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[00:00]
A
Well, thanks so much for making the time.
[00:01]
B
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
[00:03]
A
Thanks, man. So for those who don't know, can you tell us your name and what you do?
[00:06]
B
Yeah. So my name is Stefan Arindale. I'm the chief Intelligence officer of Artorias, which is an AI driven OSINT intelligence company. We serve private corporations, governments and even normal consumers. We have an app called sitrep, so if you want OSINT news, you can get it from there. And my other way that I guess from why we're here is I'm also All Source News, which is an account on X and other social media platforms that covers Mexican cartels. And I've been doing that since 2020 has really been a huge focus of mine.
[00:34]
A
And what made you want to start covering the cartels?
[00:36]
B
So what really, you know, just like, as I said, like I've, I loved open source intelligence and the reason why I really enjoyed it is, you know, prior I was in the military, I was active duty and did reserves, and when I was in the army, I really realized that there was a lot of focus on open source intelligence. It was a new type of intel that was really growing and really, you know, coming in a lot more popular. And I realized we were using it a lot. During my deployment to the Middle east, you know, I had a deployment to Jordan as part of the Counter ISIS campaign. And OSINT was something that started to really pick up steam. And while I was in the military and active duty, I did two missions. I did one mission to the border on the first Trump administration during the first caravan, and then the second one, I went to Mexico for a month and trained the Mexican army. And it was a phenomenal training experience. And what I realized is that in the OSINT world, that was very prevalent on, let's say, Twitter back then. Now X and other social media platforms, Mexican cartels was not being covered at all. And I said, hey, you know, I love osint, I speak fluent Spanish, I have connections in Mexico, I want to give it a shot. And what started out as a hobby really became significantly more and now just kind of became something that I really focus on professionally as well with my company too.
[01:45]
A
How do you think that cartels, and I guess the power structure has changed between when you started back then and now?
[01:50]
B
Oh, that's a great question. So I think one of the key aspects, and I'm going to take a kind of a broader picture and then and hone it in when we're talking about Mexican cartels, I Think it's very important to note that we say, like the cartels, like, it's almost like it's a singular entity. And it's important to note that that's not necessarily the case. Like the Trump Admin. Administration, for example, has six cartels designated as foreign terrorist organization. The Sinaloa Cartel, the Gulf Cartel, the Northeast Cartel, the United Cartel, the La Nueva Familia, Michoacana, and the Jaliscano Generation Cartel. There's more than just those six. And each of them operate differently, operate in different areas. They make money certain ways, they have different plaza bosses, et cetera. And one of the fundamental differences that I've seen since 2021 to now is that historically, when we saw violence go up in Mexico, it's because cartel leadership kind of gets captured, kill. And then this idea, well, you kill one cartel leader, 50 form. And what's an interesting dynamic is that now what I'm noticing is this new trend where the reason why violence is going up is not necessarily because of fragmentation. It's more because we're seeing alliances form between two major blocs within the Mexican cartels. In 2024, there was a major development, I think much more so than what we're seeing recently, at least, with El Mencho. And it's the. A key cartel leader was captured, named Mayo Zambada. He was one of the key figures of the Sinaloa Cartel. And the way that happened was that the US Basically churned one of El Chapo's sons who was part of a rival faction of the Sonoa Cartel called Los Chapitos, basically made him an informant to the FBI. Wow.
[03:21]
A
So he snitched.
[03:22]
B
He snitched. So those Chapitos are four brothers of El Chapo. When he was in, when he was detained, it's Ivan, El Chibaldo, Jesus Alfredo Ovidio Guzman, Ihuaquin Guzman. The same name as the father. When the father of El Chapo was captured, the two factions of the Sonola Cartel, Los Chapitos, aforementioned, and then Miles Zambada. What happened was during the Biden administration, they grabbed Joaquin Guzman and basically leveraged him to trick Miles Ambada into flying into the US where federal agents detained him in El Paso. And this was all the way back in, in 2024. Well, who took over after Miles Zambada was captured? His son, a guy named Maito Flaco. And obviously it was public record. Maito Flaco saw. Wait a minute. Los Chapitos, El Chapo's son turned in my father to U.S. prison. Well, that's the ultimate betrayal. And so he declared war on Los Chapitos. And that's when we had the Sinaloa cartel civil war. And what we've seen with the Sinaloa cartel civil war is Los Chapitos were not doing so hot. They actually announced an alliance with the Jaliscano generation cartel. So what used to be historical rivals became allies. And that alliance, I think, fundamentally transformed the cartel dynamics in Mexico, where we're starting to see basically not everybody, but for the most part, two major blocs forming inside of Mexico within the Jaliscano generation Cartel, Los Chapitos, and then the Maito Flacos with other groups such as Chapo, Isidro or cdn. And. And that's where you're seeing these two alliances that are really driving the violence in Mexico. Mostly in Sinaloa, Durango and even some other areas of Mexico, we're seeing it as well.
[04:47]
A
So in this context, what is the assassination or killing of El Mencho represent?
[04:53]
B
Right. So it's kind of interesting. In the last couple of years, we've seen two major figures of the Mexican cartels disappear, right? It was kind of like this. I mean, if you're looking at this, like back in the day, the Cali cartel in Colombia, in the Medellin, right. There's this aura almost of these cartel. Pablo Escobar, right. And Mencho and Maya Zambada were kind of the new type of. At least in the last. Last decade were kind of these major figures. And they both are now gone and Mental being killed. And I think to your point, what that means for Jaliskanu generation cartel, I think it's important to note the Jiska New generation cartel has only existed since 2009. And really a couple years later and just over a decade and Mental made Jaliskanu generation cartel from something that was not known to the most powerful drug cartel in the world. I mean, I would even make the argument that they're the most powerful criminal organization in the world. They have presence in over 40 countries, large dominance in Mexico.
[05:42]
A
And to clarify, that's because they don't just push drugs.
[05:44]
B
Oh, they push everything. And actually one of the key areas that we there is a phenomenal report on Reuters was oil. So if you look at this report and a lot of sanctions that the US has done, a lot of the, you know, holistic generation cartel makes billions of dollars every year in just oil smuggling into the US Avocado trade, lime trade. I mean, they're involved in so many industries and that's why they're so powerful. And I would even. There's even suspicion that El Mencho has a dominance just in the drug trade, in the cocaine trade. I mean, he has really built in a decade, over a decade, an empire of a Mexican cartel. So what does this killing mean? This is the first true test of, I think, a Jalisco generation cartel. Are they able to sustain themselves as one unitary cartel? That's the key question that we have. I have reporting, you know, from some of my sources and talk to others, that his stepson, Juan Carlo Valencia Gonzalez, or also known as O3, has been named as the new leader of Jalisco New Generation Cartel. What's interesting about him is, as I said, not only is he's the stepson, but he was born in Santa Ana, California. He's a US citizen.
[06:42]
A
Wow. He's from Orange County.
[06:43]
B
Yeah.
[06:44]
A
Interesting. So do you think that El Mencho's assassination will do anything to slow the importation of drugs like fentanyl and cocaine
[06:50]
B
into the U.S. i would say immediately, no. So, for example, if we looked at Miles Ambada, right when he was captured, we started to get grumblings and reportings of significant tension kind of weeks later. And then the violence really started the months after his, his capture. That's what we have to look at right now with the lisk and generation, because in the grand scheme of thing, it's fairly fresh. Now it does look like for now, that all the leadership underneath. Right. So if you look at a cartel, it's a pyramid. But the, the regional commanders are very important in any cartel. Right. The gunmen. So there's a couple names to look out for, right? To look, you have a guy named El Cardinero. He's a very powerful regional commander. You have a guy named El Sapo, another powerful one. You have a guy named Double R, very powerful one. As long as they all coalesce around O3, the stepson, then for the most part, more than likely, everything can continue to stay normal. It's just a new leadership. The question that we have though is, is the, the appointment of O3 as the new leader enough to kind of keep this cartel and Jaliska generation cartel to continue the same? Or do we see fragmentation in a civil war similar to what we see in the Sinaloa Cartel or the Gulf Cartel?
[07:58]
A
But all of these things are like the whole cartel issue is not based upon the US drug demand.
[08:03]
B
Yes and no. Well, first of all, for example, the oil, the other oil, they sell it to the US I think. Well, not all of it, but a huge portion of the oil. They sell it here. But I think one of the interesting aspects that we're seeing in Mexico is. And actually this goes to your first question. What's some fundamental change I've seen since we've seen this? There's a phenomenal book, a great academic I deal with. His name is Nathan P. Jones. He wrote a book called, I think it's called Mexican Illicit Actors and State Response. And I'm going to summarize very basically his whole premise. He basically wrote this book over a decade ago, and he identified basically two types of cartels. You have. Have transactional cartels and territorial cartels. So what are the transactional cartels? What you're saying, the drugs, Right. I have a product. I need to sell the product. There's buyers in the U.S. so we got to get this There a key example of this. If people see Narcos, Mexico, the series, the beginning of the Guadalajara cartel with marijuana, right? That's all they cared about, push drugs. The other cartel is the territorial cartel. And we were talking this earlier. Who would be a perfect example of a territorial cartel? The Zetas. Right. What do they care about? They want territorial control because that's how they get money, because they control the territories. So the routes the drugs got kept.
[09:08]
A
And specifically for those who don't know, the Zetas control Tamaulipas and the. The Gulf region. So they wanted to be able to control the smuggling route into places like Reynosa, et cetera.
[09:18]
B
Yeah, all those areas. And they, they. They used to be gunmen and the kind of the armed wing of the Golf Cartel. And they said, hey, we can make more money, so how do we make money? Well, we got to kick the Golf Cartel out of here. That's how they did it, and they became a territorial cartel. One of the fundamental issues of a territorial cartel, though, although all cartels are violent, is that they put a primary importance on the violence because they need to control the territory and think about it in broad sense like a war zone. Right. Russia, Ukraine, they're fighting for territory. So there's a lot of violence to get there. So we're starting to see, I think in the broad sense, every single cartel is kind of slowly transitioning into a primarily territorial focus. And that territorial focus inherently makes them more violent, because now it's not just the corruption now it's not just the drug trade. It's the territorial control that they need in order to make money. And I think that's a fundamental transition where even if they Lose money on drug trade, they can still make money other ways, even just extorting the civilian population and stay relevant.
[10:10]
A
So the violence is almost a tool of creating fear. So the fantastical violence, bodies from bridges decapitating people and leaving a message written on like a piece of cloth on the side of the road, that's to freak people out so they don't try to dispute the territorial control of the area.
[10:25]
B
That. And I would even. Perfect. Perfect explanation. And I would even say it's also a way for people to. It normalizes violence. So if there's a lot of these violence that goes on, people aren't going to demand political change. They're not going to go to the government and say, hey, this is unacceptable. Because it's been so normalized that in the end of the day, the government says, well, this is just a fact of matter. This is just life. And so it also enables the cartels to continue in that long streams of brutality to. In order to enforce their overall rule in the country. Yeah.
[10:52]
A
When did that start? Because I know in the context of like, what they called Middle Eastern terror, it was Al Zarqawi who really created the first execution video, with Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who got stuck out there, who is the first cartel boss to direct the production of an execution video.
[11:05]
B
I mean, it's really hard. I mean, I would have to kind of go back first, but. But I think the ones who really professionalized it was the Zetas. I. I think that if we're going to look at history, the Zeta cartels were the main one who just said, I mean, before the Zetas and after the Zetas. So even though the Zetas were gone, although they have a successor now, which is the CDN Cartel, the Northeast Cartel, and there's a lot of remnants of former Zetas forming their own groups. I think the Zetas were that primary aspect that really made a difference in the overall violence aspect, Much more so than we've seen in the past.
[11:34]
A
And I'm. I'm sure that reporting in this field, you've probably seen some pretty gnarly stuff.
[11:38]
B
Yeah.
[11:38]
A
Do you ever have to take a break from consuming cartel content?
[11:42]
B
Yeah, unfortunately, you do kind of get accustomed to it, but there are some areas that you get just a sheer level of brutality that I think shocks even those who've seen it. Like when I was deployed, I saw ISIS execution videos. And I can say hands down that the cartel videos are worse. And one of the most brutal ones that I'll kind of give a Broad overview. Obviously, I'm not going to go into details, but I think it's important. It highlights the significant aspects of how extreme they're willing to go. Because when you see execution videos, 90% right, broadly speaking of the cartel videos, it's just brute force. But this specific video that actually came from the CDN cartel, one of the groups under them, under the CDN cartel, was called Operativo Texas. So the Texas operative. So how they did it is. It's. I want to explain this without sounding like a psychopath, but I think it's very important.
[12:32]
A
Well, you didn't do it, so it's okay.
[12:35]
B
But the fact that I think I caught it kind of concerns me because you look at it and you look at trends and what. In this specific video, what happened was it was a bunch of guys in the cdn, typical execution video. They're on the back and then they have a guy kneeling in front of them who belongs to La Linea. The La Linea is basically the Juarez cartel. And this was done in northern Zacatecas, which is a huge conflict zone that CDN historically has apprentices, even though right now it looks like it's been reduced. But what they do, they do the whole spiel, hey, this is a La Line member. And they always pretend, they always portray themselves cartel members as, we're Robin Hood, we're here to do justice. And because the great government sucks and corruption. And what happened was then after their speech, they get the guy and what they do is with the knife, they peel his skin off from his face and then they remove the skin surgically, basically. So you see like this muscles with the skulls and the eyeball and everything, they remove it. They open his chin up, all the way down here, completely open it, remove the tongue, and then they cut off the heart. And then towards the end of the video, they pull it out. And then how they end the video is they show in the camera and you see the heart beating until it stops beating. And the moment it stops vading, the video cuts. Now here's the interesting. Here's two interesting aspects of that. One, the person they did that to didn't fight back. And he barely said, but basically whispering, he said, por favon pared. Please stop it. Like, very, very, very softly, but that's it. And he didn't fight back. So that tells me two things. One, this man was drugged enough to stay awake and be conscious, but just enough to make sure that he didn't fight back or scream. And then the second thing is, like, my Wife, she's an ER nurse. She's actually in one of the er, she saw open heart surgery because somebody got shot. The way the cartel members did it was very, very, like precise.
[14:24]
A
Right? Like they'd done it before.
[14:26]
B
And. But even not only have they done it before, but it, to me it says like, did these guys get medical training? Because even my wife who's been in her, she's like, I can't, I don't, I can't do that. And it goes to show that, you know, more than likely based on the fact that they knew how much to drug this guy. So he didn't fight back, but he was awake. And the fact of how they did it shows they had to have at least some medical training to be able to execute this perfectly. And the message was sent and received of like, we're violent, you can't fight back against us. And that was the one video that I probably said, I need a break. Because it was just the sheer level of brutality and violence was completely eye opening.
[15:03]
A
And when you say medical training, I've seen various things online about different intelligence services training certain factions of Mexican cartels. Do you give any credence to those theories?
[15:13]
B
I mean, yeah, we do know that, for example, the Zeta cartels, the leadership of the Zetas cartels were formerly trained by the US Special Forces. And then these guys just, you know, just became guns for hires. They became mercenaries for the Gulf Cartel and then that's how they formed the other. We do know that Mexican cartels heavily recruit foreign military personnel. So for example, talked about the Mexican special forces and Mexican military that switch sides, enjoy the cartels. Guatemalan special forces are heavily recruited specifically by Jalisca New Generation cartel. Actually, one of the fronts of Jalisca New Generation Cartel in Chiapas is called the Chiapas and Guatemala Cartel. It's a front for cjng. They have a lot of former Guatemalan special forces. And recently we've also seen a huge increase of former Colombian soldiers and mercenaries who fought in Ukraine actually now getting recruited and fighting in Mexico. They get recruited after their time in Ukraine, they fight in Mexico. And we've actually seen across Mexico, but a huge concentration of that in Michan, which looks like Jaliscanu generation cartel in the United Cartel who are battling each other in, in Michoan. They both heavily recruit from Colombians who fought in Ukraine. So I think to your point there, yes, any and anywhere where they can get a former special forces, former military, as long, you know, it's mercenaries, as long they're willing to fight for them and get paid good money, they'll pay for it.
[16:28]
A
But you think, you know, there's no like CIA type Mossad connection with the cartels.
[16:32]
B
No, I mean, I know people are going to say, I know, I mean, could go back to the Cold War and all that, but now modern days, the cartel members, they actively recruit and if anything the CIA actually to El Mencho that came from. I wouldn't be surprised if the unit that did the operation that killed El Mencho was from a CIA vetted trained unit. The unit that did the operation that killed El Mencho was definitely a US trained and vetted unit. And, and I think, you know, we can look at history where CIA and all this kind of had a role in the drug trade, obviously with back in the day, with the Cold War. But a lot of that has fundamentally shifted into this new dynamic where now we're actually seeing is these Mexican army units and Mexican police units get vetted by the U.S. so like for example, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, DEA, U.S. special Forces, CIA, they have their own Mexican units. They vet them, train them, equip them, fund them and give them intelligence. And then these guys go out and execute operations based on intelligence given to the U.S. yes.
[17:34]
A
Let's talk about the actual El Mencho raid. Yeah, So I know, I know where it was done. From your perspective, just in a complete sentence, what happened there.
[17:40]
B
Right. So, so the what happened was there was two Mexican special forces units, one from the military, looks like in the National Guard kind of did the outer perimeter Jalisco. They did an operation and there was a significant shootout and they killed El Mencho and his and a couple members of his bodyguards. There is interesting reporting that's coming out that claims. I have no, we have not definitive confirmation, but some reports coming out there Vi note, I believe it was a Mexican kind of account indicating that in Mencho might have been executed. So he surrendered and they executed him. Which wouldn't be surprising. We've seen the Mexican military do that, especially for high level figures where they don't want to deal with that person. They'll just straight up execute the person. Right. We have no confirmation that defendant have, but we do know based on the videos from the area there was a significant shooting and Mencho was eventually killed. Another interesting aspect that recently broke actually yesterday, and this is coming from a journalist from a major Mexican newspaper called Reforma. It looks like what, based on her reporting, is that the operation that led to the killing of El Mencho wasn't necessarily planned or was the president of Mexico, Claire de Chamba was even aware of it until the operation was already in place. So what, what she's claiming is that the US had intelligence with this Mexican vetted special forces unit. The Americans gave the intelligence to this unit and the unit went in, executed the operation, killed El Mencho and they and the president only found out about it when the operation was happening.
[19:03]
A
So it was really a result of U S and special forces coordination.
[19:07]
B
The Mexican special forces. Yeah, not. There's a lot of rumors that U. S Special forces was like their SEAL team said, we have no, I have not heard anything like that. There's no. But I think what people are missing is that intelligence cooperation is extensive. And if this reporting is true, it kind of makes sense because one of the key questions that I get asked even before I saw this report is like, like, well why now? Why would Claire Scheinbon, the president of Mexico go after in Menchel?
[19:34]
A
Well, I mean logically I felt like, especially after the assassination of Carlos Manzo, who was the governor, that was like going to take on the narcos. And he was killed at I think a public event. And we covered some pretty major Gen Z protests on the streets of Mexico City. It was mostly older people, but they were there basically speaking about Claudia Sheinbaum like she was this like narco compliant, sort of like inactive president who was not doing enough to combat the way that cartels had infiltrated more rural states and cities. And I felt like this was their way of getting even. That was my first reaction. I was like, all right, well maybe this is proof that the Mexican government actually does have the capacity to take out some of these top level cartel buses.
[20:13]
B
And that is exactly what I thought. Right. And I think that's the conventional wisdom. Again, this is kind of new reporting which is kind of interesting. But the conventional wisdom is because you're right, I mean the killing of the mayor of Hurapun was an earth shattering event done. I mean it's clear that it was Jaliska New generation cartel. And the problem is, is, I mean the governor Michoacan is very suspected, I mean almost to the point of almost basically confirming that he's in Jaliska new generation cartel's payroll. Because CJNG is on a like on a war path in Michoacan, extensive war path. And there's interesting reporting that maybe one of their key allies there called the Viagra cartel might have split, that alliance might have broke. So we might see violence continue to pick Up. But to your point, I mean, there's this idea that Kaideshamban, between that and then the threat from the Trump administration saying, I do believe, for example, when Trump did the whole Maduro raid, the Mexicans saw that and they said, oh, we don't want that to happen here. We don't Want Seal Team 6 or Delta Force or drone strikes to happen because sovereignty. And so there was this argument that Kaeda Shangban said, okay, who's the top dog we can go after? That puts everything to rest and, you know, buys us political goodwill with the U.S. it's El Mencho. So, hey, let's go after Mental because I can go after El Mencho. There is literally nobody you won't go after. And I think that's the conventional wisdom is kind of this concern from the Trump administration, domestic political concerns with this whole idea of the mayor of Urapuan that was assassin and the corruption and this idea that Kaneshama is probably domestic and international political pressures doing this. But this interesting report from Reforma basically says it was a Mexican operation. It's just she wasn't aware of it. And that's. I would believe that that has a lot of truth to it.
[21:50]
A
I saw a different report that he was set up by a romantic interest.
[21:54]
B
Well, that's, that's how they got him. That's the, you know, it's crazy.
[21:57]
A
Think about you build a billion dollar narco empire and you're, you get caught slipping by your girlfriend.
[22:03]
B
You know, I'm like 99 sure that's how they caught in Menchito. Mencho son, God damn. And Weddings was tracked a lot because of his mistresses. And you know what? Like that's the difference. Maybe with ISIS and Al Qaeda, they're a lot smarter in that aspect. Cartel members, they fall because of their mistresses all the time because the mistresses don't do opsec. So if you can track their Instagram, if you can track their social media, more than likely you can find them.
[22:22]
A
So that is what happened.
[22:23]
B
Again, we have to base on the reporting that we're. It does look like one of the key aspects they had to find him was through the mistress. But I, if I may, if I just may, it's not like this guy was bin Laden. I mean, the ranch that they got him, that ranch was sanctioned by the US like this wasn't an unknown location. It's not like bin Laden, where eventually we found him after years in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in this convoluted intelligence operation. A lot of these cartel Members, we kind of more or less know the general areas they're at.
[22:51]
A
And how was he living before he got taken out?
[22:53]
B
So there is rumors that he had kidney failure, dialysis. When you're tracking at least once a quarter, ever since I started, once a quarter, I would get rumors that he was killed, that he died because of health concerns. But what was super interesting, I mean, super interesting before he was killed, we didn't get a picture of El Menchel, by the way, in years. It's like the two or three pictures,
[23:13]
A
one of them, the first one being the San Francisco mugshot.
[23:16]
B
Exactly, the white and all that, like, that's it. But literally the weekend prior, he was killed on a Sunday. On Friday, there was rumors that there was an operation targeting El Mencho that really picked up. There was rumors also in August of 2025 that he, there was an operation targeted against him, that he managed to get away. But the weekend prior to that Friday, there was rumors that he was. And then Saturday there was a new picture that was released of El Mencho. There was, that was him and all his brothers and kind of the car protective. A very old picture, but it was a new picture. We haven't had a picture of El Mencho in forever. And then the next day he was killed. And that, that just seemed, that just seems so much of a coincidence that it just seems weird.
[23:52]
A
And what do you think that could
[23:53]
B
indicate that maybe certain elements within Jalisco generation cartel, or at least people within him, knew something was coming. That maybe knew something was coming and were much more free, willing and releasing certain amount of information. Maybe they tried to do this as a way to spook him because they couldn't reach him. Like, hey, maybe if I release an old picture of him, he might be like, yo, why is a picture of me coming out? I, I don't know. But it's just the, the, the sequences of the vent was just super weird in of itself.
[24:18]
A
So you think maybe there is some elements within CJNG who would benefit from a power back vacuum after Mention's death.
[24:25]
B
When you do cartel coverage, there's a thing, you know, I know I talk about OENT and all that. What you really deal with though, is what I would call Rument rumor intelligence. And you have to track all these different areas. You know, you, you know, I try to track their social media pages, I try to track their messaging groups, I try to track kind of areas where they're in communications. You try to track Facebook pages, let's say, or Instagram pages where people Live in kind of these strongholds where these guys operate and they share information and what they hear and what you try to get is basically the aggregates, right? It's very hard to say, is this one report true or is these five reports true? You have to really analyze the aggregate of everything. And to your point, there is one gentleman that I kind of keeping my eye on. He's definitely within the last years. He's kind of grown up, grown in power and statute. And there was even rumors immediately after he was killed. If you were to say, okay, who can really challenge the succession of CG and G, who can really maybe cause a fragmentation? This guy named Jardinero the Gardener. And he's even suspected of having a key role within. Remember that alliance I said with Los Chapitos? He's a key figure of that.
[25:30]
A
He's got to be psycho. That's an unintimidating nickname, which means he must have, like, real life extreme grit and clout to be able to rock with him. Because at least Mencho kind of sounds like some sort of big boss.
[25:43]
B
Yep, the Gardener. Okay, The Gardener. But his. His fighters are extremely loyal to him. Okay? Like, they will. They will. Viva Jardino. Say no. Cardinal. Like, they. He has a very loyal set of people. He is those. One of those men that I'm like, okay, if there's somebody who can benefit from this, it would be him. And there were some people who suspect that he was the most likely successor because there was this idea that maybe Cardinal was growing in power and O3 was losing power. It looks like O3 is the agreed upon successor of CGNG, but he is one of those guys to keep an eye on. Again, we don't know. It's very hard. You're trying to deal with incomplete picture. You're dealing with rumors. You're trying to paint a complete picture with incomplete information. But if there's somebody to within Holy Generation cartel who can benefit a lot from this, I can see Jardinero being one of them.
[26:29]
A
So let's talk about the immediate aftermath of the El Mancho raid. I'm sure a lot of people saw the videos coming from places like Puerto Vallarta of burning cars and smoke rising from buildings. What was going on there?
[26:40]
B
So let me. Let me explain this from my perspective, like, how that day went for me. Right? You know, we got an interesting report. I remember waking up and it was Sunday morning, and. And I saw the first videos from a Jalisco. I think it was a WhatsApp group that said, hey, there's an operation in Tall about Jalisco, right? I was like, okay, Mexican operation. They're targeting a cartel. They're like, oh, like, again, I think most people, that's normal. And then we saw subsequently afterwards reports of what we would call these narco blockades, right? The burning of the vehicles and all that. But it was very. It was kind of like in a specific area, very kind of close to Jalisco. And that's normal. It's kind of. It sounds really crazy to say that, but that's a normal occurrence. But what started to pique my interest was two things. One, then we started to see it in Puerto Vallarta. And Puerto Vallarta, again, it's a major tourist area. So generally they don't want to necessarily do it in Puerto Vallarta unless they absolutely have to. So that indicates, okay, it's an important guy, not necessarily mental, just important enough because again, you know, before Mencho was killed, the Treasury Department released sanctions against a specific Mexican resort in Puerto Vallarta that was accused of doing fraud for Jalisco Generation Cartels specifically targeting Americans, right? So they generate money from tourism and from Americans. So, okay, the Puerto Vallarta kind of was, okay, that's my first little red flag that something big is going on. And then the second one is that we started to see the violence spread from the narco blockade. So it wasn't only in Jalisco. Then I started Michoacan, and generally when you see two states, that's like a very senior guy. But. But what was very interesting, it wasn't. It wasn't just in two states. It was in Jalisco, Michoacan, Colima, Aguascalientes, Tamaulipas, even some areas, I believe in Tabasco, right? Guanajuato. It was basically all the territories that Jaliscano Generation Cartel controls. And it was like that super fast, super quick spread over. And then it became very clear there's only one man who is able to cause this level amount of violence, and it's in mental. So that immediately told me. And I remember tweeting about it before it became confirmed. Like, it has to be El Mencho. You know, it was speculated, but it has to be be. Nobody can cause that much violence about him. And then subsequently, we got the report that he was killed. And then what was interesting was that shortly afterwards, the Holiskan Generation Cartel said, okay, we're on a war path. It's important to note that the violence in Puerto Vallarta and other parts of Mexico was very much physical damage, like they didn't target Americans, and for the most part, they didn't even target civilians directly from a casualty perspective. They targeted businesses, but not. They weren't going for civilian casualties. But what they did specifically target and very effectively was the Mexican National Guard. I believe the last casualty figures we got was 28 Mexican National Guard soldiers were killed in the aftermath of that operation and directed attacks by Jalisco Generation Cartel for retaliation. So they slaughtered a large like that is the most violent day for the Mexican National Guard since their inception during the previous Mexican president. And that was Jaliscan Generation Cartel sending a message saying, we're not going to tolerate this and just take it for granted. And they killed 28. I believe the last casualty figures is 28 Mexican National Guard soldiers were killed.
