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By DUDLEY ALTHAUS
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle Mexico City Bureau
Nov. 7, 2008, 11:25PM
MEXICO CITY — In a seeming one-two punch against one of Mexico's fiercest criminal syndicates, authorities announced Friday that they had seized one of the largest weapons caches in modern Mexican history and arrested a senior gang leader in a city bordering South Texas.
The blows were struck in Reynosa, on the Rio Grande near McAllen, against the Zetas, gunmen linked to the Gulf Cartel, which operates throughout eastern and central Mexico.
Army troops seized 400 pistols and rifles, 500,000 bullets, 165 grenades, several grenade launchers, six heavy machine guns and an anti-tank rocket launcher.
Assistant Attorney General Marisela Morales said the arsenal "is the largest in the history of Mexico."
One of the largest previous seizures involved a cache of 280 weapons found in 1984, according to the Associated Press.
Mexican officials have long complained that most of the weapons used by the criminal gangs are smuggled in from Texas and other border states.
Federal police also captured Jaime Gonzalez, nicknamed "The Hummer," described as a founder of the Zetas, which were originally composed of former army and policemen.
Operating out of Reynosa, Gonzalez, 37, directed Zeta operations in Mexico City and seven Mexican states, police said. He is a close collaborator to Zeta leaders Heriberto Lazcano and Miguel Treviņo, authorities said. Police said Gonzalez reported to Lazcano.
Gonzalez joined the Mexican army in 1991 and deserted in 1999 to form the Zetas, which have acted as the Gulf Cartel's enforcers. He began his criminal career as the bodyguard for reputed cartel boss Osiel Cardenas, nicknamed "The Friend Killer," who is jailed in Houston awaiting federal trial on drug trafficking charges.
Since Cardenas' extradition last year, the Zetas have been operating on their own, with many of their gunmen drawn from civilian ranks.
The Zetas' battle with gangsters from the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa for control of narcotics smuggling routes into Texas at Laredo caused most of the violence that shook Nuevo Laredo in 2004 and 2005.
The groups reportedly reached a truce last year and the violence in that area of the border and along the Rio Grande to the Gulf has dramatically decreased this year.
Though the group has been relatively quiet in the Mexican border cities, authorities say the Zetas have racked up a high body count this year in battles with drug rivals in all the states Gonzalez reportedly operated.
A war between the Zetas and a gang called The Family has been raging in the suburbs surrounding Mexico City, claiming dozens of lives, many of them police officers.
Officials have also blamed the Zetas for a Sept. 15 grenade attack on an Independence Day crowd in Michoacan, The Family's home state, which claimed nine lives.
Also Friday, state police in Tabasco, on the lower Gulf Coast, announced they had captured a Zeta-linked band of killers and kidnappers. The band was responsible for a number of recent murders, police said. Those included that of a radio personality in the state capital who was shot Sept. 24 as he was hanging a banner calling for the end to violence.
Underworld violence has killed more than 5,000 people since President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown on Mexico's powerful drug-smuggling gangs upon taking office nearly two years ago.
dudley.althaus@chron.com
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...e/6101324.html
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