Beltrán Leyva Cartel

Born in the Sinaloan countryside in the 1960s, the Beltrán Leyva brothers—Arturo, Carlos, Alfredo, Mario Alberto and Héctor—worked closely with their cousin, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, the leader of the Cartel, during decades of smuggling. Sensing a void in the rival Gulf Cartel after Osiel Cárdenas' arrest on March 14, 2003, the organization began to move into Gulf Cartel territory. The gangs fought each other in northern Mexican cities, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people, including some civilians, police and journalists.

In 2004 and 2005, Arturo Beltrán Leyva led powerful groups of assassins to fight for trade routes in northeastern Mexico for the Cartel. Through the use of corruption or intimidation, the Beltrán Leyva Cartel was able to infiltrate Mexico's political, judicial and police institutions to feed classified information about anti-drug operations, and even infiltrated the Interpol office in Mexico.

During 2010, former Beltran Leyva cartel lieutenant Óscar Osvaldo García Montoya (a.k.a. El Compayito) attempted to regroup some cartel remnants under a gang he called La Mano Con Ojos. García Montoya was arrested on August 11, 2011; the Attorney General of Mexico had placed a 5 million pesos (US$400,000) bounty for his capture. Mexican authorities stated that García Montoya was "the last Beltrán-Leyva link of any importance", and that the cartel has been disbanded.

Allied forces of Los Zetas and Beltrán-Leyva remnants clashed on April 28, 2012 with gunmen of the organization in the Choix mountains. At least 32 armed men were confirmed dead. The renewed fighting in Sinaloa state between the BLO and the Cartel is supposedly sparked by the incursion of the Cartel and its allies in Nuevo Laredo, traditionally the biggest Zeta stronghold.

The last cartel leader, Héctor Beltrán Leyva, was captured on October 1, 2014 while eating at a popular restaurant in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato. The U.S. was offering a reward of US$5 million for information leading to his arrest. while the Mexican government was offering a US$2.1 million reward.

Switch of alliances

The arrest of Beltrán Leyva Organization leader Alfredo Beltrán Leyva (a.k.a. El Mochomo) ("The Desert Ant") on January 20, 2008, was a huge blow to the organization, as he allegedly oversaw large-scale drug-smuggling operations and was a key money launderer for the cartel. In apparent revenge for the arrest of his brother Alfredo, Arturo ordered the assassination of the commissioner of the Federal Police, Édgar Eusebio Millán Gómez, and other top federal officials in the Mexican capital. One group of these hit men was captured in a Mexico City house with dozens of assault rifles, pistols, grenade launchers, 30 hand grenades, and bullet-proof jackets bearing the legend FEDA—the Spanish acronym for 'Special Forces of Arturo'. Apparently, the Beltrán Leyva brothers blamed their partner and cousin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán for their brother's arrest, and in retaliation ordered the assassination of Guzmán's son, 22-year-old Édgar Guzmán López, which was carried out in a shopping center parking lot by at least 15 gunmen using assault rifles and grenade launchers.

The residual impact of Alfredo's arrest not only undermined long-term alliances, but resurrected animosities between rival cartel leaders Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán and Arturo's new allies, the Juárez Cartel, and provided the catalyst behind the bloodshed in Mexico's most violent city: Ciudad Juárez. The Beltrán Leyva brothers, and those loyalists who departed the Cartel with them, allied with Los Zetas, causing an escalation of conflict in strongholds shared uneasily by "old" leaders.

In February 2010, the Beltrán Leyva Cartel and Los Zetas engaged in a violent turf war against the new alliance integrated by the Gulf Cartel, Sinaloa Cartel and La Familia Cartel in the border city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, rendering some border towns "ghost towns".