← The Underworld Podcast
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- [00:01]
A
I sold my car in Carvana last night.
- [00:02]
B
Well, that's cool.
- [00:03]
A
No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong.
- [00:09]
C
So what's the problem?
- [00:11]
A
That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes as smoothly. I'm waiting for the catch.
- [00:14]
C
Maybe there's no catch.
- [00:16]
A
That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.
- [00:18]
C
Wow. You need to relax.
- [00:20]
A
I need to knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood?
- [00:22]
C
I think it's laminate.
- [00:23]
A
Okay. Yeah, that's good. That's close enough.
- [00:25]
C
Car selling without a catch. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees may apply.
- [00:34]
D
Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast with Benjamin Boster. If you're tired of sleepless nights, you'll love the I Can't Sleep podcast. I help quiet your mind by reading random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. Each episode provides enough interesting content to hold your attention and the then your mind lets you drift off. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. That's I Can't Sleep with Benjamin Boster.
- [01:24]
E
January 22, 2021, in Tamio Lipas, Mexico, a convoy of six police vehicles rolls out of a station in Camargo and just on the border with Texas. Somewhere between 8:30 and 9 in the morning.
- [01:37]
F
They stop to fuel up their gas
- [01:39]
E
tanks and then they head south on dirt roads towards the Rio Grande. They get lost in the dust and the convoy splits up. Then over the radio, an urgent call. Coded numbers. Armed personnel nearby. Not exactly out of the ordinary because the Northeast cartel and factions of the Gulf Cartel still operate all along this border. Still, it's not what you want to hear when you're in a police convoy. The lead vehicle accelerates. The others follow. Then gunshots. One of the officers will later tell investigators he couldn't make out what anyone was shooting at. He heard a commander bark at a gunner. What are you waiting for? Shoot.
- [02:18]
F
The gunner said, but I can't see anything.
- [02:20]
E
The commander said, just shoot. There's 19 people in the van that they fire on 17 migrants, most from a small mountain town in southern Guatemala, and two Mexican smugglers. Investigators would later count 107 bullet holes in the truck. Somehow, some of the migrants are still alive. When the shooting stops.
- [02:41]
F
An officer walks over to the truck
- [02:43]
E
and looks in it. He sees women, some already dead, others wounded. A boy face down on the ground. One of the women reaches out and says, please help me. The officer tells her they're going to call for support. He means it at the time. What happens next? He watches from a few meters away. A colleague walks past carrying a gasoline canister. There are more gunshots, about 10. The canister is emptied over the truck. A lighter sparks. A piece of burning paper sails into the truck bed and the whole thing goes up in flames. One line of thinking says that they might have been chasing down the van because the smugglers didn't pay the tax to the Gulf Cartel who the officers were in bed with. Another says that it was CDN smugglers trying to move people through contested territory and that's why they got lit up. To understand how something like this happens, you have to understand Tamio Lipas. It's a long, flat Mexican state that runs along the southern bank of the Rio Grande from the scrublands of the west all the way to the Gulf coast on the other side of the river. Texas, the busiest drug and human smuggling corridor on earth. The Northeast Cartel, or cdn, controls the prize crossing of Nuevo Laredo and its arteries. But various factions of the Gulf Cartel lay claim to Matamoros and Reynosa, two bigger border cities. In these borderlands, the line between cartel and authorities stopped being aligned a long time ago. Which brings us back to those 24 officers on that dirt road. Because they weren't some rogue elements, some bad apples. They were the special operations group of the Tamiya Lipa State Police, an elite unit reporting up a chain of command that went all the way to the governor's office. A unit that, by the DEA's own internal memos, was functioning less like law enforcement and more like muscle, detaining people, handing them over to the cartels, making them disappear. This is the story of a city, a cartel and a government so tangled together, you can't tell where one ends and the other begins. This is the Underworld Podcast.
- [05:06]
F
Welcome back, everyone, to the best international organized crime podcast in the entire world. The Underworld Podcast, hosted by two journalists who have reported on this sort of stuff all over the globe and now bring you new stories every single week, even when we don't want to. I'm one of your hosts, Danny Gold. Usually I'm joined by Sean Williams, but he caught a case of what we like to call the Berlin Fever, even though he's in Buenos Aires, Argentina. So he's out this week. I do have a special guest this week. We'll get to that in one second. As always, bonus episodes are available on patreon.com the normal podcast. You can also sign up on Spotify right here in the app or even on itunes for the low price of $5 a month. Tips and advertising inquiries@theworldpodcastmail.com we got a few really good ones in the last few weeks and I owe some emails. I will get to that. So if you're. If you emailed us and you're waiting for one, getting back to you soon. Merchnerworldpod.com and click that merch title to get T shirts and everything else. Now my special guest is journalist, documentary filmmaker and mad scientist Andrew Glaser, whose new documentary film Spring of the Vanishing is out now on itunes.
- [06:11]
G
Where else on Prime Video Fandango, if you knew that.
- [06:17]
F
Yeah, pretty wild stuff. And I think it's worth pointing out that Andrew here is so old that he used to actually advise me. He was my mentor in a way. He taught me how to do video and doc stuff when I just started doing video. Had no idea. He was not very nice about it, but he made me, he made me into a champion. But that's how old he is. So, yeah. Andrew, thank you. Thank you for joining us.
- [06:38]
G
Thanks for having us. I mean, long ago, I did see some promise in you. You were raw and unpolished and energetic and supremely confident as you still are with those sunglasses, clearly. But if I'd known that you were gonna throw away all my training and become a podcaster, I wouldn't have wasted my time. But I'm glad you are because I'm flogging a film right now that I really hope people learn about and see Spring of the Vanishing. So thanks for having me on.
