Gulf Cartel

One of Mexico’s oldest drug trafficking organizations, based in Matamoros, Tamaulipas. Under Osiel Cárdenas Guillén’s leadership in the late 1990s, the Gulf Cartel recruited GAFE deserters to form Los Zetas as its paramilitary enforcement wing, a decision that transformed the Mexican drug trade but ultimately led to the cartel’s own diminishment when the Zetas split off as an independent organization in 2010.