A man accused of being a hit man for a Mexican cartel went to trial Wednesday on federal racketeering, drug conspiracy and weapons charges, one of nearly three dozen defendants indicted in connection with an alleged drug-trafficking conspiracy on the Texas border. Prosecutors say that over several months, starting in 2005, teams of gunmen moved between Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, with a list of targets. Top commanders for the Zetas, the muscle of the Gulf cartel, ordered hits that left at least seven people dead, according to testimony and documents filed as part of the trial that began Wednesday. Gerardo Castillo Chavez, also known as "Cachetes," or Cheeks, is the first of 34 defendants named in the 51-page indictment to go on trial. Prosecutors allege he was part of a larger drug-trafficking conspiracy run by the Gulf cartel and the Zetas. It is prosecutors' second try at Castillo: A judge declared a mistrial in 2010 after the jury deadlocked on several counts. A new witness, arrested since the first trial, opened a rare window Wednesday into a period of growth for the Zetas Wenceslao Tovar Jr. started as a low-level courier ferrying drug loads across the border, but in a matter of months he and a partner performed their first hit on a Zeta enemy, a man whose name he never learned. "They (the Zetas) needed for me and for other people to kill people in Laredo," Tovar testified through an interpreter. "We were going to get $10,000 for every person we killed." The Zetas' unrelenting violence against their employers' enemies foreshadowed the fear-inducing public violence that has helped the Zetas become one of Mexico's most powerful criminal organizations. Court records show that the conspiracy's primary objective was moving cocaine and marijuana from Mexico into Laredo and on to Dallas. Between 2001 and 2008, the organization, known collectively as "La Compania," or the company, moved hundreds of drug loads into the United States. Cash proceeds from drug sales and guns followed the route back to Mexico. The cartel employed a network of safe houses for its drug loads and gunmen on both sides of the border. To protect its lucrative territory from the Sinaloa cartel, the Zetas employed scores of gunmen, even juvenile assassins, to eliminate rivals. In addition to the seven identified victims, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jose Angel Moreno said there were several others who were targeted, but not killed. Tovar's Zeta bosses threw in 100 kilograms of marijuana and an ounce of cocaine to sweeten the deal on his first contract killing. After the hit, he and his partner fled to Nuevo Laredo and were taken to meet Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, also known as "40," a former Mexican special forces soldier and then the Zetas' boss in the key border city. Many of the Zetas's founding members were recruited from Mexican special forces. "(Trevino) was executing three people," when they arrived, he said. "He was cutting their heads off." Trevino gave Tovar and his partner the name of the next man they were to kill- a Nuevo Laredo police officer who had switched allegiances from Zetas to Sinaloa, he said. Tovar testified that Castillo was serving under another Zeta commander, but was staying six bunks away from him in a barn at the ranch the Zetas used for training. San Fernando is where Mexican authorities have found 193 bodies on a ranch in 26 mass graves. Officials say most of those were migrants heading to the United States who were kidnapped off buses and killed by the Zetas. Tovar testified that at that camp and another where he first trained outside the state capital Ciudad Victoria, new recruits were taught to kill Zeta prisoners with machetes and sledgehammers. "Forty (Miguel Angel Trevino) used to say so they would lose their fear," Tovar said. He said he trained with 100 Zeta recruits at the first camp and 300 in San Fernando. Tovar said he remembered Castillo because he was talkative and was the only one wearing gloves because of the cold. Castillo's attorney Roberto Balli has maintained that Castillo is not the "Cachetes" or Zetas member that prosecutors say he is. Castillo was arrested in 2009 in Houston. Balli argued in the first trial that the government lacked any physical evidence to tie Castillo to the crimes and instead relied on convicted assassins. On Wednesday, Balli said federal agents were looking for a man named Armando Garcia, the name in the original indictment, when they arrested Castillo in Houston. In April 2006, Tovar was in Nuevo Laredo on vacation when he flipped his truck and was left paralyzed from the waist down. The Zetas paid to fly Tovar to Cuba for surgery under a false identity and continued to pay him a salary even though he couldn't work until they split with the Gulf cartel in 2010. Mexican authorities arrested Tovar in Nuevo Laredo in July 2011. Two weeks ago Tovar pleaded guilty to a federal firearms charge in the killing of Juarez-Orozco. Other federal charges were dismissed in exchange for his cooperation. He also has pending state charges. Oscar Vela, another attorney for Castillo, challenged Tovar on not knowing Castillo's name and not admitting to knowing him when Laredo Police first interviewed him last year. Vela suggested Tovar would say anything to try to get his sentence lightened. Tovar did not disagree, but said "I'm cooperating because I did wrong." Testimony was scheduled to continue Thursday, and the trial is expected to last more than a week.
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