Heriberto "El Lazca" Lazcano Lazcano (25 December 1974 – 7 October 2012) was a Mexican drug lord and leader of the Los Zetas cartel. He was killed in a shootout with the Mexican Navy special forces in 2012 during the Mexican Drug War.
Biography[]
Lazca in 2001
Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano was born in Apan, Hidalgo, Mexico on 25 December 1974, and he served in the Mexican Army special forces during the quelling of the Chiapas uprising in 1994. Lazcano received US and Israeli training, and he learned a variety of combat skills, as well as how to use explosives, high-caliber rifles, and grenader launchers. By 1998, however, he was smuggling drugs while working as both a Tamaulipas police officer and an enforcer for the Gulf Cartel. In 1998, he was recruited into Los Zetas by Osiel Cardenas Guillen and Arturo Guzman Decena. By 2004, he had become the boss of Los Zetas, following the death of Guzman and the capture of his successor, Rogelio Gonzalez Pizana. Lazcano reformed Los Zetas, giving squad leaders ranks like "lieutenant" and "commander" and creating a military hierarchy in the organization. By 2008, he had formed alliances with the Beltran Leyva Cartel and the Juarez Cartel, and Los Zetas began a turf war with the Gulf Cartel in Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon in 2010, leaving thousands dead. Lazcano led an army of 10,000 cartel members operating from the Rio Grande river to Central America, and he was known to have committed hundreds of murders himself. In early 2010, Miguel Trevino Morales began to wrest power away from Lazcano, but the two remained close allies.
On 7 October 2012, the Mexican Navy special forces tracked Lazcano down to Progreso, Coahuila, where he was driving in a white van with one gunman. The two cartel members fired on the marines, leading to a shootout in which Lazcano, his bodyguard, and one marine were killed. Lazcano's body was later snatched from its funeral home in Sabinas, Coahuila by Trevino Morales' gunmen, as Los Zetas had taught its members not to leave their comrades behind. He was the most powerful drug lord to be killed since the start of the Mexican Drug War in 2006.