#449 - “Extinction!” - #1 Cartel Expert on Mexico Invasion, CJNG, Mormons & Pegasus | Ed Calderon

A

Foreign. Crack in the hotel last night. Sorry about that.

B

They were cooking something. There's a lot of smoke, but it was. It was cool.

A

It was cool. They let you back in your room this morning?

B

Yeah, it's got outside with my bare chest, you know, that's.

A

That's great. I'm sure that was a sight for everyone in Jersey City.

B

I mean, I have a very hairless chest. I have. I have a lot of knees, brown nipples, and hairless chest. That's how, you know, have native in me.

A

So they got you out that fast? You couldn't even throw a shirt on. You're just like, full boxers.

B

I was taking a shower and then I poked out the room and people were running, so I was like, maybe this is a real fire.

A

Yeah, they fire trucks and everything. That scared the out of me when you sent me that video. And then you're like, it's all good.

B

It's fine. Normal is a fluid concept for me.

A

Yeah.

B

And that's pretty normal.

A

It's almost like you bring it with you, you know?

B

It's almost like I have a black cat stuck up my ass.

A

Yeah. Something you're also the only guy that's ever decided to, like, explore around there. When you put people up at that hotel, everyone else just enjoys the hotel and they don't go down the street because there's a lot going on there. But you're like, I love this. It's like Tijuana. Let's go.

B

It is. That part of Jersey is pretty Tijuana. Like, I like it. I like it.

A

Well, it's. We like to be in the shit around here, as they say. But, Ed, it's great to see you. We had a nice romantic morning together because.

B

Oh, yeah.

A

Calendar was on Pacific time, so that was nice. Surprise.

B

Get you early ADHD and all that and brain damage, but I'm here. That was a beautiful day, right? Amazing. Like, this is again, for me, this is like an exotic space. Like, I'm from Tijuana, you know?

A

Oh, it's exotic around.

B

Yeah, this is exotic to me. You know, that's a first. That's an exotic.

A

In New Jersey.

B

Yeah, I'm from Tijuana. So all this is like bougie and exotic. The Sopranos around here, like, what?

A

That's right. Yeah. I can take you by all those spots for sure. But you got a good day to see the full skyline, which my friend John Sear was weighing in on Instagram. He is wrong. The best view of New York is where I took you, not where he said, okay, shout out John, but you know, all right, anyway. But what have you been up to, man? It was. It was obviously the last time you were here was a six hour odyssey. We did two episodes. Okay, 392 and 393. Yeah, 292 and 293. But obviously a lot's been going on since then. So you just been bouncing around Mexico?

B

Bouncing around the US and Mexico. I think last time I was here, I think I ominously said that something was probably going to pop off somewhere in the hills of Jalisco.

A

Did you were cooking.

B

And that was before the el men showing the head of the. They. They took out the head of the New generation cartel. I had a prediction that it was going to be Americans doing that. It wasn't Americans directly. It was a US drone flying over and confirming the fact that that guy was in a cabin with his girlfriend in the Palpa. That's.

A

That's how the confirm happened.

B

I've heard different stories and mind you, most of my information I get. I'm not a cartel reporter. I didn't go to journalism school. I have a lot of friends in weird places and I have a lot of friends within the special operations community in Mexico. So I got a pretty early notice about what happened here are different things. One of them was that they tracked a woman that he would frequently.

A

Yes.

B

He was held up in. In a cabin in a very rural part of Jalisco called the Palpa. It's beautiful. It's like Aspen, Colorado, you know.

A

Yeah. Only the best for those guys.

B

And at some point a drone flew over his pad and they were trying to figure out if he was there or not. He was pretty good about keeping out of the view of the sky.

A

Like Bin Laden, kind of high walls.

B

Yeah.

A

Hey guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five star review. They're both a huge, huge help. Thank you.

B

But then they found the woman that he was frequenting and they saw a man coming out of the house, out into the view of the sky, hugging this woman. And I think that's what probably confirmed where he was. A few hours later, members of Mexican special operations showed up in and bulk. And after a long firefight, they had RPGs on them. They had a bunch of sophisticated firearms. It wasn't enough though, this time. And he made a run for it for the hills. Some people say he was executed. Some people say he was caught in the firefight that eventually killed him. And after his Death. His head of propaganda and communications basically called out every single member of his cartel to go out and burn vehicles across the country.

A

And that was that whole like 24 hour period which it was just popping off, but then it stopped.

B

It. It was a day, right? It was a day of them. They burned a Costco, which is pretty kind of like, listen, you know, we

A

got enough of those.

B

They burned a Costco. Gas stations that had American ties to them apparently were targeted, right? They, I used to, I used to have this map of where they were active. And you can superimpose that old map with where they started burning vehicles. And it's perfect match. And that is a lot of territory that they are in, inactive in. Basically it's like 60% of Mexico.

A

Why do you think it just like stopped on a dime? It felt like, as far as like burning in the street goes, it felt very organized.

B

It was, I mean, it was very organized. The New Generation cartel has basically, it's like a franchise company. It has many people that have these organizations that they then go under the banner of this New Generation cartel. And they have been expanding and growing exponentially for years now. And the head of this cartel, Mencho, was after the arrest, after the abduction of El Mayo Sambada, who was historically kind of the biggest fish out there. After he was put on a, a quick flight to New York, just like Maduro, after he was put on a plane by the son of El Chapo Guzman, one of his sons figured something out there which kind of tie into what we're going to talk about later. As far as all the politicians are currently in hot water in Mexico. You saw this emboldened New generation cartel growing exponentially in Mexico. It's the biggest cartel out there right now.

A

Do we have an idea of like ballpark the size of quote, unquote sicario soldiers?

B

There's no way of counting them realistically. They don't check in for no. But we talked to a few of their soldiers in the past. We've interviewed some of them and they talk about numbers, you know, hundreds in training camps or in holding patterns outside of the cities, in the rural areas. So they need to get fed. So there's ledgers of how much people are getting paid, how much people are getting paid to feed them house, including them. Equipment.

A

Yes, you got to keep track of all that.

B

So it's a whole army that they, that they have basically they have drone capabilities, anti aircraft capabilities. They're one of the only confirmed cartels that have been able to take down aircraft by the military, from the military.

A

They're taking down military aircrafts.

B

They, they're. We talked to one kid, I think two years ago who was a former tank operator, a former monster operator for them, that he would drive around one of those armored homemade trucks and he talked, he talked to us about how, what type of capabilities they had. And in a sideline conversation, he talked about how they took one of the miniguns from one of these planes, these helicopters they took down. He was explaining how they took it out. And then we started seeing these, these cars outfitted with these miniguns. So historically they, the last major arrest attempt on a Mencho was during they took down a helicopter.

A

When was that?

B

That was probably six years ago, if I remember. That was the last like attempt at trying to grab them. And that turned into a prolonged firefight. There was a federal cop that got, that survived the crash, got horribly burned. He was assassinated later like, like two years back. So like this is an unforgiving cartel. Clearly they'll, they'll find you if you, if you cross them. This, this figurehead that they had, El Mencho was.

A

Wait, why do you call him a figurehead?

B

Because they change. Right. Realistically, when you look at a lot of these cartel organizations, they, and I think we're, I think we're actually living through, through a mass extinction event. This, this El Chapo figurehead cartel system is. I think it's going away.

A

Cartel, mass extinction event. Yeah, you just gave me a good title.

B

That's, that's what's going on probably. When you see the ways that both the US is putting pressure on politicians that used to protect some of these people to the ways that they make their money and the ways that they have basically roots and family members up here in states and the. It's been a long. It's like an open secret that the CIA has operated in Mexico for decades. We're seeing open activity by them now.

A

Yes.

B

In a lot of ways, or at least they've been revealed in many places in Mexico, including two CIA agents dying after a, a massive drug laboratory was found.

A

Where was that?

B

I feel like Stefano told us about. Yes. This is not wrong. I'm forgetting the state.

A

Someone by, by the way, I just, I want to point this out because you brought this up deep. Got this while you were talking. The Jalisco New generation cartel gained international attention for the tactic of anti aircraft. I think is what it is. Right. In May 2015, during a coordinated offensive in Jalisco, CJNG operatives use a Russian made rocket Propelled grenade.

B

Yeah.

A

Good stuff.

B

They found more of those when they. They got out to.

A

Russian stuff is premium. That's what I. If Russian cartels have it, that's what I want them to have.

B

Yeah. Russian, Soviet block stuff it. It keeps longer. The issue with an American made RPG of some sort or rocket launcher or a man pad as they call them, the remote control guided stuff is they have a shelf life.

A

Expiration date.

B

Yeah, but not this Soviet stuff. You can store it, apparently.

A

But you were, when I cut you off, you were citing like some of the CIA.

B

There's a governor governess, Maru Campos. I'm blanking on the state right now. Apologies. But it was a massive drug bust and two CIA agents died in a car crash supposedly after this drug bust. Car crashes are commonly utilized as cover stories for the CIA. As far as how people die, Hastings. We don't know if they were caught in a shootout or something of that nature, but there you go.

A

Yeah. Mexican governor says she's being Persecuted case of two CIA agents killed in drug lab raid this is from May 27, 2020 26. Mexican Governor of Chihuahua said Wednesday she was being persecuted by the country's ruling party over the case of two U.S. officials who died in April during an unauthorized drug raid in her state. Maria Eugenia Campos from the opposition National Action Party appeared for questioning at the Mexican general prosecutor's office in Mexico city regarding the April 19 incident. The two Americans killed in the crash were employees of the Central Intelligence Agency Las Trace Letras. Yeah. Multiple people familiar with the matter told CBS News. The CIA declined to comment outside prosecutor's office. Campo said she was being persecuted with the entire weight of the state apparatus while politicians from the ruling Morena party have absolute impunity.

B

The issue is that she is from the conservative party and like that. They don't like that. That's one issue. The other issue is she probably. I'm pretty. She's. She's getting charged with treason at some point. If they remove her political immunity.

A

Getting charged with treason.

B

It's a treasonous act allowing foreign agents to act within your state.

A

Oh, if she. Okay, yeah.

B

I'm pretty sure that she didn't know what was going on. The CIA has a way of going into places like that and basically through training and consultation, they probably went in through a state police agency into Mexico and they started sharing information and consulting and then. And all of a sudden the state cops are working with the CIA. Something of that nature, probably.

A

She would have known that at some point.

B

She probably would have known that later. But I don't think she was informed by it. But the issue is she's of the Conservative party. Morena is not the conservative party, Although it's full of ex conservative party members. Because why is that? Morena. Morena is viewed by many people as a party of the left. But I was in politics for a while when I was in my. During my career and I recognize every single face that I see in more. And a lot of them as being former members of the conservative party because they jump shipped because that's the ruling party right now. So they just switch. They just switch allegiances. The CIA has been revealed to be operating both there and there's. There was a case of a cartel member, El Pajin, a Sinaloa operative, that was apparently blown up in a weird way after leaving the IFA airport in Mexico City.

A

El Pain.

B

El Pain.

A

How do you spell that?

B

P A Y I N. El Bayin.

A

They've got it. Alleged Sinaloa cartel operator for Francisco El Paine Beltran was killed in late March when his Toyota pickup truck exploded from a car bomb on the Mexico Pachucha highway just outside the IFA airport on the outskirts Mexico City. Stefano played this video.

B

The official narrative by the government is that there was a grenade that they all like. I pulled this pin on this grenade and exploded. I've thrown grenades before.

A

Yeah.

B

And that's not what a grenade does realistically. And also you can see the cone of explosion just going upwards and having this bubble almost effect on the. On the car. That looks like a targeted explosive charge put in the middle center console. That's what that looks like. Now why would they kill this guy? Well, he was a Mayo aligned figure. The Sinalo cartel no longer exists as a cohesive structure. It's Los Mayos or the sons of El Mayo Sambada. And the people aligned with him on one side and those Chapitos or the Chapisa as they call themselves on the other side, they are at war. A civil war that started with the abduction of El Mayo Sambada, which people say it was the Sino, the members of El Chapo Guzman's clan taking him to try and barter with his. With his life, for their brothers and to get some sort of immunity. Maybe this could be possible. That probably sounds pretty accurate. A few of their family members crossed through San Ysidro into. Into San Diego and are now protected witnesses. But there's two brothers out there still fighting it out for control. La Chapiza Archivaldo and his brother. So you're seeing These events in Mexico, when we talk about the CIA operating down there, people talk about invasions. They have in this mind there's going to be an invasion in Mexico, that there's going to be Marines showing up into Durango and going Tora Bora and some of those high Sierra mountains. If you lined up every single Marine in Pendleton on the border in San Diego, you wouldn't be able to contain the mass of humanity moving through that border. If you do something like you did in Iraq, I mean, there's no way it's that much. It would displace many if you would go into an overt invasion like that in Mexico, is my opinion. And also we're one of your biggest trading partners. And a lot of the infrastructure around northern Mexico is what the United States needs to fulfill its industrial base.

A

It's very complicated.

B

It is shooting yourself in the leg if you attempt something like that. My whole theory was that we're going to see a soft invasion of some sort. Soft invasion influence, you know, pushing things forward in certain ways. A lot of people view this as a, a war against drugs. We've been in a war against drugs for decades. That's not what this is. I think this is a political war. We've had a bunch of documents declassified around the Kennedy assassination recently and a lot of them, they reveal how many of the presidents in Mexico were actually CIA backed and paid operatives.

A

That really didn't make the headlines. But that's very interesting.

B

I mean, when we talk about why Mexico is where it is, yeah, there's a lot of blame to go around and there's a lot of responsibility within the Mexican political structure about that and culturally. But the United States has definitely had a hand in some of these things that have happened down there. Now when do you think that line of people who are backed by a CIA or people who were in some way, shape or form favored by the United States and the United States interest. Well, that probably ended with Pena Nieto, the last PRI president we had. And then what year is approximately. I'm gonna need some help with the years.

A

But after fox, right?

B

Yeah. After Felipe Calderon you had Pena Nieto and after that you had 2012 to 2018 and, and after that you had a landslide victory by this figure, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador amlo, who started this, this movement, this Morena Party. It's a populist movement like many in South America. You know, openly pro Maduro, pro Cuba, you know, pro everybody that the United States doesn't like, basically. And in a lot of ways the Mexican people as a punishment for what they viewed as systemic corruption for decades, which was very real and is very real still, they decided to vote and punish the political class. And they did so by, in a landslide victory, kind of electing Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. He came in with majorities. So he started passing a lot of sweeping laws and constitutional amendments.

A

Would you mind just explaining to people out there, especially like all the American listeners who are unfamiliar with how Mexico's government works, like the chain of command and how votes get passed, like how similar it is or dissimilar to America.

B

We have a House, we have House representatives, we have Congress, we have majorities, super majorities as well. And when Moreno went in, they, they got a super majority, which is still

A

in play, meaning that they also do have to put bills through the separate Congress, and that has to get through before it gets the president to be able to sign.

B

But a lot of that gets fast tracked when you have the supermarket, which they have now. So when he came in, his antagonistic nature against the United States was very clear. One of the first things he did was kick out the DEA out of Mexico in a lot of ways, or at least hampered their movement. He's very suspicious about U.S. activity within Mexico and he basically put in his own people in different key places in Mexico to try and keep the US Influence out. That's what you saw. Coincidentally enough, he came in during the first Trump administration, which apparently they had a pretty good relationship. They speak well of each other.

A

Obrador did.

B

Yeah, Obrador spoke pretty well of Trump. I don't know if it's out of respect.

A

Strongman, very strong.

B

All of it. All of it. Right. I don't know if it's out of fear or respect, but there was something going on there. AMLO's solution to cartels was, hey, there is no drug war going on. What It. What. But all these cartel, all these people did not. No, it's. It's violence, it's societal violence. It's all this. But there's no. There is no. I don't know. We're just going to stop thinking about it. Is this a war? And we're going to go, well, Brazos, no, Valassos, the famous bullet.

A

Hugs over bullets.

B

Hugs over bullets. And he went on a campaign and he, he won. And you started seeing this this spring when it came to cartels, I mean, they grew and specifically Sinaloa cartel grew in influence and in power, and the new generation cartel as well. Both of these kind of in tandem, kind of grew with each other as they were war. You saw in that time period was criminal organizations figured out that in a lot of ways they can go into politics themselves. Similar phenomenon that happened here in the States where the Mafia got involved in politics. And now they're unions and their other stuff, you know.

A

Yeah. Look what we built. Look at that.

B

Come on. Beautiful.

A

You saw it. It's beautiful.

B

Beautiful. Yeah. The same thing is happening in places like Tulum, I guess.

A

Yeah. Let's show them. Camera five, Dave. That's beauty right there. Built by Lucky Luciano and friends.

B

But a lot of them went into politics, and that's why you started seeing this plurification of assassinations of political candidates that are like, our cartel, Canada is going to win. You're. And that's what you saw there. And you saw the election towards the end of his administration of this Rocha Moya character, which is now currently being sought by US authorities under narco terrorism charges.

A

Yes. This isn't the general, is it?

B

No, the general gave himself up and he's currently a protected witness of some sort.

A

That's how I like him.

B

Ruben Rochamoya is a lifelong friend of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

A

This is him.

B

This is him.

A

Looks like a real straight shooter.

B

They're. There was a lot of visits by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to the hometown of El Chapo Guzman. He actually, there's a famous video of him shaking hands with a mom and talking to the lawyer, El Chapo Guzman, correcting reporters on how he shouldn't be called Chapo Guzman, they should call him by his Christian name and all that. It was interesting interactions with him. He might have been just being respectful, but he went there like six times or something like that. And Sinaloa was apparently very key for him or important or strategically important for him to visit a lot. And then his best friend and one of his closest associates gained the governorship of Sinaloa through Morena. And when that happened, Los Chapitos were probably involved in his elections. You have a lot of cases of people talking about being running against him or political campaigns that were running against him who were. Were, you know, targeted by these cartels, abductions, people being forced to vote for a certain candidate, all that stuff went on there. And those chapels grew during this administration of elders. Manuel Pasodor, when they caught the son of El Chapo Guzman, who was currently stateside under.

