Delfino was handpicked twice. At 18, he was chosen by the Mexican army to join its elite unit, the airborne special forces group known by its Spanish acronym, Gafe, where he specialized as a sniper. Nowadays, the only outward sign of his military background is the camouflaged hat on his head, and the Panther. Delfino belongs to what remains of a cult-like drug cartel called Los Caballeros Templarios, or the Knights Templar, whose original leaders blended extreme violence with pseudo-religious teachings and claimed a mandate from God.
The leakage of Mexican special forces into organized crime began in the s when the powerful Gulf cartel recruited a group of ex-Gafe troops to create its own paramilitary enforcement unit, known as Los Zetas. They eventually turned on their masters , establishing the Zetas as a cartel in their own right. But other narco bosses followed suit, turning to the military for skilled recruits.
The scale of the problem remains unclear β not least because the Mexican government has been unwilling to release data, said Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, an associate professor at George Mason University and author of Zetas Inc.
Defectors included members of units that received training in counter-terrorism, counter-intelligence, interrogation and strategy from French, Israeli and US advisers, according to a FBI intelligence document. Within two months, around 20, troops were involved in operations. Critics say that this influx of cash has helped create an opaque security industry open to corruption.
But the biggest costs have been human: since , over , people have been murdered, more than 40, reported as disappeared and 26, unidentified bodies in morgues across the country. Improved collaboration between the US and Mexico has resulted in numerous high-profile arrests and drug busts. While the crackdown and capture of kingpins has won praise from the media and US, it has done little to reduce the violence. For a time, it seemed that the strategy was working.