- [07:05]
F
Yeah, I mean, look, you either become a podcaster, you become a person who has to go on podcast. That's just, that's just what it is right now. You know, I just sort of cut out the middleman and, and rent right. To podcasting, but so I could help out my, my people that I wanted
- [07:20]
G
to thank you for doing that.
- [07:21]
E
Thank you.
- [07:21]
F
So, yeah, tell me. I mean, we. This documentary takes place in Nueva Laredo, which, you know, we're going to talk about cartel stuff. We're going to talk about cdn. We've done an episode on them, but just kind of. Tell me about starting to work there. You've traveled all over the world. You've worked all over the world in conflict zones. What's it like when you start working in, you know, a cartel stronghold like that?
- [07:40]
G
Well, I should mention that I shot my last two films in Nuevo Laredo, and after the first of the two, which was a film called Bad Hombres for showtime. I was so glad when I was crossing the bridge for the final time that I would never have to go back anytime soon. And then a few years later, here I was crossing the same bridge. When you cross that bridge, it's really as dramatic as you can get. You're going from a super sleepy, low crime town, Laredo, Texas, in about a quarter of a mile, or maybe even less, you're in a cartel stronghold in Nuevo Laredo. So I first started working there in 2018 for bad hombres and have since made, I would say, close to 50 to 80 crossings. And I still get butterflies every time I cross, even when I have a name to drop, which is important because there are various gatekeepers, official and unofficial, beneficial every step along the way. When you get into Nova Laredo. On my last documentary shoot, the name that I was told to drop was Raimundo Ramos. And I learned quite quickly that his name was an effective name to drop. Case in point, our first day on this latest shoot, my cameraman, our former colleague, shout out to Eric Fernandez, and I were crossing the bridge. And immediately after we crossed the bridge, we were sitting on the curb just a few feet from the Mexican side of the bridge. And the thing that you don't want to happen happened. A big brand new suv, black, with tinted windows, rolled right up to the curb uncomfortably close to us. The windows rolled down, and there were two mean looking guys with shaved heads who asked immediately where we were from. And my response was to be as vague and naive as possible. And I just said, I'm from New York. And they just stared back at me for a really long time, making it clear that that was not the full extent of the information they requested. So I did mention after that that I was working with Raimundo Ramos. And they waved, smiled, and said, have a great day, and we're on their way. So it was clear that that was a good name to drop.
- [10:01]
F
Yeah, even, like the watchdog guy seemed
- [10:03]
E
to seem to know him.
- [10:04]
F
So I do want to talk a little bit about what the ongoings are in Nuevo Laredo, or have been the past decade or so. But in general, so, you know, a lot of Mexican border towns, you have a lot of Americans going over there for fun, for doctors, whatever. Is that not the case in Nuevo Laredo?
- [10:20]
G
It was until early 2000s, 2006, 2007. Until then, it was definitely a place where people would pop over and hang out at the bars. There's actually an interesting place called the Sona de Tolerencia. Which is a big red light district that's surrounded by walls and is now run by the cartel.
- [10:42]
F
I think our usual co host, Sean Williams is intimately familiar with that and every other red light district in Mexico. Basically.
- [10:48]
G
Yeah. It was founded during the. When the military. When there were military bases nearby and it was safe for off duty GIs to pop over and have some drinks, enjoy the company of some women and party. It's still there, but it's getting less traffic from the US these days. But the main strip, which is really one of the main strips, is right when you cross the brid. There are some pharmacies there for people who want to pick up cheap and unprescribed Xanax and other medications.
- [11:20]
F
By some people, do you mean yourself?
- [11:22]
G
No, but I have to say that I did work with a camera person who was not Eric Fernandez, who when we were rolling some B roll on the street, this was in the first film I did, just left the camera on the tripod, went and bought some Xanax and other products and then came out without interrupting his shot.
- [11:42]
F
Sounds like a professional to me.
- [11:43]
G
Yeah, he was true pro.
- [11:44]
F
So, yeah. Let's do a brief intro into the ongoings in Nuevo Laredo right now. Let me give some background on it and the whole cartel thing. Basically right now the Northeast Cartel, otherwise known as the cdn, is in charge. Like really in charge. We're talking basically they run the city. We did an episode on them last year. But a quick refresher. They're basically the aftermath of Lozetas, who I'm sure all of our listeners recognize by now. The Mexican special forces soldiers turned cartel sicarios, I think first for the Gulf Cartel and then they became their own thing and were sort of very well known for their levels of proficiency in military tactics and their levels of brutality. Here's a short clip from Andrew's film that kind of goes into the history a bit. The speaker here is Guadalupe Correa. Am I saying that right?
- [12:31]
G
Yes.
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F
Who literally wrote the book on the Zetas called Lazettas Incorporated.
- [12:35]
B
Then Osel Carenas Guillen became the leader of the Gulf Cartel. He met some members of the federal police that were doing anti narcotics operations. They were former members of the Mexican army that were trained in counterinsurgency operations because of the conflict that had taken place in southern part of Mexico, the Zapatista movement. And this is how the SETA started. First working for OCE El Carenas as the guard of the drug lord and then were sent to protect Nuevo Laredo by the Gulf Cartel and Lozetas changed the face of organized crime in Mexico. The Zetas were so violent, they were performing extortion, kidnapping, beheadings, and all sorts of violent acts that were unprecedented in the life of Mexico.
