The Gulf Cartel is one of Mexico’s oldest criminal groups. In its heyday, its boss, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, was considered the country’s most powerful underworld leader. The group has lost territory and influence in recent years as it has splintered into several different rival factions.
But those factions still control significant areas of the US-Mexico border near the Gulf of Mexico. In recent years, factions of the group have profited greatly from smuggling a growing number of migrants across the border. In addition, their strategic position at several key crossing points has long given them an advantage for smuggling drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine into the United States, as well as high-powered weapons and cash back into Mexico.
History
The Gulf Cartel’s (Cartel del Golfo – CDG) origins can be traced to 1984, when Juan García Abrego assumed control of his uncle’s drug trafficking business, then a relatively small-time marijuana and heroin operation. García Abrego brokered a deal with the Cali Cartel, the Colombian mega-structure that was looking for new trafficking routes into the US market after US law enforcement clamped down on their Caribbean routes. From a business perspective, it was an agreement that proved irresistible for both the Cali Cartel’s leaders, the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers, and for the Mexicans. García Abrego would handle cocaine shipments via the Mexican border, taking on all the risks, as well as up to 50% of the profits.
When García Abrego was arrested and extradited to the United States in January 1996, the Gulf Cartel was reportedly earning billions of dollars in cash each year, which had to be smuggled back across the border in suitcases, jets, and through underground tunnels. This drug trafficking organization built a wide-reaching delivery network across the United States, from Houston to Atlanta, New York, and Los Angeles, but its influence was most acutely seen in its imitators. Other kingpins, like Juárez Cartel leader Amado Carillo Fuentes, alias “El Señor de los Cielos” (Lord of the Skies), quickly followed in García Abrego’s footsteps and began demanding more control over distribution from their Colombian partners instead of settling for a share in the transportation fees. As a result, by the end of the 1990s, Mexican traffickers had built a series of cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin networks that rivaled the operations of the Cali Cartel in size, sophistication, and profit. And by buying out government aides, ministers, federal police, and even the Attorney General’s Office, the Gulf Cartel was soon rivaling the Colombian group in terms of political corruption.
But it took García Abrego’s heir, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, to develop the Gulf Cartel’s military wing in a way neither the Cali or Medellín cartels had envisioned. Cárdenas recruited at least 31 former soldiers of Mexico’s Special Forces to act as security enforcers for at least three times their previous pay. They were expert sharpshooters and were trained to use weapons inaccessible to most of their drug trafficking rivals. Capable of rapid deployment operations in almost any environment, they matched Cárdenas’ more brutal, confrontational leadership style perfectly. Cárdenas was arrested in 2003 after the US State Department placed a $2 million bounty on his head. But the Gulf Cartel’s former armed wing soon began operating as an independent group known as the Zetas, ultimately becoming the Gulf Cartel’s bloodiest and most influential legacy in Mexico’s drug war.
Today, the Gulf Cartel no longer exists as a unified organization. The group has split into many different factions, each vying for control over several criminal economies, primarily in Tamaulipas along the US-Mexico border. The factions include the Scorpions, Cyclones, Rojos, Metros, and Panthers. These groups utilize their control of the border to engage in drug trafficking, arms trafficking, and migrant smuggling, among other criminal enterprises. While the Scorpions/Cyclones faction arguably holds the most significant power, the golden era of the Gulf Cartel first under García Abrego and then under Cárdenas is long gone.
Leadership
After Cárdenas’ extradition to the United States in 2007, Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez, alias “El Coss,” was believed to be leading the group’s day-to-day operations, until he was captured in September 2012. Cárdenas’ brother, Antonio Cárdenas Guillén, alias “Tony Tormenta,” had handled the cartel’s drug trafficking business until he was gunned down in November 2010.
The arrest of El Coss left the Gulf Cartel without any clear successor and began a period of unstable leadership for the group.
In January 2013, one of the contenders to succeed El Coss, David Salgado, alias “El Metro 4,” was murdered by unknown assassins.
Mario Ramirez Treviño, alias “X20,” a hitman and internal rival of Salgado, briefly took the organization’s top spot following the murder. He was later arrested in Tamaulipas in August 2013 in a Mexican army operation following the capture of 24 members of his group a week earlier.
As with the arrest of previous leadership, his arrest left another power vacuum in the increasingly fragmented cartel.
