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

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That scared the shit out of me when you sent me that video, and then you're like, it's all good. It's fine. Normal is a fluid concept for me. Yeah. And that's pretty normal. It's almost like you bring it with you, you know? It's almost like I have a black cat stuck up my ass. Yeah, something. You're also the only guy that's ever decided to, like, explore around there. Yeah. I put people up at that hotel. Everyone else just enjoys the hotel, and they don't go down the street because there's a lot going on there. But you're like, I love this. It's like Tijuana. Let's go. It is. That part of Jersey is pretty Tijuana-like. I like it. I like it. Well, we like to be in the shit around here, as they say. But, Ed, it's great to see you. We had a nice romantic morning together because the calendar was on Pacific time. So that was a nice surprise. Get you early. ADHD and all that and brain damage, but I'm here. That was a beautiful day. Right? Amazing. Again, for me, this is like an exotic space. Like, I'm from Tijuana, you know? Oh, it's exotic. It's exotic around here. Yeah, this is exotic to me. That's a first. We are exotic in New Jersey. Yeah, I'm from Tijuana, so all this shit is like fucking bougie and exotic. The Sopranos are around here? Like, what? That's right. Yeah, I can take you by all those spots for sure. But you got a good day to see the full skyline, which my friend John Sear was weighing in on Instagram. He is wrong. The best view of New York is where I took you, not where he said. Okay, done. Shout out, John. But, you know. All right. Anyway. But what have you been up to, man? It was obviously the last time you were here was a six-hour odyssey. We did two episodes. Okay. 392 and 393. Yeah. Or 292 and 293. But obviously a lot's been going on since then, so you've just been bouncing around Mexico? Bouncing around the U.S. and Mexico. I think last time I was here, I think I ominously said that something was probably going to pop off somewhere in the hills of Jalisco. You did. You were cooking. And that was before the El Mencho killing the head of the – they took out the head of the New Generation cartel. And I had a prediction that it was going to be Americans doing that. It wasn't Americans directly. It was a U.S. drone flying over and confirming the fact that that guy was in a cabin with his girlfriend in Topalpa. That's how the confirm happened. I've heard different stories. And mind you, most of my information, again, I'm not a cartel reporter. I didn't go to journalism school. I have a lot of friends in weird places. I have a lot of friends within the special operations community in Mexico. So I got a pretty early notice about what happened. I could hear different things. One of them was that they tracked a woman that he would frequent. Yes. He was held up in a cabin in a very rural part of Jalisco called Topalpa. It's beautiful. It's like Aspen, Colorado. Yeah. Only the best for those guys. And at some point, a drone flew over. They took out his pad and they were trying to figure out if he was there or not. He was pretty good about keeping out of the view of the sky. Like Bin Laden, kind of. High walls. Yeah. Hey, guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review. They're both a huge, huge help. Thank you. But then they found the woman that he was frequenting and they saw a man coming out of the house out into the view of the sky, hugging this woman. And they think that's what probably. Probably confirmed where he was. A few hours later, members of Mexican Special Operations showed up in bulk. And after a long firefight, they had RPGs on them. That's nice. They had a bunch of sophisticated firearms. It wasn't enough, though, this time. And he made a run for it for the hills. Some people say he was executed. Some people say he was caught in the firefight that eventually killed him. And after his death, his head of propaganda and communications basically called out every single member of his cartel to go out and burn vehicles across the country. And that was that whole, like, 24-hour period where shit was just popping off. But then it stopped. It was a day. Right. It was a day of them. They burned a Costco, which is pretty kind of like. Listen, you know, we got enough of those. They burned a Costco. Gas stations that had American ties to them apparently were targeted. Right. Um, they. I used to have this map of where they were active, and you can superimpose that old map with where they started burning vehicles, and it's a perfect match, and that is a lot of territory that they are inactive in. Basically, it's like 60% of Mexico. Why do you think it just, like, stopped on a dime? It felt like. As far as, like, burning shit in the street goes, it felt very organized. It was. I mean, it was very organized. The new generation cartels. The new generation cartel has, uh, basically, it's like a franchise company. It has many people that have these organizations that they then go under the banner of this new generation cartel, and they have been expanding and growing exponentially for years now. Um, and the head of this cartel, Mencho, was after the arrest, after the abduction of El Mayo Zambada, who was historically kind of the biggest fish out there. Um, after he was, uh, put on a quick flight to New York, just like Maduro, um, after he was, uh, put on a plane by the son of El Chapo Guzman, one of his sons, uh, figured something out there, which kind of tie into what we're going to talk about later as far as all the politicians that are currently in hot water in Mexico. Um, you saw this emboldened new generation cartel growing exponentially in Mexico. It's, it's the biggest cartel out there right now. Um. Do we have an idea of like ballpark, the size of quote unquote Sicario soldiers? There's no way of counting them realistically. They don't check in for the. No, but, uh, we, we, we talked to a few of their soldiers, uh, in the past. We've interviewed some of them and they talk about numbers, you know, hundreds in training camps or in holding patterns outside of the cities in the rural areas. So they need to get fed. So there's ledgers of how much people are getting paid. How much people are getting paid to feed them, housing, clothing, equipment. Yes, you got to keep track of all that. So it's a whole army that they, that they have basically, uh, they have drone capabilities, anti-aircraft capabilities. They're one of the only confirmed cartels that have been able to take down aircraft by the military, from the military. Uh, they're taking down military aircrafts that they're, we talked to one kid, I think two years ago, who was a former tank operator, a former monster operator for them that he would drive around with them. He was driving around one of those armored homemade trucks. Um, and he talked to, he talked to us about how, uh, what type of capabilities they had. Uh, and in a sideline conversation, he talked about how they took one of the mini guns from one of these planes, these helicopters they took down, he was explaining how they took it out. And then we started seeing these, these, uh, cars outfitted with these mini guns. So, um, historically they w the last major arrest. The last attempt on a Mencho was during, um, they took down a helicopter. When was that? That was probably six years ago. If I'm not mistaken. That was the last like. That was the last like attempt at, at trying to grab them and that turned into a prolonged firefight. Uh, there was a federal cop that got, that survived the crash, got horribly burned. He was assassinated later, like, like two years back. Uh, so like this is an unforgiving cartel. Clearly. They'll, they'll find you if you, if you cross them. Um, this, this, uh, figurehead that they had, El Mencho was. Wait, why do you call them a figurehead? Because, uh, they change, right? Um, realistically, when you look at a lot of these cartel organizations, they, and I think we're, I think we're actually living through, through a mass extinction event. This, this El Chapo figurehead cartel system is, I think it's going away. Wow. extinction event yeah you just gave me a good title that's that's what's going on probably um when you see the ways that both the us is putting pressure on politicians that used to protect some of these people to the ways that they uh make their money and the ways that they have basically uh roots and family members up here in the states and the it's been a long it's like an open secret that the cia has operated in mexico for decades we're seeing open activity by them now yes in a lot of ways or at least they've been revealed in many places in mexico including uh two cia agents dying after a a massive uh drug laboratory was found um where was that i feel like stefano told us about yes this is uh i'm forgetting the state somewhere by the way i just i want to point this out because you brought this up while you were talking the jalisco new generation cartel gained international attention for the tactic of anti-aircraft i think is what it is right in may 2015 during a coordinated offensive in jalisco cjng operatives use a russian-made rocket propelled grenade yeah good stuff they found more of those when they they got out to them russian stuff is premium yeah if russians have it that's what i wanted to have yeah russian soviet black stuff it keeps longer the issue with an american-made rpg of some sort of rocket launcher or a man pad as they call them the remote control guided stuff is they have a shelf life expiration date yeah but not this soviet stuff you can store it apparently um but you were when i cut you off you were citing like some of the cia uh there's a governor governess maru campos this episode sponsored by she's birdie you lock the hotel room door then check it again and maybe one more time because even the nicest room can feel unfamiliar at night that's why she's birdie created birdie box with she's birdie you can bring peace of mind with you birdie box is a portable travel door alarm for hotels dorms airbnbs and anywhere you stay away from home just attach it to the door frame switch it on and if someone opens the door birdie box blasts a loud siren and flashing alarm to alert you and everyone nearby because the best part of travel isn't worrying it's sleeping soundly birdie box from she's birdie locking in peace of mind wherever you stay more confident travel visit she'sbirdie.com that's s-h-e-s-b-i-r-d-i-e.com uh i think i'm blanking on the state right now apologies but uh there was a massive drug bust and two cia agents died in a car crash supposedly after this drug bust car crashes are commonly utilized as cover stories for the cia as far as how people die hastings we don't know if they were in a shootout or something of that nature but there you go yeah mexican governor says she's being persecuted case of two cia agents killed in drug lab raid this is from may 27 2026. mexican governor of chihuahua said wednesday she was being persecuted by the country's ruling party over the case of two u.s officials who died in april during an unauthorized drug raid in her state maria eugenia campos from the opposition national action party appeared for questioning at the mexican general prosecutor's office in mexico city regarding the april 9th crime in chihuahua county the two americans killed in the crash were employees of the central intelligence agency las tres letras yeah multiple people familiar with the matter told cbs news the cia declined to comment outside the prosecutor's office campos said she was being persecuted with the entire weight of the state apparatus while politicians from the ruling morena party have absolute impunity the issue is that she is from the conservative party and like that they don't like that that's one issue the other issue is she probably i i'm pretty she's she's getting charged with treason at some point if they remove her political immunity getting charged with treason it's a treasonous act allowing foreign agents to act within your state oh if she okay yeah yeah yeah so i'm probably pretty sure that she didn't know what was going on the cia has a way of going into places like that and basically through training and consultation they probably went in through a state police agency into mexico and they started sharing information and consulting and then and all of a sudden the state cops are working with the cia something of that nature probably she would have known that at some point she probably would have known that later but i don't think she was informed by it but the issue is she's of the conservative party morena is not the conservative party although it's full of ex-conservative party members because why is that morena morena is viewed by many people as a party of the left but i was in politics for a while when i was in my during my career and i recognize every single face that i see in morena a lot of them as being former members of the conservative party because they jump shipped because that's the ruling party right now so they just switch they just switch allegiances the cia has been revealed to be operating both there and there's there was a case of a cartel member um el payin a sinaloa operative that was apparently blown up in a weird way after leaving the ifa airport in mexico city el payin el payin how do you spell that uh p-a-y-i-n el payin he's got it alleged sinaloa cartel operator for francisco el payin beltram was killed in late march when his toyota pickup truck exploded from a car bomb on the mexico chucha highway just outside the ifa airport on the outskirts of mexico city stefano played this video the official narrative by the government is that there was a grenade that they they all like pulled this pin on this grenade and exploded i've thrown grenades before yeah and that's not a lot of grenade does realistically and also you can see the cone of explosion just going upwards and having this bubble almost effect on the on the car uh that looks like a targeted explosive charge put in the middle center console