A

Which one is that?

B

El Raton. The. The mouse video. Ovidio. Yeah. When they caught him the first time, because there was Two times. That's when the whole coolia can also thing went off.

A

Yes.

B

The president of Mexico and Obrador, for security reasons is what he said, for no more bloodshed to happen. He was released, which is the first time that something like that had happened. So they. He basically ordered the release of this individual. Later on, he was again arrested. A few special forces operators died in his arrest. It was a pretty big firefighter. They finally caught him and the extradition was almost pretty expedited this time. Now people look at that event and they wonder if he was compromised or if he was working on behalf of one side or the other. There's no way of knowing realistically, but it was very suspicious. This new president comes in, his term ends. He's very loved. He's very loved in Mexico. Obrador. Obrador. Very popular. He left with a very high approval rating. Still has a very high approval rating. He's like this figure in the background. He's come out publicly two or three times to defend the current president of Mexico and to speak about American interventionism in Mexico and how if he has to, he'll go and fight to defend Mexico. This is the whole thing with him. He's a figurehead in a lot of ways. Political figurehead, high level one. So I think what you're seeing now with the US and how it's kind of trying to navigate this, this issue with Mexico is number one. They realize that they don't have a real ally within Mexico as far as this, this issue because there's this feeling of. So the current administration under Claudia Shanebaum had been supplying the Cubans with oil for a year for, for a while. Right. And that had to stop after the US Tried to putting pressure on Mexico to stop that.

A

That was pre. Venezuela.

B

Yeah, yeah. And she was also importing a bunch of doctors that were working in Mexico from Cuba. There was a lot of.

A

They're always spies.

B

That's. This is exactly what everybody just knows about them. So there's a lot of that going on, a lot of Russian uptake and, and people working for their, for their embassy and stuff like that in Mexico. Embassy, yeah. There's a lot of embassy workers, a lot of more Russian embassy workers, some reason, which is something they talked about in Congress here in the US I think a general talked about this a while back. But also the US does the same thing. So it's like basically this intelligence front opened up in Mexico. It turned into that after this past administration, in this administration, things kind of went to where they Are I predicted the fact that Trump was going to probably designate them as terrorists.

A

Yes.

B

And when I did that, people were like kind of mocking me about that. It's, they don't fit the bill and everything. And that now we're here now narco terrorism is being utilized as a broadsword to do a lot of things.

A

But what. So that's actually a great thing to bring up because I've been wondering this and I've asked everyone who's on the ground there has come through here since that designation happened about this, like, what has tactically happened that since then that's in line with us actually, like treating them like terrorists.

B

I mean, the military is being utilized directly in some of these drug interdiction operations in Mexico. We have over flying military drones of all kinds, boats, sending up aircraft over Mexico. There's a lot of stuff going on. There's a lot of military about this. She's like, oh, this is normal, basically, you know, you know, this, this, the, the head of security there was talking about. There was one. There was like a year ago, this past year, there was a drone flying over Durango, American drone, just like doing circles over Durango. And everybody has flight radar now. So they could, some people can track some of this type of stuff. So they were like asking like, what's up with this drone? Oh, it's a, it's a government drone by the US but it's. Don't worry about it. You know, it's fine. We know what they're doing here. It's like something civilian. Don't worry about it.

A

So if they, if that government drone, hypothetically, like, sees some guy, let's call him, you know, Juan Carlos, and he's like a capo, like someone pretty high up, and they're like, oh, there he is outside the bar, chilling. It could just be like, gone.

B

This is, this is what I've seen as, as far as the change. As soon as you started seeing the, the skies swarm with U.S. assets, which. That's what's been happening in the past year. What they were probably doing is mapping out all their communication structure, command structure, supply lines. A lot of it would happen in the Gulf region of Baja, the Baja Gulf region, which is interesting because that's, that's Sonora, that's Sinaloa, that's Jalisco. That's where all of the, some of these bigger organizations are based out of. And then after all that intelligence gathering, that's when you started seeing some of these cartel heads fall. Right? So it's it seemed like a preemptive move by the United States because it knew they was about to kick up beehive, which that's what the Mexican government views the abduction of El Mayo Sambada as. And they view it as a treasonous act. Like they have treason. They want to charge El Chapo Guzman's son that participated in this abduction for treason because he's. He abducted somebody for a foreign government. So they view it as a treason.

A

That's interesting.

B

But was it a U. S. Operation to abduct them? I mean, yeah, there was probably some US Involvement. Was the Mexican government completely innocent around all this? Well, they acted in a very suspicious way. And again, going back to Rocha Moya. Rocha Moya, the best friend of Andres Manuel Lopez over there, this political figure behind the scenes of everything down there. He's our. He's our Trump in a lot of ways, although they didn't want to think about it that way, but he's kind of this figure.

A

Charismatic.

B

Yes. And you have Rochamoya, who is the governor of the state, called into a meeting by El Chapo Guzman and El Mayo Sambada, Guzman's son, in Omayo Sambada. He was. El Maya was going to mediate some sort of issue that the governor of Rochamoya had with the rector of the university there, Nemesio Gwen. So they were. They were basically gonna. He was going to be like, you know, the mediator in this meeting. Well, that didn't happen. They shot the wreck. The. The governor never showed up. They shot the. The nemesis Gwen and. And then put him in a truck. And then the state police tried to make it look like he was going to get robbed at a gas station. And there's a video of this. All this shit was like in fabricated by them. And then it turned out that he, you know, it was. It was a planned abduction and there was murders and the state government on. At the charge of Ruben or Chamoya was hiding a lot of this shit. And now we have this issue where the US is asking for 11 politicians and a few of them have already turned themselves in from Mexico. And Mexico is like saying, Klaus Shaymon saying, like, we need evidence. The same government that extradited, I don't know, like 50 people in the past two years now needs evidence. Now they need evidence because it's a sitting political figure and it's specifically the best friend of our figurehead.

A

So that's actually. You were talking early on about the El Mencho raid and yeah, we're jumping in a lot of different things here. People will get to a lot of it. Just there's a lot going on. So this is good shit. But maybe that's a good spot to ask my El Shine, my Shine bomb question. Because it seems like she has some political power. But then you see what happened with the El Mencho thing where she wasn't even told about it ahead of time. And like, if you're not even told about the most important wanted criminal in the country being whacked by your own military, how much sway do you even have in your own government?

B

People will argue about that. But let's say you're Claudia Shane, mom and charge of Mexico, and you're like, hey, the military called you, like, hey, we're about to take out Almengio.

A

Did they actually call her, like, as they were doing it?

B

I don't think they did.

A

Right.

B

It doesn't seem like it. So, like, you would preemptively maybe, maybe call off your, you know, she was, she was out and about, you know, just shopping. Her security profile was pretty low back then. Now she's. Now that's gone away probably. But Social Security profile was basically, she would walk around, like, outside of this, you know, going back to amlo. AMLO basically got rid of the Mexican secret service, the style mayor. And he would just walk. He would drive in in a Jetta. There's videos of him. He would say, the people are my bodyguards. Balls, I guess.

A

But that sounds like a man who's paid off.

B

Claudia was trying to kind of do the same thing. But after this raid, something, Something changed. She was out and about. There's. There's rumors that she was like, evacuated after the, the, the, the. The event into like on a military ship that I think it probably turned out to be. But she seemed not. They. When you saw the mass unrest and burnings and how no preparation was there, I mean, people were scrambling. People were off base. People were. Yeah, A lot of the federal police officers that died in that event were killed because they were ambushed by the cartel members looking for revenge. And they would go, they would just go after everybody. So it seemed like she had no idea this was coming. Which means that the Mexican army is operating in a slightly independent way, maybe, or they viewed this as a now or never type thing. It's odd. It's the way. The way the way it went down is odd. And over and over again, Claudia has seemed to seem to be in the dark about some of the stuff that's going on. You know, when the arrest warrant for all these Political figures came down. She was like, yeah, we know where all of them are. We just need more proof. And all of a sudden, two of them were in the US Turning, turning themselves over.

A

She's one of them, the general.

B

One of them is the general, the former head of security in that state of Sinaloa, which again, tied to Rocha Moya and was tied to a bunch of other things. Member of the military. You know, all of these characters around this specific Rochamoya case are people who facilitated the growth of this organization, the Chapiza, and specifically them solidifying power there. And it seems like a lot of them were also being funded politically or influentially through this. And all this money has to go somewhere. So political campaigns, enterprises, licenses to build buildings or, or going to different companies, Tequila companies. Like all of this. The, the. The. There's a video of Claudia Shane bomb next to the municipal president of the town of Tequila, Jalisco, who turned out to be a cartel member.

A

I mean, that's how it goes.

B

And she's like, this is our guy here in Jalisco. This is the guy we want. And you know, now he's. Now he's in custody, which got good on her that they're arresting people of their own party in that way. But there's more of them.

A

How did they catch him?

B

Mexico has been going through these swarm operations. Swarm they have. There used to be a federal police and they got rid of it during Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's tenure. They basically turned it into a military police, which is the National Guard unit. Guys, the guys that are dressed in white and they put, they. They inserted that into the military. So it's like a military policing arm all over the country. But before that there was the Mexican Federal Police and that used to have an intelligence service and investigative service and all this. It's become revived again. A lot of the old school have people that used to work for that institution are now working for the Secretary ESOURAD Public, the Federal Secret Public Safety Service Secretariat. And they're actually doing the jobs that they should have been doing for a long time, probably under a lot of international and political pressure. But they're going town to town and realizing that, like, hey, where's the cartel here? There's no cartel act. Oh, it's the, it's the municipal police are the cartel here. And I mean, this whole president is the cartel guy here. So like they're going into towns like that and just arresting some of the, the mayors of these towns because that's. Because they won through their connections and money to these cartels. And oddly enough, there are a lot of them are Morena party members.

A

I mean, whether it's Morena or their opposition party or anything in between, isn't the story still pretty much just the same that it's just whack a mole over and over again? Like, all right, you got five, well, 10 more sprouted up and we don't know about them yet.

B

That one thing I want people to just realize, we say Morena and we, we imagine that this is. It's this socialist or like this leftist organization that just popped out of nowhere and all of its affiliates are like Leninist and Communist or something like. That's not the case. At the center of it, there were some people like that, but mostly it's people from other parties saying, like, we're not winning in these elections anymore. Let's just flip sides. So you see, you see people, Baja California is one of these examples. You see the governess of Baja, the husband got investigated for huachicol, which is basically fuel theft and a few other things.

A

There's a lot of that going on

B

now, which is another thing that doesn't get talked about that much here in the US there's currently a guy, there's a former admiral of the Mexican Navy in custody, and I think he's still in Argentina because that's where you go these days. It's an interesting, it's an interesting country to be arrested in and caught.

A

Right.

B

Is all I'm gonna say.

A

But he's pulling up the Jericho missile map again

B

this time.

A

So people got that.

B

But yeah, he, he, he. There was this. Under the AMLO administration, there was a ginormous operation within the Mexican Navy to steal fuel and relabel it and move it around. And that somebody made bank somebody who knows who, but somebody made bank somebody found out within the. The Marine administration. He got immediately. And then somebody else got shot at a training event somewhere and all then this guy went on the run and he's, he's just arrested in. He was just picked up in, out of all places, Argentina. And the Mexican. Yeah, the Mexican governor, the Mexican president is asking for him to be, you know, handed over so the investigation can continue. But this involves a lot of Morena directly active things, right Deep.

A

Just found this. This is what you were talking about. Mexican Navy Rear Admiral Fernando Farias Laguna was arrested in Buenos Aires, Argentina on an Interpol Red Notice. He is wanted in Mexico on organized crime and hydrocaution, hydrocarbon trafficking charges related to A massive illegal fuel smuggling network. He is currently in custody pending extradition. He's accused of leading a maritime network known as Huachi Chico, what you call, sorry, fuel theft. Smuggled stolen fuel into Mexico. Reportedly arranging for dozens of US based ships to deliver over 1.7 million liters of fuel weekly. Was this the Mormons? Is this that one?

B

Is this part? It's part of it, yeah. You guys like, you guys like oils and drugs, you know that's, that's the two things and that's. These guys were involved in both of them. Another thing that doesn't get mentioned there is a lot of these watchy call networks were actually utilized to also put weaponry into Mexico. A lot of the military grade stuff you're starting seeing, seeing in Mexico and specifically some of the trading and stuff like that that are coming from, you know, people in some African countries are buying weapons legally in Europe through you know, regular channels, signing them as illegal government purchase and then putting them on a boat that then goes back to Mexico. So that's how you see, that's how

A

you want to see it, you know.

B

Well, we're seeing drone warfare in Mexico carried out pretty sophisticatedly and we're seeing a lot of these Ukrainian trained guys coming back and just killing it out there.

A

Oh the, oh the dude, the mercenaries over in the war.

B

Yeah.

A

You see Cat went and visited some of those guys. I can't believe how real that is.

B

But it is a school though, it is a university and you're seeing the elements of that university in Mexico now you see, you see stuff like this. That guy was directly involved in all this and it's an interesting thing that they're not letting go and it's an interesting place to run to is all I'm going to say.

A

That's all you're going to say?

B

Yes, it's an interesting. I wouldn't go to Argentina myself but he did and he was got there or handed himself in whatever you want to call it. But it seems to be like everything that the United States is trying to do around not only Mexico but like a lot of these countries out there that have these people who are openly antagonistical against the United States and its interest, this, this designation is being utilized. And like we were talking about offline, you know, if you're somebody in a country like that and you're involved in anything anti American, who are your friends, you know, who's going to finance you? You know, not blackrock.

A

Yeah, it's got to be like Cuba and places like that.

B

It's not going to be blackrock. It's going to be somebody that sells rock, you know.

A

Right, right.

B

Yeah. So I think that's, that's somebody figure that out. And that's, that's, that's the tool that's being utilized. You're seeing, Claudia, shame on right now in Mexico, basically in a stance of open hostility as far as anti interventionism is the thing. We don't want the U.S. here. We don't want the U.S. to invade us. We can do it ourselves. And you just saw JD Vance and also Trump during the G7 event two days ago speak openly about the fact that, you know, Claudia Shaymon is a great woman, but she's very afraid of the cartels who run that country. And J.D. vance is like saying, like, if they force us and lives are in danger, we're gonna have to do military operations in Mexico. Trump is talking about the fact that the sea is already kind of sealed off.

A

The what?

B

The sea routes into, into the United States. The drug sea routes in the United States are already sealed off.

A

They are.

B

That's what he said, according to his numbers. I will speak to anybody out there if they've seen some uptake in drug, drug prices out there. I don't, I don't, I don't, I'm not aware of any.

A

I was talking to my guys the other day. Something tells me we're seeing 40, 50 increases. So.

B

Yeah, well, Trump is saying now that they're going to go into a ground campaign in Mexico, basically, is what he said. They were doing a lot of ocean interdiction stuff and blowing up a bunch of boats. And on the ocean, a lot of these, like cocaine submarines, drug boats, fast boats. There's fishing villages all over the coastline in Mexico. And some of these fishing villages, they moonlight, you know, at night and they move things around the ocean. And some of these boats have been been blown up in the ocean. Some of them get played for CNN and some of them don't. Some of them just sink into the ocean and you never hear about them. But there's a lot of. I've spoken to a few people that have family members missing that. Oh, they went out on a fishing trip and they just didn't come back. There's a lot of that going on right now. And then people are afraid to go into that line of work, which.

A

Right.

B

If the US Is trying to stop that, I guess that's working.

A

Well, they're blowing up trap houses too.

B

Yeah.

A

Because I, when I had Erik Princeton here, I can say this now because it later came out publicly, but like, we got off air, we went to take the picture over there. He's like, you want to see something cool? Like, okay. Rips out his phone and it's like this grayscale drone image. And you just see like some heat maps moving and like, okay. And he's like, wait for it. And then like one Mississippi, two Mississippi. He's like, trap house. Haiti. Nice.

B

Yeah. They did it in Ecuador with the turn that I was guy. They blew him up as well.

A

Was that Eric?

B

No, that was. That was the US Maybe. Who knows? I think. I think that there. There are. There are like, like covert military operations by the United States in Mexico and all over Latin America going on right now. It's like, it's not a secret anymore. A lot of this has been already kind of been uncovered. The purpose of them is what is interesting. Like, what are they trying to do? Who are they targeting and why? Well, in Mexico, they're now shifting their focus. Who's left in Mexico as far as, like a big fish as far as cartels? Well, there's a few, you know.

A

Hardinero.

B

El Hardinero was arrested.

A

Oh, he's gone.

B

That's right, he's gone. He was just picked up.

A

I really like that.

B

No shots were fired. Pretty upsetting. He was apparently one of the. Their. Their. Their best fighters and also the head architect of the alliance between the Chapitos and the new generation cartel. That's gone and over. The Chapitas are on the run. There's firefights going on in places like Cabo.

A

Cabo.

B

Cabo. With a stronghold for the Cabo.

A

Everyone. Jeff Nanud warned you.

B

There's. There's a few. There's a few things going on there. There's a. There's stuff going on in Sonora. There's stuff going on in. In the border between Baja and Sonora. There's. There's. There's movement across the northern part of the country right now as this thing's restructure. And right now there's a. There's a siege going on in Durango where all these cartel. The remnants of the Sinaloa cartel are gonna have a stronghold there. Oguano, big cartel head is hiding around there somewhere. Names. I don't. I don't know how these. It's. It's weird because not. Some of them aren't flattering, you know?

