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#292 - Undercover Cartel Cop on Mass Grave Discovery & Covert US Ops in Mexico | Ed Calderon
03:17:35
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- [00:00]
Ed Calderon
You have a period of time where Mexico in the 60s was a hotbed for communist activity. You had a student revolt who were communist related. So they were shot and killed. There's a giant massacre there. The president that was in charge at that time turned out to be a CIA asset. And that creates a rift, that creates feeling within the populace that the government is not my friend. The border wall is being sold as a security feature to keep drugs out of the country. That's hilarious. Humans and people coming across that border pay their way through to some of these criminal organizations. Some of these criminal organizations actually make more money off people than drugs. I'll tell you a story. I grew up with this redheaded kid from 16. He disappeared from my life and all of a sudden I find him again outside of a gas station. I'm working and I'm pretending to not be involved with anything. Walking past this gas station where there was a bunch of armed people, somebody among the crowd that was there armed, whistles to me, just says my name and my stomach drops to my balls. He's wearing chest rig, AK47 magazines on there, comes over, gives me a big hug, Stick some of these things in my. What are you doing? I like. Ah, man, I'm just, you know, passing through, you know.
- [01:10]
Host
Hey, guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five star review. They're both a huge, huge help.
- [01:16]
Ed Calderon
Thank you.
- [01:28]
Host
Well, Ed, it's great to have you here, man. I've been seeing you for years and years and years on every podcast. Some of my friends, Danny Jones, Mark Gagnon, obviously you've been on Joe Rogan and Lex Freeman and Sean Ryan as well. Really doing the Lord's work in a lot of ways. Because you and I were just talking before camera and it's like there are not a lot of people who can say that from a journalistic standpoint or anything related to it. Basically go inside Mexico and go in and out and then come back and talk about graphically exactly what's happening on every level, from the cartels and the drug trade itself to what they're then doing at the border, which is all related to them as well. And it's like you're living and tell the tale, and I'm glad you are, but it's like, are you ever. You ever, like, afraid that Always.
- [02:15]
Ed Calderon
I was going to say always, always afraid, but it keeps you alive. I think more than fear, I feel the response, a responsibility for a lot of the people that I grew up with people that I met along the way, people who were struggling to like do their own thing in the world. I was just in Jalisco and Monterrey. In Jalisco I was in a place called Tala and I drove around a bit and talked to people there about this, this looming threat of an, of military intervention and, and, and how the cartels are reacting to this, these spy planes flying over the Pacific and all this type of stuff. And while I was there, you started hearing these rumblings of this mass grave being discovered. Over 200 bodies apparently. Then in Monterey I talked to a guy who basically does the same work that I used to do, but he's doing it on the northeastern side of Mexico on the border and he's facing drone attacks and IEDs. So a lot of this stuff is happening and a lot of this stuff happens at a very localized level with people that go through this personally and directly who have no access to reporters or platforms like yours or any sort of platforms on the US Side where they talk about some of this stuff. So on mine, I find it's almost a responsibility that I go down there and, and kind of bring light to some of these things. I was talking about this terrorist designation five, six years ago and I was being laughed at.
- [03:51]
Host
Yes, I actually remember that. I think you talked about that the very first time you were on Joe Rogan.
- [03:55]
Ed Calderon
Yeah. And here we are. And here we are. And I guess the, the main thing, I'm from, I'm from Tijuana and I'm a Mexican, I was born there. But I have roots in the US now. And I can't help but look back and, and, and, and look at all the people like myself who went through this process, this initial part of the drug war that you don't hear about. I mean we hear about the Ryan Terry foundation, which is a border patrol agent who got shot and killed with some of those Fast and furious guns.
- [04:36]
Host
Oh yeah, the ones they were like the US Government was selling to them.
- [04:38]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, we can talk about that later.
- [04:40]
Host
Nuts.
- [04:41]
Ed Calderon
But you don't hear anything about Rodrigo and Armenta. You don't hear anything about their daughter who lost an arm being shot by some of those guns. These are people that I work.
- [04:50]
Host
Victims. Yeah.
- [04:51]
Ed Calderon
And there's, and there's hundreds of them.
- [04:53]
Host
Yeah.
- [04:55]
Ed Calderon
There's a very weird one sided narrative being taught and said online and in the media. As far as this problem, it's like a, the U. S. Saying there's a problem in Mexico. Build a wall and let's have all these Problems stay over there.
- [05:12]
Host
Right.
- [05:13]
Ed Calderon
But on the other side you have Fast and the Furious. You have many Mexican presidents turning out to be CIA employed agents. And you have a foreign policy that U. S has been instating in Mexico that is. Has been horrible to the. The populace in Mexico.
- [05:31]
Host
Would you mind just explaining what you mean by them, by the presidents literally being CIA employed.
- [05:38]
Ed Calderon
We've had. There's been some uncovering of documents recently the past five, six years and people have realized that a lot of Mexican presence in the 60s and. And the 70s turned out to be employed officials by the CIA like. Like paid assets or like paid assets. A president. The pres. Several presidents of Mexico have been found out to be paid assets by. For the CIA. We. We're also living through this historic moment where you're. We. The Mexico. Mexico has deported many, many in the cartel individuals, including a man who supposedly was responsible for the death of DEA agent Kiki Camarena.
- [06:24]
Host
They deported that guy?
- [06:25]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, he's deported here.
- [06:26]
Host
Who is that guy?
- [06:28]
Ed Calderon
There's. It's Kiki Camarena supposedly uncovered a bunch of things in Gualhara. The name is escaping me right now. Oh God.
- [06:42]
Host
Most people out there are familiar, but yes, it was depicted in the show Narcos Mexico, 1986 DEA agent, a bunch of head injuries. So it's all good. The name is basically we deported this potential.
- [06:53]
Ed Calderon
But the truth is that a lot of the, A lot of, A lot of what happened in that time in the seven in the. In the 80s, 70s, 80s in Mexico, the. The Contra affair was happening.
- [07:04]
Host
Yes.
- [07:05]
Ed Calderon
And the US Was trying to figure out how to arm these rebel groups and get into a fight in Central America. But the US Was just getting off Vietnam. So they were, they were. They. They didn't want to spend any money on this and support this, but the US Was adamant about it. So a lot of these Contra rebels that were fighting in Central America were actually being trained in Mexico by the CIA. And a lot of the ways they were arming them was through funds produced by drug sales and basically cartel movements in this area. Keith Kamarina probably uncovered some of this.
- [07:41]
Host
Probably he was a really good agent.
- [07:43]
Ed Calderon
This is beyond my time there, but from the people that I've talked to who are around for this type of thing, this is, this is, this is what they. Their opinion is. Right. So it's, it's the surrealness of being Mexican and also now being in the US and seeing how both narratives are kind of being played out. You know, the DEA has their man who killed Kiki Camarena. But on the Mexican side, the idea is the CIA killed Kiki Camarena. So who do, who do you actually have?
- [08:14]
Host
Yeah. Are you talking about Rafa Caro Quintero?
- [08:16]
Ed Calderon
Yeah. Yeah.
- [08:17]
Host
Okay.
- [08:17]
Ed Calderon
Rafael Caro Quintero.
- [08:18]
Host
All right. Because I, I was mixed up for a second. When you was deported, I was thinking you were saying this was like an American citizen.
- [08:24]
Ed Calderon
No guy.
- [08:25]
Host
So you think Rafa was paid by CIA?
- [08:27]
Ed Calderon
They were all, they were all sent to the, to the, to Mexico, to the U.S. authorities. Right now the, the U.S. is basically hanging a giant axe of tariffs over, over Mexico.
- [08:38]
Host
That's one way to put it.
- [08:40]
Ed Calderon
The, the, their, the, the, the federal government in Mexico is at odds with the U.S. the federal government in Mexico is run by a lady named Claudia Shaman, a part of the Morena Party, which a lot of people see as the fourth transformation of Mexico. This, this, this different, this different way of doing this anti corruption party, but it's formed of every single member of other parties that just escape ship and join their party. She's uniform. Yeah. She said that they, they discovered that a lot of these cartel guys were about to be released under the legal actions which has happened in Mexico before, including Caro Quintero who got released and just released by a judge and just disappeared into, into Mexico before he was subsequently arrested again. So she said that they were about to release a lot of these guys, which is completely bogus. I don't, I don't maybe one or two of them. So in a, in an attempt to appease the US and like not have these tariffs come through, he sent members of the original members of the Zeta Scaro Quintero, a bunch of these guys to the US with realistically this was basically an offering to Lord Trump in a lot of ways. And then the tariffs, actually they said, well, you know what, no go, we're still going to do the tariffs. And now they're backing them down. So it's, it's, there's, there's this weird back and push thing with, with the US And Mexico right now on the Trump side. These are people who are adamant about the Mexican government and the federal government's involvement in cartel activities. On the Mexican side. It's like the US Is also complicit in sending weaponry. Having a giant consumer base and responsibilities are being just tossed back and forth and also corruption on the US Side. This is, there is, there has to, of course there has to be some of that.
- [10:41]
Host
So it's not one sided.
- [10:43]
Ed Calderon
So politics on both sides are pointing fingers at each other. And in the middle are US Citizenship. On the US Side, a giant generation of kids being eaten up by this fentanyl epidemic that some of it does come from Mexico, some of it comes from other places. And on the Mexican side, mass graves being discovered across the country. The war is very real. People. Don't people march for Palestine in the US or march for the Ukrainian wars or for Ukrainians? Meanwhile, on the southern border, there are thousands of people missing. And when I say missing, I mean they're gone. Talking to somebody in Monterrey who is a part of some of these special operations working in some of these cartels. He described to me this. This. This method of body disposal. And mind you, I. I lived through the. The pozolero thing in Baja where he was using caustic soda to get rid of bodies.
- [11:51]
Host
Caustic soda?
- [11:52]
Ed Calderon
Caustic soda, yeah.
- [11:53]
Host
How does that even work?
- [11:54]
Ed Calderon
It's a chemical mixture. You can get it all at Home Depot, and it's basically a homemade acid that you can. You can disso.
- [12:01]
Host
He's with. Oh, my God.
- [12:03]
Ed Calderon
This was. This was something that he said he learned from Israeli special forces guys that went to train some of the cartels on the border. Right. Again, don't quote me on that. There's a bunch of books on this. That. That's what. That's that. In his testimony, that's what he said. Then I go to Monterey recently and I hear this method. I never heard about this method, but it's an interesting one. You. You heat up diesel fuel in a drum, and diesel won't burn, so it just gets really hot, and you put the body in diesel fuel, and it will just cook and dissolve everything. He told me this method and just imagining nothing is left. Maybe some sort of dental. Dental process, prosthesis you might have, or some sort of, I don't know, implant. But that's about it. Everything else gets gone.
- [13:01]
Host
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- [14:54]
Ed Calderon
We are worried about conflicts that are going on overseas in the U. S And there are mass graves being discovered all over the country that have been filled by some of these criminal organizations for decades now.
- [15:08]
Host
Who's in these graves by and large.
- [15:12]
Ed Calderon
Everything from, you know, people that don't make it through recruitment because some of these cartels are actually recruiting people by force. I'll give you the example of what's going on right now in Jalisco. They just found this training camp in.
- [15:22]
Host
Jalisco, a cartel training camp.
- [15:26]
Ed Calderon
New generation cartel training camp. And I, and I must mention new generation because they're a different entity, like a different type of cartel. They've, they've changed the game in a lot of ways. They, they took, they took a page from the Zeta book. The Zetas were a bunch of ex Mexican special forces who were sent to combat a certain cartel and ended up joining them. These are school of the Americas, Mexican U. S. Special forces, trained individuals, high level people. They took a lot of the, they took a lot of the, the guerrilla warfare manual that the US Implements across the globe and implemented in Mexico. So the videos that they. You start seeing of people getting hacked with a chainsaw or exploded in the middle of a field with dynamite and stuff like that, that started showing up from cartels that came from U.S. propaganda training that some of these guys had, which then inspired the ISIS videos that you see on Facebook. I just wanted to put that out there as far as like, because the US Has a responsibility here and I just want to make that really clear as far as like these, these entities in some way, shape or form at, at a root have US Training or have some sort of US Involvement with their creation. The Zetas became what they became a counter to that were these matazeta groups, these tactical units z up set up in, in and around places like Sinaloa where they were going after that. These, this is where the, the new generation cartel comes from. It's a highly militarized, high hyper violent group of cartels. This is not the guys that have a tiger in their backyard rolling around the city with AKs in the back of a truck.
- [17:17]
Host
There's some of that, these are like almost uniform type.
- [17:21]
Ed Calderon
They just issued this warning against some of the Mitro Khan family to cartels that they're going to go to war with them. And you see them, there's a, there's a video of them out there right now. The new generation cartel issues a statement of war. It says, I think, oh, statement. So interestingly enough, they're going to war with la familia m in Michan. So again, if the US Feels no responsibility, all of our avocados and a lot of our. That's where it comes from. So if you go to Chipotle.
- [17:51]
Host
I don't go to Chipotle, but I eat avocados every day.
- [17:53]
Ed Calderon
Well, that, that means that we are responsible for a lot of this violence down there because a lot of these avocado orchards are playing paid protection money to the cartels and now they're fighting it out for this.
- [18:03]
Host
Yeah, because isn't it like, I didn't know much about this, but I think Kat Schultz was telling me, if my memory serves me right, like avocado trees take a long time to grow. So if they're even destroyed at all, your whole business is.
- [18:13]
Ed Calderon
Yeah. So if you don't pay us, extortion money will burn your fucking field.
- [18:18]
Host
Jesus Christ.
- [18:20]
Ed Calderon
The new Generation Cartel issued a threat of war against these families that control parts of Michoacan. These families are. These are cartel families. La Familia Michoacana.
- [18:29]
Host
Yeah.
- [18:29]
Ed Calderon
They've been fighting with the federal government against the new generation cartel in drone and trench warfare in Micho Kan for years now.
- [18:37]
Host
Trench warfare.
- [18:38]
Ed Calderon
Trench warfare.
- [18:39]
Host
That's my next question was going to be, what does this warfare look like? Now you're kind of answering it.
- [18:43]
Ed Calderon
Trench, trenches. Drones being sent over, dropping bomblets.
- [18:46]
Host
Oh, my God.
- [18:47]
Ed Calderon
IEDs being used to target military. There's. There's a current petition by local, local authorities to a federal judge to like, hey, can you clear these mines out of the way? Because. So that's going on in Mitrokat.
- [19:02]
Host
Oh, my God.
- [19:03]
Ed Calderon
I. I explained all this because they, they just found this mass grave in Jalisco. Auschwitz. Like, it's being called the Mexican Auschwitz.
- [19:13]
Host
How big we talking?
- [19:16]
Ed Calderon
It's a giant compound. It was utilized for training is what they say. So people would be recruited forcefully, like, hey, you want a security job? Yeah. Oh, come meet me here. Oh, hey, you want to work at the skull center? Hey, come meet me here. And they were looking for, you know, young individuals. Basically, you get bussed over to this field somewhere and then your instructors come out and if you don't achieve the elements of the instruction that you're about to give, you get a shot in the head or you get fed to the lines is something. One of the survivors said that they had lines there or you would get disappeared. The shoes everywhere in this place, in clothing, this, this, this, this, this. And again, if people want to know how serious the Mexican federal government is about any of this, that same farm was already raided by the federal forces.
- [20:12]
Host
Before the mass grave happened.
- [20:14]
Ed Calderon
Before, before they found this mass grave, they just went there, found a bunch of guns, found some dudes, arrested them and left. And they didn't do any investigation.
- [20:22]
Host
No smell, no nothing.
- [20:23]
Ed Calderon
They didn't do any investigations. Come on. If that's what they say, then these groups, there's several groups across the country of Madres, Buscadoras, basically mothers of the disappeared. There's one in Jalisco who found in like, hey, there's, there's bodies here. There's a ton of clothes, luggage, and pictures of people in, in this place. We should investigate. And that's what brought the attention of the media. There's, there's like, there's a lot of shoes there, like, and people's shoes don't get taken usually unless their bodies are going to be disposed of. And they don't burn the shoes because they create a lot of smoke. And a very big black pile of smoke coming out is probably going to be something that's kind of suspicious. So there's, there's no calculations exactly how many bodies are there, but a lot of people died in that place. There's a letter that was found there. I don't remember all of the letter, but I just remember it said something about like, if I don't come back, I hope you remember me. And I remember that I love you. Right. This, this just handwritten letter by this kid who. A kid, I mean, he's probably 19. Who. Under. False, false. He was just invited to this place for a job. Right. There's been many of these cases across the country now. We have the eye of the world right now because of what's going on in Mexico and the border and all this pressure. But this has been going on for years. Yes. It's only now that the horror of what this is has kind of like seeped into the American populace as far as what the news and, and people speaking about some of these things.
- [22:18]
Host
Not enough though, by the way. Not enough.
- [22:20]
Ed Calderon
Not enough. I've been called a fear monger or that I exaggerate some of the stuff that goes on in Mexico many times. And the, the amount of just death alone, 90% if not more of the homicides in Mexico are never solved.
- [22:41]
Host
90 or 90 or more. Do they even try to solve them?
- [22:46]
Ed Calderon
I was a state agent and among many of my roles that I performed there, a lot of them I had to cut. I had to take custody of certain pieces of evidence or things that could be utilized for an investigation later on. And it was almost a running joke that a lot of the stuff that we secured or collected. I remember this one time we collected a lot of casings. They put them all in a bag and the guy just laughs at it and grabs the bag casing and just throws it in this room. Right. Full of other casings. And there's, I mean, you have to think about it this way. Like in one of the offices that I used to work with, the forensic service was probably 20 people. And at the height of the war in Tijuana, there was like sometimes 12 bodies coming in a night. So I get it. It's, it's, it's, it is a, an attempt to solve a criminal aspect when it's really war fighting like insurgency. Yes. So there's, there's, it's, it's just a very absurd government Effort to try and solve issues in Mexico that are of a criminal base. When you have a group like a Zetas who are special forces trained individuals who then showed other people how they did their thing. And now you have a country that has whole sections of it being policed by cartel forces. Yeah. Or has whole elements of its political class be basically paid for by some of these cartel organizations. And people might consider that exaggerated or like, hey, no, you're just. This is propaganda. There's a reason why so many political candidates got assassinated and have been assassinated in Mexico for the. In the past few decades. It's because these cartel organizations have politicized. So if you have a political candidate, you're my right. We'll call it cartel. I'll kill your political candidate. So you. So you don't have somebody in, in the government.
- [25:00]
Host
The government's just the pawns.
- [25:02]
Ed Calderon
There is definitely something to be said about the governments being pawns, although I think it's much larger than that now.
- [25:08]
Host
How so?
- [25:11]
Ed Calderon
It's long been known that the army, the Mexican army and big parts of the. The Mexican political class, from governors to mayors to like presidents, have some sor. Clear direct involvement with some of these cartel organizations. For sure. For sure. The Sinalong cartel being the biggest one. There is no way that you can have a figure like El Mayo Sambada who. Who was mysteriously picked up in Sinaloa and flown across the border.
- [25:41]
Host
Oh, we gonna talk about that.
- [25:43]
Ed Calderon
There's no way you can have a figure like that operating for almost 40 years in Mexico without being arrested, without there being some sort of agreement on both sides of the border.