that's what that looks like now why would they kill this guy um well he was a mayo aligned figure the sinaloa cartel no longer exists as a cohesive structure it's those mayos or the sons of el mayo zambada and the people aligned with him on one side and those chapitos or the chapisa as they call themselves on the other side um they are at war a civil war that started with the abduction of el mayo zambada which was a civil war that started with the abduction of el mayo zambada which people say it was the scene of people say it was the scene of people say it was the scene of the members of el chapo guzman's clan the members of el chapo guzman's clan the members of el chapo guzman's clan taking him to try and barter with his taking him to try and barter with his taking him to try and barter with his with his life for their brothers and to with his life for their brothers and to with his life for their brothers and to get some sort of immunity maybe get some sort of immunity maybe get some sort of immunity maybe um this could be possible that's probably um this could be possible that's probably um this could be possible that's probably sounds pretty accurate sounds pretty accurate sounds pretty accurate uh a few of their family members uh a few of their family members uh a few of their family members crossed through san isidro into into crossed through san isidro into into crossed through san isidro into into san diego and are now protected witnesses san diego and are now protected witnesses san diego and are now protected witnesses but there's two brothers out there still but there's two brothers out there still but there's two brothers out there still fighting it out for control uh la chapisa fighting it out for control uh la chapisa fighting it out for control uh la chapisa um archivaldo and his brother um archivaldo and his brother um archivaldo and his brother so so so you're seeing these you're seeing these you're seeing these events in mexico when we talk about the events in mexico when we talk about the events in mexico when we talk about the cia operating down there cia operating down there cia operating down there and uh and uh and uh it's it's not people talk about it's it's not people talk about it's it's not people talk about invasions that they have in this mind invasions that they have in this mind invasions that they have in this mind there's going to be invasion an invasion there's going to be invasion an invasion there's going to be invasion an invasion in mexico that there's going to be in mexico that there's going to be in mexico that there's going to be and marines showing up into durango and and marines showing up into durango and and marines showing up into durango and going to rabora and some of those uh going to rabora and some of those uh going to rabora and some of those uh high sierra mountains high sierra mountains high sierra mountains if you lined up every single marine in if you lined up every single marine in if you lined up every single marine in pendleton on the border in san diego pendleton on the border in san diego pendleton on the border in san diego you wouldn't be able to contain the mass you wouldn't be able to contain the mass you wouldn't be able to contain the mass of humanity moving through that border of humanity moving through that border of humanity moving through that border if you do something like you did in if you do something like you did in if you do something like you did in iraq iraq iraq i mean there's no way i mean there's no way i mean there's no way it's that much it it would it would it would it would it would displace many displace many displace many um if you would go into an overt um if you would go into an overt um if you would go into an overt invasion like that in mexico is my invasion like that in mexico is my invasion like that in mexico is my opinion and also opinion and also opinion and also we're one of your biggest trading we're one of your biggest trading we're one of your biggest trading partners partners partners and a lot of the infrastructure around and a lot of the infrastructure around and a lot of the infrastructure around northern mexico is what the united northern mexico is what the united northern mexico is what the united states needs to fulfill its uh states needs to fulfill its uh states needs to fulfill its uh industrial base it's very complicated industrial base it's very complicated industrial base it's very complicated it is shooting yourself in the leg if it is shooting yourself in the leg if it is shooting yourself in the leg if you attempt something like that you attempt something like that you attempt something like that my whole theory was that we're going to my whole theory was that we're going to my whole theory was that we're going to see a soft invasion of some sort see a soft invasion of some sort see a soft invasion of some sort soft invasion soft invasion soft invasion influence influence influence you know you know you know pushing things forward in certain ways pushing things forward in certain ways pushing things forward in certain ways a lot of people view this as a a lot of people view this as a a lot of people view this as a a war against drugs a war against drugs a war against drugs we've been in a war against drugs for we've been in a war against drugs for decades that's not what this is decades that's not what this is decades that's not what this is i think this is a political war i think this is a political war i think this is a political war um um um we've we've we've we've had a bunch of uh documents we've had a bunch of uh documents we've had a bunch of uh documents declassified declassified declassified around the kennedy assassination around the kennedy assassination around the kennedy assassination recently and a lot of them they reveal recently and a lot of them they reveal recently and a lot of them they reveal how many of the presidents in mexico how many of the presidents in mexico how many of the presidents in mexico were actually cia were actually cia were actually cia backed and paid operatives that really backed and paid operatives that really didn't make the headlines but that's didn't make the headlines but that's didn't make the headlines but that's very interesting i mean when we talk very interesting i mean when we talk very interesting i mean when we talk about why mexico is where it is um yeah about why mexico is where it is um yeah about why mexico is where it is um yeah there's a lot of blame to go around there's a lot of blame to go around there's a lot of blame to go around and and and there's a lot of responsibility within there's a lot of responsibility within there's a lot of responsibility within the mexican political structure about the mexican political structure about the mexican political structure about that and it's culturally that and it's culturally that and it's culturally but the united states has definitely had but the united states has definitely had but the united states has definitely had a hand in some of these things that a hand in some of these things that a hand in some of these things that have happened down there um have happened down there um have happened down there um now when you think that line of people now when you think that line of people now when you think that line of people who were backed by a cia or people who who were backed by a cia or people who who were backed by a cia or people who were you know were you know were you know in some way shape or form uh favored by in some way shape or form uh favored by in some way shape or form uh favored by the united states and the united states the united states and the united states the united states and the united states interest well that probably ended with interest well that probably ended with interest well that probably ended with peña nieto the the the last uh peña nieto the the last uh peña nieto the the last uh pri president we had and then what pri president we had and then what pri president we had and then what years it brought me years it brought me years it brought me i'm gonna need some help with the years i'm gonna need some help with the years i'm gonna need some help with the years but it was after fox right yeah uh after but it was after fox right yeah uh after but it was after fox right yeah uh after uh after felipe calderon you had uh after felipe calderon you had uh after felipe calderon you had peña nieto peña nieto peña nieto uh and after that you had 2012 to 2018 uh and after that you had 2012 to 2018 uh and after that you had 2012 to 2018 teachers got it and teachers got it and And after that, you had a land slight victory by this figure um andres manuel lopez obrador amlo who started this this movement this morena party um it's a populist movement like many in south america you know openly pro maduro uh pro cuba you know pro everybody that the united states doesn't like basically and in a lot of ways the mexican people as a punishment for what they viewed as systemic corruption for decades which was very real and is very real still uh they they punt they decided to vote and punish the the the the political class and they did so by in a landslide victory kind of electing uh andres manuel lopez obrador he came in with majorities so he started passing a lot of sweeping um laws and constitutional amendments would you mind just explaining to people out there especially like all the american listeners who are unfamiliar with how mexico's government works like the chain of command and how votes get passed like how similar it is or dissimilar to america we have a house we have how it represents is we have congress we have majorities super majorities as well and when morena went in they they got a super majority which is still in play meaning that they also do have to put bills through the separate congress and that has to get through before it gets to the president to be able to sign yeah but a lot of that gets fast-tracked when you have the super majority which they have now um so when he came in his antagonistical nature against the united states was very clear one of the first things he did was kick out the dea out of mexico in a lot of ways or at least hampered their movement uh he's very suspicious about u.s activity within mexico and he he basically put in his own people in different key places and in in mexico to try and you know keep them out keep the u.s influence out that's that's what you saw um coincidentally enough that's this he came in during the first administration the trump first trump administration which apparently they had a pretty good relationship they speak well of each other oberdor did yeah over there spoke pretty well of trump uh i don't know if it's out of respect like strong man he's very strong all of it all of it right i don't know if it's uh out of fear or respect but there was something going on there um omlo's solution to cartels was hey there is no drug war going on would it what but all these cartels all these people did not no it's it's violence it's societal violence it's all this but there's no there's no i don't know we're just gonna stop thinking about it as a war and we're gonna go abrazos novelasos the famous uh uh hugs over bullets hugs over bullets um and he went on a campaign and he he won um and you started seeing this uh this spring when it came to cartels i mean they grew and specifically seen the lower cartel grew in influence and in power and the new generation cartel as well both of these kind of in tandem kind of grew uh with each other as they were warring uh but uh what you saw in that time period was criminal organizations figured out that in a lot of ways they can go into politics themselves similar phenomenon that happened here in the states where the mafia got involved in politics and now their unions and their other stuff you know yeah look what we built look at that come on beautiful you saw it it's beautiful beautiful uh yeah the the same thing is happening in places like tulum i guess yeah let's show them camera five beef that's beauty right there built by lucky luciano and friends but uh they a lot of them went into politics and that's why you started seeing this proliferation of assassinations of political candidates that are like our cartel canada is going to win your and that's what you saw there uh and you saw the election uh towards the end of his administration of uh um this uh rocha moya character which is now currently being sought by u.s authorities under narco-terrorism charges yes this isn't the general is it no the general gave himself up and he's currently a protected witness of some sort that's how i like him uh ruben rocha moya is a lifelong friend of andres manuel lopez obrador um this is him this is him um looks like a real straight shooter there there was a lot of visits by andres manuel lopez obrador to the hometown of el chapo guzman he actually there's a famous video of him shaking hands with the mom and talking to the lawyer of el chapo guzman um correcting reporters on how he shouldn't be called chapa guzman they should call him by his christian name and all that it was interesting interactions with him um he might have been just being respectful but uh he went there like six times or something like that and sinaloa was apparently very key for him or important or strategically important for him to visit a lot and then his best friend and one of his closest associates uh rocha moya gained the governorship of sinaloa through morena and uh when that happened uh those chapitos were probably involved in his elections you have a lot of cases of people talking about being running against them or political campaigns that were running against them who were you know targeted by these cartels abductions people being forced to vote for a certain candidate all that stuff went on there and those chapels grew during this uh administration of andres manuel lopez over there when they caught the son of el chapo guzman who is currently stateside uh under which one is that uh el raton the the mouse video yeah yeah when they caught him the first time because it was