A

Right.

B

El Chapo means short. Like.

A

Yeah.

B

If you were a chopper, would you allow people to call you shorty?

A

No, but it sounds hard in America.

B

Yeah.

A

That's your customer base.

B

You know, I get. Seems like we're moving into like siege warfare and a lot of these. A lot of these bigger organizations are getting smaller and getting more localized. The. The age of the big cartel head and his like this Mancho figure and having all these. That's gone.

A

Gone.

B

I. I don't. I don't think it's gonna last much long. You have Carlos Valencia Gonzalez, who the El Cerotres. He was the. The son in law of El Mencho.

A

Is this the one that has. That lives.

B

He's an American.

A

Yeah, he's an American. He lives in California.

B

He's from Santa Ana, California. Yeah, he's an American. So an American is the head of the biggest cartel organization in Mexico right now. So American dream. So it just like, it's so just people wrap their head. He's from Santa Ana, California. He's the head of the new generation cartel now. According to people. According to a lot of people. And then you have, you know, Archivalo and his brother, the last remaining sons of El Chapo Guzman, who are basically on the run right now. They're. The government is really going after them because. And if you're an outsider looking at that from the outside, you say like, why are they going after the Chipito specifically and so hard. That's probably because they've been. They view them as collaborators for the Americans in a lot of ways because of what they did with oh, Maya. So that's an interesting thing to kind of think about. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's an interesting way of thinking about it. They're pretty much on the run a lot of this.

A

So interesting though, because it's like, on the one hand, Mexico and the government's like, please help us. And then on the other hand, but don't do it with a terrorist. But don't do nation, but don't do

B

it with the people that pay you for.

A

That's right there. It's like a. It's like a game of thrones in six different directions.

B

Yeah. So there's not a lot of them left. And you see this shift that the United States has. And now the eye of Sauron is pointed at the politicians, the governor of Sonora under investigation. And the way you. You learn about some of these, it has been pretty interesting. I think the first one that this happened to was the governor of Baja. She was trying to cross over to California and they told her her visa was revoked. So that means that you are under investigation, apparently. Or they told her about it and then they were like, hey, you don't have anything to worry about. Crossing San Diego, crossing to San Diego. That was the way you could prove if the. So a lot of these politicians, basically that's what they're, they're getting notified that their visas are being revoked because they're under investigation.

A

It.

B

You have three governors currently under like direct investigation. Ren Rochamoya, who under his leadership, apparently, according to what I've seen, members of his administration and, and people working under him, specifically the Chapitas who helped him get him, get him into office, kidnapped a, kidnapped a, an individual who was apparently a DEA informant. Oh. Along with 10 other people, including a 13 year old boy. Allegedly he, they were under the protection and kind of like the influence of revenue. These cops, these municipal cops picked him up along with these other people and handed them over to Los Chapitos and all of them got killed, including that 13 year old boy.

A

Cops handed them over.

B

Yep.

A

Municipal 13 year old boy have to do with anything? His family and they just killed the kid.

B

I mean I, I get it. We all listen to corridos and we all listen to romanticism and glorify some of the stuff and I watch Netflix Mexico and they make him look so sexy and stuff like that. But some of these people are. There's a brutality to this.

A

Did I ever tell you the Carapillar story?

B

No.

A

So you and I were talking when we were walking earlier and I told you, to this day, one of the most bone chilling things that ever got said in here was you unknowingly last time. Because I remember we recorded on like Wednesday, March 13, and halfway through the podcast you start saying you, you're just on a tear and you're like, are we going to talk about the CIA in Mexico? We're going to talk about how they've bought off top 10 banks and top 10 bankers at those banks to flip them to do money laundering for cartel people. And I'm, I'm looking at Alessi at the time looking over and I'm like, funny you say that. The literal knock from CIA that did that told that story in that very chair last week about how he did. And there was another story he told though, because this guy went deep undercover within the cartels and his job, as you well know, was to not arrest them, but be a part of them. They took him downstairs to some warehouse like some. He was a money launderer, so not a gun guy. But the gun guys took him down to the the basement of some warehouse and there were a bunch of cartel dudes around, a beaten up, bloodied guy who was, you know, pleading whatever, but on the table. The reason he was pleading is they had his 10 year old son and what they did is they all took turns with a carrot peeler to the son's face because the father had like robbed something from the cartels and he had to sit there and watch that. And like you could see, you know, there's times where people tell stories and you're like, I don't know about that. You could see it like this guy was pretty unshakable, Matt Hedger. But when he told that one he was, you could just see like his mind.

B

There was some sort of like unwritten rules and stuff like that. And they did exist at some point, but that is gone years ago. I think the first time I heard anything of that nature was El Guero Palma, associate of El Chapo Guzman. His, his wife was enamored by the sicario. I think it was Venezuelan or something like that. And his wife and two kids were abducted and his kids were thrown over a bridge and videoed. And his wife's head was sent to him. And he went to the El Mayo Guz, El Mayo Sambada and said like, hey, can I return the favor? And here we are. You know, the brutality I've seen out there is, I mean that story about that kid, it's one in right, thousands.

A

Do you think that's from, you know, recruiting Decented. Decented. Why can't I talk right now? Desensitization from, you know, getting kids when they're 7, 8 years old and having them hold a rifle.

B

The, the, the, the, the start of this brutality. I think, you know, you could hear, you could see elements of it in the 90s and 2000s like the story I just told. But then you go into the phenomena of the Zetas.

A

Those are the ones we trained.

B

The United States had a hand in, in a lot of them. The United States had a hand in some of their training. There's like, I've heard rumors, I've never been there, but I've heard rumors of like pictures of them in, in some pretty interesting military bases in the United States. So. And School of the Americas being mentioned and how that has a history.

A

School of the Americas?

B

Yeah, it's like, it's like a university that the US has for foreign military command to come and learn ways of figuring out their own countries.

A

But foreign cartel command in this case,

B

you know, the story goes that an army unit within the Mexican special forces deserted. Realistically, that's not what happened. They were sent under official orders to be the bodyguards of a state prosecutor in some of these Gulf states. And then they just said, well, you're actually here to bodyguard the head of the Gulf cartel. And they were like, okay, let's. Let's figure this out. I guess, you know, they take orders and they got really good at it. And then they said like, hey, we can do this ourselves. We have more discipline than you guys. And they became this monster of an organization. They were growing exponentially in the. In Mexico. And I think they caught the eye of the US which in a lot of ways they were like, hey, this, this, this ISIS like figure of these that does growing in Mexico is probably not the best thing in the world. And the ones that went to war directly with them were the Sinalo cartel.

A

When was that?

B

This was the early 2000s. This is around Fast and the Furious, when a lot of those guns were showing up in the hands of some of these cartel members. Specifically the scene along cartel because they needed weapons to fight the Z. Oh, my God.

A

All right.

B

And I'm not. And I'm not gonna. We could. Let's.

A

Let's do it.

B

This is theories, dude. This is. This is your spec, dude. I. I'm. Head injuries. I'm just a student from tj.

A

That's right.

B

No idea.

A

But you, you, you were dropping some alpha on me on our walk this morning about operation Fast and Furious. So pure spec, pure speculation here.

B

We don't know. I don't.

A

We don't know.

B

I don't know.

A

What are you hearing from the birdies?

B

I found some of those guns, number one. You found them? Yeah, I found some of them. Yeah. I find these 50 Cal Barrett rifles with the instruction manuals and everything in the box.

A

This is back when you were in

B

the active police Active. And we go into houses and all of a sudden these armories are there and like, oh, that's a lot of guns. And all of a sudden the ATF shows up a few hours later outside the building. I was like, hey, can we look at some of those guns? So it seemed like they materialized in the span of a few months and they started showing up in a lot of specific places around the Sinalo cartel. It's like, hey, like somebody said, like, hey, we need these guns to fight these people. Now the. The fact that they were Barrett 50 cals showing up is interesting. The first cartel that started utilizing improvised armor in their operations was the Zetas. And Those need to be shot at with 50 cows. And to this day, when you see cartel monster on monster warfare, Zacatecas has a lot of that going on. The new generation cartel and some of the elements of the, those Mayos fight it out in tank on tank battles all the time. But the first time that happened was the Zetas. So you see the scene, an embattled scene in loan cartel fighting against the Zetas. And they need firepower. It's like Robocop. Remember when the bodyguard boys got these 50 gals? Same thing happened. It's like, hey, we need, we need something to fight against Robocop. No, we need something to fight against the Zetas in their armored truck. So he starts seeing these 50. I'm not again, it seems very suspicious that this Fast and Furious operation which actually preceded the, the Holder administration. It's like, I think it started in the Bush administration.

A

Wow.

B

And according to some people in Mexico that I've talked to, this, the, the, the numbers that the US shares as far as how many of those guns were out there is not high enough. Not high enough. And it seemed to have armed a very specific cartel because the interest of the United States was to fight the other one that was growing, that wasn't aligning with their interest. That's like the theory.

A

Yeah, that's the pure spike, of course. But what really struck me about that when you were bringing that up on our walk is that the, like the fall guy would literally be the Attorney General of the United States. Because it's like, yeah, it's better. That's like one of the highest offices in the land. They did, whoever was like behind this and realized, well, this went bad, decided that that was a better fucking whipping boy than whatever was actually causing it.

B

And I'll ask you this question. You get caught, you're. You're Holder, you know, and you just got caught letting thousands of firearms just cross the border. You lose your job or something or maybe. But nothing happened. Nothing. Nothing happened. Nothing happened later with other administrations as well again. So, dude, I, I raised a few thousand dollars for the Ryan Terry Foundation. This, this agent that was killed with some of those guns, and God bless him and his family, but nobody speaks about some of the friends that I lost to that, to some of those firearms because they're Mexican kids. Yeah, nobody gives a about. So when I talk about some of this, I talk about it in a very personal way. I was shot at with some of those guns as well. Mexicans in like the Mexican culture. And the people, when they Talk about Mexican. When they talk, when they think about or view US Intervention in Mexico, you'll hear. You're. You'll hear several things. One, fear. Because they've seen what an invasion looks like by the US in. In Iraq and Afghanistan, they don't trust the US Completely, Obviously. They shout about, why don't you just stop using drugs? Why didn't you just stop using drugs? Why are you sending all these guns down to Mexico? Is another argument you see a lot. And when the rhetoric goes into the political sphere, politicians in Mexico will say, well, shut the flow of guns down in Mexico. Maybe that'll cut the violence and maybe stop harming some of these cartels or stop training some of these people that then turn into cartel forces. And on the other end of it, you see the US Saying, well, we're gonna fight the cartels and stop these drugs from coming over the border. And the issue is with Mexico and with. With the cartels and the politicians that protect the cartels. And there's a disconnect there of those two realities. And that's why a lot of people are very nervous in Mexico, and that's why a lot of people should be nervous up here in the United States, because anything that happens in Mexico will be felt here like nothing else you've ever had. As far as a war, Mexico is one of the biggest trading partners with the United States.

A

Yes.

B

Overall, Mexican immigration is down to historic lows. Yeah.

A

To America.

B

Yeah. I posted a video of one of the crossings recently in Tecate. And you see. You see a lot of people, but you don't see a lot of Mexicans. European, Arabic. Yeah. North African is what you see.

A

North African.

B

A lot of Chinese.

A

Yeah. Now they don't. They still do. The whole system where they go through, like, the Darien Gap and everything and all the way up.

B

Yep. That's. That's. That's. I think one of them. One of those routes is still active, but a lot of them are just lying in with, uh. With, like, normal into Mexico and then just dumping out all their paperwork and just crossing the border. The border security in places like TJ is up, but people are still crossing. You know, it's like, I understand the up and security, but all that does is. Is raises prices for some of these smugglers. You see, you see that still going on, and that's a major source of money for some of these organizations that are working on the border. There is a disconnect between what the US Public sees in Mexico and what the Mexican public sees in The US they're currently seeing the US as a looming threat, just like the Ukrainians are seeing. They saw Russia before the invasion. That's what the sentiment in Mexico is like.

A

Really?

B

In politically? Yes, in some. In some places. In some of the. People talk about that type of stuff with fear. There was a drone attack in. In a place called Playas Tijuana. It's right on the beach on the border with San Diego. The new generation cartel dropped a bunch of bomblets on a state prosecutor office. Everybody was afraid that, like you would think that people were like, oh, the cartels are attacking. No, they were. They were afraid that the US Was attacked. Attacking. You know, that's the weird fear now. It's like in the back of people's minds, the beginning they thought it was the US when you see this stuff on the news about them putting maybe a bomb in a cartel guy's car or maybe being responsible for the abduction of El Mayo Sambala, which led to a ginormous war that has killed many people and displays many people and has. I've met. I met this guy in San Diego. He was. He was a highly traumatized dude. He had. He was a business owner in Sinaloa. He was a. I can't say what exactly his business was. He wasn't a cartel guy. He was like a legitimate business. He's an engineer. He. His business was broken into by the cartel guys. They stole. They stole all of his trucks and then they went to his house and ripped a safe out of his wall and took one of his sons.

A

Took one of his sons?

B

Yeah. Just to say we're taking this son, don't call the cops. We'll let him go later.

A

So how old was the son?

B

Like probably 10 years old or something like that.

A

Did he get him back?

B

Yeah, a few days later. What do you think he did after that?

A

He took whatever they told him.

B

He flew to Tijuana, paid a coyote, and he crossed into the United States.

A

God damn, man.

B

And that's. That's.

A

And that's a bit. That's an engineer.

B

It's an engineer business owner.

A

Just like I. That bad I gotta get them.

B

I mean, I'll blame him it out leave. But that's one story of.

A

Oh yeah.

B

When the whole vehicle burning was going on across the country, I met Mr. El Mencho. Oh, it's a real mancho. I went down there to. I had to get a family member out of that area. The burnings had stopped. But, you know, there was fear in my family member and they Wanted to leave. So I just went down there and try to figure that out. I saw a truck, one of the, one of the trucks that were burned across the road and there was a guy sitting on it. I went out and gave him some granolas and some water. Looked like he'd been there for a while. Turns out that was his whole business, this truck, that was his livelihood, you know, and stories like that are abundant. But one of the, one of the biggest ones I think for me is this, this un. It gets talked about, but I don't know why it doesn't horrify people that much. The industrial level method of some of these organizations of getting rid of people.

A

Yeah, talk about this. This is crazy.

B

When you go. And if anybody ever goes to Guadalajara and right now, if you're out there for the World cup, which I think is a event and FIFA is a horrible, corrupt institution, whatever, we'll come back to that. Whatever. If anybody is out there for the, for the World cup, go down to downtown Guadalajara and you'll see that they tore a lot of these signs out. But it is like a zombie apocalypse movie where all the missing posters are of the peoples, like tapestry all around downtown. Thousands of kids, women and kids. A tapestry of missing people's person's faces. You go there and you will lose count. I try to count them. Like, ah, maybe there's a few repeat ones here. There are thousands of them. Kids, kids. And a lot of them have the same story. Hey, I don't have a lot of opportunities here. Like I, I need to, I need to work call centers. I'll go to this call center is gonna hire me or this company is gonna hire me. They show up there and they get, you know, a screwdriver tossed in the middle of them. And like, whoever survives, like joker level, like whoever survives.

A

Tryouts.

B

Tryouts.

A

Oh my God.

B

Kids, Kids. This, this, this guy we interviewed, I went down there with Johnny Mitchell and we interviewed this kid who was an Uber driver.

A

An Uber driver?

B

Yeah. And he got in a car, car wreck and he didn't have an insurance, so he said, well, I have to get a side gig. And the side gig was meeting up with the new generation cartel being recruited. He gets taken into a car at a bus station, driven into the mountains. But before he gets there, the cops stop them, the municipal police stop them and they question all of them. They beat the out of them and like, where are you going? Really? Like, who are you with? Like, what are you really doing here? All this type of stuff. They wouldn't crack. It's like, oh good, you're strong people. The municipal cops were cartel guys. It was like the, the testing subjects and then they end up in this, in, in these ranches where they get trained, shoes get taken off, all the clothing, all the clothing gets taken off there. There was this Mexican Auschwitz story somewhere in Jalisco of this supposed mass grave that was found and they were citing all these, all the clothing left there. Those. That clothing wasn't probably from all the bodies. It was probably from kids showing up there and getting all their stripped off because they don't want any trackers on anything.

A

Yeah, I think Johnny was talking about that in episode 314, so I think that was right after you guys had gone.

B

Yeah. And it's, it's brutal, man. If you want a gun, you have to earn it by killing a few people. If you want a rifle, you have to earn it by killing a few people. And deserters are usually the target practice that you get to practice on.

A

So when you see those posters though, of all those missing kids, obviously many of them are dead and gone, are never going to be seen again. I'll come back to that in a second. And then some of them are just. They transformed, they went there, they transformed, they got recruited, they're never going to be seen again as they were.

B

No. I mean this kid, dude, he's like a 20 year old. Like this kid.

A

Yeah.

B

Is that eyes or glass?

A

Glass.

B

Glass eyes. Yeah, I know that, that look.

A

Thousand yard stare kind of thing.

B

Hands always trembling, Alcoholism. Kid doesn't have. It's not going to have a liver by the time he's 30 probably. And what options does he have except remaining there or, you know, continuing on there? And it's this, this generational thing now there because a lot, a lot of these organizations have been. It's a generational thing. My dad was in it, my brother was in it, now I'm in it. And you know, what do we do with our lives now? Which is. It's one of the saddest things about this whole thing. You know, you, you saw the arrestable mention in Mexico burning and still we went through like the airport where people were, planes were getting shot at in Jalisco and everybody's scrambling the same airport receiving all these international tourists coming in for the World cup. And it's like, we have to do this. There are pressing issues and matters in Mexico. A soccer game isn't one of them. We're currently in a state where the US Rhetoric around a ground assault of some sort or actively openly striking somewhere in Mexico as on the table. Like the president said it recently. J.D. van said it as well. Every. It's like a. It's like a very open thing.

