Tales of Los Zetas: A Nephew for Nephew

By Itzli.

The infamous murder of “Lalo” Moreira by Los Zetas is revisited to incorporate long overlooked details.

Killing of a Zeta

Piedras Negras, October 3, 2012, 3:00 PM. Located across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas, this city was the site of an afternoon shootout involving a special police group within the Coahuila government. Five members of Los Zetas were reported to have been killed in this clash with authorities. It would later be said that one of those killed was named Alejandro Treviño Chávez.

Death of “Lalo” Moreira

Ciudad Acuña, October 3, 2012, 9:15 PM. Twenty-five year old José Eduardo “Lalo” Moreira Rodríguez was a well known individual in this border city across from Del Rio, Texas that is located sixty miles northwest of Piedras Negras. A son of former governor Humberto Moreira Valdez and nephew of the then current governor Rubén Ignacio Moreira Valdez, Lalo Moreira was the Director of Public Works, a department which often helped impoverished areas of the city. He had future aspirations of being elected mayor of his home town of Ciudad Acuña.

After spending much of the day with the mayor and local media, Lalo Moreira was to attend the dedication of a sports field at 6:00 PM. Around 5:45 PM a friend of his called to make sure he was still coming; he replied that the police chief had asked to see him and would be on his way as soon as he found out what the police chief needed. After Lalo Moreira failed to arrive at the event a search began and his dead body was found shortly after 9:00 PM.

The Prevailing Version of Events

The vast majority of reporting on the death of Lalo Moreira presents a relatively straightforward story. Alejandro Treviño Chávez was a nephew of the second in command of Los Zetas, Miguel Ángel “Z-40” Treviño Morales. Enraged, “Z-40” ordered that Lalo Moreira be murdered in an act of vengeance, though “Z-40” has since tried to deny this and one line of information claimed it was Heriberto “El Lazca” Lazcano Lazcano, leader of Los Zetas, that made the order. 

Regardless, the leadership of Los Zetas contacted Ciudad Acuña police chief Rodolfo Castillo Montes, who had long been corrupted by the cartel. Under the false pretense of needing to speak with him in person, the police chief lured Lalo Montes to a location where police officers Jorge “El Taka” Tenorio Takajasi and Víctor “La Iguana” Landeros Sifuentes kidnapped him and handed him over to Carlos Arnulfo “El Flaco” Flores Flores and Rubén “El Shaggy” Sifuentes Cadena, members of Los Zetas that killed Lalo Moreira . Thereafter, Los Zetas hung banners in Ciudad Acuña that contained the phrases “family for family” and “nephew for nephew” which is the key piece of information connecting the killings of Alejandro Treviño Chávez and Lalo Moreira.

A Narco State

To have a better understanding of these events it is best that we take a general look at Los Zetas in Coahuila before we move forward. Once dominated by independent drug traffickers, Los Zetas began their expansion into that state in 2004 while Enrique Martínez y Martínez was governor. 

Then came the administration of the father of Lalo Moreira, Humberto Moreira Valdez, which began in December 2005. There is no doubt that Los Zetas had managed to corrupt the governor; Coahuila became one of their strongholds and Piedras Negras, their second most important city for trafficking drugs into the United States. 

Things began to change in December 2011, when Rubén Ignacio Moreira Valdez became governor. At first it seemed that Los Zetas had managed to corrupt him as well. Then in April 2012 Alberto José “El Paisa” González Xalate, regional leader of Los Zetas, was arrested in the capital city of Saltillo. Just over three months later war broke out within Los Zetas. 

As Los Zetas looked to replenish their ranks, a mass prison break took place in Piedras Negras on September 17, 2012. It was said the media was afraid to report on shootouts and arrests that were taking place in and around the city days prior. By September 25th GATES were deployed to Piedras Negras and the following day the situation escalated as Los Zetas fought against GATES and members of the military. 

The dynamics had changed greatly. Grupo de Armas y Tácticas Especiales (GATES) had been formed by Rubén Moreira in 2011 but it seems that they had never been deployed against Los Zetas prior to this time frame. Additional clashes between Los Zetas and GATES took place thereafter, including October 2, 2012 that left four dead and, as previously mentioned, five killed on October 3, 2012.

A Broken Pact Motive

The prevailing version of events is straightforward, Alejandro Treviño Chávez is killed by forces connected to the Coahuila government and hours later Los Zetas kill a relative of the governor, a nephew for nephew is the price paid for the death of a family member of “Z-40”. 