[29:32]
A
So do you see some kind of like civil war unfolding in the coming months and years in Mexico after this raid?
[29:38]
B
That is what I'm looking for to see if there's a split. Because again, the killing of El Mencho really puts to test Jaliscu New generation cartel, right? It really puts it to test because again, if you look at El Chapo, when El Chapo was captured, you had two factions, the Chapitos and Mayo Zambada, but they kind of coexisted peacefully. And the irony is Mayo Zambada was very interested in keeping the peace. And even within what there was fractures, low level within the Sinaloa Cartel, Mayo Zambada would kind of stay at band. He was kind of viewed as this old statesman who was like, no, no, guys, come on, we got to get along. We're just here for the money. We're not here to cause wars, because this guy's been doing it for 40 years, right? So he knew what he was talking about and it meant. So in a way, like we've had seen the historically, in Holiscan Generation Cartel, we did see factions kind of broke up, but very small. Like in Colima, there was a fracture. They kind of formed their own called the Independent Cartel of Colima and Michoacan. One of the former allies called Las Migueladas, they kind of fractured. We're getting reports of the Viagra Cartel kind of fracturing. But from the grand scheme of things, like as a whole, Holuska Generation Cartel is fine. They can take those fractures. Fractures, and that's not a big deal. But now with his killing, that's the question. And it would be very interesting to see now that his stepson kind of took over this US Citizen, if he's able to maintain that alliance if he's able to maintain this unity of Holiskan New generation cartel. What's very interesting about him though that I think not a lot of people are talking about is that he comes from the Valencia Gonzalez Familia, right. The Los Queenis are they called. And why they matter is even when in mention when he kind of formed the Holiscan generation cartel, he, he very much leveraged Los Quinis because the Queen control the money. They're very powerful in the money aspect, not necessarily in the guns. It's the money. And I would even say, like let's say you were to take away every single dollar that the Jew generation cartel or Lasquini specifically controlled out of the Mexican economy. The Mexican economy collapses overnight, right? They're that powerful. I mean, talking about hundreds of billions of dollars easily.
[31:30]
A
What do you think El Mencho's net worth was at the time of his death?
[31:33]
B
$10 billion at a minimum, if not more. If you look at los right in the money that they control. And if you put make the argument probably even more. I mean you're probably looking at, if not tens of billions of dollars. I mean easily 20, 30, $40 billion. It's really hard because you have to track the drugs, the oil, the avocado, the lime, the human smuggling and all these contract, the money, laundry, et cetera. And the expenses and revenue has to be easily in the tens of billions of dollars. 50, 60 billion. I know I keep on increasing because I'm trying to. I'm thinking the more I think is like, okay, okay, well this is added, this is added this business, this business. But it goes to show you, you know, if you look at Mexican cartels as a whole, they would be considered the fifth largest employer inside of Mexico. So. And Los Squinis control the money.
[32:16]
A
And that's the financial faction of CJ Angie.
[32:18]
B
Correct. Nut. Here's the thing.03 comes from that family. He comes from the money family.
[32:25]
A
Okay.
[32:25]
B
He has his own group. You know, he's expected to be in the leader of a group called Grupo Elite or the Elite group inside of cjng. They're not really elite, they're just the name that they love to go around with. But now you're in a situation where, because it used to be El Mencho, that it was like the strong arm, the, the, the guns. And, and at some point he became like more of this figure, more. And then the day to day operation, right, he wasn't doing day to day operations anymore with the list Generation Cartel. But he was this, this, this figure greater than life type of thing. You can even make the argument that 03 was more the day to day guy. Maybe the other guys like Al gardinero. But now 03, not only does he have his own group, but he comes from the money. Family. Family. And now you have the leader who is both. So now those squinies control CG and G where it used to be. El Mencho was kind of that bridge between both sides. He now controls all of it now because they control the money. Is he able to maintain that uni within Jalisco Generation cartel? Or do you see these sub commanders, El Sapo, El Cardinero, even El Dobler and others. Primito, who's the leader of Los Metros, one of the Gulf cartel factions. Now with CJ&G, do you say, no, we're not, we don't want to go that route. We don't agree with that. That's the test that we try to see. But for now, for now, as of this recording, Holy Skin Generation cartel still operates as one, but it's too soon to tell.
[33:38]
A
So I had one question that I was going to ask at the end, but I kind of want to ask it now. You know, a lot of Americans especially who are watching this stuff from afar, they hear about all these different cartel factions, but the main question they have is like, how is this going to end? What could put an end to the cartel violence? These constant back and forth territorial disputes that lead to bloodshed and the importation of drugs like fentanyl that have killed hundreds of thousands, if not now almost a million Americans or something like that. Maybe it's not a million, but it's a ridiculous number of overdose deaths. I did a report one time in Mexico City talking to Chilongos about the corridos ban. And I asked them, yo, what do you think about, you know, Peso Pluma not being able to perform in tj? What do you think about stuff like that? And they're like, listen man, they're just rapping about the material circumstances of life in the north, in some of these more narco dominated states and communities. And the real solution is for America to legalize and regulate drugs and kind of make it so there is no illicit group controlling the inflow of drugs like fentanyl, meth, cocaine and Heroin into the U.S. do you think that regulation on a U.S. market level could lead to a reduction in cartel violence? And if not, what is the solution to stopping this?
[34:45]
B
My counter to that, I would ask Those guys. What about the Santa Rosa de Lima cartel? So the Santa Rosa Lima Cartel is a group out of Guanajuato, extremely violent. I mean, these are guys who will go to a bar full of people. If they suspect the bar is supporting their rivals, which is Jaliscanu generation cartel, they'll shoot it up, do a mass shooting, kill everybody, and they will record it on their phones and upload it. They're not major drug pushers. The key way they make money is oil smuggling In Guanajuato. Their symbol is a red triangle because it's called like the Bermuda Triangle in Guanajuato because that's where all the oil and the pipelines kind of work. They push drugs, but that's not their key things of how they make money. They have an alliance with Scorpion Group and the Myo Flacos of the Caloa Cartel, but they don't make money necessarily through drug trafficking. But they're extremely vi because their territory. When we're talking about Mexican cartels, I think the problem we run into, there's a U.S. problem set of how we analyze this, and then there's a Mexican problem set of how we analyze it. And unfortunately, I think we conflate the two and mix them too, because from the US Perspective, you're right, it's drugs. How do we stop drugs from coming over to. To the US Specifically fentanyl, because the fentanyl and the drug overdose. But from the Mexican perspective, it's more about violence and how can they reduce violence in the country. And now sometimes there's an overlap between both. For example, the Zeta cartels is a perfect example where there's an overlap where they're extremely violent and causing problem for the Mexico Mexicans. They're pushing drugs into the United States. We have to go after them and knock them out. But in other cases, it's like, let's look at Durango. So Durango, for example, one of the states in Mexico, is actually one of the safest states in Mexico. And the reason why is because there's basically one cartel that controls the entire state is Los Cabreras, which is a part of the Maito Flacos of the Sinaloa cartel. Durango is a huge area where they produce methamphetamines that then get smuggled into the United States. But violence is not high in Durango because there's one cartel that controls controls it. And so if the Mexican government perspective, specifically the Durango perspective, like this is fine. We don't want to be Sinhala, where There's a Sinhala cartel civil war and this argument of the drug flow and all that, if you regulate violence goes down. It's not an illicit economy. It's just not backed up by data. Unfortunately, that's an American problem set. That's an American way of analyzing it. Because again, cdn, the Gulf Cartel, even the two factions of Gulf cartel in the civil war, the Juarez cartel and the Adeyano Felix Organization of the Tijuana cartel, they don't control the drug production area, they just control the areas where smuggling happens. If these cartels in Michoacan, for example, fight for avocados and lime, and there's a huge problem in Michoacan because of avocado and lime trafficking into the United States, that's legal, but that gets smuggled into the United States where all these other groups are involved with. It's the same with human smuggling. I think it's, it's an idea of trying to analyze a domestic problem set of drug addiction to the United States that requires a very fundamental conversation. But I think people then say, well, this will also solve drug cartels. And unfortunately, when we look at the data and what they're involved in, that's just not true. If they again, avocados, it's not illegal to buy avocados and do trade with avocados, but they fight extensively Michoacan for the avocado trade.
[37:37]
A
So what could stop them?
[37:38]
B
One thing. I've been doing this for five years. I'm going to be very pessimistic to tell you I don't think we can. I'm just going to be flat out, I don't think we can solve this.
[37:45]
A
Do you think in the year 2300, they're still going to keep pumping out execution videos and, you know, going to war for control?
[37:50]
B
I think the best case scenario we can look at is maybe cool Colombia. I said, can we ever end gang violence in the U.S. well, it's reduced
[37:56]
A
a lot since the 90s and I,
[37:58]
B
I think that's the base case scenario,
[37:59]
A
we might be looking at a reduction in the magnitude.
[38:02]
B
Correct. And I think that's where Colombia. I, I, I've also believed like, by the way, if, like, just as the Mexican cartels replace the Colombian cartels, if we see a reduction in the Mexican cartel's power of influence. And what I'm looking at is the Brazilian gangs that are now becoming more cartels. The Brazilian angle is very interesting. They have a very strong dominance in West Africa and Europe. And the next thing I'M looking at if they do the same in the US But I think the Mexican cartels, I think there's too many problems, why we can't solve it. One just within the Mexican government. I mean, bribes, favors like that. But even, but it's not even that. I mean, because that's true. I mean, that's an important thing. But there's a phenomenal New York Times report that talks about the story of General Thien Fuegos. General Thean Fuegos was the senior army commander within the Mexican military. I mean, he was the top of the top of the top. And the Mexican government, unlike the US where you had like the Joint staff and you have the Secretary of war or defense that sends the civilian leader, Pete Hegseth, and then you have a chairman of the joint Chief of Staff, Staff General Kane and the Mexicans, that's not. They don't have a joint command. And so their cabinet is. You have the army chief and the Mexican chief and both of them are military people. They're not a civilian. So this guy, General Theon Fogos, was the top army commander. Read the New York Times article about this guy and what you read there, it's yeah, there was a cartel. It was the blo, which used to be a faction of the Sinal cartel before they split in huge wars. He was indicted in the United States and detained and eventually they had to let him go because the Mexicans threw a fin. And this was all during the first Trump administration. But if you read that article, people think that cartels control the corruption and that they bribe Mexican government officials. And these Mexican government officials like behold into the cartels and they do the cartels bidding. But if you read that story, it's like the question is not who really controlled who. Because what happened was General Theofegos one day said, you know what? I'm done with blo. Even though you guys have paid me million dollars, I'm done. I don't want to do you anymore. He sent the Mexican special forces after him. When the Mexican special forces went in the raid and there's this very. This is a very famous video because this is where the minigun, the Blackhawk firing the minigun, it looks he surrendered. He goes to the Mexican special forces, he says, hey, I'm Thien Fogo's guy. I'm his guy. What are you doing? Why are you going after me? And the Mexican special forces said, cool and shot him and executed him. And what that shows to you is who really controls who in that aspect. And I think that's not a conversation we're having, which is a lot of times the Mexican government is the corrupt official that tells the cartels, you will pay me a portion of your profit, and if you don't, I'm going to send the military after you to kill you, and I'll go with your rival.
[40:23]
A
And when you say the Mexican government, are you talking about like Shine Bomb and like the actual executive state function?
[40:29]
B
Oh, everywhere.
[40:30]
A
So we're not just talking about like the governor of Guanajuato or something or like the mayor of a small town?
[40:35]
B
Yeah, we're talking from mayor to president.
[40:38]
A
You're talking everything. People in Mexico City who look like that, they're white.
[40:43]
B
Let me put it this way. Can you really think of an argument that a single Mexican president that gets to that level that has not at one point in time ever had dealings with any cartels, you think even shooting Shine bomb?
[40:52]
A
Yeah, I just always thought of her as a more like polanco country club type of person that would have been sheltered from interacting with cartel bosses.
[40:59]
B
I think at that point, I think it's. I think it's always safe to assume that corruption is at any level within the Mexican government. Like, what is the most effective anti corruption body in Mexico is the Southern district of New York. And, you know, you love it or hate it, but, you know, we, we see sanction now much more. A lot of the sanctions that we're seeing within this administration targeted against Mexican politicians. Right? Really, really singling out their corrupt dealings.
[41:20]
A
So now really getting to the question of US intervention here. You talked about Colombia and how Colombia, you know, it used to be Medellin was a war zone. Now everybody with a fat crypto wallet is moving there to escape the dating scene here because they see it as restrictive and they want a more traditional lady. Things have changed. I mean, there's some guys getting scopamine, you know, and dying. So I would not advise going to Medellin if you're watching this, if you're looking to only procure ladies of the night, however, different topic. Colombia is doing great, more or less. There's obviously problems with the, with remainder of the Fark and the Jungle, and they're definitely still involved in narco trafficking. And the same thing could be said for Chiapas. I don't even want to go down the whole left wing, guerilla narco connection there. It's too much right now.
[41:59]
B
However, that is a great thing, though. That is a great conversation.
[42:04]
A
It's just the ideological, the contradictions there are insane.
[42:07]
B
It's insane.
[42:07]
A
But the DEA was instrumental in the Escobar take. Yeah, the Escobar takedown kind of led to an era of prosperity in Colombia. So do you think. Is that accurate to say?
[42:17]
B
Yeah, I mean. Well, it's kind of crazy where I think now with Petro Gustavo, the problem he's running into is we're being flooded with cocaine. Price of cocaine in the US Is going down. Based on all the last reporting we're getting.
[42:26]
A
I've read some reports about that too.
[42:28]
B
Yeah, it's going down because I built the. The whole Colombia feed in Mexico feed in my app for said rep. And I'm like, I'm very interested in this app. Like, hey, send me notifications about drug seizures for Colombia and Mexico, because we had the country feeds in there. There's so many that I'm like, wait, okay, hold up. Getting circular reporting. And then I go through and I do an investigative report. And it's just like, I think in the last 48 hours, Mexico, just in the Pacific coast, have announced two major drug seizures of at least 5 tons of cocaines in two different vessels in just 48 hours.
[42:55]
A
Coming from Colombia from.
[42:57]
B
Yeah, Colombia. The Pacific. No, well, actually, well, Colombia or Ecuador, and they kind of go through up the Pacific coast either to Mexico or the United States. And a lot of this is handled by the Mexican cartels.
[43:06]
A
So they're still pumping coke into the US The Colombians. But it's not like carnage in the
[43:10]
B
streets like it used to be. It's way. I mean, I think anybody objectively can look at Colombia say even with all the problems they have, they're still violent. It's infinitely better than where we're at. Like, I've been to Cali, I've been to Medellin. Love it. I think Colombia is a magical country. Same with Mexico. I family there. But it's way, way better than, than anything we've kind of seen in the past.
[43:27]
A
And you think that Mexico could get to that point, like, maybe in the coming decades if there was really good collaboration between the federal government and the DEA with like, the Mexican army and Special Forces.
[43:35]
B
There's two aspects. We have to analyze it. I mean, yes, there's always grain. And I'm all, look, I'm not trying to advocate U.S. special forces. That's not, not at all. And I think most people need to understand, understand there is extensive cooperation between the Mexicans and the U.S. right. And this isn't a battle of, like, who can do it better. The reasons why we can't solve this necessarily. One is, one I said is the corruption. It's so invasive that it's impossible really to, to do. But two, I go back to this argument I made about Los Queenis, right, About the financial aspect. Like if you literally were to grab every single dollar that the Queenies have ever dealt with and removed it from the Mexican economy, the Mexican economy collapses overnight. Look at the sanctions that the US have done in Mexican financial institutions. I believe there's three. Really? And the total assets, I think of all three, maybe $15 billion. Come on man, that's pennies to the dollar to what we're dealing with in this problem set in Mexico. That's why like people say go after the money. Go after the money. Yeah, well we can't. Why? Because if we do well, what economy is left?
[44:31]
A
You mentioned that drugs are not a small portion of it, but you mentioned like limes, avocados, oil and other stuff, stuff like that. Are drugs still the primary?
[44:38]
B
Yeah, I don't want people to misunderstood. Yeah, they're still a primary aspect.
[44:42]
A
So theoretically if you look at heroin and fentanyl addiction, a lot of that came as a result of big pharma and you know, opiates and stuff like that. So if we had great healthcare here and mental health treatment, maybe we wouldn't have such a drug addicted, sick society in 100 years. It could be bilateral prosperity and Americans can still get their cocaine, which, you know, it's not good, but it doesn't kill. It's not Fentanyl.
[45:02]
B
Yeah.
[45:02]
A
Marijuana, cocaine. There's a few drugs that Americans I think will kind of always want. But you know, it's different than banging fentanyl or drink into your arm on the street.
[45:09]
B
I would even say like if we look at the marijuana, like people will look at marijuana like yeah, there's has been a, obviously the, the trans border smuggling of marijuana plummeted. But what have we seen is that a lot of organized crime groups just move the marijuana productions from Mexico up to the US and so actually the Chinese triads actually have a huge control of a lot of the illegal marijuana farming here because they're just trying to get away from the taxes. Right. Because they go so. Right. And so actually if you talk to any park ranger, strangers, they'll say, yeah, we run into illegal marijuana farming all the time. So again it's like I agree with you and again there's a conversation and I would agree with you, like people would put the Mexican cartels and fentanyl and I Said Chapitos. No, no. It's like, let's be real. It's Purdue. They're the ones who caused this with the opioids. I mean, it's. It's insane. I think there's been a huge push in the US to create. I think there was this medical study. I had to go back and look at it because I remember I saw it. It wasn't these crazy medical studies where like they got a spine of a fish or something like that. And then they did all these testings and they injected, infected with things. But what did they find with all these crazy medical tests that people like, see, this is fraud, waste and abuse. No, what did they find? A non opioid painkiller. Right. Non opioids. So you don't get addicted to it. That right there is probably the best ways we can get people off of opioids imaginable. But I think to your point, what we've seen in the fentanyl, because fentanyl has dropped in the US from a consumption and even smuggling into here. And there's. I think I have a lot of suspicions why that actually really happened. But that's why we've seen a huge surge in cocaine and now the price of cocaine is more plummeting. But to your point, I think there's a way we can kind of manage this in a way where we have to acknowledge, look, just like gang violence, we're never going to rid of it, but how do we reduce it? And I think that's the Mexican. How do we get there? And the US Perspective is how can we kind of reduce the drug smuggling? And then from a domestic perspective that's not necessarily talking about Mexico is like, how can we treat drug addiction in the US and make it much better? And how we approach that. And we're never having those conversations because it's easier just to say, oh, just blame the Mexican cartels. Wait, wait, wait. We have a lot of problems here that we need serious conversation, but there's no politician who wants to talk about it.
[47:05]
A
I think this all connects back to what you were saying when you're talking about the horrible Zetas video and what they were saying before the execution about being these like Robin Hood style figures that are giving jobs to the poor and providing economic opportunity to these rural communities that have been abandoned and they're just meeting a demand that already exists because of US drug addiction. I'm sure that you've talked to people in Mexico, especially like, especially Mexico City, when you ask them about the cartels they almost laugh at you. They're like, well, why do you people do so many drugs? Why do you think that we have this issue? And I think that sort of mentality enables cartels to recruit. And so I want to talk about El Mencho's life.
[47:39]
B
Yeah.
[47:39]
A
And how that plays into that, because he had some experience here in the US Selling drugs, got deported. I kind of want to back up a bit. Who was El Mencho before becoming a cartel boss?
[47:47]
B
I mean, you can look at his story and say, you know, he came here as an illegal drug smuggling. A lot of those operations was detained, deported. I believe it was in San Francisco Memory Service Group and Redwood City, a
[47:57]
A
huge mass death operation.
[47:58]
B
Because it goes back to this idea, to your point. It's. It was a huge economic opportunity for a lot of them where I think in Mencho had his break. Like, how do you make not only the most powerful drug cartel in Mexico, but the most powerful criminal organization in the world? And I think it's because of his connections with the Valencia Gonzalez family that his. His wife that then they got separated. I believe in 2018, was his Rosalinda. That family controls all the money. So when he was deported, he was kind of dude, still doing all the drugs. Drugs here, like 15 years, not even like 10. This was a huge explosion in growth that it just, I think, caught a lot of people off guard. But what it shows to El Menchu is that he had a very. From a psychological perspective, he was very unique in his game. He did that. Yes. He came from the Millennial Cartel. In the past. Yes. In the Millennial Cartel was kind of this long history. But even. Even with the Millennial Cartel, they never got to the power of cjng. I mean, cjng. And still to this day, even after his death, right now, they're still the same. That's where we had to do it. And I think El Mencho was from a power. Dyn Dynamics, from a business perspective. He knew how the money and the guns intertwined. He knew the network and the families. He knew the corruption and the politicians. And he knew how to play everybody against each other to enable him to grow to the power figure that he is now. And I think that's why it's just a fundamental aspect of his. Of his life that we need to look into. It goes into something about him that I think few really understand. And we heard rumors that maybe there was targeted operations against. Against him. But for the most part, outside of the op, when he was detained in the U.S. there's really not hard evidence to show that even he was targeted by the Mexicans until this operation that killed him. To be honest, I don't even think the Mexican government was really well aware of.
[49:34]
A
So he was moving really secretive.
[49:36]
B
How many pictures do we have of him?
[49:37]
A
Like four or five. Right.
[49:39]
B
That's not normal. I think people need to understand, like I've tracked cartel members on their social medias. Dude, they upload things all the time, especially when they're the lower guys now. Once they start rising up in the ranks, then they're like, oh, pop sack. Like, let me think for a second. Right. But obviously he came from a different era. I mean, this idea that he had kidney failure was kind of always reported, but we had no hardcore evidence of a lot of the things about him. And that just shows that he was able to operate very secretively in the shadows, but even still was able to influence large segments of America and Mexico just, you know, by his desires and wishes and. And gids.
[50:12]
A
You mentioned social media among some of the younger guys. Yeah, sometimes I'll just open my Instagram or Tik Tok feed and I'm stuck in cartel gram for like two or three, three days. Is that real? Like the videos of those small planes dudes drinking beer on the small planes rolling around these valleys, tossing packs of fentanyl out the window.
[50:27]
B
There's some that obviously like steal it. So there's a huge community. There's one. They've been. They historically were very accurate. I think they kind of quiet down because there's a lot of violence going on because of the Sinaloa cartel civil war. But there's a called Baduato Caloa and that's the birthplace of El Chapo. There's a lot of the aviation community there. Yes, they do that because there's people who steal it and just do it for like the engagements. But if you know where to look, you can find these networks. That's how I find a lot of them. And actually some of my sources even come from these people because I know kind of where to find them and talk to them about it. It's also once you kind of break into the mold, it's not hard just using Instagram, WhatsApp or Telegram to just buy drugs and have them sent directly to you. No agency was ever going to find out. You can find where they sell drugs into Mexico and they'll mail it over to the US for a couple hundred pesos. But as long as you know where to look and you pay the fees and you who to talk to. And these guys market this. For example, the human smugglers. I think a lot of times when we're talking about human smuggling, think, oh, it's the cartels. Okay, wait, wait, take a step back. Are there certain cartels are much more involved in human smuggling than others? Yes, but for the most part, human smuggling is done by local and family networks, criminal networks that pay a fee to the cartels to operate in their plazas. But what do these guys do specifically on TikTok, they will upload videos of them smuggling migrants into the United States. And what they do, is that the reason why they do this? Like, see, we're successful even now during the Trump administration. We're very, very successful. See, look at all these videos. I'm getting them, I'm passing border patrol, I'm passing. Everybody reach out to me, pay me, and I can get you through. Even now with the Trump administration, that is a huge focus. It goes back to marketing and these cartel members. Now others from the drug perspectives, the same. They will upload their videos of speed. There's a very famous Moroccan. If once you find him, you know who he is, he will upload videos left, right and center of him and his speedboat smuggling drugs into Spain and France all the time. And he even tags other drug creators and content creators that then you can go over to them, follow them, DM them, and buy drugs directly. Directly from them.
[52:15]
A
So this whole thing isn't really happening, like, in the Internet underground. No, this is all on the surface.
[52:20]
B
People focus on the dark web. Like, I. I was funny, I was talking to someone. What about the dark what, dude, Just take a step back. If you want to buy drugs, you think you're going to figure out how to use the dark web? Get Instagram, find out how to talk to these people, and you buy it that way. Or Facebook. It's not this dark web, secretive, underground, like, oh, my God. And I think that's a misconception about drug cartels and just drug trafficking. They're in the 21st century, guys.
[52:43]
A
Well, I think so much of that misconception probably ties into the lac of reporting on it. It's really dangerous to cover this stuff in Mexico. I think outside of the Gaza Strip, it's the second deadliest place to be a journalist. The moment you step into covering narco affairs, you basically put your life on the line. Like, even I have a Spanish language channel in Mexico. And one of the first things they said is, like, we don't really want to cover cartel stuff because we live here. And it's just if you really dive deep into that world, they can get you touched anywhere in the country.
[53:09]
B
Yep.
[53:09]
A
It seems even in Mexico City, in neighborhoods that look like Bushwick, Brooklyn, there's still corruption on all levels, you know. So being here in the US do you feel like you're at, at an advantage?
[53:19]
B
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And I think that's something I've talked to others like there's a reason why a lot of the corruption aspects. Mexican journalists can't cover it because if they do, they get targeted. And I wouldn't even say just by the cartels. I would even say it's by government officials who use the COVID of cartels to just silence people in, in, in honest reporting.
[53:38]
A
Can you think of an example of that happening?
[53:40]
B
I would say anytime a journalist gets killed in Mitan, it's because of that.
[53:43]
A
Because a government official doesn't want the
[53:46]
B
story to come out so they direct
[53:47]
A
the police to kill a person and
[53:48]
B
then they use a cover up or they even use the cartel said, hey, cartel member, this is a target I want you to kill to the police, hey, I want you to execute this guy.
[53:54]
A
How much do you think they pay for something like that?
[53:56]
B
In pesos? 10,000 pesos maybe. Or even less. Like the guy who killed the European mayor, I think he was a drug addict, if memory serves me correctly, that they just grabbed him across the street and said, here's some money, here's a gun, go kill the mayor of Udapuan who was this huge figure of fighting corruption and all that. And it didn't take that much to kill the mayor of Udopan. So you're going to tell me if the mayor of Udapan, who has this whole national figure, this national presence, this national media, is willing to be assassinated? To your point, you don't think a journalist isn't going to be targeted? And then what does that do? And oh, by the way, it's not only that, but a lot of times I've known this where Mexican journalists, there's two aspects, either literally will go out to the cartel and say, what do you want us to cover? We don't want our people to get killed. You tell us what to cover. And there's others that get straight up paid by the cartel, cartel members to push stories that they want them to push.
[54:39]
A
So it's almost like a media blackout. Unless you're talking about Cartelgram and which is the opposite of a media black.
[54:44]
B
But even, but even in Cartelgram and all that, you could Fall into the propaganda piece of it. Like what is actual and what's propaganda? And then that's where I go back to my original comment, which is the aggregate, right? It's like in the room. It. And it's really trying to focus more on the aggregate. To your point, for example, you want a media black hole, Chiapas. I mean, you mentioned that I have a hard time knowing what's going on in Chiapas. And I. I do this every day, but that's the whole point. And I think there's this idea, even with social media, where things get out. And there is a lot where you know how to look, but a lot of information does not get out. A lot of information just either because of lack of social Internet or just because of just how hard it is to. And people are afraid to upload things because they are afraid to get targeted.
[55:21]
A
And the Zapatistas have a very strict control of media there.
[55:24]
B
