book

Los Zetas Inc.: Criminal Corporations, Energy, and Civil War in Mexico

by Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera

Published: 2017

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Regions: Mexico, Tamaulipas
cartelsoil theftorganized crimescholarship

Examines Los Zetas not merely as a drug cartel but as a criminal corporation with a diversified portfolio: drug trafficking, oil theft (controlling approximately 40% of Mexico’s stolen oil market), extortion, kidnapping, human trafficking, and piracy. Correa-Cabrera argues the Zetas represented an organizational innovation in Mexican organized crime, applying corporate and military logic to criminal enterprise.

The book also analyzes the Zetas’ role in Mexico’s energy sector and their territorial control in northeastern Mexico as a form of parallel governance.