Mark Gagnon (7:57)

Alrighty. Don't skip forward, guys, because I am on the road. World's fastest ad read coming at you. I'm gonna be in Bangor, Maine. Portland, Maine. Charleston, S.C. atlanta, Stroudsburg, Hoboken, Indianapolis, Buffalo, Raleigh, Poughkeepsie. Portland, Oregon. Fort Worth, Texas. Austin, Texas. Stanford, Philly, Levittown, Chandler, Arizona, San Diego. I'm also going to be adding Toronto, Montreal as well as was in D.C. and a bunch of other dates. You can get all that@the markagnon.com dates are in the description. Also in probably the comments of this episode. Go see me on the road. Come hang out. I'll be hanging out with everyone after the show. Come shake my hand, call me an idiot, whatever you want to do, I will be there. Additionally, I will be doing my one hour of standup comedy. I'm very proud of this hour. I'm really excited to share with you guys and it would mean the world if everyone could come on out. And what do you wear to a show on the road? That's a great question. You can go to campgoods co. That's right. We got merch, we got camp merch. We got hats, hoodies, T shirts. A lot of stuff is out of stock. Things have been selling like hotcakes. But we're going to be restocking everything in all the sizes so you can go there right now, get all the merch, get all the coolest clothing in the podcast game. We're going to be updating that site regularly. And if you come out to a show, I'd love to see you sporting some of the threads that we got up online. I'll see you guys there. Let's get back to the show. Yeah, I'm curious, could you take me just through like, a little bit of backstory? Not too much, but just kind of get me up to speed with, like, the nature of cartels in Mexico. If anyone's sort of unfamiliar with, like, how they kind of operate, what kind of weapons and weapon systems they possess, and more or less what their business is.

Chris Cappy (9:28)

Yeah, the cartels have increased their arsenal to a point where they're indistinguishable from, like a paramilitary force. And you could make the argument that they. The reason you could argue that they're a foreign terrorist organization is because, yeah, maybe they don't have a political goal insofar as their main goal is making buku bucks. But they're political in the sense that they control the. They administer areas. So you go through an area that might be.

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Chris Cappy (10:41)

If money is what it takes to get her back, we're gonna pay it.

Kaley Cuoco (10:45)

The secrets they hide.

Chris Cappy (10:46)

You can't talk about this, you can't.

Kaley Cuoco (10:48)

Write about it are the clues.

Mark Gagnon (10:50)

The mother's hiding something.

Chris Cappy (10:51)

I know it.

Kaley Cuoco (10:52)

To find her, tell me where she is. The stolen girl. New episodes Thursdays stream on Hulu.

Chris Cappy (10:59)

A checkpoint and so whether they want to be political or not, you could argue that they are just by the virtue of the fact that they administer and govern some areas with the goal, end goal being making money. And they have their fingers in. There's hundreds of thousands of people whose jobs in Mexico depend on the cartel. And they're very good at making themselves absolutely vital to a lot of people in Mexico's way of life. When you look at the polls of Mexico, a lot of times, 40, 45% of people in Mexico would love to work in partnership with America to destroy the cartels. And, and, and it's a by, with and through strategy. So not like unilateral American military action against them, but working with our Mexican partners. So the cartels, you've got a bunch of different cartels in Mexico. It's not like one organization like the Taliban, and it's just the Taliban. Now, I've spoken to a couple of special forces former Green Berets, who have explained the situation way better than I can. And they have outlined why this is a more difficult counterinsurgency mission potentially than like going into Afghanistan or Iraq. Because it's this fractured group and these different groups, these different cartel groups are at war with each other. But if we push them, they might maybe have a truce, work with, with, with each other. It's a mess of different factions that control different parts of the border. And the question is, what's the right way to get rid of them? Is it we stop demand in America or is it that we put the violence on them?

Mark Gagnon (12:58)

Yeah, it poses an interesting question because speaking with a few different people that have both worked with Mexican federales, basically on the side of the Mexican government, the Mexican police, and people that have worked with cartels, there are many different factions that are constantly at war with each other for control of territory and trade routes and basically access to drugs or weapons or whatever it is that they're trying to traffic. And by getting rid of one, you basically create a power vacuum where then the other ones can take over. And then by monopolizing that power, they actually get more powerful and more strong. So there's almost kind of an incentive to keep many different factions that are easier to kibosh and easier to control. But by taking out their competitors now, you can have one that has potentially hundreds of millions of dollars that then they can buy greater weapons illegally and then pose a greater threat. Then there's the question of by having a common unifying enemy. You could imagine all these different cartels saying, hey, if America is going to dry up our business, we can put aside our differences, come together to then fight the Americans.

Chris Cappy (14:07)

You're talking about the retaliation that we might face that I think Americans, we get stoked on, like, oh, we're gonna, we're gonna fuck the cartel up and they're not gonna even know what hit them. We also, I think, need to also think about what the retaliation from the cartel is gonna be and just be like prepared for those type of actions. Maybe we are ready to stomach that and we're down to do that. Great. But let's be prepared for targeted assassinations. Let's be prepared for drone strikes within American territory. Prepared for. We know that the cartel has permeated through. I'm going to pull up something that I think you're going to find to be a little bit eye opening. There's a map of the highly trafficked drug routes that I sent you. Okay. Have you seen this before?

Mark Gagnon (14:55)

I've never seen this.

Chris Cappy (14:57)

Let's look at where we are. So we're in a hita. This is what the dea, the Drug Enforcement Agency considers to be like one of the highly drug trafficked areas in the United States. And what we're looking at here is the corridors through which the cartel moves their drugs.