So you have that. We talk a lot about the drug trafficking and all that. Right. And when I was talking about these regional commanders and all that, these, these are like the factions and the sub factions, right? And they have. Those are the guys who control the guns. So, for example, Jardinero has another guy under him called El Serio, who somebody else I'm noticing is growing. He's doing a lot of operations in Morelos recently. I've kind of noticed that against the Maito Flacos. You can look at the Metros, for example. They have guys that they send over to Zacatecas, and there's all these factions and sub factions and groups. And then, you know, and they really break it down and it's almost like an insurgency. And you're looking like, okay, we have isis, but then this province, and then this province has this commander and all that. That's how they operate. And I mean, I wrote a piece about this, literally about the militarization of drug cartels. And I think to your point, because they are able to then leverage that to really silence people at their women, at their discretion. Because the Mexican government doesn't have what we would call the monopoly of violence, which is what makes a government, what makes a nation state is like the government has what we would call the monopoly violence, or the only legitimate authority that is able to apply violence.
[56:19]
A
I got you.
[56:20]
B
So.
[56:20]
A
So the Second Amendment, the way libertarians see it in the US prevents that from happening.
[56:24]
B
Right. So, for example, like, I mean, look, I'm not trying to make. The idea is the president can order the military to conduct operations against the island, Iran or the drug cartels or Maduro. That's what we would consider the monopoly of violence, the state. When the police with guns can detain you, who can, you know, like in broad sense, the problem in Mexican cartels, that's completely broken down and that's the new problem set that we're dealing with, and that's militarization of the drug cartels.
[56:48]
A
So going back to some of the work that you've done and the risk level, have you ever been threatened after writing a piece or following a certain lead?
[56:54]
B
No, not really, but I think it's because of what you said. I'm an American citizen and you know, and generally that does give you a little bit more leeway. But I wasn't really. I mean, some people might say something, but not necessarily credible from my perspective.
[57:04]
A
But you've never had a security concern?
[57:06]
B
No, no, no, no, I've not personally, no. I know of a lot of Mexican journalists who, who have. I've talked to them and they've been specifically threatened and a lot of them have to operate anonymously. You know, I find it interesting, this whole new term of citizen journalists. Like, I know people in Mexico that are citizen journalists who can't release their name because if they do, it's to your point. But I do believe it's also because of this aspect of I'm in the US and cartel members, I think people think like, oh my God, they're going to come in the US and bomb us. It's like, all right, like, let's take a step back. That's not necessarily their main focus here in the US or not. It's not the sicario. The guys with guns that go into the US Are going to shoot it up. It's the lawyers, it's the money laundering business, the cash business. That's what they do mostly in the United States.
[57:44]
A
So there's no guys like the Salamanca twins of Breaking Bad or Javier Bardem's character in no country for Old men who are roving the borderlands looking to assassinate cartel.
[57:53]
B
I mean, okay, do those exist? Sure. Really? Yeah. But, but, but I think everybody thinks that's what they do here. And it's like, okay, wait, wait, wait. That's like a minority, a small a. Like I've tracked cartel members in the US with kind of guns, and they do their shit. Right, got it. But that's not their primary focus here, guys. What are the primary focus here? It's to launder money. That's it. They want to move money for Businesses, Yes. You're making, generating billions of dollars in drugs every month, let's say, or every year. But you want to put it in the financial sector. You think you can do it with the guys who are sicarios with guns? Or do you need a law office, a cash business and professionals that know. Or the guys with like the glasses and the accountants who know how to make money, launder money and go through like the movie the Accountants.
[58:35]
A
So the US Is the last stop for the washing of the cartel money. So.
[58:39]
B
Or the first stop.
[58:40]
A
So you think that in Phoenix and LA and places like that, El Paso, there's a lot of fraudulent businesses that are just existing only to filter and wash money for the cartel.
[58:48]
B
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. But that's the main aspect, whether what you do here, again, I mean, these are billion dollar companies. They would be in the NASDAQ or the Dow or you know, the New York Stock Exchange generating insane amount of money. That's what they have to focus on. And I think that's when we talk about the U.S. by the way, the vast majority of the people that get detained crossing the border, smuggling drugs are U.S. citizens. They're U.S. citizens and they, most of the drugs get smuggled through ports of entry, through legal, legal trade. Right. They use the excuse of, because Mexico is our largest trading partner, which another reason why like shutting down the border and all that, like, be very careful what you wish for, they're our largest trading partner in our economy would stop overnight. They take advantage of, of that to move product. And then the way back, what the US Sends over to Mexico, guns and money, we make the guns. And so there's a lot of criminal elements in the United States. I know people are going to say Fast and Furious. I just have to address it. Fast and Furious are a couple thousand guns that happen during a certain time period.
[59:37]
A
What's Fast and Furious?
[59:38]
B
The Operation Fast and Furious during the Obama administration was an ATF program. Instead of stopping the guns, they were trying to track the guns. But a lot of the tracking was a complete disaster and they weren't able to track it. They lost it. And so it just ended up having like, where a lot of guns were being to cartel members. But what I think people don't realize is like, that's normal. There's a lot of criminal elements through straw purchases that smuggle guns into the United States. We're talking about tens of thousands of guns every year from the United States get smuggled into Mexico that then they use to fight either rival cartel members who are the primary threat or the Mexican government. So guns and money is what we send them. They give us drugs and maybe human smoking, other business products and they get guns. And these are two examples for people to understand broadly what a cartel is. Just in the broad suns, imagine the, the corporation Amazon and the, the Blackwater, right? The mercenary group in the US merge into one. That's what a cartel is. And then the other way that they do business from, from the U.S. you know, you're not going to find a guy in the streets of LA selling cocaine. Oh, I work for the SON cartel. That's not how they operate. What are they think of Maersk, the shipping container company, what do they do? They get products from Shanghai, let's say to la. They get a container ship, they fill it up with container and then they move it. And then the moment it reaches is la, then it's somebody else's responsibility to get it to the end destination. That's what Mexican cartels are. They get the drugs from mostly Colombia somewhere into the US or if it's fentanyl, let's say China or even if they produce it in Mexico, somewhere in the U.S. tulsa, Oklahoma, Charlotte, D.C. new York, Chicago, Louisiana. But once the drug gets there, the Mexican car say okay, they give it to the, let's say the gangs or the organized crime and they say it's your job to sell it to the Americans and then they just get cash. We kind of joke about this, but it's true. Like I've heard of stories where they literally, instead of counting the dollars, they literally, literally weigh it because it's just so much. But that goes back to the business here, the import export businesses, the money laundering, the fraudulent documents that kind of hide the, the way that they can traffic drugs through other products. That's what is their significant presence in the United States. Not necessarily the sicario.
[61:29]
A
Well said. So on a morality level you think those guys are evil?
[61:33]
B
Oh yes. I mean after covering them for years and years and years and just the sheer level of brutality and violence that they're willing to go to, I mean it's. Yeah, yeah. I mean look, they're businesses and they're making money, but it's like Purdue. Is Purdue evil?
[61:44]
A
Yeah, the most like evil people that I've interviewed were these two guys in Philly who had guns on their like waists. And they make this drug called Tranq, which is a combination of animal tranquilizer and fentanyl. And when you shoot it into your arm or any, anywhere, if you miss a vein it creates something called necrotizing fasciitis eventually, which makes your arm basically die and fall off. So people are hacking their own limbs off in the streets because they don't want to go pay to get an amputation because of a drug invented by these two guys. You talk to them and they say, well, you know what, if it's not me, it's going to be somebody else. I happen to think of this. But it would have been discovered eventually. In fact, we actually make better tranq than the next person who might make it wrong. Or add a third chemical that'll be even more comorbid. Or they'll say, or whatever the word is. And then they'll say, and those people whose arms fall off, well, they miss the veins, so it's their fault. Even people doing objective evil have a way of justifying it. And I'm sure you said with the cartel, they have the whole Robin Hood thing, but do you think on the core there's like a real evil at the core of cartel activity?
[62:44]
B
I think the problem we ran into is that narco culture and cartel culture and violence more importantly has been so normalized in Mexico that they use that as a justification, because it's been so normalized that they don't see it that way. I mean, look, I think to most people there is a lot of execution videos that get released every day. There's a lot of violence that happens. There's a lot of targeting of civilians, of killing of civilians. I mean, Mexico, over a hundred thousand people in Mexico are missing to this day. Mass graves are found in Mexico all the time. There was a famous extermination camp in Jalisco that was found hundreds of bodies and extermination camp that was literally there where they would just dissolve bodies at some point. Even in their mind, where it's justifiable in everything you said there is an absolute, just an evil component to it. And I just firmly believe that at some element that's the fundamental problem. And the narco culture, the narco corridos, as you said, it's a way to whitewash it. It's a. It's a way to just say this is acceptable. And even that aspect to me kind of infuriates me. But it's caused a situation where there's never going to be, unfortunately, as long as this continues, the political will to change it inside of Mexico is never going to exist because it's just been so normalized. And I do believe at some element we have to call them out for what they are. And yeah, there is an inherently an evil aspect of this.
[63:53]
A
Yeah, yeah, we have the normalization of violence here too through like drill music and what was called gangster rap. But it hasn't ever infiltrated the government. You know, it still remained on a street level. Yeah, I think that be one of the main differences there is. It's not only glorified for the street kids, but it's also embedded within the power structures. So it creates a sort of top down romanticization that is serving their interests because they don't care about those kids either.
[64:14]
B
I like that front footage you said the power structure because that's the key thing. It's not the truth inside of Mexico that matters. It sounds crazy. It's the perception. The cartel members thrive on perception. If they're perceived to be within the power structure, if they're perceived to be powerful, that's more valuable than the actual truth of the matter, how they can do it. And that's where you see cartel members really try to push very, very heavily within the culture and the news and society is to give this perception of power. Because the perception of power is what gives them the deterrence and that deterrence enables them to operate. And I think that's the fundamental issue. It's the power structure of that. And it's not a one answer fits all type of scenario. You have to analyze it dependingly in each scenario. But who has the power structure and the corruption of it? The cartels to the government or is it to the government to the cartel? And when we're talking about Mexican cartels and the violence and the war, there is not just the cartel war, it's dozens of conflicts spread across Mexico that some of them have nothing to do with the other. But that, that then creates this idea of the normalization of violence in the power structure that then allows them to thrive and make money in the drug
[65:10]
A
business and other RIP La pirata de la Cujacan. Yeah, that's my guy. He was one of my favorite Instagram comedians. We talked about the normalization of violence. It just made me think about how confusing it is for me because like you speak Spanish, you've been to Mexico a bunch, right? Mexicans are so cool and so trustworthy. It's confusing to me as someone who's never interacted with cartel members, how there's also this brutality in Mexican society that seems to surpass almost anywhere in the world. America is a really violent, antisocial place. But you don't necessarily have that same fringe of people doing the kind of thing they're doing.
[65:40]
B
It's also the scale. And I think the problem we're running into because people might say, well, what about all the mass shootings? Okay, got it in the U.S. got it tracking. But it's to the point that you're saying the scale, I mean, we don't have 100,000 people missing that are just presumed dead in a country that's significantly smaller in population than us. And the homicide rates that continue to increase and increase and increase, like the homicide rates in New Mexico are a problem. I, I think it just goes down to the greed, corruption. Like just think for a second if there is a scenario where a cartel member, a Mexican cartel, let's say the Sinaloa Cartel, even though they're civil war, like the Mexican New Generation cartel, hanged bodies on a bridge in la, I mean, just imagine the uproar that would exist in the United States because of that and the political pressure that that would put on to our government at the local, state and federal level to action and respond to it. And I think that's the fundamental problem in Mexico, that that has been broken down completely. And I think in Mexican society, if we're talking about violence, the argument then goes back to, I mean, you can make the argument that many may, probably many in Mexico would rather just have back in the day, the Guadalajara cartel, which is one cartel. Everybod making money, drugs get pushed into the US but violence is an imaginable, acceptable level. But the question then becomes, does the US care about that? And if I may, I mean, it goes back to the Sinaloa cartel civil war. I'll share my conspiracy theory for everybody.
[66:51]
A
Yeah, let's go.
[66:51]
B
You remember how I told this story, right? How Mayo Zambada was captured? They used the son of El Chapo, turned him into informant, flew him over to the United States. And this was during the Biden administration, right, with Merrick Garland. 2024. When I heard this story, how it happened, first of all, I didn't believe it until it became confirmed. And I was like, the first thing that we all said is like, oh, there's going to be war. This is going to cause a civil war. Especially once Maito Fraco, the son of my, came in charge. And it quickly showed that. And my conspiracy theory is, I think the US Government, but the Biden administration said that's exactly what we want.
[67:21]
A
Why?
[67:21]
B
Because they knew the Sinaloa Cartel was the main pusher of fentanyl into the United States. So if we cause a civil war, their ability to push fentanyl into the United States drops drastically. And look at the drug seizures along the border. There's a huge drop shortly after the civil war starts, meaning they're pushing less of the product.
[67:36]
A
Fentanyl overdose rates are at their lowest this year since 2020.
[67:40]
B
And we've. And when did that drop start? Look at the dates when it started to drop significantly.
[67:44]
A
So victory for Joe Biden.
[67:46]
B
You know, the whole movie construct of Sicario 2 is like how do we call a civil war? And people like oh, that's just Hollywood. And I'm just like, there is elements, I truly believe within the US Government that either actively plan for that or, or at a minimum don't give a if it happens. They don't care. And the logic is the Mexicans don't care if violence goes up. So why should, should we care? We just want fentanyl drops. We want fentanyl to stop coming.
[68:10]
A
So you think it's in the US interest basically to create an internal civil war in Mexico between cartels to keep them busy fighting each other so they have less time to import mass quantity of fentanyl so that less Americans die?
[68:21]
B
Correct.
[68:22]
A
Sounds accurate.
[68:23]
B
100%.
[68:23]
A
Is that a widely espoused theory?
[68:25]
B
Probably not. Look again, it's a conspiracy theory. Right. But if you're asking me from a non conspiracy perspective, you're telling me does cartel civil war weaken the cartels not only from the drug trafficking perspective, but even just the control of the the plaza. And does that it weaken them internally? Absolutely. I mean you can't look at the Sinaloa cartel and say they're doing great.
[68:43]
A
And plaza refers to individual territorial control zone.
[68:46]
B
Yes. So look, I know the Joe Biden, like that's a conspiracy theory, but if you're analyzing, taking a step back, did it serve US national security interest? Yes. Do cartel infighting serve American interests? Yes. Because what happens is they're unable they focus more on each other. And that's the thing. Cartels, their biggest threat is not the U.S. it's not the Mexican government. It's other rival cartels. Holistic new generation cartel. Who are their main rival Maito Flacos. Who do the Maito flacos mean Ry the alliance of Jaliscan Generation Cartel nos chapitos. The Maito Flacos have an alliance with Chapu Isidro, which is the Mezza Flores Cartel. They're also suspected of having an alliance with the CDN cartel. And that's kind of the beginning where I said the main difference. It's this idea of these two main groups are forming. I was talking to a very brilliant person who I think said it great. This great example. He said, what we're seeing in Mexico is almost like this high school or PE dodgeball. There's two teams, you got to pick one. And it's kind of this idea that we're starting to see that happening inside of Mexico. As long as they're fighting each other, is that now reducing their ability to push drugs in the U.S. now what's interesting is cocaine is the exception to
[69:46]
A
this because of Colombia.
[69:47]
B
That and I think because for so many years we've been focused on fentanyl that we missed the drop the ball on the cocaine. Like a lot of the sanctions during the Biden administration was very focused on fentanyl. Right now in the Trump administration is actually the oil. We haven't necessarily done a lot of focus on the cocaine, cocaine yet. But keep an eye on Ecuador because a lot of the drug and the cocaine that gets pushed to the US Is through Ecuador. And recently we got the first reporting of a joint US And Ecuadorian military operation in Ecuador targeting kind of a lot of the drugs and gangs that operate there. And the two main gangs are Los Lobos who have an alliance with Jaliscan new generation cartel Ilos, Choneros that have historically have had an alliance with the Sinaloa cartel and Lobo. Los Choneros are engaged in a brutal viola. Those both are also declared foreign terrorist organization. And you can kind of view them as almost like a proxy cartel war inside of Mexico.
[70:33]
A
Wait, that sound bit confused here. So if the blow is coming from Ecuador and Colombia and the fentanyl and some weed is coming from Mexico, what the heck's going on in the Caribbean with US bombing all those speedboats that are coming from Venezuela?
[70:43]
B
So the vast majority of the drugs that come through the US Is through the Pacific route. I think the last estimate is between 70 to 80% and then about 20 to 20, you know, 30% comes from the Caribbean route and some of them from Venezuela.
[70:56]
A
And we've been focusing a lot on that as well.
[70:58]
B
We there's been now a huge push now also in the eastern Pacific because the vast majority of the drugs come there. Like if you go to, let's say the border, Venezuela and Colombia, imagine you're in the New York Stock Exchange. You're trying to buy oil right now in the commodity market. Well, if you go down there, it's the same, but instead of oil you're buying cocaine. It's like bartering Like, I'll pay this. I'll pay this. No, this. And the price kind of goes up and down depending on the supply and demand. What the cartels really specialize, they're, they're, they're like the corporate, almost like the logistical planner. Somebody produces the cocaine. How can we get the drugs from, let's say, Colombia up to the US and that's what the cartels plan, either through their own organizations to do that or through third parties. And that's where you find these other little disparate groups. And so, for example, in Venezuela, what we saw a lot of the Venezuelan, Maduro, specifically, they dominated the air travel, the CESNAs, from Venezuela into Central America. This is when Juan Hernandez, the president of Honduras that was pardoned by Trump, pushed a ton of cocaine to the U.S. but that, that again, that's a perfect example of the corruption. Maduro threw the planes flying them to Central America. President Hernandez that Trump pardoned would get a lot of the cocaine and threw drug cartels, hey, I'm managing it. I'm going to push it through you, through my country, into Mexico, into the
[72:00]
A
U.S. so Maduro was selling drugs?
[72:02]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, or, and, or he created the infrastructure that enabled a lot of the drug trafficking to happen. And he also had his own areas where he was pushing the drugs. But even Maduro and the Venezuelan military, they were the logistical planners. Even if there was drugs going through Ecuador or Colombia, he controlled the managerial logistical aspect and the planning aspect. So even though it didn't come from, I think that's where a lot of analysts get it wrong. They think, oh, it didn't come from Venezuela. So it wasn't Maduro. Like, no, no, no, that's not how the drug trade works. It doesn't matter where it came from. It's who planned it.
[72:30]
A
One of the first conversations we had before the camera started rolling is what is accurate Cartel movie. Not entertaining, but which cart or we can say TV show. What piece of entertainment do you feel like is the most reflective of reality?
[72:41]
B
You know, I really, I'm a huge fan of the narco series. Like Mayo Zambada is a very key figure in this and I think the narco series. The premise of Sicario too, is the US government actively planning cartel civil wars. I don't think, even if it does confirm Americans would care. But if you ask me, does it serve US national security interests? Which is exactly kind of the premise of it, it does. So, you know, those would kind of might be my recommendations, but I think the drug problem and the cartel problem gets very oversimplified and there's so many layers into this that requires a lot of analysis to have a better understanding.
[73:13]
A
So my final question is kind of a curveball because you have expertise in both fields here or with both parties that I'm going to ask about. Who do you think would win in an Iwo Jima style firefight? ISIS or cj? Angie.
[73:24]
B
Oh, that's a good one.
[73:25]
A
Thanks.
[73:26]
B
That's a good one.
[73:26]
A
I think about it all the time.
[73:28]
B
You got me there. Because I'm going through the tactics and all that and how they fight.
[73:32]
A
Love Toyotas.
[73:33]
B
I would say isis. Why the political motivation, but more importantly how this new generation cartel, the most they've ever had is like Toyota up armored vehicles with Toyotas. ISIS actually had tanks, they had T55s and T72s in their arsenals. At the height of the ISIS in Syria, they were using tanks, BMPs, APCs. You know the cartels don't have that. Now cartels don't have large quantity of anti tank missiles. That's why we see like the M82 barrets, like the 50 cals anti material rifles. They use that instead of the anti tanks because they don't have large quantities. ISIS does. Oh, they had RPGs for days. And so in a way I think if we're just using from a quantifiable resources aspect, ISIS had tanks, cartels don't.
[74:11]
A
Would cartels do a suicide bombing?
[74:13]
B
No, but they would do car bombings. There is an insane increased amount of explosives, IEDs and car bombings. Actually a couple days ago they just released a video of them doing a car bombing against the Zaka state police, a police station.
[74:25]
A
Now are you talking setting a car on fire or IRA style keys in the ignition explosion or like park a
[74:31]
B
car, car get out and then from a distance detonate it? I've seen daisy chain against like, like the IEDs and they're all. And they just blow up right when the convoy goes through. And so this is a Jaliskanu generation cartel specific faction more than likely associated with the Metros that is doing a lot of this because they accused the Zacateca state police of supporting Maito Flaco's arrival. And that's where we see that. And they're a significant increase in car bombings and IEDs in Zacatecas right now because of that.
[74:55]
A
Did journalists ever reach a definitive conclusion about what was causing all of the feminists sides in Juarez?
[75:00]
B
I don't think so, but I just think that just highlights a complete breakdown of the rule of law.
[75:04]
A
You don't think it's like a la initiation?
[75:06]
B
I mean, look, I've seen terrible stories. I mean, for example, I know you guys like with Katarina Schultz, phenomenal journalist. She broke a story about baby trafficking. A terrible baby trafficking ring that exists in Aarus that sold babies into the US they targeted pregnant ladies and they would do rudimentary C sections, kill the motor. Rudimentary C section, take the babies and then sell them for adoption. Fake adoptions over to the U.S. to who? To American citizens.
[75:27]
A
And why were they buying them?
[75:28]
B
So the Trump administration really pushed this. There was a report on CBS News, Tulsi Gabbard, the office of Director of National Intelligence, reported on it. But this terrible baby trafficking ring, that was a CGNG LA Linez thing that was pushing babies over to the U.S. the problem is we have no idea about the U.S. england. This we have no detain, no arrest. There was a huge media attention on this from the Mexican side. Yeah, but who was buying it in the U.S. my assumption, I think what a lot of reporting is fake adoptions. They can make money, so that's why they did it.
[75:54]
A
But who's buying the babies in the
[75:55]
B
US well, it's fake adoptions. So people either willingly or unwillingly buying babies, thinking they're going through a legitimate adoption process, but in reality they're not. Adoption is very expensive in the US it cost tens of thousands of dollars to adopt somebody. Well, if you adopt from Mexico, it's cheaper, but it's still thousands of dollars that you could make. So you're like, oh, let me just adopt the baby from Mexico.
[76:14]
A
There's that many people looking to adopt
[76:16]
B
babies from Mexico, not from the U.S. yeah.
[76:17]
A
My first thought was like, like pedophiles are buying.
[76:19]
B
No, no, no, no, no. Ask anybody who's adopted a child child how much it cost them. I think somebody I remember was like, 25,000. If I go to you and I'm from Mexico, say, oh, instead of 25, pay me 10,000, you can just adopt directly from Mexico. What would you do? There you go, easy money.
[76:32]
A
Well, I think that situation you just described probably answers the evil question a little bit. I mean, if you're kidnapping pregnant mothers and killing them and taking their baby and selling it across the border, it's about as bad as it gets.
[76:42]
B
Exactly.
[76:42]
A
I also heard from a city council member in Tijuana that they have underground child sex slave layers, basically. And a lot of American pedophiles and pedophiles from across the world go to TJ specifically for that. For the soul purpose of doing like that.
[76:55]
B
Again, I'm not surprised at all. And it goes back to your evil comp. All they care about is the money. That's the most addictive drug money.
[77:03]
A
Yeah. You think it'll make you do worse things than anything else.
[77:05]
B
Okay, let me put it this way. Mexico, 90% of crime is not even investigated. The vast majority of homicides no getting even investigated, let alone convicted. And if they're not even going to investigate a crime, what's holding you back from committing it? Think about it. It's almost like in a way, the purge. If I have a. Even if outside of this crime, let's say you and I have a business dispute and it's going to take me 10 months, 10 years to solve it through court. Or I could just kill you and I win. What do you think? These people. And there's no punishment. That's. That's the problem. That the judiciary in Mexico is completely ineffective. And that's the glaring issue as well in this whole entire problem set for
[77:39]
A
Americans watching who have never been to Mexico. Would you advise that right now is a safe time to go down there?
[77:43]
B
I would tell anybody, look, I've been to Mexico, even covering this, and I track everything. Anybody who wants to go to Mexico, always follow the State Department travel advisory. The U.S. embassy in Mexico. These guys are professionals. The State Department does an excellent, excellent job of tracking all the threats. If there is a threat, they will notify you. They make it public and they will tell you. So when everything happened in Puerto Vallarta, they put a shelter in place. If you follow the tribal advisory, they have restrictions for US government employees. What I would tell people, if they're telling their employees, do not take this road, this road, this road, probably follow that.
[78:11]
A
But it's chill to go to like Guadalajara, Oaxaca, Mexico City, Merida.
[78:15]
B
Especially if you know people there and you know the area. Look, I've been to Juarez and Juarez is also extremely wide, but I know of the people there. I've been there as long as you're smart, just like anywhere else around the world and you follow the State Department, you'll be fine.
[78:26]
A
I love Juarez. Yeah, Juarez is fun. People there are cool.
[78:29]
B
Yeah, I love it.
[78:30]
A
I just like, I think that the Charles Bowden's book, Murder City and then immediately followed by the release of Sicario. Pretty bad PR for Juarez.
[78:37]
B
Yeah, I mean there's a lot of homicide, don't get me wrong, but it's It's a great city. I had a lot of fun there.
[78:42]
A
Definitely. El Paso is great too.
[78:43]
B
I love El Paso.
[78:44]
A
Okay, top five border cities on the US side.
[78:47]
B
Well, would you consider San Diego or I have to go like. No, I would consider San Ysidro. Well, El Paso is number one. That to me will always, always been the top. I like Calexico is really nice.
[78:55]
A
Yeah, I like.
[78:56]
B
Oh my God. What's the one? Oh my God. I'm Dragon playing. It's the. It has the same name in Arizona and Mexico.
[79:01]
A
Nogales.
[79:02]
B
Nogales. Thank you.
[79:02]
A
But they nickname, they renamed the Mexican one Heroic.
[79:06]
B
No, that's true. That's true.
[79:09]
A
Ass.
[79:09]
B
Other than when you live in like I lived in el Paso for 10 years. I was there because of the army and I was. When I was active duty stationed in el Paso for 10 years. It was great. I mean it's very affordable. Number one. So especially if you're starting off young. The people are great, the culture is amazing. I always tell people like, you know, it's, it's a great culture. It's such a pity that what's going on in Mexico. But even though I cover it, please don't take this video as that. I focus on a very niche topic but leave it at that. Yeah, don't broad based Mexico as a whole because of it.
[79:34]
A
Back to El Paso. Do you like dive bars and stuff?
[79:37]
B
Absolutely.
[79:38]
A
Have you been to that bar King's X by utep?
[79:40]
B
Yes, once. Yes.
[79:42]
A
It's a good one.
[79:43]
B
It's a good one. There's two big ones that are there. The country bars are really nice and it's always really cool to be there. What I love about the, the whole album Paso aspect a lot of times all the family lives right, right next to each other and so once you get kind of like, you know, we, we. I didn't have family there when I lived there, but when they would invite us to the birthday parties and all that and they were bandas, you know the mariacha bandas. Like the people, the, the tents, the beer, the pool parties and all. And you would just go there and you just have a great time. And my favorite tacos will always be tripitas. Have you ever had tripitas?
[80:10]
A
No.
[80:10]
B
Oh, it's like the pig intestine.
[80:12]
A
Oh yeah.
[80:12]
B
I've had this. So every time I go back to El Paso it was very rare to find it. Always have to go and eat that because I just love it.
[80:17]
A
Yeah, I've been shouting them out like incessantly for the past four years and hoping that there's. There'll be. And they actually let me throw the first pitch at the Chihuahuas game.
[80:25]
B
No way. Yeah.
[80:25]
A
Cuz they kept shouting them out all the time. I'm even kind of on tour right now, like on the weekends and I. We're going to like every major city, but I made sure they added El Paso on my birthday.
[80:35]
B
Oh, perfect.
[80:36]
A
April 23rd at the Lowbrow Palace. It's cool now too, because people are starting to cross back over to juarez.
[80:40]
B
Yeah.
[80:40]
A
After 2011, 2012, everybody in my generation, especially the old timers, were like, I'm never going over there.
[80:45]
B
I've flown out of the Juarez airport to go to Mexico. Like it's just way cheaper. Yeah.
[80:49]
A
Yeah. I do the same thing.
[80:50]
B
Yeah.
[80:51]
A
Well, Tijuana's having a big, big revival of the arts.
[80:52]
B
Yeah.
[80:53]
A
So I wouldn't be surprised if Juarez follows. But it might take some time.
[80:56]
B
Unfortunately a lot of the human smuggling aspect has kind of increased violence there. But hopefully a lot of the Mexican government is to clamp down and gets back to normal.
[81:02]
A
Anything else you want to say? You feel like I didn't ask?
[81:04]
B
No. Thank you so much for having me. This was great. I told you that this is the best place I could ever done a recording.
[81:09]
A
Loved it.
[81:10]
B
So thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Summary8 min read

