The second-highest-ranking leader of the Gulf Cartel pleaded guilty this week to a federal drug conspiracy charge as part of a plea agreement with federal prosecutors. The feared cartel boss is one of the top cartel figures that Mexico’s government sent to the U.S. in early 2025 after the Trump Administration began pressuring Mexico to take a hard line against drug cartels.
The Gulf Cartel is one of six Mexican crime syndicates labeled as foreign terrorist organizations by the U.S. government.
On Tuesday afternoon, the man known as Vaquero went before U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez, where he pleaded guilty to one count of drug trafficking conspiracy as part of a plea deal. Despite the deal, Cruz Sanchez is still facing a term in prison of ten years to life for his role in helping lead the Gulf Cartel.
The case against Vaquero centers on the large quantities of cocaine, meth, and fentanyl that the criminal organization smuggled into Texas, primarily through Brownsville.
The criminal indictment in the case names Jose Alfredo “El Contador” Cardenas Martinez, Cruz Sanchez, and Ricardo “Billeton” Cortez Mateos as the three main leaders (in that order) of the Gulf Cartel between 2015 and 2021, when authorities in Mexico arrested Vaquero. El Contador is currently in a Mexican jail but is reportedly still running the Gulf Cartel from behind bars.
Court documents in Texas revealed that from 2015 to 2021, Contador used Vaquero and Billeton to run his organization.
In 2021, Breitbart Texas published an exclusive photograph of El Vaquero following his arrest in the border state of Nuevo Leon. At the time of his arrest, Vaquero was listed as an employee of the Matamoros police.
During his time in power, Vaquero helped spread a reign of terror in northern Tamaulipas as his faction of the Gulf Cartel waged a fierce turf war with another faction based in the border city of Reynosa known as Los Metros. During that turf war, both sides deployed convoys of armored trucks carrying a large number of gunmen carrying high-powered weapons and explosives. In addition to the fighting, both sides carried out hundreds of abductions and eventual murders of individuals suspected of having ties to their rivals; in many of those cases, the victims were innocent bystanders.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart News Foundation. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at [email protected].
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