- [13:33]
F
So Lozettas, they broke away in the 2000s and formed their own cartel, which became known for, like, their sheer love of violence and paramilitary tactics. Basically changing the game in cartel land. The CDN forms around 2014, 2015, when the Zetas, who have been undergoing a period of fracturing, when, you know, the usual cartel growing pains, break up into multiple factions. The CDN is the bigger faction that kind of wins the territory, I guess you could say. And they follow the Zetas path of just brutal violence, torture, acid dissolving, fun stuff like that, along with developing these sort of paramilitary shock troop wings. They're real go getters, I think you could. You could say. And the crazy thing is when they break off from them, they represent the more violent, insane wing of the Zetas, which is saying a whole lot. They break away essentially because another faction of the Zetas takes issue with the fact that they've gone just completely psychotic and out of control. And that's psychotic for, like I said, a Mexican drug cartel. And not just any Mexican drug cartel. The one that was known for being hyper violent. I feel like I'm stressing this a lot, but it's because it's. It's reality.
- [14:40]
G
If I could just interject for a sec. There's suspicion that because their Zeta's roots were in counternarcotics operations for the Mexican military, that some of them may have actually been trained in the United States.
- [14:54]
F
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we talked about that. Yeah, yeah, I think they. I think some of them were. I mean, when the US Went over there, didn't they train with some of the guys who have eventually made up? Is that, Isn't that like. Is that a known thing or is that only. That's only suspicious.
- [15:04]
G
Guadalupe, who I consider the foremost expert on the Zetas, doesn't say it with full, complete confidence, but it's very. There's a lot of suspicion that there were Zetas trained or proto pre Zetas.
- [15:18]
F
Yeah. When they were with Mexican officials, they
- [15:20]
G
were trained at Fort Benning in the United States.
- [15:22]
F
So I always assumed that was. Maybe it was assumed that they were trained in Mexico, but I always assumed that was like a known thing. I had no idea that it was debatable.
- [15:30]
G
Yeah, I think at least maybe the Ford Benning training, but yeah.
- [15:34]
F
Okay, so they basically, when they first formed this faction, the CDN. They're led by Z40, who you guys know, Lozette does. They're original guys, Z1, I think, through Z something. But they all received numbers, I think based on hierarchy or something along those lines. This guy's name is Miguel Trevino. Trevino, right. With the N, with the little thing. Morales, who was an early Zetas member and leader, who was captured around that time they first broke away, right? His brother, known as Z42, takes over. And the Trevino, the Trevino Morales family, they basically run the show and still run the show. I think in the CDN you got brothers, cousins, uncles. I think an aunt's involved. It's a real family affair. And there was almost like a cult like following amongst people who were a part of CDN with that family. And in 2014, 2015, that's when they give themselves this name, the Cartel de Noresta, the Northeast Cartel. And we have the birth of this new notorious cartel on our hands. Z42 is captured soon after. And that a different Trevino morale is his nephew, Juan Francisco El Chico Trevino Chavez takes over along with help from an aunt and his dad and sort of goes. I think he gets captured relatively soon. But you've always. There's a cousin or uncle always, always stepping in, I think. What do we just do an episode on three, Three. Oh, El Mancho and cjng. These sort of like big. And the cartel before them, the Valencia clan. It's like these big. A lot of the cartels are these sort of big family clans that you really don't think of them as these affairs. But you know, 40, 50, 60 members and you know, you'll have 15 or 20 people in the same family that are in the higher ups of these cartels. It's really wild. So Nuevo Laredo, when the Northeast Cartel official declaration comes, they make the city
- [17:20]
E
their base of operation, their stronghold, and
- [17:22]
F
they really take it over. Right. They're basically a quasi government of sorts. They expand outward into other areas in the northeast of Mexico and establish contact in Colombia and parts of Central America. But they're really a localized cartel at Nuevo Loreto, the city in the state of Tamio Lipas. It's the reason the CDN can exist and fight off bigger, more well known cartels. It's the busiest crossing from the US to Mexico. The most valuable piece of real estate along the border. Although I feel like that kind of goes, doesn't it change most busiest.
- [17:51]
G
It is still the busiest as far as commercial traffic, which makes it super easy to smuggle. Everyone, you know, talks about the drug smugglers somehow carrying it across the border on their bodies. Yeah. Much more volume of narcotics is coming through on the trucks, which they. I think they. I can't remember what the figure is, but they check, like, less than 1% of every truck that's passing through. If they did, otherwise it would just slow down commercial traffic to a standstill.
- [18:16]
F
And you also told me before we started filming that they also don't check camera equipment.
- [18:20]
G
Yeah, well, sort of, yes and no, actually. So we. One of my greatest. You know, I talked about the butterflies I have crossing the bridge into Mexico. Part of that is because I'm going into a place that's kind of scary, and part of it is the arbitrariness of the customs officials that are meeting you when you get across into Mexico. And so we are carrying across, sometimes wheeling on a cart, $200,000 worth of camera equipment, which, if we got the proper declarations and documents, would mean nothing. So we didn't bother doing it, and we just hoped for the goodwill of the customs agent. And it worked probably dozens and dozens of times. And one time a guy just stared at us and said, where are your papers? With the clear intent of either shaking us down for a bribe or taking away our equipment. And suddenly my Spanish got really bad, and I just stared at him like an idiot for a time until he got bored and just waved us through. So they. They don't always check camera equipment, but this one guy did, and that kind of reinforced a lot of concerns we had of losing our cameras to the. To the supposed good guys.
- [19:27]
F
Still, probably safer than taking camera equipment into Oakland.
- [19:30]
G
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, definitely. They don't like reporters. No, but they do like reporters because they give them steal every cameras. Yeah, yeah.
- [19:37]
F
There's like, no one we. We should do an episode on that.
- [19:39]
E
They like.
- [19:40]
F
It was a thing for a while. I mean, even when I was out there.
- [19:42]
G
Yeah.
- [19:43]
F
Years ago.
- [19:43]
G
They're stealing all the cameras, guys.