5CAST w/ Andrew Callaghan

Episode 20 – How the U.S. Engineered a Civil War Between Cartels in Mexico

Date: April 15, 2026
Guest: Stefano Ritondale, Chief Intelligence Officer of Artorias, OSINT analyst specializing in Mexican cartels

Episode Overview

This episode explores the complex and violent dynamics of Mexican cartels, recent shifts in their power structures, the U.S.'s covert role in escalating cartel infighting (specifically the Sinaloa Cartel civil war), and the far-reaching consequences for both Mexico and the U.S. Host Andrew Callaghan interviews Stefano Ritondale, a leading OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) expert, to unravel how high-level arrests, political pressures, and evolving criminal economies are reshaping cartel violence and the drug trade.

Major Discussion Points & Insights

1. Background & Stefano's Expertise

Stefano's Trajectory: Military and OSINT background, fluent in Spanish, personal/professional ties to Mexico, and runs a major cartel-tracking news account.
- Began reporting due to a lack of open-source coverage on Mexican cartels.
- Experience as an army trainer with the Mexican military.
- Quote: “What started out as a hobby really became significantly more and now just kind of became something that I really focus on professionally…” (00:34)
Rise of OSINT: Increasingly critical in government, private sector, and consumer intelligence.

2. Cartel Power Structures & Fragmentation

Multiplicity & Diversity: Six major cartels recognized as FTOs by the Trump Administration—but far more exist, each with unique economics and territorial strategies.
Shift from Leader Decapitation to Alliance/Bloc Wars:
- Historically, violence spiked after leaders were captured or killed (the “hydra effect”).
- New trend: Violence now tied to the formation of rival alliances—mainly “two big blocs,” not leader fragmentations.
Trigger for Recent Upheaval:
- U.S. leveraged an internal informant from Los Chapitos (El Chapo’s sons) to orchestrate the arrest of Mayo Zambada (Sinaloa Cartel patriarch), triggering civil war between cartel factions.
- "That's the ultimate betrayal. And so he declared war on Los Chapitos. And that's when we had the Sinaloa cartel civil war." (03:22)
Strategic Outcome: Formation of new alliances—Los Chapitos aligning with the CJNG, historical enemies now collaborating.

3. El Mencho’s Death: Significance & Aftermath

El Mencho's Legacy: Raised CJNG from obscurity to perhaps “the most powerful criminal organization in the world” with operations beyond drugs: oil, agriculture, etc.
- Presence in over 40 countries.
Succession: Steps up Juan Carlo Valencia Gonzalez ("O3", El Mencho's stepson and a U.S. citizen from California) as new leader.
- Key regional commanders maintain cohesion for now:
  - El Jardinero – “the Gardener” (notably dangerous)
  - El Sapo
  - Double R
- Quote: “The question…is the appointment of O3 as the new leader enough to kind of keep this cartel…as one, or do we see fragmentation in a civil war similar to what we see in the Sinaloa Cartel…?” (07:27)
Drug Flow Impact: Immediate effect on U.S. fentanyl/cocaine importation minimal; leadership stability in question long-term.

4. Cartel Business Models: Drugs, Oil, Avocados, and Beyond

Transactional vs. Territorial Cartels (explained via Nathan P. Jones’ work):
- Transactional = Focus on moving products (mainly drugs) for profit.
- Territorial = Control physical routes and lands, deriving power (and increased violence) from territory, not just product.
Key Example: The Zetas cartel professionalized extreme violence as a tool for both internal order and public intimidation.
Diversification of Revenue: Cartels now heavily involved in oil, produce (lime, avocado), human trafficking, extortion, etc.
- Example: "Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel...not major drug pushers...their key way to make money is oil smuggling." (34:44)

5. Normalization and Spectacle of Violence

Purpose of Brute Violence: Intimidation for territorial control and population pacification.
- “It normalizes violence...people aren’t going to demand political change...it enables the cartels.” (10:24)
Professionalization: Zetas “main ones who just said, before the Zetas and after the Zetas.” (11:05)
Execution Videos: CDN “Operativo Texas” and other extreme acts described to illustrate brutality and possible military-level training in sadism and medical techniques.
- Notable, chilling moment: “That was the one video that I probably said, I need a break. Because it was just the sheer level of brutality and violence was completely eye opening.” (14:24)

6. Connection with Military, Paramilitary, and Foreign Mercs

Foreign Special Forces:
- Zetas originated with former US-trained Mexican special forces.
- Cartels actively recruit Guatemalan (notably for CJNG), Colombian mercs (including those who fought in Ukraine).
US Intelligence Infiltration:
- Mexican special forces vetted/trained/funded/supplied/intel-fed by US agencies (CIA, DHS, DEA, etc.), especially in high-profile raids like El Mencho’s.
- "The unit that did the operation that killed El Mencho was definitely a US trained and vetted unit..." (16:31)

7. El Mencho Raid: Timeline & Broader Implications

Raid Details:
- Combined Mexican special forces op, perimeter by National Guard, intel provided by U.S.
- President Claudia Sheinbaum learned during/recently after the operation (possibly not pre-approved).
Immediate Aftermath:
- CJNG orchestrated narco-blockades and violent retaliations: burning vehicles, attacks on National Guard (at least 28 casualties).
- "That's the most violent day for the Mexican National Guard since their inception." (29:19)
Internal Cartel Dynamics:
- Some evidence of potential informants and internal betrayals (Mencho possibly set up via romantic partner).
- Ongoing leadership contest, with El Jardinero as a possible contender.

