"El Z43": Hiding in Plain Sight in Mexico City

Translated by Yaqui for Borderland Beat from: Milenio Feb 11, 2018

Identified as the last of the active founder Zetas , the last of the "numbered" of the criminal organization, José María Guízar Valencia, "El Z43" , took refuge six months ago in Mexico City, where he was a regular gambler at horse races at the Hipódromo de las Américas.

That was one of the activities he carried out in the capital city , from where even with his diminished power,  he managed drug trafficking operations and organized crime in the southeast of the country.

"Z 43", for whom the US government offered a reward of $5,000,000 hid in the suite of a hotel in Colonia Roma, for which he paid a monthly rent of 20,000 pesos. Intelligence reports to which Milenio had access, reveal that at least since August 2017, Guízar Valencia had moved to Mexico City, but he did not completely cease his business as head of the Tabasco plaza for the Los Zetas cartel .

                                            Hotel Marabella Colonia Roma, Mexico City

Guizar Valencia sought to pass unnoticed, he was alone, without the security circle with which he normally moved or the escorts and assassins with whom he unleashed a wave of violence in entities such as Veracruz and Chiapas.

"Z 43's" love of horses, which included buying horses and betting on them made him a frequent customer at the Hippodrome, which is in the Miguel Hidalgo delegation.

The federal authorities managed to document the constant visits to the betting area and his other movements, which allowed them to prepare the operation against Guizar Valencia.

Officials said the Zeta's regional leader preferred to hide in Mexico City because it made it easier for him to go unnoticed, contrary to his areas of operations, "where he was known."

Alone, as he returned to his hotel in Colonia Roma, "Z 43" was captured in the street, the last of the "numbered" heads of Los Zetas , the 43rd leader of a story that began with "El Z1", Arturo Guzmán Decena,  who built up the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel in 2001.

For the federal government, 17 years after its creation, the fraction of leaders of the criminal group ended with the capture, without a single shot, of "El Z43" .

It concludes a stage in which several military deserters of the Special Forces Aeromobile Group (Gafes), an elite body of the Army, created the fearsome Zetas and became hit men in the service of capo Osiel Cárdenas Guillén.

In a few years, they achieved a power that made the Barack Obama administration classify them in 2011 as an "unusual and extraordinary threat to the stability of international political and economic systems" due to their degree of dangerousness and violence.

Wedding Party Photo:

A photograph held by Milenio shows Guízar Valencia along with nine "legendary" Zetas who not only met to commit a crime, but also to socialize. The image was captured in 2010, the year in which the violent Zetas were at the top of the drug trafficking scene; they are seen embracing, as great friends or family members. 

The ten "greats" attended the wedding of Salvador Alfonso Martínez Escobedo, "El Ardilla" , in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, in which the godfather was the late Zeta leader Heriberto Lazcano, "El Lazca".

These were times of splendor for these criminals, who in the same year became independent of the Gulf cartel. In 2010 they were no longer the armed wing of the criminal organization, but one more cartel.

Of the men shown in the photo, three of them were killed and seven were captured during operations by federal and military forces.

It is observed from left to right to Francisco Antonio Medina Mejía, "El Quemado" , killed in April 2012; "Commandante Gallo" , who lost his life in January 2012; Fernando Galaviz or Juan Carlos Gutiérrez, "El Pinky" , arrested in March 2013.

Óscar Omar Treviño Morales, "El Z42" , arrested in March 2015; Salvador Alfonso Martínez Escobedo, "El Ardilla" , captured in October 2012; José María Guízar Valencia, "El Z43" , arrested on February 8, 2018.

Carlos Alberto Oliva Castillo, "La Rana" , apprehended in October 2011; Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, "El Z40" , apprehended in July 2013; Mauricio Guízar Cárdenas, El Amarillo , arrested in July 2012 and José Luis Peña Brizuela, "El Pompín" , killed in August 2011.

The fall of each one of them represented the diminution of the Los Zetas power . In recent years "El Z43", Jose Maria Guitar Valencia, was in charge of the Plaza de Tabasco, he turned the southeast into a bastion, from there he  kept active the drug transfer operations from Colombia to the US.

The intelligence reports indicate that he had protection from local authorities to prevent operations, but he also deployed violence in states such as Chiapas and Veracruz.

Extraditable:

Guízar Valencia, also known as "El Charly" and "El Amo" , is  Mexican-American and formed part of the list of 122 priority objectives identified by the federal authorities, and of those 109  have now been neutralized.

The National Security Commissioner, Renato Sales confirmed the arrest of "El Z43" , operator of the transfer of drugs from Colombia to the US and one of the main generators of violence in the southeast region of Mexico and Guatemala.

He explained that the US government has already requested Mexico for his extradition, since "El Z43"  has arrest warrants in Washington, Dallas and Laredo, although he is also accused in Tabasco, Puebla and Chiapas of crimes against health, arms trafficking, organized crime, homicide and kidnapping.

According to Mexican authorities, he was born on November 1, 1979 in Venustiano Carranza, Puebla, and began  drug trafficking in Michoacán in 1998, and  continued in 2001 in Tamaulipas.

In 2003 he began the recruitment of cells to seize the Palenque plaza in Chiapas; which in  2005 expanded its activities to Veracruz and by 2007 he  was in charge of the transport by land of cocaine from Colombia to the US, passing through Guatemala.

Sales Heredia said that Guízar Valencia "established connections with other suppliers in Central and South America, derived from control in the southeast of the country, in 2013 the defendant expanded its operations to the center of the Republic, mainly the state of Puebla."

Note: The claim "El Z43" was born in the state of Puebla contradicts the previously published information by Milenio that Guizar Valencia was born on that same date , Nov 1, 1979 in Tulare California ; see my BB Post on Friday Feb 9, 2018