- [19:45]
F
Yeah, yeah. They follow them and just take everything. Okay. So CDN basically has total near control of Nuevo Laredo. It's so pervasive that in 2019, gasoline stations in the city are forced to refuse service to police and military vehicles under threat, forcing authorities to ship in fuel from outside the city. Unlike, say, CJNG or Sinaloa Cartel, when they have operations in other areas, the CDN directly controls the city rather than just allying with local gangs to operate. Quote, the Northeast Cartel decides what's permitted and what isn't? Said one government official. This includes a total ban on robberies, carjackings and assaults, as well as consumption and sales of synthetic drugs like methamphetamine and I think fentanyl too. Members settle disputes as small as local neighborhood disagreements and hand down punishments. So that's one. I'm actually forgetting who I quoted there, but we should give them credit at some point. But yeah, that's how when you're talking about settling local disputes, that's very different from other massive cartels who usually don't bother with that sort of stuff. That means that like, you know, that's quasi government, so paramilitary government basically. And they're still kind of fighting with the remnants of the Gulf Cartel and another faction of the Zetas, known as
- [20:54]
E
the Old School zetas.
- [20:56]
F
Famously, in 2022, the CDN attacks the entire city after their leader is grabbed, like we saw in Puerto Vallarta when Mencho was killed. But yeah, it's still not a really well known cartel. It's not nearly as big as the remnants of Sinaloa or Jalisco New Generation. But in Nuevo Laredo, where you were filming, they are in complete control. Can you talk a little bit more about the city itself? Kind of set, set the scene for us?
- [21:19]
G
Yeah, I mean, in your last episode about the cdn, which I thought was great, you talked about their sort of overt wars that they fight and extreme violence that they carried out both as CDN and Zetas. Right now, it is not always like that. There are flare ups, but since the really bad old days of 2006, 2007, when Nova Lareda was one of the most dangerous places on earth and that was during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Things have feel calmer day to day. There used to be raging wars in the streets between rival cartels, between the cartels and the police, between the cartels, police and military. And there was horrible violence against civilians too. Kidnappings, as you said, beheadings, car bombs. Today there is a sense of relative calm. People are going about their business. Oftentimes you'll see people out on the streets in restaurants and stores. When you don't, it's a pretty clear sign that the local community knows something's going on and that we should follow suit and be a little less overt with our filming. But it's important to note the impact of the bad years of extreme violence, which lasted until maybe 2012, 2013, is that the city is in many places just pretty dead, as we talked about. Also, it's important to note that there's no more local police. The police were disbanded back in the early days and haven't recovered. So the authorities are the state police who come in once in a while and you see them with big pickup trucks and 50cals mounted in the balaclavas. The military, which includes now the National Guard and occasionally the Marines, which was the focus of our film, and also the CDN themselves. And sometimes they're indistinguishable. You'll see the CDN Tropa Dell Infierno, the shock troops, kind of the patrols going about in the same vehicles that the military and the state police go in. The only way you can really tell the difference is the stamp on the side of the truck, which is the CDN logo, which is always pretty, pretty off putting. When you see that, you kind of assume that there's some degree of authority and then you realize that that authority, the guys holding the power and keeping things as they are, are the bad guys you hear about. Again, there are occasional, and sometimes not occasional outright warfare on the streets with bullets flying. The local people call them baleseras, which just means shootouts. And you learn about those almost the way you learn about traffic jams in some cities through the informal network or that's almost like micro storms. People will. There's WhatsApp groups, various WhatsApp groups and they'll say, don't drive down Avenida Guerrero because there's balasera going on right now, or avoid X Street because there's what they call Ponche Yantas, which is these chains with spikes that the cartels and sometimes the military, military will lay down to slow or prohibit traffic from passing or watch out because the Tropa del Infierno is passing down the street. So it is very off putting. And also it's interesting to note that the way you can sometimes tell, aside from the stamp, if you don't see the stamp on the truck, the way you can tell the bad guys, the cartel, from the military because they wear the same uniforms often is their shoes. The cartel guys, maybe because of the availability of combat boots, but they don't wear those, they wear sneakers. And so the local slang, one of the local slangs for the cartel guys because they don't want to say cartel or narco in the streets is contenis, which means with sneakers. That's kind of the little slang that people use.
- [25:27]
F
It's a great, great nickname. What kind of sneakers are we talking about? Like New Balance? Are we.
- [25:32]
G
Good question. I didn't get close enough.
- [25:34]
F
Cortez. I don't think Cortez was the El Salvador thing, but, I mean, yeah, look, I. I remember watching, like, some crime podcaster, like, a year or two ago, being like, I would never go to Mexico. It's too d. And I'm like, that's ridiculously silly. Like, a great. There's plenty of nice places to go in Mexico where you're not gonna have any issues, especially if you don't go looking for them. Amazing places to vacation. This does not sound like, like one of those places. And this is right across the border too, huh? Like, you know, usually I think tales of this stuff, unless you're in really, really hot spots, is exaggerated for the most part. People want to scare you not to go to Mexico. But you can go to, you know, Puerto Escondido, you can go to Cancun. You'll be fine. Playa del Carmen, all that stuff. But this is right, right on the border. And they have the local sense. They're not even trying to hide it.
- [26:18]
G
No, they're not trying to hide it. And I guess it is a place that once you kind of learn how to navigate, it mitigates a lot of the risk. But there is a huge fear, even among journalists who are very experienced in working in cartel y areas, including a mutual friend of ours who helped out on my last film. And in Sinaloa, for example, you can, with proper notice and connections, you can sort of embed with a cartel. The Sinaloa is, I say with reservations and with million asterisks. They're relatively press friendly. They want to give you insight into their way of life.
- [26:55]
F
There's like, one fixer that everyone uses that goes and sets them up. They get the same footage of a guy wearing a ball of cloth.