- [25:53]
Host
Yes.
- [25:54]
Ed Calderon
To allow somebody like this to operate. And there's. There's just no way. And they can't tell me that it's not true because I've. I was a cop in Mexico and I was told to not go near places or not to go patrol certain spots or to let people go.
- [26:12]
Host
Was that. Do you think that was pure corruption or risk mitigation?
- [26:17]
Ed Calderon
I think that's pretty. I think there was. There was some high level corruptions and now we. I mean the former guy at the top of the agency that I was. I was with is now in federal custody in the U.S. oh, he is? Yeah. Luna. Luna was the head of public safety for the Calderon administration and a few other administrations before him. He was showered with praise by US Authorities. He was showered with. With recognitions by the FBI as this. That's a super cop guy.
- [26:46]
Host
How'd that turn out?
- [26:47]
Ed Calderon
I mean, while he was being showered with all these recognitions and all that we were being put through. FBI background checks, polygraph examinations, toxicological exams, every randomly, like the rank and file. Yeah, yeah. I had people showing up at wherever I was living. I would, people have show show up in my house, government guys and like, that's a new tv. Where'd you get that? Can you see how you paid for it? Because they were trying to keep us clean.
- [27:14]
Host
Yes.
- [27:15]
Ed Calderon
Meanwhile, the guy that's in charge of all this yet he was dirty. Dirty as. So like I, I, I, I hope people can know why I'm so frustrated.
- [27:26]
Host
Yes.
- [27:26]
Ed Calderon
With the, the, the amount of effort we made and also the, the responsibility that the US has with some of these situations going on in Mexico. The US was the one that was supporting this guy in Luna during the Calderon administration.
- [27:43]
Host
When was that? Approximately?
- [27:44]
Ed Calderon
That was the Filip called the administration. That's God, man. That's 2013 era. I guess you have, you have somebody that was supported and fostered by the us, the US government. And then this is around the time that Fast and Furious happened.
- [28:03]
Host
Yeah, let's talk about that. For people out there who. This was a little while ago. Now, can you just explain exactly what this was? Because every time I hear this, I'm like, I can't even believe that someone, let alone like the Attorney General of the United States saw this on the desk and said, yeah, sounds good, I'll sign.
- [28:18]
Ed Calderon
Yeah. So. And again, it's an example of, I'm trying to, I'm trying to provide you guys with an, a Mexican perspective of why people think that the US is full of shit. Because it's something. And I get, there's truth to that and I get administration change. But we have to realize, I think it was a Project Wide Receiver. I think it was, was the project the first name and it, it started during the Bush administration, not the Obama administration. It was, they were, they were tracking straw purchases of small arms in the U.S. places like Arizona and Texas and stuff like that, where some individual will go in there and buy, I'll buy an 8K, I'll buy a 50 cal. I'll buy something. And then they would pile these and smuggle them to Mexico. The US knew exactly who was buying where they were buying it from. Some of these vendors would like contact the atf, like, hey dude, this is getting out of hand. Like, we were selling a ton of guns. Do you guys want to do something? And they're like, nah, we're just, we need to track them. So they, they decided it was a Good idea to allow all these ginormous straw purchases to happen. Walk them across the border, basically deliver them. Deliver them and support some in some way, shape or form. They were going to trace these, where they went.
- [29:38]
Host
How'd that work out?
- [29:40]
Ed Calderon
They started showing up shooting at us with those guns and nobody warned us about any of this. Now this is, I, Eric Holder was the one that signed off on a lot of this and, and obviously Obama, you know, which, which, which is hilarious that you gave this guy a peace prize like I like as Mexicans. Like ha, yeah, that again, that's why that, that's a perspective of many of my, that many of the citizens of Mexico have like what's going on? Right. But all these weapons started showing up in weird places. The only time, the only moment that I realized what was going on was by seeing it on CNN. Federal agents, U.S. federal agents in Mexico driving in this Suburban. They got shot up during a cartel related incident. And it turned out that some of those guns being utilized in that incident were traced back to this, this, this operation, this operation Fast and Furious. But meanwhile a lot of these guns were being found in many places including Tijuana. I found a few of them in a barrel buried in somebody's backyard. New in the box. 50 cows being found. This was around the time where armored vehicles started being utilized by cartel members because they realized it's probably a good idea to have armor. We started using armor. They started using armor. So a way they figured out how to get through armor was 50 cows. So we started seeing them. FN57 pistols. FFN57 pistols. Shoot a very high velocity right pistol round. These pistol rounds will go through soft body armor. And we're Mexican poor, we don't have plate armor like the US and when we had plate armor, it's stuff we found in cartel houses and we put on ourselves. So one of my friends and his wife were shot with these guns outside of their house. He murdered, they murdered my friend who's somebody I work with. His wife and his daughter lost an arm. She survived the attack, but she's no mom and no dad.
- [31:47]
Host
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- [33:00]
Ed Calderon
This was done with guns that were allowed to walk across that border. And again I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm pro second amendment. Like, like I am. I get it. But something in this operation is really, really off. And it's interesting that it only like a single cartel was armed. Specifically the Sinalo cartel specifically was the one that saw the benefit of this operation. At least on our end.
- [33:31]
Host
We don't know.
- [33:33]
Ed Calderon
It's. It seems to have been a favorite cartel of us, of US government for years. I mean you hear rumors and ramblings around when 911 happened. And again this is something was before my time but you would hear stuff like this that when 911 happened, the US didn't call the Mexican government to secure its northern border. It called the Sinaloa cartel. Like anything Arab you should probably not, you know, you should probably tell us about.
- [33:59]
Host
We have a record of this. They called the cartel.
- [34:01]
Ed Calderon
We don't have a record of this. But this is something that's you know, spoken about in Mexico in certain circles that, that when 911 happened like all channels were open with Mexico, including the cartel channel. So if anything Arabic was showing up on the border wall or if anything, any smugglers were like dealing with any sort of Arabic people they would tell just to say something about it.
- [34:22]
Host
Enemy of my enemy is my friend.
- [34:25]
Ed Calderon
And you know there's, there's an Egyptian national who was arrested in Baja and some people can look this up on some sort of arms charges, international arms charges. This was around that time like post 911 era. And you know the, the rumor is that the cartel guys were like hey there's a, there's an Arab guy here like the US Told us to say something about it. So there he is. So there's, there's some sort of relationship there. It has been, there has been a relationship there for years and decades. There's no way this, this, this organization could get to the size it has. This transnational, like the silo cartel has dwarfed every other organization out there.
- [35:11]
Host
How big is it?
- [35:12]
Ed Calderon
It's not that big anymore. I mean, the, the government has done a lot to destroy this organization. And they.
- [35:18]
Host
Covering up evidence, who knows?
- [35:20]
Ed Calderon
I mean, you have, you have a, you have el mayo sambada in u. S. Custody. You had Mexico send 40 top cartel heads to the, to the US as an offering. And now you have a Mayo Sambada sending threatening lawyers to the federal government in Mexico saying that if you don't release me, this is going to destabilize regional politics in Mexico. And the same lawyers that delivered this letter to the consulate are now being found, pictured with all of the top ranking members of the federal government, including Claude Chambal in the past five years. So there's, there's a direct link. And people can call me like, paranoid. Claudia Shay. Mom went on, went on her press briefing saying, like, I've met a lot of people online. I've met a lot of people. I don't know who these people are. I didn't know that they were the lawyers of el Maya Sambada, the biggest cartel in Mexico. But there's several pictures of her shaking hands and like, being with somebody. And also some of these, some of these lawyers basically receiving recognitions for their. Whatever, you know, basically.
- [36:31]
Host
And you believe it was very obvious to be able to find out who they were attached to.
- [36:35]
Ed Calderon
I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now, now it's even more obvious because they're trying to, they're trying to get him sent back to Mexico and the government in Mexico is very adamant about that. They want him back. Yeah, I would want him back too, because I know what he like. If, if, if what we assume he knows is true, he probably has a ledger of every single politician, government official on both sides of the border from the past 40 years.
- [37:06]
Host
You think he's got a dead man switch?
- [37:09]
Ed Calderon
I would if I was in.
- [37:11]
Host
All right, so let's talk about that. We're. There's so much on the bone here, people. We're going to come back around to things. So we, we got ed here for the day. We'll get to it. So I know you're thinking about different things out there. We'll come back to some stuff but on the el Mayo thing, when this went down, I believe it was like last July, August.
- [37:27]
Ed Calderon
Yeah.
- [37:28]
Host
He essentially, you have El Chapo's sons in custody in the United States. Allegedly, there's information coming from them that's involved in El Mayo being kidnapped to be put on this plane, flown to the u. S. Where he's met by 15 different u. S. Agencies, taken into custody. And the difference with him, the way I understood it, please correct me if I'm wrong, is that like, el Chapo was kind of the flashy, you know, I'm showing you who I am celebrity kind of guy. Whereas omayo was the quiet, like, I don't know, grandfatherly type back in the hills.
- [38:00]
Ed Calderon
Abuelo.
- [38:01]
Host
Right, right. So, so what, what do you think that was there? What, what, what's the story? That's. Am I, is that the, is the story being told? Far more shallow than it actually is.
- [38:15]
Ed Calderon
So like, I, I, what I'm gonna, what I'm going to state, it comes from three sources.
- [38:21]
Host
Okay.
- [38:22]
Ed Calderon
I have people that work in the special operations community in Mexico.
- [38:26]
Host
Okay.
- [38:26]
Ed Calderon
I have friends who work in the new intelligence service in Mexico, this new federal police intelligence service in Mexico who used to work with me and now they're working at a high level there. And just people in kulika that didn't, you know, talk about some of this. Elmo sambada started his career in Los Angeles. So if you want to think about the sinalog cartel, the Sinaloa cartel is actually probably the Los Angeles cartel. A dude married his sister who was a former Castro era police officer that then disappears and then shows up in the U. S. Right.
- [39:05]
Host
A dude married his sister who is former Castro.
- [39:08]
Ed Calderon
Okay, Cuban.
- [39:10]
Host
That's loaded.
- [39:11]
Ed Calderon
Cuban, Cuban guy who was a former cop during the Castro, during the Castro days, then disappears and shows up in the US probably smells like CIA or some sort of like, smells like that.
- [39:27]
Host
Where was he on November 22, 1963? That's what I want to know.
- [39:31]
Ed Calderon
Who knows? Well, people can look this up and he's a mysterious character, but this is the man that teaches El Mayo the ways of the transnational movement. El Mayo sambana, smart individual, goes back and, you know, starts this, this organization. A lot of us, a lot of us thinking back on el Chapo Guzman from the Sean Penn nonsense that happened and all that, I don't even get started on that guy. But what that, all that, that happened, we would, we, we were sold by the U. S. Government. We were sold this, this, this, it was El Chapo Guzman and OSAMA bin Laden were on the top of the. The most wanted list. You know, you would. You would assume that. That, you know, this. El Chapo Guzman was this giant kingpin that was in charge of the whole of the Sinaloa cartel. When he gets arrested, nothing happens. Realistically, it's business as usual. In fact, it grows. This. This organization actually grows. After his arrest the first time he was arrested, after his last arrest and deport and then extradition to the United States.
- [40:51]
Host
Okay.
- [40:52]
Ed Calderon
Also, although he was arrested many times and escaped from prison many times.
- [40:56]
Host
Seen that video.
- [40:57]
Ed Calderon
One of them was through a. Some of the people, people that made his drug tunnels on the border went down and constructed this beautifully made tunnel. If you want to make a tunnel in a hurry underground, you have to shape it like this. This is like an arc with a point on it. That's.
- [41:16]
Host
Didn't it have, like, a motorcycle railroad track or something?
- [41:19]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, yeah, it had a motorcycle installed on a track. So he. As soon as he got down, he sped out of there again. I'm not knock. El Chapo Guzman was. Was. Was a very smart man, but very smart man. But I think that his genius was in. Yeah, right there. Yeah.
- [41:36]
Host
He's just pulled it up.
- [41:37]
Ed Calderon
Yeah.
- [41:39]
Host
Looks down.
- [41:40]
Ed Calderon
All of the people that are in charge of that security and in this place were all arrested, including the director. I think he's still in prison.
- [41:46]
Host
You know, they didn't do that. I feel like we never heard from Epstein's people when they. When. When that went down. I don't know if we heard from these people again, but. Gone.
- [41:54]
Ed Calderon
Yeah.
- [41:55]
Host
Right through the back of the shower.
- [41:56]
Ed Calderon
Yeah. And also the fact that he was on the ground floor of that prison is completely suspect in my mind. But, like, whatever that's.
- [42:02]
Host
This is.
- [42:03]
Ed Calderon
This is this. This is this. This is the last time he escaped from prison. The first time he escaped from prison, supposedly they put him in a laundry cart. Yes. That's all. He walked out of that prison. The government in uniform went in there, grabbed them, and walked him out of that prison. That's probably what happened. Happen.
- [42:20]
Host
Why do you say that's what happened?
- [42:21]
Ed Calderon
Because the government down there at that time was extremely corrupt, and their money could move mountains down there.
- [42:26]
Host
Yeah, but don't you think they would have at least made it look good? They said, all right, get in this laundry cart, buddy.
- [42:31]
Ed Calderon
It was before cameras, so like, just more cameras. You just got them out.
- [42:36]
Host
Okay.
- [42:39]
Ed Calderon
During all this circus that's going on, is quietly living in the mountains, controlling this vast empire of drug irrigation. It's he's an interesting character. Only appeared in a few interviews. I think his last interview was with a guy from a magazine in Mexico, Processo and. And I think they had some. Another one that recently came out. But he was like kind of bothered by the fact that he would mention El Chapo in his interviews and stuff like that. He would say he was like kind of shy about or kind of like sore about the fact that Chapa was getting more coverage, I guess in a lot of ways. So he played it smart. He was quiet about things. Hard, hard to pin down. Nobody knew where he was. He was. He rolled around with like a squad of people.
- [43:33]
Host
What's the power sharing setup? Because like in the United States we think about this, you know, if we're looking on our end, we think like the five families and there's a boss and then 100 bosses. Awesome.
- [43:41]
Ed Calderon
Whatever.
- [43:42]
Host
But it's not really, it's not like.
- [43:44]
Ed Calderon
That with the cartels like back, back when it was again functioning federation because again, the Sinal cartel I think is. Is on its way to a full extinction. It was a federation, families controlling territories, having some sort of alliance. We're not going to. With each other. We're going to band together and fight other people. And we. El Mayo Sambada seemed to have the Vito Cornelone type strategy of investing in people, investing in political careers, investing in businesses on both sides of the border. So he, he played it cool, he played it quiet. Favors here, favors there. El Maya Zambala was the one that actually negotiated the release of El Chapo Guzman's sons when they were abducted by the head of the Sino, the New Generation Cartel, El Mencho.
- [44:38]
Host
When was this?
- [44:39]
Ed Calderon
Oh, this is like a while back, probably nine years ago, ten years ago they. Some of El Chapo Guzman's sons ventured into New Generation Cartel territory and were abducted in mass. Supposedly El Mayo Sambada was the one that negotiated this directly with the head of the New Generation Cartel. So again, this is a. A very astute individual.
- [45:00]
Host
Yes.
- [45:01]
Ed Calderon
Who has this, this level. And I think around that time is when you start seeing a split in these families. I guess you have the remnants of El Chapo, his sons now taking care of business in Kulikan.
- [45:18]
Host
How many sons does he have total?
- [45:22]
Ed Calderon
At the top of my head, I don't, I don't know exactly how many. But there's a few. There's a few wives, a few girlfriends. There's some twins that are living in the United States. Right. With a. With Emma. So there's. There's a Lot of them.
- [45:34]
Host
Oh, right, the kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [45:35]
Ed Calderon
There's a lot of them right now. The. The one on the top of the list is Archivaldo. Archivaldo is the last remaining son of Oapo Guzman, who is actually actively in control and moving things around down in. In Kulan, the capital city of Sinaloa. It's their last bastion of control, basically. I don't think he's in Kulikan, probably. He's probably somewhere else, probably. Maybe even in another country right now, hiding. I wouldn't. But he's basically at the top of the most wanted list, both by the Americans and by the Mexican government right now.
- [46:07]
Host
How do you call the shots in such a violent world, living in another country, having.
- [46:13]
Ed Calderon
Having lieutenants on the ground that you trust directly who are on the payroll.
- [46:17]
Host
How can you really trust them, though?
- [46:18]
Ed Calderon
There's no really, I guess, but we just saw the mass arrest of four of his top lieutenants in Kulekan by Mexican special operations. They found a tunnel in the houses that they were hiding in, by the way. Barry. Barry on that led right into the sewer system. Very, very chapo. Yes, esque. But you see these organizations and the way they operate in places like Kulikan, So. And the. The. The. The abduction of Omayo Sambala is, like, key. So if people want to uncover this, like, exactly what's going on. El Mayo Sambala is asked to participate in this political meeting. There's. There's a guy that runs a university, and the mayor, the governor of Sinaloa, have a dispute, and he's asking El Mayo to kind of like, hey, can you. Can you mediate this? El Mayo Zambada is compadre. It's a compadre. Basically. He's the godfather of one of the sons or some sort of, like, familiar relationship there. So he says, yeah, I have to go to kind of solve this issue. So he shows up to this ranch, and it's not that, you know, the person that he was there to help out gets shot. He says this in this letter that he writes about his abduction. And then he gets probably blindfolded and gagged and put on. They put zip ties on him, and he gets hurried onto a plane. The guy that was shot in that meeting, Nemesio Gwen, the Sinaloa state prosecutor's office says that he was shot in a gas station. And they produce this video of him being shot at a gas station, which didn't happen, but they produced this video and said, oh, he was shot at this gas station. No, it's Like a video of somebody getting shot at gas station. Yeah. Okay, so basically they're lying about his murder.
- [48:22]
Host
Yeah.
- [48:22]
Ed Calderon
So that means the government, the Mexican government is trying to cover up some there maybe, but not the Mexican government, the local government, the state level government. So the state level governor says that I wasn't there for that meeting. I went to the U.S. he wasn't in the U.S. he's probably in the somewhere in that meeting. He's a Morena party candidate, so he's part of the federal ruling party, so there's some shame there. And supposedly one of El Chapo Guzman's sons organize all this, accompanies El Mayo on a plane that flies into the US and the rest is kind of history. To me it has all the indications of a US covert operation on foreign soil. But we could maybe one of El Chapo Guzman's lowest experience sons organized all of this and pulled it off. I don't know.
- [49:15]
Host
Could have been, it could have been a mix of both. Like he's helping with it, but they also want it. My question would be, why would the United States covert operators turn on a guy who hypothetically here they've been working with for decades, who knows where all the bodies are buried and bring them back very publicly? This isn't like they, why not just kill them right there and, and let it, and let it die with him? Like they brought him back and now he's going through the whole trial thing and he can make threats like this, like, oh, I know where is, why would they let that happen?
- [49:47]
Ed Calderon
I think, I don't know. I, I, I think there's something to be said about the age of some of these overt cartels coming to an end. I think there's something to be said about the age of information and a lot of people now tuning into this as an issue and problem. Like I, I used to be on the fringes of, of social media talking about some of this. It's crazy. Now it's front and center.
