The long wait for Osiel Cárdenas Guillén is over. The 57-year-old drug trafficker, historical leader of the Gulf Cartel and a key figure in the rise of Los Zetas to the top leagues of the criminal world, was released this Friday after serving a 21-year prison sentence, according to the United States authorities. Also known as El Ingeniero or El Mata Amigos, Washington accused him of commanding a vast criminal empire that moved tons of marijuana and cocaine, made millions in profits and sowed terror on both sides of the border during the 2000s.
Cárdenas Guillén was captured in March 2003 in the middle of a shootout that rained fire for hours in the border city of Matamoros (Tamaulipas), his hometown and main base of operations. He had been at the head of the Gulf Cartel for at least five years, which has historically dominated the drug routes that enter through southern Texas. The origins of the organization date back to the years of prohibition and the whiskey trade in the 1930s, but its presence catapulted after they sealed a protection pact with law enforcement in Mexico and an alliance with the Cali Cartel of Colombia in the late 1990s. The Mexican press claims that Cárdenas Guillén earned the nickname “Gulf Cartel” The Friend Killer for being behind the murder of Salvador Gómez Herrera, one of his closest allies and former head of the criminal organization.
The engineer started from the bottom: he first worked for federal police, training dogs trained to detect drugs, until he rose through the ranks of the criminal group as one of its top lieutenants. At the time of his downfall he was considered the most powerful drug lord in Mexico, with more than 300 men in charge of his security. “A lot was already happening with him,” declared General Clemente Vega, Secretary of National Defense, when confirming the arrest. The arrest occurred more than two years before the start of the war against drugs that has left hundreds of thousands dead in the last two decades in Mexico.
The drug lord spent four years in the maximum security prison of Almoloya de Juárez (State of Mexico), the same prison from which Joaquín escaped. El Chapo Guzmán in 2015. Despite being behind bars, he remained at the head of the cartel through his lawyers. The state of Tamaulipas, his main stronghold, was one of the most coveted territories by rival cartels due to its proximity to the United States and its 370-kilometer border with Texas. That was what led him to recruit a group of special forces soldiers as hitmen in the late 1990s: Los Zetas, who burst into Mexico’s criminal geopolitics as the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel.
Cárdenas Guillén was considered a particularly violent criminal boss, who ruled the cartel with an iron fist. The United States also accused him of the attempted kidnapping and murder of a DEA agent in 1999, of an undercover FBI agent who was caught by his men, and of threatening a Texas agent who prevented the arrival of almost a ton of marijuana. The boss also had a knack for business and money laundering, as he commanded a large drug distribution network that extended to large cities such as Houston and Atlanta. During the boom years, he brought in between four and six tons of cocaine each month. He earned $41 million in a three-and-a-half-month period in the Atlanta metropolitan area alone.
The White House had already had him under its radar since the early 1990s, but it did not formally charge him until 2000. He had to wait seven more years for his extradition to Texas. It was in 2010 when he pleaded guilty to five charges of drug trafficking, money laundering and assaulting a federal agent. The judge sentenced him to 25 years in prison, four of which he served in Mexico and 21 in various US prisons, as well as a fine of 50 million dollars. His last stop was the Terre Haute penitentiary in Indiana, where he was transferred in 2020. In Mexico, the alliance between the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas, who introduced martial structure and discipline to their old allies, broke down the same year he was sentenced. The breakup came after several years of tensions, ignited by the murder of Ezequiel Cárdenas alias Tony Stormhis brother, accusations of treason and the rise of the Zetas themselves, who became one of the most powerful actors in the early years of Felipe Calderón’s presidency (2006-2012) and the war on drugs.
The payment of the million-dollar fine was an act of “poetic justice,” in the words of the US authorities. Just over $29 million was allocated to 12 police corporations in Texas who worked for more than 10 years to see him fall. Each police chief posed in 2012 with a giant check, in sums ranging from $1.1 to $5.9 million. Cárdenas Guillén hid mountains of cash in basements and hiding places: the US justice system made at least 10 different seizures during the investigations, the largest for $4.5 million. Juan Jesús Guerrero Chapa, known as the drug lawyer and a key figure in managing its finances, was killed in 2013 outside a Texas shopping mall, in revenge after it was revealed that he had collaborated with the United States.
The noose around El Ingeniero’s inner circle has tightened since his arrest, including his family. Osiel Cárdenas Jr., his son, pleaded guilty to arms trafficking in 2022 and was sentenced last year to nine years in prison. Rafael Cárdenas, his nephew, was sentenced to 20 years for drug trafficking and money laundering in 2014. José Alfredo Cárdenas The Accountanthis nephew and alleged leader of the Gulf Cartel, was arrested in 2022 as he left an amusement park in Mexico City. After multiple delays, a judge gave the green light to his extradition this month, although it still needs to be approved by the Mexican Foreign Ministry. Two sons of El Contador, Alan Alexis and Axel Alfredo Cárdenas, were accused of the kidnapping of four US citizens in Matamoros last year.
The sentence against Cárdenas Guillen includes five years of supervised release in the United States and it has been reported that he remains in the custody of immigration authorities. In the next few hours it will be decided whether he will remain in the United States or be deported to Mexico, where he has several judicial proceedings and arrest warrants in force. In February he obtained an injunction to avoid being arrested for arms trafficking in a case that dates back to 2003. Having served his term on U.S. soil, all eyes are on his pending accounts south of the border.
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