A

Do you think that's rhetoric or actually like they, they're thinking in their head maybe 20 chance we're gonna.

B

Before Maduro, I would have said. I don't know. I don't know who I was talking about. Who's. Who's left out there that they could go after or explode, you know?

A

Yeah. Deep. Just got this. This is JD Vance on June 18th, a few days ago.

B

Yeah.

A

U. S. Reserves the right to take military action against cartels in Mexico. There it is.

B

Trump said the same thing at the G7.

A

Yep.

B

So it's in unison. Right. So who are they going to go after? Archivaldo, his brother, the last remaining sons of Ojapa Guzman. There's a few other half brothers and stuff like that out there. But. But that's not. Let's say, you know, you, you. You send Seal Team 6 after these people and they, you tomahawk them or whatever. Okay, that's a. Now crater in the middle of the hills of Xinaloa.

A

Next man up.

B

So that's not going to do anything. So they've. They've moved their lens towards politics because they've realized that a lot of these organizations can't have a hold or can't continue on without direct official complaint, like a, direct official participation by the government.

A

But how do you, Ed, how do you fix that when, A, it's so widespread, B, the guys who are paying off the government are also holding a gun to their head when they do it. Not just to them, to their families as well. And again, back to point A. This is at mass scale. So it's. It's like whack a mole. How do you actually not even fix it, let's say put a 60 dent into it to make a difference?

B

Well, number one is drug consumption and some of the ways they're funding themselves. In the past you would say, like cartels are funding themselves with drugs. Now we see that's one of them, you know. Another one is illegal immigration. Another one is basically that they've been diversifying their portfolio for decades. So when everybody goes to Chipotle and orders extra guac, they're putting money in the hand in the pockets of a few cartels out there.

A

What about my avocados?

B

That is. You're funding the new generation cartel and members of la familia and Michel right now but they are fire. I know, I get it. But you're. You're funding them and how is that? Well, they tax all the farmers there, and they get a cut out of all of that. So that's connect the way.

A

Can I incentivize them to just do the avocado thing and not like the fentanyl thing?

B

I think the fentanyl thing is being utilized as a rhetoric as well. The fentanyl aspect of this, I think, is, you know, people are getting wise to it. There's more things out, more other drugs out there. People are shifting to other drugs. And also the ways that fentol gets into this country, you know, some. Yeah, some of it goes through Mexico. Some of it. But most of it probably comes through the mail, realistically. Or most of it comes from Canada. Yeah, like, a lot of it is coming from other places right now, but

A

the Mexicans are also operating in Canada, in all fairness.

B

Yeah, some of them. But, like, there's other players in this now. So viewing this as a we need to stop the fentanyl thing is very simplistic to think. To say it's not just stop the fentanyl.

A

Yeah, that's like a. That's one symbol.

B

That's one.

A

One. You know, if we. If we had a pie chart right now of all the things, it's like, you know, there's your 10 or 5% or whatever.

B

I'll say. I'll say this. As I was born in Mexico and I got to see the drug war kick off directly. I was there for it. I was there for.

A

In the.

B

In the. In one of the biggest shits in my time, trying to. Trying to figure out a very specific city and part of Mexico. And from there to now, not a lot has changed. These organizations have gotten bigger. These organizations have politicized, and now they're in politics. These organizations used to have, like, maybe paid off one general in one region or maybe paid off the head of police in the other. But now they have the mayor and now they have the governor. And you know what?

A

They have those other positions that you don't think about on the ballot that are really important, too.

B

Yeah, people that sign, you know, regulatory. Yeah. You know, things get passed like, oh, there's a hotel being built here in this national reserve. How is that possible? Oh, if you protest against it, we'll send some people after you in the middle of the night. So. So that's. That's where we are in Mexico, realistically. And there is a lot of blame to go around as far as how we got here. But right now, independently of the blame on the US side, there is a ginormous drug market and organized crime is definitely here in the US Operating right. You have the biggest cartel in Mexico being run by an American, it an American born national. You have, how is that being allowed?

A

That's what I don't understand.

B

You, you have elements of his, El Mencho's family being found to be living comfortably in Riverside, California, just enjoying their, their, their, their life. There may, may or not be, may or may not be directly involved, but this is the thing and you have these politicians who are involved in Morena who used to be in other parties that did horrible job at trying to cut this cartel shit. So the rhetoric in Mexico is oh, we're not the same government as the past. No, you're all, you're the same, you're exactly the same people. So there's no the conservative party or the leftist party. All that is rhetoric. It is the political class in Mexico that has been compromised for decades now. And slowly but surely they've been infiltrated, compromised. And they're very much now Siamese twins in a lot of ways with some of these criminal organizations. And yes, some of them are going away, Some of them are, some of these figureheads are going away. But the US is adamant about it's attacking or figuring out how to cut this fentanyl problem from Mexico. And the eye of it is on politics now, now. So like we just, let's say Juan Carlos Valencia, the new, the, the new generation cartel head gets blown up maybe in the hillsides. Although that's going to be an American. So that's going to be. I don't know, I don't know if the military can blow up a US citizen.

A

I mean they did it in 2011 with that dude in Africa.

B

So if anybody's going to do it again, it's probably going to be yeah, yeah, yeah, this, this is going to be like, it's fine.

A

Constitution be damned.

B

Let's, let's, let's. He might be blown up somewhere. You have Los Chapito still around. You have elements of Los Mayos Mayo flaco around. None of that's going to like do any damage or do a dental real realistically change anything in Mexico if you blow them up. Right. At least the US foreign policy as I see it, they're trying to figure out how to actually create a change in Mexico that allows them to implement whatever they want to implement in, in Mexico. And for me, I think the key Thing is, a lot of these governors, Ruben Rochamoya, Alfonso Durazo, Americo Villarreal, Tamalipa, Sonora. These are all northern Mexico, which is interesting because that's where most of the industrial plant of Mexico is. Yes. We could talk about resources which, you know, lift. There's a ton of lithium in the north.

A

We need that.

B

The United States is in a hurry to figure out its industrial plant after China. I think that's what's going on. It's probably preparing for something. Something's coming. You know, this Iranian war isn't going as well as, as well as people thought. I think they, they just closed the straight Hormuz back up.

A

Yeah. Don't. Don't speak for me. I, I knew it wasn't going to go well. So did everyone else out there listening but the, you know, at the White House.

B

But using that forever now. But, but now you have this. Now. Now you have. Now you have the US In a. In an interesting time and specifically the administration in an interesting place. They need to win. They need a. They need a win. They need a win. So what did, what happened with Maduro? They flew in there with some strange Doritos in the sky and made a bunch of people boil from the inside out maybe or something.

A

Yeah. Can you explain this some more?

B

You were telling me this on my mind. I have no, I don't, I don't know.

A

Pure spec Ed, but I have no idea what your spec is.

B

They probably, they probably flew over something that boiled people from the inside out is what I think some sort of

A

microwave took their bone marrow and basically

B

something made them really hot from the inside out. And then they go and they just, then they just walked in and just took. And took him. That's probably. Something like that probably happened there. We got a revelation of some sort of weird technology there. All of those Cuban mercenaries who were part of his bodyguarding unit all got put into little boxes and sent back to Cuba.

A

So that's put into little boxes, like in pieces.

B

I don't know. Like everybody, like they all showed up back in Cuba. There's a video of them getting like pulled out of a plane and they're all in a little box. So if you can find that video, it's pretty interesting video. Yeah.

A

Defoe get it?

B

Yeah. Like why did they decide to cremate all of them mysteriously for transport? I don't know. Maybe they don't have refrigerated planes.

A

Yeah, it's less space, I guess. Well, right.

B

Well, you know, the, the US Went in there and took Maduro on a. The. The most expensive Uber ride to New York. There they are. Yeah.

A

Let's play this. Maduro's bodyguards. Oh, look, they. At least they got like the official marching, you know. Wow, those are little ash boxes. Yeah, no, no North Korean looking right there too.

B

I don't, I don't know.

A

He's kicking a little low.

B

He's gonna get fired. I don't know what they. What, what technology that they probably use, but they probably. They unveiled something pretty interesting in that raid. And again, I think about this event and I think about Mexico, and again, who's. Who is there that could. They took out Maduro. They took out Maduro. When they say took out. They took him out of Venezuela. And now is the Venezuelan government changed?

A

No, the Venezuelan government is still communists under Delsey Rodriguez, and they just have to listen to the United States on everything. And Ed, I don't know. You tell me. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but one of the things I feared when this happened is that it would turn into this situation where now it's still a communist government. And the Venezuelan people, who were very happy, maybe a year or two down the. The line, we'll start to see all these oligopolistic type, you know, gringos come into town from America and say, we got 50% of your oil now. And their government's technically still communist, but it's just playing ball with the Americans and they're going to suddenly be like, well, wait a minute. Righteously. So this is our oil. What the. Do you see it trending in that direction?

B

It's exactly where we are. Yeah, they're after gold and, and oil. There's no.

A

There's a gold.

B

Yeah, there's a lot of gold there. And yeah, there's. There's reports of them. There's reports of American armed personnel in, in one of their mining regions. A lot of, A lot of the mining going on in Venezuela is run by these criminal organizations and gangs and stuff like that. They basically extract the. The gold and then sell it. And where. I don't remember exactly the region, but it's in Venezuela. And there's. There's like the government, the, the Venezuelan government is going in there and now saying, like, hey. Yeah, like, hey, like, let's see. The US And Venezuela joined forces to target gangs in key mining regions.

A

It's from the Wall Street Journal.

B

Yeah, they're definitely friendly.

A

Government in Caracas is trying to lure American investment into its mineral.

B

They want that gold. That's gold.

A

Everybody's seen leprechaun say yeah, so it's,

B

it's, it's a something Venezuela should be. That's like a blueprint, that blueprint. And I think the next Venezuela could be Mexico.

A

All right, now that's interesting. I wasn't necessarily expecting you to say that. And the reason is one of the ways that they sold the Venezuela raid was oh, it's a huge drug capital.

B

It's been Los Solis.

A

Right. And then when you actually looked at the literal like government reports from before they did this raid, it shows like South American drugs. And I forget the numbers but it was like 05% or something like that as Venezuela. And yet Mexico is the main problem. And Mexico had already been designated a terrorist organization cartel wise. And yet we, the mission happened in Venezuela, not Mexico. So my thought was they're dancing around the Mexican issue perhaps because of the reasons you were laying out about the industrial back and forth partnership.

B

It's a bigger. Mexico is in Venezuela. Venezuela is. Yeah. Heavily fortified. Had all those guns and everything like that. All that, that anti air Russian technology that everybody was very afraid of. You're gonna get all these kids sent back in body bags? No, the only body boxes went to Cuba. No,

A

that one down.

B

I mean, yeah, I mean whatever that operation was, you had to hand it to them. They, they did a, they did a number on them. But that's, that, that's not Mexico though. You had Ruben Rochamoya when he was, when they issued him a red notice that they were looking, coming after him. He had the Mexican federal government install the military around him to protect him. And he was held up in his bunker because he was a sitting governor in Sinaloa. So he was hiding in his office basically for a while and he. What do you think he was afraid of? Mexican helicopter showing up and laying on his roof and extracting him. That was what they were are afraid of ever since that the federal government apparently has taken his security off and he's hiding somewhere in a rural ranch somewhere.

A

The governor and can he govern?

B

He's on a license and there's somebody else governing for him right now because that you can do that in Mexico for a bit. So he's in the hills hiding. So when I say Venezuela, I don't say I'm not. When I say that Mexico is probably on, on the verge of becoming the next Venezuela. Who would be the, the, who would be the Maduro figure in Mexico that they would go after is my question. Right.

A

If you were a betting man, Ed Pure Spec.

B

Claudia Shame mom. Very popular.

A

Yeah.

B

Trump says a lot of good things about her.

A

He does.

B

She's a sitting president of Mexico. I don't think it's her.

A

I agree.

B

Was she, is she compromised by cartels? It doesn't seem so. Not. I mean, maybe she has some people around her who are right, maybe that maybe her, her campaign was funded in, in a lot of ways by some of this cartel money, which has always been the case for a lot of these elections for the past a few decades. So that's, there's nothing new there. I don't see it. I don't see a Blackhawk helicopter showing up to, to Mexico, like put, putting her like with some Doritos in the sky and just. Yeah, I don't see that. Who else could it be? Let's look around the room. Ruben Rochamoya would be a good candidate.

A

Is he still a little too high to be a candidate? You know what I mean?

B

He's a governor. Okay, could be him. But who's his best friend? And why is all this attention being put on this? In specific person? It's because he's the closest friend and direct link to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the political figurehead of the Morena party in Mexico.

A

How much power does he still hold now out of office? All of it.

B

If he comes out and says like, hey, I'm the president now, I could see a political movement in the country to change the constitution, to put him back in. I could see that.

A

But Trump likes him.

B

I thought you said he said good things about him and they did pretty well together. But they, they had a lot of arguments about U.S. agents and, and the DEA working in the United States. And Evo Morales for a while, who was on the run, hid in Mexico for a bit and he spoke highly of Maduro and so he was definitely on the other side of that spectrum. I'm, I'm, I, I think that's where we're headed. In some way, shape or form, the United in some way, shape or form, the United States is probably going to target him next.

A

And what do you think? Let's say they target him. Let's say it's not even, doesn't even need to be as fancy of an operation it was for Maduro. They don't have to use some bone marrow microwave weapon or whatever, but they target, they go in, they get them, they take them out. What does the aftermath of that look like from a U. S. Mexico relationship standpoint?

B

Point bad. Yeah, I think it's shine bomb has

A

to act in some way, right.

B

Either, either she separates herself from it and says like, hey, you know what? The US was right about it and we're going to do what Venezuela did, which is like, well, I guess he's gone. We're still going to continue on with our project. We're still going to be like communists and brunch it. But, well, let, let's, let's cut down all the anti American talk. I think, I think that could be, that could be it. Or, or this is the other possibility. The Mexican government and Morena fold and they round up all of this list of politicians that are on that red notice.

A

The 11.

B

Well, there's nine now because two of them I think, but they, they round them all up and they put them on a plane and the US has this moment where they're pulling them out of the helicopter on that bay where Mangioni was and Maduro and they're like,

A

I'm showing you that this morning.

B

Yeah, like, yeah, it's cool.

A

I got to show you something.

B

That was a cool spot. Like, I've seen it on tv.

A

I've never seen, you know, Cash Patel is going to be out there in his custom air forces with him. Right?

B

Yeah.

A

Saying he did it.

B

Yeah, yeah. But just, just imagine this moment. I think that's, that's what this administration is looking for, like a clear point in victory. Like, hey, this cartel thing and it's went all the way up and all this, now it's in the politics now this is a clear victory. Like, this is our, like all these corrupt Mexican politicians were handed over by the Mexican government. And now the Mexican government sitting Mexican government, federal government behind Claude shame bomb legitimizes itself in the eyes of the United States. And like, that's all we wanted. Thank you. Now we're gonna play ball. Allow us to aid you in this cartel war and really create a mass extinction event with these criminal organizations. It's either one or the other, I think is what might happen.

A

I could see that. I think, you know, and I've been thinking about this all day while you're talking so far, but I think all the, I don't know, I guess you call us like the normies, like the people like me who aren't on the ground there and just have to hear about it and try to get an idea what's going on. And too often I'll look at it like, oh yeah, cartels kills everyone. Anyone that doesn't agree to be paid off, they just, you know, take out Their families. And obviously they're a brutal organization and all that. And then we talk about how intelligence organizations like CIA will infiltrate them and use them as, like, a vehicle to be able to do all their. Around the world. But I don't know, and maybe I'm off base here in saying this, so correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know if we look enough at. At the intelligence aspect of the cartels as well, because when they have to go figure out, all right, we're going to target these people in government or these people in this position of power as opposed to those people over there, obviously there's a calculation that happens, which is a part of intelligence, I think if you say it is. But the reason I bring that up is because when you look at a lot of intelligence agencies, when they want to infiltrate centers of influence, if you will, places that they want to have eyes and ears on the ground and know everything that goes on, they'll look at it and they'll say, okay, who's in charge of this place? Person X. All right, who's the janitor at this place? Person Z. And what they really look for is person Y who's not at the top and not at the bottom, but knows who's coming, knows who's going, and can do things out of the spotlight, away from the camera, and be able to take care of business if called upon. So when you talk about who the figurehead would be in that they'd go in and take because they're completely under the thumb of the cartel. Or when you talk about, like, yeah, it seems like Sheinbaum herself, from all appearances, is not directly paid off by the cartel. I would actually agree with that. Like, I could see that being true because like you said, there's people around her whose names we don't know and, you know, who get paid a decent government salary and have a lot of access to her and the things she's doing, who probably are.

B

Yeah.

A

And that's a very, you know, not to, like, praise the cartels here. Don't like doing that. But from a just, like, strategic tactic, unfortunately, that's a kind of brilliant tactic they have there.

B

Yeah. I mean, who's really in charge? Are the act or the actual cartels in charge in Mexico? Oh.

A

Or where I thought you were going.

B

Or. Or is it that they are a part of a structure that is in charge of Mexico? You have. We had our version of the WikiLeaks event in Mexico. I think I talked about this the last time the guacamaya leaks.

A

Yes.

B

That event led to us finding out that in certain military regions they support one cartel. In certain other military regions they support another. There is a admiral hiding admiral that went to Argentina to try and figure something out out there and now he's being caught. And now apparently the Mexican marines were completely in bed with some of the fuel smuggling, arming some of these cartels. So like are they two things or are they one over overlapping thing across Mexico?

