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The Nuevo Laredo Cartel (ヌエヴォ・ラレド・カルテル Nuevo Raredo Karuteru) is a Mexican crime syndicate and branch of the Gerolamo Familia, a crime syndicate based in Florida. Although based in Mexico, they also operate internationally. In the Thai branch in Roanapur, which is led by Fernando Lobos, the enforcer Elvis attempted to create counterfeit U.S. bills by hiring Janet Bhai and her partner Theo to make perfect counterfeiting plates.

Structure and business[]

The Nuevo Laredo Cartel is ultimately commanded by a man known as Jefe Guerrera, who is based in Mexico. The group is heavily involved in drug trafficking and is allied with the powerful Mexican cartel Los Soldados.[1] On the other hand, Don Gerolamo is the leader of the overarching eponymous Gerolamo Familia. Furthermore, the group is invested in money counterfeiting and uses political corruption as demonstrated when Don Gerolamo visited Washington, D.C. to discreetly meet with U.S. Senator Jack Bonham.[2]

History[]

Greenback Jane[]

In the "Greenback Jane" arc, Elvis, who was new to Roanapur, relocated to the Thai city to hire Jane and Theo to continue perfecting their counterfeit money plates. The cartel even provided the two with high-grade materials and a Swiss printing press to truly perfect their final product. When Jane kept working two months past the deadline and $200,000 over the budget, Elvis and his men paid the two counterfeiters a visit. Impatient with Jane's time and resource usage, Elvis threatened her to hurry up by signaling one gangster to kill Theo, shocking her and angering Elvis's advisor Lobos since he had to organize the corpse removal. Elvis had his men keep Jane under surveillance and confinement, giving her a time frame of 48 hours to finish the job or face severe consequences. While playing a card game with each other outside Jane's room, one of the two gangsters got up to use the bathroom. Seizing the opportunity, Jane trapped the man in the bathroom by shutting the door tight with a computer cord and then knocked out José with the computer monitor. Exiting the building, Jane ran away but was unfamiliar with Roanapur's layout while escaping the cartel, and Elvis and his men immediately dispatched to locate Jane.[3]

Elvis and his men arrived at the Rip-Off Church and saw her pleading with Eda at the door, and the mobster fired a warning shot from his car at the door, angering Eda. He demanded that they hand over Jane, but Eda and Revy were angered and shot back at Elvis and his men. During the shooting, Lobos waved his arms and pleaded with the women to hold their fire since the situation was a misunderstanding. Eda refused to believe this and she, Revy and Rico continued shooting at Elvis and the frightened Lobos. Yolanda joined in and shot at one of the Nuevo Laredo Cartel's cars, flipping it over. Lobos ordered the cartel to retreat from the church premises, angering an injured and restrained Elvis.[4] Elvis was bedridden from his injuries and demanded Lobos to find and capture Jane, but the latter refused. Accordingly, he had Russell, a native Floridan member of the Nuevo Laredo Cartel under Don Gerolamo, hire some muscle to kill Jane since the cowboy received info on her whereabouts from Richie Leroy. Promising that Elvis would be in the Caribbean in no time to watch the sunset with Don Gerolamo, Russell commented that he came to Thailand in case Elvis ran into the exact problem that he was dealing with. At the Yellow Flag, the cowboy relayed the job to the bounty hunters, who chastised him for being very bossy for someone who was oblivious to how Roanapur operated.[3]

As Russell's various mercenaries failed to capture Jane again and again, Lobos apologized to Dutch for the mercenaries' attack on the Lagoon Company's dry dock.[5] In the hospital, Lobos visited Elvis, who was still adamant in hunting down Jane despite the bounty hunters' failure. Stepping outside of the room, Lobos sighed while his pistol was shown under his suit jacket, implying that he was going to purge Elvis for his cost to the cartel.[6] Elsewhere on Dutch's PT boat, Russell managed to sneak inside the PT Boat and started wrecking the engine room, where he was confronted by Eda in a firefight. When he was held at gunpoint, he was disappointed since he wondered how he would break the news to Elvis. The nun informed him that Lobos would get rid of him, surprising the cowboy, who thought that he recognized Eda. Although she tried to dissuade him from thinking further, Russell recalled how he saw someone like her when Don Gerolamo visited Washington, D.C. to meet U.S. Senator Jack Bonham at the Fontainebleau. She joked that she lied about her hometown being Alabama and was instead from Langley, Virginia. When Russell realized that she was a CIA agent due to the metonym, Eda immediately shot him in the face and killed him, ending the Nuevo Laredo Cartel's pursuit of Jane for the time being.[2]