two times that's when the whole culiacanazo thing went off yes the president of mexico and devon over the four security reasons is what he said um for no more bloodshed to happen he was released which is the first time that something like that had happened so they he basically ordered the release of this individual later on he was again arrested a few special forces operators died in his arrest it was a pretty big firefight they finally caught him and the extradition was almost pretty expedited this time now people look at that event and they wonder if he was you know compromised or if he was working on behalf of one side or the other there's no way of knowing realistically but it was very suspicious this new president comes in his term ends he's very loved he's very loved in mexico uh he did over door very popular he left with a very high approval rating still has a very high approval rating he's like the supreme president of mexico and he's like what's going on with mexico he's like this figure in the background uh he's come out publicly two or three times to defend the current president of mexico and to speak about american interventionism in mexico and how if he has to he'll go and fight to defend mexico you know this is the whole thing with him he's a figurehead in a lot of ways political figure high level one so i think what you're seeing now with the u.s and how it's kind of trying to navigate this uh this issue with mexico is number one they realize that they don't have a real ally within mexico as far as this this issue because there's this uh feeling of so the current administration under claudia sheinbaum had been supplying the cubans with oil for a year for for a while right and that had to stop after the u.s started putting pressure on mexico to stop that that was pre-venezuela yeah yeah and she was also importing a bunch of doctors that were working in mexico from cuba there was a lot of they're all always spies that's this is exactly what everybody just knows about them so there's a lot of that going on uh a lot of russian uh uh uptake and and and people working for their um for their embassy and stuff like that in mexico the embassy yeah there's a lot of embassy workers a lot of more russian embassy workers now for some reason which is something they talked about in congress here in the u.s i think a general talked about this a while back but also the us does the same thing so it's like basically it this this intelligence front opened up in mexico it's it turned into that after this past administration and this administration things kind of went to where they are um i predicted the fact that trump was going to probably designate them as terrorists yes and when i did that people were like kind of mocking me about that that's that they don't fit the bill and everything and that now we're here now narco-terrorism is being utilized as a broadsword to do a lot of things but what so that's actually a great thing to bring up because i've been wondering this and i've asked everyone who's on the ground there has come through here since that designation happened about this like what has tactically happened that since then that's in line with us actually like treating them like terrorists uh i mean the military is being utilized directly in some of these drug interdiction uh operations in mexico we have overflying military drones of all kinds boats uh sending up aircraft over mexico there's a lot of stuff going on there's a lot of military bombs say about this she's like oh this is normal basically you know you know this this type of the the head of security there uh was talking about there was one there was like a year ago this past year there was a drone flying over durango american drone just like doing circles over durango and everybody has flight radar now so they could some some people can track some of this type of stuff so they were like asking like what's up with this drone oh it's a it's a government drone by the us but it's don't worry about it you know it's fine we know what they're doing here it's like something civilian don't worry about it So if that government drone hypothetically sees some guy, let's call him Juan Carlos, and he's like a capo, like someone pretty high up, and they're like, oh, there he is outside the bar chilling. It could just be like, go on. This is what I've seen as far as the change. As soon as you started seeing the skies swarm with U.S. assets, which that's what's been happening in the past year, what they were probably doing is mapping out all their communication structure, command structure, supply lines. A lot of it would happen in the Gulf region of Baja, the Baja Gulf region, which is interesting because that's Sonora, that's Sinaloa, that's Jalisco. That's where all of the, some of these bigger organizations are based out of. And then after all that intelligence gathering, that's when you started seeing some of these cartel heads fall, right? So it seemed like a preemptive move by the United States because it knew that it was about to kick up Beehive, which that's what the Mexican government, they used the abduction of El Mayo Zambada as. And they view it as a treasonous act. Like they have treason, they want to charge El Chapo Guzman's son that participated in this abduction for treason because he abducted somebody for a foreign government. So they view it as a treasonous act. That's interesting. But was it a U.S. operation to abduct them? I mean, yeah, there was probably some U.S. involvement. Was the Mexican government? Was the Mexican government completely innocent around all this? Well, they acted in a very suspicious way. And again, going back to Rocha Moya, Rocha Moya, the best friend of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, this political figure behind the scenes of everything down there, he's our Trump in a lot of ways, although they didn't want to think about it that way. But he's kind of this figure. Charismatic. Yes. And you have Rocha Moya, who is the governor of the state, called into a meeting by. El Chapo Guzman and Elmayo Zambada. Elmayo Guzman's son and Elmayo Zambada. Elmayo was going to mediate some sort of issue that the governor of Rocha Moya had with the rector of the university there, Nemesio Cuen. So they were basically going to, he was going to be like, you know, the mediator in this meeting. Well, that didn't happen. They shot the, the governor never showed up. They shot the Nemesio Cuen. And, and then put him in a truck and then the state police tried to make it look like he was going to get robbed at a gas station. And there's a video of this. All of this shit was fucking fabricated by them. And then it turned out, hey, you know, it was, it was a planned abduction and there was murders and the state government on, at the charge of Ruben Rocha Moya was hiding a lot of this shit. And now we have this issue where the U.S. Is asking for. 11 politicians and a few of them have already turned themselves in, um, from Mexico and Mexico is like saying, quite a shame on saying like, we need evidence. Yeah, the same government that extradited, I don't know, like 50 people in the past two years now needs evidence. Now they need evidence because it's a sitting political figure and it's specifically the best friend of our figurehead. So that's actually, you were talking early on about the El Mencho raid and we're jumping. Yeah. And a lot of different things here, people will get to a lot of it, just, there's a lot going on. So this is good shit, but maybe that's a good spot to ask my, my shine bomb question, because it seems like she has some political power, but then you see what happened with the El Mencho thing where she wasn't even told about it ahead of time. And you're like, if you're not even told about the most important one in criminal in the country being whacked by your own military, how much sway do you even have in your own government? People will argue about that. But let's say you're Claudia's shine bomb and you're in charge of Mexico and you're like, Hey, the military called you like, Hey, we're about to take out El Mencho. Did they actually call her like as they were doing it? I don't think they did. Right. It doesn't seem like it. So like you would preemptively maybe, maybe call off your, you know, she was, she was out and about, you know. Just shopping. Her security profile was pretty low back then. Now she's, now that's gone away probably. But her security profile was basically, she would walk around. Like outside of this, you know, going back to AMLO, AMLO basically got rid of the Mexican secret service, the Estado Mayor. And he would just walk, he would drive in, in a Jetta. There's videos of him. He would say the people are my bodyguards. Balls, I guess. But. That sounds like a man who's paid off. Claudia was trying to kind of do the same thing. But after this raid, something, something changed. She was out and about. There's rumors that she was like evacuated. After the, the, the, the, the event into like a, on a military ship that they could probably turn out to be bullshit. But she seemed not the, when you saw the mass unrest and burnings and how no preparation was there. I mean, people were scrambling, people were off base, people were, yeah, a lot of the federal police officers that died in that event were killed. Because they were ambushed by the cartel members looking for revenge and they would go, they would just go after everybody. So it seemed like she had no idea this was coming, which means that the Mexican army is operating in a slightly independent way, maybe, or they viewed this as a now or never type thing. It's odd. It's the way, the way, the way it went down is odd. And over and over. And over and over again, Claudia has seemed to seem to be in the dark about some of the stuff that's going on, you know, when the arrest warrant for all these political figures came down, she was like, yeah, we know where all of them are. We just need more proof. And all of a sudden, two of them were in the U.S. turning, turning themselves over. She's one of them, the general. One of them is the general, the former head of security in that state of Sinaloa, which again, tied to Rocha Moya and was tied to a bunch of other things. Member of the military, you know. Mm-hmm. All of these characters around this specific Rocha Moya case are people who facilitated the growth of this organization, the Chapiza, and specifically them solidifying power there. And it seems like a lot of them were also, you know, being funded politically or influentially through this, and all this money has to go somewhere. So political campaigns, enterprises. Licenses to build buildings or going to different companies, tequila companies, like all of this. There's a video of Claudia Sheinbaum next to the municipal president of the town of Tequila, Jalisco, who turned out to be a cartel member. I mean, that's how it goes. And she's like, this is our guy here in Jalisco. This is the guy we want. And, you know, now he's in custody, which got good on her that they're arresting people of their own party in that way. There's more of them. How did they catch him? Mexico has been going through these swarm operations. Swarm. They have, there used to be a federal police, and they got rid of it during Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's tenure. They basically turned it into a military police, which is the National Guard unit guys, the guys that are dressed in white. And they put, they inserted that into the military. So it's like a military policing arm all over the country. But before that, there was the Mexican federal police. And that used to have an intelligence service, an investigative service, and all this. It's become revived again. A lot of the old school people that used to work for that institution are now working for the Secretaría de Seguridad Pública Federal, the federal public safety service, secretariat. And they're actually doing the jobs that they should have been doing for a long time, probably under a lot of international and political pressure. But they're going town to town. And realizing that, like, hey, where's the cartel here? There are no cartel acts. Oh, it's the municipal police are the cartel here. And the municipal president is the cartel guy here. So, like, they're going into towns like that and just arresting some of the mayors of these towns because that's, because they've won through their connections and money to these cartels. And oddly enough, there are a lot of them are Morena Party members. I mean, whether it's Morena or their opposition party or anything in between. Isn't the story still pretty much just the same that it's just whack-a-mole over and over again? Like, all right, you got five. Well, 10 more sprouted up and we don't know about them yet. One thing I want people to just realize, we say Morena and we imagine that it's this socialist or like this leftist organization that just popped out of nowhere and all of its affiliates are like Leninist and communist or something. That's not the case. At the center of it, there were some people like that. But mostly. It's people from other parties saying, like, we're not winning in these elections anymore. Let's just flip sides. So you see, you see people, Baja, California is one of these examples. You see the governess of Baja. The husband got investigated for huachicol, which is basically fuel theft and a few other things. There's a lot of that going on now. Which is like, it's another thing that doesn't get talked about that much here in the U.S. There's currently a guy. There's a. former admiral of the Mexican Navy in custody. And I think he's still in Argentina because he's- That's where you go these days. It's an interesting country to be arrested in and caught. Right. Is all I'm going to say. He's pulling up the Jericho missile map again. Las seis letras this time. I hope people got that. But under the AMLO administration, there was a ginormous operation within the Mexican Navy to steal fuel and relabel it and move it around. And that somebody made bank. Somebody, who knows who, but somebody