A

Yeah. Are they playing both sides against the middle?

B

I think anybody in, anybody in Mexico that gets into a high enough position of power realize that it's a mind. A gold mine.

A

A gold mine, yeah.

B

Mexico is a gold mine. Mexico is a gold mine. It has a lot of money in it, a lot of things go through it. It's right next to the world superpower. So there's a financial game of having any control over it. There's a lot of international interest in Mexico. You had Trump coming into office, you had the Chinese come into Mexico under Manuel Andres, Manuel Lopez or the, or they try to make electric vehicles in Mexico to get around some of the tariffs. But the United States kind of caught on to that. So now Mexico is coming out with their Mexican made electric vehicles which are made with Chinese parts. But you know, whatever. But so that's China in Mexico trying to figure things out. Right. You have an openly antagonistical government in Mexico against the United States and against US Interests, saying on one hand, well, we're not going to play ball with the US but on the other hand, massive raids on Chinese products illegally coming into Mexico and being sold.

A

Oh, they've been doing that.

B

Oh, they've been, they've been putting the pressure on that they don't want that anymore because you know, you have, you know what? Because you know, the US doesn't want it. So let's, let's say we're not playing ball, but on the other hand we're gonna play some ball. Right, Right.

A

So are you saying they're taken out symbolically some places?

B

Yeah.

A

The real.

B

Yeah. I mean China's there, Russia is there in some way, shape or form in Mexico? I don't know to the extent that the U.S. is saying they are. But there, there's definitely an influence of Russia in Mexico.

A

What kind of influence would you say?

B

I'd say, I mean political influence. Mexico is coming out as antagonistic to the United States. So the enemy of my enemy is my friend is the old adage. And Russia's been in Mexico for years. It's like a Good spot.

A

You know, they go back to like what was it, Lenin or I mean, who died?

B

Castro was trained his, his original guerrilla forces in Mexico. Yeah, I was in a cafe called Cafeta Cuba where Castro and Che Guevara would like hang out and drink coffee.

A

Nice.

B

So that's, that's a history China has, China's there. Obviously some people say that the new generation cartel in some shapes and forms have displayed technology capabilities and equipment capabilities that seem to have come from China from, from jamming devices to drones to some sophisticated equipment that can take down planes. So that might mean that they're being supplied by an, by a foreign country. Who knows. There was a time when shitloads of fentanyl was being pumped into that part of the country from China. China's still producing it, it's still singing out. Some of it is being produced within legitimate pharmaceutical companies across Mexico because there's pharmacies. So there, people should do the math as far as where some of these drugs might be coming from. But you see influences from everywhere. Mexico is very important and we, we, we as Mexicans don't realize it sometimes that we're, we like to think of ourselves as a little guy but we are very key and strategic and important for the United States future. Number one, our industrial plant on the northern border. That's all t on most of the. I think that TV is probably made in Baja maybe. Yeah. So the US is might run out of the ability to source some of their things in China and we don't know where this war is going in Iran and we might be in the beginnings of war footing and we might need to figure out technology and equipment to fuel some of this stuff. And, and I don't think China is going to be too supportive of a prolonged war there because it's going to kill their ability to get resources. We're pretty close to running out of some reserves internationally.

A

Yeah. They were calling early publicly for Iran to stop returning bombs to just to the Gulf region and everything. Yeah, that's supposed to be their ally.

B

Trump said something about four weeks out.

A

I think he kept saying four weeks every four weeks.

B

Yeah. As far as the reserves running out.

A

Oh, well, not. Yes, that's right.

B

Then you're going to see bedlam. He said that? I don't know. I don't think he, I don't think he was supposed to say that publicly.

A

That was a little true serum.

B

But we'll see in four weeks, I guess because that straight is still closed in any way. I think the United States is retreating back into its continent. It's kind of probably going to get out of NATO.

A

You think so?

B

I think it's. It's on its way. So you see, you see Trump and the US As a whole, because this is not about Trump. This is like the United States interest West are looking at, look, are looking at the continent, you know, like they're looking at green, they're looking at Greenland, they're looking at Argentina, they're looking at other parts of the. Venezuela just got. Maybe Q was next, you know, Mexico. And yeah, there are cartels in all these regions. There are people selling drugs and moving things around and all this. But it's specifically the survivability of this country is dependent on its ability to produce produce. And we've lost that here in the United States.

A

You would think that it would have been a huge wake up moment, a bigger one at least than it actually turned out to be with COVID Yeah. When suddenly the whole supply chain got shut down and you had to have this whole. Basically like a lot of business had huge businesses. Not the smaller ones they got really, but the, the bigger ones would have to come in and basically like subsidize creating things here we had never thought about doing. And as far as I've been able to tell from the outside, it's not like we built bigger systems on top of that once the pandemic died down, but that would have been the time to do it.

B

Yep. I think what the US sees in Mexico is an issue that they can't really depend on it being able to police itself. They can't depend on it to guard some of these industrial plants that they might want to build. And there was talk about building a Tesla plant in Monterey that got shit canned. They don't see it as a. As a place where they can do any of this because they have cartels. So let's say you. You build your avocado orchard. You know, let's. Julian Dori's up avocado orchard in the middle of Michigan that supplies. You would get behind that and you're down there and you're like, hey, this is my avocado field. And you're. And then the dude shows up like, hey, I'm just here to hand you a phone. You're gonna have to pay us a $10,000 every week.

A

Go fuck yourself.

B

Yeah. And then the next day there's a. There's a OXO cooler outside of Your Oxo is our 7 11. There's an Oxal cooler. And it's it's always one of those coolers for some reason. There's an OXO cooler outside of your house and. And you're like, it's got my dog's head in it. Something, you know. And now you're like, ah, maybe this is not a good idea to invest here. And then you leave because you're afraid.

A

Right.

B

And all that capital you put into that, that is now gone. It happens in the mining industry in Mexico. There's been a lot of miners killed and like robberies going on across the

A

mining, the gold mining.

B

There's gold mining in Mexico and there's been a lot of high level robberies and a lot of cartel targeting events around them. Seen the lower cartels pretty active in some of that in certain regions like Sonora. So again all of the, all of these are being disruptive towards US interests that are not necessarily, necessarily tied to drugs. Drugs. They're necessarily tied to US economic interests and growth and an industrial plant. Yes. And resources as well. I don't know. Like people like to talk about gas. The oil in Mexico. There's. There's oil there, but there's. The US has way more of it.

A

Right.

B

But there are draw. It's lithium. It's land. And, and also realistically think about it. The American dream is no longer in America. It's in Mexico. Go to Tijuana.

A

Why they come in here.

B

Go to Tijuana. Go to Tijuana and you'll see all of these Hong Kong level skyrises coming up all over the place. Because it's filled with Americans that don't want to live in the United States because it's too expensive.

A

Interesting.

B

And a lot of these people are retiring. Not to Florida, they're going to Mexico. Mexico City is full. Tulum ruined. The gringo's ruined a little.

A

It's ruined.

B

It's. It sucks.

A

I don't want. No. Like are you. So for people that go down there for a one week vacation stuff, is that a safe place these days?

B

It's safe. I wouldn't go there.

A

You still wouldn't go.

B

It's safe. It's just a team.

A

They do.

B

Yeah. It's a. I'd rather go somewhere else. Go to Mullejo, go San Felipe. It's a way but cooler.

A

Gonna. Mitchell and Nadu like disagree on this. Johnny Mitchell's like, I go down all the time. It's fine. It is like I'm never going to Mexico.

B

It's not, it's not about the safety, safety aspect of it. And also Jenny you know, he's a former criminal, so he can, he can. He. I've seen him operate. He can, he can swim. He swims anywhere.

A

You can talk his way around, dude.

B

He's a giant white guy and somehow he always blends in. Yeah, right. He's a. Dude, don't play basketball with that guy.

A

He's nice.

B

He's a, He's a good player.

A

Really?

B

Yeah.

A

I mean, I know he's tall as. I didn't take him for a baller, though.

B

Yeah, he's funny too. Too.

A

Hey, it is funny.

B

I broke into his room once in a hotel in.

A

You broke?

B

Yeah, he's like, what do you do for a living? It's like, oh, I, I, I can. I teach people how to get in and out of places. And he didn't believe me, so I cloned one of his key cards and opened his door.

A

Oh, that's awesome. You clone the key card?

B

Yeah.

A

How'd you do that? Magician doesn't give us tricks.

B

It's just a small device that we 3D print somewhere and make and build.

A

Oh, you like in your back pocket you got a 3D printer?

B

Well, we, we. There's like a little device that we.

A

So when did the CIA hire you? Is that like 20? Did they get you?

B

Yeah, that's a pretty cool question. A lot of people say that I'm a CIA, right?

A

What about the say, slay, trust, maybe?

B

No, no.

A

So they contracted you?

B

None of that. I was trained by Americans. I was trained by Americans. At the beginning of my career, I was, I wasn't trained by the US military, was trained by the Department of the Navy.

A

Yeah, also not reassuring, you know, and

B

then a lot of the stuff they showed me was specifically related to urban warfare. That's what I learned from the US

A

could you break that down a little bit, if you don't mind.

B

When I got started in 2004, I didn't know anything about. Realistically. I went through a police academy and I thought I was going to go do community policing. And then I got handed an assault rifle and got in the back of a truck with a bunch of special forces guys.

A

Communities need rifles too.

B

And then they quickly realized that we're not equipped to any of that. And they went around trying to figure out training for us. The LA Sales letras showed up and some, some people. We did get Israeli training. Some of us did get Israeli training. Israelis came and trained us. Some of us were put on FBI background checks. They got all of our checked out. And then we. And some of us were bilingual. Went to long. Where the Top Gun school is that naval yard where the Top Gun School is in Coronado. In, In San Diego.

A

Top Gun School. Yeah. I mean I always think of like sealed SEAL training.

B

Yeah. Everything the Top Gun school is at a. Is right next to the Navy yard and that's where part of our training went on.

A

And then they've gone at the real life Top Gun School officially known as the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor Program. That's a long name. Is located Naval Air Station Fallon and Fallon, Nevada.

B

Oh no, that's a different one. There's one in Coronado.

A

Oh yeah. It says the program moved from its original location at NAS Miramar in San Diego.

B

Was there when, when I was there, I used to see these migs, these fake migs flying out of there. Yeah, like Russian migs flying out of there. It's pretty cool.

A

I think DARPA's at a place like that.

B

Probably. I don't know. Well, they showed us some. I got. I got to meet some cool seals and yes, probably some of. Some of that was probably some sort of orchestration by United States to have an influence in Mexico. Probably. I was never on a payroll. I never got to sign anything. That's what I would say. That probably went well. That's. But that probably went out. Went on higher. Like my boss is, mate, I have no idea. You know, All I know is that money goes up and comes down and I got all of this.

A

So you're like the cop in the town.

B

Yeah, I, Well, I didn't. I wish, I wish I could tell you I looked the other way mostly, but I did. I did 12 years of it and people who are around for it and know who I work with and what we did. Yeah, I, I came out of that. It wrecked.

A

Yeah. Jokes, Joe. And seriously though, jokes aside, like, you talked about that a lot last time and like what that whole process was because like, when we think of. I won't even say community policing, but like, you know, high level police forces in America, maybe even like SWAT teams and stuff like that. There's still like a standard idea to it. What you guys were doing was you're basically going into minefields where you don't even know.

B

Yeah.

A

If the people you're going to talk to who are supposed to be reporting to you from another part of the government or whatever are working for the cartels or not, it's just like.

B

Or working for interests that are way higher than any of us, you know? Yeah. And again, fast and The Furious is an example of it. You know, if I was a member of the Tres Letras, you know, why would I be speaking about some of this in such a horrible way? Well, because it affected me directly. I lost friends. I got to see some of those guns maim. Children.

A

Children.

B

One of my friends was shot outside of his house. They killed him and his wife and his daughter lost an Army. An FF57 FN57 pistol with high velocity rounds was shot at him by these two Sicarias kids, probably 18, 19. And those guns were like new in the package. They still had the factory gel inside of them that they keep so they don't rust in the can be shot at. That affected me. Yeah. And it does have. It's a reason why I do a lot of this. Yeah. Like if, if it was me, I just, I'd focus on my training. I have a small company and I, I do pretty well in that. Why am I speaking about some of this stuff so openly and why am I predicting some of this is coming down the pipeline? I've. I have a vested interest in both sides. You know, I'm up here now. I have a lot of friends up here. You're one of them. And thanks.

A

Good.

B

I don't, I don't. I don't want anything to happen to this cool place and country and all my friends. I want them to do well. And I have a daughter who is an American. But also I have a whole family in Mexico and I have friends and family down there. And I fought for that country. Tooth and nailed.

A

That's right.

B

And I lost a lot of myself in that war. And I'm seeing a continuation of the same shit from 2004 to now. And I do have to say something, you know, and I see a lot of blaming by the US towards Mexico and blaming by Mexico to the US and nobody wants to take responsibility for what went on. And I think both sides have, have a lot of sins and skeletons in the closet that where we are now though. I don't know if it even matters if they get revealed. Anthony Fauci basically is now being outed as the one that produced Kobe in a laboratory somewhere in China. That's out now. The, the head of in intelligence just said that before she said bye. So it's crazy. He's pardoned though. He gotta be out of pardon.

A

So dating back to 2014, I believe

B

how many people didn't died because of that? So if nothing happens there, there was a whole island of, of stuff happening here.

A

And you were telling me earlier, and it's scary to hear it, but it's also like some of it feels very inarguable where you're saying, like I. You told me. Yeah, I've, I've watched a banana republic happen. Now I'm looking here and I'm like, this is how it goes.

B

This is how it goes. Like, how do you, how do you turn a country into a banana republic? You know, institutions get, you know, cancel the police. The police are horrible. You don't want to go up to be a cop. I lived through some of that, you know, a lot of that. So, you know, the sins get bigger and bigger and the outings get larger and larger, but, you know, nobody.

A

There's no accountability for a certain class

B

of people and there's no options.

A

No options.

B

Yeah, it's like, what are you gonna vote for?

A

Right?

B

Yeah. Like who, like who are, who are, who are, who are our possible candidates for this next US Elections?

A

Yeah, I was having a conversation. My friend Will Toms runs rec Philly down in, in Philadelphia. Does a great job there. But he was like, like, he really smart guy and like big community guy and like, focus on what you can, what you can change right in front of you. But naturally he's thinking about like, the bigger picture here of how do we fix like this system that feels rotted at the top. And I like to be an optimist and I like to say things can be fixed and maybe it just takes a really long time. But once I was like, laying out each thing when he would ask me questions about some of the people I talked to and each layer that would need to be corrected to get this back to, to some semblance of like, what the guys in 1776 envision this to be. Even I was like, God Damn, that's a 50 year project and 47 million things have to go right just to get 50% of the way there. And I don't, I do not like to be a downer. I don't love being a cynic, but some of it feels a little far gone. Like, how do you get money out of politics? Good luck. How do you.

B

Super PACs.

A

Yeah, but exactly like, how do you, you st. How do you take away incentives when the people who have to vote on taking away the incentives by the hundreds, by the way, are people who are incentivized to not vote on taking away the incentives?

B

Shout out to my friend Eddie Gallagher speaking about this. But yeah, he talked. He, he, he, he made a pretty solid point on Online he was talking about this SF guy who was being prosecuted because he made a bet online around the Maduro right Arrest best. And he says like yeah, that sounds like insider trading, which all of our like a lot of our politicians do. And nobody says anything about that. Like what's, what is this double standard going on? Yes, you see that on one hand on my end again, Banana Republic experience. You know, you see, you see members of the military that went through a generational war after 9 11, seeing the exit of Afghanistan and I was with some of them as we were seeing some of those planes taken off, they're crying, yeah, the waste of life. And like that's very demoralizing not only for the country but for the youth who's. I mean recruitment is at an all down all time low. A bunch of laws were changed recently about drafts and people are nervous about that because that is definitely something in the four. Like I could see it out there.

A

They're talking what it would be everyone below age like 29 or something like 18 to 29. Yeah, I don't know if I'm right about that.

B

So we should check something, something like that. But a lot of things were like mysteriously, you know, just started shifting and what's going to happen when that happened, when that goes on. And we saw elements of this, we with this Iran situation, like descent from all the way in the top. Like some high level people said like hey I've been here before, I know where this goes, can't be a part of this. And all, all along that you have this global war going on which people don't want to talk about the fact that we're probably in World War three already.

A

You think we're already in it? Yeah, via proxy war kind of deal.

B

Yeah, I mean I have a lot of friends who are fighting on that Ukrainian front.

A

Oh, you have friends that are a part of that?

B

Yep, we trained a few people that went over there and trained them and then we started seeing a lot of information coming from there as far as like what they were seeing. Some of the stuff that's going on right now. Some of the latest and greatest augmentations in technology. Kind of my specialty right now. And what I do a lot of security consulting around is warfare, specifically non state actors figuring out against bigger opponents. So at the start of this war I'm like oh this is, this is what, this is my bread and butter. So I sent some of the of my instructors out there and we showed them from low means and low means medical, medical management, trench Warfare, hand to hand stuff and just like mindset things. You know how, how do you defend a city if you don't have a lot of military grade equipment? You know how to, how to create barricades, how some of these cartel forces did their in Mexico. That influenced some of that going on over there. And a lot of the drone pilots are pretty big fans of the brand that I have staff. There's a lot of these tattoos on some of those arms. These kids who are just smoking vape pens and in rooms with these headsets and are just racking up kills. Yeah, you can't.

A

The way you say that too. It's like a.

B

That's, that's, that's, that's, that's how these drones are changing everything.

A

It's the. And it's also desensitizing you to war because it's not.

