Gulf Cartel # 2 nabbed grocery shopping

McAllen Monitor:

A man believed to be second-in-command of the Gulf Cartel’s operations in Reynosa was arrested this weekend at a McAllen supermarket, federal authorities said Monday.

Carlos Landín-Martinez, 52, allegedly collected taxes for the cartel on drugs smuggled by smaller organizations through the city to markets north of the Rio Grande.

He previously worked as a commander for the Tamaulipas State Police and has been linked to the cartel’s paramilitary enforcement group, Los Zetas, authorities said.

McAllen police arrested Landín-Martinez on Saturday afternoon at the H.E.B. at the corner of Fern Avenue and North 10th Street, after an off-duty agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency spotted him grocery shopping.

Once confronted, he identified himself to police and was transferred to federal custody Monday morning.

“He’s a very significant arrest in that he’s a major figure in the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas,” McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez said.

...

Taxing the traffic from smaller smuggling groups has become a lucrative side business for the Gulf Cartel, U.S. authorities said.

But income has sparked internal political struggles within the group and spawned several external challenges to the cartel’s dominance in the region.

Landín-Martinez’s boss, who runs cartel operations in Reynosa and Matamoros, may have become a target in one such dispute.

Federal authorities believe Gregorio “El Goyo” Sauceda-Gamboa fell out of favor with accused Gulf Cartel head Osiel Cárdenas last year and may have been marked for replacement by the imprisoned kingpin.

Since Cárdenas arrest in Mexico in 2003, a coalition of smaller drug trafficking organizations working with the rival Sinaloa Alliance has tried to wrest control over northern Mexico’s smuggling corridors, known as “plazas.”

But their efforts have so far proved unsuccessful thanks in part to the resistance of the Zetas, a group personally loyal to Cárdenas and made up of former police officers and soldiers with foreign military training.

The group has successfully protected the Gulf Cartel’s plazas in northern Mexico, including Reynosa, through a campaign of targeted killings and violent attacks along the Texas-Mexico border.

...

Insurgent operations are funded through outside support or internally generated funds. The Viet Cong levied heavy taxes on the areas they controlled in Vietnam. It appears that the drug cartel is also taxes those who operate on its turf. The tax revenues and/or the failure to pay them probably account for much of the violence among the drug thugs. The arrest may be an opportunity for Mexico to help defund the insurgents along the Texas border.