Eventually, Julián Manuel Loisa Salinas, alias “El Comandante Toro,” assumed leadership of the group and commanded a network of hitmen in the border town of Reynosa in the Gulf Cartel’s traditional hub of Tamaulipas. However, Loisa Salinas was gunned down by Mexico’s federal security forces in April of 2017. The following month, the Mexican army captured yet another Gulf Cartel leader, José Antonio Romo López, alias “La Hamburguesa,” again throwing the leadership of the group into uncertainty.
José Alfredo Cárdenas Martínez, alias “El Contador,” the nephew of former cartel capo Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, was the only one of the group’s leaders that remained. However, his tenure was also cut short by authorities. Mexican forces arrested him in 2018 and again in 2019, but a judge freed him both times after ruling there was not enough evidence to charge him. In 2022, the Marines arrested him for a final time. The United States later requested his extradition to face drug trafficking charges in Texas..
These constant changes in leadership went hand-in-hand with the group’s fragmentation. In order to project its influence and cover territory, the Gulf Cartel often formed relationships with local gangs. Amid law enforcement pressure, leadership voids, and constant violence, local groups became more independent, continuing their control of illicit economies.
It is unclear where exactly the group’s leadership stands now, as fragmentation has made leaders more difficult to discern. In January 2024, the Mexican Navy captured José Alberto García Vilano, alias “La Kena,” who had been the leader of the Gulf Cartel’s Scorpions faction in Matamoros. US and Mexican authorities have identified Armando López Garcés, alias “El Pajarito,” as La Kena’s likely successor in Matamoros to lead the Scorpions, which is the group’s most formidable criminal faction due in large part to an alliance they have maintained with the Cyclones.
In the United States, the infamous former Gulf Cartel leader, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, is set to be released from prison on August 30, 2024. However, it is unlikely his departure will have any impact on the group’s operations in Mexico.
Geography
The Gulf Cartel’s traditional center of operations is in the northeastern border state of Tamaulipas, with its most important operational bases in the border cities of Matamoros and Reynosa. Control of these cities is critical from an operational and financial standpoint, facilitating the group’s control over the flow of arms, drugs, and migrants.
As it splintered, the group’s reach within Mexico became more limited, with factions primarily based out of Tamaulipas. However, some splinter groups are also present in parts of San Luís Potosí and Nuevo León, although they have a very limited presence elsewhere in Mexico.
In recent years, the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG) has expanded into Tamaulipas and threatened the Gulf Cartel’s control in key municipalities across the northern part of the state, such as Miguel Alemán, Camargo, Diaz Ordaz, and Reynosa, but also in San Fernando and Victoria.
Allies and Enemies
In April 2010, the federal police confirmed that there was an alliance between the Familia Michoacana and the Gulf Cartel against their common rival, the Zetas, which had been pushing aggressively into the Gulf’s traditional stronghold in Tamaulipas.
It was little surprise to crime watchers in Mexico. The Gulf Cartel has a violent history of seeing former allies turn against it. A previous alliance that had been brokered in prison between Cárdenas and Benjamín Arellano Félix, one of the heads of the Tijuana Cartel, held for about a year until the agreement broke down in 2005, leading to another outbreak of killings on the border. Another temporary division of territory with the Sinaloa Cartel fell apart in 2007, causing havoc nationwide.
Today, factions of the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas often engage in open warfare in Tamaulipas. The multitude of groups are constantly forming shifting alliances and developing new rivalries, making it difficult to discern the leadership structures of each group. That said, the Scorpions and Cyclones have maintained an alliance in recent years to fend off incursions from other offshoots of both the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas. But the CJNG has sought to expand into the area, leading to concerns of more violence as it challenges remnants of the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas.
However, the reality on the ground is less clear. While some analysts and security experts believe the CJNG’s invasion of Tamaulipas is all but a sure thing despite the Gulf Cartel’s deep historical roots here, others say the situation is more nuanced and caution that the home team almost always has the upper hand.
Prospects
The Gulf Cartel is far from the organization it once was. Still, despite the fact that the Gulf Cartel is very fractured and divided, it continues to have a lot of power and control.
This power was established decades ago, and one family, the Cárdenas, has helped maintain it. Even after several debilitating arrests in recent years, the family is still pulling the strings. However, internal power struggles continue to plague the group.The Gulf Cartel also faces significant pressure from US authorities due to its presence along the border and its involvement in drug trafficking and migrant smuggling.Additionally, in March 2023, four US citizens were kidnapped in Matamoros by alleged members of the Scorpions faction of the Gulf Cartel. Two of the four were killed, sparking outrage in the United States.
As two high-ranking members of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told InSight Crime, the Gulf Cartel is still public enemy number one on the US-Mexico border.
