Narco Wars

Man (over tv): Shake this square world and blast off for kicksville.

Nixon (over tv): Public enemy number one is drug abuse.

Nancy (over tv): Just say, "no."

Reagan (over tv): Solving the drug problem in america

Is like carrying water in a sieve.

Bush (over tv): Take my word for it,

This scourge will stop.

Woman: There's now an understanding that the war on

Drugs was an abject failure.

Man: You have to stop and ask yourself,

'how did we get here?'

Trump (over tv): We will build a wall.

Man (over tv): Mexico's drug cartels have turned roads into

The us into super-highways for their narcotics.

Man (over tv): It occurred last month in downtown

Matamoros, mexico.

An fbi and a dea agent were riding with an informant when

They noticed they were being followed.

After a pickup truck blocked their path,

15 armed men emerged and ordered the agents and

Informant out of the car.

As one of the gunmen leveled an ak-47,

The agents flashed their badges and pleaded for their lives.

Daniel: My name is daniel fuentes,

And I was that fbi agent.

In 1999, this individual assisting us there in matamoros,

He was showing us some residences that were

Associated with members of the gulf cartel,

Including the house of osiel cárdenas guillén.

Osiel cárdenas guillén started off his career,

Believe it or not, helping out a local law enforcement

Agency in matamoros.

He rose to sole leader of the gulf cartel right around July 3rd of 1999,

When it is said that he murdered his partner,

Chava gómez.

As we're driving through these neighborhoods,

My partner thinks that we may be followed by a dark colored pickup.

We're seeing multiple cars joining.

One particular vehicle, there's an ak-47 weapon

Sitting on the bench of his truck right next to him.

We're realizing that, that things are about to start going bad.

I start collecting all of my ammunition,

And the informant told us, you know, "here comes osiel."

He recognized his vehicle.

We're boxed in, we're completely surrounded,

And that's when we were forced off the road.

They start exiting their vehicles.

They're completely in uniform, in tactical gear,

Like soldiers.

They're all heavily armed with high-caliber weapons.

Osiel comes over to my window.

And he proceeds to point his gold-plated ak-47,

Cussing up a storm, demanding who it is that we are.

So, I show him my diplomatic passport saying we're

Diplomats from the us consulate in monterrey.

You know, 'who are you?'

And I could see osiel kinda grinning.

He said, "I don't give a (bleep) who you are.

You're gonna die. I'm gonna kill you."

He sticks his head into the car,

And he looks to the backseat, and he says,

"ah, so it's you. You're with the fbi, huh?"

The guns go up, total chaos.

He wants this guy really badly.

He says, "you give him to me, and I'll let you go."

And we said, "no, no-one's getting out of the car."

We were literally in a mexican standoff.

If I fire a shot, we're all dead,

Because everyone's gonna start shooting,

And so osiel continues to point his ak-47 in my head.

I start getting what's referred to as "tunnel vision."

I can't see beyond this hole that's in front of me.

Everything else is black.

Although you resign yourself to the fact that you're going to die,

Your training kicks in.

My partner tells him,

"you better think about what you're doing here,

Because if you kill us,

You're gonna have 30,000 enemies from the us that

Are coming out here looking for you.

They're gonna hunt you down like a dog."

And it seems like something clicked in his mind,

And he realized,

"they're gonna find me,

And it's going to affect my operation here."

So, osiel says, "I'm gonna let you go.

And you in the backseat, I'm gonna deal with you later,

And I don't want you guys to ever come back here,

Cause if you do come back, I'm gonna kill you."

We later learned that amongst those individuals were some

Former special forces mexican soldiers.

Ioan: The zetas were created by the gulf cartel

In a corner of northeast mexico on the border with texas.

The gulf cartel controlled key towns from the gulf of mexico

Right up to the city of nuevo laredo,

And the hub of their operations is the border

Crossing between nuevo laredo and mexico, and laredo, texas.

Arturo: My name is art, arturo fontes.

I was an fbi agent for approximately 28 years.

People laugh at me because I left sunny san diego,

With beaches and everything, and nice big house,

To be in a small town in laredo.

They call it the "armpit of texas."

It takes you all the way to dallas,

And it even goes all the way to the north in the us.

Ioan: Now, this is an area where there was the biggest

Number of trucks crossing the whole border.

It was a very important route.

The gulf cartel was shifting marijuana, cocaine,

And heroin through texas to across the united states.

The gulf cartel was on to a good thing,

But it was about to get a whole lot better with the

North american free trade agreement.

Clinton (over tv): After we tear down trade barriers between our three nations,

It will create the world's largest trade zone.

Today we have the chance to do what our parents did before us.

We have the opportunity to remake the world.

Arturo: Nuevo laredo is more important than

Almost any other area in mexico,

And that's why it's a battle ground.

It's the crown jewel for drug trafficking.

Everybody wants that.

Mike: Osiel was a genius at being able to read people and

Manipulate them.

He was brilliant at influencing people to do

Things that they shouldn't be doing.

Ioan: In the special forces, they had radio code with the

"z" letter, so they would have, like...

Would be, like, you know, "zed two, I'm on alert."

They quickly became called the "zetas,"

Or the "zeds" after that radio code.

Mike: Osiel saw in them a discipline that your regular

Trafficker did not have, and that was a militarized discipline.

A respect for chain of command, loyalty,

The willing to attack the hill when told,

Regardless of the outcome.

We saw that the zetas were becoming a threat.

There was definitely a foreboding of things to come

As the zetas began to grow and become stronger,

And they were learning the drug trade from the gulf cartel.

Daniel: Osiel is definitely in the crosshairs

Of, of the fbi and dea.

He is public enemy number one.

Daniel: The arrest was like a scene out of afghanistan, iraq.

Daniel: The mexican military, I believe,

May have lost one or two soldiers during the course of

That gun battle.

Daniel: Osiel survived.

He was apprehended, but it was quite the shootout.

Mike: After osiel was out of the picture,

What we didn't anticipate was how strong the zetas

Were going to become.

Mike: They were outta control.

Mike: They turned mexico into one giant war zone.

Man (over tv): Good evening!

Suddenly guns are back in the middle of the presidential campaign,

Triggered by what happened today,

A ten-year ban on 19 kinds of military assault weapons ran out.

Man (over tv): Gun manufacturers are already

Preparing for what some predict will be a gun buying frenzy.

Ioan: You have the sinaloa cartel going in to try

And take the city of nuevo laredo from the zetas.

But they did not understand the zetas.

They underestimated the zetas.

Arturo: Nuevo laredo was on fire.

There were shootouts in the streets,

Grenades being launched in the house.

It was just extremely violent.

They had commando hit squads operating.

It was brutal.

The zetas and the gulf cartel, they have the help of fire

Power to actually counter any threat, and they did.

They kicked ass.

Ioan: This was the beginning of the mexican drug war

As we know it.

When you talk to people who live this,

Who fight in this conflict, and who do see themselves as

Being soldiers and, you know, like,

They might not live till they're 25.

Ioan: Now, the zetas became so powerful the gulf cartel

Could not contain them.

So, you had the zetas breaking away from the gulf cartel.

So, suddenly it wasn't only northeast mexico.

They started spreading all the way down the gulf of mexico.