Mark Gagnon (15:18)

And they run on our highway systems.

Chris Cappy (15:20)

Right. And America has some of the best highway systems for, you know, it's, it's, it's for moving goods and it's, it's designed basically for what they're leveraging. Moving goods, moving material. We have this amazing interstate system that has made. This is why you hear everyone say that like every state is a border state now, because you gotta look up in Montana, all the way up north in Montana, the drug cartels from Latin America are moving. And sure, like we could take our share of the accountability and responsibility. There's demand and it's awful. And especially in some poor communities. No matter what the ethnicity, if it. There's Native American populations in Montana that are suffering from the drugs that are being moved up there. There's poor white communities, poor. Any ethnicity you can name are, are, are hurting for the fact that what they're doing is. I think it's interstate. What is that in Texas? Starts in Texas.

Mark Gagnon (16:30)

What was that?

Chris Cappy (16:30)

Can you zoom in a little bit? 45, 20 go down. Okay, so 35, so Interstate 35. What I was looking at, there's police reports of. You've got basically these tactical SWAT teams that are getting into firefights with cartel members on this interstate who are trying to get their drugs up to Montana from Texas through Mexico. And the reason they're doing that is because if you can get fentanyl, you can get your drugs up to Montana, you, your product is going to sell for such a premium and they're making a killing on that profit margin. If you look up Montana cartel. Yeah, Montana cartel should probably bring it up.

Mark Gagnon (17:19)

Interesting. So this one even from NBC. Mexican drug cartels are targeting America's quote, last best place.

Chris Cappy (17:26)

The Great Plains is just a beautiful part of the United States, just like sprawling. A lot of nuclear weapons are actually located out there. Our silos that we launched from. So the cartel is making, they've been making inroads here for years. And it's tough because you got the jurisdiction, different jurisdictions of you got your local agencies, then you got like your state agencies. And they're all trying to coordinate. And what they're looking at is this map that we're looking at that I had only just recently learned about through one of my great researchers, Diego Assettuno, who brought this to my attention. And when I saw this, I was like, holy crap. Let's look at New York area that we're in.

Mark Gagnon (18:07)

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Chris Cappy (19:39)

So they're trafficking drugs right through here.

Mark Gagnon (19:43)

And how are they getting these trucks through the border?

Chris Cappy (19:45)

It's not trucks. They're using like just regular vehicles and cars.

Mark Gagnon (19:51)

Okay, so they have coyotes or whatever their system is. They'll say, you know, maybe it's a US citizen that's also working with a cartel. Maybe a Mexican code, you know, dual citizens as well.

Chris Cappy (20:01)

There's long, deep tunnels that they've dug under border cities that are, you know, straddling the border. And they, and there, I can't bring up the article probably right now, but they're, they're getting into firefights. They're getting, they're put. When you pull over a cartel member on the highway, they're not going to be taken prisoner because, yeah, they're getting sent to an El Salvador prison, which they should be sent to, right? Maybe.

Mark Gagnon (20:31)

Yeah.

Chris Cappy (20:33)

So they're, they're pulling triggers.

Mark Gagnon (20:35)

Wow.

Chris Cappy (20:35)

And this guy, this cop, this story that I read, he took a bullet straight to the bulletproof vest. It. Fortunately he survived and he just, merc just destroyed the cartel member, killed him but then what they're left with is a vehicle filled with drugs that they're trying to get up north.

Mark Gagnon (20:55)

Wow.

Chris Cappy (20:55)

It's so. The way I look at it is like they're. These cartel guys are trying to run the gauntlet. They're basically trying to just bat out of hell, get up north, and get to where they can drop off the drugs and to the distribution centers. This. When I saw this, it visually put it kind of made things. I will. I'm a map guy. That's my tism. I got my Riz. I got my. My Riz. A little bit of Riz. But I got a lot of Tis. And maps make things clearer to me.

Mark Gagnon (21:29)

Yeah.

Chris Cappy (21:30)

And, like, puts it into context sort of like at the higher level.

Mark Gagnon (21:34)

Oh, you're. I mean, have you read Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall?

Chris Cappy (21:38)

Yes, yes, yes.

Mark Gagnon (21:38)

All the time.

Chris Cappy (21:39)

And then I put that in the back of my studio for a long time, and then he goes through each area and the geopolitics of it. Yeah. How you're, like, sort of predestined.

Mark Gagnon (21:50)

Yeah. Those are. Those are the cards you're dealt. Your geography are the cards. And then how you play it is, you know, the government is the player, and, you know, everything makes so much more sense when you're like, you know, even, like, the Ukrainian Russia conflict that we spoke about, once you look at, like, the geography, you're like, oh, I get why these sides are behaving, because they have different cards, and they're trying to play their hand the best they can. And when you see this, you go, okay, I see what's happening. And I think that the border situation, the border conversation is so, like, politically volatile because there's a ton of different things that are getting conflated all at once, where it's like, okay, you have, you know, a Mexican migrant that comes over with his family, and he's got two young daughters, and he's, you know, working at a restaurant, or maybe he's working on a tomato field in Florida, and he's been here for 10 years. And, you know, they're part of the community, and most Americans are like, all right, yeah, this guy's making a living. He's helping the people out. And maybe he doesn't have all the specific paperwork, but, you know, he's low on the list of. Of illegal migrants that we need to be worried about. And then you have stuff like this where it's like violent cartel members trafficking drugs to go, you know, ostensibly to annihilate communities kind of by their own Volition, because, you know, they're poor and destitute and looking for some type of escape, which I can, you know, sympathize with. But simultaneously, they're getting it through these criminal means. And that I think everyone can be on board with, like, hey, we gotta stop this. And unfortunately, they're both kind of being lumped into this large mass that's difficult to parse. So just looking at this topic specifically, it seems like the first, you know, course of action is, hey, let's shore up the border and stop violent cartel members, which I can imagine is probably a small minority of the people coming over, but is a very important problem to address. So I can see why Trump's administration was like, hey, let's stop this part specifically. Now for the cartel guys coming over, I'm curious. They're probably finding new ways to get drugs over now that things are kind of become more contested. Like, I've seen even, like, the submarine footage. Like, that was a few years ago, but I'm sure they're probably ramping that up and trying to get more creative. Are they. Are they trying to come through Canada? Like, what else are they doing?

