos who formed as an elite paramilitary security force for the Gulf Cartel that controlled the Dallas smuggling routes. They split violently from the Gulf Cartel in and went on to become a formidable and ultra-violent drug organization, controlling a wide swath of Mexico from Guatemala to the U. The use of well-trained former soldiers as enforcers was an innovation the Zetas used to good effect as they broke out on their own, Campbell said.
Traditional cartels typically negotiated with top Mexican government and police officials using bribes and other inducements, he said. Richard Clough, a veteran DEA agent, testified that raids of North Texas drug houses in had begun turning up cocaine that originated in Colombian jungle labs with distinctive packaging and labeling linked to the Zetas. Police found the drug in dump trucks, hidden beneath loads of sand; inside truck wheel wells; under dung-lined cattle trucks; and in reserve gas tanks.
Josh Troquille, a Mesquite police sergeant, detailed the case of a minivan stopped in early that was outfitted with an ingenious hydraulic false roof that could be opened and closed from inside to carry drug bundles. Prosecutors played a short video of the U. Coast Guard capturing one.
It was a rare find, Clough said, because crews were given strict orders to sink the vessels by pulling a plug should they be discovered. Couriers were sent back to Mexico in vehicles with millions of dollars in drug proceeds.
Women and the elderly were chosen to drive to try to throw off suspicious police, according to testimony. The bundles of cash arriving weekly in Mexico were also used to bribe politicians, police chiefs, military commanders and judges, witnesses said at the hearing. The Zetas were bold enough to target Americans, too — something cartels avoid because of the trouble it brings. In September , David Hartley was shot and killed by Zetas as he rode a water scooter with his wife on Falcon Lake near the Mexican border.
Police believe the Texas couple got too close to a drug deal. And the Zetas in February ambushed an SUV with diplomatic plates driven by two Homeland Security agents on a busy highway in Mexico, spraying it with gunfire. One of the agents, Jaime Zapata, 32, was killed and the other was wounded. A video showed him clad in camouflage cargo pants and a black polo shirt, striding along a hallway without handcuffs, broad-shouldered and looking calm. In Mexico's brutal drug war, where mutilations and torture are commonplace, it's difficult to claim one gang's brutality rises above the rest.
The Zetas were formed in the late s by former members of the Mexican special forces special air group, known by the Spanish acronym GAFE. Originally hired by Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cardenas Guillen as his personal muscle, they eventually were sent to Nuevo Laredo in the early s to secure that city from the encroaching Sinaloa Cartel. Tovar and a friend had just committed their first U. And he was executing three people. He was cutting their head off. And that's when I met Cuarenta.
Tovar, who testified that he and a group were ordered in to kidnap a rival but that he ended up killing him after the man resisted, also offered testimony that provided a first-hand account of what happened in San Fernando, a small agricultural town in the border state of Tamaulipas where in , bodies were found, many buried in mass graves.
After killing for the Zetas in the U. Other witnesses have testified in other Zeta trials that cartel leaders ordered the dismemberment of rivals, debtors or innocent victims — while alive — who were then dissolved in vats of acid or burned in barrels.
After closing arguments that ended after lunch Tuesday, jurors deliberated the rest of the afternoon, returning the verdict after 5 p. The jury also convicted him of conspiracy to possess a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking, and money laundering conspiracy, each carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. In February, he turned down a plea deal that would have capped his potential sentence at 30 years if he had pleaded guilty to some of the charges in two separate federal drug cases related to cartel drug smuggling operations.
Guillermo Contreras covers federal court and immigration news in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read him on our free site , mySA. Read More.
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