B

You're seeing. Yeah. Seeing all the camera. Yeah. So Russia, we just saw like a massive assault in Russia. I spoke at a conference about this.

A

You were talking about thief. Is that the same thing?

B

I'm not sure.

A

You're talking about like they attacked that

B

Russian attack the church and then they retaliated. Well, I spoke at a conference with like the head of cyber warfare for the army and I went to this big conference, military conference and my whole participation there was speaking about, about non state actors and how cartels and groups and small groups are like, are arming themselves with some of these drones. And basically the world introduced drones into warfare and now everybody figured out like, oh, it's like a democracy now, like all of us can make drones. And I mean the, the Iranians are doing a pretty good job holding off the United States with pretty cheap technology with some of these drones. The Ukrainians are utilizing some of that technology against the Russians and they're back engineering all these things. And a lot of that technology is coming to Mexico and a lot of that is now available online. I mean I learned how to 3 print 3D print a drone and figure out all the release mechanisms on a drone. As far as dropping things from a drone.

A

3D print it.

B

You can 3D print the body of a drone and just buy the components online and build your own drone. There's other scary things like programming math into a drone and having an AI in it and just having it find a face and all that.

A

Had two of those guys in here this year run those companies.

B

Yeah, but so I think we're already in that World War Three and now what does Mexico have to do with all this? It's a front, it's another front. It's a front from. It's a front where countries that are not specifically aligned with the US interest are trying to set a fire underneath the US feet. And this is something the US has realized. So it needs to get a hold and a control of Mexico is the thing that I think I've realized about some of the policies and how it's shifting towards Mexico. And if a lot of people think this is a Trump thing, this is a Trump administration thing, this is a US thing. It's like a cross across the line thing. They realize that this, the next front in this probable World War III we're already living through isn't going to be. There might be a line in Europe, but that's going to be for the Europeans to fight. The next war that the United States is probably going to fight is going to be a continental war. And I think we're already in the starts of it.

A

Okay, I see where you're going because a little bit ago before this tangent happened you were talking about like the separation from NATO and things like that and now like a potential at an odd time needing to cozy up with like Mexico and almost set off off Western hemisphere versus Eastern hemisphere in a way. And that sounds like this is painting the war itself.

B

This is where we are. We're like trended out one members being blown up in their houses in Ecuador and joint military operations.

A

You're seeing joint military.

B

Apparently the US blew him up. That's. I think the, the True Social account posted that. Nice. The video of that and all these boats being blown up in the ocean. Venezuela was the first domino to fall. Cuba's on its way probably.

A

You think that's happening?

B

I think, I think the US doesn't want to invest a lot into that. So they're gonna wait for the people in there to basically give up and make some concessions and do like a Venezuela type like hey, we're gonna give you this old 90 year old brother of. Of. You know, because that's. I think that's. He got. Yeah, Castro. And then they're all gonna fall in line and Mexico is probably part of that as well.

A

How so?

B

The people who are governing Mexico and all their interests and a lot of their political allegiance, specifically the person at that center, Andres Manuel Lopez over there, is part of the change that they need to clear out of the way so they can do. The United States can fulfill its international security interest in the continent. They need to control. They need to go back to the things the way things were. And again, this is not me saying it. This is not a theory. This is not Alex Jones talking about whatever. Although he was right about a shit ton of things. This is the fact that, you know, the CIA had presidents in Mexico that they were backing and paying for for decades. And all of a sudden we have two of them in the past two administrations that were clearly not CIA assets. Meaning Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Claudia Shane Marmara are clearly not CIA backed or supported assets or at least not supportive of US interest in the continent.

A

Or that's what they want you to

B

think, or maybe that's what they want us to think. And they're pretty, doing a pretty good job of hiding it. That's kind of their saving grace within the US populace. These guys are clearly not US backed, CIA people, people. So we're going to support them is why they're so supported and popular. That's got the front that they built for themselves.

A

But that's also the 500 pound elephant in the room here in every one of these conversations. Because on the one hand we're talking about Mexico being declared a terrorist or did not Mexico, the cartels in Mexico being declared terrorist organizations. And the US can now take all these odd actions because of that. We see the literal vice president and president coming out and talking about reserving the right to be able to take action in there when this is a trading partner. And there's a lot of stakes that you've just laid out very beautifully. But at the same time, like the elephant in the room being we all know that our bureaucracy, meaning the people that are there before presidents and still there after they leave for decades, maybe not quite a century, but four decades, have been effectively moving the real chess pieces around on the board down there, including the very chess pieces that we're claiming to target, need to target with bombs now. You know what I mean? So it's like It's a catch 22.

B

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I look at it, what is the purpose of some of these motions and movements? And I see a lot of emphasis on the northern part of the country. I see a lot of emphasis in governors that are governing in the areas where there would be strategic resource and industrial things that the United States might be interested in. And who is the person or the people behind all these interests and why they're moving towards that. That's something that is beyond me. It's a, it's a, it's a high level. We can talk about the six letters. Maybe I don't Know, it's interesting for me again from the outside, Banana Republic in Mexico, there is an ongoing realization of how involved the six letters are in Mexico.

A

We're referring to Israel, in case that wasn't painfully obvious. Israel, Mossad, both six letters.

B

So, yeah, they, they've been found out to. The weaponry has been found in Mexico. They are involved in one of the biggest surveillance programs in Mexico and technologies with the Pegasus.

A

Terrific.

B

Which, which was. It's an old version. I mean, the stuff they have now is like completely different, but, but it's still a technology that they supply.

A

You know, this is the. Basically like can jailbreak right into anyone's without doing anything.

B

That, that was the old one, this is new. And it's a surveillance apparatus that they are selling and they have installed in Mexico. They're, they're currently going through a process in Mexico right now where they're. At the end of this month, if you don't have your biometrics tied to your phone, your phone is going to be cut.

A

Wait, what?

B

At the end of this month in Mexico, if your biometrics aren't installed on, aren't sent over to the phone company, your phone line is going to be cut.

A

What in the 1984 is that?

B

You tell me. The US goes down to Mexico and says, like, we need access to your biometrics. The President comes up and says, like, the U.S. taxes for us, we, we decline, but we're going to build the program where we collect all your biometrics anyway, because for our interest, you know. But as of next month, if you don't, if your biometrics aren't, and a lot of people aren't going through with it. Most of my family is like that.

A

So they're not gonna have a phone?

B

Well, they'll have prepaid phones. There, there's ways of getting around, but it's, it's, it's a shit show. There's a lot of suspicion around that.

A

That.

B

And again, it's growing. It's growing. Yeah, it's growing in Mexico now. I, I've heard a lot of these stories and I think there was a viral clip of me talking about Israeli training the cartels in Mexico that I did. I think I mentioned it on John Ryan or something.

A

What was the context there?

B

The Ariano Felix cartel for a while hired Israeli specialists to go to places like where they operated and show them how to effectively do, you know, cartel hits and how to, how to make suppressors for your gun so they don't sound. How to adequately train People how to shoot, how to carry handguns, concealed. The, the head body disposal guy for the Sinaloa cartel in Tijuana when I was active. The posolero, the stew maker. In interviews. And I think somebody wrote a book about this openly said like he learned this tradecraft from people who were trained by the Israelis.

A

So is this like private intelligence companies of ex guys? And I say that in huge air quotes. Yeah, there's like a black cube and stuff like that. Or is it actual active special forces guys from Israel coming over?

B

During the kickoff of the drug war, it was a gold rush of security companies from all over the place coming into Mexico selling off their training, their equipment, their whatever. And the biggest ones of them all were, all of them were former IDF Israeli people coming in there selling bomb detection detection technology. A lot of it. Some of some had equipment like they had these, like, what do you call them, people that take water with them. These rods that they cross. What Dousing rods, I think they're called, called.

A

I have no idea.

B

Dousing rods, I think it's, they're called but like people can look this up. Technology sold to Mexicans to detect weaponry. Like these dousing rods that were the is. I, I think there was really, I don't, I don't, I don't remember, but it was, it's this, is that like

A

St. Anthony holding one of those.

B

It, I'll, I'll see if I can find, I'll send it to you. But it's a, this technology was sold supposedly, like it looks like dousing rods. You would walk and they would detect where people were hiding guns.

A

But it's total.

B

Exactly. And a lot of like, dude, people made millions with this in Mexico because they, with all war profit comes and with all desperation. Felipe Calderon I, I, I worked under his administration. Part of my relation. No relation to Felipe Calderon, but I remember wearing that. Felipe Calderon by a chill, like, oh, Felipe Calderon started off, kicked off this drug war. And I don't think he was really ready for what happened. And I'm still questioning why he decided to do what he did.

A

What makes you think he wasn't ready? It was just a total disaster right after.

B

Yeah, the bodies, the stack of bodies and the Mexico being on fire right now. Morena, like Morena's main talking point is like, this is not the time of Filigo Calderon where all these corrupt politicians were in play. Like Luna, who was his head of secure, who was head of public safety, is the top, top cop in Mexico who was decorated by the FBI. All the, all the, all of the. All of these prizes and stuff like that for being this amazing cop. Cop. And now he's in federal prison up here for being a cartel operative. Morena used to say, like, well, Calderon had that guy. But now Morena has like 11 politicians on a list with the same issues. So, like, we're. We're chasing our tail now.

A

That's what I'm saying.

B

It just feels like it's a cyclical thing. It's a cyclical thing, and I've said this before many times. Mexico has an issue with amnesia. Every six years, President comes in, everything gets all, this was bad. We're gonna do this new thing now. A ton of money comes from the outside, paying for technology, equipment, training, uniforms, vehicles. You wonder. You wonder why cops in Mexico always drive around in those big trucks. And why, why is that? Why would you. Where else in the world have you seen the federal police drive around in trucks with people in the back sitting down and on those benches exposed? You think it might have something to do with some mortar companies having a big giant deal with the, with the Mexican government to sell them vehicles? Yeah, that's probably it. Yeah, if you kind of do the math on it. So there's a lot of money in the war continuing. The Mexican military was put on the streets by Felipe Calderon. And I remember him saying that, well, well, they're going to be out there for a while. Meanwhile, our police is going to be professionalized. We're going to get a hold of this federal police and all that. Well, the military is still out, and we've just seen the levels of corruption that they've engaged in. Some of the biggest money heist in Mexico. I mean, talk of the people. Talk about Mayo and old Chapa Guzman, this fuel theft that went on for, for that administration.

A

Right, let's go like into the actual nitty gritty of it. You said earlier there's like sea routes and stuff that this has been going on with. Obviously it's happening with the United States. Like, that's where a lot of it's coming from. But like, what's the full picture here? And what kind of scale, from a monetary standpoint are we buildings?

B

Billions.

A

Billions.

B

Billions.

A

And this is relatively new, meaning, like the last decade.

B

This is relatively new because people were installed that were willing to like, go this way. And again, this is like Morena administration, AML administration. People that we see. That's. That's who's involved. That's at least who we've seen involved at the top this guy who was on a run that went to Argentina, that he came from, that, that Manuel Lopez administration, the military was given this ginormous power in Mexico to fight the cartels. And now we realize that in a lot of ways they became their own cartel. And we talk about the Zetas now. It's a small version of probably what they're now.

A

Right.

B

So where, where are we going with all of this? Mexico and Mexican citizenship is afraid of a US Invasion. Like it is afraid. You'll see people supporting it on the right side of the political spectrum and they're like, is a Mexican politician, she speaks openly about that, this.

A

They want a U.S. invasion.

B

They want U.S. participation to come in. They want them to arrest all these corrupt politicians because they're on the losing side of the politics in Mexico. So they're about to try this late this governor governess in Goila of. Not Aila, not the one we pulled up earlier. Yeah, they want to try her for. For treason. So it's, it's infighting. What are they trying to figure out? I mean, it's.

A

Oh, you know what, I forgot to ask on that. This was back when we pulled this up towards the beginning of the podcast. But if that lady did in fact know and dealt with people within underneath her as they're alleging that ended up being CIA, like let's say, you know, you're that person that walks in the office and says, hey, lady, by the way, I work for CIA. Sorry, what could she have even done about it?

B

Reported it maybe?

A

Yeah, like, hey, reports it, she's probably dead.

B

Probably. It was like, hey, there's like CIA agents working here dismantling drug labs with my state police. Like is. Who do I talk to? I mean, the federal police, maybe state, federal prosecutor. But she is on the opposite side of the political spectrum. So that's like Nome going to Trump over something going on in, in, in, in. In her. In her home state.

A

Well, you talk, you talk about Banana Republic. That's something we didn't say either. The law fair of the last decade that's going on across the parties here. This is the shit you see in all these other countries with more failed ish type governments and stuff where they do political retribution using the courts in prison.

B

Yep.

A

And it's like, to be clear, I don't ever like the idea of someone being above the law or something like that, but the precedent of going after people. Yeah, you ha. You need to have a high. I'm gonna invent a term here, but like burden of need of action.

B

Yep.

A

To do it. Meaning, like, listen, I don't like James Comey a little bit, but some seashells on the beach, that's below the line.

B

Yeah.

A

You know what I mean? Like, he's an asshole, but the precedent's worse, I think. And this, you know, you're. You're seeing now, this is an example. Maybe this lady is totally on the take and is actually a traitor and was like, like, excited the CIA was working, in which case, like, that's really bad. But other examples, it's like, you know,

B

there's a lot of that right now, again, on the right of the political spectrum in Mexico, which is a losing side. The, the. The party that Calderon originally was a part of, they're shouting for intervention. They're shouting for the US to come in and save the day. And that's like, that's another side of the argument down there. Are they right? Right. I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't. I wouldn't go about asking them in like that because of the history that some of this things have. And sovereignty is a thing, although apparently hasn't. Mexico hasn't been a sovereign nation for decades, although it wants to think of itself except for the past two administrations. I think that's when it has exerted sovereignty with, with Andres Manila. And we cloud the shame on. At least they're expressing some sovereignty. And we can be pretty sure that they weren't on the CIA take because now they're being attacked by U.S. interests.

A

So are you defining sovereignty as the ability or as the ability to govern

B

yourselves and make your own decisions as a country?

A

Yeah, but not say that you're on the payroll or actively in discussions with another country's. I don't know, intelligence apparatus, specifically.

B

Specifically with the United States, because that's what all these, what all these populist governments across Latin America have happened. You know, they start not supporting the United States and, And they become really popular because some of them, Some people realize that the United States might not be in their best interest or have a long history of them not supporting the right people and the right policies, except the policies that benefit the United States itself. And that leaves many marginalized communities and people out there in the wind.

A

But also, look at, look at the timing, too. I was thinking about this earlier. You said obra door. That's how you say his name.

B

Yeah, Obrador. He.

A

He became president in 2018, which means he's, like, running and rising to power, I guess, in like, 2017, campaigning just look around the world, start post global financial crisis. Here we have Tea Party and Occupy. Right, right and left. But they're both populist. Yep. And then you look over in Europe where there's all kinds of migration issue. Migration issues and arguments over that. You see a massive rise of populism. Then that even has like Brexit happen and then all these other governments like the Marine Le Pens get a big following. Obviously she's losing elections in France but like the fact that someone like that with some of the things she says getting that big a percentage of the population, something's happening there. And then you look all across South America and there's the rise of that populism. In this case more left leaning or whatever. But point being like regardless of what's left and right around the world, the movement of like the people being separated from an ever shrinking size but increasing amount of money. Elite class.

B

Yep.

A

Wherever it is in the world. And how, whatever form it takes, whether it's a, you know, to quote Omar from the wire, I got a shotgun, you got a briefcase. So whether it's a cartel or Bill Gates running a company with billions of dollars like that class structure separation and the political blowback or like burgeoning pipe bomb that's forming from that in the form of populism. I still don't think we've even seen a slight amount of the dynamite explosion there that could be happening in the future.

B

But all these people that came up and were from that wave, the Evo Morales, the Andres Manuel Lopez over the, the Maduro's, you know, the people in Cuba, you know, they're, all of them are like, they're on the chopping block.

A

The communist ones.

B

Well again like communists, socialist. I mean can we say that the Cubans, the Cuban government is that it's a giant corporation with. They have. Their kids are living in the US A lot of them, a lot of them were living in the US The Hobits, but they're in charge. But they were, they're working. They were working and have been supported by the, the people that. Because they are openly saying like we're against the American devil.

A

Right.

B

But realistically they're like, but you could

A

make the same argument with like Soviet leadership and saying the same kind of thing. Right. And it's not that, it's not to say like America is like you know, saints or anything like that. That's not the argument. I'm just saying like what do the Pete, what is the average rank and person in, in a country like that have his quality of life.

B

Yeah. That's an interesting thing you say about America's not a saint. It is. It isn't. It is. It isn't a saint. There's name a country out there that is though.

A

There isn't one.

B

Well, so nobody's like one of the best pieces of advice my mom ever gave me and it's changed my life. Nobody's against you there for themselves.

A

Yes.

B

You learn that and you live a easier life.

A

That's a bar.

B

The United States is for itself. And we, you and me and everybody here is a part of that in one way, shape or form. And what is going on right now is a challenge of that. Is the United States in decline? I've seen the US in the 80s and the 90s as a visitor and now in the 2000s as a citizen here. And I could tell you that, yeah, now it is.

A

I agree.

B

I see it now. What does that mean? Should we go off to war again? Like, should we, like, what is the response to that? Like, how do we get out of that decline? Well, I think people in power at the high, at highest levels are saying, like we're scrambling to try and figure out how to maintain that. And I think it's clear that, yeah, the United States in decline in a lot of ways, but it still has a pretty insane military. That is, we do. But it still probably lost a war with the Iranians though, with that military power.

