Arturo Guzmán Decena

Arturo Guzmán Decena
Arturo Guzmán Decena while in the military.
Born	(1976-01-13)13 January 1976 Puebla, Mexico
Died	21 November 2002(2002-11-21) (aged 26) Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico
Other names	Z-1
Occupation	founder and leader of Los Zetas
Successor	Rogelio González Pizaña
Military career
Allegiance	Mexico
Service/branch	Mexican Army
Years of service	1994–1998
Unit	Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales

Arturo Guzmán Decena (a.k.a. Z-1) (13 January 1976 – 21 November 2002) was a Mexican Army Special Forces operative who in 1997 defected to the Gulf Cartel and subsequently founded the criminal syndicate's enforcement wing at the behest of drug baron Osiel Cárdenas Guillén. Known today as Los Zetas, the cartel's armed wing ultimately broke apart and formed its own drug trafficking organization.

Guzmán Decena was born in a poor family in Puebla and joined the military as a teenager to escape from poverty. While in the military, he was a talented and bright soldier, earning a position in the Special Forces of the Mexican military by the mid-1990s. During his military career, Guzmán Decena received counter-insurgency training, acquired skills in explosives, and learned how to track down and apprehend his enemies from an elite combat group trained by the U.S. Special Forces and the Israel Defense Forces.

He began to take bribes from the Gulf Cartel while still serving in the military, but eventually defected to work full-time for the criminal organization in 1997. For years he recruited other members of the Mexican Armed Forces to form Los Zetas, the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel, along with Cárdenas Guillén.

He served as the right-hand man of Cárdenas Guillén until 21 November 2002, when he was gunned down and killed by the Mexican Army in the border city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas.

Guzmán Decena was born in a poor village in Puebla, Mexico on 13 January 1976, and finished middle school and high school before joining the Mexican military to escape poverty. His talents and aggressive behavior earned him a position with an elite Mexican military group called Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE), originally trained in counter-insurgency tactics for the Zapatista uprising in 1994 and for locating and apprehending members of Mexico's drug trafficking organizations. Guzmán Decena reportedly received military training from the Israeli special forces. His training came into practice after more than 3,000 Zapatista rebels seized several towns across the southern state of Chiapas in 1994. The rebellion was a symbolic rising against poverty and the single-party rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and many rebels took arms; the Mexican government, however, sent in the GAFE to put down the Zapatistas. Within hours, 34 rebels were killed and three others were captured by Guzmán Decena's counter-insurgency group. Their bodies were then disposed on a riverbank – with their ears and noses sliced off.