8. Civil War, Cartel Economics, and U.S. Policy

Unified Cartels = Low Violence: When a single group dominates (e.g. Durango/Sinaloa), less violence. But smaller, fragmented groups = extreme bloodshed.
Legalization & Violence:
- Legalization of drugs in the U.S. would not dismantle cartels, as their incomes are diversified.
- Violence persists due to territorial control, not just drug profits.
- “Avocados, it’s not illegal to buy…But they fight extensively in Michoacan for the avocado trade.” (36:33)
Colombia as a Model: Some hope in reducing magnitude, but corruption/institutional weakness in Mexico makes a full fix unlikely.

9. U.S. Policy: Fomenting Civil War for Strategic Goals

Explosive Theory/Timestamp: 66:51-68:25
- The U.S. (especially the Biden administration) intentionally fostered a civil war within the Sinaloa Cartel to weaken its fentanyl export capacity.
- "My conspiracy theory is, I think the U.S. government...said that's exactly what we want." (66:51)
- Result: Significant drop in fentanyl flows and overdose rates in the U.S.
- “Do cartel infighting serve American interests? Yes. Because what happens is they're unable, they focus more on each other.” (68:45)

10. Media Blackouts, Social Media, and the Dangers of Reporting

Media Blackouts:
- Reporting on cartels is nearly impossible inside Mexico, except for state-sanctioned or cartel-sanctioned narratives.
- Many journalists are killed, and often at the behest of politicians using cartel connections as cover.
Cartelgram: Cartels brazenly flaunt lifestyle and operations on Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp; availability of drugs and human smuggling services is highly public.
American-Based Journalists: Safer, but not immune; main risk in the U.S. is financial crime, not targeted assassinations.

11. Cartel Structures and Money Laundering

Cartels as Corporations: Complex, hierarchical, and multi-domain (criminal + business), merging aspects of Amazon (business) and Blackwater (armed force).
U.S. Role:
- U.S. is a primary avenue for money laundering (import/export/fraudulent businesses in LA, Phoenix, El Paso, etc.)
- Majority of drugs enter via legal ports of entry, smuggled by U.S. citizens.
- "Primary focus [of cartels in the US]: It's to launder money. That's it." (58:35)

12. Morality, Normalization, and Limits

Evil as a Cultural Force:
- Cartel brutality justified through Robin Hood narratives or economic deprivation, deeply normalized in parts of Mexican society.
- Mass disappearances, extermination camps, and high homicide rates as symptoms of a failed rule of law.
- “There is an inherently evil aspect to this.” (63:10)
Perception over Truth:
- Cartel and government focus on the “perception of power” more than hard facts.
- “It's not the truth inside of Mexico that matters…It's the perception.” (64:14)

13. Notable Quotes & Moments

(with timestamps)

On Sinaloa split:
- “That’s when we had the Sinaloa cartel civil war.” (03:22)
On cartel diversification:
- “They push everything... billions every year in just oil smuggling into the US. Avocado trade, lime trade…” (05:44)
On brutality normalization:
- “There’s a lot of execution videos that get released every day...over a hundred thousand people in Mexico are missing to this day.” (62:43)
On U.S. interests:
- “Do cartel infighting serve American interests? Yes.” (68:45)
On investigative risk in Mexico:
- “Anytime a journalist gets killed in Mitan, it's because of that.” (53:40)

14. Lighthearted/Fascinating Tangents

U.S./Mexican Border Culture:
- Border city rankings, favorite tacos and dive bars in El Paso, normalization of Americans crossing to Juarez, positive cultural notes despite underlying dangers. (79:34–81:09)
Who’d Win: ISIS vs CJNG?
- “I would say ISIS…at the height...they were using tanks…cartels don’t have that.” (73:32)

Key Timestamps for Reference

Cartel Power Structure Evolution: 01:45–04:47
Sinaloa Civil War Triggered by US Operation: 03:21–05:41
CJNG After El Mencho & U.S. Coordination: 06:41–08:03, 16:27–19:03
Purpose and Impact of Spectacle Violence: 10:10–14:24, 37:38–38:01
Cartel Diversification (beyond drugs): 34:44–36:33
Explicit Conspiracy Theory—US Fostered Cartel Civil War: 66:51–68:25
Money Laundering & Cross-Border Economics: 58:35–59:37
Journalism Dangers/Cartel Narratives: 53:08–55:20
EXAMPLE: Graphic killing/effect on reporting: 12:32–14:24

Conclusion

The episode lays bare a complex, grisly interplay of cartel economics, political corruption, U.S. realpolitik, and the normalization of violence stretching from Mexico’s smallest villages to the highest halls of power. Stefano and Andrew compellingly argue that U.S. policy, intentionally or otherwise, may benefit from Mexican cartel infighting (especially the Sinaloa civil war) at the cost of civilian blood. Meanwhile, the ever-evolving business models, deepening corruption, and cartel diversification ensure that no single-solution—legalization, militarization, or bilateral ops—can hope to "end" the problem. As Stefano says, “I don’t think we can solve this.” (37:38)

For ongoing, granular updates, Stefano suggests following OSINT feeds and the community of anonymous, risk-taking Mexican citizen reporters—and always pay attention to U.S. State Department travel warnings if actually traveling to Mexico.