made bank. Somebody found out within the Marine administration. He got immediately. And then somebody else got shot at a training event somewhere. And then this guy went on the run and he's just arrested and he was just picked up in, out of all places, Argentina. And the Mexican, yeah, the Mexican governor, the Mexican president is asking for him to be handed over so the investigation can continue. But this involves a lot of more than a directly active things. Right. Steve just found this. This is what you were talking about. Mexican Navy Rear Admiral Fernando Farias Laguna was arrested in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on an Interpol red notice. He is wanted in Mexico on organized crime and hydro caution, hydrocarbon trafficking charges related to a massive illegal fuel smuggling network. He is currently in custody pending extradition. He's accused of leading a maritime network known as watch Chico, what she called what she called. Sorry, it's a field that smuggled stolen fuel into Mexico. Reportedly arranging for dozens of US based ships to deliver over 1.5 million liters of fuel weekly. Was this the Mormons? Is this that one? This is this part is part of it. Yeah. So you guys like damn you guys like oils and drugs. You know, that's that's the two things. And that's these guys were involved in both of them. Another thing that doesn't get mentioned there is a lot of these watch. He called networks were actually utilized to also put weaponry into Mexico, a lot of the military grade stuff you're starting seeing, seeing in Mexico. And. And specifically some of the trading and stuff like that are coming from, you know, people in some African countries are buying weapons legally in Europe through, you know, regular channels, signing them as a legal government purchase and then putting them on a boat that then goes back to Mexico. So that's how you see how you want to see it. You know, well, we're seeing drone warfare in Mexico carried out pretty sophisticatedly, and we're seeing a lot of these Ukrainian trained guys coming back and just killing it out there. Oh, the oh, the dude, the mercenaries over in the war. Yeah. You see Kat went and visited some of those guys. Oof. I can't believe how real that is. But it is a school, though. It is a university. And you're seeing the elements of that university in Mexico now. You see you see stuff like this. That guy was directly involved in all this. And it's an interesting thing that they're not letting go. And it's an interesting place to run to is all I'm going to say. That's all you're going to say. Yes. It's an interest. I wouldn't go to Argentina myself. But he did. And he was got there or handed himself in, whatever you want to call it. But it seems to be like everything that the United States is trying to do around not only Mexico, but like a lot of these countries out there that have these people who are openly antagonistical against the United States and its interest. This this designation is being utilized. And like we were talking about offline, you know, if you're. If you're somebody in a country like that and you're involved in anything anti-American, who are your friends, you know, who's going to finance you, you know, not black rock. Yeah, it's got to be like Cuba and places like that. It's not going to be black rock. It's going to be somebody that sells rock, you know. Right. Right. Yeah. So I think that's that's somebody figure that out. And that's that's the tool that's being utilized. You're seeing Claudia Sheinbaum right now in Mexico, basically in a stance of open hostility as far as anti-intervention. Ism is the thing. We don't want the U.S. here. to invade us. We can do it ourselves. And you just saw J.D. Vance and also Trump during the G7 event two days ago speak openly about the fact that, you know, Claudia Sheinbaum is a great woman, but she's very afraid of the cartels who run that country. And J.D. Vance is like saying, like, if they force us and lives are in danger, we're going to have to do military operations in Mexico. Trump is talking about the fact that the sea is already kind of sealed off. The what? The sea routes into into the United States, the drug sea routes in the United States are already sealed off. They are. That's what he said, according to his numbers. I will speak to anybody out there if they've seen some uptaken drug drug prices out there. I don't I don't I don't I'm not aware of any. I was talking to my guys the other day. Something tells me we're seeing 40, 50 percent increases. So, yeah. Well, Trump is saying now that they're going. Yeah. Yeah. They're going to go into a ground campaign in Mexico, basically, is what he said. They were doing a lot of ocean interdiction stuff and blowing up a bunch of boats on the ocean. A lot of these. What kind of boats? Like cocaine submarines? Drug boats. OK. Fast boats. There's fishing villages all over the coastline in Mexico. And some of these fishing villages, they moonlight, you know, at night and they move things around the ocean. And some of these boats have been being been blown up. And the ocean, some of them get played for CNN and some of them don't. Some of them just sink into the ocean and you never hear about them. But there's a lot of I've spoken to a few people that have family members missing that. Oh, they went out on a fishing trip and they just didn't come back. There's a lot of that going on right now. And the people are afraid to go into that line of work, which right. If the U.S. Is trying to stop that, I guess that's working. Well, they're blowing up trap houses, too, because when I had Eric Prince in here, I could say this now because it later came out publicly. But like. We got off air. We went to take the picture over there. He's like, you want to see something cool? Like, OK. Rips out his phone and it's like this grayscale drone image. And you just see like some heat maps moving. And I'm like, OK. And he's like, wait for it. And then like one Mississippi to Mississippi. He's like, trap house, Haiti. Nice. Yeah. They did it in Ecuador with the Trenderagua guy. They blew him up as well. Was that Eric? No, that was that was the U.S. I mean, I think that's one of the same. Maybe. Who knows? I think I think that there are there are like like covert military operations by the United States and Mexico and all over Latin America going on right now. It's like it's not a secret anymore. A lot of this has been already kind of been uncovered. The purpose of them is what is interesting. Like, what are they trying to do? Who are they targeting and why? Well, in Mexico, they're now shifting. They're focused. Who's left in Mexico as far as like a big fish as far as cartels? Well, there's a few, you know, hard and narrow. El Jardinero was arrested. Oh, he's gone. He's gone. He was just picked up. I really like no shots were fired. Pretty upsetting. He was apparently one of their their their best fighters and also the head architect of the alliance between the chapitos and the new generation cartel. That's gone and over. The chapitos are on the run. There's fire. Fights going on in places like Cabo, Cabo Cabo with the stronghold for the Cabo. Everyone, Jeff, they didn't warn you. There's there's a few. There's a few things going on there. There's a there's stuff going on in Sonora. There's stuff going on in the border between Baja and Sonora. There's there's movement across the northern part of the country right now as this thing restructure. And right now there's a there's a siege going on in Durango where all these cartel the remnants of this, you know, a cartel. Are going to have a stronghold there. Oh, Guano, a big cartel head is hiding around there somewhere. Oh, Guano, Guano, Guano. I got some hard names. It's pretty. I don't I don't know how these it's weird because not some of them aren't flattering. You know, right. Chapel means short. Like, yeah, if you were a chapel, would you allow people to call you shorty? No, but it sounds hard in America. Yeah, that's your customer. Yeah, I get it. Um, it seems like we're moving. We're moving into like siege warfare and a lot of these a lot of these bigger organizations are getting smaller and getting a little more localized the age of the big cartel head and this is like this Mencho figure and having all these it's gone gone I don't I don't think it's going to last much long you have Carlos Valencia Gonzalez who the three zero three suppose he was the son-in-law. Is this the one that has that lives he's an American yeah he's an American California he's from Santa Ana California yeah he's an American so an American is the head of the biggest cartel organization in Mexico right now so dream so it's just like it's so just people wrap their head on that he's from Santa Ana California he's the head of the new generation cartel now according to people going to a lot of people and then you have you know. Archivaldo and his brother the last remaining sons of El Chapo Guzman who are basically. on the run right now they're the government is really going after them because and if you're an outsider looking at that from the outside you say like why are they going after the chapitos specifically and so hard that's probably because they've been they view them as collaborators for the americans in a lot of ways because of what they did with oh my oh so that's an interesting thing to kind of think about i don't know if that's true or not but that's an interesting way of thinking about it they're pretty much on the run a lot of this so interesting though because it's like on the one hand mexico and the government's like please help us and then on the other hand but don't do it with the terrorist nation but don't do it with the people that pay for our that's right it's there it's like a it's like a game of thrones in six different directions yeah yeah um so there's not a lot of them left and you see this shift that united states has and now the eye of something sauron is pointed at the politicians the governor of sonora under investigation and the way you you learn about some of these it has been pretty interesting um i think the first one that this happened to was the governor of baja she was trying to cross over uh to california and they told her her visa was revoked so that means that you are under investigation apparently or they told her about it and then they were like hey if you don't have anything to worry about crossing san diego crossing san diego that was the way you could prove if the so a lot of these politicians basically that's what they're they're getting notified that their visas are being revoked because they're under investigation you have three governors currently under like direct investigation ruben rocha moya who under his leadership apparently according to what i've seen um members of his administration and and people working under him uh specifically those chapitos who helped them get him get a him into office kidnapped a um kidnapped a an individual who was apparently a dea informant along with 10 other people including a 13 year old boy um allegedly he they were under the protection and kind of like the influence of roben rocha moya uh these cops these municipal cops picked him up along with these other people and handed him over to those chapitos and all of them got killed including that 13 year old boy the cops handed them over yep municipal 13 year old boy had to do with anything his family and they just killed the kid i mean i i get it we all listen to corridos and we all listen to romanticism and glorify some of the stuff and i watch netflix mexico and they make him look so sexy and stuff like that but some of these people are there's a brutality to this did i ever tell you the caterpillar story no so you and i were talking when we were walking earlier and i told you to this day one of the most bone chilling things that ever got said in here was you unknowingly last time because i remember we recorded on like wednesday march 13th and halfway through the podcast you start saying you you're just on a tear and you're like are we going to talk about the cia in mexico we're going to talk about how they've bought off top 10 banks and top 10 bankers at those banks to flip them to do money laundering for cartel people and i'm i'm looking at alessi at the time looking over and i'm like funny you say that the literal knock from cia that did that told that story in that very chair last week about how he did that and there was another story he told though because this guy went deep undercover within the cartels and his job as you well know was to not arrest them but be a part of them they took him downstairs to some warehouse like some he was a money wanderer so not a gun guy but the gun guys took him down to the the basement of some warehouse and there were a bunch of cartel dudes around a beaten up bloodied guy who was you know pleading and you know they were like why are you doing this to me and i'm like why are you doing this to me and i'm like why are you doing this to me and i'm like why are you doing this to me whatever but on the table the reason he was pleading is they had his 10 year old son and what they did is they all took turns with a carrot peeler to the sun's face because the father had like robbed something from the cartels and he had to sit there and watch that and like you could see you know there's times where people tell stories and you're like i don't know about that you could see it like this guy was pretty unshakable matt hedger but when he told that one he was you could just see like his mind there was some sort of like unwritten rules and stuff like that and they did exist at some point but that is gone years ago um i think the first time i heard anything of that nature was uh el huero palma an associate of el chapo guzman his uh his wife was um enamored by the sicario i think it was venezuelan or something like that and his wife and two kids were abducted and his kids were thrown over a bridge and videoed and his wife's head was sent to him and he went to the el mayo el mayo zambada and said like hey can i return the favor