Mexico's Gulf cartel undaunted by military assault

By Robin Emmott

REYNOSA, Mexico, April 18 (Reuters) - In one of its most audacious moves yet, Mexico's Gulf cartel drug gang this week openly advertised for army troops to desert and join it in a fight that has killed some 900 people this year.

The cartel's feared Zetas hit squad strung banners from bridges over main roads in the towns of Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo on the U.S. border offering well-paid jobs.

"The Zetas want you, soldier or former soldier. We offer a good salary, food and family care. Don't go hungry any longer," the ads read.

The cartel, based across the border from Texas, is Mexico's most violent gang in a war between rival drug smugglers that the army has deployed thousands of troops to try to quash.

"This shows how brazen, how arrogant they are, born of the huge profits that drug trafficking brings," said Steve Robertson, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration special agent.

"They want to be known as the biggest and baddest, they aim to intimidate. Violence is their way of life," he said.

President Felipe Calderon has tried to crush the Gulf cartel since taking office in Dec. 2006, extraditing its former leader Osiel Cardenas to the United States and dispatching thousands of troops to the cartel's heartland in Tamaulipas state on the Gulf of Mexico.

Despite several historic drug busts and Cardenas' extradition, the cartel is far from defeated.

It has extended its presence into southern Mexico and gone westward to seek control of smuggling routes in Ciudad Juarez over the border from El Paso, Texas. A top member of the Zetas was arrested in Guatemala two weeks ago.

WELL TRAINED, WELL ARMED

The Zetas were set up by around 30 former Mexican special forces troops in the late 1990s and they do the cartel's dirty work like beheading or shooting rivals and extorting victims.

"The Zetas have allowed the Gulf cartel to survive and develop despite the Cardenas extradition," said Fred Burton, a security analyst at the U.S. consultancy Stratfor. "There is no evidence that their back is broken."

Armed with a huge arsenal of grenades, automatic weapons, dynamite and even rocket launchers, the Zetas are engaged in a gruesome battle for supremacy with a coalition of drug gangs from Mexico's Pacific state of Sinaloa.

Led by Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, the Sinaloans sparked a turf war after Guzman escaped from prison in a laundry van in 2001. He seeks to control Mexican and Central American smuggling routes into the United States.

"We believe the Gulf gang and the Zetas are not only trying to fend off Guzman, but also want expand their business. They have set up training camps along the Mexico-Texas border," said a Mexican military commander who declined to be named.

While Guzman has become a household name in Mexico, glorified by singers of "narco corrido" drug ballads, the Gulf cartel is led by men of lower profile.

Former soldier Heriberto "El Lazca" Lazcano, known as Z3, heads the Zetas. Ezequiel Cardenas, known as "Tony Tormenta", the brother of Osiel Cardenas, and former policeman Jorge Eduardo Costilla "El Coss" control the smuggling wing.

All three have evaded capture, protected by concentric rings of security and constantly moving between northern Mexico, Texas and Central America.

Following the escalation of violence with the Sinaloans, Lazcano, who was mistakenly reported dead last year, is protected by bodyguards who are former elite Guatemalan soldiers known as kaibiles, Mexican drug officials say.

Still, anti-drug officials believe the Gulf Cartel is being squeezed, if not defeated, by military and police efforts.

Higher cocaine prices and lower purity appear to signify less narcotics are getting into the United States.

"They are not getting bulk marijuana and cocaine shipments through the border like in the past. They are being forced to go to greater lengths to conceal small amounts of drugs, like in sealed beer cans or in car engine manifolds," said Hector Mancha, a U.S. customs and border protection director on the Texan border. (Additional reporting by Magdiel Hernandez in Nuevo Laredo; Editing by Kieran Murray)