Loading summary

Transcript266 lines

[00:00]
A
Well, thanks so much for making the time.
[00:01]
B
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
[00:03]
A
Thanks, man. So for those who don't know, can you tell us your name and what you do?
[00:06]
B
Yeah. So my name is Stefan Arindale. I'm the chief Intelligence officer of Artorias, which is an AI driven OSINT intelligence company. We serve private corporations, governments and even normal consumers. We have an app called sitrep, so if you want OSINT news, you can get it from there. And my other way that I guess from why we're here is I'm also All Source News, which is an account on X and other social media platforms that covers Mexican cartels. And I've been doing that since 2020 has really been a huge focus of mine.
[00:34]
A
And what made you want to start covering the cartels?
[00:36]
B
So what really, you know, just like, as I said, like I've, I loved open source intelligence and the reason why I really enjoyed it is, you know, prior I was in the military, I was active duty and did reserves, and when I was in the army, I really realized that there was a lot of focus on open source intelligence. It was a new type of intel that was really growing and really, you know, coming in a lot more popular. And I realized we were using it a lot. During my deployment to the Middle east, you know, I had a deployment to Jordan as part of the Counter ISIS campaign. And OSINT was something that started to really pick up steam. And while I was in the military and active duty, I did two missions. I did one mission to the border on the first Trump administration during the first caravan, and then the second one, I went to Mexico for a month and trained the Mexican army. And it was a phenomenal training experience. And what I realized is that in the OSINT world, that was very prevalent on, let's say, Twitter back then. Now X and other social media platforms, Mexican cartels was not being covered at all. And I said, hey, you know, I love osint, I speak fluent Spanish, I have connections in Mexico, I want to give it a shot. And what started out as a hobby really became significantly more and now just kind of became something that I really focus on professionally as well with my company too.
[01:45]
A
How do you think that cartels, and I guess the power structure has changed between when you started back then and now?
[01:50]
B
Oh, that's a great question. So I think one of the key aspects, and I'm going to take a kind of a broader picture and then and hone it in when we're talking about Mexican cartels, I Think it's very important to note that we say, like the cartels, like, it's almost like it's a singular entity. And it's important to note that that's not necessarily the case. Like the Trump Admin. Administration, for example, has six cartels designated as foreign terrorist organization. The Sinaloa Cartel, the Gulf Cartel, the Northeast Cartel, the United Cartel, the La Nueva Familia, Michoacana, and the Jaliscano Generation Cartel. There's more than just those six. And each of them operate differently, operate in different areas. They make money certain ways, they have different plaza bosses, et cetera. And one of the fundamental differences that I've seen since 2021 to now is that historically, when we saw violence go up in Mexico, it's because cartel leadership kind of gets captured, kill. And then this idea, well, you kill one cartel leader, 50 form. And what's an interesting dynamic is that now what I'm noticing is this new trend where the reason why violence is going up is not necessarily because of fragmentation. It's more because we're seeing alliances form between two major blocs within the Mexican cartels. In 2024, there was a major development, I think much more so than what we're seeing recently, at least, with El Mencho. And it's the. A key cartel leader was captured, named Mayo Zambada. He was one of the key figures of the Sinaloa Cartel. And the way that happened was that the US Basically churned one of El Chapo's sons who was part of a rival faction of the Sonoa Cartel called Los Chapitos, basically made him an informant to the FBI. Wow.
[03:21]
A
So he snitched.
[03:22]
B
He snitched. So those Chapitos are four brothers of El Chapo. When he was in, when he was detained, it's Ivan, El Chibaldo, Jesus Alfredo Ovidio Guzman, Ihuaquin Guzman. The same name as the father. When the father of El Chapo was captured, the two factions of the Sonola Cartel, Los Chapitos, aforementioned, and then Miles Zambada. What happened was during the Biden administration, they grabbed Joaquin Guzman and basically leveraged him to trick Miles Ambada into flying into the US where federal agents detained him in El Paso. And this was all the way back in, in 2024. Well, who took over after Miles Zambada was captured? His son, a guy named Maito Flaco. And obviously it was public record. Maito Flaco saw. Wait a minute. Los Chapitos, El Chapo's son turned in my father to U.S. prison. Well, that's the ultimate betrayal. And so he declared war on Los Chapitos. And that's when we had the Sinaloa cartel civil war. And what we've seen with the Sinaloa cartel civil war is Los Chapitos were not doing so hot. They actually announced an alliance with the Jaliscano generation cartel. So what used to be historical rivals became allies. And that alliance, I think, fundamentally transformed the cartel dynamics in Mexico, where we're starting to see basically not everybody, but for the most part, two major blocs forming inside of Mexico within the Jaliscano generation Cartel, Los Chapitos, and then the Maito Flacos with other groups such as Chapo, Isidro or cdn. And. And that's where you're seeing these two alliances that are really driving the violence in Mexico. Mostly in Sinaloa, Durango and even some other areas of Mexico, we're seeing it as well.
[04:47]
A
So in this context, what is the assassination or killing of El Mencho represent?
[04:53]
B
Right. So it's kind of interesting. In the last couple of years, we've seen two major figures of the Mexican cartels disappear, right? It was kind of like this. I mean, if you're looking at this, like back in the day, the Cali cartel in Colombia, in the Medellin, right. There's this aura almost of these cartel. Pablo Escobar, right. And Mencho and Maya Zambada were kind of the new type of. At least in the last. Last decade were kind of these major figures. And they both are now gone and Mental being killed. And I think to your point, what that means for Jaliskanu generation cartel, I think it's important to note the Jiska New generation cartel has only existed since 2009. And really a couple years later and just over a decade and Mental made Jaliskanu generation cartel from something that was not known to the most powerful drug cartel in the world. I mean, I would even make the argument that they're the most powerful criminal organization in the world. They have presence in over 40 countries, large dominance in Mexico.
[05:42]
A
And to clarify, that's because they don't just push drugs.
[05:44]
B
Oh, they push everything. And actually one of the key areas that we there is a phenomenal report on Reuters was oil. So if you look at this report and a lot of sanctions that the US has done, a lot of the, you know, holistic generation cartel makes billions of dollars every year in just oil smuggling into the US Avocado trade, lime trade. I mean, they're involved in so many industries and that's why they're so powerful. And I would even. There's even suspicion that El Mencho has a dominance just in the drug trade, in the cocaine trade. I mean, he has really built in a decade, over a decade, an empire of a Mexican cartel. So what does this killing mean? This is the first true test of, I think, a Jalisco generation cartel. Are they able to sustain themselves as one unitary cartel? That's the key question that we have. I have reporting, you know, from some of my sources and talk to others, that his stepson, Juan Carlo Valencia Gonzalez, or also known as O3, has been named as the new leader of Jalisco New Generation Cartel. What's interesting about him is, as I said, not only is he's the stepson, but he was born in Santa Ana, California. He's a US citizen.
[06:42]
A
Wow. He's from Orange County.
[06:43]
B
Yeah.
[06:44]
A
Interesting. So do you think that El Mencho's assassination will do anything to slow the importation of drugs like fentanyl and cocaine
[06:50]
B
into the U.S. i would say immediately, no. So, for example, if we looked at Miles Ambada, right when he was captured, we started to get grumblings and reportings of significant tension kind of weeks later. And then the violence really started the months after his, his capture. That's what we have to look at right now with the lisk and generation, because in the grand scheme of thing, it's fairly fresh. Now it does look like for now, that all the leadership underneath. Right. So if you look at a cartel, it's a pyramid. But the, the regional commanders are very important in any cartel. Right. The gunmen. So there's a couple names to look out for, right? To look, you have a guy named El Cardinero. He's a very powerful regional commander. You have a guy named El Sapo, another powerful one. You have a guy named Double R, very powerful one. As long as they all coalesce around O3, the stepson, then for the most part, more than likely, everything can continue to stay normal. It's just a new leadership. The question that we have though is, is the, the appointment of O3 as the new leader enough to kind of keep this cartel and Jaliska generation cartel to continue the same? Or do we see fragmentation in a civil war similar to what we see in the Sinaloa Cartel or the Gulf Cartel?
[07:58]
A
But all of these things are like the whole cartel issue is not based upon the US drug demand.
[08:03]
B
Yes and no. Well, first of all, for example, the oil, the other oil, they sell it to the US I think. Well, not all of it, but a huge portion of the oil. They sell it here. But I think one of the interesting aspects that we're seeing in Mexico is. And actually this goes to your first question. What's some fundamental change I've seen since we've seen this? There's a phenomenal book, a great academic I deal with. His name is Nathan P. Jones. He wrote a book called, I think it's called Mexican Illicit Actors and State Response. And I'm going to summarize very basically his whole premise. He basically wrote this book over a decade ago, and he identified basically two types of cartels. You have. Have transactional cartels and territorial cartels. So what are the transactional cartels? What you're saying, the drugs, Right. I have a product. I need to sell the product. There's buyers in the U.S. so we got to get this There a key example of this. If people see Narcos, Mexico, the series, the beginning of the Guadalajara cartel with marijuana, right? That's all they cared about, push drugs. The other cartel is the territorial cartel. And we were talking this earlier. Who would be a perfect example of a territorial cartel? The Zetas. Right. What do they care about? They want territorial control because that's how they get money, because they control the territories. So the routes the drugs got kept.
[09:08]
A
And specifically for those who don't know, the Zetas control Tamaulipas and the. The Gulf region. So they wanted to be able to control the smuggling route into places like Reynosa, et cetera.
[09:18]
B
Yeah, all those areas. And they, they. They used to be gunmen and the kind of the armed wing of the Golf Cartel. And they said, hey, we can make more money, so how do we make money? Well, we got to kick the Golf Cartel out of here. That's how they did it, and they became a territorial cartel. One of the fundamental issues of a territorial cartel, though, although all cartels are violent, is that they put a primary importance on the violence because they need to control the territory and think about it in broad sense like a war zone. Right. Russia, Ukraine, they're fighting for territory. So there's a lot of violence to get there. So we're starting to see, I think in the broad sense, every single cartel is kind of slowly transitioning into a primarily territorial focus. And that territorial focus inherently makes them more violent, because now it's not just the corruption now it's not just the drug trade. It's the territorial control that they need in order to make money. And I think that's a fundamental transition where even if they Lose money on drug trade, they can still make money other ways, even just extorting the civilian population and stay relevant.
[10:10]
A
So the violence is almost a tool of creating fear. So the fantastical violence, bodies from bridges decapitating people and leaving a message written on like a piece of cloth on the side of the road, that's to freak people out so they don't try to dispute the territorial control of the area.
[10:25]
B
That. And I would even. Perfect. Perfect explanation. And I would even say it's also a way for people to. It normalizes violence. So if there's a lot of these violence that goes on, people aren't going to demand political change. They're not going to go to the government and say, hey, this is unacceptable. Because it's been so normalized that in the end of the day, the government says, well, this is just a fact of matter. This is just life. And so it also enables the cartels to continue in that long streams of brutality to. In order to enforce their overall rule in the country. Yeah.
[10:52]
A
When did that start? Because I know in the context of like, what they called Middle Eastern terror, it was Al Zarqawi who really created the first execution video, with Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who got stuck out there, who is the first cartel boss to direct the production of an execution video.
[11:05]
B
I mean, it's really hard. I mean, I would have to kind of go back first, but. But I think the ones who really professionalized it was the Zetas. I. I think that if we're going to look at history, the Zeta cartels were the main one who just said, I mean, before the Zetas and after the Zetas. So even though the Zetas were gone, although they have a successor now, which is the CDN Cartel, the Northeast Cartel, and there's a lot of remnants of former Zetas forming their own groups. I think the Zetas were that primary aspect that really made a difference in the overall violence aspect, Much more so than we've seen in the past.
[11:34]
A
And I'm. I'm sure that reporting in this field, you've probably seen some pretty gnarly stuff.
[11:38]
B
Yeah.
[11:38]
A
Do you ever have to take a break from consuming cartel content?
[11:42]
B
Yeah, unfortunately, you do kind of get accustomed to it, but there are some areas that you get just a sheer level of brutality that I think shocks even those who've seen it. Like when I was deployed, I saw ISIS execution videos. And I can say hands down that the cartel videos are worse. And one of the most brutal ones that I'll kind of give a Broad overview. Obviously, I'm not going to go into details, but I think it's important. It highlights the significant aspects of how extreme they're willing to go. Because when you see execution videos, 90% right, broadly speaking of the cartel videos, it's just brute force. But this specific video that actually came from the CDN cartel, one of the groups under them, under the CDN cartel, was called Operativo Texas. So the Texas operative. So how they did it is. It's. I want to explain this without sounding like a psychopath, but I think it's very important.
[12:32]
A
Well, you didn't do it, so it's okay.
[12:35]
B
But the fact that I think I caught it kind of concerns me because you look at it and you look at trends and what. In this specific video, what happened was it was a bunch of guys in the cdn, typical execution video. They're on the back and then they have a guy kneeling in front of them who belongs to La Linea. The La Linea is basically the Juarez cartel. And this was done in northern Zacatecas, which is a huge conflict zone that CDN historically has apprentices, even though right now it looks like it's been reduced. But what they do, they do the whole spiel, hey, this is a La Line member. And they always pretend, they always portray themselves cartel members as, we're Robin Hood, we're here to do justice. And because the great government sucks and corruption. And what happened was then after their speech, they get the guy and what they do is with the knife, they peel his skin off from his face and then they remove the skin surgically, basically. So you see like this muscles with the skulls and the eyeball and everything, they remove it. They open his chin up, all the way down here, completely open it, remove the tongue, and then they cut off the heart. And then towards the end of the video, they pull it out. And then how they end the video is they show in the camera and you see the heart beating until it stops beating. And the moment it stops vading, the video cuts. Now here's the interesting. Here's two interesting aspects of that. One, the person they did that to didn't fight back. And he barely said, but basically whispering, he said, por favon pared. Please stop it. Like, very, very, very softly, but that's it. And he didn't fight back. So that tells me two things. One, this man was drugged enough to stay awake and be conscious, but just enough to make sure that he didn't fight back or scream. And then the second thing is, like, my Wife, she's an ER nurse. She's actually in one of the er, she saw open heart surgery because somebody got shot. The way the cartel members did it was very, very, like precise.
[14:24]
A
Right? Like they'd done it before.
[14:26]
B
And. But even not only have they done it before, but it, to me it says like, did these guys get medical training? Because even my wife who's been in her, she's like, I can't, I don't, I can't do that. And it goes to show that, you know, more than likely based on the fact that they knew how much to drug this guy. So he didn't fight back, but he was awake. And the fact of how they did it shows they had to have at least some medical training to be able to execute this perfectly. And the message was sent and received of like, we're violent, you can't fight back against us. And that was the one video that I probably said, I need a break. Because it was just the sheer level of brutality and violence was completely eye opening.
[15:03]
A
And when you say medical training, I've seen various things online about different intelligence services training certain factions of Mexican cartels. Do you give any credence to those theories?
[15:13]
B
I mean, yeah, we do know that, for example, the Zeta cartels, the leadership of the Zetas cartels were formerly trained by the US Special Forces. And then these guys just, you know, just became guns for hires. They became mercenaries for the Gulf Cartel and then that's how they formed the other. We do know that Mexican cartels heavily recruit foreign military personnel. So for example, talked about the Mexican special forces and Mexican military that switch sides, enjoy the cartels. Guatemalan special forces are heavily recruited specifically by Jalisca New Generation cartel. Actually, one of the fronts of Jalisca New Generation Cartel in Chiapas is called the Chiapas and Guatemala Cartel. It's a front for cjng. They have a lot of former Guatemalan special forces. And recently we've also seen a huge increase of former Colombian soldiers and mercenaries who fought in Ukraine actually now getting recruited and fighting in Mexico. They get recruited after their time in Ukraine, they fight in Mexico. And we've actually seen across Mexico, but a huge concentration of that in Michan, which looks like Jaliscanu generation cartel in the United Cartel who are battling each other in, in Michoan. They both heavily recruit from Colombians who fought in Ukraine. So I think to your point there, yes, any and anywhere where they can get a former special forces, former military, as long, you know, it's mercenaries, as long they're willing to fight for them and get paid good money, they'll pay for it.
[16:28]
A
But you think, you know, there's no like CIA type Mossad connection with the cartels.
[16:32]
B
No, I mean, I know people are going to say, I know, I mean, could go back to the Cold War and all that, but now modern days, the cartel members, they actively recruit and if anything the CIA actually to El Mencho that came from. I wouldn't be surprised if the unit that did the operation that killed El Mencho was from a CIA vetted trained unit. The unit that did the operation that killed El Mencho was definitely a US trained and vetted unit. And, and I think, you know, we can look at history where CIA and all this kind of had a role in the drug trade, obviously with back in the day, with the Cold War. But a lot of that has fundamentally shifted into this new dynamic where now we're actually seeing is these Mexican army units and Mexican police units get vetted by the U.S. so like for example, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, DEA, U.S. special Forces, CIA, they have their own Mexican units. They vet them, train them, equip them, fund them and give them intelligence. And then these guys go out and execute operations based on intelligence given to the U.S. yes.
[17:34]
A
Let's talk about the actual El Mencho raid. Yeah, So I know, I know where it was done. From your perspective, just in a complete sentence, what happened there.
[17:40]
B
Right. So, so the what happened was there was two Mexican special forces units, one from the military, looks like in the National Guard kind of did the outer perimeter Jalisco. They did an operation and there was a significant shootout and they killed El Mencho and his and a couple members of his bodyguards. There is interesting reporting that's coming out that claims. I have no, we have not definitive confirmation, but some reports coming out there Vi note, I believe it was a Mexican kind of account indicating that in Mencho might have been executed. So he surrendered and they executed him. Which wouldn't be surprising. We've seen the Mexican military do that, especially for high level figures where they don't want to deal with that person. They'll just straight up execute the person. Right. We have no confirmation that defendant have, but we do know based on the videos from the area there was a significant shooting and Mencho was eventually killed. Another interesting aspect that recently broke actually yesterday, and this is coming from a journalist from a major Mexican newspaper called Reforma. It looks like what, based on her reporting, is that the operation that led to the killing of El Mencho wasn't necessarily planned or was the president of Mexico, Claire de Chamba was even aware of it until the operation was already in place. So what, what she's claiming is that the US had intelligence with this Mexican vetted special forces unit. The Americans gave the intelligence to this unit and the unit went in, executed the operation, killed El Mencho and they and the president only found out about it when the operation was happening.
[19:03]
A
So it was really a result of U S and special forces coordination.
[19:07]
B
The Mexican special forces. Yeah, not. There's a lot of rumors that U. S Special forces was like their SEAL team said, we have no, I have not heard anything like that. There's no. But I think what people are missing is that intelligence cooperation is extensive. And if this reporting is true, it kind of makes sense because one of the key questions that I get asked even before I saw this report is like, like, well why now? Why would Claire Scheinbon, the president of Mexico go after in Menchel?
[19:34]
A
Well, I mean logically I felt like, especially after the assassination of Carlos Manzo, who was the governor, that was like going to take on the narcos. And he was killed at I think a public event. And we covered some pretty major Gen Z protests on the streets of Mexico City. It was mostly older people, but they were there basically speaking about Claudia Sheinbaum like she was this like narco compliant, sort of like inactive president who was not doing enough to combat the way that cartels had infiltrated more rural states and cities. And I felt like this was their way of getting even. That was my first reaction. I was like, all right, well maybe this is proof that the Mexican government actually does have the capacity to take out some of these top level cartel buses.
[20:13]
B
And that is exactly what I thought. Right. And I think that's the conventional wisdom. Again, this is kind of new reporting which is kind of interesting. But the conventional wisdom is because you're right, I mean the killing of the mayor of Hurapun was an earth shattering event done. I mean it's clear that it was Jaliska New generation cartel. And the problem is, is, I mean the governor Michoacan is very suspected, I mean almost to the point of almost basically confirming that he's in Jaliska new generation cartel's payroll. Because CJNG is on a like on a war path in Michoacan, extensive war path. And there's interesting reporting that maybe one of their key allies there called the Viagra cartel might have split, that alliance might have broke. So we might see violence continue to pick Up. But to your point, I mean, there's this idea that Kaideshamban, between that and then the threat from the Trump administration saying, I do believe, for example, when Trump did the whole Maduro raid, the Mexicans saw that and they said, oh, we don't want that to happen here. We don't Want Seal Team 6 or Delta Force or drone strikes to happen because sovereignty. And so there was this argument that Kaeda Shangban said, okay, who's the top dog we can go after? That puts everything to rest and, you know, buys us political goodwill with the U.S. it's El Mencho. So, hey, let's go after Mental because I can go after El Mencho. There is literally nobody you won't go after. And I think that's the conventional wisdom is kind of this concern from the Trump administration, domestic political concerns with this whole idea of the mayor of Urapuan that was assassin and the corruption and this idea that Kaneshama is probably domestic and international political pressures doing this. But this interesting report from Reforma basically says it was a Mexican operation. It's just she wasn't aware of it. And that's. I would believe that that has a lot of truth to it.
[21:50]
A
I saw a different report that he was set up by a romantic interest.
[21:54]
B
Well, that's, that's how they got him. That's the, you know, it's crazy.
[21:57]
A
Think about you build a billion dollar narco empire and you're, you get caught slipping by your girlfriend.
[22:03]
B
You know, I'm like 99 sure that's how they caught in Menchito. Mencho son, God damn. And Weddings was tracked a lot because of his mistresses. And you know what? Like that's the difference. Maybe with ISIS and Al Qaeda, they're a lot smarter in that aspect. Cartel members, they fall because of their mistresses all the time because the mistresses don't do opsec. So if you can track their Instagram, if you can track their social media, more than likely you can find them.
[22:22]
A
So that is what happened.
[22:23]
B
Again, we have to base on the reporting that we're. It does look like one of the key aspects they had to find him was through the mistress. But I, if I may, if I just may, it's not like this guy was bin Laden. I mean, the ranch that they got him, that ranch was sanctioned by the US like this wasn't an unknown location. It's not like bin Laden, where eventually we found him after years in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in this convoluted intelligence operation. A lot of these cartel Members, we kind of more or less know the general areas they're at.
[22:51]
A
And how was he living before he got taken out?
[22:53]
B
So there is rumors that he had kidney failure, dialysis. When you're tracking at least once a quarter, ever since I started, once a quarter, I would get rumors that he was killed, that he died because of health concerns. But what was super interesting, I mean, super interesting before he was killed, we didn't get a picture of El Menchel, by the way, in years. It's like the two or three pictures,
[23:13]
A
one of them, the first one being the San Francisco mugshot.
[23:16]
B
Exactly, the white and all that, like, that's it. But literally the weekend prior, he was killed on a Sunday. On Friday, there was rumors that there was an operation targeting El Mencho that really picked up. There was rumors also in August of 2025 that he, there was an operation targeted against him, that he managed to get away. But the weekend prior to that Friday, there was rumors that he was. And then Saturday there was a new picture that was released of El Mencho. There was, that was him and all his brothers and kind of the car protective. A very old picture, but it was a new picture. We haven't had a picture of El Mencho in forever. And then the next day he was killed. And that, that just seemed, that just seems so much of a coincidence that it just seems weird.
[23:52]
A
And what do you think that could
[23:53]
B
indicate that maybe certain elements within Jalisco generation cartel, or at least people within him, knew something was coming. That maybe knew something was coming and were much more free, willing and releasing certain amount of information. Maybe they tried to do this as a way to spook him because they couldn't reach him. Like, hey, maybe if I release an old picture of him, he might be like, yo, why is a picture of me coming out? I, I don't know. But it's just the, the, the sequences of the vent was just super weird in of itself.
[24:18]
A
So you think maybe there is some elements within CJNG who would benefit from a power back vacuum after Mention's death.
[24:25]
B
When you do cartel coverage, there's a thing, you know, I know I talk about OENT and all that. What you really deal with though, is what I would call Rument rumor intelligence. And you have to track all these different areas. You know, you, you know, I try to track their social media pages, I try to track their messaging groups, I try to track kind of areas where they're in communications. You try to track Facebook pages, let's say, or Instagram pages where people Live in kind of these strongholds where these guys operate and they share information and what they hear and what you try to get is basically the aggregates, right? It's very hard to say, is this one report true or is these five reports true? You have to really analyze the aggregate of everything. And to your point, there is one gentleman that I kind of keeping my eye on. He's definitely within the last years. He's kind of grown up, grown in power and statute. And there was even rumors immediately after he was killed. If you were to say, okay, who can really challenge the succession of CG and G, who can really maybe cause a fragmentation? This guy named Jardinero the Gardener. And he's even suspected of having a key role within. Remember that alliance I said with Los Chapitos? He's a key figure of that.
[25:30]
A
He's got to be psycho. That's an unintimidating nickname, which means he must have, like, real life extreme grit and clout to be able to rock with him. Because at least Mencho kind of sounds like some sort of big boss.
[25:43]
B
Yep, the Gardener. Okay, The Gardener. But his. His fighters are extremely loyal to him. Okay? Like, they will. They will. Viva Jardino. Say no. Cardinal. Like, they. He has a very loyal set of people. He is those. One of those men that I'm like, okay, if there's somebody who can benefit from this, it would be him. And there were some people who suspect that he was the most likely successor because there was this idea that maybe Cardinal was growing in power and O3 was losing power. It looks like O3 is the agreed upon successor of CGNG, but he is one of those guys to keep an eye on. Again, we don't know. It's very hard. You're trying to deal with incomplete picture. You're dealing with rumors. You're trying to paint a complete picture with incomplete information. But if there's somebody to within Holy Generation cartel who can benefit a lot from this, I can see Jardinero being one of them.
[26:29]
A
So let's talk about the immediate aftermath of the El Mancho raid. I'm sure a lot of people saw the videos coming from places like Puerto Vallarta of burning cars and smoke rising from buildings. What was going on there?
[26:40]
B
So let me. Let me explain this from my perspective, like, how that day went for me. Right? You know, we got an interesting report. I remember waking up and it was Sunday morning, and. And I saw the first videos from a Jalisco. I think it was a WhatsApp group that said, hey, there's an operation in Tall about Jalisco, right? I was like, okay, Mexican operation. They're targeting a cartel. They're like, oh, like, again, I think most people, that's normal. And then we saw subsequently afterwards reports of what we would call these narco blockades, right? The burning of the vehicles and all that. But it was very. It was kind of like in a specific area, very kind of close to Jalisco. And that's normal. It's kind of. It sounds really crazy to say that, but that's a normal occurrence. But what started to pique my interest was two things. One, then we started to see it in Puerto Vallarta. And Puerto Vallarta, again, it's a major tourist area. So generally they don't want to necessarily do it in Puerto Vallarta unless they absolutely have to. So that indicates, okay, it's an important guy, not necessarily mental, just important enough because again, you know, before Mencho was killed, the Treasury Department released sanctions against a specific Mexican resort in Puerto Vallarta that was accused of doing fraud for Jalisco Generation Cartels specifically targeting Americans, right? So they generate money from tourism and from Americans. So, okay, the Puerto Vallarta kind of was, okay, that's my first little red flag that something big is going on. And then the second one is that we started to see the violence spread from the narco blockade. So it wasn't only in Jalisco. Then I started Michoacan, and generally when you see two states, that's like a very senior guy. But. But what was very interesting, it wasn't. It wasn't just in two states. It was in Jalisco, Michoacan, Colima, Aguascalientes, Tamaulipas, even some areas, I believe in Tabasco, right? Guanajuato. It was basically all the territories that Jaliscano Generation Cartel controls. And it was like that super fast, super quick spread over. And then it became very clear there's only one man who is able to cause this level amount of violence, and it's in mental. So that immediately told me. And I remember tweeting about it before it became confirmed. Like, it has to be El Mencho. You know, it was speculated, but it has to be be. Nobody can cause that much violence about him. And then subsequently, we got the report that he was killed. And then what was interesting was that shortly afterwards, the Holiskan Generation Cartel said, okay, we're on a war path. It's important to note that the violence in Puerto Vallarta and other parts of Mexico was very much physical damage, like they didn't target Americans, and for the most part, they didn't even target civilians directly from a casualty perspective. They targeted businesses, but not. They weren't going for civilian casualties. But what they did specifically target and very effectively was the Mexican National Guard. I believe the last casualty figures we got was 28 Mexican National Guard soldiers were killed in the aftermath of that operation and directed attacks by Jalisco Generation Cartel for retaliation. So they slaughtered a large like that is the most violent day for the Mexican National Guard since their inception during the previous Mexican president. And that was Jaliscan Generation Cartel sending a message saying, we're not going to tolerate this and just take it for granted. And they killed 28. I believe the last casualty figures is 28 Mexican National Guard soldiers were killed.