and here we are you know um the brutality i've seen out there is that story about that kid it's it's one in right thousands do you think that's from you know recruiting decent to decent to why can't i talk right now desensitization from you know getting kids when they're seven eight years old and having them hold a rifle the the the start of this brutality i think you know you could hear you could see elements of it in the 90s and 2000s like the story i just told but then you go into the phenomenon of the zetas those are the ones we trained the united states had a hand in in a lot of them uh the united states had a hand in some of their training there's like uh i've heard rumors i've never been there but i've heard rumors of like pictures of them in in some pretty interesting military bases in the united states um so and school of the america is being mentioned and how that has a history school of the americas yeah it's like um it's like a university that the us has for foreign military command to come and learn ways of figuring out their own countries but foreign cartel command in this case you know um the story goes that an army unit within the mexican special forces deserted realistically that's not what happened they were sent under official orders to be the bodyguards of a state prosecutor in some of the gulf states and then they just said well you're actually here to bodyguard the head of the gulf cartel and they were like okay let's just figure this out i guess you know they take orders um and they got really good at it and then they said like hey we can do this ourselves we have more discipline than you guys and they became this monster of an organization they were growing exponentially in the in mexico and i think they caught the eye of the us which in a lot of ways they were like hey this this uh this isis like figure of these that does growing in mexico is probably not the best thing in the world and the the ones that went to war directly with them were the sinaloa cartel when was that this was the early 2000s uh this is around fast and the furious when a lot of those guns were showing up in the hands of some of these cartel members specifically the scene the law cartel because they needed weapons to fight the zetas oh my god all right let's let's do it this is theories dude this is this is your spec dude i i'm head injuries i'm just a student from tj that's right but you you you were dropping some uh alpha on me on our walk this morning about operation fast and furious so pure spec pure speculation here we don't know we don't know i don't know what are you hearing from the birdies i found some of those guns number one yeah i found some of them yeah i find these 50 cal uh barrett rifles with the instruction manuals and things in the box this is back when you were in the we're active police active and we go into houses and all of a sudden these armories are there and like oh that's a lot of guns and all of a sudden the atf shows up a few hours later outside the building i was like hey can we look at some of those guns um so it seemed like they materialized in the span of a few months and they started showing up in a lot of specific places around the scene the law cartel it's like hey like somebody said like hey we need these guns to fight these people now the the fact that they were barrett 50 cows showing up is interesting the first cartel that started utilizing improvised armor in their operations was the zetas and those need to be shot at with 50 cows and to this day when you see cartel monster on monster warfare zacatecas has a lot of that going on the new generation cartel and some of the elements of the those mayos fight it out and tank on tank battles all the time but the first time that happened was the zetas so you see this you know an embattled scene the law cartel fighting against the zetas and they need firepower it's like robocop remember when yeah the boddicker boys got these 50 cows the same thing happened it's like hey we need we need something to fight against robocop no we need something to fight against the zetas in their armor truck so you start seeing these 50 i'm not again it seems very suspicious that this uh fast and furious operation which actually preceded the the holder administration it's like i think it started in the bush administration wow and according to some people in mexico that i've talked to this the the the numbers that the us shares as far as how many of those guns were out there is not high enough not high enough and it seemed to have armed a very specific cartel because the interest of the united states was to fight the other one that was growing that wasn't aligning with their interest that's like the theory yeah that's pure spite of course but what really struck me about that when you were bringing that up on our walk is that the like the fall guy would literally be the attorney general of the united states because it's like yeah it's better that's like one of the highest offices in the land but they just whoever was like behind this and realized well this went bad decided that that was a better fucking whipping boy than whatever was actually causing it and i'll ask you this question you get caught you're you're you're colder you know and you just got caught letting thousands of firearms just cross the border you lose your job or something or maybe you but but nothing happened nothing nothing happened nothing happened later with other administrations as well again so uh dude i i raised a few thousand dollars for the ryan terry foundation this this agent that was killed with some of those guns and god bless him and his family um but nobody speaks about some of the friends that i lost to that to the ryan terry foundation and god bless him and his family um but nobody speaks about some of those firearms because they're mexican kids nobody gives a fuck about um so when i talk about some of this shit i talk about it in a very personal way um i was shot at with some of those guns as well um mexicans in like the mexican culture and the people when they talk about mexican when they talk when they think about or view u.s intervention in mexico you'll hear you'll hear several things one fear because they've seen what an invasion looks like by the u.s in in iraq and afghanistan they don't trust the u.s completely obviously um they shout up they they shout about why don't you just stop using drugs you know why do you why didn't you just stop using drugs why are you sending all these guns down to mexico is another argument you see a lot and when the rhetoric goes into political the political sphere politicians in mexico will say like well shut the flow of guns down in mexico maybe that'll cut the violence and maybe stop arming some of these cartels or stop training some of these people that then turn into cartel forces and on the other end of it you see the u.s saying well we're gonna fight the cartels and stop these drugs from coming over the border and the issue is with mexico and with with the cartels and the politicians that protect cartels and there's a disconnect there of those two realities and that's why a lot of people are very nervous in mexico and that's why a lot of people should be nervous up here in the united states because anything that happens in mexico will be felt here like nothing else you've ever had as far as a war mexico is one of the biggest uh trading partners with the united states yes um overall mexican immigration is down to historic lows yeah to america yeah i posted a video of uh one of the crossings recently in tegate and you see you see a lot of people but you don't see a lot of mexicans um european uh arabic yeah uh north african is what you see um north african a lot of chinese yeah now they don't they still do the whole system where they go through like the darien gap and everything and all the way up yep that's that's uh that's i think one of them one of those routes is still active but a lot of them are just lying in with uh with like normal into mexico and then just dumping out all their paperwork and just crossing the border um the border security uh in places like tj is up but people are still crossing you know it's like uh i understand the up in security but all that does is raises prices for some of these smugglers um you see you see that's still going on and that's a major source of money for some of these organizations that are working on the border there is a disconnect between what the u.s public sees in mexico and what the mexican public sees in the u.s they're currently seeing the u.s as a looming threat just like the ukrainians are seeing they saw russia before the invasion that's what the sentiment in mexico is like really in politically yes uh in some in some places in some some of the places where they're seeing the people talk about that type of stuff with fear there was a drone attack in in a place called playas tijuana it's right on the beach on the border with san diego the new generation cartel dropped a bunch of bomblets on a state prosecutor office um everybody was afraid that like you would think that people were like oh the cartels are attacking no they were they were afraid that the u.s was attacking you know the that's the weird fear now it's like in the back of people's minds at the beginning they thought it was like oh it's like oh it's like oh it's like oh it's like they thought it was the u.s uh when you see this stuff on the news about them putting maybe a bomb in a cartel guy's car or maybe being responsible for the abduction of el mayo zambada which led to a ginormous war that has killed many people and displaced many people and has i've met uh i met this guy in san diego uh he was uh he was a highly traumatized dude um he had a car in sinaloa he was uh i can't say what exactly his business was he was in a cartel guy he was a legitimate business um he's an engineer uh he his business was broken into by the cartel guys they stole they stole all of his trucks uh and then they went to his house and ripped a safe out of his wall and took one of his sons took one of his sons yeah just to say we're taking the son don't call the cops we're looking for him and we're looking for him and we're looking for him let him go later so how old was the son like 10 years old or something like that did he get him back yeah a few days later what do you think he did after that he took whatever they told him he flew to tijuana paid a coyote and he crossed into the united states god damn man and that's that's and that's a bit that's an engineer business an engineer business owner just like i that bad i gotta get them i mean i'll blame them fuck it fuck out leave um but that's one story of oh yeah but when the whole vehicle burning shit was going on across the country uh i met mr almentro austral mancho i went down there to i had to get a family member out of that area the the burnings had stopped but you know there was fear in my family member and they wanted to leave so i just went down there and fucking try to figure that out um i saw a truck one of the one of the trucks that were burned across the road and there was a guy sitting on it uh i went out and gave him some granolas and some water looked like he'd been there for a while turns out that was his whole business this truck that was his livelihood you know and stories like that are abundant but one of the one of the biggest ones i think for me is this this un it gets talked about but i don't know why it doesn't horrify people that much um the industrial level method of some of these organizations of getting rid of people uh yeah talk about this this is crazy um when you go and if anybody ever goes to guadalajara and right now if you're out there for the world cup which i think is a bullshit event and fifa is a horrible corrupt institution whatever i'll come back to that but whatever um if anybody is out there for the for the world cup uh go down to downtown guadalajara and you'll see that they tore a lot of these fucking signs out but it is like a zombie apocalypse movie where all the missing posters are of the people's like tapestry all around down there and they're like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die downtown thousands of kids women and kids a tapestry of missing people's a person's uh faces uh you go there and you will lose count i try to count them like ah maybe there's a few repeat ones here there are thousands of them kids kids um and a lot of them have the same story hey i don't have a lot of opportunities here like i need to i need to work call centers i'll go to this call center is gonna hire me or this company's gonna hire me they show up there and they get you know a screwdriver tossed in the middle of them and like whoever survives like joker level shit like whoever survives tryouts tryouts oh my god um kids kids um this this this guy we interviewed i went down there with johnny mitchell and we interviewed this kid who was an uber driver a new uber driver yeah and he got in a car car wreck and he didn't have insurance so he said well i'll have to get a side gig and the side gig was meeting up with the new generation cartel being recruited he gets taken into a car at a bus station driven into the mountains but before he gets there the cops stop them the municipal police stop them and they question all of them they beat the shit out of them and like where are you going really like who are you with like what are you really doing here all this type of stuff they wouldn't crack it's like oh good you're strong people the municipal cops cartel guys it was like the the testing subjects and then they end up in the car and they're like in these ranches where they get trained. Shoes get taken off, all the clothing gets-- Up in the hills. Yeah, all the clothing gets taken off. There was this Mexican Auschwitz star story somewhere in Jalisco of this supposed mass grave that was found and they were citing all these all the clothing left there those that clothing wasn't probably from all the bodies that was probably from kids showing up there and getting all their shit stripped off because they