A

Look at all the wars we've lost. It's not because we lack the military talent or resources. It's also not because we lack the talent of the planners in the military. It's because we have interests here and people here in back rooms who haven't even seen a fucking Call of Duty battlefield field who decide to make decisions that make absolutely no sense and put our guys in the worst possible scenario or just straight up, you know, lift up and pull out of Afghanistan and leave all the weapons behind just to not only take an L, but make the L six times bigger. Yeah, it's man.

B

Yeah. So this conversation about Mexico is about survival and like, independently of what the United States and the rhetoric is around the government, be it narco terrorism, be it fentanyl, be it organized crime, human smuggling and all this. All of this, realistically, the efforts put forth by the United States in the continent, I think are about survival. The world is global. Globalism is ending. Like the US patrol. Yeah. The US patrolling the oceans and like guaranteeing the straight of horbos and guaranteeing safety, like sending Its millet that is going away, I think.

A

But it won't be filled. That sucking sound. Won't have someone else fill the role. You don't think. You think it'll just be a series of isolationist ideas where everyone goes back to policing themselves.

B

Well, going back to like theory and I don't know, for me, China is not going to be it. No way. They've never fought a war outside of their continent. You know, Taiwan is right there and they're kind of figuring that out. Out. They have two, like aircraft carriers. Yeah. They can build a lot of ships and a lot of weird sand islands and like that. But so what? Their population is declining there. There's a giant cities that are empty. Yeah. They have a lot of capabilities and like that. But I don't see them being the world police. I think they're more about themselves. Who else is out there? Yeah, Russia.

A

Look at the GDP perspective. Russia's not even, you know, it's not to say they don't do things that you not like. All right, that's not great. But like from a GDP perspective, they're similar to the size of Italy, which means they're not on the map when it comes to China.

B

The US so it's not in Russia, the Germans.

A

What about India? Two billion people.

B

Nah. No, not them. No, not them. They try. They will try, probably, but not them. I don't know. Like, who's there? You know, who is there? Who's behind the Ukrainians, you know who's in Europe. Yeah, the Germans. The Germans are arming up again. Like everybody's getting back into a war footing.

A

That's nice.

B

And we have a state actor in the form of the six letters in the middle of the Middle east. Like picking battles.

A

Yeah, Just pissing everybody off so there's

B

no world police coming. Like, I think that those days are over. I think this was the last foray into that as far as, like, you think there's going to be another U. S. Intervention in Iran of some sort like this or like maybe some sort of intervention somewhere out there? I think the US Is done with that type of stuff for now.

A

I hope so.

B

I think it's going to focus on its own continent, though.

A

You re.

B

You really believe that even it's already happening? It's already happening. It's already happening from this week.

A

We.

B

I mean, we're already seeing Venezuela, where Cuba's probably on the. On. On the line. All we needed to do was get rid of this background noise which is Iran. And I think I think we're going to see some, some fireworks.

A

But if you retreat too much, right, and you retreat into your own continent, you still have the issue of like the fact that so much of global financial trade has been settled in the dollar, which despite all the fucking damage we've done to our own dollars, money and shit like that, it's still the king at the moment. But if you do pull out and go from, and again, I'm obviously the farthest thing from an interventionalist. But if you go full blown isolationist just from like a global stage of like participation, whether that mean leaving NATO, leaving some certain trade partnerships and things like that, you could risk long term, you know, losing the spot of the dollar as top currency, which you and me don't know.

B

A world no where.

A

That's the case.

B

No, I, I've never lived in a world where that isn't the, that the dollar isn't at the center. But we might be moving towards that

A

though, like, but then America is not America.

B

It still has a military that can blow up most of the other military.

A

Military is backed by the US dollar though.

B

It's backed by other things. I don't know about the dollar. I think it's backed by the US's ability to control resources. The US's ability to control what goes where specifically. The US is in a very strategic place. I mean it's a pretty good thing to be in the place where there's oceans.

A

But if you can't to control resources though, you need to control the money. Or am I thinking about that too simply?

B

I think you're thinking about it too simply. You need to control who controls and I think that's what we're seeing here in this list.

A

Yeah, you only got the page two

B

in your notebook here.

A

What's in the other 600 pages?

B

A bunch of like things from my group therapy sessions.

A

Okay.

B

But I, I think, I think, I think, I think we're probably, I think that's where we're probably heading. Where the, where the US retracts into this continent. It figures out resources here, it regroups, it figure out, figures out a new China in Mexico because that's, that's, that's, that's the next China, Mexico, China and Mexico. The, the only issue with Mexico being the next China is its lack of ability to process resources. It doesn't have that realistically, China does. It makes its own and makes, it makes its own aluminum and Titan, all that. It just figures it out, out. We don't have that in Mexico. And I think. But how could you create that in Mexico? Well, first you have to stabilize it. And who's in the way of that? It's criminal organizations, unless you work with them or you work with one of them to disrupt all of them and then eventually make your way to the government which is supporting some of them. And now you have your own government there, and now the cartels are gone.

A

So are you saying it's in a lower that they would choose as the horse there?

B

It's where all. It's where still tbd. It's where it all started with the abduction of El Sala. And it's probably where it's going to end if they hand over the governor of Caloa and hopefully that's where it ends, or else they're going to have to go after our Maduro, our figurehead.

A

I'm going to come back to the El Metro thing because there's still a lot there that we we that off. But the Almayo thing, because you and I talked about this last time, it was about. At the time, I think, maybe seven, eight months after it had happened when we talked in March 2025. But is there. Has there been. Have you seen any more information or picked up on any more information surrounding that since then that makes you, I don't know, change your opinion on what that was. You touched on it earlier that there's some sort of intelligence involvement for sure, and also involvement of like, you know, a tit for tat with El Chapo's kids. But is there anything else we're missing there that we should be looking at?

B

The extradition of El Raton, the first brother of the Chapo Guzmans that was responsible for the. The Cooler Canaso, being arrested and finally captured by the Mexican government, extradited to the United States, and then probably some sort of deal being done with the United States that shielded most of his family members who were then secretly flown to Tijuana, then cross into the United States and given protective custody.

A

Why did they have to be. Where were they flown to Tijuana from?

B

From Tinaloa or from Guadalajara, where they were hiding? They were hiding somewhere. Got it. They're probably outside. Most of them went to hide in Wallahar in Mexico City, I think. I'm not sure where they were flying from, but they went to Tijuana and they were crossed in with all their suitcases. Suitcases. It was like. It was whole spectacle. There's some pictures of them online, but there seemed to have reached the deal there, right and the deal was, hey, immunity, protective custody and we'll help you figure out how to do what you would say. Eliminate the Sinaloa cartel. No, a bunch of indictments for politicians came out of that.

A

That.

B

So I think they're key there. Calo is key and the Chapitas are key there. Now the, the remaining brothers out there are Chivalo and I don't remember the other guy's name. The remaining brothers out there are being rumored to have been trying to negotiate their own surrender and deals with the United States. They're on the run. They're being dismantled by the Mexican government. You know, that's who's target them, targeting them specifically. And we just had the Harfouche, which is the head of that, the new police force in Mexico come out and say that the ally, the alliance between the New Generation cartel and Lo Chapitas is over. Because they're all. A lot of the people were in charge of that, including elementary are dead. So that's gone. So you can see that the Mexican government is targeting the Chapitas specifically. Are they aware maybe that they're being utilized by the U.S. and the U.S. interest as a proxy?

A

Meaning like the soldiers on the ground?

B

Yeah, yeah. I don't know, it's. It's, it's interesting that that's who's getting decimated.

A

Do you have sources in there like any good sources? Obviously you're not going to say who they are, but I'm saying like, do you have in the last two years have you had a chance to speak with someone that's at least in some position to know some, something? I'm not saying like a top guy, but you know.

B

Yeah, yeah, I hear things about, around them and they're, they're. Yeah, they're on the run. They're on the run. They're on the, they're on the backside.

A

Listen, in the wind.

B

Yeah, they're on the run. They're on, they're on their back legs. His head of security was grabbed. A bunch of family members were grabbed. I think they almost caught him last year. I'm talking about Archivalo, the head of this Lo Chapitos. They're on the run. The run. And like again, okay, so they're on the run because those Mayos, the family of El Mayo Sambada after them for vengeance. Clearly they have, they're motivated then the Mexican military is targeting mostly them specifically. Although some of this targeting has happened to Los Mayos. And you see this airport bombing of these two individuals and one of Them is cartel aligned and his allegiance is with the Mayos. And if this was a CIA operation, why they target a Mayo guy, not a Sinaloa Chapo guy? So it's.

A

It.

B

I don't know. It's like you start seeing all these lines. I don't know. It seems like there's. The Mexican government is supporting one side of this organization and the US side might be making deals and some sort of effort to disrupt and to manifest its interest within Mexico through some of these organizations.

A

Do you see any scenario where like the El Mayos faction and the Chipitos faction recongregate at some point?

B

There's no way.

A

Totally ship assailed. Right.

B

There's no way. The worst of the sins. The worst of the sins. Collaboration is the worst of the sins. Amongst them is. I don't. I don't see that happening. I do see them. Them coming out as a survivor. I see the Maya's being pretty. In a pretty strategic place where they could probably weather this out and get smaller and maybe fragment into smaller regional groups that don't really deal in the whole transnational thing anymore.

A

What would that. So what would their business look like?

B

Just like the Gamora, the. The Italian Gamora. Like something like some. Like a mafia. Like a localized organized crime element. That's what most of these organizations are probably going to turn into growers and

A

local smugglers to take it to somewhere bigger and then hand it off.

B

Yep.

A

Interesting.

B

The whole. The whole head of the cartel guy and all this openly moving around with trucks and that's. I think that's. That's on its way out.

A

Yeah. So you use this phrase earlier. We're going through a mass extinction event.

B

Yeah.

A

With cartels in general, with cartel heads

B

and people who are very public and with a lot of notoriety for being cartel head. Is what you're seeing ending and all the. And. And maybe there's some shadowy figures out there who are heads of giant cartels. They don't see but they're. All of them are being outed and targeted. So it's.

A

You don't think the styles could change because like that, by the way, that's what made Oayo so effective for so long because he was so quiet. He was known from the old days.

B

But I think the ch. The style's already changed. That's why you have an American as the head of the scene. The head of the new generation cartel.

A

Or at least that's what they want you to think.

B

Or at least that's what they want you to think.

A

Right.

B

Although they've caught some of them up here. And I think again, like the, a lot of the rhetoric out there is like Mexico, build the wall, keep that down there, don't bring it up here. But it's been up here growing. I mean it's quieter, they're not as overt up here, but it's here.

A

Yeah. Because that like I, you know, I'm picturing the imagery in my head and when I think mass extinction event, I think exactly what it is, which is that I'm just going to throw round numbers out. Let's say you got, you know, 10 million people operating as active people in the cartel, across the cartels, the different factions and groups across Mexico. You know, suddenly that goes down to 500,000 ten years from now. That would be like an extinction level event to me. I haven't heard like, like scenarios where that's realistic. And even in hearing you talk today, this is the way everything is, is that people, young kids are being recruited and that's what it is. Yeah, but you're looking at it from. If there's no more major, I don't know, figurehead, cult leader.

B

Yeah.

A

If you will. Just not having that as like a propaganda tool is a mass extinction event in and of itself.

B

I don't understand how not having the figureheads being supported by politics, local federal government, there's, there's a push back against that now so they can't have that support. So they're going to have to hide a bit more again. Durango is a pretty good example of this. They're hiding in the mountains right now. Durango, Durant in Durango. There's a giant military operation right now. But it's Tora Bora, man. It's high sea. It's a golden triangle. It is.

A

What's going on there?

B

Can you explain it there? It's a massive military operation around the area and they're blocking roads to try and cut out, cut, cut off resources to that feed these cartels that, to which cartels, Remnants of the scene along cartel that are hiding out out there. But they, they go in through mines and like there's caves and. Can we pull this up on a map?

A

This is like Tora Bora, you said.

B

I actually posted a video on my Instagram account and it's like an aerial view of this place so you could see it. I think that's, that's probably going to be what's going to be in the news and then next few months as

A

far as like, yeah, everyone go follow Ed down below. We'll put the link to, to his Instagram.

B

That's an a, that's an, that's an aerial view of some of the, some of the golden triangle.

A

Whoa. Oh, this is like. No, this is like literally like Tora Bora.

B

Yeah. There's been like a lot of.

A

And so there's just cartel people living in these.

B

You'll see, you'll see some of, you'll see some of the cave systems in a bit.

A

I did cave systems.

B

Like look, here's one of them. That's how they, like how, how. Where are they hiding their cars? Oh, they put them in my mine shafts.

A

Holy.

B

Yeah.

A

Who are the construction companies that get these contracts?

B

I mean they're probably old mines that they just reutilized. And Mexico Mexican army doesn't have a mountain division, so we, we just have special forces and they basically get sent to for everything. Those guys just by seeing their equipment are not equipped to go in there there. But there, that's who's getting, gonna head in there.

A

Right.

B

I think that's going to be the next open front in, in Mexico that some of these rural mountains open front. They're, they're surrounding it right now. They're not going in there because they know it's, it's. I mean people, people who are in the military and people who went through Afghanistan can tell you more than I can about that type of warfare. It's not, it's not an easy place specifically since they've been lived there, grew up there, know all the towns, know all the places, know all the holes, ambushes are going to be everywhere and eyes in the sky are not going to do you any good in that place. So I'm not saying they're, they're unstoppable or undefeatable, but it's not going to be an easy battle.

A

That's the thing though. It's like when you look at the history over the last four or five decades, the cartels, they always find a way to address just. Yeah, they've always found a way to get literally more powerful.

B

They adapt.

A

They adapt.

B

At the, at the beginning of my career, they would dress like federal agents and move around in big trucks in the middle of the city in Tijuana. And then they got freaked out by the fact that we started utilizing gun guerrilla tactics against them. So they shifted to taxi cabs and low, lower profile vehicles and, and they basically just shifted and all of a sudden they were harder to find. Yeah. So yeah, the, it's like a, the Hammer trying to get a fly. They're always shifting. But I think right now what we're seeing is that whatever that classic cartel organization that you, you grew up with, watching Marcos Mexico or just seeing some of the Sinaloa stuff and El Chapo Guzman and meeting Sean Penn and Castillo in the mountains and all that, that's, that's. I think that's what's, what's going away. I think a lot of this stuff is going to evolve into smaller fractionalized groups that are controlling their areas. This is an example of it. They're pretty cut off right now, but they have if stockpile of weapons there. They can hold out there for I don't know how long.

A

How many men do you think a faction like that in the, in the mountains has?

B

Ballpark, tens of thousands.

A

But that's like a small action.

B

Yeah, but, but you, well, so you think all of them are going to have a gun? Some of them are going to be women that are going to feeding some of these men. Some of them are going to be transport related, Some of them are going to be municipal police officers or state police officers that are on the take still a huge tribe, a ginormous tribe. And that's the issue. Like the, you think these, these men and women and again, God bless them. I know like, I know many members of the Mexican special operations, some of the best war fighters in the world because they get a lot of experience. They, they don't get, they don't get the praise that they deserve. They're amazing people. Some of them sadly they are in a war against themselves, which is one of the worst wars to be at.

A

A war against themselves.

B

Yeah. When I speak to some of my friends in my therapy group, some of them went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq and they fought people that didn't speak their same language and didn't have their same faith and then they came home. These guys are fighting in their own country, shooting at people that speak their same language, that pray to the same Catholic at the same Catholic church that they do. The damage that's being done internally and generationally there is pretty wild. But they're, they're not the heroes in that story when they arrive there. Yeah, some of the citizenship is going to be pretty happy about the fact that some of these cartel guys are going to be like laying low and not, not robbing people, not extorting people. Yeah, there's a lot of that. But also some of these cartel members have their families there and the extortion money goes to Them and some of the schools. So their enemies, enemies there. And that's another factor of this war that a lot of people just don't realize. Some of these large cartels and some of these communities are funded and fed by these cartels. So when the army comes in there and disrupts that, they become the enemy, and they inspire a lot of these kids to go into the same line of work.

A

Yes.

B

So again, as you said, this is a cycle.

A

Yes.

B

And I think, at least what I see now with the current administration and what it's doing, the cycle hat is going to end though it, for the reasons behind it, might not be the best ones, the way it's being done. The interventionism in another country might not be the most ethical thing ever, but you have to realize that change is happening.

A

Yes.

B

A guy who was untouchable a few years back got murked by this Mexican special operations after they landed in his backyard. And he had a ledger just like this one where he had this amount of thousand for the federal police to watch my back. This amount of thousand for the military to watch my back. So you have to hand it to whoever was in charge of this operation, despite all that, that they went in there and they put a bullet in his head. Now we never saw the body. We have, like, there's a, there's like an Osama bin Laden element to this story of old. Mention. God damn it, you know, And I have to, I have to say it

A

or else I just had Rob sitting right there. The guy shot him.

B

Shout out Rob. He's a cool guy. I follow him online. Funny, funny dude. That's, that's how you can tell.

A

I do believe he shot him too. I know people have, like, argued about that. I believe him.

B

I, I, we never saw Mencho's body.

A

Right.

B

Is, is, is, is one thing that you know. And there was a whole thing around his body. Then there was a giant funeral for him, which I think the roses were like, you can get them in the area because they covered his.

A

Yeah, you were saying it was like a month without roses in the area.

B

It's insane. They just, it, it just every day they would just cover his grave. Propaganda is important, but you would say, like, hey, you just, you just killed Bin Lan of Mexico.

A

Right.

B

And then all of his cartel family that has warrants showed up to the funeral and nobody did anything. So has anything really changed?

A

That's what I'm saying. That whole thing was fishy. Just real quick before I go to that, because I don't want to Lose this point. But then we'll come right back to

B

that because that's really important.

