Upon his desertion, he was recruited by the drug lord Osiel Cárdenas Guillén and Arturo Guzmán Decena with around 30 other soldiers to work as the enforcers of the Gulf Cartel, forming the paramilitary group known as Los Zetas.
[A 1] He enlisted in the Mexican Army as an infantry soldier at age 16 and was later enrolled in the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE), an elite special forces team dedicated to combating Guerrillas (like the EZLN) and drug-trafficking organizations.
He acquired training in areas of counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism tactics; sniper techniques; jungle, mountain, desert, naval, and urban warfare; and learned how to use explosives, high-calibre rifles and grenade-launchers.
The federal document does not explain why he was allowed to leave after the narcotics were confiscated, but soon after this incident Lazcano left the military and his duty as a police reinforcement to work full-time for the Gulf Cartel.
[18] Since early 2010, Los Zetas broke relations with their former employers, the Gulf Cartel, causing a violent turf war throughout the border states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo León in northeastern Mexico.
[20] Lazcano is suspected of killing hundreds of people, including the journalist Francisco Ortiz Franco, who was assassinated in 2004 in front of his two children as he was leaving a clinic.
"[7] When he was in power, Lazcano would go with his organization into several regions of Mexico, find out who was in charge of the local kidnapping, human trafficking, and extortion rings, and kill them to take over their business.
[26] In a flurry of articles on late August 2012, a U.S. law enforcement official told the press that Miguel Treviño Morales, the former second-in-command of Los Zetas, had reportedly taken the leadership of the cartel and displaced Lazcano, the long-time leader.
[27][28] Due to his violent and confrontational personality, Treviño Morales began the process of taking over the assets of Los Zetas and removing Lazcano in early 2010.
[41] 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.[42] On 21 April 2012 the Mexican Armed Forces raided a party in the city of Monclova, Coahuila, with the objective of capturing Lazcano.
[45][46] Two reports by U.S. newspapers The Monitor and The Brownsville Herald indicated that Lazcano had been killed in a gunbattle with a Mexican Army on the streets of Matamoros, Tamaulipas on 17 June 2011.
[46] The U.S. Department of State later confirmed that "the physical characteristics of the dead men allow the conclusion to be drawn that Heriberto Lazcano, leader of the Zetas criminal organization, was not among them.
[50] However, before the Navy could make an official announcement of his death, several heavily armed and masked gunmen, presumably under orders of Miguel Treviño Morales, stormed the funeral home where his body lay with that of the other man involved in the shooting.
[32][51] Homero Ramos, Coahuila's state prosecutor, said: "A masked, armed group overpowered the personnel, took the bodies, and forced the owner of the funeral home to drive the getaway vehicle.
His entourage was also uncharacteristic for a major drug trafficker, although it is quite common for cartel leaders to travel in small groups to avoid attracting unnecessary attention.
[58] In 2010, the Mexican police killed the drug lord Nazario Moreno González of La Familia Michoacana in a gun battle; before they could take the body, his gunmen carried it off.
[61][62] The apparent death of Lazcano benefited three parties: the Mexican Navy, who dealt a significant blow to organized crime with the death of Lazcano; Miguel Treviño Morales, who, until his capture on 15 July 2013, rose as the "uncontested" leader of Los Zetas; and Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, who, until his capture on 22 February 2014, was the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and the main rival of Los Zetas.
[63] If the body hadn't been taken, it would also be a symbolic victory for Felipe Calderón, who can say that his administration took down one of the founders and top leaders of Los Zetas and consequently boost the morale of the Mexican military.
Ultimately, the death of Lazcano will not stop the split inside Los Zetas, given the organization's infrastructure, where its members can operate freely in local cells.
[68] According to the journalist Samuel Logan, Ciudad Juárez is likely to experience relative peace in the future as the Sinaloa Cartel fights off the remaining second-tier groups to establish a monopoly in the area.
Los Zetas have a line of succession when leaders are arrested or killed, but the problem is that most of these replacements are younger, less-experienced members who are likely to resort to violence to maintain their reputation.
[71] In a response to the Navy's statements, InSight Crime believes that Lazcano's fall will not stop Los Zetas from fragmenting, making incursions from other cartels and infightings more likely to occur.
Juan Aguilar, spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Tulancingo, where the chapel is located, said it was built in 2009 as a community project and the money did not go through the church, which was unaware of who funded it.
[75] Aside from financing a church in Tezontle, Lazcano also sponsored several other constructions and festives in honor of Our Lady of San Juan de los Lagos every February, which helped him gain the gratitude of the villagers.
This practice was borrowed from the drug lord Cárdenas Guillén, who organized Children's Day parties when Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel were under a single command structure.