Chris Cappy (24:00)

What you're talking about is the ports of entry. And so they try to use narco subs, which are these. If you type in narco sub, you could see them. There's these little, like, they barely go under the water and they'll carry. There's this crazy, sick video of the Coast Guard boarding team just knocking on the door and being like, get the fuck out.

Mark Gagnon (24:24)

Yeah.

Chris Cappy (24:24)

And arresting these guys. I mean, like you said there. You have to. I think you made an important distinction. There are people who are trying to escape the violence. They had their father, they had their mother, brother killed. There's 120,000 people going missing each year in Mexico.

Mark Gagnon (24:45)

120,000?

Chris Cappy (24:45)

Yes.

Mark Gagnon (24:46)

Wow.

Chris Cappy (24:47)

Just disappeared. Don't know, you know, just disappeared by the cartel. There's mass graves that they're finding now. Yeah, throughout.

Mark Gagnon (24:55)

Max, talk to me about that.

Chris Cappy (24:57)

Just recently, they found a. I think it was at a school or ranch. Sorry, it was at a ranch. And they found all this clothing, and then they found the bones. And they'll. They'll routinely find trucks on the side of the road just filled with dead bodies, decomposing. And so I. Yeah, I went to the front line of Ukraine and I reported from there. I can tell you I would not go to Mexico and try to, like, report from the front, from anywhere about the cartel issue, because I would just. I would get killed. I get Colombian necktied with my tongue out my ass. Like they don't fuck around and you don't know who to trust. In Ukraine I went there, you know, this is this team, that team. It's awful. But there's uniforms, right? Yeah, it's like it's a different conflict and there I think I would pretty quickly get disappeared.

Mark Gagnon (25:53)

Yeah. I mean even the Mexican police, some people refer to them as the fifth power. Right.

Chris Cappy (25:58)

When there's a big clearing operation, when the Mexican marines go in and they just. Because they'll destroy the cartel, they go in and they put cartel bodies in the ground. What they do, the first thing they do is they go and they disarm the police because they don't trust the local police. And there's a huge problem of corruption on both sides of the border with the cartel. Worse probably than worrying about like Russian sympathizers in Ukraine. So yeah, it's like a problem that. It's like a cancer that has metastasized. Is that. Am I a doctor?

Mark Gagnon (26:34)

Sounds right.

Chris Cappy (26:35)

Yeah.

Mark Gagnon (26:35)

And not to mention the amount of money, like it's difficult to really contextualize how much money these fucking guys have.

Chris Cappy (26:42)

I think it's 15 billion that some of the estimates are for the revenue that they drive the cartels. And it's mind boggling. And I mean, wow, between.

Mark Gagnon (26:58)

I mean this high end on here is saying potentially 49 billion. I mean it's like, I mean that's the GDP of men of some countries. That is remarkable. I mean, yeah, it's difficult to really, like, I think that's an important distinction to also put on this if people aren't aware. Obviously this is across many different cartels, but ostensibly there's some individual cartels that are making billions of dollars in rev every year. And with that you pay off local police, you can pay off politicians. I mean there was a Mexican president recently that was in office for like a couple months and then was found hanging from a bridge. Like the access that these guys have because of their insane wealth is sort of unparalleled. And I wonder how they even keep, you know, American border patrol immune from that type of corruption.

Chris Cappy (27:42)

They don't. There's. I looked into it there, you know, in the last 10 years, many times fold more prosecutions of border patrol agents as well as local judges on the border.

Mark Gagnon (27:55)

Wow.

Chris Cappy (27:55)

Yeah. All kinds of corruption in America as well. Way worse in Mexico, but you could see why. So the best possible, the best of all possible worlds is that the United States and Mexico partner together. They Work together with each other to destroy the cartels. Right. The biggest hang up to that is corruption. You could say whichever, whichever side. But like corruption is what prevents that. Because how do you partner with somebody if you do not trust them? And so we've seen us Special Forces are now we're trying to do some trust building exercises. They sent Green Berets to Mexico recently to train with the Mexican soldiers. And the big story was like that they're going there to fight the cartels or something. No, it's not that. What I think was fascinating about that is how public it was, how big of a hullabaloo they made in the press about it. And also that it's a huge intelligence sharing opportunity. Because when you get. It's human, you get people on the ground, people. We're way more likely to share information with each other when we're with each other than for me to tell my commander or tell who tells his commander, who tells the Americans, no, like you and me, let's get together, let's train and you tell me what's really going on down here. Huge opportunity for intelligence sharing. Also, the Americans are flying. If you look up this, the fascinating thing about this, the MQ9 Reaper drones over Mexican territory. The New York Times released this story. I feel like nobody really read this insane story. CIA expands secret drone flies over Mexico. So the New York Times spoke to CIA operatives which to me that essentially the New York Times has done this a ton where they're basically the stenographers for the CIA. They're telling you exactly what the CIA wants you to know and they get the exclusive. The CIA gets to tell you really what this article reads to me like they're not talking to us, they're talking to the cartel. They're telling the cartel we're watching you.

