Samuel Flores Borrego

"'Hand over the Assassin of my friend, you son of a Bitch ... You have until the 25th, if you don't comply, there will be war.'"

Both of the Gulf cartel leaders ignored the command, and Treviño Morales did not wait to avenge the death of his friend.

Samuel Flores Borrego (a.k.a. Metro 3; 6 August 1972 – 2 September 2011) was a Mexican drug lord and high-ranking lieutenant of the Gulf Cartel.

He was a former state judicial policeman who protected the ex-leader of the Gulf cartel, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén.

Upon his arrest, Flores Borrego became the right-hand man of Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez, the former leader of the criminal organization.

The Mexican authorities believe that Flores Borrego is responsible for the split of the Gulf cartel and Los Zetas, a cartel originally formed by deserters of the Mexican Army Special Forces hired in the late 1990s as the private army of the Gulf cartel.

In the late 1990s, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, the former leader of the Gulf Cartel, began recruiting members of the Mexican Army to protect his territory, personnel, and drug trafficking operations.

These original deserters, who were known as Los Zetas, came from the Special Forces squadron of the army, arguably the best trained branch of the Mexican military.

Although born in Matamoros, Flores Borrego was closely linked to the city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, where he served as the Gulf cartel's regional leader on and off for many years after serving as a policeman during the governorship of Tomás Yarrington (1998–2004) – the peak era of the Gulf cartel.

Upon the arrest and extradition of Cárdenas Guillén in 2003 and 2007 respectively, Los Zetas strengthen its role in the Gulf cartel, but managed to retain its alliance.

While operating in Reynosa in early 2010, Flores Borrego ordered the abduction and execution of a leader of Los Zetas.

After the slaying, Los Zetas demanded Flores Borrego's death and threatened to go to war if the Gulf cartel did not hand over the Assassin.

Nonetheless, Flores Borrego ignored their demands and consequently broke the organization's alliance.

Nonetheless, that alliance lasted until early 2010, when disagreements reached a turning point.

On 18 January 2010, several members of the Gulf cartel kidnapped Víctor Peña Mendoza, a leader of Los Zetas nicknamed Concord 3 and a close associate and friend of Miguel Treviño Morales, alias Z-40. When he was held captive, Peña Mendoza was asked to switch alliances and join the Gulf cartel, but he refused, earning a beating and an execution, presumably carried out by Flores Borrego.

Treviño Morales heard about the incident and issued an ultimatum to Flores Borrego and Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez:

On 30 January 2010, Treviño Morales kidnapped and slaughtered 16 Gulf cartel members in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, marking the start of the cartel war between the Gulf cartel and Los Zetas in the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, and Veracruz that has left thousands of people killed.

Los Zetas used violent and intimidation tactics to expand and gained a notorious reputation as Mexico's most violent drug trafficking organization.

Over time, it managed to take control of most of the territories owned by the Gulf cartel when they had once essentially operated as a single organization.

On 24 March 2010, the United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned Flores Borrego under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (sometimes referred to simply as the "Kingpin Act"), for his involvement in drug trafficking along with fifty-three other international criminals and ten foreign entities.

The act prohibited U.S. citizens and companies from doing any kind of business activity with him, and virtually froze all his assets in the U.S.

Other unconfirmed reports suggest that Cárdenas Vela teamed up with Mejía González to kill Flores Borrego because the former believed that the Gulf Cartel betrayed his uncle Antonio Cárdenas Guillén (Tony Tormenta) by leading the Mexican military to his whereabouts, and eventually killing him after a gun fight in November 2010 in Matamoros.

Mario Ramírez Treviño, who had been working as the regional boss of Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, was appointed within few hours of Flores Borrego's death as the new crime boss of Reynosa, and was given "explicit orders to make the [drug market] profitable again."

On 2 September 2011, Flores Borrego was found dead along with a local police officer on the outskirts of the border city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas.

The Mexican authorities indicated that he had been killed by members within his own criminal group over disagreements and territorial disputes.

On 2 September 2011, the Mexican authorities discovered the bullet-ridden corpse of Flores Borrego inside a Ford Lobo truck on a highway that connects Reynosa, Tamaulipas with the industrial city of Monterrey.

His body was found along with the corpse of a policeman named Eloy Lerma García from Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Tamaulipas.

Before being executed, the two men were stripped to their underwear, severely beaten, tortured and then shot dead execution-style; their corpses were then left on the bed of the Ford Lobo along with a written message directed to the Gulf Cartel faction Flores Borrego commanded – a group known as Los Metros.

Although the information was never confirmed, the Mexican Army alleges that Flores Borrego was killed by "members of his own cartel," presumably on orders from the Gulf Cartel leaders Juan Mejía González (El R-1) and Rafael Cárdenas Vela (El Junior).

After his death, several factions within the Gulf Cartel went to war with each other, resulting in the deaths and arrests of several high-ranking drug traffickers.

An anonymous informant outside of law enforcement but with direct knowledge of the Gulf Cartel criminal workings suggests that El Metro 3 was killed because Mejía González was appointed as the crime boss of "La Frontera Chica," a narrow stretch in the northern part of Tamaulipas, while Flores Borrego kept Reynosa, suggesting that he was above Mejía González in the cartel's structure.

In January 2012 at the entrance of a neighborhood in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, where Flores Borrego was rumored to have lived and on one of Reynosa's busiest avenues, a bronze rooster statue was erected in tribute of him.

It is not clear who placed the statue but it was adorned with a wreath of flowers bearing the name of "Samuel Flores Borrego."

Nicknamed El Gallo de Vista Hermosa ("The Rooster of Vista Hermosa"), the statue mysteriously appeared overnight, and has worried, puzzled, and attracted curious residents of Reynosa.

The rooster statue became a Twitter sensation, where Reynosa residents uploaded their own pictures of the monument and created a hashtag to specifically talk about it.

During the first week, the residents showed fear of the statue, but that feeling quickly dissolved; one Twitter user said on his page that people were posing for pictures in front of the statue.

In addition, a Twitter user noticed that the statue used its own light source at night, and wondered how it got connected and who was paying for the electric bill.

A month later, however, the rooster was moved to the Reynosa Palenque, a rodeo arena and live-music venue a few blocks from its original location.

Reportedly, the rooster statue once stood outside a restaurant located along a highway that connects Reynosa with Nuevo Laredo.

The man who supposedly owned the restaurant was the slain boss of the Gulf cartel, Samuel Flores Borrego, El Metro 3.