The Wired Red Wild Card[]

Upon seeing Sawyer the Cleaner again, Jane was terrified and asked in fear if Gerolamo hired more people again to kill her.[7] Much later, Jane got a call from a fellow Highwaymen member telling her that she had the option to go in hiding until Reinbach A.G. was no longer angry with her. She furiously responded that she could not stay in Roanapur since there was still a bounty on her head, indicating that the Nuevo Laredo Cartel was still after her.[8]

L'homme sombre[]

The Nuevo Laredo Cartel was mentioned by Mister Chang to be waging war with the Colombian Cartel for territory in Latin America. He added that the control of drugs was leaning toward the Nuevo Laredo Cartel, mentioning that their lackey Fernando would possibly become a member of the Council in the near future.[9]

El réquiem de los Desalmados[]

While fighting for more territory in the Mexico–U.S. border region, the Nuevo Laredo Cartel allied themselves with Los Soldados, a rising cartel in Mexico. In a brief period, the two weakened the Colombian Cartel enough that they lost their seat on the Council in Roanapur, and they began to rival with Hotel Moscow in Cananea because they fought the Russians' ally, the Guadalajara Cartel. After the Colombian Cartel removed their own presence from Roanapur, Fernando Lobos was informed by Chang that he would be offered a seat on the Council, pleasing him. Meanwhile, Jefe Guerrera informed his subordinate Lobos that he would not mind declaring a truce with the Russians on the condition that Hotel Moscow would abandon the Guadalajara Cartel as their ally. Before attending the next Council meeting to vote on the appointment of Lobos to the Council, the leader of Los Soldados, Gris el Tigris, decided to accompany Lobos to the meeting to personally speak with Balalaika.

On the night of the Council meeting, Lobos arrived at The Golden Swingin Night Club and voluntarily surrendered his sidearm per the meeting customs. When the meeting began, Lobos admitted that he was honored to be offered a position among Roanapur's most powerful bosses. Chang asked him when his representative would arrive, to which the Mexican boss replied that he heard he recently arrived at the airport. At that point, Gris arrived and sat down. Lobos subsequently listened to him explain that he started his cartel after learning of Balalaika's backstory as a discarded soldier. The two bosses began to exchange words, with Gris affirming that he would do everything in his power to crush Hotel Moscow despite his respect for them. Frustrated, Lobos warned him to be quiet because the former was the one with authority in Roanapur. Chang chimed in to say that they needed to focus on their agenda item of voting on the Nuevo Laredo Cartel's appointment to the Council. In response, Lobos relayed his boss's condition of a truce to them, but Gris vehemently disagreed with him, exclaiming that they could not expose their backs to their enemy in any part of the world.[1]

Shocked by his declaration, Lobos sat speechless as Gris asserted that he would not forgive Hotel Moscow and only wanted to kill Vasily Krivchenko, who ran Hotel Moscow's operations in Cananea. Though he could not say anything due to his shock, he snapped out of it when Rock volunteered to speak up and propose a compromise. Hearing Rock's idea that Hotel Moscow would give up its share of territory that they took after the Colombian Cartel fled Roanapur in exchange for sparing Krivchenko, Lobos agreed to the terms. When Balalaika said that she would not take a backseat to Nuevo Laredo, he assured her that the initial plan would be for his cartel to not take any shares so that the Russians had time to think about the overall deal. To his surprise, Gris interrupted them and asked Lobos if he was done with his "fairy tale." Gris declared that he would not stop at taking Krivchenko's head, causing Lobos to shout at him, but the former only replied that Lobos seemed to forget that Mexico's criminal underworld was an unforgiving place. Once Gris reiterated his threat to crush anyone who got in his way, Lobos stood up while his ally stated that war would commence after leaving the nightclub.[10]

Trivia[]

  • The "Nuevo" in Nuevo Laredo is usually transcribed as "ヌエボ" (Nuebo) in Japanese, but the Black Lagoon series has it written as "ヌエヴォ" (Nuevo).
  • In the 1990s, the Gulf Cartel had influence in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, where the city of Nuevo Laredo is located.

References[]

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