- [50:08]
Host
Thanks to you though, by the way.
- [50:09]
Ed Calderon
I, I've, I've, I've tried to, I've tried to figure out what the intention is as far as why now. And the only thing that comes to mind is one, the fact that this fentanyl epidemic has reached all of us in a very direct way. Do you know anybody who has died of fentanyl?
- [50:29]
Host
Friend died last year.
- [50:30]
Ed Calderon
I, I, I meet them a lot and I will just say this one, it makes me kind of emotional because I know the guy, a friend of mine who is a beautiful, beautiful guy. Beautiful man, volunteers for like, at risk youth people and stuff like that. Who's this, this person who was a heroin addict himself in the past. His son, 14, got dosed with something at a party and he didn't wake up.
- [51:10]
Host
14.
- [51:11]
Ed Calderon
14. This is, this is almost two years ago. His room is exactly the same. What way? Now that's 1,1000. So I imagine that the US is like, you know what, whatever this is, whatever we're trying to figure out, or whatever policies, like twisted policies were around this, we need to maybe do something about it now. I think this is going to be the next war on terror. Yeah. And when I say the next war on terror, I mean this is going to be the next big issue that's going to be in front of people. So let's figure out how to start it in a big way. There's a narrative there going on, and I don't know exactly what the narrative is. I do know that this happened before the Trump administration came into power. So people trying to pin it on Trump are kind of mistaken or a bit vague on that.
- [52:03]
Host
Yeah, it's too early to say stuff on that. Yeah.
- [52:07]
Ed Calderon
But I do think that in a lot of ways, Trump is some sort of weird catalyst for change. I'm not saying, I'm not saying he's a positive or negative figure. I, I do know he's an outsider in a lot of ways. The way he's been utilizing those tariffs and the pressure behind them, and just the fact that he's adamant about the, the Mexican government being involved in all this, despite all the pleasantries between both governments. He's like, but I know you guys are in on it. It's refreshing to hear that because it is something that is plainly true to most Mexicans. But I guess as far as the perspective shift that I'm trying to put out there for people, all of us are complicit in the US as well. The, the policies that the US has implemented abroad have greatly fostered some of the situation that is now exploding in Mexico. And a lot of these mass graves, a lot of the.
- [53:07]
Host
What do you. Why, like what, what do you mean by that?
- [53:10]
Ed Calderon
The US's hunger for some of these drugs. I mean, I was in Portland, I was telling you about this Portland experience where I was seeing federally issued syringes being filled with Xenolo cartel heroin for crazy. If we watch Netflix series. I mean, if you think about it, if, if I went to a winery that was run by Al Qaeda and then did like Some product promotional for their bottles of wine, you know, and said, hey, buy this Al Qaeda wine. It benefits this organization. They're pretty cool. I mean, I'd be spot. I'd be supporting terrorism.
- [53:50]
Host
That's right.
- [53:51]
Ed Calderon
There could be some. Netflix has a bunch of series on some of these people and, and a lot of life rights have been paid for. There's a lot of tequila bottles on the aisles that Americans buy. I'm not going to name the brands, but people can research themselves who are owned by cartel organizations. You have, you have people, popular musicians showing up on MTV and, and singing to Lady Gaga and like that on the VMAs who are clearly seeing the law. Cartel funded and supported it. Where's the outrage there that we saw post 911 when this designation came in? So there's a weird, it's, it's a weird double standard. It's a weird dou. Double standard where it's like these people are, these cartel group organizations are not terrorist organizations, but somehow when they cross the, the border that they're all down in Mexico. Like, when's the last time you heard about a major US based figurehead being arrested related to drug distributions?
- [55:01]
Host
Couldn't tell you.
- [55:03]
Ed Calderon
Isn't that a weird thing?
- [55:04]
Host
Yes, it's weird. We started this entire part of the conversation with you talking about the kind of, the disconnect between how people in Mexico view this versus how a lot of it is like ignored or considered a problem, as you just said down there.
- [55:20]
Ed Calderon
Yeah.
- [55:21]
Host
As they say here. And you are such a unique person to talk about this because you have skin in the game on both sides of the border. You're from there, you go there all the time. It breaks your heart to see what goes on. You've already mentioned some stories and you have way more of people, you know, who've been caught in the middle of this and killed, their family, maimed. You know, it's, it's personal in every way. And yet, you know, we take it seriously here now because we have problems, but we're not looking at it through the same lens to your point as we do when we look at, you know, radical Islamic terrorism and shit like that.
- [55:55]
Ed Calderon
Sharia law coming to the U.S. right.
- [55:58]
Host
Right. But there's something, and this is just a thought I've had in my head long before you were here, just because of some of the people I talk to and things I hear. But there's some sort of odd attitude that has existed until now where I think the government, the United States government has always viewed the Cartels as a net resource instead of a net threat. And here's, here's what I mean by that because that's a crazy statement to say, but here's how I'll back it up.
- [56:32]
Ed Calderon
I mean, it's not that crazy.
- [56:34]
Host
It's not that crazy in a way. But like when you think about it, like imagine people who are supposed to be representing your government, that's, you know, the modicum of the free world making decisions like this in the back office. What I mean is when we had radical Islamic terrorism or something, they were pointing to buildings that fell down here, you know, images that just shocked people and like, holy 3,000 people died. The cartel stuff would happen down there and, and the effects that would happen here would be anecdotal. Oh, Johnny died of, of an overdose.
- [57:08]
Ed Calderon
Media blackout.
- [57:10]
Host
That's right. So they, it would be. What was the old Stalin quote? It's like one death is a tragedy, you know, a thousand is a statistic or something. It was almost like the opposite of that in a way because the statistics were drug use. It wasn't cart people in the media didn't say cartel funded drug use. So we created this attitude that could have been pushed by people in the bureaucracy to kind of say like that's a separate problem. And the reason I'm saying this is because I've seen it up close myself as to how the government has used the cartel as a resource. I had Matthew Hedger sitting in that seat for the second time the other day. And I like Matt a lot. You know, he was doing what, what his job was, but he was a knock. And he ended up infiltrating the cartels for many years where he was a money launderer for them. And he was, his job was for them to continue to exist so that the CIA could do what, what could use the access he would get to take care of CIA related national security threat shit around the world. And I say that when I also know this guy Matt lost his brother to narcotics and he takes it very personally.
- [58:23]
Ed Calderon
Yeah.
- [58:23]
Host
And yet he had to live in that world to go a step farther with that. There's another guy who was talking to me about coming on the podcast some months ago. We may do it at some point, who's like 75 years old. He says he's not in the CIA, but he's a part of this organization with like 3.4x covert guys. And you know, magically, every time they show up in some country, you know, the government's toppled six months later. So do it that way you will. But he came into the CIA as a knock for 15 to 20 years in the cartels where they literally recruited him and said oh no, we don't want you to stop what they're doing. We want you to go be a part of it. You see this is something that's in the 70s.
- [59:02]
Ed Calderon
Yeah.
- [59:03]
Host
So I see a pattern forever where the United States has said they may say like the cartels are very bad, these guys suck. We don't like it. But this bad and the access we can get is not as bad as this bad.
- [59:16]
Ed Calderon
Yeah.
- [59:17]
Host
That we actually need to stop.
- [59:18]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, yeah. That's. I mean again this, this, this, this whole rat's nest that is being uncovered now and you know, I get it, people are asking for the Kennedy files, man. Ask for the Mexico files. Oh yeah, I know there's a lot of them. People are asking for disclosure on UFOs and stuff like that. And ask for disclosure on Wide Receiver, on Eric Holder and his, his involvement in some of these operations. Putting guns and weaponry into the hands of a very specific cartel. Basically doing a destabilizing military act against Mexico. You have a, you have a, you have a period of time where Mexico, you know, in the 60s Mexico was a hotbed for communist activity. You had a student revolt in Mexico in the 60s in Tatelolco who were, were communist related. So they were shot and killed. There's a giant massacre there. The president that was in charge at that time turned out to be a CIA asset.
- [60:32]
Host
Oh, that's nice.
- [60:33]
Ed Calderon
So there is probably some sort of call being made there to, to, to, to allow these soldiers to basically go live fire with some of these protesters back in the 70s. And that creates a rift that creates generational trauma that creates of feeling within the populace that the government is not my friend. And whoever These guys with AK47s are in patrolling my town who are probably a more of an authority figure to me because they're right here. They could be more of my friends. So it leads to this societal shift in Mexico where like people want to talk about where corruption comes from. It's easily corruption comes from the local populace saying the government is no good. Let me figure out how to just, just pay my way through, pay other people that are not the government to make pay my way through or figure out ways around. Corruption is like cultural in, in the system. And the, the, the saying that I always go back to Mexico has a single saying about the United States. Mexico so far from God but close to the United States. Yes. There is a responsibility by Mexicans. And I'm like, I was born there. I realized that there is a responsibility by the Mexican government, by some of the citizenry that support some of these organizations or that defends them or by some of the people that listen to some of this cartel music and they want to grow up to be like that. And you know, family dissolution, all. There's a ton of responsibility that go all around. But a big part of that responsibility lies here in the US and we have to talk about that. You know, it's pretty easy to point fingers and say like build a wall to keep all this unsafe things to come here. The wall is only going to inhibit the. It's only, it's not, it's only going to stop the elderly and the people who are not able bodied. Like I just, I just came down from the border and I saw a group of like 20 people make it across. Right over a walled part of the border. Yeah, yeah.
- [62:40]
Host
I mean was it a wall with an open door?
- [62:41]
Ed Calderon
No, there's ladders. There's like, there's ladders. The customs and border protection guys still have a manpower issue.
- [62:49]
Host
Yeah.
- [62:50]
Ed Calderon
And there's, I mean the last time they put the military on the border during the, the migrant caravans, I think a few of them were arrested for smuggling people up.
- [63:00]
Host
Oh, that's nice.
- [63:01]
Ed Calderon
So like again, the whole aspect of corruption.
- [63:03]
Host
Yeah.
- [63:04]
Ed Calderon
Perspective wise, the border wall is being sold as a security feature to keep drugs out of the country. That's hilarious because the border wall has been up in a lot of the places where most of the drugs go across that border. So that's pretty funny. It. Human smuggling and people coming across that border pay their way through to some of these criminal organizations. Some of these criminal organizations actually make more money off people than drugs. And continuously again, one of the mind blowing aspects of, you know, this American experience that I was talking to you guys about as far as like me coming up here and like traveling around and figuring things out. You hear a lot of talk about slavery here in the United States, the history of slavery here in the US There is slavery going on right now.
- [63:53]
Host
How so?
- [63:54]
Ed Calderon
Some people can't pay for the crossing.
- [63:56]
Host
So they work their way like indentured servitude in a way. Yeah. Which is slavery.
- [64:01]
Ed Calderon
Yeah. And sexual slavery as well. Like I've been in some weird hotel rooms in, in the Midwest that would freak you out.
- [64:09]
Host
In, in our Midwest that involved people that came across the board that involved children.
- [64:15]
Ed Calderon
Children. Yeah. And I, I 13 year olds for me is A kid?
- [64:19]
Host
Of course it's a kid. Yeah, you're talking that they were.
- [64:22]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, there's, there's the, during the Biden administration, many people that came across that border had a very specific little wristband on their, on their wrist that meant that they were to be used. So a lot of unaccompanied miners made it across that border, were taken to hotels and moved around. And that's another aspect of it that doesn't really get talked about. No, some people, and mind you, I'll bring this a little bit back. I've worked, I work with a few law enforcement agencies as an advisor. They sent me stuff. I give them an opinion. I've trained some of them as well.
- [64:57]
Host
With a bunch of them.
- [64:58]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, you name them, I've worked with them. Yeah, but there was this whole thing about picking that came out like this movie came out and everybody was like against picking and they were like fighting against all these. And the thing that made me boil in my blood with all this is that these guys were doing operations outside of the US to mitigate. The biggest consumer of victims is the US And a lot of these kids that were being put across the border, unaccompanied minors, a lot of them were being utilized and are still being utilized as. Olivia loves a challenge. It's why she lifts heavy weights and likes complicated recipes. But for booking her trip to Paris, Olivia chose the easy way with Expedia. She bundled her flight with a hotel to save more. Of course she still climbed, climbed all 674 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower. You were made to take the easy route. We were made to easily package your trip. Expedia made to travel flight inclusive packages are atoll protected ways of paying. They're crossing.
- [66:08]
Host
So are their parents aware of that?
- [66:10]
Ed Calderon
Because no, I mean these are kids.
- [66:12]
Host
That were just, just alone.
- [66:14]
Ed Calderon
Alone. Unaccompanied minors coming all over, across the, across Mexico being handed over by somebody that knew what they were doing. And you know, would it be, would it make you suspicious if you saw two 20 year old dudes showing up in a van picking up a 13 year old kid? Yes, that's why they use ladies for this.
- [66:35]
Host
See that would make me suspicious though too.
- [66:38]
Ed Calderon
Two ladies, older age, working with some of these criminal organizations, putting the two or three kids in the back of a car, take him to a hotel, staying in a hotel, long term, dude's coming in and out, servicing like that.
- [66:50]
Host
This happens and they pay off the hotel.
- [66:52]
Ed Calderon
Obviously this happens. Right. And that's just One side of it, and it might be minor maybe, but it's huge in the. In the. In the. In the. In. In the. The effects of. To some of these kids.
- [67:03]
Host
No, it's. You know what? I'm sick about it. But, like, it doesn't.
- [67:06]
Ed Calderon
But it doesn't surprise me, but the mindset is this. You know, again, we saw these movies about, like, overseas and then other countries, sexual tourism. All that is true, but the main consumer is right here, and this happens here too. So I was like, where are all the local raids of these, you know, hotels and in places like this where some of these services are being. Are happening also, where are the raids on some of these, you know, like at the. On some of these places where some of these kids are being destroyed, handed over to strangers. I mean, these kids are being handed over to strangers with like a. Like a. Some paperwork, and you would see them at the airport.
- [67:48]
Host
Yeah, no, you're taking the words out of my mouth.
- [67:50]
Ed Calderon
So. So, like, I. I get the whole aspect of the US Being horrified by that's going on overseas. I'm not from here. I want to be like, I'm now committed to being from here because I have to, you know, do my whole immigration process. But, man, we talk about the horrors of the war in the Ukraine. Like, what about the horrors here? There's some shit happening here. Like some dark, twisted shit at high levels. You know, you. You. We went through the COVID epidemic, and you can't find toilet paper, but you can find produce. Right. And I traveled around. I flew on, like two or three commercial empty flights, like I did. Yeah. During COVID besides, I had to work.
- [68:38]
Host
Yeah.
- [68:39]
Ed Calderon
And you know what I always encountered when I was staying in hotels? Clean rooms. Clean rooms at hotels, you know, and the ladies were always not speaking that clear English, you know? So, like, how can it be that we are all screaming for, you know, the border wall, Send them back, deport them. But during COVID these were the people that were essential to work in life, you know?
- [69:07]
Host
Yeah.
- [69:07]
Ed Calderon
How can we have somebody like Governor Newsom speak about the current policies that are, you know, in. In place while he has a winery full of people that are paying off their. Their, Their. Their. Their ability to cross that border.
- [69:25]
Host
Oh, so he literally has people working.
- [69:27]
Ed Calderon
There who are indentured, I don't know, like this. This is. This is the. This is. They're. They're everywhere, Right. People who are trying to pay off their. Their. Their time here. You know, I get it. I understand there's a reason why Illegal immigration is illegal. Yeah. And it has nothing to do with the loss of this country. It is, has everything to do with the need and addiction that this country has to cheap, off the books labor and other things that are much, much darker. Much darker. Now. I am an immigrant myself. Like, I went through it legally and it is a show.
- [70:10]
Host
Yes.
- [70:13]
Ed Calderon
And I, I get it. Like, I'm not a, you know, I'm not, I don't. I didn't support any of both of those. I think we could do much better than both of the candidates we had on the ballot last year, last election cycle.
- [70:24]
Host
Agreed.
- [70:25]
Ed Calderon
But I understand, I get, I get the frustration. I get the punishment that is being issued by the boating populace. But I think we should really look at ourselves, our society, what we're doing and what our responsibility is. I mean, I'm not talking about reparations or like, none of that. I'm just talking about, hey, it's like realizing the US And Mexico are tied at the hip. Number one. It's the number one trading partner of the United States. If the US Decides to follow the advice of all the commenters online and just send drone strikes to, to finish off the cartels in Mexico, the only thing you're going to do is turn these cartels into insurgencies.
- [71:11]
Host
That's right.
- [71:12]
Ed Calderon
Because that's what's going to happen probably.
- [71:14]
Host
That's right.
- [71:14]
Ed Calderon
You send a predator drone down to Kulia Khan and explode a house that has some family members in there. Now the government is going to turn to its citizenship and say, yeah, the US Made a mistake. No, they're going to say the U. S. Attacked us.
- [71:29]
Host
That's right.
- [71:29]
Ed Calderon
And these criminal organizations, well, they're probably, they're actually freedom fighters now. And like the local populace is going to be on their side. They already are in a lot of ways. They're already. The, the cartels have been doing hearts and minds for decades. Right. When covet hit, they were the one enforcing the mass mandates down there.
- [71:45]
Host
The cartels were.
- [71:47]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, when covet hit, the cartels were enforcing mass mandates. If you didn't wear a mask in parts of Cooligan, you would get a board. No, it would get you. They wouldn't kill you. They would, they would take a board, pull your pants down and slap you in the ass with this paddle. When people were locked in, the cartels were the ones in certain parts of Mexico actually giving out these bags of, of, you know, basic staples.
- [72:12]
Host
Yeah.
- [72:12]
Ed Calderon
For people.
- [72:13]
Host
How does, how does forcing people to mask win hearts and minds? I feel like that would be kind of the opposite.
- [72:18]
Ed Calderon
I don't know. It was like a thing. They were basically in any. Any play where they. Any place where they operate, they try to be the government. And again, if you. You have this. This. This. These criminal organizations acting as governments in the places where they operate, but also they have the shadow parts of themselves here in the US which is, again, things. Media blackout, which is traditional media in the U.S. man. Shady.
- [72:43]
Host
It's bad.
- [72:43]
Ed Calderon
It's shady.
- [72:44]
Host
Yeah.
- [72:45]
Ed Calderon
And as somebody from Mexico that was working at a time when Facet of Heroes was happening, the amount of. Not the amount of things that weren't said about that, for example, like, in the media was like.
- [73:00]
Host
Because they have the people on there talking who are supporting the operation.
- [73:05]
Ed Calderon
This is. This is what we're now learning, and this is what we now realize with this. This revolution of people just not being a part of the traditional media. There's something shady about all of that. Realistically. There's something shady about just immediate blackout. With all of the happening in Mexico from the time that I was active to. You're seeing a break of it now, people are talking about killing fields and mass graves like it's a new thing. This has been happening going on decades. Again, I was in. I was around for the. The. The incident in Mexico.
- [73:37]
Host
What was that?