- [27:00]
G
Yeah. Yes. I have them in my phone. But then that same very experienced and seasoned journalist said there was no way he was going to try to do that in Novo Laredo because of the unpredictability and extreme violence.
- [27:16]
F
Does his name start with an M? Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. When I was going to do the crazy cartel thing, and I've talked about on the podcast years ago when I was supposed to get this, like, sleepover with a cartel fuck.
- [27:28]
E
What was his name?
- [27:30]
F
El Durango. He was a guy that I. That I sought advice from on that stuff. And that was a crazy situation. And then he, of course, got arrested two days before we were supposed to fly out. Ruined all my dreams of you would
- [27:43]
G
have been swept up as well.
- [27:44]
F
Wound up in Guantana that's the optimistic way of looking at it. I mean, I was just like, I can't believe I missed this opportunity. We had this lined up for so long. The Mexican federalis completely ruined my. My story and all that. But the optimistic way is being like, if I would have been there when this happened, somebody would have probably shot us.
- [28:03]
G
Yeah. Yeah, you're probably lucky. Yeah. But these days, again, as I said, Nuevo Laredo is relatively calm. And I stress relative, because it doesn't mean that cartel Noreste is gone. It's just very entrenched, as you said, it's really part of the civil society. They're the law enforcement, they're the. The politicians, and they're the. Even the main employer. Not the main employer, I shouldn't say, but they're a significant employer. And as an example, on payday for the Alcones, the lookouts, there is often a parking lot or someplace where there are lines and lines of these local people who are waiting for their paycheck or cash from the cartel guys. And that's just out in the open. So it's very systematic. It's very ossified. Um, one guy.
- [29:00]
F
Do they. Do they. They pay in cash or they use, like, ramp or. Or some sort of, like, payment system, you think?
- [29:04]
G
I think they pay in cash. At least this makes sense. And. And one guy that we talked to from unam, which is the biggest university in Mexico, he described the hold that the CDN has on Nuevo Laredo as a Pax cartel, using the same jargon that foreign policy people use to describe the period of stability during American unilateral superpower status. Pax Americana or the British Empire, Pax Britannica. So he describes it as that, meaning that they've got hegemonic control over pretty much all aspects of society. And they've asserted that they collect taxes from local businesses, they run protection rackets, they've got an extremely elaborate surveillance operation. Alconis that I talked about are on pretty much every street corner. Quick anecdote. When I was filming my last film, it was about a baseball team, professional baseball team that was based in Novo Laredo and huge fan base. One day, the umpires didn't show up to the game, and so the game was delayed. No one could figure out what was going on. A local hot dog guy called around who knew some of the Contenisse guys, and he found out that these umpires were from Sinaloa. And when they checked into their hotel, and I don't remember what hotel, it Was but mainstream American hotel in Nova Laredo. Probably someone at the front desk was a lookout for the cartel and said, hey, we heard some Sinaloan accents here, you better check it out. And these poor umpires got kidnapped. They were released without harm. But that's how pervasive it is, that these guys who had an accent were sniffed out and kidnapped right away before they could even leave their hotel room.
- [30:46]
F
Yeah, that's like. It reminds me of El Salvador when I used to go down there during the like heyday of Ms. 13 and 18 Street. They had the same thing. They had. The Los Alcones were usually kids. You filmed in an area too long, even if you had permission, they didn't want you there. They'd be like, like it's time. You got a 12 year old coming up to you being like, it's time to go. But they knew everything. You know, they allegedly had people at the airports, they would just know anyone. In every area. There were WhatsApp groups that, you know, anytime you go into a neighborhood that they control, you're getting that WhatsApp notice. And it was just complete and total control.
- [31:18]
G
That's the way it is. And it works almost in some ways like a security force as well. An example that I would give is you would think that in a place that's overrun by organized crime, you wouldn't want to leave an expensive camera in your car. That's just bad practice. We never do that. But there was one day, we have a local fixer, a guy who helps us navigate things and make sure we don't get in trouble. And we were stopping for breakfast in downtown and wanted to bring our camera in to the restaurant. And he said, no, you don't want to do that because some of your might be there and they're not going to like that you just ran up with a camera on them. So just leave it in the car. What does that mean? It means that there's no petty crime, no kind of robberies or muggings or the kinds of things you find in other places. Because the cartel doesn't want to stir up problems in their place of business. It is so valuable, their plaza, their place that their territory that they control because it is the main, the biggest entry point into the US and the US's drug market, which is enormous. So they do control that aspect of society as well, which is interesting.
- [32:38]
F
Yeah, I mean there's a story like that. When I was in Puerto Escondido in Oaxaca, shortly after I left, there was a group, I think that, like, 14 people got. Got killed. And at first it was a report that they were students. Then it turned out that they were a group of just, like, thieves. And they had gone into a touristy area, I think more popular with Mexican tourists than Western tourists, and just kind of robbed a bunch of people. And they did it without getting permission to do so because they probably would have been denied. And the cartel obviously doesn't want that. They don't want the attention. They're making money off retail sales and all that. So they all just got wiped out.
- [33:13]
G
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the kind of thing these guys just know not to. And we had heard that the person who picked up the umpires, I don't know what his punishment was, but that he got in big trouble because he had freelanced. He thought he was doing something that his bosses at the cartel were going to like. And he really don't show initiative, folks.
- [33:33]
F
Do not show initiative when you're in the cartel.
- [33:35]
G
No, no.
- [33:36]
F
Don't just listen to orders.
- [33:37]
G
Yeah. You know, also, kind of, aside from the all. Everything I described in Nova Laredo, one thing that's very different is that the narcos used to drive around in big, jacked up, really, you know, big rimmed SUVs, brand new. And they realized that that called too much attention to themselves. So now they ride what everyone affectionately calls mommy cars, little or minivans that you would see in suburban America carrying kids around. Except often the guys in the back are not cute little kids. They're guys with guns.
