Los Zetas translated to The Zs in English, derives its name from its founder Arturo Guzmán Decena, whose radio code was Z1, which was a code name for high-ranking officers in the Federal Criminal Police. The Zetas can trace their origins back to the year 1999, while during an intense war the new head of the Gulf Cartel, a man named Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, recruited the help of the aforementioned retired army officer, Arturo Guzmán Decena hopes to maintain order in the turmoil of his current conflict. Once Decena established himself as a high-ranking member of the Gulf Cartel, using the promise of greater pay and more freedom, he managed to bring in over thirty deserters from the Mexican army. While these soldiers were not simply your average grunt, these thirty men were highly trained members of the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales, essentially they were Mexican Special Forces soldiers. These men were elite commandos who had received preliminary training from Israeli and US special forces units and were skilled in urban combat, weapons training and tactical discipline. Decena's original purpose in hiring these men was primarily as bodyguards, although as time went on the roles of these men would increase greatly, as would the name Los Zetas. When the war that Guillén inherited had finally calmed down, he chose to give the Zetas a broader range of responsibilities. With this greater responsibility also grew the importance of the Zetas within the Gulf Cartel. Many of these new responsibilities the Zetas received included kidnapping and extortion and acting as a sort of task force to protect drug routes. With their military background the Zetas have been able to execute... middle of paper...like this and the capture of Zeta leader Miguel Treviño Morales in 2013 are definitely some bright spots for the battle against the cartel. But despite all the captures and kidnappings, the Zetas still maintain control over eleven Mexican states and continue their daily acts of violence and drug trafficking. The Zetas have become a formidable foe, having risen from relatively humble beginnings to being sanctioned by the state government in 2012 as, along with the Russian Brothers Circle, the Japanese Yakuza and the Italian Camorra, as one of the most important transnational criminal groups. Perhaps it will be impossible for the Mexican government to control the Zetas, and if the last fourteen years of the war on drugs has shown that this may very well be the case, the only option remaining is simply to coexist with Los Zetas. in a new Pax Mafiosa.