- [73:39]
Ed Calderon
A guy they called the stew maker who used to use caustic soda to disappear bodies. Yeah. And this is. Oh, this is. This is. This is. This is way back. This. This is. This is way back. So you. So that's been happening for decades now. So there's no. There's this. There's nothing new about this. And the media just being completely silent and quiet about it is suspicious. Is. Yeah, right. It's very suspicious. I don't know. You're. We're entering into an age where you're. We're seeing the probable and possible extinction of the Caloa cartel, for example.
- [74:17]
Host
Yeah. Let's come back to this, because that's obviously a huge statement to a lot of people out there. What is this? Strictly because of the vacuum that's happened since Elio.
- [74:27]
Ed Calderon
For some reason, the US Federal government has decided that El Chapo Guzman and all of his sons are public enemy number one in Mexico. So they're just concentrating their efforts on them. And you are seeing an embattled Chapo Guzman family trying to maintain control of. Of its. If. Of Kula Khan as its kind of like power center. And meanwhile, a lot of the faction that supported it and a lot of the factions that used to be with it are now turned on them because of the, of betrayal that they experienced. So and the Mexican federal forces are specifically. That's who they're going after. Right. Because that there's tariffs involved, there's politics involved and again I don't buy into Mexican federal efforts right now actually trying to eliminate this problem.
- [75:30]
Host
Why would you. They've always been corrupt.
- [75:32]
Ed Calderon
They've always been corrupt. But people need to just factor this in. Clubhouse Shane BOMB Current current president massive security overhaul going after some of these cartels. New, new police being invented and new names being put to them. The, this political figure of Harfouche who was, who was the head of the police for Mexico State, Mexico City when she was a leader there coming into power and now him being at the forefront of this, of all these anti cartel operations. But before that there was a time where the federal policy was bullets, hugs, not bullets. Right. Which was led by the political leader of this movement that is now in control of all of Mexico. Address Manuel Lopez Obrador who among other things went to the hometown of El Chapo Guzman six times during his tenure as president. Latuna produces nothing but cartelman like but some of some of the most most famous cartel members of the of the past few decades. He is seen talking to El Chapo Guzman's lawyer and mother during political campaigns and rallies. But again the whole denial of the current federal administration is that there's no relationship. Right. So you have a whole presidency where it was basically hands off. That was, that was the policy. Hands off. And now you have this administration who is like we need to figure this out now. Yeah. Like we need to undo all of what just happened in Mexico. There's two factions. One, the loyalists who are Claudo Shanebaum Morena. They are the change we need. They're uncorruptible. They're like the, the, the responsibilities of all the past political parties. The pre, the Pandy, the Brian. All of them are trying to tear down this, our candidate, our, our president. Claudia and then there are people like me who realize that most of the people that are in that party used to belong to other parties. Yes. And I, I was, I was in, in high level politics for a bit myself as a, as a security individual. Like I, I headed up the security of a, of a governor for a while in Baja.
- [78:10]
Host
Was he on the right side or the wrong side?
- [78:13]
Ed Calderon
Time will tell. I, I, I, I, I, I didn't get to see anything shady. They try to kill him a lot.
- [78:18]
Host
That's interesting.
- [78:20]
Ed Calderon
That's why they sent us to take care of him. So his, his whole security staff was apparently corrupted. And it was, it was a whole show. But I got to see all the political faces and names and now I see them all under this new banner, right, because they're all Morena. They're all somehow clean now. And it's, it's, it's, it's a farce. It's a farce, you see. And every now and then I post some of these videos on my Instagram account, which is shadow band as hell, but I still post them of federal forces saying hi to the cartel guys and kind of moving off or not being actively trying to get at them, but they're like, you know, shaking hands and just there's this farce going on all over the country where, yeah, some, some cartel members are being targeted, but other ones are completely being left alone. You know, you have on one end an embattled Chapisa Chapo Guzman cartel being dismantled in Kule Khan, but on the other end you have a new generation cartel posting a video where they're issuing war statements against the Familia Micho Cana. And there's just about like dozens of these heavily tacked out cartel members basically issuing a statement of war against the Familia Michoacana, which.
- [79:42]
Host
How old is the new. Is the new air cartel?
- [79:45]
Ed Calderon
It's probably 15 years old somewhere around that.
- [79:48]
Host
How did it form?
- [79:50]
Ed Calderon
They created this organization. They created this, these, this group called Los Matasetas. Those Matasetas were basically a counter to the Zeta Cartel who was expanding across Mexico. So they wanted to form a unit or a group that could fight them. And I think what they got right, and they were basically mirroring the Zetas, interestingly enough. Like, I'm going to talk a little bit about the Zetas because I recently learned some information about them. I was just in Jalisco like a month ago. I, I interviewed, interviewed a guy Gafe as his moniker on YouTube. He's like a, like a prolific YouTuber in Mexico, but he was a part of one of the most elite units in Mexico, Los Gafes. They are our delta force. I guess that would be an equivalent. I mean, these guys, high level people. The narrative that we have now is that the Zetas were a group of special forces operators from Mexico that went AWOL and joined cartels, joined a cartel organization, the Gulf Cartel, as bodyguards. That's the narrative we have now. Well, according to him and a few people that I've talked to now, they were Actually sent on government orders as an investigative police arm to the Gulf of Mexico. And they got issued like, these are your orders. You're working for this guy now. And that guy was the head of the, that guy was the head of the Gulf Cartel.
- [81:27]
Host
So the, the government, the military orders them to go in and says basically your military commander when you get there is the head of the Golf.
- [81:35]
Ed Calderon
Yeah. You're going to be respons. This is going to be who you're working with. So these are smart people. I mean the amount of training these guys had and also the selection process. People want to talk about buds and the SEAL selection process being like this, this very difficult thing. Gafe had described his process taking three years of actual military service and then almost two years of a process to create agafe. And we're talking about third world special Forces trading. I mean these, this is, this is not, you're not going to get waterboarded with a towel.
- [82:13]
Host
They're not checking your vitals.
- [82:16]
Ed Calderon
This is brutal trading. And then he explains what they show them. It's a Green Beret like unit. I mean they're, they're talking about augmenting forces by training the locals. They're talking about media propaganda, they're talking about psychological warfare. They're talking about explosives ordinance, sabotage. They're talking about taking control of local populate populations. They're talking about out.
- [82:45]
Host
This is espionage training.
- [82:46]
Ed Calderon
This is, this is, this is taking down government type level trade.
- [82:49]
Host
Yeah.
- [82:50]
Ed Calderon
And this is. The US was directly responsible for the creation of some of these groups. School.
- [82:55]
Host
How do we know that?
- [82:56]
Ed Calderon
School of the Americas. There are some pictures of some of these at the people I've heard, I've never seen them, but there's, there's pictures of some of them in Fort Bragg. So these, these guys were people that were trained. So you have this, these, these, these, these units, these groups of that level and they go into basically say bodyguarding positions with the head of the Golf cartel and all the while they're just taking notes.
- [83:24]
Host
Yeah.
- [83:24]
Ed Calderon
You know, because they're smart.
- [83:26]
Host
Yes.
- [83:26]
Ed Calderon
They're not, you know, they're taking notes and they're figuring out, you know, we can probably do this ourselves. The Zetas changed everything in Mexico. When I mean everything cartel related. No, things before the Zetas were, you know, there were, there were shootouts, you know, there were like gang, gang wars and like that. The set has implemented armored vehicles or artisanal armored vehicles for the first time. The Zetas implemented ID technology and explosives to some of these events. Not the first ones, but the ones that did, the more sophisticated.
- [84:02]
Host
So now they're putting IEDs all over Mexico.
- [84:04]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, there's. There's IDs currently in Michoan and local populace is actually issuing the government to try and get them out. I just talked to a guy who is in. In Monterey who's working in some of the operations groups. IDs and drones dropping bomblets on them is a common thing now. So the Zeta. What I wanted, what I want to state is the Zeta cartel changed the game and up the violence to a level that Mexico had never seen.
- [84:31]
Host
How much push back did they get from existing cartels? Like a war perspective.
- [84:35]
Ed Calderon
Try to stop seeing a cartel and a few of the other cartels were like this. These guys are going to take over. They. They would go into a town and just recruit locally, which is, if you think about it, brilliant because they would take all these kids who were. Didn't have opportunities and people like myself, because some of the people that actually trained me were more members of the gafe. So they were actually this type of individuals. So they would take. Take a bunch of them, put them through the same training process or in a lot of ways that they went through. You want to talk about like scary, like psychological. I mean, take a kid and it's like 19, 20, just like I was. Put him through some hardcore training where you have to like witness somebody getting shot or shoot somebody yourself to prove loyalty. Sleep in the middle of nowhere, easy. Eat garbage, kill a dog, eat the dog's meat in front of your trainer. Then get involved in shooting and tactics and movement and operations and patrolling. And then, then see that you have a very specialized. This, this kid can shoot, so give him a rifle with glass. And that kid can drive, so give him a wheel. So you start getting them responsive. You start getting very sophisticated cells of cartel operators going into a town and just wiping the floor with their rivals. Because the rivals are just kids with AKs.
- [86:05]
Host
Yes. No training and they're psychologically brainwashing them. Though what you're describing as clear methods to get people to lose sight of their own autonomy and who they are.
- [86:15]
Ed Calderon
Well, we can call the military brainwashing as well in that. In that regard. But that's exactly what they went through. I mean, when I went through my training, it was the same people were involved in my training. The. Not the Zetas, but like people that came from the institutions that produces that. That's go. Is. Yeah. The. The breaking down of the human.
- [86:35]
Host
Yes.
- [86:35]
Ed Calderon
So they can pull out or create the individual that they want to use, this, this, this artificial sociopath. Right. Which is, again, we talk about the military, but. But that's, that's who they started producing. So this, this phenomenon grew in Mexico. Mexico.
- [86:56]
Host
All across the whole.
- [86:57]
Ed Calderon
All across northern Mexico. The, The. We. We saw some activities in, in Baja from these guys as well. This surgical precision prison break that they did in Tijuana. They dressed as ambulance drivers, movie level. So what they did was they basically upped the game.50 caliber armored vehicles, precision precision shooting, rocket launchers. Manpads were kind of put into the game as well. So they basically turned into an insurgency cartel. Basically. That's what they were. So they changed the game. And again, I'm not going to point names. I'm not going to say this is directly responsibility to the U.S. but the U.S. has a long track record of training its own enemies.
- [87:48]
Host
Oh, yeah. So again, it comes back to that whole argument where they're like, all right, this enemy is worse than that enemy. So it. We'll take that. L. Yeah, that's what they decide. And they use Mexico is very clear across every level. They use Mexico as a dumping ground for that.
- [88:03]
Ed Calderon
You know? You know, we, we. I Remember watching Rambo 3. Remember Rambo 3? It's like in Taliban or just a bunch of, like, freedom fighters and then. But then they're not anymore.
- [88:15]
Host
Then they're not. Not. They were the mujahideen back then. Right.
- [88:18]
Ed Calderon
So a lot of the same phenomenon has happened in Mexico, I guess.
- [88:23]
Host
Yes.
- [88:23]
Ed Calderon
These guys are the, are our allies, and now they're not. You know, we've, we've seen the US Use, for example, the Mexican Marines for a while. The Mexican Marines were utilized by the United States as a point of contact, and they would utilize them to do operations against cartes cells. Operation Black Swan, which went after El Chapo Guzman in his final moments of freedom, was run by the Mexican Marines. But the federal Mexican government saw this when they changed political parties and said, like, you know what? We're not going to use you guys anymore because you are compromised by the US So let's use the Mexican army instead. That's why you start seeing who's compromised by the cartels. You're. No, the Marines are compromised by the.
- [89:08]
Host
U.S. yeah, the Marines are compromised by the U.S. but the Mexican army is compromised by the cartels.
- [89:13]
Ed Calderon
It's comprom. Compromised by a more old and linear. And again, I'm not just speaking out of my ass with the. When I say that the Mexican army is compromised by cartels, People can look up something called the Guacamaya Leaks, which is our version. Mexico Guacamaya Leaks was a giant leak of Mexican army documents.
- [89:33]
Host
It's like the Pentagon papers kind of.
- [89:35]
Ed Calderon
Yeah. And in these documents there's like conversations about, hey, the governor in this state works for this cartel. So let's, you know, or the, the, this, this middle military region favors this cartel over here. But this military. So they're, they're speaking openly.
- [89:53]
Host
Openly.
- [89:54]
Ed Calderon
Yeah.
- [89:54]
Host
We have it pulled up here on the screen. So military surveilled Ayotzinapa School for years before disappearance of 43 students. Intelligence reports reveal constant exchange of messages during night of attacks in Iguala. Mexican military continues to deny investigators complete access to archives.
- [90:11]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, this is, this is, this is in relation to a bunch of students that went missing in Mexico.
- [90:18]
Host
Oh, there it is. Yeah. What you were talking about the Mexican military's current use of the Israeli surveillance platform.
- [90:23]
Ed Calderon
Pegasus. Yeah, Pegasus.
- [90:25]
Host
Wait, they're using Pegasus?
- [90:26]
Ed Calderon
Pegasus has been implemented. I have experience with this. Pegasus has been implemented in Mexico for years now. The Israelis have a really strange presence in Mexico. Mexico. In Mexico, as far as trading, as far as politics everywhere, as far as cartel activity. There's been some high level cartel assassinations with Israeli individuals involved in Mexico. So yeah, they're, they're, they're around. There was, there was a time in the early 2000s where they were like the IT people for security in Mexico. So if I'm a security agency and I need high level anti terrorist training them training, the US wouldn't send people because we're afraid to bring people down. So the Israelis would come.
- [91:06]
Host
So a lot of like the Israeli government sponsored or like people like Black.
- [91:11]
Ed Calderon
Cube people would say, people that came from Israeli government that are now presenting themselves as contractors. Yeah, yeah. Whoa. Which again, I, I'm not saying anything. I don't know know, but I imagine that there is some shady going on.
- [91:30]
Host
You just did. So.
- [91:31]
Ed Calderon
I mean this, this, these are, these are.
- [91:33]
Host
Put his hands up like Trusky, like, don't worry about me.
- [91:37]
Ed Calderon
You know, I'm not, I'm not Kanye west or anything like that, but I.
- [91:41]
Host
Wasn'T gonna accuse you of that.
- [91:43]
Ed Calderon
But, but there, there's definitely. Mexico is Mexico. Is this, this, this crossroads of a place? I mean, yes, you find, you find like, like just, just so people can, can understand how complex of a crossroads it is as far as like an inspiration for warfare. The Zetas or who they used to be, learned how to use propaganda warfare from Americans. So Americans Showed Mexican special forces how to use propaganda warfare to psychologically damage their enemy from the us The Zetas. The, the, the, the Mexican special forces guy turned into the Zetas. The Zeta start implementing torture videos of people getting hacked in half with a chainsaw or horrible. And these videos start showing up online. A lot of Americans first interactions with the cartels online were these videos. And these videos were being seen by the Middle East East. So we can draw a clear line from the US showing how to use terror videos to the Mexican army, to the Zetas, to isis. Like the inspiration of this process. And also you can see the IDs and a lot of the weird mortars and explosives we're being, are finding, we're finding all over or all over Mexico are traced back to. People are coming back as people are coming back with experience from the Middle east.
- [93:18]
Host
Right.
- [93:19]
Ed Calderon
Americans with military training and experience who are then like I don't, I don't want to work at a 7 11. Let me go to Mexico, sell my ids, sell my experience and my IDs.
- [93:32]
Host
Yeah.
- [93:32]
Ed Calderon
There's some people online talking about high level special forces individuals training people in places like Jalisco. Like I've been down there and talked to a lot of people down there. I don't, I don't see that. I don't think there's a Delta force guide down there training anybody. But I think there are probably a few Americans that have some sort of military background and experience at least in Jalisco, doing tactics and training explosive, an ordinance type training for cartels. So again we have this, this, this, this feeling that, that a lot of things that happen in Mexico are just somehow just, just originate in Mexico. No, a lot of them are originating in the United States and the influence of the United States into Mexico. And, and again ideas come from all over place. Israelis. And again this is from, this is from the stew maker El Paso statement. Israelis showed elements of the Ariano Felix cartel in Tijuana how to get rid of bodies. Right.
- [94:30]
Host
This is years ago.
- [94:31]
Ed Calderon
This is years ago.
- [94:32]
Host
Yeah.
- [94:33]
Ed Calderon
So that is a foreign entity or a foreign group basically showing tradecraft to Mexican criminal organizations. Then you start seeing IDS and bomblets of a very specific type. And again I've, I have interactions and I share information with, with people including some people in the U.S. army who every now and then IEDs and, and explosive related stuff. Like it got sent to me and I'm like, I just like check this out. A lot of the, a lot of the know how for some of these IEDs. And a lot, A lot of the, you know how just the skill set, especially with some of these IDs that are being shown that are showing up in the northwestern part of Mexico, these IDs have a, a very specific trigger setup. The plunger from a syringe. So these plastic plungers from a syringe. So these bombs, these mines are actually plastic. A lot of them are actually mostly made of plastic with a very small amount of metal in.
- [95:35]
Host
They're that delicate then.
- [95:36]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, you can buy. And we're like, that's a curious style. That's not something, that's not something you'll see. We don't have ordinance laying around all over the place like Iraq or Afghanistan. So they're utilizing mining level explosives or some homemade stuff, stuff that actually comes from Colombia. So at some point, the Colombian FARC units and forces hired a bunch of IRA members.
- [96:03]
Host
Like the IRA in Ireland.
- [96:04]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, the IRA in Ireland, who also were supplied and trained by US people. The IRA basically trained a bunch of the Colombian FARC forces. And the methodologies and systems of how the great IDs and explosives are making their way north 4th.
- [96:19]
Host
It's a petri dish.
- [96:20]
Ed Calderon
It is. And it's an insane school of modern fourth generation warfare, I guess is what you would call it. But Mexico is a petri dish, and it is, is something that is now creating. I mean, people were surprised by the drones being utilized as weapons in the Ukraine, the Ukrainian war.
- [96:42]
Host
Like, why were they surprised about that?
- [96:44]
Ed Calderon
I don't know. Like, it was like a novelty thing for people. People. Like, I was seeing them in Syria and in Mexico before that. Yeah, yeah, it was like drones.
- [96:52]
Host
They've been around.
- [96:53]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, yeah. Like 2000, 2011, I think is when I found. I don't, I don't, I don't remember exactly. Again, a lot of brain injuries. We found this quadrone with a giant break of meth because they were utilizing them to like cross drugs into the U.S. this, this is 2000.
- [97:16]
Host
They're using drones to do drops.
- [97:17]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, basically. Yeah. This is. And this is 2013 era. I don't remember exactly late, but you, you. The. And then they landed one with a grenade. They landed a drone with a grenade in the backyard of a former, like, government official in Baja. So this has been happening a while. And a lot of the stuff, again, I mentioned all this because I, I feel in a lot of ways that Mexico is a. Mexico has been utilized as a training ground or as a center of creation for a lot of.
- [97:48]
Host
The stuff you're seeing it's experimentation. Yeah, that's what you're describing.
- [97:51]
Ed Calderon
Because it's. It's a place. It's a. It's a. It's a wild west place. There's no authority, realistically, you might go into a town where the local cops are working with one cartel, the state cops are working with another, and the federal cops are working.
- [98:06]
Host
Does that even work, though? How do they organize? Organize that because one is supposed to be outranking another.