don't want any trackers on anything yeah I think Johnny was talking about that in episode 314 so I think that was right after you guys had gone yeah and it's it's brutal man uh if you want a gun you have to earn it by killing a few people if you want a rifle you have to earn it by killing a few people and deserters are usually the target practice that you get to practice on so when you see those posters though of all those missing kids obviously many of them are dead and gone are never going to be seen again I'll come back to that in a second and then some of them are just they transformed they went there they transformed they got recruited they're never going to be seen again as they were no I mean this kid uh dude he's like a 20 year old uh kid yeah uh is that eyes are glass glass glass eyes yeah I know that that look thousand yard stare kind of thing um hands always trembling um alcoholism um kid doesn't have he's not going to have a liver by the time he's 30 probably um and what options does he have except remaining there or you know continuing on there and it's this uh this this generational thing now there because a lot a lot of these organizations have been it's a generational thing my dad was in it my brother was in it now I'm in it and you know what do we do with our lives now which is it it's one of the saddest things about this whole thing you know you you saw the arrestable mention in Mexico burning and still we went through like the airport where people were planes were getting shot at in Jalisco and everywhere he's scrambling the same airport and all these international tourists coming in for the world cup and it's like we have to do this there are pressing issues and matters in Mexico a soccer game isn't one of them um we're currently in a state where you know the U.S rhetoric around a ground assault of some sort or actively openly striking somewhere in Mexico as on the table like the president said it recently JD van said it is as well every it's like a it's like a very open thing do you think that's rhetoric or actually like they they're thinking in their head maybe 20 chance we're gonna before Maduro I would have said I don't know I don't know who I was talking about who's who's left out there uh that they could go after or explode you know yeah Dave just got this and this is JD Vance on June 18th a few days ago yeah U.S reserves the right to take military action against cartels in Mexico there it is Trump said the same thing at the g7 yeah so it's in unison right so who are they going to go after archivaldo his brother the last remaining sons of Olchapa Guzman there's a few other half brothers and stuff like that out there but and that's not gonna let's say you know you you've sent seal team six after these people and they you tomahawk them or whatever uh okay that's a now crater in the middle of the hills of Sinaloa next man up yeah so that's not going to do anything so they've they've moved their Lens towards politics because they've realized that a lot of these organizations can't have a hold or can't continue on without direct official complete like a direct official participation by the government but how do you Ed how do you fix that when a it's so widespread B the guys who are paying off the government are also holding a gun to their head when they do it not just to them but to their families as well and again back to point a this is like mass scale so it's it's like whack-a-mole how do you actually not even fix it let's say put a 60 dent into it to make a difference well number one is drug consumption and some of the ways they're funding themselves uh in the past you would say like cartels are funding themselves with drugs now we see that's one of them you know another one is illegal immigration another one is basically that they've been diversifying their portfolio for decades so when everybody goes to chipotle and orders extra guac they're putting money in the hand in the pockets of a few cartels out there what about my avocados that is you're funding the new generation cartel and members of La Familia in Michoacan right now but they are fire I know I get it but you're you're funding them and how is that well they tax all the farmers there and they get a cut out of all of that so that's connected the ways can I incentivize them to just do the avocado thing and not like defend no thing I think the fentanyl thing is being utilized as a rhetoric as well the fentanyl aspect of this I think is you know people are getting wise to it there's more things out other drugs out there people are shifting to other drugs and also the ways that fentanyl gets into this country you know some yeah some of it goes through Mexico some of it but most of it probably comes through the mail realistically or most of it comes from Canada yeah like a lot of it is coming from other places right now um but the Mexicans are also operating in Canada in fairness yeah some of them but like there's other players in this now so viewing this as a we need to stop the fentanyl thing is very simplistic to think to say it's not just stopped yeah that's like a that's one symbol that's one you know if we if we had a pie chart right now of all the things it's like you know there's your yeah 10 or five percent or whatever I'll say I'll say this as I was born in Mexico and I got to see the drug war kick off directly I was there for it I was there for in the in the in one of the biggest in my time uh trying to trying to figure out a very specific uh city and part of Mexico and from there to now not a lot has changed these organizations have gotten bigger these organizations have politicized and now they're in politics these organizations used to have like maybe paid off one general in one region or maybe paid off the head of police in the other but now they have the mayor and now they have the governor uh and you know what they have those other positions that you don't think about on the ballot that are really important too yeah uh people that sign you know regulatory yeah you know things get passed like oh there's a hotel being built here in this National Reserve how is that possible if you protest against it we'll send some people after you in the middle of the night so so that's that's where we are in Mexico realistically and there is a lot of blame to go around as far as how we got here uh but right now independently of the blame on the U.S side there is a ginormous drug market and organized crime is definitely here in the U.S operating right you have the biggest cartel in Mexico being run by an American um an American-born general you have how is that being allowed that's what I don't understand you you have uh elements of his elementary family being found to be living comfortably in Riverside California that's right enjoying their their their uh their life there um may or not be in may or may not be directly involved but this is the thing and you have these politicians who are involved in Morena who used to be in other parties that did horrible job at trying to cut this cartel shit so the rhetoric in Mexico is oh it we're not the same government at the past no you're all you're the same you're exactly the same people so there's no the conservative party or the leftist party all that is rhetoric it is the political class in Mexico that has been compromised for decades now and slowly but surely they've been infiltrated compromised and they're very much now Siamese twins in a lot of ways with some of these criminal organizations and yes some of them some of them are some of these figureheads are going away but the U.S is adamant about it's it's hacking or figuring out how to cut this fentanyl problem from Mexico and the eye of it is on politics now so like we just you know let's say Juan Carlos Valencia the new the new generation cartel head gets blown up maybe in the hillsides although that's going to be an American so that's going to be I don't know I don't know if the military can blow up a U.S citizen I mean they did it in 2011 with that dude in Africa so if anybody's going to do it again it's probably going to be yeah yeah yeah this is going to be like it's fine Constitution be damned let's let's let's he might be blown up somewhere um uh you have los chapitos still around you have uh elements of los mayos mayo flaco around and none of that's going to like do any damage or do a dent or really realistically change anything in Mexico if you blow them up right uh at least the U.S foreign policy as I see it they're trying to figure out how to actually create a change in Mexico that allows them to implement whatever they want to implement in in Mexico and for me I think the key thing is a lot of these governors Ruben Rocha Moya Alfonso Durazo Americo Villarreal Tamaulipas and all these are all northern Mexico which is interesting because that's where most of the industrial plant of Mexico is yes we could talk about resources which you know there's a ton of lithium in the north um we need that the United States is in a hurry to figure out its industrial plant after China. I think that's what's going on. It's probably preparing for something. Something's coming. You know, this Iranian war isn't going as well as people thought. I think they just closed the Strait of Hormuz back up. Yeah, don't speak for me. I knew it wasn't going to go well, so did everyone else out there listening, but, you know, at the White House. Las seis letras. I'm using that forever now. But now you have the U.S. in an interesting time, and specifically the administration in an interesting place. They need a win. They need a win. They need a win. So what happened with Maduro? They flew in there with some strange Doritos in the sky and made a bunch of people boil from the inside out, maybe, or something. Yeah, can you explain this some more? You were telling me this on the walk. I don't know. It's pure. It's pure spec, Ed, but explain what your spec is. They probably flew over something that boiled people from the inside out, is what I think. Some sort of microwave. Like it took their bone marrow and basically made it. Something made them really hot from the inside out. And then they go. And then they just walked in and just took them. Something like that probably happened there. We got a revelation of some sort of weird technology there. All of those Cuban mercenaries who were, part of his bodyguarding unit, all got put into little boxes and sent back to Cuba. So that's. Put into little boxes, like in pieces? I don't know. Like everybody, like they all showed up back in Cuba. There's a video of them getting like pulled out of a plane and they're all in a little box. So if you can find that video, it's a pretty interesting video. Yeah, do you forget it? Yeah, like why did they decide to cremate all of them mysteriously for transport? I don't know. Maybe they don't have refrigerated planes. Yeah, it's less space as well, right? Well, the U.S. went in there. and took Maduro on the most expensive Uber ride to New York. There they are in Cuba. There it is. Yeah, let's play this. Maduro's bodyguards. Oh, look, at least they got like the official marching, you know. Wow, those are little ash boxes. Yeah, no. Some North Korean looking shit right there too. I don't know. I don't know. He's kicking a little low. He's going to get fired. I don't know what technology they probably used, but they probably. They unveiled something pretty interesting. Interesting in that raid. And again, I think about this event and I think about Mexico. And again, who's there that could. They took out Maduro. When they say took out, they took him out of Venezuela. And now is the Venezuelan government changed? No, the Venezuelan government is still communist under Delcy Rodriguez. And they just have to listen to the United States on everything. And Ed, I don't know, you tell me, correct me if I'm wrong here, but one of the things I feared when they said, this happened is that it would turn into this situation where now it's still a communist government and the Venezuelan people who were very happy, maybe a year or two down the line, will start to see all these oligopolistic type gringos come into town from America and say, we got 50% of your oil now and their government's technically still communist, but it's just playing ball with the Americans and they're going to suddenly be like, well, wait a minute, righteously. So this is our oil, what the fuck? Do you see it trending in that direction? It's exactly where we are. Yeah. They're after gold and oil. Yeah. There's no. They're after gold? Yeah, there's a lot of gold there. And yeah, there's reports of American armed personnel in one of their mining regions. A lot of the mining going on in Venezuela is run by these criminal organizations and gangs and stuff like that. They basically extract the gold and then sell it. Where? I don't remember exactly the region, but it's in Venezuela. And there's like the government, the Venezuelan government is going in there and now saying like, hey, yeah, like, hey, like the U.S. and Venezuela joined forces to target gangs in key mining regions. It's from the Wall Street Journal. Yeah. The newly friendly government in Caracas is trying to lure American investment into its mineral rich. They want that gold. It's gold fever. Let's go with that. Everybody see a leprechaun say yeah. So it's something Venezuela should be. That's like a blueprint. A blueprint. And I think the next Venezuela could be Mexico. All right. Now that's interesting. I wasn't necessarily expecting you to say that. And the reason is one of the ways that they sold the Venezuela raid was, oh, it's a huge drug capital. Los soles. Right. And then when you actually looked at the literal like government reports from before they did this raid, it shows like South American drugs. And I forget the numbers, but it was like point. Five percent or something like that is Venezuela. And yet Mexico is the main problem. And Mexico had already been designated a terrorist organization cartel wise. And yet we, the mission happened in Venezuela, not Mexico. So my thought was they're dancing around the