Mark Gagnon (30:13)

What are the highlights from the article? What stuck out to you?

Chris Cappy (30:17)

So what's different than before is that we're flying actual tons of US unmanned drones over Mexican territory, which is not. We were not doing that. That's considered breaking their sovereignty. There is good evidence to suggest maybe Mexico okayed it. We don't know. Maybe not. Maybe totally not. But there's reasonably maybe they did. You're trying to create strategic ambiguity with your adversary so they don't know how close is America working with Mexico? Are they aligned on this? Is us doing this unilaterally. What we, we don't know that for sure. We know for sure is that the CIA wants the cartel to know that they're watching them.

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Chris Cappy (31:58)

Spotify and what that does is that forces the cartel or it could make the cartel change their operations. And when you change your operations, it's easier to get intelligence on them.

Mark Gagnon (32:11)

Right. That's interesting. And what, what incentive would like the Mexican president or like the Mexican government at large have for not okaying some type of joint partnership with the US.

Chris Cappy (32:21)

To stop the cartels though all the communications from the Mexican the new she's brand new Shane Bomb. She is just recently the president. And her incentive for not cooperating would be because you don't want to appear like you're not. Your sovereignty is not being respected. Don't you? If I'm Mexico's president, you cannot appear like the United States is unilaterally doing flying drones over your territory, doing whatever the hell they want.

Mark Gagnon (32:53)

Right. And then furthermore, you know, inevitably there's going to be, you know, I guess innocent civilians or like quasi innocent that could be caught up in some type of, you know, skirmish with the United States and basically the Mexican government is saying, hey, I'm not going to give some other country permission to go to war against our citizens.

Chris Cappy (33:12)

Yeah. Or if America escalates or even shuts off the border and hurts the cartel's revenue, who are they going to take that out on?

Mark Gagnon (33:19)

Yeah, exactly. What happens within their own country? Can they stoke some type of civil war?

Chris Cappy (33:23)

There's already a cartel on cartel war that was exploding right before Trump got elected because the United States helped arresting one of the cartel leaders for the Hawaii, I believe it's the Hualisko cartel. If I get that wrong. One of the major cartel leaders was arrested by the dea and it was a betrayal by another cartel. He says it was betrayal by another cartel leader. So there's this huge cartel on cartel war. The way I'm looking at it is there's a lot of that is being. It's like a maximum pressure campaign against the cartels by America. Get these cartels to fight each other. Start flying drone missions. What are the drone missions for? It's building an op picture. It's building an operational picture for, you know, you need, if you're going to strike them, which we don't know if America is going to do, cruise missile that route or not. But if you're going to, you need to build a picture of just the mundane routine of like, okay, you know, Carl gets up at 5 in the morning. He goes to his cartel drug facility at 6 in the morning. He's there until 8, goes home. The, the handoff happens at this. Like, you need to know all of that finite minutia. You need to build that picture out before you do any strikes or even to give the Mexican authorities the information they need to do the strikes.

Mark Gagnon (34:54)

Yeah, I just, like, so you have to be so tactical with something like this. Like, it's almost in many ways way more complicated than any other conflict that's happening globally, I guess, to an extent, because the lines are so blurred. It's like, you know, you're sending. If you were to actually do like a strike, it's like, okay, what is the fallout from that? Are you going to send troops and deploy them into Mexico? Like, it's just creating a powder keg. And then how do the Mexican cartels retaliate? Like, they're not going to operate like a traditional military force. And I wonder if there's even ways you could do it. Like more like to be as, as clever as possible. Like, I wonder if you could. My suspicion is like, with organized crime and the incentive being only money, it's a little bit easier to chip away at that. Right. Like a national identity or fighting for a cause, it's hard to get someone to turn over, you know, their own, their own countrymen. But yeah, I think you've seen this with, you know, American gangs, you know, whether Italian or, you know, even like Mexican gangs in America or black gangs. If you're able to get like the leader, you can kind of get them to sell out the rest of the group. Everyone has this whole thing of like, oh, no one snitches. You know, we have honor. But typically with these crime organizations, it's a little bit easier to chip away at that sort of enamel. So I'm curious if they could do a similar thing with the cartels here or if it would have to.

Chris Cappy (36:10)

You're talking about cutting off the head.

Mark Gagnon (36:12)

Of the snake to an extent. Yeah.

Chris Cappy (36:15)

I actually do not think that you can probably cut off the head of the snake with cartels, unfortunately. I think we did learn a lot of lessons from the fighting and insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan. You kill one of them, like someone potentially worse pops up, you get them to dime on their friend, they're going to be replaced by someone who's possibly worse. It creates more violence. Trying to cut off the head of the snake is an argument like, yeah, sure, there's a, also a reality where you could just, just annihilate them. Like isis, where we had a partner force on the ground that we work closely with and we destroyed isis. That, that's one use case, if you want to call it that. If you want to like corporatize or say, let's ISIS them, sure, maybe that'll work. Or maybe it turns into a bogged down insurgency. Something I think that is interesting is if you pull up the map of the US Strategic commands, norcom, pacom, southcom. Perfect. So have you ever seen this before?

Mark Gagnon (37:37)

No.