- [98:12]
Ed Calderon
So if you, if you go, I'll use Tijuana as an example, because I was there. So in Tijuana, we had the issue that the local municipal police was working with a. Was working with cartels. But it was a weird thing because the city was like, the guys in the north part of the city were working with one cartel. So this. Then the guys in this other precinct were working with another one. One. So my former boss and one of my mentors, Lieutenant Colonel Lizaola, fascinating guy, he said, like, well, how do we deal with that? Well, he would change where they would. So the head of this. This precinct would be moved to the rival cartel precinct, and the head of this precinct will move to this precinct over here. So either they resigned or they were killed. So that's a way to clean up that in. In. In. In a hard piece.
- [99:02]
Host
Feet.
- [99:03]
Ed Calderon
But sometimes you would. You. You would go into places where the city was favoring one cartel, the army is favoring another. So, like, it's. It's a show. Not. Nothing realistically would change for a long period. Either you would eliminate one of the competing cartels and have a little weird agreement with the one that survived, or it only dawned on me years later that a lot of the stuff that I was doing was favoring one cartel. Right. In a lot of ways. So. And funny enough, it's the one that dominates right in the region, some of the regions that are operated in now. So you. It's. It's this case of chopping one head off and two emerging or chopping a head off and thinking that's the whole of a snake. When you realize that snake leads all the way back, back to the government. It's a mess. And there's responsibility on both sides. The thing that I want to just knock home in this interview is there is a clear line of responsibility from the US to the origin point. A lot of this, A lot of.
- [100:12]
Host
These issues in Mexico, meaning it multifaceted through the potential training that's been happening, through the potential utilization for espionage purposes to allow these things to grow and continue. And through the lack of border security to allow products to be able to easily get into the United States and also through the use of the actual substances in the United States and the demand for that.
- [100:34]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, I mean the, the most corrupt federal institution, police institution in the US Is the border patrol.
- [100:40]
Host
And you've worked with them, right?
- [100:41]
Ed Calderon
Yeah.
- [100:41]
Host
You've trained them a little bit.
- [100:42]
Ed Calderon
I've trained the border patrol.
- [100:43]
Host
What makes them the most corrupt?
- [100:45]
Ed Calderon
Convictions. I'm not saying that as a. Like they're the ones that have the most convictions for corruption issues because they're right on the border. Right. So I mean somebody's saying hey look that way and I'll give you 100 grand. I'll leave it in the parking lot over there. Just you have to look that way so we can cross people through here.
- [101:01]
Host
I mean that's happens all the time.
- [101:03]
Ed Calderon
It sounds like it's not, I mean it's not an uncommon thing. Also the fact that high level government officials said it was a good idea to just open the border and have these waves of people just going across, boss. Like somebody at a high level in the government said we should do this. And I'm speaking to people from the border patrol that were involved in some, in some of that time of history. I mean they were completely like just, just imagine. I mean.
- [101:34]
Host
Yeah, they had their balls cut off.
- [101:35]
Ed Calderon
Yeah. So where are the investigations there?
- [101:40]
Host
Yeah.
- [101:40]
Ed Calderon
Where's the outrage there by the, the amer. The American populace?
- [101:44]
Host
I had our mutual friend Rocco Vargas in here, here a few months ago and obviously he was there during, during I guess like the starts of this kind of stuff happening.
- [101:52]
Ed Calderon
Yeah.
- [101:52]
Host
And it's, they're already. Forget the corruption for a minute. That kind of blows my mind that they're the most convicted.
- [101:58]
Ed Calderon
Yeah. As far as convictions go, they're the most corrupt. I mean when, I mean they're not. I'm not saying that as to tell you that though. Yeah. You're all the border patrol is because again I've know some of them and I've seen them out of their pocket, pay for candy or for toothbrushes and give them to people in detention and people wanting to. About U. S. Detention centers come down to Mexico. See, I'll show you some of the immigration detention center. Mexico.
- [102:25]
Host
Yeah.
- [102:26]
Ed Calderon
I'm not saying that they're adequate and in any ways, like they're horrible. I won't want my kid to be in any of these places. It's relative. You're saying it's relative. And also you hear, you hear all these people screaming about family separation and some of the horrible conditions in some of these detention sites. But why aren't they screaming for the people all the way in the south that said, come, come, here's money, here's buses to bus you all the way there. Here's some cash money, you know, or, or all these Americans coming down to Tijuana to give them money or donations in, in these migrant caravans camps that they had. And then those guys selling the, the donations in the, in the open air markets and making cash, not giving into the kids who were props there or.
- [103:16]
Host
The NGOs that just allow the coyotes to bring people over and they know they're coyotes and help them out, do their job. To say nothing of the fact that these are the same people putting some of those people they're bringing over, who they don't hand to the NGOs into indentured servitude? I mean, it's, it's crazy.
- [103:32]
Ed Calderon
It's crazy. And the, the again, I'm trying to bring home the level of corruption on both sides of the border. Oh, yeah, it's wild. It's wild. And as somebody that's experienced it, again, we, every time I say, hey, cop in Mexico, I'm a corrupt guy. All cops in Mexico are corrupt. Yeah, yeah, okay, I get it. You know, like, I live like a homeless person. I don't know where I did, I did with all the millions that the cartels gave me, but whatever.
- [104:00]
Host
Yeah, now you're them and, and reporting on them.
- [104:03]
Ed Calderon
I'm just, I'm just speaking about my experience with them. And again, I got, I don't. People that know me and people that have kind of seen my process. Like, like I'm friends with some of the people that I went after in the past because I know how futile and just stupid a lot of the conflict was.
- [104:22]
Host
Wait, wait, you're friends with some of the cartel guys you went after?
- [104:25]
Ed Calderon
I'm friends with some of the criminals that I went after after, yeah.
- [104:28]
Host
Today. Are they still criminals?
- [104:29]
Ed Calderon
No. Like, one of them is an actor. One of them is, one of them is a rapper, Conejo I I. My group arrested him on murder charges while he was hiding in Tijuana. And we're friends now, so I guess.
- [104:43]
Host
He didn't get convicted.
- [104:44]
Ed Calderon
He got off.
- [104:46]
Host
Did he do it?
- [104:47]
Ed Calderon
I don't know. I don't, I don't think he did. He seems like a nice guy. I don't, I don't think he did.
- [104:55]
Host
But you're friends with him now. He Left the life. What's his perspective now?
- [104:59]
Ed Calderon
Like, it's like, I remember when we got him. I, I've always tried to, like, I'm, My mom raised me Catholic, like, with.
- [105:12]
Host
A ruler, like the nuns.
- [105:16]
Ed Calderon
That's, that, that's from, that's from doing the sign of the cross with my left hand of Catholic school. School.
- [105:23]
Host
Nice.
- [105:23]
Ed Calderon
So I, I, I, I, I don't like dehumanizing anybody, even if they are criminals or, like, they were, like, perceived enemy. You, you would have this programming that we talked about how to. How people get brainwashed. I was brainwashed in a lot of ways by this training that I went through and the group that I was in. You know, they brainwash you into thinking that you're, you know, I don't know, indestructible or that you, you're right righteous in what you're doing and that the people that are in charge of you know what they're doing and you shouldn't question orders. And all this for people out there.
- [106:02]
Host
Who aren't familiar with your story. What group are you talking about?
- [106:04]
Ed Calderon
Baja State Police. Back then, there was an operations group that was kind of the initial start to that experiment. It was a weird institution at the start.
- [106:14]
Host
How did they get to you? Did you want to join them or did they find you?
- [106:17]
Ed Calderon
This is post 9 11. The economy was in the toilet. I was, I was on my second year of medical school, and I just couldn't afford it anymore.
- [106:27]
Host
So you had wanted to be a doctor?
- [106:28]
Ed Calderon
Yeah.
- [106:29]
Host
Was that a lifelong dream?
- [106:30]
Ed Calderon
Yeah.
- [106:31]
Host
What kind of doctor did you want to be?
- [106:32]
Ed Calderon
A general practitioner. I just want to be like a community doctor somewhere. Like, my mom was a nurse, so that's where I got that.
- [106:38]
Host
It's interesting. So you, there's something in you that wanted to help people.
- [106:42]
Ed Calderon
Yeah. At a basic level. Yeah. And they use that, that, they use that. At some point in my career, I realized that a lot of the people that I was being told where my enemies were, I had a lot in common with them because they were plucked, too. Yeah. And it's, it's also like a. It's not like going like. Every now and then I talk to my veteran friends here in the US it's not the same. It's not the same. I spoke the same language as some of these kids. I could recognize the breakfast that they had that morning by the smell. Some of them were shot in the stomach. Oh. So I could recognize what they had for dinner, for breakfast. Like, they had Wells, Concharizo, and that Shit just gets in your mind. It just like, holy, this is a human being. This could have been me. And there's this weird. There's. It's. It's a different war. War. It's a different war.
- [107:40]
Host
Do you compartmentalize that?
- [107:43]
Ed Calderon
I'll tell you. I'll tell you a story. And this. I. I've talked about this a few times, but never on. I don't think I've talked about this on a podcast. There was a. I grew up with this redheaded kid. It was like Canelo, you know, the boxer. For some reason we have a lot of redheads down there.
- [108:03]
Host
The Irish.
- [108:04]
Ed Calderon
The Irish that betrayed the US and went to join us. The French too, there was a bunch of French. And course of with. We'd skateboarded together. And we were. Again, we grew up on the border, so we were very Americanized. This kid skateboarded with me. Cool kid. Used to do a very high ollie. That was his whole thing. Beautiful parents. Their dad and mom still married. Sister, great kid, strong Catholic. It was at a cross on him. We'd make give him about that. I didn't see him from 16. He disappeared from my life. He just, you know, we went separate ways. And all of a sudden I find him again. And outside of a gas station, I'm working. I have a Glock stuffed on my pants. I have a Nextel radio in my back pocket. And I'm pretending to not be involved with anything. Walking past this gas station where there was a bunch of armed people parked Suburbans, Tahoes and like that. Everybody's wearing plate armor, AKs, not police issue, just a bunch of random ars and stuff like that. And I was sent there to walk by, to walk through and to. Just to see what was going on. Somebody among the crowd that was there, armed whistles to me and says my name and my stomach drops to my balls. It's him. Like, I turned to him and I could see his freckly nose and red hair peeking out of a little hat that he had on sideways. He's wearing this chest rig with AK, AK47 magazines on there. He comes over and gives me a big hug. Stick some of these things in my, you know, like, what are you doing? I'm like, oh man. I'm just, you know, just passing through, you know, I just. I give him some story about me looking for a job and just not knowing what to do and like that. And he, you know, he smiles and kind of like he knows I'm full.
- [110:28]
Host
Of how many years have passed since he was 16. And you didn't see him again?
- [110:31]
Ed Calderon
I was 23 back now that. At that time.
- [110:35]
Host
Wow.
- [110:35]
Ed Calderon
He, you know, we exchanged pleasantries. We asked. We ask each other about each other's parents and like that. Before he goes, he says, I know what you do for a living. You should probably leave here. It's pretty dangerous for you. And I said, thank you, you know, So I walk off. I didn't have my. My. My. My next cell was going off the vibrating. The army showed up. As soon as I got back to where I came from, the army showed up and got into a firefight with all of them. You could hear it from blocks away, the roar of these G3 rifles and AK just going, Kip, grab. Grab my plate, put it on. Grab all my. Everybody's rolling. Roll that, roll, roll to where this was happening. By the time we got there, it was over. It was a few minutes. I spent probably 40 to 40 minutes to an hour looking for him. I couldn't find him. Like, I was trying to pretend that I was like, securing the area and shit like that, but I was like, look, I was looking for my friend. He was. He was under a car. He tried to escape under a car. The only way I recognized him was his hair because his face was gone. How can you. How can I dehumanize him? Or, like, this is the enemy? I stayed. I. I stayed with him in his body until late into the night. And I. I received his parents so they can recognize him. It's a. It's. It's a different war down there. It's not. It's not. It's not overseas. It's not an enemy that you can't recognize. These are kids. These are kids shooting at each other. For what? Allegiance to a cartel? To supply the US With a substance? Because they are. They are living in a country that is rife with corruption and that has people in power that don't give a fuck about its citizenship and allow young people like myself at that time to be drug dragged into this war? I mean, are the people that trained me to do what I had to do in that time any different than the people that went and trained them to do what they had to do for these cartels at one time? What's the difference there? That's just one. That's just one kid that was eaten by this. This kid had a lot of potential. He's like athlete kid, but just. There's no opportunities.
- [113:42]
Host
Now you. Now. He disappeared from your life. Life when. When you were 16 and you don't know exactly what happened, but you could probably guess. Correct me if I'm wrong, he was recruited. Right. Someone came and tapped him on the shoulder. 16 year old kid said, you come with us now. So here, here's why I say that. What choice does that kid have?
- [114:02]
Ed Calderon
Zero. Not a lot. But what choice did I have? You know, it was either going and going to where this newspaper told me that I was going to be a part of something special or to finally cave into some of my friends who were driving loads across loads across the San Ysidro border into San Diego, say hey, it's easy money. All you have to do is just drive this car and leave it in this parking lot over here.
- [114:30]
Host
And those are your friends and those are my friends. Those are your friends.
- [114:33]
Ed Calderon
Those are.
- [114:34]
Host
Imagine if the wrong guy came to the skate park though when you were 16. Not your first boyfriend.
- [114:38]
Ed Calderon
Yeah.
- [114:38]
Host
Older guy.
- [114:39]
Ed Calderon
Yeah.
- [114:40]
Host
You wouldn't be here right now. Probably down there doing this.
- [114:43]
Ed Calderon
Probably not. But like the, the, the like I, I want Americans to like realize there is no safety net. There is no unemployment check, there is no Social Security in Mexico. There is no outreach program. There is, there is no say no to drugs kids. And if there is, it's a joke, you know, it is, is survive it is figuring out how to get what you need and then leave everything out, leave every everybody else to the side. You know, me first. And the level of just dehumanization that has a normalization that has happened again. Americans are just learning about this Auschwitz in Jalisco and that's the way they call it because they have no other way of calling it because is all the shoes and all the people that were burned. So Auschwitz is what they come up with. This has been happening for decades down there during the first parts of the Ukrainian conflict. Mexico had performed that war with bodies like they were really. There were more bodies in Mexico in the first three days of the Ukrainian war than in Mexico than there were in the Ukrainian conflict. And somehow there's no war going on. That there you have a federal government in the, in Mexico stating that the US should do this, should do that and all this rhetoric about this, not that they're that Mexico's sovereignty and all this. Meanwhile there's a European cartel head guy in Mexico City got assassinated because he was a direct link between Los Mayos and their, their influences in Europe. You're seeing Chinese manufactured and produced precursors and chemicals coming into Mexico through its ports which are military manned and nothing is happening. You get a Lot of people assassinated that work those ports from the military, but nobody's asking questions like, hey, how is all this getting into the country Century. You have now a US utilizing that as a threatening device to Mexico. And, and those tariffs are not going to affect anybody but us, the government. They're going to be fine. Those tariffs are going to affect the small companies that sell, do and move things. That's who's going to be affected. Small people. Cartels are going to give a about those tariffs. And again, these organizations were created and fostered by the same governments that are now going after them. That's, I think that's the, that's a reality that I don't think gets talked about. And again, maybe Trump wasn't responsible directly for the, the origin of the Zeta cartel or the origin of the Sinaloa cartel, but he's, he's there now and he's pointing the finger at them as a terrorist organization. And just like we pointed the finger at Al Qaeda at some point and figured out that, oh, we created Al Qaeda or just how we pointed the finger at some of the stuff that was going on in Syria. And now we're coming to learn that a lot of these freedom fighters that were in Syria fighting were actually former Al Qaeda people that are now being paid and trained by the US government to do all, all this shit is coming out now. Now I, I can't, I can't wait to see what other type of involvement stuff comes out from the Mexico side of things.
- [118:18]
Host
From the Mexico side of things.
- [118:20]
Ed Calderon
Yeah. The war that is going on and has been going on in Mexico and the US's direct involvement in the aspects of it, again, Fast and the Furious is just the tip of an iceberg, I think, of the US basically arming a single cartel force in Mexico. The Zetas are trained by U.S. special Operations and they're also School of the America graduates, some of them, I've heard. So there's a responsibility there. Former presidents of Mexico being CIA bankrolled people. There's definitely some sort of interaction there. Some major government officials being touted as incorruptible and being showered with awards and accolades by, by federal officials in the us are now in federal custody on cartel charges.
- [119:13]
Host
It's hard not to get cynical.
- [119:15]
Ed Calderon
And we have El Salvada, the historical figurehead of the Sinaloa cartel, issuing a statement of warning to the Mexican federal government that if he doesn't get released and tried for his crimes in Mexico, it's going to destabilize the region. And while that's happening, a bunch of pictures of both the president of Mexico and a lot of his top officials like this with all of Almayo Zambia's lawyers and direct representatives. The rat's nest is large and crosses the border.
- [119:55]
Host
How would, if, if in a perfect world you waved a wand and all of it came out, how would there not be a massive explosion into itself in Mexico for the entire system? Meaning all the rats would be running off the ship and they'd be killing everyone while they run off the ship. And I'm not just talking cartels, I'm talking to people in the government, I'm talking the military. I'm talking if it's all came out like the system's bad right now, it's violent, there's death happening every day. Right. But I'm just making round numbers to make this simple. If there's 10,000 deaths happening in the country right now, which is objectively horrible a day, you know, who's to say that if, that if you pulled the rug out from this thing, there wouldn't be a period of two years where it's just a war torn country where 200,000 people are dying a day? I, I think you know what I'm saying.
- [120:48]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, yeah. Well again, I, I, I, I keep looking at the government's rhetoric right now of invasion and military operations still being on the, it's still an option. So I think the US itself and, and people in charge right now are planning for something like that.
- [121:06]
Host
I think to invade.
- [121:09]
Ed Calderon
To cause a change in Mexico that is very dramatic.
- [121:15]
Host
Okay, let's go, let's go to this now. I've been waiting to go to this throughout this whole conversation. You've mentioned it several times.
- [121:20]
Ed Calderon
Sure.
- [121:20]
Host
We did just declare them a terrorist organization.
- [121:26]
Ed Calderon
There is now on the books a clear designation that these organizations are terrorist organizations. Cartels, which is, and they, and they issued a list of all the cartels that are included in this, this designation.
- [121:40]
Host
Were there any left off that you were surprised?
- [121:43]
Ed Calderon
Not really. I think most, I was surprised that a lot of the names that are on that list or, or the organizations that are on that list have a clear representation in the U.S. i mean they're clearly here in the U.S. but it's, it's somehow this designation just, it's, it's reaches.
- [122:02]
Host
That's what makes it weird because it's like if you're going to designate the or. I've heard people talking about this. I was talking with Matt Hedger about this. It's like if you're going to designate them terrorists over there. It would be so obvious. Like if we had known that there's Al Qaeda cells here, like they go to take them down.
- [122:16]
Ed Calderon
So why aren't they taking them down? Let's, let's say that you found out like this, this post 911 world.
- [122:22]
Host
Yeah.