- [34:19]
F
That was me and my friends in high school with a Mazda mpv.
- [34:21]
G
Yeah, that's. That's what you said. Yeah, exactly. They probably had water guys.
- [34:26]
F
But, yeah, I mean, El Salvador was a very similar thing. After a while, they were like, no more face tattoos. Don't dress like cholos in the US we want you guys to wear, like, khakis and collared shirts and just kind of go under the radar because they were attracting way too much attention.
- [34:40]
G
Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of times you will see large individuals that you can assume are, because of where they are and who they're with, they work for the cartel. But there's, as you said, not big, scary face tattoos and sleeves even. They're just kind of pretty. Pretty toned down, inconspicuous. But, you know, all around town, as I mentioned, there's these alcones, literally every corner. And it's usually, as you said, in El Salvador, it could be little kids. It can be someone who is paid in drugs, a strung out woman on a bike. They all have walkie talkies. That's how you can pick them out. They're often sitting kind of in front of a newsstand so it looks like a normal place for them to loiter, but they're everywhere. And that's somewhat off putting to the point where we one time got a text from a local journalist that we're friendly with and he said, oh, I see you're over in this neighborhood. We said, what do you mean? Did you drive by? Why don't you say hi? He said, no, he was on a WhatsApp group with the narcos and they were reporting our whereabouts. So actually in a way that helped us. So no little freelance kid would pick us up and kidnap us and take our gear. They were keeping an eye on us. But it's very off putting to know that every step you take is being watched by these really violent bad guys.
- [36:01]
F
Yeah, but it's like, it's an interesting point. It's almost counterintuitive. Right. You don't want to go in under the radar. You want them to know with that level of control, you want them to know exactly who you are and where you are. Because it's almost like a built in safety mechanism.
- [36:14]
G
Yeah. And every anytime they would approach us. I mean, I described the first time it happened, but it happened probably half a dozen times where someone who didn't immediately know who we were, and frankly we stand out, tall white guys with cameras. But if someone rolled up on us and asked who we were with, we would say we were working with Raimundo Ramos and we can go into who he is in a little bit. And they would send us on our way after what they did. There's a command center, so they would radio it in to a warehouse where there's a whole communication center where they're taking all this information from the Alcones and feeding it up to the big guys and making sure they're apprised of anything noteworthy. And then they send back their approval or disapproval. And luckily we always got the approval, the thumbs up.
- [37:05]
F
You mentioned the big guys and I feel like that's. I don't know if it's them specifically, but you also mentioned Trope, Ozdi and Fierno, which we've talked about in a previous episode. Basically the hell troops. Right. They're like the most intensive paramilitary tip of the spear, most violent. I think you mentioned that you had seen like a public mural with them in it.
- [37:22]
G
Yeah, not a mural. It was actually so when I was filming my last film, Bad Hombres, we had driven by on the main highway on the way to Monterrey, which is called the Death highway, just outside of Nova Laredo, there was a giant, I would say, two to three story statue of Santa Muerte. And I don't know if you've talked about that on your podcast before, but it's kind of the patron saint of the underworld. And it's a scary skeleton dressed in a robe, female skeleton with a scythe. And when you see it, it means generally, when you see a large statue, it generally means that there are bad guys that are feeling pretty emboldened. So we didn't. We were advised to not look too closely at that. But I was always curious. And on a down day, when we were filming this Spring of the Vanishing, I asked our fixer if we could swing by and have a look. And he radioed one of his friends, a kid he grew up with who was probably in the cartel, and he said, fine, just don't film. So we got there, looked at it, and then behind it off the road, was something that I'd never seen. It was probably three times or four times the size of that. It was almost like a massive diorama, I would say, in height, about two stories, and then it was long, like a whole city block, like half a city block long. And inside that diorama was a tribute to the shrine to the Tropas del Infierno. It said that in giant writing and had pictures of devils and devils doing the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil sign. And it was really creepy. So there's an old lady who's the caretaker of this shrine, this area. And I asked my fixer if we could ask her, despite what his friend said, if we could ask her if we could film. And he said, go ahead, but if she says no, we're out of here. And I went to her and said, hey, do you mind if we film? These are really interesting and nice. And she said, for 100 bucks. And my fixer said, that means get the fuck out of here. So we got in the car and we said, we'll be right back. We have to go to an atm. And we bolted. And interestingly enough, and everything is on the Internet these days and Instagram, And I've looked for images of that shrine many times since then, and I don't see anything. And it's huge. So it's really remarkable that this is like this sacred shrine to these scary bad guys that somehow have Avoided any kind of publicity.
- [40:07]
F
So if our listeners are near there, if you go and film it, Andrew will pay you 100 for the foot. Do not go and film it. Do not. Do not. No. Tick tock. Challenge for filming the giant Mexican shock troop cartel mural.
- [40:22]
G
No, don't do that. That Scientology thing where you run across and film it. That would be bad.
- [40:27]
F
Yeah, no, it's a.
- [40:28]
G
They don't make it very far.
- [40:29]
F
Yeah, get us some attention, but probably the wrong kind of attention. Yeah, but, yeah, so, I mean, you've mentioned that there's no local police. You've got the state police there and the military there, and they're just all kind of interacting with it. Like, are they in the pocket of these guys? Are they interacting with each other? Are they kind of just like, you know, is it like an old school, I don't know, Western thing where they cross each other and look and then like, you know, everyone's fingers on the trigger, but they don't do anything?
