Antonio Cárdenas Guillén

Antonio Ezequiel Cárdenas Guillén (5 March 1962 – 5 November 2010), commonly referred to by his alias Tony Tormenta ("Tony Storm"), was a Mexican drug lord and co-leader of the Gulf Cartel, a drug trafficking organization based in Tamaulipas.

He headed the criminal group along with Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez.

Antonio was considered by Mexican security forces as one of Mexico's most-wanted men.

Born in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Antonio initially worked as a car washer at a local police station with his brother Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, former leader of the cartel.

Antonio Ezequiel Cárdenas Guillén was born on 5 March 1962 in El Mezquital ranch in the border city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico.

As a teenager, Antonio Ezequiel and his brother Osiel earned their living by washing cars at the headquarters of the Federal Judicial Police in their hometown.

By the late 1980s, he entered the drug trade, and later became the crime boss of Matamoros, where he controlled the city's drug trafficking shipments and all organized crime activities.

By the late 1980s, Cárdenas Guillén started his criminal career under the Gulf Cartel, where he became a high-ranking leader and commanded organized crime activities and drug trafficking in Matamoros.

His contact with the police in Matamoros marked the life of the Cárdenas Guillén clan; federal reports of the Procuraduría General de la República (PGR) suggest that the drug lord had solid business relations with police and military men.

Witnesses indicate that Antonio frequented public places in Matamoros, Reynosa, Ciudad Victoria, and other cities in the state of Tamaulipas surrounded by a number of municipal and state police officers, whose superiors have allegedly remained loyal to the Gulf Cartel for over half a century.

His henchmen reportedly wore bullet-proof vests with the Spanish insignias for the Gulf Cartel (Cártel del Golfo – C.D.G.) embellished across their chests.

Although some of Antonio Ezequiel's men were reported to have worn military garbs while on duty, their uniforms have also become more subtle with time.

For example, some Gulf Cartel gunmen wear tennis shoes of the same color, caps with the logo "CDG–TT" (Gulf Cartel–Tony Tormenta), or trucks emblazoned with the same logo to help them distinguish themselves from rival gangs.

Inside the domicile, the US authorities discovered "cash, numerous vehicles, cocaine, marijuana, firearms and one 1996 Sea Doo Bombardier with expired Florida registration."

In 1998, Antonio avoided arrest after FBI and DEA agents tracked his whereabouts inside a domicile in Houston.

Back in Mexico, his brother Osiel was the Gulf Cartel's main leader and had created a paramilitary squad known as Los Zetas, formed by soldiers who left the Mexican military.

A decade before ascending in the Gulf Cartel leadership rankings, Cárdenas Guillén avoided arrest by FBI and DEA agents in 1998, after they raided his home in Houston, Texas.

The federal agents saw the drug lord leave, but they decided to pursue a search warrant than to chase him, given the activity in the neighborhood, the number of cars at the parking lot near his house, and the lack of sufficient agents in the operative.

In 1998, the federal agents knew little about Cárdenas Guillén and the criminal organization he worked for.

Few details were known of Antonio's criminal career prior to 1999, when his brother Osiel confronted federal agents at gunpoint with several of his gunmen in Matamoros.

The FBI later closed the investigation in February 1999 due to the drug lord's fugitive status, his local indictments, and the lack of information available in the Houston jurisdiction.

Ten months later in November 1999, the Cárdenas Guillén surname started to gain momentum when Antonio Ezequiel's brother Osiel and several of his gunmen stopped two US federal agents at gunpoint in the streets of Matamoros.

After a tense standoff, the agents convinced Osiel to let them go.

When Osiel was arrested in 2003, Antonio and Costilla Sánchez took the lead of the criminal organization, and Los Zetas eventually broke apart from the Gulf Cartel in 2010.

In 2003, Osiel was arrested in Matamoros following a shootout with the Mexican military, and was extradited to the United States in 2007.

In exchange for a life sentence, Osiel cooperated with the U.S. authorities by supplying information on the workings of the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas.

When Osiel was arrested, Antonio Ezequiel inherited the Gulf Cartel along with Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez, a former policeman in Matamoros.

He and other Gulf Cartel leaders were responsible for trafficking multi-ton drug shipments of cocaine and marijuana from Mexico to the United States.

But Antonio Ezequiel never had the edge; one of his most trusted men, Ramiro García Hernández (alias El Mati), was arrested in 2004.

Deemed inexperienced, Costilla Sánchez, Lazcano, and high-ranking leader Víctor Manuel Vázquez Mireles (alias El Meme Loco) moved Antonio Ezequiel to command the Gulf Cartel in Cancún.

Under orders of his brother Osiel, Antonio Ezequiel ordered the drug lord Gregorio Sauceda Gamboa (alias El Goyo) and his henchmen to execute 6 prison guards in Matamoros on 20 January 2005, reportedly as a reprisal for Osiel's treatment at Altiplano prison.

Their corpses were discovered inside a Ford Explorer near the Matamoros federal prison.

In May 2005, he commanded a battalion of over 100 Zeta members to fight off Los Pelones, an enforcer group working for the Beltrán Leyva Cartel, in the state of Guerrero.

Antonio Ezequiel received a federal indictment in 2008 in the District of Columbia for drug trafficking violations.

He also directed the flow of narcotics through land, sea, and air from Venezuela and Colombia to Guatemala and the U.S-Mexico border.

When Osiel was imprisoned, several high-ranking lieutenants in the Gulf Cartel got together to appoint leaders and their turfs.

According to the declarations of Zeta leader Mateo Díaz López (alias Comandante Mateo), Antonio Ezequiel was given the turf of Matamoros, one of the leading smuggling routes for the cartel.

However, Antonio was killed in an eight-hour shootout between Gulf Cartel gunmen and soldiers of the Mexican Navy in Matamoros on 5 November 2010.

According to the Mexican government, ten people were killed that day in Matamoros, but local media outlets suggested that over 40 people were killed by gunfire.

One anonymous law enforcement officer, witnesses, and several local newspapers indicated over 100 were killed in Matamoros.