Antonio was brother of the main drug cartel leader Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, and a business partner of Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez, an ex-policeman.
Indeed, collusion and price-fixing are the main reasons cartels exist — and why they are illegal in America.
As further evidence of success, the government cites the tens of thousands of arrests it has made of rank-and-file members of the four main Mexican cartels and of some of the kingpins leading them.
Internationally, the gradual dismantlement of the main Colombian cartels after the death of Medellín kingpin Pablo Escobar in 1993, coupled with a U.S. crackdown on smuggling routes across the Caribbean, strengthened the geostrategic leverage of the Mexican cartels.
There are three main players: the cartel known as Los Caballeros Templarios (the Knights Templar), the Federal Police and Mexican Army forces, and the armed civilian groups that have emerged in Michoacan – as well as other states – in the absence of peace and safety.
There are three main players: the cartel known as Los Caballeros Templarios (the Knights Templar), the Federal Police and Mexican Army forces, and the armed civilian groups that have emerged in Michoacan as well as other states in the absence of peace and safety.
Known straw buyers made purchases that were supposed to lead to the cartels' main brokers.
Officials say the cartel's main sources of income are illegal mining, logging and extortion.
It would leave Ismael "el Mayo" Zambada, as the only one of the cartel's main leaders still in action.
The message appeared to be from the Beltrán Leyva drug cartel, whose main leader, Arturo Beltrán Leyva, was shot to death in a confrontation with Mexican troops on Dec. 16.