Yet an article from nearly a month later adds a different context to the motivations of Los Zetas. The report cites information from a high ranking source within Mexico’s attorney general’s office (Procuraduría General de la República/PGR) that claims that “Z-40” had a non-aggression pact with the Coahuila state police. Thus, Alejandro Treviño Chávez being killed in a shootout with GATES goes beyond a nephew of “Z-40” being killed, by deploying GATES in the first place the non-aggression pact had been broken.

The general absence of operations against Los Zetas while Humberto Moreira was governor of Coahuila serves as circumstantial evidence that a non-aggression pact was in place back then and it seems that this extended into the early part of the administration of Rubén Moreira. In the summer of 2016 a financial operator of Los Zetas was a witness in court and, when asked about the murder of Lalo Moreira, he seemingly alludes to the non-aggression pact when he stated “It was ordered by ‘Z-40’ because they killed his nephew. They didn’t respect the agreements”. 

The Secret Kidnapping Motive

According to the prevailing version of events Alejandro Treviño Chávez was killed in Piedras Negras around 3:00 PM and Lalo Moreira was last in contact with his friend at 5:45 PM. Thus, for these events to be connected everything had to have transpired in the course of at most three hours. When one considers this it seems to be a very narrow timeframe as the leadership of Los Zetas needed to first learn of Alejandro’s death, make a decision to act in a way that had great potential for fallout against the cartel, contact the police chief to lure Lalo Moreira, and coordinate this with the members of Los Zetas that conducted the killing.

Unlike the vast majority of reporting, articles written by Chivis for Borderland Beat claimed that Alejandro was killed a day prior, on October 2, 2012, and the banners containing the phrases “family for family” and “nephew for nephew” were hung as a threat the evening before Lalo Moreira was murdered. As previously mentioned, a shootout in Piedras Negras did take place that afternoon and left four cartel members dead. Assuming this is the incident in which Alejajandro was killed, instead of three hours, Los Zetas would have had over 24 hours to react to the nephew of “Z-40” being killed and orchestrate the murder of Lalo Moreira.

An extended timeline of events can be derived from the previously mentioned article as it presents a dramatically different scenario. While the PGR source stated that Lalo Moreira was killed because the non-aggression pact had been broken, a document from the Mexican Federal Police mentioned allegations that Alejandro was not killed during the October 3, 2012 shootout. Instead, claims existed that he had been kidnapped by Coahuila state police officers at some point prior and his dead body was dumped at the scene of that event, which prompted Los Zetas to murder Lalo Moreira.

The Multi-Motive Theory

While the prevailing version of events surrounding the deaths of Alejandro Treviño Chávez and Lalo Moreira is simple and straightforward, we have seen that two alternative motivations for the actions of Los Zetas have been reported. Taking this into account perhaps there is a theory that can be constructed that would incorporate all these possibilities.

Assuming that the rumored non-aggression pact between Los Zetas and the Coahuila state government was true, governor Rubén Moreira Valdez had violated the agreement by September 26, 2012 at the latest from the perspective of Los Zetas, as by that date GATES were clearly deployed in Piedras Negras. If this was at the very least a partial motive for Los Zetas actions, this opens up the possibility that the timeline of events began up to a full week before Lalo Moreira was murdered. Perhaps there was an initial phase in which the leadership of Los Zetas were angry at Rubén Moreira for deploying GATES in Piedras Negras and had yet to decide how to react.

As the actions taken against Alejandro Treviño Chávez appear to be the principal driving factor for the murder of Lalo Moreira, one would be tempted to delve into his general history to search for relevant information. A member of Los Treviño Chávez within the extended Treviño Morales family, he was the son of Juan Francisco “El Kiko Ozuna” Treviño Morales. Very little is known about him in comparison to his brothers Juan Francisco “El Kiko” Treviño Chávez and Juan Gerardo “El Huevo” Treviño Chávez. In the article that we have previously referenced for motives it states that Alejandro had no known ties to organized crime and he did not appear in government alert records. 

Nevertheless, some reporting indicates that Alejandro was a head of plaza for Los Zetas in an unspecified city. It would be tempting to ascribe him to Nuevo Laredo as it is said he lived in Laredo and one high ranking member of Los Zetas, Salvador Alfonso “La Ardilla” Martínez Escobedo, assumed he had been killed in that city when he learned of Alejandro’s death. Another possibility is Piedras Negras; on September 9, 2012 their head of plaza was arrested and may have briefly been succeeded by an individual known as “El Chango”. It is possible that Alejandro was assigned as head of plaza in Piedras Negras at this point, having previously operated in Nuevo Laredo. Regardless of the position he held within Los Zetas, it appears that Alejandro Treviño Chávez was in Piedras Negras when GATES operations were being conducted in that city. 