- [40:55]
G
Most of the time, I don't see that to be the case. And I. The notion originally in 2006 and 7, when Calderon sort of declared his war on drugs in the US Gave lots and lots of money for military support, the idea was that the military was less corruptible or incorruptible, that it was more disciplined than the local police and they were going to be able to handle this. They're not disciplined as far as human rights. And that's the focus of our film, Spring of the Vanishing is we investigate a case where the military was called in to take on the cdn, a special unit, actually, of the military. The Marines, they're called under the kind of the special operators of the Navy. They were called in to pacify the CDN and wound up killing a lot of innocent people. And we can go on to that a little bit, but the suspicion is, and I don't know or believe necessarily that the military is in cahoots with the cartel, but the guys in charge of the military may be, and that is the politicians that decide where they will operate. And this is all an allegation. But the former governor of Tamaulipas, a guy named Francisco Cabeza de Vaca, he has been charged with having ties to the Gulf Cartel. And it was under his governorship that a unit of the Marines that was the focus of our film came into Nova Laredo and outside of Nova Laredo and killed a lot of people in the effort of destabilizing and decapitating the cartel. And the suspicion there is Suspicion that Cabeza de Vaca, because he was working for the alleged associate of the Gulf Cartel, that he was doing their bidding by calling it in these Marines to clear out the cdn, not to make life better for the community, but to clear out a clear path for the Gulf to move in. That is all unsubstantiated, but that's what people on the ground are saying.
- [43:13]
F
So who is then the guy you keep mentioning, Raimundo Ramos. You mentioned him a couple times, and he seems to be a central focus of your film.
- [43:20]
G
So he is a longstanding president of the Committee for Human Rights of Nuevo Laredo, and he's a former journalist and he. His investigations and his documentation of human rights abuses by the government and by the military and by state police have been foundational in prosecuting and investigating lots of cases by credible international bodies. So he is an established and respected human rights activist and defender. But the US is alleging and other people on the ground allege that he is also an associate of the cartel Noreste. It's something that he vehemently denies. And interestingly, on the day that my film was released, on April 14, when it was released on Apple TV and Amazon prime treasury, the US Treasury Department issued sanctions against Raymond Ramos for those alleged ties. And also claiming that a lot of his activism against the military and his investigations were disinformation campaigns to discredit the guys that were going after the cdn and that the victims that he was representing were paid crisis actors and that they weren't really people who had lost loved ones.
- [44:46]
F
Would be a pretty incredible tactic to pull that off.
- [44:49]
G
It would be, and I think it's also a bit specious, the allegations, at least in the. That we investigated, which was, I believe, the biggest case of the military committing grave human rights violations in Mexico. In Nova Laredo, we looked again at a case where the military came in, the special forces of the Marines, the same guys, by the way, that caught El Chapo and that are trained. These guys are, I can say with authority, are trained in the US, receive intelligence from the US and often work closely with the DEA. And they came in and made at least 49 innocent people disappear, including an American teenager who's the focus of our film and two 12 year olds. These were not cartel people that they killed and made disappear. And Raimundo's investigation and the brave activism of the Mothers and Wives of the Missing was credible enough for Amnesty International, the United nations, and my colleague Weston Phippen and I to rely on his investigation to report on it credibly to the point where the military, for the first time, the head of Mexico's navy came to Novo Laredo and apologized to the mothers and wives and survivors of the missing. That's unprecedented. So if he was making that up, it would be a conspiracy that reached all the way to the top of the military, which is not true.
- [46:22]
F
I mean, working in that area though, would you like, is he, according to the treasury report, is he actually associated with the cartel, would you say?
- [46:29]
G
I mean, he says no. And his human rights organization, again, is trusted by international human rights groups and journalists across the world. And he's been meticulous in documenting many of the cases, the abuses that happened in over Laredo by the government. But when it comes to serious abuses committed by the cartel, there is a blind spot. And I actually, if you want to play a clip from my film, there's a former investigator from Amnesty International who talks about Raimundo and the allegations against him. And she can put it in some context.
- [47:05]
H
Raimundo is a human rights defender that has been informing Amnesty International and many human rights organizations of CAP cases for about three decades. And we've always been aware of the allegations against him, the allegations of his links to. I mean, I can't even keep up with the amount of allegations of different supposed networks or criminal networks that Raimundo could be part of. You know, unfortunately, these states such as Tamaulipas, anybody that is going to try and bring evidence to light in those contexts is going to be the subject of a lot of attacks.
- [47:44]
G
So it's again, it's important to note that when it comes to serious abuses committed by the cartel, Raymondo Ramos and his organization are pretty quiet. And to be fair, the local press is quiet on that as well. And I would argue with good reason.
- [48:06]
F
Yeah, it seems like a self preservation thing, self preservation.
- [48:08]
G
They call it autocensora, self censorship, because there was deadly consequences when they were reporting on the Zetas cartel in the early days in 2006 on to 2012, there's still bullet holes in the local newspaper, in the wall from an attack in the early days. And a few months later after that, narcos rolled a grenade into that newsroom. It was the first but not last grenade attack on a local newsroom. And then in 2012, they came in with big guns and shot up the newsroom and no one was luckily killed. And during that time, there are also targeted assassinations of individual reporters. One was stabbed 29 times outside of his home to death. And a female editor from Another newspaper was decapitated in 2011 with the Zetas leaving a warning note beside her body saying, stop covering us. So it would be arrogant of us to say why aren't they covering worked. The warnings and the killings and the shootings silenced the local press and probably the local human rights community as well. El Manana, which is that local newspaper in 2012 publicly declared it wasn't going to cover any drug cartel related news at all anymore. And again, they wouldn't be around if they did. So I do not blame them, nor would I blame Raimundo if that is the reason for his blind spot. He's doing really important work, work that he wouldn't be able to do if he was dead.
- [49:39]
F
So is there any other evidence that sort of casts suspicion on Ramos in the Treasury's eyes?
