[5] In the late 1990s, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, the former leader of the Gulf Cartel, began recruiting members of the Mexican Army to protect his territory, personnel, and drug trafficking operations.

On 18 January 2010, several members of the Gulf cartel kidnapped Víctor Peña Mendoza, a leader of Los Zetas nicknamed Concord 3 and a close associate and friend of Miguel Treviño Morales, alias Z-40.

[6] When he was held captive, Peña Mendoza was asked to switch alliances and join the Gulf cartel, but he refused, earning a beating and an execution, presumably carried out by Flores Borrego.

[6] Treviño Morales heard about the incident and issued an ultimatum to Flores Borrego and Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez: "Hand over the assassin of my friend, you son of a bitch ... You have until the 25th, if you don't comply, there will be war.

[8] 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.[9] On 2 September 2011, the Mexican authorities discovered the bullet-ridden corpse of Flores Borrego inside a Ford Lobo truck on a highway that connects Reynosa, Tamaulipas with the industrial city of Monterrey.

[10][12] Before being executed, the two men were stripped to their underwear, severely beaten, tortured and then shot dead execution-style; their corpses were then left on the bed of the Ford Lobo along with a written message directed to the Gulf Cartel faction Flores Borrego commanded – a group known as Los Metros.

[11][15] An anonymous informant outside of law enforcement but with direct knowledge of the Gulf Cartel criminal workings suggests that El Metro 3 was killed because Mejía González was appointed as the crime boss of "La Frontera Chica," a narrow stretch in the northern part of Tamaulipas, while Flores Borrego kept Reynosa, suggesting that he was above Mejía González in the cartel's structure.

[19] The rooster statue became a Twitter sensation, where Reynosa residents uploaded their own pictures of the monument and created a hashtag to specifically talk about it.

In addition, a Twitter user noticed that the statue used its own light source at night, and wondered how it got connected and who was paying for the electric bill.

[18] There are several Narco-Rap music videos on YouTube dedicated to Flores Borrego from a Reynosa hip-hop group composed of two rappers, Cano and Blunt.

[27] The division of the Gulf Cartel into separate factions started in November 2010, following the death of drug lord Antonio Cárdenas Guillén, who was killed by the Mexican Navy in an eight-hour-long shootout in Matamoros.

During the 1990s and early 2000s, however, the cartel was headed by the imprisoned Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, who "operated with a certain structure that allowed for rivalries among lieutenants to exist without affecting the organization as a whole".

[28][29] When he was arrested and extradited to the United States in 2003 and 2007 respectively,[30] the remaining lieutenants in the Gulf Cartel fought for the leadership void left by Cárdenas Guillén.

[29] This resulted in the death of several leaders and in the split with Los Zetas, the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel that was originally formed by soldiers who deserted the Mexican Army to serve as bodyguards of Cárdenas Guillén.

[29][31] The Gulf Cartel maintains a strong operational control over Reynosa and Matamoros, Tamaulipas, where they earn much of their income from the international narcotics trade and from human smuggling.