- [122:23]
Ed Calderon
And we find out. And again, I'm just going to be a good example, you know, that Taylor Swift has been laundering money for Al Qaeda. Right. Let's, let's, let's. This is a, this is a fictional story. We find out to get that on the. Right. Yes, fictional story. We figure out that Taylor Swift is laundering money for Al Qaeda. What should happen to Taylor Swift? Something's gonna be.
- [122:47]
Host
Again, it's a fictional story, but she's.
- [122:50]
Ed Calderon
Gonna get a knock at the door probably and there's gonna be some heat. Okay. So we, we currently have a Mexican popular singer by the name of Pesa Pluma who is clearly. And like this, He's. He sings about it. This guy sings about his relationship. He sings about it. He sings about it in his songs and it's clear as day that he has some sort of, that he has some sort of tie.
- [123:17]
Host
This guy does. He's in the U.S. yeah, he's in.
- [123:20]
Ed Calderon
The U.S. he's then and no, he's.
- [123:22]
Host
On the COVID of Rolling Stones.
- [123:23]
Ed Calderon
Done. Yeah. Nice. Now this designation puts one of the organizations that basically fostered his rise is on that terrorist designation list.
- [123:38]
Host
How do we know they fostered his rise?
- [123:40]
Ed Calderon
Because he sings about it. I mean I, if people are like, hey Ed, come on. He's. He sings about it.
- [123:49]
Host
Now devil's advocate here. There's rappers who sing about. Yeah, they didn't do.
- [123:55]
Ed Calderon
But this is if, if I am saying something that isn't true, we'll hear about it, I guess. But there's, there's a clear line there. So I'm, I'm asking if this is a serious attempt by the United States to actually go after these organizations, why aren't we hearing anything on this side about, you know, tequila companies that are funded by political figures in the US they have to have somebody in politics out here.
- [124:29]
Host
Oh yeah.
- [124:29]
Ed Calderon
We just saw the arrest of El Mayo. Not Mayo, Nessio Seguera Cervantes, the head of the New Generation cartel who may or may not not be dead because nobody knows.
- [124:43]
Host
But he's arrested and now he may or may not be dead.
- [124:46]
Ed Calderon
His son in law faked his death in Mexico.
- [124:50]
Host
Okay.
- [124:50]
Ed Calderon
And miraculously resurrected himself and was arrested in Riverside, California. Oh, so what Are we doing realistically with this designation? Is this an attempt by the United States to actually eliminate the cartel problem? And this fentanyl epidemic which the United States created, by the way, why do.
- [125:16]
Host
You say we created it?
- [125:18]
Ed Calderon
Because you prescribe fentanyl in the US For a long period of time to people and then talking about, like the sacklers, the opiate epidemic and all that. That's good America. So. And then when they realized that a lot of the orchards that were being populated with marijuana, Marijuana grows, were no longer necessary because you guys are growing weed up here. Here, we cut that off and now we put heroin in there and then we mix it with fentanyl to make it give it a kick. So there's some sort of involvement from China? There's some sort of involvement from the.
- [125:48]
Host
U.S. yeah, we'll come back to China.
- [125:50]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, we'll talk about that in a bit. But so, like, what's going, like what's going on? Is this an attempt by the US to actually get things in control as far as drug and cartels, or is this an attempt by the US to control its biggest trade partner? Is this an attempt by the US to create an industrial plan in Mexico? Because Mexico is probably the next China. It's on its way to be the next China. China is lagging behind economically. China is getting a drop off. We don't hear a lot about people immigrating to China. I think China's probably gonna, gonna, gonna go out of.
- [126:26]
Host
I think I don't hear about a lot of people immigrating to Mexico though, too, in all fairness.
- [126:30]
Ed Calderon
Well, there's a bunch of Venezuelans and Haitians right now close, trying to seek asylum in Mexico. So we need to.
- [126:35]
Host
And then they're probably trying to find.
- [126:36]
Ed Calderon
Their way here because they were trying to find their way here. Now the borders close. So now they're trying to stay in Mexico. There is like, there's.
- [126:42]
Host
But meaning it's not, it's not like good talent. Like there aren't engineers for. To your example, going from here to church.
- [126:50]
Ed Calderon
I want to correct you.
- [126:51]
Host
Okay? That's why you're here.
- [126:52]
Ed Calderon
There are a ton of immigrants in Mexico right now from a very impoverished country. Country. I want you to try and guess which country this is.
- [127:03]
Host
It's not someone in South America, it's the United States. What?
- [127:07]
Ed Calderon
90% of all new housing in Tijuana, for example, is being bought up, bought off by Americans who can't afford to live in San Diego.
- [127:14]
Host
Okay, but that's also right on the border.
- [127:17]
Ed Calderon
But there's a bunch of communities elsewhere like Tulum is ruined by all the Americans living down there. There. Mexico, Mexico City has open revolt against all the Americans who are living down there who are all, if we're honest about it, economic migrants. So yeah, Mexico fosters a ton of migrants. So I just wanted to get shoes.
- [127:41]
Host
On the other foot now.
- [127:41]
Ed Calderon
I just want to get that clear. What I think the US Is trying to figure, what I think the US Is trying to do long term is that I think the US Sees in Mexico the potential that it has to be a, a economic superpower. I think it has a potential. I think one Mexican workers equal three or four Chinese workers as far as productivity.
- [128:03]
Host
One Mexican is better than three or four Chinese. Yeah, Chinese got to get it together.
- [128:08]
Ed Calderon
And they're, you know, the US the first time Trump came into power, he had this whole, you know, bring, bring manufacturing back to the U.S. you know, know, which was stupid in a lot of ways. We did that in Mexico and one of the, one of speaking purely as a like strategist, I guess the, the trade agreement he came up, he came up with, with Mexico, the renegotiated trader agreement was brilliant for the U.S. not for Mexico, but for the U.S. so that was a pretty strong deal for him.
- [128:44]
Host
Great deal.
- [128:44]
Ed Calderon
Deal, Great deal. Like he, he, yeah, he hit it on the park with that. Again, from the US Perspective, not Mexico, but he told a bunch of companies in Mexico to leave Mexico and come back and manufacture in the east in the United States. China took full advantage of this. Yeah, I mean, was viewed as a punishment to Mexico. But then we saw a giant in like influx of Chinese investment during the Biden administration. The peso was one of the strongest currencies in the planet. Like it didn't fluctuate and it was because of all this foreign investment coming into Mexico fostered by that first Trump administration. So I think what Trump figured out and started seeing, or some of the people around him started seeing, is that a lot of these Chinese companies, manufacturing companies, to try and get around tariffs, start, started saying, hey, we're going to build the first Mexican electric car. But all the parts of that Mexican electric car, meaning China, most of them. So that's a way to get around the tariffs. So in a lot of ways I think he realized that the Chinese were trying to get around a lot of this to buy, figuring out a control and, or a good solid footprint as far as investment in collaboration with the Mexican government and basically cutting the US Off. So yeah, so I think a lot of the A lot of what we're seeing now as far as terrorist designation of cartels, terrorists being pressured against Mexico, the Mexican political block being at odds with the American political block as far as who's in charge. I mean Trump represents some interest and Claudia, shame on, represents clearly other different interests.
- [130:27]
Host
What do you mean by that specifically?
- [130:30]
Ed Calderon
I mean Claude Shay mom is all the way to the left. Right. It's open. Chavista, open supporter Venezuela. So that's, that's her. And on the Trump side we have like completely the opposite of that.
- [130:44]
Host
Yeah.
- [130:44]
Ed Calderon
So I think there's. There that's.
- [130:46]
Host
It's literally just a political divide.
- [130:48]
Ed Calderon
You're saying that's a political divide. And also the US is realizing that Mexico is much more valuable than it wants to admit. And I think control is a big aspect of this. We're hearing a lot of expansionists talk about in the US about buying.
- [131:01]
Host
Yeah, we're going to buy Canada. Apparently we.
- [131:03]
Ed Calderon
And I don't think you're going to buy Mexico, but I think you are going to and are exerting your control over it. And I think one of the first things you do as an opposing force to control the place is to cause and start in, yes, the area, destabilize it. So the main claim that the federal government has against the United States for the arrest, the legal arrest of El Mayo Sambala is that it destabilized senal organization. And it did. I mean it started a war there. So there is, there's definitely some sort of high level game being played and Mexico was at the center of it. China is involved in it as well. If you want to think about some of the conflicts that have been going on in Mexico, you have the new generation cartel who controls ports in and out of Mexico in a lot of ways, including one big one in, in Colima who were not affected by the COVID lockdowns when that they happened as far as their supply of fentanyl, for example. So who's moving fentanyl into Mexico even during the shutdowns? New generation cartel. So are they being fostered or supported by some sort of entities in China that are keeping these shipments coming?
- [132:25]
Host
Yeah, yeah.
- [132:26]
Ed Calderon
Who knows? No, maybe it's the triads or like criminal organizations in China. Nothing happens in China without like.
- [132:32]
Host
That's right.
- [132:33]
Ed Calderon
The Chinese have the biggest intelligence op operation on the planet because everybody who is Chinese is a part of this operation. So there's something going on there. On the Caloma side of the cartel, when the co thing was happening, they were smuggling Fentanyl from the US into Mexico to infuse their product and then ship it back. Like they caught a guy in, I think in San Ysidro with a ton of fentanyl back then. So you start seeing these weird influences and games and he starts realizing that there's a proxy war of a sort in Mexico going on. And Mexico is very much being utilized as a proxy war type setting.
- [133:14]
Host
Yeah, well, they're the middleman of it. And the wars happening on multiple lens, not the least of which is also in America where the downstream effects of this are killing people. And to be fair, I'm glad you brought it up earlier. Like the market was also created by people here.
- [133:32]
Ed Calderon
Yeah.
- [133:33]
Host
Through the opioid epidemic and the disgusting nature of what the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma did to this country. Which, you know, I try to like take the tinfoil hat off sometimes and, and just be like, all right, you know, there's just evil people. But it is hard to look at a story like that and say there is not something coordinated there. They were allowed to operate with total impunity. And then they were able to make a deal with. None of them are in prison.
- [134:02]
Ed Calderon
It's wild. It's wild. You know, who, who, who are their lobbyists? You know, what are they doing? Like, why can't we look at that? Of course, the legalization of marijuana in the United States was, was, was, was said to like bring it's. It's going to put a dent in cartel finances. Was something you would hear a lot. Cartels came to the US and started growing that weed illegally in federal lands and mixing in it with the legal stuff. Cartels started putting their money into money laundering operations in places like Colorado because it's cash only institutions with. So it didn't do. It actually made it grow and it gave them another angle.
- [134:44]
Host
And it's also their lowest as far as like poundage that they can move and profit that they can make. It's at the bottom of their totem pole.
- [134:53]
Ed Calderon
And that was at the start of legalization. Now you have Chinese gangs, which we don't care not a lot about doing some of the same operations and going into the illegal weed business being grown and then sold through other leagues. Legal man.
- [135:06]
Host
Yeah. Jorge talked a lot about this.
- [135:07]
Ed Calderon
So the Chinese. Chinese gangs and organizations. And again, we can't talk about Chinese criminal organizations that are kind of independent from the government. I don't all of them have some sort of.
- [135:19]
Host
They do.
- [135:20]
Ed Calderon
So if we really look at it closely, it's not Chinese based gangs. It's.
- [135:28]
Host
Yeah. What we deem as criminal gangs, though, are effectively spies. They don't. The same way that, like, you'll hear, you know, any spy you talk to in the United States government, when they go on these podcasts, they'll say, your job was to be a criminal on behalf of the United States. Somewhere else, I'll bet they were considered gangsters. And some of the things they did, I mean, in certain places. So what's the difference here?
- [135:48]
Ed Calderon
There's a video of a line of Chinese nationals at the Mexico border in Tijuana and Tijuana.
- [135:54]
Host
Yeah.
- [135:54]
Ed Calderon
I want you to, if you can find that video. I recognize a military haircut when I see one. And I recognize people not moving their right arm when they're moving around. See, like, look at the luggage, look at the clothing. I mean, they're, they're not the poor and impoverished people. They're taking full advantage of a stupid government policy.
- [136:20]
Host
Absolutely.
- [136:20]
Ed Calderon
To like, come on, look at that. Yeah, look, the hands behind the back is, you know, very Asian, I guess. But there's videos of them walking around. The, the videos walking. Of them walking around. You, you have a, you have people basically walking around without moving their right hand.
- [136:39]
Host
Like a Secret Service kind of type deal.
- [136:41]
Ed Calderon
I mean, Putin walks around without moving his right hand because he's trapped. Putin is always trapped. Yeah, I don't, I'm not saying that these guys are strapped, but these, some of these people that went across that border, if you look at that, just that little element, I mean, these are people that have weapons training, of course. And these guys were welcomed. They were welcomed and they had orders issued in their native language as far as like, hey, this is how you have to go here.
- [137:06]
Host
Oh, it's, it's, it's. Even so we had Nick Shirley in here for episode 214 last summer. He, he got a hold of those and he had it translated and we read it on that podcast. It is down to the, to the smallest detail, starting with where they start all the way to some random little court in bumble town in the middle of the United States. And people out there are trying to imagine every single thing between there. Yeah, it's all covered.
- [137:33]
Ed Calderon
Yeah.
- [137:33]
Host
Every single day. And it's, and it's easy. It's, it's like there. I, I've used this a lot in other contexts, talked about this before, how foreign nations in the ideological warfare and stuff will use our democracy against ourselves. Another example with China would be Tick tock. I don't like communism at all. Right. But one very useful thing that they can do with that totalitarian power is their kids have their TikTok turn off at 9 o' clock at night and they're watching nature videos and science videos. Our kids have it on 247 and they're watching titty videos. Same thing here. They're using our immigration system, which is obviously extremely broken and you've experienced that up close against us to be able to get people all the way through these nooks and crannies down the line to the legal process. Like have them use the legal process to. Once they're in the system and they're just allowed to stay here while that's going on now, they can go disappear.
- [138:26]
Ed Calderon
Yeah. And we're not even talking about real estate, which they are definitely invested in. Like go to places like LA and around there.
- [138:35]
Host
Go to New York. Look at these buildings.
- [138:37]
Ed Calderon
Yeah. So. And you know, Tick Tock in Mexico is a whole other thing. It's an interesting thing. That's one of the things that I don't get get from the Trump administration, why there was an effort to save Tick Tock. Tick Tock is not the friend of anybody as far as the, in Mexico, if you, if you want to cross that, the, the U.S. mexico border, you go on Tick Tock. That's where, that's where the classifieds are.
- [139:01]
Host
The classifieds.
- [139:02]
Ed Calderon
Like yeah, who, who, who is the best smuggler to cross? Me at the border. You go on TikTok to look them up. There's a bunch of videos on TikTok of successful smugglers basically showing off that they just have. They just cross somebody across the border and they're all over Tick Tock. And that's somehow we need to save that. You know, social media is what it is. And I get it. Freedom of information. I'm an anarchist by heart, man. I grew up punk rock. I get it, I get it. But some of these things are clearly and obviously being utilized to manipulate and just do bad to. To people. China is definitely an enemy. Me. Mexico has definitely been infiltrated and used in a lot of ways by Chinese state operatives and the Chinese state to go after U.S. interest or just being an antagonistical to U.S. interest in the past.
- [139:53]
Host
And they're running a reverse opium war too.
- [139:56]
Ed Calderon
There you go. Which is pretty poetic if you kind of think about it.
- [139:59]
Host
It's very poetic.
- [139:59]
Ed Calderon
It's very poetic. I think one thing, one thing that I've also kind of seen and you see that with the new generation cartel, there's a There's a video and pictures of the new generation cartel. They're, then they're, they're, they're all kitted out in black and they have signal jammers on their shoulders.
- [140:17]
Host
Signal jammers?
- [140:18]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, it's multi, multi frequency signal jammers. They have multiple antennas on them. So when you see these videos, those things are meant to cut, cut signals, cell phone signals, radio signals, any sort of signals coming out of an environment. And all of those are like, when I saw those, those are like Tamu, you know, those are Chinese bootleg manufactured pieces of, and the uniforms are all Chinese manufactured copies of U.S. tactical. Their, their nylon gear is all. So you can, could, you could see that there's a supply line of some sort from China to, to Mexico that's supplying that cartel. I don't think they're dumb enough to send anything like a remote guided missile or anything like that. Although a lot of the stuff that was sold to the Ukrainians apparently and this, I haven't seen any of it directly myself, but I, I've heard rumblings in federal government in, in, in Mexico about, about some of those radio guided missiles that were given to the Ukrainians to defend themselves against the Russians showing up in Mexico.
- [141:31]
Host
Oh, they made their way back here.
- [141:35]
Ed Calderon
A lot of the stuff that the US left behind in Afghanistan, including some high level vision, optical night vision stuff and stuff like that is also ending up in Mexico. I mean so yeah, it's a, it's a show and there's just responsibilities are everywhere. It's mistaken as Americans to view this as a Mexico versus US problem. There's high level politics going on, there's proxy war going on. There is a responsibility that the United States has with some of the issues going on in Mexico that goes back a while.
- [142:11]
Host
Yeah, decades and decades and decades.
- [142:14]
Ed Calderon
And there is a giant responsibility that the Mexican government and the Mexican people have themselves, themselves undoubted. I'm not here to play that, say that Mexico's a victim of all this and, and the US is the big bad. Both sides are, have their hands bloody. I'd say just is if you're viewing this objectively and you're looking at this problem and you have a MAGA hat on or you have a rainbow hat on or you have whatever hat you have on. You know, division is part of this issue and it's been utilized for years. Us versus them.
- [142:50]
Host
Yes.
- [142:52]
Ed Calderon
But at the end, at the end of the day, you know, Trump's not going to show up to the, to the cemetery to bury this 1314 year old kid who was experimenting with drugs and now he's in a grave somewhere. Claudia Shay mom is not going to, you know, show up to one of these migrant caravan camps in Mexico to talk to some of the girls and ask them like, hey, how many times have you ever been raped on your way up here? Because that would be anti immigration rhetoric. And she's not going to be able to, she's not going to be able to say anything like that because we're supposed to be welcoming and just fostering like, oh, people just want to move freely so we need to. So there's, there's, there's a dark effort on both sides of this border to keep some under wraps. I think we're living in the day and age where truth is whatever you want to make it, I guess. Yeah, right about that. But there are things that are coming into light now that have been festering, at least that I knew about. And I was talking about five years back, more than that. From mass graves to government corruption and participation in a lot of these things to the military being part of the problem. Five years ago I was asked this question like, hey, if you could do something, what would you do if like a magic wand thing, like. And I said, well, I really, it's beyond my pay grade. But I did say whatever effort is going to be done to stabilize Mexico from, as from the perspective of America can't involve the federal government because they're part of the issue. I was laughed at.
- [144:35]
Host
So how do you go around that? You shouldn't be laughed at for that. I fully understand why you say that.
- [144:40]
Ed Calderon
Yeah. But back then I was ridiculed for.
- [144:42]
Host
It by people of no idea what they're talking about. So how do you go around that?
- [144:52]
Ed Calderon
I think, and I think this is where the US has had a. I think they're going to make an example out of one or two former heads of state in Mexico.
- [145:00]
Host
Make an example out of them.
- [145:02]
Ed Calderon
How many times have you ever heard of a Mexican president being arrested on cartel and corruption charges? How can you cause an immediate change from the top down? You chop the head off a king.
