Miguel Treviño Morales

Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales (born 18 November 1970), commonly referred to by his alias Z-40, is a Mexican former drug lord and leader of the criminal organization known as Los Zetas.

Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales was born on 18 November 1970 in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico.

His parents, Rodolfo Treviño and María Arcelia Morales, created a large family with six daughters and seven sons, including Miguel.

Like many families along the U.S.-Mexico border, the Treviño family travelled from Mexico to the United States and vice versa, where they bought properties and opened several businesses.

His father abandoned his family at a very young age, forcing Treviño Morales to single-handedly raise the whole family.

Treviño Morales grew up in a lower-class neighborhood in Nuevo Laredo, but as a teenager, he worked for the wealthy by fixing their yards and washing their cars.

He also did chores for the local drug lord Héctor Manuel Sauceda Gamboa (alias El Karis), who later became his mentor; Treviño Morales eventually replaced him as a Zetas leader in Nuevo Laredo.

Treviño Morales grew up disliking Mexico's class disparity and developed so much resentment as to partially explain his violent behavior as an adult.

Treviño Morales frequented Dallas, Texas with his family.

His fluent English and experience of moving contraband along the U.S.–Mexico border enabled him to be recruited in the late 1990s by the drug lord Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, who headed the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas.

He was hired by them and the Gulf Cartel in the late 1990s for his experience moving contraband across the border.

His fluent English and his criminal contacts on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border allowed him to gain the trust of the then-leader of the Gulf Cartel, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén.

When he joined the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas, Los Tejas, the local gang he once worked for, was absorbed by the former groups.

In 1993, he was apprehended in Dallas County and charged with avoiding police arrest, after he had tried to evade the police in a car chase that ended in a street dead end.

He paid a $672-dollar fine and was subsequently released from the county prison.

Few details are known of Treviño Morales's life in Dallas; the U.S. authorities believe he learned about "power, money, weapons and the vast consumer market for illegal drugs" while living in Texas.

They also believe that he perceived an anti-Mexican bias among Americans, and especially towards Mexican immigrants like him.

However, Treviño Morales considered Dallas his home because of his large family network that lives in the surrounding areas.

Around 2005, he was appointed as the regional boss of Los Zetas in Nuevo Laredo and was given the task to fight off the forces of the Sinaloa Cartel, which was attempting to take over the lucrative drug trafficking routes to the United States.

According to U.S. investigators, he was last seen in the Dallas area in 2005 after entering the United States illegally, where visited his family and was said to have been at a strip club.

As a teenager, he began to work for Los Tejas, a gang that ran the criminal activities in his hometown of Nuevo Laredo.

From washing cars, running errands, and stealing car parts in Nuevo Laredo, Treviño Morales turned to the drug trade, starting with small-scale drug retail sales and smuggling.

Unlike the first members of Los Zetas, he was never in the military.

Around 2005, Treviño Morales became the regional boss of Nuevo Laredo; he was in charge of fighting off the incursions of the Sinaloa Cartel, which was attempting to take control of the smuggling routes in the area.

The Laredo–Nuevo Laredo area is a lucrative smuggling route for narcotics because of the Interstate 35 highway, which serves as a strategic pathway to San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas for future drug distribution.

While in power, he orchestrated a number of assassinations in American cities and in Mexico by young U.S. citizens whom he put on his payroll.

Treviño Morales was good at identifying and grooming young teenagers who he believed had the potential to become professional assassins for Los Zetas.

After successfully securing these routes in Nuevo Laredo in 2006, Treviño Morales was moved to Veracruz and appointed as the Zetas leader in the state after the death of the drug lord Efraín Teodoro Torres.

Two years later, his boss Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano sent him to Guatemala to wipe out his competitors; after completing the task successfully, he appointed Treviño Morales as the national commander of Los Zetas in 2008.

In 2010, Los Zetas gained their independence from the Gulf Cartel, their former allies, and both organizations went to war with each other.

As the national commander of Los Zetas, Treviño Morales earned a notorious reputation for intimidating officials and citizens throughout Mexico.

The Mexican authorities believe that he is responsible for a significant part of the violence in Mexico, including the murder of 72 migrants in 2010 and the massacre of 193 people in 2011.

A common torture method of his was known as el guiso (stew), in which victims would be dumped into oil barrels, doused with gasoline or diesel fuel, and burned alive.

Following the death of his boss Lazcano Lazcano in October 2012, Treviño Morales became his successor and the top leader of Los Zetas drug cartel amid an internal power struggle within the organization.

Considered a violent, resentful and dangerous criminal, he was one of Mexico's most-wanted drug lords until his arrest in July 2013.

Born into a family with six brothers and six sisters, Treviño Morales began his criminal career as a teenager, working for Los Tejas—a local gang from his hometown of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas.

Mexican Marines arrested Treviño Morales on 15 July 2013 in the state of Nuevo León without a single bullet being fired.

At the time of his capture, the Mexican government was offering up to a 30 million pesos (US$2.3 million) reward for information leading to his arrest.

The United States Department of State was offering up to US$5 million for information leading to his arrest and conviction.

Authorities on both sides of the border believe that he was succeeded by his younger brother Omar Treviño Morales, a man who was also on the most-wanted list.