Top 10 Notorious Mexican Drug Lords

The ongoing Mexican government campaign has led to the killing of two major drug lords, Nazario Moreno Gonzalez and Antonio Ezequiel Cardenas at the end of 2010, and the arrest in June 2011 of Moreno's apparent successor Jesus Mendez Vargas. All this, however, offers small encouragement as Mexico tries to rein in the powerful drug cartels that have wreaked havoc across the country. TIME looks at 10 of the country's most prominent gangsters — dead or alive.

Not Your Pancho Villa

Jorge Eduardo Costilla

By Ioan GrilloWednesday, June 22, 2011
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Alias: El Coss
Affiliation: Gulf cartel
Born: Aug. 1, 1971, in Matamoros
Bounty: $5 million (U.S.), 30 million pesos (Mexico)
What We Know: Costilla heads a cartel that supposedly first grew out of a gang of bootleggers back in the days of American prohibition. Costilla was indicted in the U.S. for being part of a group that threatened an FBI and DEA agent with Kalashnikov rifles. He used to work closely with the Zetas cartel, but now is at the forefront of a war to exterminate them.

UPDATE: On Sept. 12, 2012, Costilla was arrested in Tampico in Mexico's Tamaulipas state.

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