- [145:13]
Host
So you think, like I'm painting a hypothetical, they'll have Claudia Scheinbaum arrested.
- [145:19]
Ed Calderon
I don't think they're going to have Claudia Shaymon arrested. I don't think they're going to have anybody arrested in office now. Now. But they are going to look at somebody from the past administration like Vicente Fox or something. Vicente is dirty. Calderon had a very dirty person in charge of national safety in his, in his, in his cabinet.
- [145:37]
Host
Luna.
- [145:37]
Ed Calderon
Luna. And again, I don't know, but how can all this happen without anybody knowing about it?
- [145:45]
Host
It can't. I can't.
- [145:46]
Ed Calderon
So you have all the, you have a line of presidents and you have AMLO there as well as well. And again, I'm gonna have a lot of people on the left side of the political spectrum in Mexico saying, what do you mean? I'm low. Amlo's clean.
- [145:57]
Host
He's the guy before, right?
- [145:59]
Ed Calderon
He was the guy before. Before Claudia. Right.
- [146:02]
Host
He was the one hugs not bullets.
- [146:04]
Ed Calderon
He was hugs not bullets.
- [146:05]
Host
And he was probably invented by the cartel guys laughing in some room with him somewhere.
- [146:09]
Ed Calderon
But he represent. But he represents more than half of Mexico because more than half of Mexico voted for him to be in power. And there's a lot of people who are very passionate about him as a figure of change and a figure that transformed Mexico and somebody that's going after all these corrupt officials and all that. But we can't lose sight the fact that most of the people that are in that party used to belong to all these parties that he's saying that were corrupt, but they're not. We have to realize that his abrasos nobalazos pause in this efforts against these criminal organizations made worse.
- [146:44]
Host
Yeah.
- [146:44]
Ed Calderon
Made the problem grow. Couldn't have predicted that this, this, this aitz that was found was probably active during his administration. Yeah. Where. Who is he going to blame about? He's going to blame like his whole thing was blaming Calderon about everything. Like Calderon kicked off this drug war. He was stupid. Like he should be in jail, in prison. He did everything like exactly the same on. In his administration. He militarized the drug war. He militarized the federal police.
- [147:14]
Host
He militarized the drug war. The same guy who's saying hugs not bullets. How does that work?
- [147:18]
Ed Calderon
He made a federal. So there was a federal police unit in all Mexico was civilian unit. And the first thing he says, well, we're going to get rid of all the military and we're going to. Soldiers are going to go back to their court carta to their, their bases and no more militarized persecution of the cartel hotels. And the first thing he does is makes the guardian, which is a national federal police that is part of the military. People need to realize this Mexico is. Has two people in charge. The military as a whole is one person. And the president of Mexico, those are the people who are in charge of all Mexico. The military number one and the president number two.
- [148:00]
Host
Are they separate?
- [148:01]
Ed Calderon
They're Separate, Separate. And if, if people are, want to know how much power the Mexican military has in Mexico. You had a figure, figure by the name of general Cienfuegos, if you can pull them up. General Sienfuegos was active, was, was active during the Salvador sinfo. Yeah. Okay. He was basically heading up all military operations against cartels during the Enriqueto and administration. Okay. And the United States Justice Department figured out that he was actually talking to high level cartel people over the phone and coordinating things.
- [148:41]
Host
How did they figure that out? They tapped his phone.
- [148:44]
Ed Calderon
Somebody, somebody somewhere. Like I, I'm not, I haven't had access to what they had, but he, he, like he left that job and he went to Disneyland with his family, I think or something like that. And he got picked up by the DEA at the airport. They were going to charge him, they were going to throw the book at him, make an example out of him. And then the State Department issued a letter to the justice Department saying that for reasons of international security and relationship, we need to send this individual back with all the evidence so he gets tried in his own country, Mexico. So let him go. So all charges were not dropped, but he was basically put into the custody of Mexico. Mexico said, yeah, we'll try him. This is Andres Manuel Lopez over there. Yeah, we'll, we'll try him. He landed in handcuffs. Those get taken off, put him in car and he gets a military escort to his house and that's it. Never charged. Nope. So that, that's, that's, that's. So if this is. So if the, basically the Mexican army pressured the U. S. Government to let one of their own go, that's what happened. That's, there's no ifs. And, and they use the presidency of Mexico to like, hey, get him out or we're going to be sad about this. I guess.
- [150:07]
Host
I wonder what chits they had to call home on that one.
- [150:09]
Ed Calderon
I mean, so if people want to look at the whole of this issue, the army is involved, the presidency is involved, state local government is involved. The US Is involved. Like everybody, everybody has a hand in this. It's not an issue of us versus them. And again, I keep saying this is a regional issue. This is not like a Mexico issue or a US Issue. This is a regional issue. And the reason I say that is because we are, are economically tied to the hip. Yeah, we're just. And also our families are like intertwined. It's like absurd. Americans live down in, in, in, in, in, in, in Mexico, ton of them.
- [150:54]
Host
And how Many of them live in America now. Like, we don't even know the number.
- [150:58]
Ed Calderon
We don't even know the number. But there's like a ridiculous number of Mexicans living out here. Yeah.
- [151:02]
Host
Most represented.
- [151:03]
Ed Calderon
If, if, if, if, if. And again, illegal immigration. And I'm, I may be called out for saying this, but illegal immigration in the United States is essential for the economy. It is essential. There. There have been places where laws have been passed so that people can't show up to a grow and, and, and do la Pisca, you know, work on a field, and the economy's crashed there locally, so the laws were changed immediately. Illegal immigration in the United States is a actual.
- [151:34]
Host
But if, if they're trying to stop.
- [151:36]
Ed Calderon
It, though, that's, that's what I'm saying that. Because I don't think they are really.
- [151:41]
Host
You don't think they. You seen this Tom Homan guy?
- [151:46]
Ed Calderon
I, I've seen him. I've seen some of those, some of those raids and all that. I've seen some people being deported that had absolutely nothing criminal about them except their. The way they crossed into the United States, who have been working quietly for 20 years, who are supporting families and like that, being deported on the Tijuana now, they're what the to do.
- [152:06]
Host
Yeah.
- [152:07]
Ed Calderon
So I've seen the injustices being done by some of these policies, but on the other end, I've also seen some of the darker stuff that is being done by people like the Chinese government sending a ton of their citizenship through the border.
- [152:20]
Host
Yeah.
- [152:21]
Ed Calderon
Or people who are consuming the lives of young people sexually.
- [152:26]
Host
How do you, if you don't stop illegal immigration, though, how, how do you stop that stuff?
- [152:33]
Ed Calderon
But I said a program. I mean, there were. Yeah, there was, there was worker programs, and there are worker programs across the country that legally bring Mexican labor into, into the United States to work and.
- [152:45]
Host
Pay them at less than minimum wage.
- [152:47]
Ed Calderon
No, they legalize. They're. They're working legal. They have their wages, they have, they have their way. There's ways. And doing this legally. But there are institutions, corporations and companies that won't want to pay out. So they don't want to do that.
- [153:01]
Host
Right. Because they can pay them less.
- [153:03]
Ed Calderon
Because they can pay them less. Or also, if they just don't, they're done with them. They can just call the immigration authorities on.
- [153:08]
Host
Right. And they're the people that pay off all the politicians who get into office and make the legislation.
- [153:12]
Ed Calderon
Yep. And some of them are, you know, Trump's Trump campaign financiers and some.
- [153:17]
Host
Yes.
- [153:17]
Ed Calderon
Which Is. And again, that's when you just look at the money with all of these issues. Look at the money. Right? Look at the money. And.
- [153:25]
Host
And I tell people all the time, I'm like, you're not going to get all good, you can get all bad.
- [153:31]
Ed Calderon
Yeah.
- [153:32]
Host
But all these people, I. Whoever your God is, politically, I don't care what candidate or what office they're in. I hate to be that guy, to be cynical. They're dirty whether they want to be or not.
- [153:48]
Ed Calderon
Yeah.
- [153:49]
Host
Period. End of story.
- [153:50]
Ed Calderon
Yeah.
- [153:51]
Host
When I go and I vote, and I've done this since, the last time I pulled the trigger for someone was in 2016, and I voted in every election except 2020. I have the great distinction in this job that other people do not have this luxury out there to where. When I go in there, down to every position, including dog catcher, I vote journalist. Abstain. Which is how I do my job.
- [154:12]
Ed Calderon
Okay.
- [154:13]
Host
But if I didn't do this job and I actually had to make a decision and, you know, felt like I would want to be a part of the process, I don't think I'd have anyone to choose, because I do look at this stuff. I do look at who pays people, and there is dirt on everyone.
- [154:27]
Ed Calderon
Let me. Let me, like, shift this conversation, shift it away. As. As somebody from Mexico, right. I view the Trump phenomenon in, like, in different. With different eyes. Like. Like, I'm from Tijuana, where we. We assassinated a political candidate for the presidency. You know, he was. He was at the Colossio.
- [154:52]
Host
When was this?
- [154:53]
Ed Calderon
This was in the 90s, early 90s. He was. He was walking around a place where he shouldn't be walking around, and somebody pulled a gun out in a crowd and shot him in the head. Maybe one person, maybe two. Political assassinations of that nature usually have some sort of motivation behind them or an attempt to keep somebody from doing something that the greater powers don't want to happen.
- [155:18]
Host
That's right.
- [155:20]
Ed Calderon
Why do you think they tried to kill Trump and who did? Which is something that gives me pause sometimes when I think about the amount of, like, I've started to feel like home here in the US When I started seeing all the, the political, The, the, the legal system being weaponized against Trump. That's some banana republic. Yeah, that's some banana republic level. When I started seeing the multiple assassination attempts that we heard about, you know, the one we saw on tv, which people say it's fake. Like, I didn't. I know it. Oh, that was Right. Yeah. And also this assassin that we know nothing about who was a ghost on social media somehow at that age, which is a weird thing is my question is like, from your perspective as a journalist and as an American, does it give you pause to say, like, maybe he is trying to actually do something that is.
- [156:14]
Host
Oh, sure.
- [156:15]
Ed Calderon
Counter to the powers that be.
- [156:17]
Host
Yeah, let, let me, let me give you.
- [156:20]
Ed Calderon
Because, because, because a lot, a lot of Mexicans have a give pause sometimes. Like, yeah, he's. He's the bad guy. He's like, they're out. They're telling us he's the bad guy and he's evil. Not. But why didn't try to kill him.
- [156:32]
Host
They're trying to kill him. Yeah, I think it's a fair question. Let me give more context to what I just said a couple minutes ago when I say all these people are dirty. They're not all knowingly. I would like to think all politicians are dirty just because they put a bad taste in your mouth. Mouth. Just because of the job they do and the fact that they even wanted to do in the first place. But to be clear, they're not all dirty because they actually are voluntarily trying to be dirty. They're dirty because they're a part of a system where it is impossible to not have cash slushing around somewhere that then is going to impact the decisions they make that therefore makes them dirty. And so when I look at a guy like Trump, do I think there's some people around him that he definitely in the back of his head knows sucks and maybe there's some reason he has to be tied to them and that's like a little dirty. Yes. But are there other things that are actually an outsider about him that even if they're not a 100. Right. They got the arrow pointed in the right direction for the first time in generations on either party. Do I think that those things could exist to the point that, like, he is someone that. Yeah. There could be forces that want, want to see him gone because of that. Which makes you think, like, maybe there's some good there. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. You have to say, like, I think that I don't know how much subjectivity there is there. Yeah, I think that's very objective for.
- [157:53]
Ed Calderon
Me and for most Mexicans that have this momentary pause when you look at him. And again, I'm not saying he's a good character. Like, like, I, there's. He inflames people. He's a, he's a, he's a joker in a lot of ways. Yes. You know, he, he says wild you know, and it's very easy to make him the enemy or the, the, the, the, the bad guy in Mexico because all you have to do is point to a few videos of him saying some.
- [158:20]
Host
And the rapists, the murderers, all the rapists assume are good people.
- [158:24]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, all, all that. It's, it's, it's fascinating. Yeah, but then why try to kill him and why try to imprison him with all these weird charges which were all bullshit. And again it, it, it gives people pause and like in Mexico, they're like looking at, just like Americans had a momentary pause during the election cycle when that 2, 2, 3 round nicked his ear and was bloodied. And like, wait a minute, I know I hated this guy. But why are they trying to kill him? Let, maybe, let's vote for him anyway just to see what happens. Yeah, it's, it's an interesting phenomenon. I guess he is a clear, like for the majority of Mexicans, he's the enemy in a lot of ways. And again, it's, it's easy to see how the media has done its job there. And also it's easy, it's easy to see how he himself and a lot of his base have done that job of creating this narrative screaming at people to go back to their home country. And, and you know, again, I, I've, I've, I've, I've been shot, shouted at by people wearing that red hat, you know. Oh yeah, and I get it, I understand. But I've also been shouted out by people on the other side. So I get the whole, you know, being in a, being in this, this divide of a country. I have family in the US And I have a, I have a, a pretty clear path in my mind where I'm trying to make things better for them and whatever future that is going to come up for them. I think there's no way moving forward into the future without both countries figuring something out. Yes, Mexico has more than earned its place on an international stage as far as a place where culture gets created. We have the best food on the planet. It. Fight me.
- [160:23]
Host
Do you want Italians out there?
- [160:25]
Ed Calderon
Fight me, fight me, fight me. Let's go to Italy. And you know, wherever you live there.
- [160:31]
Host
It'S pretty good, good.
- [160:32]
Ed Calderon
Take, I'll, I'll take you to Tijuana and the street food there is going to kill anything in a restaurant, but that's.
- [160:36]
Host
Kill me while I'm there too.
- [160:38]
Ed Calderon
Nah, nah, Come on, Italians, you're pretty thick skinned. Come on. So what I'm saying is There's. There's no moving into the future without us being together on this. The fires in Los Angeles and all the houses that were destroyed, who's going to build those back? I know a lot of my friends who work in construction. Who's going to build those? We have this giant movement across the country where people are trying to now move away from fen, Fentanyl, and it is less of an. It's. It is still an issue, but less. People are dying of overdoses because doctors are getting better at dealing with fentanyl exposure because there's Narcan everywhere. Like, I, like, I remember getting a whole bag full of it in Portland because the government gives it out. So I was like, put some of that in here just in case. But you start seeing this change in the world. So, like, fentanyl is probably on its way out as well now. What comes next?
- [161:46]
Host
It's on its way out.
- [161:47]
Ed Calderon
I think it's on all the problems we have, I think it's on its way out. I think it's getting mixed in with something called tranq now. I think people are wise to it a lot, in a lot of ways. Some people, maybe some people with mental issues that are living on the street and that get that, but it's not. It's no longer that urban drug or that drug that people are taking into, like, I'm gonna take this fentanyl as I work this 9 at 5, but.
- [162:09]
Host
It'S also getting laced and to everything too. Someone at the club's going to do coke. Turns out it's not coke, but it's.
- [162:15]
Ed Calderon
It's. It's. I think we're. I think we're all of us experiencing an education and everybody's now realizing that whatever that is, it's probably not the best idea.
- [162:26]
Host
I hope you're right.
- [162:27]
Ed Calderon
I think, I think between that and, you know, sourcing a lot of the stuff and some of those blind lines and change, hopefully getting affected, that's another aspect of this that I need people need to take take into, into account out. We have seen the historic dismantling of the Sinaloa cartel. Right. Recently, I mean, all of us have been looking at this on the news. Mass arrest, all of our cartel heads being sent to me from Mexico to the U.S. have we seen a spike in drug sale, drug prices in the U.S. no. No. Or shortages?
- [163:07]
Host
No. Are there like the resources are just being sloshed around?
- [163:11]
Ed Calderon
Is there. Are the hospitals being filled with people that are going through withdrawals because of the drugs? Drugs not going through because of all the cartel guys being in prison. Right, so nothing's, nothing's changed is what I'm trying to say.
- [163:21]
Host
Yes.
- [163:22]
Ed Calderon
So whatever designation means, whatever the tariffs mean as far as pressure, whatever the, the, the, the giant show that the Mexican government is doing for its U.S. audience, like, hey, we're, look at us, we're, we're making a difference now. Look at what we're doing. None of that has made a real clear effect on the U S side that we can see. The only thing that I've seen change is immigration. Like the less there's not a thousand to two thousand people showing up at some of these border crossing areas, there's like 20 now. But you know that that's one aspect of this issue with this problem which I think now what's more important for national security? Poison being pumped through the border or a bunch of Venezuelans running around in mopeds in the middle of New York with, with debit cards that are living in hotels?
- [164:16]
Host
I see where the argument is. Yeah, technically, yeah.
- [164:19]
Ed Calderon
So again, both of these are issues that need to be solved. But like why aren't we, why aren't we seeing this dramatic drop of drug use and, or supplies?
- [164:31]
Host
There's tunnels because there's catapults, because there's, there's people on this side of the border who are in business with those people who are taking care of getting.
- [164:40]
Ed Calderon
It in because there's boats, because manufacturing is now probably happening in the U.S. probably these people don't want to talk about that, but probably that's probably.
- [164:47]
Host
Do you have evidence of that? I mean, I believe you, but probably.
- [164:51]
Ed Calderon
I, I don't have any, any evidence of that except just see realizing that there's absolutely no dent being put into the problem by all the operations going on in Mexico.
- [164:59]
Host
So there's operations in Canada, we know that.
- [165:03]
Ed Calderon
So it's probably being manufactured here somewhere or probably just being sent through the mail from different places overseas. So like what are we doing? What are we doing? You know, people need to realize that a lot of their taxpayer money is being sent to Mexico and has been sent to Mexico for decades, paying the wages of cops equipment. There's certain U S based companies that have, that sell uniforms, tactical equipment, firearms, vehicles that have made millions off this by selling some of the stuff to the Mexican government. And every year the violence increases. Isn't that a shitty investment?
- [165:45]
Host
It is a shitty investment.
- [165:47]
Ed Calderon
Who's looking into that? Who, where's Doge right now? Where are they looking into Plan Merida, which, which is basically this binational plan where they're, where the US is basically paying for the outsourcing of the drug war down to Mexico. And where's that?
- [166:02]
Host
I don't know anything about that.
- [166:04]
Ed Calderon
There you go. Where like as Americans we should be asking like, hey, what's this called?
- [166:09]
Host
How do you spell it?
- [166:11]
Ed Calderon
I think it's a, the Merida initiative, I think is one of the, one of the programs it was called. So basically the US has been paying for a lot of this drug war, you know, so like, why is it like again, if people want to ask questions or want to start probing around, that's one of them. You know, there's a lot of US based companies have made a killing off just selling equipment and stuff like that to the, to Mexico. And you know, at the same time, the Mexican government has been doing its best to disarm the local populace, which is an interesting thing. You want to hear something?
- [166:47]
Host
The local populace, not the cartels.
- [166:48]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, you know, I grew up hunting on a ranch. You can't do that anymore unless you are upper middle class. To get a gun permit, you have to get some money, fly to Mexico City, buy your firearm, get a bunch of documentation to fly it back. Every, every, every presidency that comes along, the army gets another bite off that constitutional right that Mexicans have to defend their property with firearms. There's, there's a single federal firearms law in Mexico which makes it almost unobtainable for anybody that is an upper middle class or rich to basically own firearms and operate them because it's so expensive to. Yet. Yeah. And it's, every year it gets worse and worse. This, the, the, this, this new administration passed a ton of laws. You can't put a flashlight on your gun to use to defend your home in Mexico.
