Zeta Cartel Term Analysis

That is when Marisela heard rumors that started to make it possible to make sense of this whole story. Sergio, she was told, is a Zeta. That is why the police would not touch him. That is why he kept escaping. When Marisela got her final lead on where Sergio was, the police were finally honest with her. “If he’s with the Zetas, we’re not going to be able to do anything, because they run the state,” they told her. “If we do a bust, it’s because they allow us to do it. We don’t bust people just like that.” They were apologetic, but they explained that the Zetas give them money if they serve them and death if they don’t.

With legalization, the fevered poetry of the drug war has turned into the flat prose of the drug peace. Drugs have been turned into a topic as banal as selling fish, or tires, or lightbulbs.

As Barbara speaks, all the killing—from Arnold Rothstein to Chino’s gang to the Zetas—is being replaced by contracts. All the guns are being replaced by subordinate clauses. All the grief is being replaced by regulators and taxes and bureaucrats with clipboards.

[…]

I am bored at last, and I realize a tear of relief is running down my cheek.