The rapid growth of organized crime in Mexico and the government’s response to it have driven an unprecedented rise in violence and impelled major structural economic changes, including the recent passage of energy reform. Los Zetas Inc. asserts that these phenomena are a direct and intended result of the emergence of the brutal Zetas criminal organization in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas. Going beyond previous studies of the group as a drug trafficking organization, Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera builds a convincing case that the Zetas and similar organizations effectively constitute transnational corporations with business practices that include the trafficking of crude oil, natural gas, and gasoline; migrant and weapons smuggling; kidnapping for ransom; and video and music piracy. Combining vivid interview commentary with in-depth analysis of organized crime as a transnational and corporate phenomenon, Los Zetas Inc. proposes a new theoretical framework for understanding the emerging face, new structure, and economic implications of organized crime in Mexico. Correa-Cabrera delineates the Zetas establishment, structure, and forms of operation, along with the reactions to this new model of criminality by the state and other lawbreaking, foreign, and corporate actors. Since the Zetas share some characteristics with legal transnational businesses that operate in the energy and private security industries, she also compares this criminal corporation with ExxonMobil, Halliburton, and Blackwater (renamed “Academi” and now a Constellis company). Asserting that the elevated level of violence between the Zetas and the Mexican state resembles a civil war, Correa-Cabrera identifies the beneficiaries of this war, including arms-producing companies, the international banking system, the US border economy, the US border security/military-industrial complex, and corporate capital, especially international oil and gas companies.

Los Zetas represent a new generation of ruthless, sadistic pragmatists in Mexico and Central America who are impelling a tectonic shift among drug trafficking organizations in the Americas. Mexico's marines have taken down the cartel's top leaders; nevertheless, these capos and their desperados have forever altered how criminal business is conducted in the Western Hemisphere. This narrative brings an unprecedented level of detail in describing how Los Zetas became Mexico's most diabolical criminal organization before suffering severe losses. In their heyday, Los Zetas controlled networks of American police, politicians, judges, and businessmen. The Mexican government is losing its "war on drugs," despite the military, technical, and intelligence resources provided by its northern neighbor. Subcontracted street gangs operate in hundreds of US cities, purchasing weapons, delivering product, executing targeted foes, and bribing the US Border Patrol. Despite crippling losses Los Zetas still dominate Nuevo Laredo, the major portal for legal and illegal bilateral commerce. They also work hand-in-glove with the underworld in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, as well as with gangs like the Maras Salvatruchas.

The brutal journey of two American kids from normal teenagers to Cartel killers. At first glance, Gabriel Cardona was the poster boy American teenager: athletic, bright, handsome and charismatic. But the streets of his border town of Laredo, Texas, were poor and dangerous, and it wasn't long before Gabriel, along with some childhood friends, abandoned his promising future for the allure of the Zetas, a drug cartel with roots in the Mexican military, boosting cars and smuggling drugs. Within a few months they were to become some of the cartel's most-feared killers: Los Lobos, The Wolf Boys. Mexican-born detective Robert Garcia had worked hard all his life, struggling to raise his family in America. As violence spilled over the border into his adopted country, Detective Garcia's pursuit of the boys and their cartel leaders would place him face to face with the terrible consequences of a war he came to see as unwinnable. Through the eyes of these young boys, whose actions and lives blended teenage normalcy with monstrous barbarity, Dan Slater takes us from the Sierra Madre mountaintops to the dusty, dark alleys of small-town Texas on a harrowing, often brutal journey into the heart of the Mexican drug trade. An astonishing, immersive, non-fiction thriller informed by extraordinary research and vivid detail, Wolf Boys uncovers the dark truth about Mexico's cartels and the tragic failure of the 'war on drugs'.

‘War’ is no exaggeration in discussing the bloodshed that has terrorized Mexico in the past decades. As rival cartels battle for control of a billion-dollar drug trade, the body count - 23,000 dead in five years - and sheer horror beggar the imagination of journalistic witnesses. Cartel gunmen have attacked schools and rehabilitation centers, and murdered the entire families of those who defy them. Reformers and law enforcement officials have been gunned down within hours of taking office. Headless corpses are dumped on streets to intimidate rivals, and severed heads are rolled onto dancefloors as messages to would-be opponents. And the war is creeping northward, towards the United States. El Narco is the story of the ultraviolent criminal organizations that have turned huge areas of Mexico into a combat zone. It is a piercing portrait of a drug trade that turns ordinary men into mass murderers, as well as a diagnosis of what drives the cartels and what gives them such power. Veteran Mexico correspondent Ioan Grillo traces the gangs from their origins as smugglers to their present status as criminal empires. The narco cartels are a threat to the Mexican government - and their violence has now reached as far as North Carolina. El Narco is required reading for anyone concerned about one of the most important news stories of the decade.

Los Zetas, which appeared on the scene in the late-1990s, have raised the bar for cruelty among Mexican Mafiosi. Traditionally, the country's narcotics cartels maximized earnings by working hand-in-glove with police, military officers, intelligence agencies, union leaders, and office holders affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which dominated the political landscape from 1929 to 2000. An informal set of rules benefited both the drug capos and their allies in government posts. On the one hand, officials raked in generous payments from the malefactors for turning a blind eye to-or employing the Federal Judicial Police and other agencies to facilitate-the growing, storage, processing, and export of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines. In return for this treatment, the kingpins were expected to keep their substances away from children, leave civilians (and especially Americans) alone, and limit their arsenals to weapons less powerful than those possessed by the armed forces.

The narrative regarding criminal violence in Mexico tends to highlight the negative, while minimizing success stories: this book is different. It explains the reasons why the region of La Laguna succeeded in reducing the statistics of homicides and missing persons and how it started to attend to the families of victims. There were two key factors: 1) federal, state, and local government pushing aside party differences in order to coordinate efforts, and 2) dialogue and response to the petitions of social actors. The result is the best security model in Mexico.