A

I've had that question held up all day, but when you're with the mass extinction event. Event. Now that you've explained it, I don't know if I'm misreading this in my head, but what it feels like to me based on that whole idea that you're like, okay, now long term without the figureheads, it's gonna boil down into just a bunch of factions and more tribes. It feels less like mass extinction and more like trust busting. Yeah, right. So like think Standard Oil and then it turned into all these different oil companies that actually grew in power over time. There's just more of them.

B

Yeah, yeah, that's one. Also a lot of them are just going to go into legitimate businesses of various kinds. You know, marijuana legalization in Mexico is in a process that has been taken years. Vapes are federally illegal in Mexico.

A

They're federally illegal.

B

Yeah.

A

Interesting.

B

So that business. So there's already kind of the settings of some of this drug trade being legalized and then some of these people just going into legitimate business. You know, the mafia got disappeared here because they went into construction and into politics.

A

That's right. They did a nice job and looks good.

B

And in Mexico that's the same thing. They went into tequila, they went into politics and.

A

But is that just how they launder money? Because they still do all the other.

B

I think, I think they're. They're always going to do the other. They're just not going to do it at the volume that they have. And they're just not going to be their own government as they have been. Got it again, we, we in the past, you would see El Mencho and Jalisco and you. And you. The government would be like the government was afraid to go after.

A

Right.

B

Because he was governing there. And if they don't believe that once it killed them most a lot of Mexico burned because they told their soldiers that govern in these areas to go and burn it. So you have that level, I think is going away.

A

Right?

B

That's what's going away. The amount of firearms and bullets and everything like that coming into the country. Unless the United States is ready to do a, a naval blockade of everything coming in and out of Mexico, that's probably not going to go away as well. And unless the United States decides to change its. It's a gun rights and people want to sacrifice that somehow and get rid of all the millions of guns. So this is going to still go on. And also like, technology is going to change. Like it's already. As it already is. CNC machines can manufacture an AR15 in a room somewhere. A lot of the, the rifles that are being found in some of these cartel hands, 3D printed or, or, or, or made. Like some of them are now going that route. They're holding off whole military battalions by dropping bomblets on them from, you know, drones. So it's modifying itself.

A

Yeah, shifting.

B

I think where we're headed is the whole classic el chapo, el Mencho, el mayo figureheads governing a whole region and just leading through fear. That's the simp. It's fading away. It's like thanos snap. Are they going away? It's criminality and violence in Mexico going away.

A

No, but that is leading through fear. The way I understand it.

B

I mean, it's. It's turning a giant criminal organization that would govern a region and it would blow up helicopters in this guy that tried to arrest him. It's turning them into a smaller groups that are harder to see, that are more infiltrated and more entwined into everyday life. It's, it's them getting into legitimate businesses is then getting into other types of things that might not draw the attention of a U. S. Government. But again, I don't think this is about drugs and cartels. I think this is about regime change. That's what this is all regime change. Yeah. The United States wants to put people in power in Mexico that it can go back to the way things were in the 70s and 80s and that

A

could include people that are now doubling as legitimate businessmen who used to be.

B

Could be.

A

I mean, they did put a guy in charge. He used to run al Qaeda in Syria. So I guess it's not out.

B

And they.

A

Invisibility.

B

And they invited him like, dude, talk about.

A

Yeah, he's playing basketball.

B

Talk about surreal.

A

Yeah.

B

He seems like a nice guy.

A

Right. Seems like, you know, likable.

B

Likable.

A

Likable terrorist.

B

Like a cool watch. I say that smiling and people cool watch. Like all respect to them. I don't know. I, I've. I've met people like that, I guess in. In my own way, in a different part of the world. And I, I know, you know, who is going to like, that's a great question. Like if they do a Venezuela and Mexico, which I think this is where we're going probably. It doesn't make sense to take out Claudia where she is.

A

Right.

B

And again, she. I don't think she's targeted. I think it's going to be more about changing the whole Morena movement and shifting it to something that is more aligned with the US Interest.

A

That's right.

B

And I don't see them putting in a strong man in there. Now, there's one name that sounds a lot, not as far as the next presidential election in Mexico.

A

Who's that?

B

Omar Garcia Harfush.

A

Omar Garcia Harfush.

B

Yeah.

A

It's a hard name.

B

Omar Garcia Harfush.

A

Sounds like a terrorist from 24.

B

He came out of the. That's him. He seems to be doing an amazing job.

A

Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection of Mexico. He's doing an amazing job.

B

He's doing a pretty good job.

A

Citizen protection.

B

Well, he's taken down a lot of high level cartel guys.

A

Okay.

B

He's doing. He's in charge of those swarm operations, going after local governments and arresting municipal police officers and municipal and municipal governors. He, they try the, the. The four. That's quatro letras, the four letters. The new generation cartel tried to assassinate him at one point in Mexico City when he was in charge of security in Mexico City proper. He is at the head of all federal operations right now in, in Mexico, apparently, intelligence wise. And he is the strongman of Mexico. People call him Batman and Batman. Yeah. And ladies swoon over this guy.

A

I mean he's a good looking dude.

B

He's a good looking dude. And there's like a. And I think he, I think he's on his way to being the next president of Mexico. And I think he fits what the United States would like.

A

How would you describe his, his personal politics? Like, can you put him in a box there?

B

No, he's a. He's a career. He's a. He's a career cop. Like he made his. His name in the Federal Police. He went through some of the same training that I went through. He had family members in politics and he was. He had influential family that's who's been basically going to got. That's who probably got him into some of the positions that he's had. He was named as somebody involved in the disappearances of those students, those normalista students way back. But I don't think he had any direct participation in. He was just in the room with some of the people that were. Were. He's a key figure. He's a strong guy.

A

He's your age too. Do you know guys who know him?

B

Yes, I do.

A

Yeah. What do they say about him?

B

They trust him with their lives.

A

Really?

B

Yep.

A

That's a good sign.

B

It's again, I. I think that's what we need in Mexico right now. You thought. You want to talk about true change? How do you change Mexico from within? Well, you get a career guy like that guy who's actually seen everything from the inside. You get somebody that's actually been involved in successful policing operations and. And. And operations related to public safety, who has actually changed things in Mexico. That guy's changing.

A

All right. Not to be a cynic, but how does a guy like that not get killed on the way to getting office by people who don't want him or once he actually gets to office, not get completely undermined by other people around him who are not operating on the same team?

B

There's no way. And yeah, he has a giant target on his back.

A

Right.

B

Yeah, I agree with you. How does he do it? I have no idea. Right now, he is in a very hard spot because he is basically next to the president of Mexico. He is a man who has to toe the line as far as the political rhetoric and everything that's happening.

A

Total line.

B

Yeah.

A

With her. Like, with what she. Okay, got it.

B

And. But I've heard some of my American friends who have actually interacted with him say he's like. They like him.

A

Them.

B

You're in the U. S. The Americans.

A

Like, like some of your Navy SEAL

B

guys or some of the people that I talk to.

A

Okay.

B

Like them and that. Who are involved in decision making, like them.

A

Last Trace Lettres.

B

No, not. Let's translate later. But some people who are involved in politics and decision making, like him. I don't know. I think that. I think he's probably in the running. There's no other name out there sounding as far as the next president of Mexico. And we're still off a ways off off elections. But keep an eye on this. If he gets put into the cabinet position of secretariat, which is basically our vice presidency.

A

Oh, wow.

B

If he gets placed there, he's in the running.

A

Yeah. Because he's, again, literally next in line.

B

He's the next in line. That's my predictions, one of my predictions. I guess I'll pull it out there.

A

You got a lot of good predictions over the years. Yeah. If you run the tape, like on your old Rogan podcast in, like, 2018. 2019. 19. I think it was 2019. Where you did both those.

B

Yeah.

A

And then you were on again last year. But, like, a lot of the. You said was.

B

Yeah.

A

Strangely tracking.

B

Yeah. August, I said on the. On. On that Rogan show, I said somewhere in the hills of Jalisco some shit's gonna go down. I thought the Americas were going to be it, but, you know, they were. At least with the drone and the eye in the sky, I think. I think he's in the running

A

now.

B

Is that going to change anything? I think things are already changing. Mexico and the government right now. Right, right in Mexico right now is under pressure to make the. All the changes now. That's why they're going so hard off all these people. That's why they probably went after the men show directly even, and took that hit. Think about it. They went after the mention right before the World cup in the. The state where some of those games are going to be held. That doesn't sound like a political decision. That sounds like a desperate decision by some people in charge or somebody in charge at a high level saying, you know what, we'll take the hit.

A

Cleaning up the streets before all the people come in.

B

Maybe. But why would you cat like, Mexico was on fire before the World Cup?

A

That's what I'm saying. Like the opposite effect.

B

Yeah, but apparently the World Cup's going pretty well. People are liking it. There's a bunch of violence. There's.

A

There's.

B

There's schools with dirt floors in Mexico. There's a lot of horrible. That money could be put forth. But like, you know, soccer, yay. Soccer, football.

A

You. You called it a disgraceful event or something earlier.

B

I hate.

A

You're not a fan.

B

I hate, I hate all that.

A

Why?

B

It's predatory.

A

It's predatory, yeah.

B

FIFA is a corrupt institution. Predatory.

A

I mean, there's a lot of documentaries on that, but, like, the actual FIFA seems to suck for sure. But like the actual event of like a lot of different countries coming together and like, kumbayan over sport a little bit. You're not into that.

B

The Iranian team is staying in Tijuana, my hometown, right now, because they can't stay in the U.S. it's cool. But it's being utilized as a political tool by Morena to say, like, hey, they can stay here in Mexico where they're safe. They don't want to stay in the United States. And if you go to the hotel where they're staying at, there's a Chinese flag, Iranian flag and a Mexican flag outside, which is like, pretty interesting to see. So it's politics there. You know, one of the things that really caught my Every now and then, I'll go out with some of the mares buscadoras. There are organizations across Mexico where they're basically looking for the bones of their children that were. That have been missing for years. So they look for, they're. They're basically mothers who organize as in search parties to look for the bodies of their missing kids. I. I can't even be. If, if anybody wants to see the effects, just go down there. And if everyone wants to support like an actual good cause.

A

What's the name of that again?

B

Las Madres Buscadoras. And it's like, it's, it's. It's a name that basically a lot of organizations use out there.

A

Yes.

B

Some of them have been compromised and used for political means and, and like that. I get it. Morena doesn't like those women calling them out constantly about the fact that they not only inhibit their searches sometimes, but they don't send any protection with them. One of those mothers actually went to the president so like, hey, they're trying to kill me. And then they did so looking for

A

their kids, bones for their bodies.

B

So they'll go around dirt dump sites with, with steel probes, robes, poke them in the ground. And if it comes out smelling like body, we dig. Wallets, shoes are found and documented IDs. A lot of them were setting up protest in Mexico City around the World cup because of, I mean like, how, how can we be in a jubilant celebration where there's thousands of people missing. Yeah. And where there's industrial level body disposal and mass graves being found? Like that's there. And I'm, I'm with them. And the president of Mexico comes out and mockingly says that they're being utilized as political ploy to make the Moreno party look bad. Fuck that. It's because it's like, how, how are we dedicating all these resources to this soccer event when there are women who are like fainting in the sun without any, any sort of police protection, going into some of these horrible places, getting shot at sometimes for simply looking for a body to bury. That's what I don't understand on my end when I started my career. It's a story I've told a few times and it's like communicates everything about Mexico and my experience there. Mexico is a beautiful place. It has amazing people. Not all of Mexico is bad. Not all Mexicans are cartel members or, or anything like that. Just like not all Americans are the TEs, you know?

A

That's right.

B

There's like good people on both sides and people that just want to be left alone. They want to have the ability to make the best lives for themselves and their kids and Just not be harassed, extorted, taxed, all that. I get it. We're very much alike as a. As a country with a lot. I see the similarities between both of us. We've been told this whole story about being separate. Like, dude, we're. We're the same. When I started my career, they told me, like, hey, let's go get the bolt cutters. I was, like, fucking excited about it. It's like, oh, fuck, we're on a raid. Should I take the battering ram? No, just the bolt cutters. First thing I did in my career was cut a kid down from a bridge who was hung with some electrical wire with a sign on him, some sort of vengeance from one cartel to the other. While I was cutting him down, we put a truck underneath him so the body wouldn't fall. Is we're doing a favor because one of the guys that I was working with was banging one of the forensic women. The weird story of that, but I was there doing that. It's like, what the am I into? We're slowly trying to let this body down. It just flops down. Family shows up. You, You. You can dehumanize. And I. I got some of that programming during my training where, like, you know, those people, those muosos, the bad guys, man, I bought into all that as programming, but at that moment, like, that was a red pill for me that changed it. The women that showed up, I think, were mothers and sisters. This body that I was treating as a thing that I was just annoyed with was the most valuable thing to them.

A

Son, brother, lifeguard on. Yeah.

B

I went over to my friend and I said, like, this is the cruelest thing I've ever seen somebody do to a human being. And he turned to me and, like, you're dumb. That is an act of kindness.

A

An act of kindness, yeah.

B

At least they have a body to

A

bury, and it's a low bar, but

B

that's what we have down there sometimes. Yeah, we are horrified about that, but we've normalized it for years. You'll hear, you'll see somebody get shot across the street. You look, you'll duck, and you'll finish eating your tacos and then step over the body. And I'm glad it wasn't me. You know, we are. We have normalized this for decades. And, you know, Mexican normal in some places is an absurd. Normal normal.

A

Yeah.

B

And there's some horrific that happens up here that horrifies me. You know, you talk about being afraid of cartels. I'm afraid of a Weirdo showing up at a school.

A

Yeah.

B

Yeah. You talk about people smuggling and. And. And child trafficking, and we're standing in the country that is the consumer of most of that.

A

Yep.

B

We talk about drugs and proliferation of violence in Mexico, but then we were in the place that consumes a lot of that and then sends a lot of those guns down there as well. Yes. So we're. This is like a very toxic relationship we have going on where you need each other more than we would. Then we're being led on to think both of our countries are tied to the hip genetically.

A

Yeah. Yes.

B

There's been a. I think. I don't remember. There was, like, a viral ad where they were talking to some people in Texas who were pretty adamant about them being American and not Mexican at all. And all them got DNA tested and they all had some Mexican in them.

A

Yeah.

B

It is a travesty. I think that we have been led into this position where, you know, there's a. You know, I'm all about. I'm all about people with a rule of law and just people, you know, being able to live. Most Mexicans that come up here, you know what their dream is? They go back home.

A

Yeah. To make. Make a better life. Be able to send money home and then make enough that they can actually make a life where they came from. Yeah.

B

I heard that from a lot of them. But why can't they, though? It's because when. If they go back home or. Or they hear news from back home,

A

what are they going back to?

B

Yeah. So Sinaloa's on fire. Durango is about to turn into a new front. Jalisco is pretty spicy in some parts. Baja, and in some ways is getting gentrified, and in other ways, it's. A lot of the people who are leaving Sinaloa are now setting up shop in places like Baja, are gonna maybe turn it into another Sinaloa later. We're in a cycle.

A

The cycle. Yeah.

B

Whatever. This is going on right now politically within the United States and its current attention on Mexico, independently of the ethics around it, independently of. It's. If it's good or bad or whatever you want to think about it, it is changing the game down there. Things are changing. People who are untouchable are dead now.

A

Right.

B

Government officials who have always been on the take or have in some way, shape or form been involved in all this, are now being hunted internationally with red notices. And that is something that's never happened before. So we. You have to realize and notice that that is actually happening. And it is a thing that many Mexicans have wanted for years.

A

Start maybe something.

B

But a group of Marines crossing into Tijuana, different story. And having a, having a shootout somewhere in downtown Jalisco with the police, because that's the cartel. In some places, that's a different story. It is a very dangerous thing to think that you can go to Mexico with all the military force the United States has and not turn a single cartel head into a martyr. And now having.

A

Yeah, yeah.

B

And now you want to talk about something scary.

A

Yep.

B

Think about a Mexican Taliban. You know, Mexicans are true believers as war fighters. You know, we've been fighting it out with each other for a while. Yeah. I get technology and all that. But think about it. You have a very antagonistical country in Mexico, if we go into that is now inspired to defend its sovereignty. You have this social movement now kind of moving in within the United States. Of all the people that are living up here that have direct family ties and blood in Mexico. Yeah. Dissent is going to happen here. Sabotage is going to happen here. Most of the, the, the Joses Luis's and Fernando's in the Mexican, in the, in the US Marine Corps are probably going to be conflicted with their new travel, with their new travel arrangements and their, their design, their designated enemies now.

A

Oh, that's interesting.

B

So I, I, there's a lot to be avoided that I would recommend the United States kind of think about before they try and attempt something of that nature. Which is again why I think they're going to focus on these political figures.

A

Yeah.

B

Because this isn't about that. I don't think they're going to go into a ground invasion, although they say that a lot. I think it's probably going to be some sort of targeted mass arrest, which is what that list is. Or a single figurehead that symbolizes corruption and union between criminal organizations and politics in Mexico. And after that happens, moving forward with a more agreeable government. But again, this is not about good versus evil. This is not about the right side versus the bad side. This is, this is a survival on both sides. I think in the United States is looking out for its best interest. Nobody's against you there for themselves. In this case, the United States is out for themselves.

A

Yeah. All right, let's come back to the El Metro thing. But before that, I just gotta go to the bathroom real quick.

B

Go.

A

So we'll be right back. All right, guys. So it turns out Ed and I did an entire second episode after we got back from the bathroom break. So that would be coming out on my channel soon. If you are not already subscribed, please hit that subscribe button so you don't miss it. And if you'd like to join my clipping community for a chance to make money doing edits of the show, you can join via the Discord link in my description below. Finally, if you'd like to join Patreon, that link is also in my description. See you guys for the next one.