Chris Cappy (37:37)

These are. The US military breaks down their different area of operations into different commands. You never hear about northcom a lot. You might, you might have heard or remember hearing about centcom. You hear like, oh, Centcom says that they did a strike against the Houthis, right? They just hit Yemen. They CENTCOM released on Twitter or X a bunch of video of F18s taking off of aircraft carriers and striking the Houthis or the Northcom or centcom. CENTCOM is like Middle east, you hear about them all the time. AFRICOM, you hear about them occasionally. EU com, US EUcom is like that whole area of AO of like Russia, Europe, US PAC, comm is the area of responsibility of like anything having to do with Taiwan, China. So it's a way of like breaking down different area of responsibility. What we're talking about right now is a command that like you have not heard about this command since I don't know how long you've not heard. You've not read a press release from US Northcom that frequently since, you know, maybe the war in Mexico in the 1800s. Sure. Was it the 1800s?

Mark Gagnon (38:57)

Yeah, yeah.

Chris Cappy (38:58)

I don't know. Nobody knows.

Mark Gagnon (38:59)

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Chris Cappy (42:33)

So northcom is what we're talking about right now. And it's always led by an Air Force general. And it's because what frequently centcom, often led by Marine generals and army generals because it's often ground wars. US Northcom, almost going back 20, 30 years from the creation of this concept has been Air Force and naval, Air Force generals and naval admirals. And it's because this is potentially going to be airstrikes, a lot of them, and potentially strikes from submarines and destroyers. So looking at this, I think puts into perspective the area of operations that we're talking about.

Mark Gagnon (43:23)

Right.

Chris Cappy (43:24)

The way the military looks at it.

Mark Gagnon (43:25)

Yeah, that's really interesting. And so I'm curious, is there a domestic situation? We kind of alluded to this a little bit, but I know, like, you know, around election time, there's a lot of conversation about, you know, cartels infiltrating American cities. And this has been, you know, like oh, there's a, you know, an apartment complex in Colorado that's overrun with cartels. And I think they were even saying they're Venezuelan perhaps, I can't remember exactly. Is that overblown? Like, what is the nature of that? Is that strategic or is that just sort of like how things played out? Like, what can you tell me about that?

Chris Cappy (43:55)

You're talking about Trende Aragua perhaps, which is the Venezuelan gang that. So when Venezuela recently, Venezuela collapsed in a big way. Their currency, huge inflation, their government, just the economic situation in Venezuela has not been awesome. And Venezuela is one of those like far left socialist countries in Latin America that has a history of support from Soviet Union in Venezuela. Very difficult times that they're faced with. Trende Aragua started up as was actually supposed to be a railway project that was run by the government, was going to be this like big railway that they were going to build. Ended up not happening. So the crew that was supposed to build that, this is the lore for them. So the crew that was supposed to build that rail network ended up turning to crime instead. And Trende Aragua literally means, I think, like train something. So they ended up going into mega prisons. Trained from Aragua, right, The city that it happened in. So they ended up getting sent to mega prisons, where it's not the kind of prisons that you see here in America. These prisons are run by the gangs. It's basically like the state saying, you're not our problem. You go police yourselves in this big dorm that you run. And so they had their own tunnel network in and out. The leaders of Trende Arago could come and go kind of as they pleased. And it was this. They ended up sending the National Guard in, in Venezuela to try to crack down on it. And they found like RPGs, explosives, hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition and weapons. They had their own pool, they had their own bar and like, it was like a resort for them that they ran. But, you know, they also were out of sight, out of mind. And what happened was they started being. Finding their way leaving Venezuela. They escaped a lot of. There was a big prison break and a lot of them escaped to the United States and they set up, they started. How do you differentiate yourself as a business, any business? You have to find a way to differentiate yourself. The way they did it was by using means of violence that a lot of other organizations were not willing to do. I'm talking like killing former police officers from Venezuela in the United States, bodying people and bagging them and leaving those bags Of. Of body parts to be found. They used shocking types of violence to make a name for themselves and carve out a territory turf. And one of the things that they did in Venezuela, they brought like a best practice of theirs that they brought over was charging rent on people. So when they go and move into a community, they started. This is the reports that I saw, they started charging rent on, you know, extortion on people in this project. Not project, but apartment complex. And that's the Aurora, Colorado story that you're talking about where you see Trende Aragua moving into a city and there is disputes about how much did they actually run that apartment complex and how much was it just sensational rationalizing or politicizing the story? I, from what I looked at, think that they're a very small minority that is extremely violent and more a br. More what do you say? Like overt than maybe we've seen in the past. But they still. Their numbers might not be as big. But that doesn't mean that it's something that we want to just ignore right now.

Mark Gagnon (48:14)

Part of me feels like in America we have a little bit more, I guess, rule of law compared to many other countries in the world. We have a very robust and sophisticated police presence that doing these types of violent acts would draw so much attention and so much heat. It's antithetical. Like you said to many other gang operations in the United States, which is don't hit civilians, only do what we have to do. Try not to get detected because we don't want to blow up our whole spot. These guys were sort of out front with everything and did that just bring a ton of attention to them? Do they just get clipped and all of them got arrested? Like what. What happens with that?

Chris Cappy (48:49)

That's their M.O. is that they'll go and let's say there's an abandoned. A lot of times what you'll find them at is abandoned hotels. They'll go and set up shop and they, they like their MO is to take over. We saw this in Texas. There was I think about a hundred Trende Aragua gang members were arrested in Texas for setting up shop basically in some formerly shut down hotel. Yeah, the Gateway Hotel. Exactly.

Mark Gagnon (49:20)

Wow.

Chris Cappy (49:21)

So just not disputable like it's happening. But the what you to your point, it's like how much is it really a epidemic? They everywhere. No, but where they are, it's weird.

