Mexican authorities capture leader of notorious Gulf Cartel

A top leader of Mexico's Gulf Cartel was captured Saturday in a military operation near the Texas border, the second major capture of a gang boss since President Enrique Pena Nieto took office last December.

Mexico's government said the army apprehended Mario Armando Ramirez Trevino, who had been vying to take over the cartel since the arrest last September of the Gulf's erstwhile leader, Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez, known as "El Coss."  

The U.S. State Department is offering a reward of $5 million for his capture. Ramirez, who was born in 1962 according to the U.S. government, is wanted on several federal drug violations.

The once-powerful Gulf Cartel still controls most of the cocaine and marijuana trafficking through the Matamoros corridor – in the state of Tamaulipas – across the border from Brownsville, Texas, and has an international reach into Central America and beyond. But the cartel has been plagued by infighting since Costilla's arrest, while also being under attack in its home territory by its former security arm, the Zetas.

The Zetas also took a hit on July 15, when authorities in northern Mexico captured Zetas boss Miguel Angel Trevino Morales in the first major arrest of a drug boss during Pena Nieto's administration.

Meanwhile, in the Gulf succession fight, Ramirez and rival Michael Villarreal, known as "Gringo Mike," have been at odds, according to U.S. law enforcement, and the cartel divided into two major factions of those loyal to Costilla and those loyal to former boss Osiel Cardenas Guillen, who was arrested in 2003 and extradited to the U.S. in 2007, where he is serving a 25-year prison sentence.

The split is blamed for much of the violence in the border city of Reynosa across from McAllen, Texas, where there have been regular, public shootouts between Gulf factions and authorities in the last six months.

In recent years, the Mexican government has made major hits on the leadership of both the Gulf and Zetas, who were aligned until 2010. Their falling out also caused an unprecedented spike in violence in the border state of Tamaulipas.

More than 70,000 people were killed during former President Felipe Calderon's six-year offensive against drug cartels and more than 6,000 have died since Pena Nieto took office in December.

Al Jazeera and wire services