- [49:45]
G
Well, the alleged, well, the alleged smoking gun comes in the form of a recorded phone call. Do you remember the whole thing about Pegasus software? It made international news. It was Israeli made phone tapping software that was used by Mexico's military to listen in on phone calls by NGOs, human rights rights workers and the press. Illegally, I should mention. And the New York Times at the time reported that Raimundo Ramos's phone had been tapped. Shortly after that, there was a strange moment in one of amlo, the Mexican president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, he used to have these daily morning press conferences. And there was this really strange moment where a reporter who, in the framing of his question, I would suggest that he's probably a plain plant. He played a long excerpt of a tapped phone call between Raimundo and the second in charge of the cartel, Noreste, a guy nicknamed El Borrado, which means the Erasure. And let's not think too hard about why he has that name.
- [50:53]
F
Definitely not an artist, just like the gardener. I don't think the gardener was a gardener, no.
- [50:58]
G
But the phone call, to be fair, sounds like El Borrado was complaining that Raimundo hadn't done a better job of tipping him off to a federal raid that he now really escaped. And in the call they sound very friendly. They sound like they know each other pretty well.
- [51:15]
F
So that's kind of damning. I mean, if the call, like is the assumption that it's real, I'm assuming it's real. But the fact that the guy is even communicating with a second in command of this cartel and, you know, friendly with him, not like a local guy, that he's just like trying to be like, oh, we've got to, you know, sort of Communicate. So I can avoid. We can avoid trouble. But like the second in command, that seems pretty serious.
- [51:38]
G
It does. And I don't think anyone has said the call was not real, that it was the two of them talking. I think is fairly certain. And so it's fair to say that Raimundo is in communication with some of the cartel leaders. And frankly, I think that's why it was his name that we would drop when we were confronted by one of the Alcones, one of the lookouts, because he had told them to lay off us. So. So that's not unusual that he works in a place that's overrun by the cartel, that is run by the cartel, as we established that he is in communication with them. And I would say that part of his job actually requires him to speak to all of these people. And as an example, us journalists have to talk to a lot of unsavory characters. That's part of the job.
- [52:29]
F
I mean, that's what I'm doing right now.
- [52:31]
G
Yes, exactly. Likewise,
- [52:35]
F
who don't reverse it on me.
- [52:38]
G
But we do that all the time. I recall you and I in the field in the West Bank, I think, back in 2014, spent a day with a Hamas guy.
- [52:47]
F
Oh, yeah, it was awful.
- [52:48]
G
It was awful. And if you had listened to me, my last name is Glaser. Your last name is Gold. Trying to warm him up and get him to agree to allow us to film with him. It probably wouldn't sound great. It would sound like that I'm pretty friendly with a Hamas guy, which wouldn't go over so well with my family and extended family. But really, that is what we do to work in these places and to get people to open up to us. So I think it's a leap to say that Raimundo is. To draw the conclusion that Raimundo is in the pocket of the cartel, based on that phone conversation. But I also think it's important to note that there is this cliche that you've probably mentioned in a number of other episodes, and it's a choice given in a lot of cartel places. It's called plata o plomo. It means silver or lead. That means you can either take money and work with a cartel or you can get lead, which is obviously a bullet. And so I have no information about Raimundo's relationship and whether he was given this choice, but it is a choice that's consistently given to people across areas that are riven by cartels. And I think it's safe to say that he may have Been given that choice.
- [54:14]
F
Yeah. I mean, he's in an impossible situation, essentially, if he wants to do the work that he was doing. I will say, though, it's one thing to kiss him ass so you can talk to someone. It's another to tip somebody off about police action or.
- [54:26]
G
Yeah, and we don't know that. I mean, the complaint is that he didn't in that case. So I don't know if it's just positive proof, because Albarado was saying, why didn't you? And he sounds. Raimundo sounds shaken in the call. So, you know, it could be. I don't know that that's a perfect smoking gun.
- [54:45]
F
So what do the sanctions mean for him?
- [54:48]
G
It's unclear. I would say he's definitely shaken. He's been doing rounds of press, both in Mexico and international. I've communicated with him. He actually believes that the sanctions were timed with the release of my film, which I'd like to believe that. That many people have seen my film and that it would have that impact. But it has had a chilling effect on him. They don't really impact him day to day right now because he can't come into the States already. He was blocked a few years ago from getting a visa to travel in the US he used to go to Washington regularly and testify to House committees about these disappearances and about other human rights issues. He can't do that anymore. There's concern now that the Trump administration is cracking down on what it says is corruption of Mexican politicians, and that culminated recently in indictments of a bunch of politicians, including the governor of Sinaloa. There is concern that, I guess Raimundo could be on that list of put future indictments, but. But it's unclear what impact that would have as well, because the Sheinbaum government, the new president of Mexico, has not turned these figures over to the US Government for extradition. And so it's unclear what this will do other than pressure her to do more security cooperation with the United States.
- [56:18]
F
Yeah, sounds very, very intense. The film, again is Spring of the Vanishing. You can see it on itunes, on Amazon prime and on Fandango.
- [56:30]
G
Don't forget about Fandango.
- [56:31]
F
Yeah, please, guys, go. Definitely go buy it or rent it if you can. Andrew can't afford haircuts, and we really want to help him out here. He has to wear his mom's glasses. It's just he's going through a tough time.
- [56:44]
G
I just couldn't pull off those narco glasses that you have on.
- [56:47]
F
Independent documentary filmmakers really do struggle and we want to help them out as much as we can. Thank you again to my guest Andrew Glazer for joining us. It was fun and for taking us through Nueva Laredo and the cartel lands situation there. As always, guys. Patreon.com podcast underworldpod.com the podcast gmail.com all right guys, thank you. Till next week. Sean will be back. We'll have some fun. It. Sam.
- [58:26]
C
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