Mark Gagnon (49:43)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess it's epidemic if you're living in the area that's being extorted. Right you're like, hey, this is a massive issue. Why are we not doing something about this? And then if you're someplace where you know they don't have a presence, you're like, ah, it's, it's crazy. It's overblown. So to say that it's in every city is probably an over exaggeration. But to say that, you know, this is something that's normal we should permit is definitely an understatement. Yeah, I guess.

Chris Cappy (50:05)

I don't know.

Mark Gagnon (50:06)

I think it's a little bit easy for me at least to kind of lump in like all Central and South American gangs. Is it fair to say that these Venezuelan gangs are operating in conjunction with these Mexican cartels? Are they operating completely on their own?

Chris Cappy (50:18)

My understanding is that they're trying to carve out their territory. It's a competition between a lot of these gangs and trend. I know where I grew up on Long island, all the time you'd hear about Ms. 13, right. And that was the biggest gang that you just knew they're around and there are rumors about like, oh, so and so is in MS.13 and they're. The only way to get let in is you, you have to kill someone. And these gangs flourish off of that sort of like mystique around them that they're so brutal or they're so violent that they're untouchable.

Mark Gagnon (51:01)

Yeah. It's also difficult to really nail down what it means to be a cartel member. And I think from an American perspective we can be like, oh, if you work with the cartels, you're a cartel member, like put them under the prison, like, you know, throw them away. But there are many people like you see it in America that grow up in crime ridden areas that one, don't really have a ton of a choice. Like it's either like join us or die. And then two, there's also like different levels of connection where it's like, hey, I worked for a guy that was connected to a cartel and I just, I was a lookout or you know, I would drive a car or I would do stuff, but I wasn't really violent. And maybe they're, you know, exaggerating or maybe, you know, I guess understating their stories. But with this case specifically, how can the United States parse, you know, who's the bosses, who's doing violence, who are like the, I forget what they call the hitmen, the sicarios. Sicarios.

Chris Cappy (51:51)

That and then who's like a low.

Mark Gagnon (51:53)

Level teenage kid that's like kind of wrapped up in some bad stuff, because that's his circumstance and his, you know, making some extra cash, being a lookout. Because in El Salvador, it didn't really seem like they cared, right? Like they just. Everyone in prison and they dropped their crime rate. But then obviously there's going to be some overstep. But I'm curious in Mexico if there's been conversation about how to deal with that issue.

Chris Cappy (52:13)

What you're talking about is a huge part of the dilemma, because especially in Mexico, it's just you. You see, there's. I forget how many people, but there are, I think they said over a hundred thousand people that work for the cartels, like in some capacity. And if you're just a poor person living in Mexico and you go and you work at a drug facility, like, do you deserve a Cruise missile, a $2 million cruise missile fired at your drug facility to blow you up, up? And also, they put these drug facilities purposefully within residential areas.

Mark Gagnon (52:56)

Oh, really?

Chris Cappy (52:57)

Oh, yeah. Like, they're not gonna just set up a drug processing lab like in the middle of nowhere. They're gonna put it in a residential area. And if you blow up that building, you're blowing up several buildings around it, potentially, or killing. There's gonna be collateral damage. So. And that's a strategic decision. So, yeah, they've inextricably link themselves to the local population, which is a tactic that they've done back to the 80s, Pablo Escobar and decoupling that and deciding where to draw the line between who is a hardcore sicario hitman and who is and, you know, somebody who has been roped into a life that almost out of necessity. Like, I feel terrible for those people. And it's part of the reason why I feel like American military violence and action has its limitations in this fight.

Mark Gagnon (53:57)

Yeah. I'm curious what America's responsibility in all this is. Like my. My CIA, you know, corruption knowledge is escaping me slightly. But didn't the United States help traffic and like, work with cartels, like the Fast and the Furious operation?

Chris Cappy (54:12)

Okay.

Mark Gagnon (54:12)

Way back in the day.

Chris Cappy (54:14)

So there's controversial aspects we can get into. I think the most concrete thing we can get into is just nobody disputes this, which is that It's, I believe, 60 to 80% of weapons that the cartel uses, the firearms come from America. It's traffic from America. The United States does not dispute this. Mexico reminds us of this. Every time we say that the drugs are coming from Mexico, like, the first thing they say is, well, all of the arms are coming from America. And only recently, what we saw is, and this is to the Trump administration's credit, they said that they. Not that. Not putting any kind of judgment value on that. I'm just saying that, like, the Trump administration has agreed with the Mexican administration to try to cut down on the amount of weapons that are trafficked through the other side of the border. Because there's plenty of. Anecdotally what we hear is that in the past, a lot of times it's easy to get from America to Mexico, but it's more difficult the other way around. Now they're starting to crack down on, like, show me your passport. What are you doing here? Let's search your car for. Because they don't want those weapons coming in from Mexico. So that, you know, that I think is the most concrete thing that we want to talk about responsibility from the United States is to me, you know how like, some relationships are codependent.

Mark Gagnon (55:43)

Sure.

Chris Cappy (55:43)

And not healthy.

Mark Gagnon (55:45)

Yeah.

Chris Cappy (55:47)

To the amount that Mexico and the United States have like a. An unhealthy relationship. I think. Mexico's sending us drugs. We're sending them weapons.

Mark Gagnon (55:56)

Yeah.

Chris Cappy (55:56)

And it's like, there's gotta be a win win here. It's gotta be a WW where like, we stop sending. We stop those weapons from getting to them and they stop the drunks, drugs from getting to us.

Mark Gagnon (56:10)

Yeah.

Chris Cappy (56:10)

Like, can we not. Can we, guys, can we work this out? Can we be allies? Can we be partners and find that win win.

