Who is “El Juanito”, the new leader of the Northeast Cartel

The reign of El Huevo Treviño at the head of the Northeast Cartel (CDN) has come to an end. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that “everything has returned to normal” following the capture of the criminal leader in Nuevo Laredo and his subsequent extradition to the United States.

Juan Cisneros Treviño, alias El Juanito, has allegedly taken control of the cartel following the capture of his cousin Juan Gerardo Treviño Chavez, so he is now regarded not only as his successor but as the last of the Treviños.

El Juanito is designated as the new head of the organization and its armed arm, the Troop of Hell, through which he maintains a fierce struggle with cells of the Gulf Cartel, as well as territorial disputes against the Old School Zetas.

Juanito had a strong rivalry with his cousin El Huevo for control of the criminal organization and allegedly, after his capture, rumors began to circulate in the bowels of the cartel that Cisneros Treviño had leaked information about his cousin to the authorities to be arrested, La Opinión reported.

The treason would also have extended to other operators of the Troop of Hell, whose arrests progressively weakened the armed arm of Juan Gerardo Treviño.

Cisneros, like Juan Gerardo, is the nephew of Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, the Z-40 and Oscar Omar Treviño Morales, the Z-42. He is the son of Ana Isabel Treviño Morales and half brother of Sofía Del Carmen, alias La Mojón; of Orlando, the Rolis; and Carlos Alberto la Bola Monsiváis Treviño. All of them are currently in prison.

The arrest of Treviño Chavez unleashed hours of hell in that border town. After an operation of only 16 minutes, commanded by the Army, blockades followed, with vehicles on fire, in 13 parts of the city.

The Troop of Hell, the armed wing of the Northeast Cartel, unleashed aggressions against 20 military bases and attacked six housing units in which Sedena personnel live. Eight other civilian facilities were attacked.

Under the command of the Egg, the Northeast Cartel became the third most territorial criminal organization in Mexico. Today he is charged by a Texas court with drug trafficking and money laundering, among eight other counts.

According to analysts consulted by Infobae Mexico, the history of Los Zetas dates back to the 1980s and 1990s, when the Gulf Cartel was at its peak. In the late nineties, some of the kingpins began recruiting former military and former federal police officers to hire them as their bodyguards.

The reason was that if they were arrested by the authorities, they received a lesser penalty if they were only found drugs, rather than weapons. The bodyguards were the only ones who were armed, so the capos could not be accused of carrying weapons.

Osiel Cardenas Guillen, a former leader of the Gulf Cartel who received a 25-year prison sentence in 2010, was one of the main drug traffickers who began recruiting military bodyguards, who would later be named “Los Zetas”. The name of the organization has to do with the radio keys they used at the time, and in which the letter “Z” had several meanings.

The place where they settled most strongly was in the city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, on the border with the United States. Over the years, after several recruitments, new generations of zetas began to emerge. Among them was a family from Nuevo Laredo, which was known as the Treviño Morales.

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