[29:32]
A
So do you see some kind of like civil war unfolding in the coming months and years in Mexico after this raid?
[29:38]
B
That is what I'm looking for to see if there's a split. Because again, the killing of El Mencho really puts to test Jaliscu New generation cartel, right? It really puts it to test because again, if you look at El Chapo, when El Chapo was captured, you had two factions, the Chapitos and Mayo Zambada, but they kind of coexisted peacefully. And the irony is Mayo Zambada was very interested in keeping the peace. And even within what there was fractures, low level within the Sinaloa Cartel, Mayo Zambada would kind of stay at band. He was kind of viewed as this old statesman who was like, no, no, guys, come on, we got to get along. We're just here for the money. We're not here to cause wars, because this guy's been doing it for 40 years, right? So he knew what he was talking about and it meant. So in a way, like we've had seen the historically, in Holiscan Generation Cartel, we did see factions kind of broke up, but very small. Like in Colima, there was a fracture. They kind of formed their own called the Independent Cartel of Colima and Michoacan. One of the former allies called Las Migueladas, they kind of fractured. We're getting reports of the Viagra Cartel kind of fracturing. But from the grand scheme of things, like as a whole, Holuska Generation Cartel is fine. They can take those fractures. Fractures, and that's not a big deal. But now with his killing, that's the question. And it would be very interesting to see now that his stepson kind of took over this US Citizen, if he's able to maintain that alliance if he's able to maintain this unity of Holiskan New generation cartel. What's very interesting about him though that I think not a lot of people are talking about is that he comes from the Valencia Gonzalez Familia, right. The Los Queenis are they called. And why they matter is even when in mention when he kind of formed the Holiscan generation cartel, he, he very much leveraged Los Quinis because the Queen control the money. They're very powerful in the money aspect, not necessarily in the guns. It's the money. And I would even say, like let's say you were to take away every single dollar that the Jew generation cartel or Lasquini specifically controlled out of the Mexican economy. The Mexican economy collapses overnight, right? They're that powerful. I mean, talking about hundreds of billions of dollars easily.
[31:30]
A
What do you think El Mencho's net worth was at the time of his death?
[31:33]
B
$10 billion at a minimum, if not more. If you look at los right in the money that they control. And if you put make the argument probably even more. I mean you're probably looking at, if not tens of billions of dollars. I mean easily 20, 30, $40 billion. It's really hard because you have to track the drugs, the oil, the avocado, the lime, the human smuggling and all these contract, the money, laundry, et cetera. And the expenses and revenue has to be easily in the tens of billions of dollars. 50, 60 billion. I know I keep on increasing because I'm trying to. I'm thinking the more I think is like, okay, okay, well this is added, this is added this business, this business. But it goes to show you, you know, if you look at Mexican cartels as a whole, they would be considered the fifth largest employer inside of Mexico. So. And Los Squinis control the money.
[32:16]
A
And that's the financial faction of CJ Angie.
[32:18]
B
Correct. Nut. Here's the thing.03 comes from that family. He comes from the money family.
[32:25]
A
Okay.
[32:25]
B
He has his own group. You know, he's expected to be in the leader of a group called Grupo Elite or the Elite group inside of cjng. They're not really elite, they're just the name that they love to go around with. But now you're in a situation where, because it used to be El Mencho, that it was like the strong arm, the, the, the guns. And, and at some point he became like more of this figure, more. And then the day to day operation, right, he wasn't doing day to day operations anymore with the list Generation Cartel. But he was this, this, this figure greater than life type of thing. You can even make the argument that 03 was more the day to day guy. Maybe the other guys like Al gardinero. But now 03, not only does he have his own group, but he comes from the money. Family. Family. And now you have the leader who is both. So now those squinies control CG and G where it used to be. El Mencho was kind of that bridge between both sides. He now controls all of it now because they control the money. Is he able to maintain that uni within Jalisco Generation cartel? Or do you see these sub commanders, El Sapo, El Cardinero, even El Dobler and others. Primito, who's the leader of Los Metros, one of the Gulf cartel factions. Now with CJ&G, do you say, no, we're not, we don't want to go that route. We don't agree with that. That's the test that we try to see. But for now, for now, as of this recording, Holy Skin Generation cartel still operates as one, but it's too soon to tell.
[33:38]
A
So I had one question that I was going to ask at the end, but I kind of want to ask it now. You know, a lot of Americans especially who are watching this stuff from afar, they hear about all these different cartel factions, but the main question they have is like, how is this going to end? What could put an end to the cartel violence? These constant back and forth territorial disputes that lead to bloodshed and the importation of drugs like fentanyl that have killed hundreds of thousands, if not now almost a million Americans or something like that. Maybe it's not a million, but it's a ridiculous number of overdose deaths. I did a report one time in Mexico City talking to Chilongos about the corridos ban. And I asked them, yo, what do you think about, you know, Peso Pluma not being able to perform in tj? What do you think about stuff like that? And they're like, listen man, they're just rapping about the material circumstances of life in the north, in some of these more narco dominated states and communities. And the real solution is for America to legalize and regulate drugs and kind of make it so there is no illicit group controlling the inflow of drugs like fentanyl, meth, cocaine and Heroin into the U.S. do you think that regulation on a U.S. market level could lead to a reduction in cartel violence? And if not, what is the solution to stopping this?
[34:45]
B
My counter to that, I would ask Those guys. What about the Santa Rosa de Lima cartel? So the Santa Rosa Lima Cartel is a group out of Guanajuato, extremely violent. I mean, these are guys who will go to a bar full of people. If they suspect the bar is supporting their rivals, which is Jaliscanu generation cartel, they'll shoot it up, do a mass shooting, kill everybody, and they will record it on their phones and upload it. They're not major drug pushers. The key way they make money is oil smuggling In Guanajuato. Their symbol is a red triangle because it's called like the Bermuda Triangle in Guanajuato because that's where all the oil and the pipelines kind of work. They push drugs, but that's not their key things of how they make money. They have an alliance with Scorpion Group and the Myo Flacos of the Caloa Cartel, but they don't make money necessarily through drug trafficking. But they're extremely vi because their territory. When we're talking about Mexican cartels, I think the problem we run into, there's a U.S. problem set of how we analyze this, and then there's a Mexican problem set of how we analyze it. And unfortunately, I think we conflate the two and mix them too, because from the US Perspective, you're right, it's drugs. How do we stop drugs from coming over to. To the US Specifically fentanyl, because the fentanyl and the drug overdose. But from the Mexican perspective, it's more about violence and how can they reduce violence in the country. And now sometimes there's an overlap between both. For example, the Zeta cartels is a perfect example where there's an overlap where they're extremely violent and causing problem for the Mexico Mexicans. They're pushing drugs into the United States. We have to go after them and knock them out. But in other cases, it's like, let's look at Durango. So Durango, for example, one of the states in Mexico, is actually one of the safest states in Mexico. And the reason why is because there's basically one cartel that controls the entire state is Los Cabreras, which is a part of the Maito Flacos of the Sinaloa cartel. Durango is a huge area where they produce methamphetamines that then get smuggled into the United States. But violence is not high in Durango because there's one cartel that controls controls it. And so if the Mexican government perspective, specifically the Durango perspective, like this is fine. We don't want to be Sinhala, where There's a Sinhala cartel civil war and this argument of the drug flow and all that, if you regulate violence goes down. It's not an illicit economy. It's just not backed up by data. Unfortunately, that's an American problem set. That's an American way of analyzing it. Because again, cdn, the Gulf Cartel, even the two factions of Gulf cartel in the civil war, the Juarez cartel and the Adeyano Felix Organization of the Tijuana cartel, they don't control the drug production area, they just control the areas where smuggling happens. If these cartels in Michoacan, for example, fight for avocados and lime, and there's a huge problem in Michoacan because of avocado and lime trafficking into the United States, that's legal, but that gets smuggled into the United States where all these other groups are involved with. It's the same with human smuggling. I think it's, it's an idea of trying to analyze a domestic problem set of drug addiction to the United States that requires a very fundamental conversation. But I think people then say, well, this will also solve drug cartels. And unfortunately, when we look at the data and what they're involved in, that's just not true. If they again, avocados, it's not illegal to buy avocados and do trade with avocados, but they fight extensively Michoacan for the avocado trade.
[37:37]
A
So what could stop them?
[37:38]
B
One thing. I've been doing this for five years. I'm going to be very pessimistic to tell you I don't think we can. I'm just going to be flat out, I don't think we can solve this.
[37:45]
A
Do you think in the year 2300, they're still going to keep pumping out execution videos and, you know, going to war for control?
[37:50]
B
I think the best case scenario we can look at is maybe cool Colombia. I said, can we ever end gang violence in the U.S. well, it's reduced
[37:56]
A
a lot since the 90s and I,
[37:58]
B
I think that's the base case scenario,
[37:59]
A
we might be looking at a reduction in the magnitude.
[38:02]
B
Correct. And I think that's where Colombia. I, I, I've also believed like, by the way, if, like, just as the Mexican cartels replace the Colombian cartels, if we see a reduction in the Mexican cartel's power of influence. And what I'm looking at is the Brazilian gangs that are now becoming more cartels. The Brazilian angle is very interesting. They have a very strong dominance in West Africa and Europe. And the next thing I'M looking at if they do the same in the US But I think the Mexican cartels, I think there's too many problems, why we can't solve it. One just within the Mexican government. I mean, bribes, favors like that. But even, but it's not even that. I mean, because that's true. I mean, that's an important thing. But there's a phenomenal New York Times report that talks about the story of General Thien Fuegos. General Thean Fuegos was the senior army commander within the Mexican military. I mean, he was the top of the top of the top. And the Mexican government, unlike the US where you had like the Joint staff and you have the Secretary of war or defense that sends the civilian leader, Pete Hegseth, and then you have a chairman of the joint Chief of Staff, Staff General Kane and the Mexicans, that's not. They don't have a joint command. And so their cabinet is. You have the army chief and the Mexican chief and both of them are military people. They're not a civilian. So this guy, General Theon Fogos, was the top army commander. Read the New York Times article about this guy and what you read there, it's yeah, there was a cartel. It was the blo, which used to be a faction of the Sinal cartel before they split in huge wars. He was indicted in the United States and detained and eventually they had to let him go because the Mexicans threw a fin. And this was all during the first Trump administration. But if you read that article, people think that cartels control the corruption and that they bribe Mexican government officials. And these Mexican government officials like behold into the cartels and they do the cartels bidding. But if you read that story, it's like the question is not who really controlled who. Because what happened was General Theofegos one day said, you know what? I'm done with blo. Even though you guys have paid me million dollars, I'm done. I don't want to do you anymore. He sent the Mexican special forces after him. When the Mexican special forces went in the raid and there's this very. This is a very famous video because this is where the minigun, the Blackhawk firing the minigun, it looks he surrendered. He goes to the Mexican special forces, he says, hey, I'm Thien Fogo's guy. I'm his guy. What are you doing? Why are you going after me? And the Mexican special forces said, cool and shot him and executed him. And what that shows to you is who really controls who in that aspect. And I think that's not a conversation we're having, which is a lot of times the Mexican government is the corrupt official that tells the cartels, you will pay me a portion of your profit, and if you don't, I'm going to send the military after you to kill you, and I'll go with your rival.
[40:23]
A
And when you say the Mexican government, are you talking about like Shine Bomb and like the actual executive state function?
[40:29]
B
Oh, everywhere.
[40:30]
A
So we're not just talking about like the governor of Guanajuato or something or like the mayor of a small town?
[40:35]
B
Yeah, we're talking from mayor to president.
[40:38]
A
You're talking everything. People in Mexico City who look like that, they're white.
[40:43]
B
Let me put it this way. Can you really think of an argument that a single Mexican president that gets to that level that has not at one point in time ever had dealings with any cartels, you think even shooting Shine bomb?
[40:52]
A
Yeah, I just always thought of her as a more like polanco country club type of person that would have been sheltered from interacting with cartel bosses.
[40:59]
B
I think at that point, I think it's. I think it's always safe to assume that corruption is at any level within the Mexican government. Like, what is the most effective anti corruption body in Mexico is the Southern district of New York. And, you know, you love it or hate it, but, you know, we, we see sanction now much more. A lot of the sanctions that we're seeing within this administration targeted against Mexican politicians. Right? Really, really singling out their corrupt dealings.
[41:20]
A
So now really getting to the question of US intervention here. You talked about Colombia and how Colombia, you know, it used to be Medellin was a war zone. Now everybody with a fat crypto wallet is moving there to escape the dating scene here because they see it as restrictive and they want a more traditional lady. Things have changed. I mean, there's some guys getting scopamine, you know, and dying. So I would not advise going to Medellin if you're watching this, if you're looking to only procure ladies of the night, however, different topic. Colombia is doing great, more or less. There's obviously problems with the, with remainder of the Fark and the Jungle, and they're definitely still involved in narco trafficking. And the same thing could be said for Chiapas. I don't even want to go down the whole left wing, guerilla narco connection there. It's too much right now.
[41:59]
B
However, that is a great thing, though. That is a great conversation.
[42:04]
A
It's just the ideological, the contradictions there are insane.
[42:07]
B
It's insane.
[42:07]
A
But the DEA was instrumental in the Escobar take. Yeah, the Escobar takedown kind of led to an era of prosperity in Colombia. So do you think. Is that accurate to say?
[42:17]
B
Yeah, I mean. Well, it's kind of crazy where I think now with Petro Gustavo, the problem he's running into is we're being flooded with cocaine. Price of cocaine in the US Is going down. Based on all the last reporting we're getting.
[42:26]
A
I've read some reports about that too.
[42:28]
B
Yeah, it's going down because I built the. The whole Colombia feed in Mexico feed in my app for said rep. And I'm like, I'm very interested in this app. Like, hey, send me notifications about drug seizures for Colombia and Mexico, because we had the country feeds in there. There's so many that I'm like, wait, okay, hold up. Getting circular reporting. And then I go through and I do an investigative report. And it's just like, I think in the last 48 hours, Mexico, just in the Pacific coast, have announced two major drug seizures of at least 5 tons of cocaines in two different vessels in just 48 hours.
[42:55]
A
Coming from Colombia from.
[42:57]
B
Yeah, Colombia. The Pacific. No, well, actually, well, Colombia or Ecuador, and they kind of go through up the Pacific coast either to Mexico or the United States. And a lot of this is handled by the Mexican cartels.
[43:06]
A
So they're still pumping coke into the US The Colombians. But it's not like carnage in the
[43:10]
B
streets like it used to be. It's way. I mean, I think anybody objectively can look at Colombia say even with all the problems they have, they're still violent. It's infinitely better than where we're at. Like, I've been to Cali, I've been to Medellin. Love it. I think Colombia is a magical country. Same with Mexico. I family there. But it's way, way better than, than anything we've kind of seen in the past.
[43:27]
A
And you think that Mexico could get to that point, like, maybe in the coming decades if there was really good collaboration between the federal government and the DEA with like, the Mexican army and Special Forces.
[43:35]
B
There's two aspects. We have to analyze it. I mean, yes, there's always grain. And I'm all, look, I'm not trying to advocate U.S. special forces. That's not, not at all. And I think most people need to understand, understand there is extensive cooperation between the Mexicans and the U.S. right. And this isn't a battle of, like, who can do it better. The reasons why we can't solve this necessarily. One is, one I said is the corruption. It's so invasive that it's impossible really to, to do. But two, I go back to this argument I made about Los Queenis, right, About the financial aspect. Like if you literally were to grab every single dollar that the Queenies have ever dealt with and removed it from the Mexican economy, the Mexican economy collapses overnight. Look at the sanctions that the US have done in Mexican financial institutions. I believe there's three. Really? And the total assets, I think of all three, maybe $15 billion. Come on man, that's pennies to the dollar to what we're dealing with in this problem set in Mexico. That's why like people say go after the money. Go after the money. Yeah, well we can't. Why? Because if we do well, what economy is left?
[44:31]
A
You mentioned that drugs are not a small portion of it, but you mentioned like limes, avocados, oil and other stuff, stuff like that. Are drugs still the primary?
[44:38]
B
Yeah, I don't want people to misunderstood. Yeah, they're still a primary aspect.
[44:42]
A
So theoretically if you look at heroin and fentanyl addiction, a lot of that came as a result of big pharma and you know, opiates and stuff like that. So if we had great healthcare here and mental health treatment, maybe we wouldn't have such a drug addicted, sick society in 100 years. It could be bilateral prosperity and Americans can still get their cocaine, which, you know, it's not good, but it doesn't kill. It's not Fentanyl.
[45:02]
B
Yeah.
[45:02]
A
Marijuana, cocaine. There's a few drugs that Americans I think will kind of always want. But you know, it's different than banging fentanyl or drink into your arm on the street.
[45:09]
B
I would even say like if we look at the marijuana, like people will look at marijuana like yeah, there's has been a, obviously the, the trans border smuggling of marijuana plummeted. But what have we seen is that a lot of organized crime groups just move the marijuana productions from Mexico up to the US and so actually the Chinese triads actually have a huge control of a lot of the illegal marijuana farming here because they're just trying to get away from the taxes. Right. Because they go so. Right. And so actually if you talk to any park ranger, strangers, they'll say, yeah, we run into illegal marijuana farming all the time. So again it's like I agree with you and again there's a conversation and I would agree with you, like people would put the Mexican cartels and fentanyl and I Said Chapitos. No, no. It's like, let's be real. It's Purdue. They're the ones who caused this with the opioids. I mean, it's. It's insane. I think there's been a huge push in the US to create. I think there was this medical study. I had to go back and look at it because I remember I saw it. It wasn't these crazy medical studies where like they got a spine of a fish or something like that. And then they did all these testings and they injected, infected with things. But what did they find with all these crazy medical tests that people like, see, this is fraud, waste and abuse. No, what did they find? A non opioid painkiller. Right. Non opioids. So you don't get addicted to it. That right there is probably the best ways we can get people off of opioids imaginable. But I think to your point, what we've seen in the fentanyl, because fentanyl has dropped in the US from a consumption and even smuggling into here. And there's. I think I have a lot of suspicions why that actually really happened. But that's why we've seen a huge surge in cocaine and now the price of cocaine is more plummeting. But to your point, I think there's a way we can kind of manage this in a way where we have to acknowledge, look, just like gang violence, we're never going to rid of it, but how do we reduce it? And I think that's the Mexican. How do we get there? And the US Perspective is how can we kind of reduce the drug smuggling? And then from a domestic perspective that's not necessarily talking about Mexico is like, how can we treat drug addiction in the US and make it much better? And how we approach that. And we're never having those conversations because it's easier just to say, oh, just blame the Mexican cartels. Wait, wait, wait. We have a lot of problems here that we need serious conversation, but there's no politician who wants to talk about it.
[47:05]
A
I think this all connects back to what you were saying when you're talking about the horrible Zetas video and what they were saying before the execution about being these like Robin Hood style figures that are giving jobs to the poor and providing economic opportunity to these rural communities that have been abandoned and they're just meeting a demand that already exists because of US drug addiction. I'm sure that you've talked to people in Mexico, especially like, especially Mexico City, when you ask them about the cartels they almost laugh at you. They're like, well, why do you people do so many drugs? Why do you think that we have this issue? And I think that sort of mentality enables cartels to recruit. And so I want to talk about El Mencho's life.
[47:39]
B
Yeah.
[47:39]
A
And how that plays into that, because he had some experience here in the US Selling drugs, got deported. I kind of want to back up a bit. Who was El Mencho before becoming a cartel boss?
[47:47]
B
I mean, you can look at his story and say, you know, he came here as an illegal drug smuggling. A lot of those operations was detained, deported. I believe it was in San Francisco Memory Service Group and Redwood City, a
[47:57]
A
huge mass death operation.
[47:58]
B
Because it goes back to this idea, to your point. It's. It was a huge economic opportunity for a lot of them where I think in Mencho had his break. Like, how do you make not only the most powerful drug cartel in Mexico, but the most powerful criminal organization in the world? And I think it's because of his connections with the Valencia Gonzalez family that his. His wife that then they got separated. I believe in 2018, was his Rosalinda. That family controls all the money. So when he was deported, he was kind of dude, still doing all the drugs. Drugs here, like 15 years, not even like 10. This was a huge explosion in growth that it just, I think, caught a lot of people off guard. But what it shows to El Menchu is that he had a very. From a psychological perspective, he was very unique in his game. He did that. Yes. He came from the Millennial Cartel. In the past. Yes. In the Millennial Cartel was kind of this long history. But even. Even with the Millennial Cartel, they never got to the power of cjng. I mean, cjng. And still to this day, even after his death, right now, they're still the same. That's where we had to do it. And I think El Mencho was from a power. Dyn Dynamics, from a business perspective. He knew how the money and the guns intertwined. He knew the network and the families. He knew the corruption and the politicians. And he knew how to play everybody against each other to enable him to grow to the power figure that he is now. And I think that's why it's just a fundamental aspect of his. Of his life that we need to look into. It goes into something about him that I think few really understand. And we heard rumors that maybe there was targeted operations against. Against him. But for the most part, outside of the op, when he was detained in the U.S. there's really not hard evidence to show that even he was targeted by the Mexicans until this operation that killed him. To be honest, I don't even think the Mexican government was really well aware of.
[49:34]
A
So he was moving really secretive.
[49:36]
B
How many pictures do we have of him?
[49:37]
A
Like four or five. Right.
[49:39]
B
That's not normal. I think people need to understand, like I've tracked cartel members on their social medias. Dude, they upload things all the time, especially when they're the lower guys now. Once they start rising up in the ranks, then they're like, oh, pop sack. Like, let me think for a second. Right. But obviously he came from a different era. I mean, this idea that he had kidney failure was kind of always reported, but we had no hardcore evidence of a lot of the things about him. And that just shows that he was able to operate very secretively in the shadows, but even still was able to influence large segments of America and Mexico just, you know, by his desires and wishes and. And gids.
[50:12]
A
You mentioned social media among some of the younger guys. Yeah, sometimes I'll just open my Instagram or Tik Tok feed and I'm stuck in cartel gram for like two or three, three days. Is that real? Like the videos of those small planes dudes drinking beer on the small planes rolling around these valleys, tossing packs of fentanyl out the window.
[50:27]
B
There's some that obviously like steal it. So there's a huge community. There's one. They've been. They historically were very accurate. I think they kind of quiet down because there's a lot of violence going on because of the Sinaloa cartel civil war. But there's a called Baduato Caloa and that's the birthplace of El Chapo. There's a lot of the aviation community there. Yes, they do that because there's people who steal it and just do it for like the engagements. But if you know where to look, you can find these networks. That's how I find a lot of them. And actually some of my sources even come from these people because I know kind of where to find them and talk to them about it. It's also once you kind of break into the mold, it's not hard just using Instagram, WhatsApp or Telegram to just buy drugs and have them sent directly to you. No agency was ever going to find out. You can find where they sell drugs into Mexico and they'll mail it over to the US for a couple hundred pesos. But as long as you know where to look and you pay the fees and you who to talk to. And these guys market this. For example, the human smugglers. I think a lot of times when we're talking about human smuggling, think, oh, it's the cartels. Okay, wait, wait, take a step back. Are there certain cartels are much more involved in human smuggling than others? Yes, but for the most part, human smuggling is done by local and family networks, criminal networks that pay a fee to the cartels to operate in their plazas. But what do these guys do specifically on TikTok, they will upload videos of them smuggling migrants into the United States. And what they do, is that the reason why they do this? Like, see, we're successful even now during the Trump administration. We're very, very successful. See, look at all these videos. I'm getting them, I'm passing border patrol, I'm passing. Everybody reach out to me, pay me, and I can get you through. Even now with the Trump administration, that is a huge focus. It goes back to marketing and these cartel members. Now others from the drug perspectives, the same. They will upload their videos of speed. There's a very famous Moroccan. If once you find him, you know who he is, he will upload videos left, right and center of him and his speedboat smuggling drugs into Spain and France all the time. And he even tags other drug creators and content creators that then you can go over to them, follow them, DM them, and buy drugs directly. Directly from them.
[52:15]
A
So this whole thing isn't really happening, like, in the Internet underground. No, this is all on the surface.
[52:20]
B
People focus on the dark web. Like, I. I was funny, I was talking to someone. What about the dark what, dude, Just take a step back. If you want to buy drugs, you think you're going to figure out how to use the dark web? Get Instagram, find out how to talk to these people, and you buy it that way. Or Facebook. It's not this dark web, secretive, underground, like, oh, my God. And I think that's a misconception about drug cartels and just drug trafficking. They're in the 21st century, guys.
[52:43]
A
Well, I think so much of that misconception probably ties into the lac of reporting on it. It's really dangerous to cover this stuff in Mexico. I think outside of the Gaza Strip, it's the second deadliest place to be a journalist. The moment you step into covering narco affairs, you basically put your life on the line. Like, even I have a Spanish language channel in Mexico. And one of the first things they said is, like, we don't really want to cover cartel stuff because we live here. And it's just if you really dive deep into that world, they can get you touched anywhere in the country.
[53:09]
B
Yep.
[53:09]
A
It seems even in Mexico City, in neighborhoods that look like Bushwick, Brooklyn, there's still corruption on all levels, you know. So being here in the US do you feel like you're at, at an advantage?
[53:19]
B
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And I think that's something I've talked to others like there's a reason why a lot of the corruption aspects. Mexican journalists can't cover it because if they do, they get targeted. And I wouldn't even say just by the cartels. I would even say it's by government officials who use the COVID of cartels to just silence people in, in, in honest reporting.
[53:38]
A
Can you think of an example of that happening?
[53:40]
B
I would say anytime a journalist gets killed in Mitan, it's because of that.
[53:43]
A
Because a government official doesn't want the
[53:46]
B
story to come out so they direct
[53:47]
A
the police to kill a person and
[53:48]
B
then they use a cover up or they even use the cartel said, hey, cartel member, this is a target I want you to kill to the police, hey, I want you to execute this guy.
[53:54]
A
How much do you think they pay for something like that?
[53:56]
B
In pesos? 10,000 pesos maybe. Or even less. Like the guy who killed the European mayor, I think he was a drug addict, if memory serves me correctly, that they just grabbed him across the street and said, here's some money, here's a gun, go kill the mayor of Udapuan who was this huge figure of fighting corruption and all that. And it didn't take that much to kill the mayor of Udopan. So you're going to tell me if the mayor of Udapan, who has this whole national figure, this national presence, this national media, is willing to be assassinated? To your point, you don't think a journalist isn't going to be targeted? And then what does that do? And oh, by the way, it's not only that, but a lot of times I've known this where Mexican journalists, there's two aspects, either literally will go out to the cartel and say, what do you want us to cover? We don't want our people to get killed. You tell us what to cover. And there's others that get straight up paid by the cartel, cartel members to push stories that they want them to push.
[54:39]
A
So it's almost like a media blackout. Unless you're talking about Cartelgram and which is the opposite of a media black.
[54:44]
B
But even, but even in Cartelgram and all that, you could Fall into the propaganda piece of it. Like what is actual and what's propaganda? And then that's where I go back to my original comment, which is the aggregate, right? It's like in the room. It. And it's really trying to focus more on the aggregate. To your point, for example, you want a media black hole, Chiapas. I mean, you mentioned that I have a hard time knowing what's going on in Chiapas. And I. I do this every day, but that's the whole point. And I think there's this idea, even with social media, where things get out. And there is a lot where you know how to look, but a lot of information does not get out. A lot of information just either because of lack of social Internet or just because of just how hard it is to. And people are afraid to upload things because they are afraid to get targeted.
[55:21]
A
And the Zapatistas have a very strict control of media there.
[55:24]
B