Mark Gagnon (56:19)

Now, is it American gangs or American crime organizations that are getting the weapons down there? Like, I imagine that, you know, a cartel would probably pay double. Right. And you can get weapons fairly easily in the United States and then getting them down there, if you're an American, you know, in crime, there's a ton to be gained in that regard. Or is it like Mexican gang cells in the United States that are getting the weapons down or both?

Chris Cappy (56:42)

It's both.

Mark Gagnon (56:42)

It's.

Chris Cappy (56:43)

Yeah. There's Mexican cartels that are trafficking the weapons. There's also the United States. There's a dot. There's money to be made. There's underground. What do you call it, like, tunnels that they're trafficking these weapons through. It's hundreds of thousands of weapons, sometimes automatic weapons. You see.50 caliber, you see the cartel using. There's a video on. If you type in Twitter.50 caliber Barrett. Mexican cartel, like, they're firing.50 cals at aircraft straight up in the sky and. And they're taking video of it and just like overtly posting it on the Internet. Oh, that's it. That's it. The first one.

Mark Gagnon (57:26)

Oh, what is this?

Chris Cappy (57:27)

I'm pretty sure it's. It should play into it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mark Gagnon (57:33)

Okay, so describe what we're seeing here.

Chris Cappy (57:34)

This dude has. He's firing. Put his.50 cal Barrett machine gun on. Because that. The recoil from that is like a horse kicking you in the. In the shoulder. So what he's doing is firing at a commercial airplane.

Mark Gagnon (57:52)

What?

Chris Cappy (57:52)

And I. I'm almost positive. But they've had bullets go through. Like, imagine you're flying to Florida or something. And like, just you hear like, thonk. And a bullet goes through the cabin fuselage.

Mark Gagnon (58:03)

What?

Chris Cappy (58:04)

Like they. Because they're. They're aiming at airplanes that are trying to land in. I believe it's Mexico City. Sorry if I get that wrong, but this was during a major battle where they were trying to capture one of the El Chapo's family members.

Mark Gagnon (58:21)

Oh, wow.

Chris Cappy (58:22)

Correctly. But it was like, you're getting. You keep getting these warnings, like, how many red flags do you want to see that? I mean, they took over the whole city that day. And I don't know that they got that.50 cal from America, but they're getting it from somewhere. And a lot of them are coming from America and. Yeah. What. What a clusterfuck.

Mark Gagnon (58:47)

I mean, is it possible that they're getting funding weapons from our foreign adversaries? Is it possible that you have like a China, potentially a Russia saying, hey, let's get money in there, to then cause issues for the Americans?

Chris Cappy (59:01)

Dude, you want to know what I find fascinating about the China connection? So I. What I love to do a lot of times is connect history to what's happening currently. And I don't know if you're familiar with. In China, they had a major opium crisis. You had the opium wars for. You know, how did China go from having, I think it was 60% of their male population, between 20 and 40, addicted to opium to today? They have no drug problem. We have a drug problem. They have no drug problem. You know how. How were they able to do that?

Mark Gagnon (59:38)

Mass incarceration.

Chris Cappy (59:40)

Mass. Yeah, incarceration and mass killing.

Mark Gagnon (59:45)

Wow.

Chris Cappy (59:46)

When a problem gets so bad, the people will give their government the authority to do whatever it takes. They will beg to be controlled.

Mark Gagnon (59:58)

Yeah.

Chris Cappy (59:59)

The people will beg you to do what it takes. They will scream and applaud for authoritarianism.

Mark Gagnon (60:06)

Yeah.

Chris Cappy (60:07)

And you can almost not blame them because the drug problem in China was so bad and ruining so many lives and just destroying their economy that they. They went nuclear option.

Mark Gagnon (60:18)

Yep.

Chris Cappy (60:19)

And they Destroyed people. You want to talk about freedoms and liberal order, like, yeah, out the window. Yeah. And like, almost, can you blame them? And then also look at us today and it's like, could you blame us for crying out and saying, just do it?

Mark Gagnon (60:36)

Yeah. I mean, the El Salvador thing is a great example. On the one hand, it's like, hey, there's probably a mass infringement on freedom and human rights here, but also the country has the highest murder rate in the world and then immediately goes to like, I mean, like one of the safest countries in the world within a span of a few months. It's like, man, and you broke a.

Chris Cappy (60:53)

Lot of eggs doing it.

Mark Gagnon (60:54)

Yeah, of course. And there are innocent people sitting in jail cells right now. I'm assuming there are hundreds of. Purely like, they had nothing to do with. They had an uncle or maybe a relative that was involved and they didn't even know. And now they're wrapped up sitting in a prison cell. And that's terrible. But you look at the dire state of a nation, you say, so during.

Chris Cappy (61:13)

The opium, after the opium wars, when 60% or whatever, 70% of China's population addicted to opium, what they did was they just started incarcerating and killing people who were addicted. And if you were like a repeat offender, you're fucked. Like, they did not play games. The Mao just went in and you talk about in China, the Cultural Revolution, the amount of. Everyone says, like millions of people are killed. Like, this is what they did. This is how they stopped their drug problem. And so you talk about foreign adversaries funding our drug problem. Who is it? It's funny because it's like. It's not funny. It's funny. Awful China. It almost feels like they're trying to.

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Chris Cappy (62:30)

Ball for buzzballs ready to go. Cocktails take 12.

Mark Gagnon (62:33)

Buzzballs just dropped their biggest blue balls. Script says Biggie's blue balls.

Chris Cappy (62:37)

Lonzo take 13.

Mark Gagnon (62:39)

Blue balls just dropped their biggest buzz balls. Ugh. Let's Try a vocal exercise. Buzz balls, Biggies, Blue balls. Buzz balls, Biggies, Blue balls. Big balls. Just drop. Get with Buzz balls.