Amidst a lack of details one can speculate that in one of these events Alejandro was “kidnapped” in the sense that he was taken by authorities who did not officially report his capture. Working under the assumption that Alejandro Treviño Chávez had been captured by the Coahuila government, one would expect that Los Zetas would seek to react to the situation in one form or another which brings us back to the question of who authorized subsequent actions. 

“El Lazca” is sometimes blamed based upon reporting of text messages between him and “La Ardilla” on October 3rd in which “El Lazca” informs “La Ardilla” had been killed in Piedras Negras and that he had “already taken care of the matter” which was assumed to be a reference to ordering the killing of Lalo Moreira. Furthermore, a line of reporting indicates that “El Lazca” had ordered Miguel Ángel “Alfa Metro” Rodríguez Díaz, regional leader of Los Zetas in northern Coahuila including Piedras Negras and Ciudad Acuña who was arrested October 14, 2012, to oversee the matter.

This begs the question, was it the killing of Alejandro Treviño Chávez or his kidnapping that was the motivating factor to react. If we assume the latter, at some point after Alejandro was kidnapped “El Lazca” ordered “Alfa Metro” to plot revenge against governor Rubén Moreira. One often overlooked aspect to all of this is that Lalo Moreira was not the only individual that Los Zetas considered killing. According to Carlos Moreira Valdez, a brother of Rubén and Humberto Moreira, banners were hung by Los Zetas in various cities across Coahuila in the days before October 3, 2012 that threatened “they were coming for one of the Moreira” family members. In an interview weeks later, Humberto Moreira stated that Lalo Moreira was not the only individual being sought, Los Zetas had an order to kill “a nephew of the governor, at the same time they were searching for a son of one of my sisters”.

Within this working theory October 3, 2012 becomes critical as it is the day in which all these threads come together. Alejandro Treviño Chávez was being held by forces of the Coahuila government. Los Zetas were publicly threatening the Moreira Valdez family and searching for at least two nephews of governor Rubén Moreira. That afternoon authorities dumped the dead body of Alejandro in Piedras Negras, most likely in an attempt to present his killing as having taken place during a shootout rather than at the hands of Coahuila police. 

In any scenario one would expect for “Z-40” to be enraged over a family member being killed, within this framework the stage was already being set by “El Lazca” to act against a nephew of Rubén Moreira. It has been reported that lookouts informed “El Lazca” about the death of Alejandro immediately after the shootout. He informed “La Ardilla”, telling him it took place in Piedras Negras and that “Z-40” should be notified. 

This may be the key to rectifying the fact that the majority of the versions of events state that “Z-40” ordered the murder of Lalo Moreira. The plot was already under way to locate a nephew of Rubén Moreira. Perhaps “Z-40” was allowed to make the final decision as to which one was to be killed, a relatively unconnected nephew or the son of the governor under which Los Zetas grew in power in Coahuila, and so took place the murder of Lalo Moreira. 

Ongoing Uncertainty

As previously mentioned, the prevailing narrative is simple and straightforward, a nephew for a nephew, Lalo Moreira was killed by Los Zetas to avenge the death of Alejandro Treviño Chávez. Other pieces of information exist and can be incorporated into a working theory, yet for the most part they have been reported only once without being addressed elsewhere. Thus it is tempting to dismiss these lines of information as unsubstantiated rumors.

One possibility that stands out is the allegation that Alejandro was essentially kidnapped by Coahuila government forces as it opens up a number of questions. Assuming this was the case, did authorities know his location prior to the operation or was he merely captured by sheer luck.  If the prior was the case, who authorized his capture? Perhaps it was governor Rubén Moreira but even this leads to the question, what was his reason for doing so?

With this in mind it is worth noting that some reports indicated that a message was left along with the body of Lalo Moreira but its contents have never been revealed. Following this murder Los Zetas severed direct ties with Rubén Moreira, instead choosing to use an intermediary and in time they lost control of the state they once dominated. Humberto and Rubén are no longer on speaking terms; Humberto blames Rubén for the murder of Lalo Moreira and they have both publicly attacked the other.

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