Mexican issue, perhaps because of the reasons you were laying out about the industrial back and forth partnership. It's a bigger, Mexico isn't Venezuela. Venezuela is, yeah, heavily fortified, had all those guns and everything like that. All that anti-air Russian technology that we were afraid of. Yeah. You're going to get all these kids sent back in body bags. The only body boxes went to Cuba. Body boxes. Write that one down. I mean, yeah. I mean, whatever that operation was, you had to hand it to them. They did a number on them. But that's not Mexico, though. You had Ruben Rocha Moya when he was, when they issued him a red notice that they were looking at coming after him. He had the Mexican federal government install the military around him to protect him. And he was held up in his bunker because he was a sitting governor in Sinaloa. So he was hiding in his office basically for a while. And he, what do you think he was afraid of? Mexican helicopters showing up and laying on his roof and extracting him. That was what they were afraid of. Ever since that, the federal government apparently has taken his security off and he's hiding somewhere in a rural area. A ranch somewhere in Sinaloa. The governor. And. Can he govern? He's on a license and there's somebody else governing for him right now. Because that, you can do that in Mexico for a bit. So he's in the hills hiding. So when I say Venezuela, I don't say, when I say that Mexico is probably on the verge of becoming the next Venezuela. Who would be the, who would be the Maduro figure in Mexico that would be the next Venezuela? That they would go after is my question, right? If you were a betting man, Ed, pure spec. Cloudy the Shame Mom? Very popular. Trump says a lot of good things about her. He does. She's the sitting president of Mexico. I don't think it's her. I agree. Was she, is she compromised by cartels? It doesn't seem so. I mean, maybe she has some people around her who are. Right. Maybe they, maybe her campaign was funded in a lot of ways by some of this cartel money, which has always been the case for a lot of these elections for the past few decades. So that's, there's nothing new there. I don't see it. I don't see a Blackhawk helicopter showing up to Mexico City and like put it, putting like with some Doritos in the sky and just, I don't see that. Who else could it be? Let's look around the room. Ruben Rocha Moya would be a good candidate. Is he still a little too? Too high to be a candidate? You know what I mean? He's a governor. Okay. Could be him. But who's his best friend? And why is all this attention being put on this specific person? It's because he's the closest friend and direct link to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the political figurehead of the Morena Party in Mexico. How much power does he still hold now? All of it. All of it. If he comes out and says like, hey, I'm the president. Now, I could see a political movement in the country to change the constitution, to put him back in. I could see that. But Trump likes him, I thought you said. He said good things about him and they did pretty well together. But they had a lot of arguments about U.S. agents and the DEA working in the United States and Evo Morales for a while who was on the run, hid in Mexico for a bit. And he spoke highly of Maduro. And so he was. Definitely on the other side of that spectrum. I think that's where we're headed. In some way, shape or form, the United States is probably going to target him next. And what do you think? Let's say they target him. Let's say it's not even, doesn't even need to be as fancy of an operation it was for Maduro. They don't have to use some fucking bone marrow microwave weapon or whatever, but they target, they go in, they get him, they take him out. What is the action? What is the aftermath of that look like from a U.S. Mexico relationship standpoint? Bad. Yeah. I think it's a. Scheinbaum has to act in some way, right? Either, either she separates herself from it and says like, hey, you know what? The U.S. was right about it. And we're going to do what Venezuela did, which is like, well, I guess he's gone. We're still going to continue on with our project. We're still going to be like communists and brunch it. But let's, let's, That's. let's cut down all the anti-american talk i think i think that could be that could be it um or or this is the other possibility the mexican government and morena fold and they round up all of this list of politicians that are on that red notice the 11 well there's uh nine now because two of them i think but they they round them all up and they put them on a plane and the u.s has this moment where they're pulling them out of the helicopter on that bay where manjioni was and maduro and they're like i'm showing you that this morning yeah yeah like yeah it's a cool i got to show you something that was a cool spot i got i've seen it on tv i've never seen you know cash patel is going to be out there in his custom air forces with him right yeah saying he did it yeah yeah but just just imagine this moment i think that's that's what the cinema is looking for like a clear point in victory like hey this cartel thing that's went all the way up and all this now it's in the politics now this is a clear victory like this is our like all these corrupt mexican politicians were handed over by the mexican government and now the mexican government sitting mexican government federal government behind claudia sheenbaum legitimizes itself in the eyes of the united states and like that's all we wanted thank you now we're gonna play ball allow us to aid you in this cartel war and really create a mass extinction event with these criminal organizations it's either one or the other i think is what might happen i could see that i think you know and i've been thinking about this all day while you're talking so far but i think all the i don't know i guess you call us like the normies like the people like me who aren't on the ground there and just have to hear about it and try to get an idea what's going on too often i'll look at it like oh yeah cartels kills everyone anyone that doesn't agree to be paid off they just you know take out their families and obviously they're a brutal organization and all that and then we talk about how intelligence organizations like cia will infiltrate them and use them as like a vehicle to be able to do all their shit around the world but i don't know and maybe i'm off base here and saying this correct so correct me if i'm wrong i don't know if we look enough at at the intelligence aspect of the cartels as well because when they have to go figure out all right we're going to target these people in government or these people in this position of government or these people over there obviously there's a calculation that happens which is a part of intelligence i think if you say it is but the reason i bring that up is because when you look at a lot of intelligence agencies when they want to infiltrate centers of influence if you will places that they want to have eyes and ears on the ground and know everything that goes on they'll look at it and they'll say okay who's in charge of this place person x all right who's the janitor at this place person z and what they really look for is person y who's not at the top and not at the bottom but knows who's coming knows who's going and can do things out of the spotlight away from the camera and be able to take care of business if called upon so when you talk about who the figurehead would be in that they'd go in and take because they're completely under the thumb of the cartel or when you talk about like yeah it seems like shine bomb herself from all appearances is not directly paid off by the cartel i would actually agree with that like i i could see that being true because like you said there's people around her whose names we don't know and you know who get paid a decent government salary and have a lot of access to her and the things she's doing who probably are yeah and that's a very you know not to like praise the cartels here don't like doing that but from a just like strategic tactic unfortunately that's a kind of brilliant tactic they have there yeah i mean who's really in charge right are the act are the actual cartels in charge in mexico oh that's not where i thought you were going or or is it that they are a part of a structure that is in charge of mexico um you have uh we had a version of the wiki leaks event in mexico i think i talked about this the last time the guacamaya leaks yes um that event led to us finding out that in certain military regions they support one cartel in certain other military regions they support another there's a admiral hiding an admiral that went to argentina to try and figure something out out there and now he's being caught and now apparently the mexican marines were completely in bed with some of the fuel smuggling arming some of these cartels so like are they two things or are they one over overlapping thing across mexico are they playing both sides against the middle um i think anybody in anybody in mexico that gets into a high enough position of power realize that it's a mine a gold mine a gold mine yeah mexico is a gold mine mexico is a gold mine it has a lot of money in it a lot of things go through it it's right next to the world superpower so there's a lot of money all over it um there's a lot of international interest in mexico you had trump coming into office you had the chinese come into mexico under andres manuel lopez over there they try to make electric vehicles in mexico to get around some of the tariffs if but the united states kind of caught on to that so now mexico is coming out with their mexican-made electric vehicles which are made with chinese parts but you know whatever but uh so there that so that's changed a lot in mexico i think it's a big change in mexico i think it's a big change in mexico trying to figure things out right you have an openly antagonistical government in mexico against the united states and against u.s interests saying on one hand well we're not going to play ball with the u.s but on the other hand massive uh raids on chinese products illegally coming into mexico and being sold oh they've been doing that oh they've been they've been putting the pressure on that they don't want that anymore because you know you have you know what because you know the u.s doesn't want it so let's let's say we're not playing ball but on the other hand we're going to play some ball right right so are you saying they're taking out symbolically some places yeah for real yeah i mean china's there russia is there in some way shape or form in mexico i don't know to the extent that the u.s is saying they are but there there's definitely an influence of russia in mexico what kind of influence would you say i'd say i mean political influence mexico is coming out as antagonistic to the united states so the enemy of my enemy is the u.s and the united states are the enemy of my enemy and the united states are the enemy of my friend right is the old adage and russia's been in mexico for years it's like a good spot you know they go back to like what was it lenin or i mean who died castro was trained his his original guerrilla forces in mexico uh i was in a cafe called cafeta cuba where castro and che guevara would like hang out and drink coffee nice so that's that's a history china has china's there obviously some people say that the new generation cartel in some shapes and forms have uh technology capabilities and equipment capabilities that seem to have come from china uh from from jamming devices to drones to some sophisticated equipment that can take down planes um so that might mean that they're being supplied by an by a foreign country who knows there was a time when shitloads of fentanyl was being pumped into that part of the country uh from china um china's still producing it it's still singing out some of it is being produced within legitimate pharmaceutical companies across mexico because there's pharmacies everywhere so there's people should do the math as far as where some of these drugs might be coming from um but you see influences from everywhere mexico is very important it's we we we as mexicans don't realize it sometimes that we're we like to think of ourselves as a little guy but we are very key and strategic and important for the united states future number one our industrial plant on the northern border that's all t all most of the i think that tv is probably made in baja maybe yeah so the u.s is might run out of the ability to source some of those things in china and we don't know where this war is going in iran and we might be in the beginnings of war footing and we might need to figure out technology and equipment to fuel some of this stuff and i don't think china's going to be able to do that china is going to be too supportive of a prolonged war uh there because it's going to kill their ability to get resources we're pretty close to running out of some reserves internationally yeah um they were calling early publicly for iran to stop returning bombs to just to the gulf region and everything yeah that's supposed to be their ally uh trump said something about four weeks out i think he kept saying four weeks every four weeks yeah as far as the reserves running out oh well now yes that's right and then you're going to see bedlam he said that i don't know i don't think he should i don't think he was supposed to say that publicly that was a little true serum but uh we'll see in four weeks i guess because that straight is still closed um in any way i think the united states is retreating back into its continent uh it's kind of probably going to get out of nato you think so i think it's it's on its way so you see you see trump and the u.s as a whole because this is not about trump this is like the united states interest are looking at him at look are looking at the continent you know like they're looking at green they're looking at greenland they're looking at Argentina they're looking at and other parts of the Venezuela