Chris Cappy (62:55)

Available in Spirit, wine and malt 15.

Mark Gagnon (62:57)

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Chris Cappy (62:59)

Turn the tables and be like, okay, Britain, they. They had a. I feel like they had an opium problem before Britain anyway. But Britain certainly put the pedal to the metal on it, sent them a lot of opium in the 1800s. It feels like now China's sending a ton of fentanyl to the United States precursors. It almost feels like a. Like a middle finger, like, you did this to us. Now we're going to send fentanyl to you. United States absolutely needs to do something to stop it. But, like, the. The thing that I find fascinating about the whole story is, yeah, China's sending precursors. They're working with the cartels. It's part of the reason why the United States used that as a justification to say that they're a foreign terrorist organization because they're working with a foreign government. Alien Enemies act was put into place because they're claiming that it's an invasion by Venezuela. And by. Whether you agree with it or not, these are just. I'm talking about justifications that are given.

Mark Gagnon (64:02)

Yeah. I'm curious how it plays out. Do you think that, you know, in the event that there's some type of, like, actual artillery strikes on, you know, drug facilities, you know, heads of cartels, do you think that that could happen? Would that be, like, would that happen in this administration, or is that something way down the road?

Chris Cappy (64:21)

I think the best way to look at it is the steps that will happen before that happens. So I think before that happens, what you see is the United States try very hard to either pressure or just work, work by, with and through the Mexican authorities, Mexican Federal police, Mexican National Guard, Mexican marines, Special forces, they're going to try to work with them. I think if the US Government feels like they don't get the response they want, then we would be more likely to potentially see a unilateral strike, whether that happens or not. But that's like, okay, A, B and C would need to happen before what you're talking about, which is some kind of just artistic, like, missile strike against the cartels.

Mark Gagnon (65:12)

Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious if the Mexican president gets on board, and I'm curious how that could look and if they would want to do it with Trump specifically, given the volatility of his administration and sort of his rhetoric, if that they would, if they would capitulate I guess it just depends on how bad the problem is.

Chris Cappy (65:29)

And I wouldn't even necessarily frame it as capitulation. And more like. So the Mexican president, Shane Baum, probably can't get up there and just say, we're going balls to the wall on the cartel because then you're telling the enemy what you're doing. Or she probably also can't get up there and say, like, I'm not going to strike the cartel. We don't know exactly. Maybe it's her plan to go hard against the cartels. We don't. I think. No.

Mark Gagnon (66:01)

Yeah, it's very, very fascinating.

Chris Cappy (66:03)

There's indicators you could look back at, like, so she's inheriting, you know, the same administration she was on, aligned with the policies of the former. The former Mexican President Obrador, who perpetuated the. Basically the game plan of, like, hugs, not bullets, which was, you know, that's a counterinsurgency strategy. So is Shane Bomb, like, doing the same as her predecessor, or is she taking a different we? Like, these are things that will play out.

Mark Gagnon (66:38)

Interesting. Yeah, I'm very, very curious. I mean, it's. It's interesting to see specifically on the border shoring up those things, which I think most Americans generally are kind of on board with, like, hey, let's kind of just stop the. The violence at the border.

Chris Cappy (66:53)

There's this. I. I always look at it like there's this. I think what is a sane position, what most Americans feel, which is we. I, I love fellow Mexican people who've immigrated here and made an amazing life and, like, worked super hard and built a family and, like, worked really hard on that to get that and earn that. And people, I think, in America respect that. And then there's also the sane position of, like, there's 100,000Americans killed by fentanyl, and we need to do something about this. And I think, think Mexican people also feel the same way.

Mark Gagnon (67:34)

Yeah, I don't know if we need to be sending ice into, like, a restaurant in Bushwick to, you know, arrest a line cook. You know what I mean? But, you know, could we put reinforcements and funding to stopping violent cartel members from trafficking people, drugs, weapons into the United States.

Chris Cappy (67:48)

People are having a more what I would call, like, nuanced approach. Now you, I remember 10, 15 years ago, you also, you all the time would hear people say, just like, open borders is the only sane thing, and you're a racist if you don't think that. Now the conversation is more, I think, realistic, where it's like, there's good immigration and then there's bad drug cartels.

Mark Gagnon (68:16)

Yeah. Well, Chris Cappy, I appreciate you. Thank you so much for breaking this down. If people want to see more cartel content or more geopolitical analysis from you, where could they find that could go.

Chris Cappy (68:27)

And subscribe to Cappy army on YouTube. Chris Cappy on YouTube. New brand, new channel. No longer at the old digs. You could find me there. Also, Cappy army on Instagram and Twitter. Thank you so much for having me.

Mark Gagnon (68:43)

Yeah, of course. As this unfolds, this topic and many other conflicts around the world, I always enjoy speaking with you and yeah, let's do it again. If you've made it to the end of this episode, you are clearly someone who understands that beneath every historical event lies a deeper truth. Truth waiting to be uncovered. You're the type of person who knows that real history is more fascinating than any fiction, and we deeply appreciate that about you. I'll be honest, that's exactly why I personally invite you to sign up for Today in History, our free newsletter that goes beyond the surface of historical events. We dive into the stories that textbooks never told you, the secrets that challenge the course of nations, and the forgotten tales that deserve to be remembered. Let's continue this journey of discovery together. Take the conversation from your headphones into your inbox. Sign up now through the QR code or link in the description Today in History. Because every day holds a secret waiting to be revealed. Thank you for being part of our historical journey. We'll see you next time.