Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano

Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano (25 December 1974 – 7 October 2012), commonly referred to by his aliases Z-3 and El Lazca, was a Mexican drug lord and the leader of Los Zetas drug cartel.

He was one of the most-wanted Mexican drug lords.

Lazcano joined the Mexican Army at the age of 17 and later ascended to the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE), the Mexican Army special forces.

Lazcano was born to a poor family on Christmas Day, December 1974, in Apan, Hidalgo, Mexico.

He enlisted in the Mexican Army as an infantry soldier at age 17 and was later enrolled in the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE), an elite special forces team dedicated to combating Guerrillas (like the EZLN) and drug-trafficking organizations.

His first military mission took place during the presidency of Ernesto Zedillo, when he was sent along with other GAFE soldiers to put down the armed insurgency in Chiapas.

After that, he was moved to northern Mexico as part of a security reinforcement program against the drug trafficking organizations.

While serving in the Mexican Army, Lazcano reportedly received training from the Israeli Defense Forces and the United States Army.

He acquired training in areas of counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism tactics; sniper techniques; jungle, mountain, desert, naval, and urban warfare; and learned how to use explosives, high-calibre rifles and grenade-launchers.

During his tenure in the Mexican Army, Lazcano reportedly received military training from the Israeli Defense Forces and the United States Army, but eventually deserted in 1998, after eight years of service.

Upon his desertion, he was recruited by the drug lord Osiel Cárdenas Guillén and Arturo Guzmán Decena with around 30 other soldiers to work as the enforcers of the Gulf Cartel, forming the paramilitary group known as Los Zetas.

His torture methods earned him the nickname "El Verdugo" ('The Executioner'), particularly for killing his victims by feeding them to lions and tigers he kept in a ranch.

While traveling through Reynosa, Tamaulipas on 18 February 1998, Lazcano was detained by the Mexican authorities with 325 kilograms of marijuana in his vehicle (Chevrolet Silverado).

During that time, Lazcano was still working as a judicial police officer in Tamaulipas but was also working for the drug lord Osiel Cárdenas Guillén.

The federal document does not explain why he was allowed to leave after the narcotics were confiscated, but soon after this incident Lazcano left the military and his duty as a police reinforcement to work full-time for the Gulf Cartel.

He served in the Army for seven years and eventually deserted on 27 March 1998, when he was recruited by Osiel Cárdenas Guillén and Arturo Guzmán Decena to form part of Los Zetas, originally set up by former soldiers of the Mexican Army working on the behalf of the Gulf Cartel.

Lazcano was placed as third in command (Z-3), and after the death of Guzmán Decena (Z-1) in 2002 and the capture of Rogelio González Pizaña (Z-2) in 2004, he became the commander.

Under the tutelage of Lazcano, Los Zetas recruited more gunmen into their ranks, many of them former soldiers of the Mexican military and ex-Kaibiles, the Special Forces squadron of the Guatemalan military, former police officers, and street thugs.

Lazcano also created regional cells that specialized in other crimes besides drug trafficking.

Due to his military background, Lazcano instilled a "military culture" in his squadron, designating new recruits with the titles of "lieutenant" and "commander," and training them in military tactics.

Lazcano is suspected of killing hundreds of people, including the journalist Francisco Ortiz Franco, who was assassinated in 2004 in front of his two children as he was leaving a clinic.

Lazcano played a particular role in Los Zetas; with his military training, he was able to combine "military precision with stone-hearted criminality."

When he was in power, Lazcano would go with his organization into several regions of Mexico, find out who was in charge of the local kidnapping, human trafficking, and extortion rings, and kill them to take over their business.

The rest were then told to join or die.

At its peak, Lazcano's criminal empire consisted of about 10,000 gunmen stretching from the Rio Grande all the way into Central America.

Lazcano made a name for himself by decapitating his victims, putting them in acid baths, and for torturing and killing hundreds of people.

Lazcano became known for using a torture method known as "La Paleta" ('The Popsicle'), in which victims were stripped naked and brutally beaten with a board.

A reporter also recalls that Lazcano reportedly tied a man to a tree and beat him until he broke his legs, and then left him tied to the tree for two or three days until he died.

According to the Mexican authorities, Lazcano owned a ranch with several lions and tigers, which he used to get rid of his victims.

Lazcano also used effective intimidation kills to keep his subordinates in check.

He reportedly dumped his victims (or their children) in large barrels of boiling oil.

When he found out that some of his men were stealing from him, Lazcano would force one of them to watch while his henchmen grabbed a 2-by-4 and beat the other to death.

When they were dead, the executioner would then cut out the victim's heart (Lazcano threw the organs away, but other drug lords have forced their guests to eat the organs of the victims).

Lazcano also pioneered the decapitation techniques that Los Zetas now employ, and protected witnesses have said that Lazcano would let captured rivals starve to death because he liked to watch the process or that he would let them be eaten by wild animals.

After Cárdenas Guillén was arrested and extradited to the United States in 2007, Los Zetas broke relations with the Gulf Cartel in 2010 and rose to become the strongest criminal organization in Mexico, alongside the Sinaloa Cartel.

By 2008, Lazcano forged an alliance with the brothers of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel and with Vicente Carrillo Fuentes of the Juárez Cartel.

Since early 2010, Los Zetas broke relations with their former employers, the Gulf Cartel, causing a violent turf war throughout the border states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo León in northeastern Mexico.

The war between these two criminal organizations has left thousands dead.

Lazcano died in a shootout with the Mexican Navy on 7 October 2012.

After his death, his body was taken from the funeral home by an armed gang.