So you have that. We talk a lot about the drug trafficking and all that. Right. And when I was talking about these regional commanders and all that, these, these are like the factions and the sub factions, right? And they have. Those are the guys who control the guns. So, for example, Jardinero has another guy under him called El Serio, who somebody else I'm noticing is growing. He's doing a lot of operations in Morelos recently. I've kind of noticed that against the Maito Flacos. You can look at the Metros, for example. They have guys that they send over to Zacatecas, and there's all these factions and sub factions and groups. And then, you know, and they really break it down and it's almost like an insurgency. And you're looking like, okay, we have isis, but then this province, and then this province has this commander and all that. That's how they operate. And I mean, I wrote a piece about this, literally about the militarization of drug cartels. And I think to your point, because they are able to then leverage that to really silence people at their women, at their discretion. Because the Mexican government doesn't have what we would call the monopoly of violence, which is what makes a government, what makes a nation state is like the government has what we would call the monopoly violence, or the only legitimate authority that is able to apply violence.
[56:19]
A
I got you.
[56:20]
B
So.
[56:20]
A
So the Second Amendment, the way libertarians see it in the US prevents that from happening.
[56:24]
B
Right. So, for example, like, I mean, look, I'm not trying to make. The idea is the president can order the military to conduct operations against the island, Iran or the drug cartels or Maduro. That's what we would consider the monopoly of violence, the state. When the police with guns can detain you, who can, you know, like in broad sense, the problem in Mexican cartels, that's completely broken down and that's the new problem set that we're dealing with, and that's militarization of the drug cartels.
[56:48]
A
So going back to some of the work that you've done and the risk level, have you ever been threatened after writing a piece or following a certain lead?
[56:54]
B
No, not really, but I think it's because of what you said. I'm an American citizen and you know, and generally that does give you a little bit more leeway. But I wasn't really. I mean, some people might say something, but not necessarily credible from my perspective.
[57:04]
A
But you've never had a security concern?
[57:06]
B
No, no, no, no, I've not personally, no. I know of a lot of Mexican journalists who, who have. I've talked to them and they've been specifically threatened and a lot of them have to operate anonymously. You know, I find it interesting, this whole new term of citizen journalists. Like, I know people in Mexico that are citizen journalists who can't release their name because if they do, it's to your point. But I do believe it's also because of this aspect of I'm in the US and cartel members, I think people think like, oh my God, they're going to come in the US and bomb us. It's like, all right, like, let's take a step back. That's not necessarily their main focus here in the US or not. It's not the sicario. The guys with guns that go into the US Are going to shoot it up. It's the lawyers, it's the money laundering business, the cash business. That's what they do mostly in the United States.
[57:44]
A
So there's no guys like the Salamanca twins of Breaking Bad or Javier Bardem's character in no country for Old men who are roving the borderlands looking to assassinate cartel.
[57:53]
B
I mean, okay, do those exist? Sure. Really? Yeah. But, but, but I think everybody thinks that's what they do here. And it's like, okay, wait, wait, wait. That's like a minority, a small a. Like I've tracked cartel members in the US with kind of guns, and they do their shit. Right, got it. But that's not their primary focus here, guys. What are the primary focus here? It's to launder money. That's it. They want to move money for Businesses, Yes. You're making, generating billions of dollars in drugs every month, let's say, or every year. But you want to put it in the financial sector. You think you can do it with the guys who are sicarios with guns? Or do you need a law office, a cash business and professionals that know. Or the guys with like the glasses and the accountants who know how to make money, launder money and go through like the movie the Accountants.
[58:35]
A
So the US Is the last stop for the washing of the cartel money. So.
[58:39]
B
Or the first stop.
[58:40]
A
So you think that in Phoenix and LA and places like that, El Paso, there's a lot of fraudulent businesses that are just existing only to filter and wash money for the cartel.
[58:48]
B
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. But that's the main aspect, whether what you do here, again, I mean, these are billion dollar companies. They would be in the NASDAQ or the Dow or you know, the New York Stock Exchange generating insane amount of money. That's what they have to focus on. And I think that's when we talk about the U.S. by the way, the vast majority of the people that get detained crossing the border, smuggling drugs are U.S. citizens. They're U.S. citizens and they, most of the drugs get smuggled through ports of entry, through legal, legal trade. Right. They use the excuse of, because Mexico is our largest trading partner, which another reason why like shutting down the border and all that, like, be very careful what you wish for, they're our largest trading partner in our economy would stop overnight. They take advantage of, of that to move product. And then the way back, what the US Sends over to Mexico, guns and money, we make the guns. And so there's a lot of criminal elements in the United States. I know people are going to say Fast and Furious. I just have to address it. Fast and Furious are a couple thousand guns that happen during a certain time period.
[59:37]
A
What's Fast and Furious?
[59:38]
B
The Operation Fast and Furious during the Obama administration was an ATF program. Instead of stopping the guns, they were trying to track the guns. But a lot of the tracking was a complete disaster and they weren't able to track it. They lost it. And so it just ended up having like, where a lot of guns were being to cartel members. But what I think people don't realize is like, that's normal. There's a lot of criminal elements through straw purchases that smuggle guns into the United States. We're talking about tens of thousands of guns every year from the United States get smuggled into Mexico that then they use to fight either rival cartel members who are the primary threat or the Mexican government. So guns and money is what we send them. They give us drugs and maybe human smoking, other business products and they get guns. And these are two examples for people to understand broadly what a cartel is. Just in the broad suns, imagine the, the corporation Amazon and the, the Blackwater, right? The mercenary group in the US merge into one. That's what a cartel is. And then the other way that they do business from, from the U.S. you know, you're not going to find a guy in the streets of LA selling cocaine. Oh, I work for the SON cartel. That's not how they operate. What are they think of Maersk, the shipping container company, what do they do? They get products from Shanghai, let's say to la. They get a container ship, they fill it up with container and then they move it. And then the moment it reaches is la, then it's somebody else's responsibility to get it to the end destination. That's what Mexican cartels are. They get the drugs from mostly Colombia somewhere into the US or if it's fentanyl, let's say China or even if they produce it in Mexico, somewhere in the U.S. tulsa, Oklahoma, Charlotte, D.C. new York, Chicago, Louisiana. But once the drug gets there, the Mexican car say okay, they give it to the, let's say the gangs or the organized crime and they say it's your job to sell it to the Americans and then they just get cash. We kind of joke about this, but it's true. Like I've heard of stories where they literally, instead of counting the dollars, they literally, literally weigh it because it's just so much. But that goes back to the business here, the import export businesses, the money laundering, the fraudulent documents that kind of hide the, the way that they can traffic drugs through other products. That's what is their significant presence in the United States. Not necessarily the sicario.
[61:29]
A
Well said. So on a morality level you think those guys are evil?
[61:33]
B
Oh yes. I mean after covering them for years and years and years and just the sheer level of brutality and violence that they're willing to go to, I mean it's. Yeah, yeah. I mean look, they're businesses and they're making money, but it's like Purdue. Is Purdue evil?
[61:44]
A
Yeah, the most like evil people that I've interviewed were these two guys in Philly who had guns on their like waists. And they make this drug called Tranq, which is a combination of animal tranquilizer and fentanyl. And when you shoot it into your arm or any, anywhere, if you miss a vein it creates something called necrotizing fasciitis eventually, which makes your arm basically die and fall off. So people are hacking their own limbs off in the streets because they don't want to go pay to get an amputation because of a drug invented by these two guys. You talk to them and they say, well, you know what, if it's not me, it's going to be somebody else. I happen to think of this. But it would have been discovered eventually. In fact, we actually make better tranq than the next person who might make it wrong. Or add a third chemical that'll be even more comorbid. Or they'll say, or whatever the word is. And then they'll say, and those people whose arms fall off, well, they miss the veins, so it's their fault. Even people doing objective evil have a way of justifying it. And I'm sure you said with the cartel, they have the whole Robin Hood thing, but do you think on the core there's like a real evil at the core of cartel activity?
[62:44]
B
I think the problem we ran into is that narco culture and cartel culture and violence more importantly has been so normalized in Mexico that they use that as a justification, because it's been so normalized that they don't see it that way. I mean, look, I think to most people there is a lot of execution videos that get released every day. There's a lot of violence that happens. There's a lot of targeting of civilians, of killing of civilians. I mean, Mexico, over a hundred thousand people in Mexico are missing to this day. Mass graves are found in Mexico all the time. There was a famous extermination camp in Jalisco that was found hundreds of bodies and extermination camp that was literally there where they would just dissolve bodies at some point. Even in their mind, where it's justifiable in everything you said there is an absolute, just an evil component to it. And I just firmly believe that at some element that's the fundamental problem. And the narco culture, the narco corridos, as you said, it's a way to whitewash it. It's a. It's a way to just say this is acceptable. And even that aspect to me kind of infuriates me. But it's caused a situation where there's never going to be, unfortunately, as long as this continues, the political will to change it inside of Mexico is never going to exist because it's just been so normalized. And I do believe at some element we have to call them out for what they are. And yeah, there is an inherently an evil aspect of this.
[63:53]
A
Yeah, yeah, we have the normalization of violence here too through like drill music and what was called gangster rap. But it hasn't ever infiltrated the government. You know, it still remained on a street level. Yeah, I think that be one of the main differences there is. It's not only glorified for the street kids, but it's also embedded within the power structures. So it creates a sort of top down romanticization that is serving their interests because they don't care about those kids either.
[64:14]
B
I like that front footage you said the power structure because that's the key thing. It's not the truth inside of Mexico that matters. It sounds crazy. It's the perception. The cartel members thrive on perception. If they're perceived to be within the power structure, if they're perceived to be powerful, that's more valuable than the actual truth of the matter, how they can do it. And that's where you see cartel members really try to push very, very heavily within the culture and the news and society is to give this perception of power. Because the perception of power is what gives them the deterrence and that deterrence enables them to operate. And I think that's the fundamental issue. It's the power structure of that. And it's not a one answer fits all type of scenario. You have to analyze it dependingly in each scenario. But who has the power structure and the corruption of it? The cartels to the government or is it to the government to the cartel? And when we're talking about Mexican cartels and the violence and the war, there is not just the cartel war, it's dozens of conflicts spread across Mexico that some of them have nothing to do with the other. But that, that then creates this idea of the normalization of violence in the power structure that then allows them to thrive and make money in the drug
[65:10]
A
business and other RIP La pirata de la Cujacan. Yeah, that's my guy. He was one of my favorite Instagram comedians. We talked about the normalization of violence. It just made me think about how confusing it is for me because like you speak Spanish, you've been to Mexico a bunch, right? Mexicans are so cool and so trustworthy. It's confusing to me as someone who's never interacted with cartel members, how there's also this brutality in Mexican society that seems to surpass almost anywhere in the world. America is a really violent, antisocial place. But you don't necessarily have that same fringe of people doing the kind of thing they're doing.
[65:40]
B
It's also the scale. And I think the problem we're running into because people might say, well, what about all the mass shootings? Okay, got it in the U.S. got it tracking. But it's to the point that you're saying the scale, I mean, we don't have 100,000 people missing that are just presumed dead in a country that's significantly smaller in population than us. And the homicide rates that continue to increase and increase and increase, like the homicide rates in New Mexico are a problem. I, I think it just goes down to the greed, corruption. Like just think for a second if there is a scenario where a cartel member, a Mexican cartel, let's say the Sinaloa Cartel, even though they're civil war, like the Mexican New Generation cartel, hanged bodies on a bridge in la, I mean, just imagine the uproar that would exist in the United States because of that and the political pressure that that would put on to our government at the local, state and federal level to action and respond to it. And I think that's the fundamental problem in Mexico, that that has been broken down completely. And I think in Mexican society, if we're talking about violence, the argument then goes back to, I mean, you can make the argument that many may, probably many in Mexico would rather just have back in the day, the Guadalajara cartel, which is one cartel. Everybod making money, drugs get pushed into the US but violence is an imaginable, acceptable level. But the question then becomes, does the US care about that? And if I may, I mean, it goes back to the Sinaloa cartel civil war. I'll share my conspiracy theory for everybody.
[66:51]
A
Yeah, let's go.
[66:51]
B
You remember how I told this story, right? How Mayo Zambada was captured? They used the son of El Chapo, turned him into informant, flew him over to the United States. And this was during the Biden administration, right, with Merrick Garland. 2024. When I heard this story, how it happened, first of all, I didn't believe it until it became confirmed. And I was like, the first thing that we all said is like, oh, there's going to be war. This is going to cause a civil war. Especially once Maito Fraco, the son of my, came in charge. And it quickly showed that. And my conspiracy theory is, I think the US Government, but the Biden administration said that's exactly what we want.
[67:21]
A
Why?
[67:21]
B
Because they knew the Sinaloa Cartel was the main pusher of fentanyl into the United States. So if we cause a civil war, their ability to push fentanyl into the United States drops drastically. And look at the drug seizures along the border. There's a huge drop shortly after the civil war starts, meaning they're pushing less of the product.
[67:36]
A
Fentanyl overdose rates are at their lowest this year since 2020.
[67:40]
B
And we've. And when did that drop start? Look at the dates when it started to drop significantly.
[67:44]
A
So victory for Joe Biden.
[67:46]
B
You know, the whole movie construct of Sicario 2 is like how do we call a civil war? And people like oh, that's just Hollywood. And I'm just like, there is elements, I truly believe within the US Government that either actively plan for that or, or at a minimum don't give a if it happens. They don't care. And the logic is the Mexicans don't care if violence goes up. So why should, should we care? We just want fentanyl drops. We want fentanyl to stop coming.
[68:10]
A
So you think it's in the US interest basically to create an internal civil war in Mexico between cartels to keep them busy fighting each other so they have less time to import mass quantity of fentanyl so that less Americans die?
[68:21]
B
Correct.
[68:22]
A
Sounds accurate.
[68:23]
B
100%.
[68:23]
A
Is that a widely espoused theory?
[68:25]
B
Probably not. Look again, it's a conspiracy theory. Right. But if you're asking me from a non conspiracy perspective, you're telling me does cartel civil war weaken the cartels not only from the drug trafficking perspective, but even just the control of the the plaza. And does that it weaken them internally? Absolutely. I mean you can't look at the Sinaloa cartel and say they're doing great.
[68:43]
A
And plaza refers to individual territorial control zone.
[68:46]
B
Yes. So look, I know the Joe Biden, like that's a conspiracy theory, but if you're analyzing, taking a step back, did it serve US national security interest? Yes. Do cartel infighting serve American interests? Yes. Because what happens is they're unable they focus more on each other. And that's the thing. Cartels, their biggest threat is not the U.S. it's not the Mexican government. It's other rival cartels. Holistic new generation cartel. Who are their main rival Maito Flacos. Who do the Maito flacos mean Ry the alliance of Jaliscan Generation Cartel nos chapitos. The Maito Flacos have an alliance with Chapu Isidro, which is the Mezza Flores Cartel. They're also suspected of having an alliance with the CDN cartel. And that's kind of the beginning where I said the main difference. It's this idea of these two main groups are forming. I was talking to a very brilliant person who I think said it great. This great example. He said, what we're seeing in Mexico is almost like this high school or PE dodgeball. There's two teams, you got to pick one. And it's kind of this idea that we're starting to see that happening inside of Mexico. As long as they're fighting each other, is that now reducing their ability to push drugs in the U.S. now what's interesting is cocaine is the exception to
[69:46]
A
this because of Colombia.
[69:47]
B
That and I think because for so many years we've been focused on fentanyl that we missed the drop the ball on the cocaine. Like a lot of the sanctions during the Biden administration was very focused on fentanyl. Right now in the Trump administration is actually the oil. We haven't necessarily done a lot of focus on the cocaine, cocaine yet. But keep an eye on Ecuador because a lot of the drug and the cocaine that gets pushed to the US Is through Ecuador. And recently we got the first reporting of a joint US And Ecuadorian military operation in Ecuador targeting kind of a lot of the drugs and gangs that operate there. And the two main gangs are Los Lobos who have an alliance with Jaliscan new generation cartel Ilos, Choneros that have historically have had an alliance with the Sinaloa cartel and Lobo. Los Choneros are engaged in a brutal viola. Those both are also declared foreign terrorist organization. And you can kind of view them as almost like a proxy cartel war inside of Mexico.
[70:33]
A
Wait, that sound bit confused here. So if the blow is coming from Ecuador and Colombia and the fentanyl and some weed is coming from Mexico, what the heck's going on in the Caribbean with US bombing all those speedboats that are coming from Venezuela?
[70:43]
B
So the vast majority of the drugs that come through the US Is through the Pacific route. I think the last estimate is between 70 to 80% and then about 20 to 20, you know, 30% comes from the Caribbean route and some of them from Venezuela.
[70:56]
A
And we've been focusing a lot on that as well.
[70:58]
B
We there's been now a huge push now also in the eastern Pacific because the vast majority of the drugs come there. Like if you go to, let's say the border, Venezuela and Colombia, imagine you're in the New York Stock Exchange. You're trying to buy oil right now in the commodity market. Well, if you go down there, it's the same, but instead of oil you're buying cocaine. It's like bartering Like, I'll pay this. I'll pay this. No, this. And the price kind of goes up and down depending on the supply and demand. What the cartels really specialize, they're, they're, they're like the corporate, almost like the logistical planner. Somebody produces the cocaine. How can we get the drugs from, let's say, Colombia up to the US and that's what the cartels plan, either through their own organizations to do that or through third parties. And that's where you find these other little disparate groups. And so, for example, in Venezuela, what we saw a lot of the Venezuelan, Maduro, specifically, they dominated the air travel, the CESNAs, from Venezuela into Central America. This is when Juan Hernandez, the president of Honduras that was pardoned by Trump, pushed a ton of cocaine to the U.S. but that, that again, that's a perfect example of the corruption. Maduro threw the planes flying them to Central America. President Hernandez that Trump pardoned would get a lot of the cocaine and threw drug cartels, hey, I'm managing it. I'm going to push it through you, through my country, into Mexico, into the
[72:00]
A
U.S. so Maduro was selling drugs?
[72:02]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, or, and, or he created the infrastructure that enabled a lot of the drug trafficking to happen. And he also had his own areas where he was pushing the drugs. But even Maduro and the Venezuelan military, they were the logistical planners. Even if there was drugs going through Ecuador or Colombia, he controlled the managerial logistical aspect and the planning aspect. So even though it didn't come from, I think that's where a lot of analysts get it wrong. They think, oh, it didn't come from Venezuela. So it wasn't Maduro. Like, no, no, no, that's not how the drug trade works. It doesn't matter where it came from. It's who planned it.
[72:30]
A
One of the first conversations we had before the camera started rolling is what is accurate Cartel movie. Not entertaining, but which cart or we can say TV show. What piece of entertainment do you feel like is the most reflective of reality?
[72:41]
B
You know, I really, I'm a huge fan of the narco series. Like Mayo Zambada is a very key figure in this and I think the narco series. The premise of Sicario too, is the US government actively planning cartel civil wars. I don't think, even if it does confirm Americans would care. But if you ask me, does it serve US national security interests? Which is exactly kind of the premise of it, it does. So, you know, those would kind of might be my recommendations, but I think the drug problem and the cartel problem gets very oversimplified and there's so many layers into this that requires a lot of analysis to have a better understanding.
[73:13]
A
So my final question is kind of a curveball because you have expertise in both fields here or with both parties that I'm going to ask about. Who do you think would win in an Iwo Jima style firefight? ISIS or cj? Angie.
[73:24]
B
Oh, that's a good one.
[73:25]
A
Thanks.
[73:26]
B
That's a good one.
[73:26]
A
I think about it all the time.
[73:28]
B
You got me there. Because I'm going through the tactics and all that and how they fight.
[73:32]
A
Love Toyotas.
[73:33]
B
I would say isis. Why the political motivation, but more importantly how this new generation cartel, the most they've ever had is like Toyota up armored vehicles with Toyotas. ISIS actually had tanks, they had T55s and T72s in their arsenals. At the height of the ISIS in Syria, they were using tanks, BMPs, APCs. You know the cartels don't have that. Now cartels don't have large quantity of anti tank missiles. That's why we see like the M82 barrets, like the 50 cals anti material rifles. They use that instead of the anti tanks because they don't have large quantities. ISIS does. Oh, they had RPGs for days. And so in a way I think if we're just using from a quantifiable resources aspect, ISIS had tanks, cartels don't.
[74:11]
A
Would cartels do a suicide bombing?
[74:13]
B
No, but they would do car bombings. There is an insane increased amount of explosives, IEDs and car bombings. Actually a couple days ago they just released a video of them doing a car bombing against the Zaka state police, a police station.
[74:25]
A
Now are you talking setting a car on fire or IRA style keys in the ignition explosion or like park a
[74:31]
B
car, car get out and then from a distance detonate it? I've seen daisy chain against like, like the IEDs and they're all. And they just blow up right when the convoy goes through. And so this is a Jaliskanu generation cartel specific faction more than likely associated with the Metros that is doing a lot of this because they accused the Zacateca state police of supporting Maito Flaco's arrival. And that's where we see that. And they're a significant increase in car bombings and IEDs in Zacatecas right now because of that.
[74:55]
A
Did journalists ever reach a definitive conclusion about what was causing all of the feminists sides in Juarez?
[75:00]
B
I don't think so, but I just think that just highlights a complete breakdown of the rule of law.
[75:04]
A
You don't think it's like a la initiation?
[75:06]
B
I mean, look, I've seen terrible stories. I mean, for example, I know you guys like with Katarina Schultz, phenomenal journalist. She broke a story about baby trafficking. A terrible baby trafficking ring that exists in Aarus that sold babies into the US they targeted pregnant ladies and they would do rudimentary C sections, kill the motor. Rudimentary C section, take the babies and then sell them for adoption. Fake adoptions over to the U.S. to who? To American citizens.
[75:27]
A
And why were they buying them?
[75:28]
B
So the Trump administration really pushed this. There was a report on CBS News, Tulsi Gabbard, the office of Director of National Intelligence, reported on it. But this terrible baby trafficking ring, that was a CGNG LA Linez thing that was pushing babies over to the U.S. the problem is we have no idea about the U.S. england. This we have no detain, no arrest. There was a huge media attention on this from the Mexican side. Yeah, but who was buying it in the U.S. my assumption, I think what a lot of reporting is fake adoptions. They can make money, so that's why they did it.
[75:54]
A
But who's buying the babies in the
[75:55]
B
US well, it's fake adoptions. So people either willingly or unwillingly buying babies, thinking they're going through a legitimate adoption process, but in reality they're not. Adoption is very expensive in the US it cost tens of thousands of dollars to adopt somebody. Well, if you adopt from Mexico, it's cheaper, but it's still thousands of dollars that you could make. So you're like, oh, let me just adopt the baby from Mexico.
[76:14]
A
There's that many people looking to adopt
[76:16]
B
babies from Mexico, not from the U.S. yeah.
[76:17]
A
My first thought was like, like pedophiles are buying.
[76:19]
B
No, no, no, no, no. Ask anybody who's adopted a child child how much it cost them. I think somebody I remember was like, 25,000. If I go to you and I'm from Mexico, say, oh, instead of 25, pay me 10,000, you can just adopt directly from Mexico. What would you do? There you go, easy money.
[76:32]
A
Well, I think that situation you just described probably answers the evil question a little bit. I mean, if you're kidnapping pregnant mothers and killing them and taking their baby and selling it across the border, it's about as bad as it gets.
[76:42]
B
Exactly.
[76:42]
A
I also heard from a city council member in Tijuana that they have underground child sex slave layers, basically. And a lot of American pedophiles and pedophiles from across the world go to TJ specifically for that. For the soul purpose of doing like that.
[76:55]
B
Again, I'm not surprised at all. And it goes back to your evil comp. All they care about is the money. That's the most addictive drug money.
[77:03]
A
Yeah. You think it'll make you do worse things than anything else.
[77:05]
B
Okay, let me put it this way. Mexico, 90% of crime is not even investigated. The vast majority of homicides no getting even investigated, let alone convicted. And if they're not even going to investigate a crime, what's holding you back from committing it? Think about it. It's almost like in a way, the purge. If I have a. Even if outside of this crime, let's say you and I have a business dispute and it's going to take me 10 months, 10 years to solve it through court. Or I could just kill you and I win. What do you think? These people. And there's no punishment. That's. That's the problem. That the judiciary in Mexico is completely ineffective. And that's the glaring issue as well in this whole entire problem set for
[77:39]
A
Americans watching who have never been to Mexico. Would you advise that right now is a safe time to go down there?
[77:43]
B
I would tell anybody, look, I've been to Mexico, even covering this, and I track everything. Anybody who wants to go to Mexico, always follow the State Department travel advisory. The U.S. embassy in Mexico. These guys are professionals. The State Department does an excellent, excellent job of tracking all the threats. If there is a threat, they will notify you. They make it public and they will tell you. So when everything happened in Puerto Vallarta, they put a shelter in place. If you follow the tribal advisory, they have restrictions for US government employees. What I would tell people, if they're telling their employees, do not take this road, this road, this road, probably follow that.
[78:11]
A
But it's chill to go to like Guadalajara, Oaxaca, Mexico City, Merida.
[78:15]
B
Especially if you know people there and you know the area. Look, I've been to Juarez and Juarez is also extremely wide, but I know of the people there. I've been there as long as you're smart, just like anywhere else around the world and you follow the State Department, you'll be fine.
[78:26]
A
I love Juarez. Yeah, Juarez is fun. People there are cool.
[78:29]
B
Yeah, I love it.
[78:30]
A
I just like, I think that the Charles Bowden's book, Murder City and then immediately followed by the release of Sicario. Pretty bad PR for Juarez.
[78:37]
B
Yeah, I mean there's a lot of homicide, don't get me wrong, but it's It's a great city. I had a lot of fun there.
[78:42]
A
Definitely. El Paso is great too.
[78:43]
B
I love El Paso.
[78:44]
A
Okay, top five border cities on the US side.
[78:47]
B
Well, would you consider San Diego or I have to go like. No, I would consider San Ysidro. Well, El Paso is number one. That to me will always, always been the top. I like Calexico is really nice.
[78:55]
A
Yeah, I like.
[78:56]
B
Oh my God. What's the one? Oh my God. I'm Dragon playing. It's the. It has the same name in Arizona and Mexico.
[79:01]
A
Nogales.
[79:02]
B
Nogales. Thank you.
[79:02]
A
But they nickname, they renamed the Mexican one Heroic.
[79:06]
B
No, that's true. That's true.
[79:09]
A
Ass.
[79:09]
B
Other than when you live in like I lived in el Paso for 10 years. I was there because of the army and I was. When I was active duty stationed in el Paso for 10 years. It was great. I mean it's very affordable. Number one. So especially if you're starting off young. The people are great, the culture is amazing. I always tell people like, you know, it's, it's a great culture. It's such a pity that what's going on in Mexico. But even though I cover it, please don't take this video as that. I focus on a very niche topic but leave it at that. Yeah, don't broad based Mexico as a whole because of it.
[79:34]
A
Back to El Paso. Do you like dive bars and stuff?
[79:37]
B
Absolutely.
[79:38]
A
Have you been to that bar King's X by utep?
[79:40]
B
Yes, once. Yes.
[79:42]
A
It's a good one.
[79:43]
B
It's a good one. There's two big ones that are there. The country bars are really nice and it's always really cool to be there. What I love about the, the whole album Paso aspect a lot of times all the family lives right, right next to each other and so once you get kind of like, you know, we, we. I didn't have family there when I lived there, but when they would invite us to the birthday parties and all that and they were bandas, you know the mariacha bandas. Like the people, the, the tents, the beer, the pool parties and all. And you would just go there and you just have a great time. And my favorite tacos will always be tripitas. Have you ever had tripitas?
[80:10]
A
No.
[80:10]
B
Oh, it's like the pig intestine.
[80:12]
A
Oh yeah.
[80:12]
B
I've had this. So every time I go back to El Paso it was very rare to find it. Always have to go and eat that because I just love it.
[80:17]
A
Yeah, I've been shouting them out like incessantly for the past four years and hoping that there's. There'll be. And they actually let me throw the first pitch at the Chihuahuas game.
[80:25]
B
No way. Yeah.
[80:25]
A
Cuz they kept shouting them out all the time. I'm even kind of on tour right now, like on the weekends and I. We're going to like every major city, but I made sure they added El Paso on my birthday.
[80:35]
B
Oh, perfect.
[80:36]
A
April 23rd at the Lowbrow Palace. It's cool now too, because people are starting to cross back over to juarez.
[80:40]
B
Yeah.
[80:40]
A
After 2011, 2012, everybody in my generation, especially the old timers, were like, I'm never going over there.
[80:45]
B
I've flown out of the Juarez airport to go to Mexico. Like it's just way cheaper. Yeah.
[80:49]
A
Yeah. I do the same thing.
[80:50]
B
Yeah.
[80:51]
A
Well, Tijuana's having a big, big revival of the arts.
[80:52]
B
Yeah.
[80:53]
A
So I wouldn't be surprised if Juarez follows. But it might take some time.
[80:56]
B
Unfortunately a lot of the human smuggling aspect has kind of increased violence there. But hopefully a lot of the Mexican government is to clamp down and gets back to normal.
[81:02]
A
Anything else you want to say? You feel like I didn't ask?
[81:04]
B
No. Thank you so much for having me. This was great. I told you that this is the best place I could ever done a recording.
[81:09]
A
Loved it.
[81:10]
B
So thank you so much. Appreciate it.