- [167:40]
Host
Why not?
- [167:41]
Ed Calderon
It's illegal.
- [167:43]
Host
Flashlight on it?
- [167:44]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, it's a, it's a, it augments its capabilities. So why would a federal government do constitutional amendments to get people from, from not being armed unless they're getting ready for a revolt?
- [167:58]
Host
This does. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Because this doesn't even make sense. Like obviously we have our gun issues here. In America, where there's gun violence that happens, it's nothing. Nothing like in Mexico where you have hundreds of thousands of people across the country who are employed by these cartels walking around with Uzis.
- [168:15]
Ed Calderon
I, I, I've done some irregular shit in my life and one of the most irregular things that I did, and I'll speak about it here we were working in a rural part of Mexico, and this old dude comes to the door with a rifle that he shouldn't have. Right. Because it's illegal to have that type of rifle that he had. And I took out the magazines, pull out. Pulled all the bullets out in a bag and left it at the fence and left the. Not his rifle there because he has daughters. And that rifle is there to defend those young daughters that might be taken to a party somewhere, which is a story that I've heard over and over again.
- [169:02]
Host
Taken to a party.
- [169:03]
Ed Calderon
Cartel guys showing up to a ranch, say, hey, we're going to take some of your daughters to this party. We'll bring them back. They're the guys that have guns. You have nothing because the government says that you shouldn't have a gun. Gun. Because somehow you having a gun fosters organized crime. So the daughters never show up. And that's a story that I've heard many times.
- [169:26]
Host
What happens to them?
- [169:29]
Ed Calderon
They're liked, so they keep them. They resist, so they shoot them, which is something we don't. You know, again, sometimes I bring up Netflix and. And some of these TV series about these criminals and stuff like that. Yeah, I get it. Robin Hood is cool. You know, getting over the government is cool and all that. I get the whole romantic. Romanticize.
- [169:51]
Host
They are the virgin.
- [169:53]
Ed Calderon
That. That's. That's the thing, you know. But also some of these criminal organizations and criminal cartel members are pedophiles in something that doesn't get talked about a lot. Some of these.
- [170:05]
Host
I haven't heard about this.
- [170:06]
Ed Calderon
Well, some of them go, come in, go into a town and say, like, hey, hey, I like her. And her. But she's 14. She's. Doesn't matter. We don't hear about that. You know, we don't hear about. We're just hearing about some of these mass graves. Why are there women in those mass graves? We just. There's a Monterey, they found three decapitated females.
- [170:28]
Host
Decapitated?
- [170:29]
Ed Calderon
Yeah. What's going on there? You know, Are these cartel cicardias? Why are there so many women being murdered in Mexico ago? Is it just because we have a proliferation of. Of serial killers that are targeting women? Or is it because there's a weird social thing among some criminal organizations where women are being utilized as resources and once they're done, they're done, or just people get away with because of the permissive nature of crime that they fostered across the country, both the government and these cartels?
- [171:05]
Host
Yeah, it's the court. I mean, maybe I'm making a leap here. I don't think I am though. You keep talking about the government's convincing the people that they shouldn't be able to have guns because it causes violence and this causes proliferation of guns in the hands of the people who don't give a. About the laws, which is the cartels, but the government who's telling them that is the government that's paid by the cartels or works for them directly. So it's basically the cartels are legislating to make sure people don't have guns.
- [171:33]
Ed Calderon
There you go. You have a political situation in Mexico in this last election cycle where over 30 some candidates were killed that we know of.
- [171:46]
Host
Like what kind? Like governor candidates, senators.
- [171:49]
Ed Calderon
All of them. All of them. Right. And we have a single ruling party across Mexico, which is the Morena Party, which basically took everything in the landslide.
- [171:57]
Host
Yeah.
- [171:59]
Ed Calderon
So it's obvious that there is an effort, a political effort by criminal organizations or underground organizations to eliminate candidates. Right. And okay, so you have this political candidate that won and they won by a majority. The first thing they do is they go after the constitution, a bunch of, in a bunch of amendments to the constitution. Including, including, this is the big one, the, the, all the federal judges and the Supreme Court, the Mexican Supreme Court basically. And all the judges in Mexico, they say, well, you know what, A lot of these cartel guys are getting off because they, they, the. The legal system is corrupted. So all these judges are there, are letting some of them out and, and they're fucking doing this shenanigans. So we need to figure out how to, to get rid of that. Right. So the constitutional amendment they have is now that all judges are going to be popularly elected officials. This is from a country that just lived through basically cartel funded candidates.
- [173:07]
Host
So now the judges are going to be literally cartel funded.
- [173:10]
Ed Calderon
I mean, unless something changes dramatically in Mexico in the next. This is, this is. Right. We're in the middle of it. There's a guy, there's. There's one guy I'm going to talk to who is, is a candidate for one of these positions. And I want to, so I want to kind of get a read on. You know, you're gonna make the people in charge of sending somebody away for a long period into an elected official in a country that. Whose political system in class is completely corrupt. Corrupted.
- [173:46]
Host
What percentage of it do you think is, what percentage of people in there do you think are corrupt?
- [173:53]
Ed Calderon
I don't know. There's no way of knowing, you know, but a lot of it is, I mean if, if, if we look at it, let's, let's just look at the current, current federal administration. They, the Internet did a field day by researching and figuring out all the times that the two, two main lawyers of Omayo Sambada were with all of the people that are currently in high level positions in the government.
- [174:18]
Host
It's just like Reddit threads and stuff.
- [174:21]
Ed Calderon
Like one of them is getting like a, like a, like an award by the federal government on in the Senate. There's this freedom award of some sort. All these El Mayo Sambada cartel lawyers. So there's, there's, there's whole like series of pictures online that came out and like their, their, their solution now is constitutional amendments to keep people from owning firearms or to make it even harder and to make judges elected elected officials.
- [174:52]
Host
Yeah.
- [174:53]
Ed Calderon
And you know, I know that the system is corrupt already. Like the judges there, man, I could tell you something, the cases that I worked in where the judge was completely on that side. But I get it, it's corrupt and all of it is, it's like a corrupt institution. But what makes anybody think that it's a good idea to make judges politically elected officials in Mexico with this story? In the history, the recent, it's crazy political history that it's had and it's.
- [175:29]
Host
Not being talked about here. This is the first I'm hearing about.
- [175:30]
Ed Calderon
Got it. So that's, that's not in the possibility realm that's going to, that's happening now. Like there's the first rounds of election of these people are going to be that are going to be elected is just right across, it's nearby again I'm going to try to speak to one of them who is going to run for that office. And one of the first questions, I.
- [175:51]
Host
Just want to get a read on them.
- [175:52]
Ed Calderon
I just want to get the first question I'm going to ask like how do we keep people from getting, you know, know. And this is the thing, it's not going to be a guy with a cowboy hat and a gold tooth and a gun coming in like hey cabron, I want you to be my judge. Here's all this money for your political campaign. It's going to be that guy paying, hey bakery shop. Hey, yeah, here's some money and give it to this guy. Hey, all you guys here, if you don't vote for this guy, we're going to burn your businesses. Or I don't know this because this is how they work, you know. Know. I think as we move forward we're probably going to see a, an evolution of cartel activities in Mexico right now. They're very overt in a lot of places. Again, I was just in Monterrey and I spoke to some operators that are working all along that area and they're describing, you know, trying to the Cartel de Noroeste, Northwestern Cartel, which is basically a remnant of the Zetas.
- [176:54]
Host
Wait a rem. What do you mean it's a remnant?
- [176:57]
Ed Calderon
The original set does trained people that then trained other people and the cartel went away and then they formed another. So this is like that's the latest version of what they are now. And he's speaking about almost 20 vehicles sometimes that they, you know, show up around, you know, so this is like an overt cartel. They'll show up and mask mass, they'll burn trucks and, and go into like a one on one fight with the government. I think we're going to see a shift from that into a more of a traditional organized crime type element in New Mexico. Talon style. You know, I think, I think, I think Mexico is probably gonna. Criminal organizations in Mexico are probably going to take a page from the, from.
- [177:43]
Host
He set up like a commission.
- [177:44]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, I mean just like, you know, how did the U.S. get rid of the mob RICO? I think they, I think the, the way the U.S. got rid of the mob was inviting them into politics. And I think in a lot of ways that's what we're. And I think that in a lot of ways that's what we're going to be seeing in Mexico. Oh, tell me I'm wrong. Tell me I'm wrong.
- [178:08]
Host
It's figurative rather than totally literal.
- [178:12]
Ed Calderon
But in a lot of ways, in a lot of ways they legitimated the, they became legitimate, but still the sins are there.
- [178:20]
Host
Yes.
- [178:21]
Ed Calderon
And you know, I think that's the evolution we're gonna, we're about to see in Mexico.
- [178:25]
Host
Here's the thing, like I'm a long term optimist in the world, right. When you look at world history, it's not, it's never a straight line but overall things get better and better and better. Problems that are, are objectively terrible today were actually 10 times worse 2000 years ago and stuff. But the weird thing about good and evil, well, the first weird thing is that for good to exist, evil has to exist, which is a strange thing to accept as, as your basis. The other weird thing about it though is the short term versus the long term. What I mean by that is I believe good wins out in the long term over a lot of pain goes through that. That in the short term, though, evil has a. Has the stakes rigged to be able to win. And here's the example I give. If I have a room filled with a hundred people and 99 of them are evil and one of them is good, we're okay. If I have a room filled with a hundred people and 99 of them are good and one of them is evil, we might still be.
- [179:27]
Ed Calderon
Yeah.
- [179:27]
Host
Because there's something surreptitious and quiet and underhanded and manipulative and cunning about evil that can win. So when I look at. That's why I ask you, like. And it's an impossible question to even answer, so I understand that. But when I ask you, like, what percentage of the Mexican government or military do you think is actually corrupt? Even if it's a number that's lower than the exaggerated number we may think of in our head, let's say the number is actually more like 15. That's an insanely high.
- [179:53]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, yeah.
- [179:53]
Host
You get 15% of people in a room to secretly, you know, like, I, I know what you're up to. I know what you're up to. We're.
- [180:00]
Ed Calderon
But, but I'll, I'll, I'll stretch the question back up, like, forward to you. How many percent. What percentage of the US Political class is corrupted?
- [180:08]
Host
You think it's it. And, and I think, I think, I think it's actually the numbers shockingly similar.
- [180:16]
Ed Calderon
Yeah. So Nancy Pelosi's a million.
- [180:20]
Host
Oh my God. It's insane.
- [180:21]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you, you, you start like looking at all these political candidates and people that are like, hey, the Democratic Party ad. You're immigrant. This is who you should be voting for because these are your people. And I'm like, they do remind me of Mexican politicians in a lot of ways. But it's. And I'm not. And I'm not just saying the Democrats, I mean the Republicans have a lot of people there that I'm. So I'm trying to figure out. Out like, like I was speaking to, to you guys when I was getting here. Like, I legit and making an attempt to figure out the US Because I'm new here. I travel around a lot. I talk to everybody. Everybody. Like I could sit down with somebody. I've talked to racist dudes and, and, and Cal. I talked to a Grand Dragon once in Fallburg, California ones.
- [181:20]
Host
KKK guy.
- [181:21]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, it was a guy that lived in Fallburg. I don't know if he's still alive. He's like a Grand Dragon guy. He was Telling me how like inferior Mexicans were and all that type of. But I find it, I find it fat. I, I, I don't get offended. They're not.
- [181:36]
Host
He got thick skin.
- [181:39]
Ed Calderon
Like I'm Mexican. We give ourselves the biggest, like nothing can hurt us. We're, we give ourselves so much shit, so we're fine. But when I like, I listen to his perspective, I listen to the perspective of somebody working, working in the Border Patrol. I look at the perspective of a guy wearing like a rainbow hat and telling me how the trans issue is central to the US's politics, that we should focus on that. And meanwhile I'm looking at the border in Mexico and fucking kids in fucking hotel rooms and weird parts of the country just fucking being utilized as whatever. So I, I try and look at the whole issue and again I'm, I'm a, I'm a day walker, you know, I'm Mexican born, but I'm legally in the us and I'm trying to figure.
- [182:26]
Host
Called that a day walker.
- [182:27]
Ed Calderon
Yeah, day walker.
- [182:28]
Host
Day walker is a ginger without freckles.
- [182:29]
Ed Calderon
A day walker is a vampire that walks in the day, you know, blame.
- [182:33]
Host
Okay.
- [182:33]
Ed Calderon
So he's like in the middle, you know. So I try to figure I'm legit trying to figure out it's a very complex place to be because I can't come out as a Trump supporter because I'm from Mexico and he's the devil down there, right? He's the orange devil. But I also can't come out as a, as a closet shame mom supporter.
- [182:52]
Host
Right.
- [182:52]
Ed Calderon
Because she's, she was supported by BlackRock and she has a bunch of money behind her from the, like from some shady places maybe. And I can't come out in support of that. So like what do I do? It's quickly come to, it's quickly dawned on me that a big part of the US is kind of on the same boat and lot of ways. Yeah. Like, which is the less of two evils or.
- [183:14]
Host
That's it. That's exactly it.
- [183:15]
Ed Calderon
And number one, I think, and this is coming from somebody that has both, like, dude, I have friends who were, who were veterans who did some wild in the world.
- [183:28]
Host
Yeah.
- [183:29]
Ed Calderon
But you have to, you have to question your country when you have two towers hit by a bunch of Saudis and Egyptian people and then you bomb the out of Iraq and Afghanistan. There's some going on there. It's weird. And as far as villainy goes, one of the biggest body dysmorphia things that I've ever seen. In the world has the United States seeing themselves as an instrument of change and good in the world because you've, you've gone through a villain arc in the past few decades that is pretty wild. Wild.
- [184:02]
Host
Yeah, I think, I think that's. I think that's fair criticism, but it's.
- [184:06]
Ed Calderon
It'S not even criticism. It's like, hey, we did some. And we're like, there's a reason why a lot of people in the world hate us. Right? And I include myself because people don't give a about where I was born. I'm going to be towel in the block with everybody. You see. You see a. And I say this because the perspective of a lot of Mexicans when they look at the US is that as is of a village villain. Like you're not the good guys in their mov. In their, in their. In their life movie. You guys are not GI Joe coming in to save them from Cobra. You guys are Cobra in a lot of ways. To them, the foreign policy has been an issue for you for decades and years, especially in South America. It's been not.
- [184:45]
Host
Not great.
- [184:46]
Ed Calderon
Not great. So we have to admit that your need for things like drugs and substances is great. Also your need for sexual exploitation material and people is great. And that's sexual tourism. Figure out where most of these people come from and where most of the pedophiles that get caught with a lot of on their computer are from. And this. And again, that's an aspect of it. The hurtful nature of. Of the US's foreign policy towards Mexico and how it's vilified a whole segment of the population and now said that the Mexicans. You go back home. Like I've had people. I spoke to a guy, a friend of mine who's in a punk band, the Voodoo Glow Skulls.
- [185:38]
Host
The Voodoo.
- [185:39]
Ed Calderon
The Voodoo Glow Skulls punk band from the 2000s, early late 90s. Great dude. American born. You know, born, but Mexican. Mexican in origin, but he's American. And people are. Are telling him online that you. Your citizenship is void. You're going to be deported too. Like there's. There's these weird wild conversations going on online of that nature and that's that we're living through it here.
- [186:06]
Host
Yes.
- [186:07]
Ed Calderon
In the us, but say. I say all of that with. There was no other country that I would rather be in right now to try and put forth my life and the life of my family. Right. Which in my family includes one person.
- [186:24]
Host
See, I knew you were going there that whole time with that. And in my head I'M wondering because I. I like looking at things for what they are. No right. There is good and bad with everything and you're calling out the bad. Said it's hard to hear all that, though. And by the way, I agree with you on a lot of it. And then try to say, yeah, but the good outweighs the bad.
- [186:48]
Ed Calderon
No, I'm not saying the good outweighs the bad. But there are less enemies to my ability to be independent in the way that I live and in my choices and the amount of responsibilities that I've been managed to take here. So I take responsibility for my safety here. I take responsibility for the safety of my home. Home. I have a firearm. You know, I'm a legal firearm owner. I train people how to utilize not only that, but other skills. I empower people through some of the lessons that I provide them from some of the situations that I went through. I have five employees. I'm a fucking immigrant dude. I have five employees. There's a lot of freedoms that I'm allowed here that I'm not allowed other parts of the world. There's less enemies to freedom here than there are in other parts of the world. World, mind you, enemies to it. I'm not saying this is the freest place in the world because that's another body dysmorphia thing that us has where it thinks it's a free country. Go to Tijuana and have a party till five in the morning and have the cops show up, give them some money. That's freedom right there. Dangerous freedom, but it's freedom. I understand. Again, the. If, If I could, if I could ask Americans, one thing that I would recommend them do is to travel. Just get out of your fucking bubble and travel somewhere. Yeah, God bless Texas and come here, my guns and all that type of shit. Big game. Go down to fucking. Go down to fucking Cabo or somewhere. Just fucking walk around, talk to locals. Go down to. Go down to Hermosillo in Sonora and talk to the locals about what's going on. And none of them are armed, harmed, and you know, just be humane. That just talk to people and see their perspectives directly. It's one thing me taking the point of view of the whole of the United States from this orange man on tv. Imagine that, because that's what's happening right now. Mexicans are watching tv and all of America, all the United States, it's. It's, is, is that guy. So imagine the animosity and frustration that a lot of these people are hearing. So on My end. Like, I want, like when I go down to Mexico, because I do that a lot. And Aren't you afraid of going down to Mexico? Yeah, I'm afraid to go to Baltimore too. But I still go right there's this a perspective thing. I'll go somewhere and I'll talk to the locals. Like, what's going on here? Like, what happened here? I came to New Jersey last night, and first thing I said, like, where do the locals eat? You know? So I got a few recommendations. And then I was walking across the street and I saw a big mattress on the side of the road and a lot of graffiti and a bunch of cars parked on the sidewalk. And I couldn't walk on the sidewalk. And I found it hilarious because, like, holy, this is Mexico. So I did a video. So I did a small video, like, where am I? In Tijuana or in New York? Jersey. Right. What I'm saying is we're more similar than we want to admit. We have ties that go culturally blood, economic, and a lot of this. And then I realize the humanity behind all of this again. Just like some of the enemies that I face who are now friends of mine and I, it kids hang out together and like that. There was definitely an effort being made by. For. By power powers that aren't too clear to me that are fostering an animosity between both of our countries, a political animosity. There are certain powers that be on both sides of the border that are fostering and fostered for years. And this past administration is a clear sign of that.
- [190:33]
Host
All right, guys, that takes us to the end of part one of my two part sit down with Ed Calderon. The next episode will be out out on the Tuesday after this. So this is dropping on a Friday. I'll see you in a few days. Enjoy the weekend. If you haven't already subscribed, please hit that subscribe button as well as that, like, button on the video. It's a huge help. And see you on Tuesday.