just got maybe Cuba's next you know Mexico and yeah there are cartels in all these regions there are people selling drugs and moving things around and all this but it's specifically the survivability of this country is dependent on its ability to produce and we've lost that here in the United States you would think that it would have been a huge wake-up moment a bigger one at least than it actually turned out to be with COVID yeah when suddenly the whole supply chain got shut down and you had to have this whole basically like a lot of business had huge businesses not the smaller ones they got really fucked but the the bigger ones would have to come in and basically like subsidize creating things here we had never thought about doing and as far as I've been able to tell from the outside it's not like we built bigger systems on top of that once the pandemic died down but that would have been a huge wake-up moment for us. been the time to do it yep I think what the U.S. sees in Mexico is an issue that they can't really depend on it being able to police itself they can't depend on it to guard some of these industrial plants that they might want to build and there was talk about building a Tesla plant in Monterey that got chit-canned they don't see it as a as a place where they can do any of this because they have cartels so let's say you you build your avocado orchard you know let's Julian avocado orchard in the middle of Michoacan the supplies you would get behind that and you're down there and you're like hey this is my avocado field and you're and then the dude shows up like hey you're uh I'm just here to hand you a phone okay you're gonna have to pay us a ten thousand dollars every week go fuck yourself yeah and then the next day there's a there's a oxo cooler outside of your oxo is our 7-eleven there's an oxo cool and it's it's always one of those coolers for some reason there's an oxo cooler outside of here and then you're like hey this is my avocado field and then you're like it's got my dog's head in it something you know and now you're like ah maybe this is not a good idea to invest here and then you leave because you're fucking afraid right and all that capital you put into that is now gone uh it happens in the mining industry in Mexico there's been a lot of miners killed and like robberies going on across the mining the gold mining there's gold mining in Mexico and there's been a lot of high-level robberies and a lot of cartel targeting events around them uh the senior law cartel is pretty active in some of that shit in certain regions like Sonora um so again all of the all of these are being disruptive towards U.S. interests that are not necessarily necessarily tied to drugs they're necessarily tied to U.S. economic interests and growth and an industrial plant yes and resources as well I don't know like people like to talk about gas but the oil in Mexico there's there's oil there but there's U.S. has way more of it right um but there are draw it's lithium it's land and and also realistically think about it the American dream is no longer in America it's in Mexico go to Tijuana they come in here go to Tijuana go to Tijuana and you'll see all of these Hong Kong level sky rises coming up all over the place because it's filled with Americans that don't want to live in the United States because it's too expensive interesting and a lot of these people are retiring not to Florida but they're going to live in the United States because it's too expensive and a lot of these they're going to Mexico Mexico City is full Tulum ruined the gringo's ruined a little it's ruined it's it sucks I don't know like are you so for people that go down there for a one-week vacation stuff is that a safe place these days it's safe I wouldn't go there you still wouldn't go it's safe you're on team they do yeah it's a I'd rather go somewhere else go to San Felipe it's a way I go down all the time it's fine yeah it's like I'm never fucking going to Mexico it's not it's not about the safety aspect of it and also Jenny you know he's a former criminal so he can he can he I've seen him operate he can he can swim he swims anywhere he could talk his way around dude he's a giant white guy and somehow he always blends in right he's a dude don't play basketball with that guy um he's nice he's a good player really yeah I mean I know he's tall as fuck I didn't take him for a baller though I didn't take him for a baller though I didn't take him for a ball yeah he's funny too hey he is a funny I broke into his room once in a hotel and you broke yeah he's like what do you do for a living it's like oh I I can I teach people how to get in and out of places and he didn't believe me so I cloned one of his key cards and opened his door oh that's awesome you cloned the key card yeah how'd you do that uh there's no doesn't give his tricks it's just a small device that we 3d print somewhere and make and build oh you like in your back pocket you got a 3d printer yeah well we there's like a little device that we so when did the CIA hire you is that like 20 did they get you in the beginning that's a pretty cool question a lot of people saying that I'm gonna see you at tres letras right what about the say slay trust uh maybe no no so they contracted you none of that uh I was trained by Americans I was trained by Americans at the beginning of my career I was I wasn't trained by the U.S. military I was trained by the department of the navy yeah also not reassuring you know and then a lot of the stuff they showed me was specifically related to urban warfare that's what I learned from the U.S. could you break that down a little bit if you don't mind uh when I got started in 2004 I didn't know anything about realistically I went through a police academy and I thought I was going to go do community policing and then I got handed an assault rifle and got in the back of a truck with a bunch of special forces guys communities need some rifles too yeah and then they quickly realized that we were not equipped to any of that and they went around trying to figure out training for us um showed up and some some people we did get Israeli training some of us did get Israeli training Israelis came and trained us um some of us were put on FBI background checks they got all of our checked out and then we and some of us who were bilingual went to uh long uh where the Topcon school is that uh Naval Yard where the top of gun school is in Coronado in in in San Diego Topcon school yeah I mean I always think of like sealed sealed training yeah everything the Topcon school is at uh is right next to the Navy Yard and that's where part of our training went on and then they've gone at the real life Topcon school officially known as the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics instructor program that's a long name is located Naval Air Station Fallon in Fallon Nevada oh no that's a different one there's one in Coronado oh yeah it says the program moved from its original location at nas Miramar in San Diego I used to was there when I was there I used to see these Migs these fake Migs flying out of there yeah like Russian Migs flying out of there it's pretty cool uh DARPA is at a place like that probably yeah I don't know well they showed us some um I got I got to meet some cool seals um and yes probably some of some of that was probably some sort of orchestration by United States to have an influence in Mexico probably payroll I never got to sign anything that's what I would say that that probably went well that's but that probably went up went on higher like my boss is me I have no idea you know all I know is that money goes up and comes down and I got all the so you're like the cop in the town yeah I well I didn't I wish I wish I could tell you I looked the other way mostly but I did I did 12 years of it and people who are around for it um and know who I work with and what we did yeah uh I I came out of that shit it wrecked yeah jokes Joe seriously though jokes aside like you talked about that a lot last time and like what that whole process was because like when we think of I won't even say Community policing but like you know high level police forces in America maybe even like SWAT teams and stuff like that there's still like a standard idea to it what you guys were doing was you're basically going into minefields where you don't even know yeah if the people you're going to talk to who are supposed to be reporting to you from another part of the government or whatever are working for the cartels or not it's just like or working for interests that are way higher than any of us you know um and again Fast and the Furious is an example of it you know if I was a member of the tres letras you know why would I be speaking about some of this in such a horrible way well because it affected me directly I lost friends uh I got to see some of those guns maim children children uh one of my friends was shot outside of his house they killed him and his wife and his daughter lost an arm an FF57 FN57 pistol with high velocity rounds was shot at him by these two sicarius kids probably 18 19. um and those guns were like new in the package they still had the factory um uh gel inside of them that they keep so they don't rust in the future um can be shot at um that affected me yeah and it does have that's a reason why I do a lot of this yeah like if if it was me I just I'd focus on my training I have a small company and I I do pretty well on that I why am I speaking about some of this stuff so openly and why am I predicting some of this is coming down the pipeline um I've I have a vested interest in I have a vested interest in both sides you know I'm up here now uh I have a lot of friends up here you're one of them and thanks don't i don't want anything to happen to this cool place and and country and all my friends i want them to do well and i have a daughter who is an american but also i have a whole family in mexico and i have friends and family down there and i fought for that country tooth and nail that's right and i lost a lot of myself in that war and i'm seeing a continuation of the same from 2004 to now and i do have to say something you know and i see a lot of uh blaming by the u.s towards mexico and blaming by mexico to the u.s and nobody wants to take responsibility for what went on and i think both sides have a lot of sins and skeletons in the closet that where we are now though i don't know if it even matters if they get revealed anthony fauci basically is now being outed as the one that produced covid in a laboratory somewhere in china that's out now the the head of in intelligence just said that before she said bye so that's crazy he's pardoned no he got a you had a pardon so dating back to 2014 i believe how many people didn't died because of that so if nothing happens there there was a whole island of of stuff happening here and you were telling me earlier and it's scary to hear it but it's also like some of it feels very inarguable where you're saying like i told me yeah i've i've watched a banana republic happen and now i'm looking here and i'm like this is how it goes this is how it goes like how do you how do you turn a country into a banana republic you know institutions get yeah cancel the police the police are horrible they you don't want to go up with a cop i've lived through some of that you know a lot of that so you know the sins get bigger and bigger and the outings get larger and larger but you know nobody there's no accountability for a certain class of people and there's no options no options yeah it's like who are you gonna vote for the next election right right yeah like who like who are who are who are who are our possible candidates for this next u.s u.s elections yeah i was having a conversation my friend will toms runs rec philly down in in philadelphia does a great job there but he was like he really smart guy and like big community guy and like focus on what you can what you can change right in front of you but naturally he's thinking about like the bigger picture here of how do we fix like this system that feels rotted at the top and i like to be an optimist and i like to say things can be fixed and maybe it just takes a really long time but once i was like laying out each thing when he would ask me questions about some of the people i talked to and each layer that would need to be corrected to get this back to some semblance of like what the guys in 1776 envisioned this to be even i was like god damn that's a 50 year project and 47 million things have to go right just to get 50 of the way there and i don't i do not like to be a downer i don't love being a cynic but some of it feels a little far gone like how do you get money out of politics good luck how do you get super packs yeah but exactly like how do you how do you take away incentives when the people have to vote on taking away the incentives by the hundreds by the way are people who are incentivized to not vote on taking away the incentives uh shout out to my friend eddie gallagher speaking about this but yeah he talked he put he he made a pretty solid point on online he was talking about this uh sf guy who was being prosecuted because he made a bet uh online around the maduro right he was talking about this uh sf guy who was being prosecuted because he made a bet arrest and he says like yeah that sounds like insider trading which all of our like a lot of our politicians do and nobody says anything about that like what's what is this double standard going on yes um you see that on one hand uh on my end again banana republic experience you know you see um you see members of the military that went through a generational war after 9 11. uh yeah i mean i think that's a very important thing to think about because i think that's a very important thing to think about because i think that's a very important thing to think about because i think that's a very important thing to think about because i think that's a very important thing to think about i was with some of them as we're seeing some of those planes taking off they're crying yeah the waste of life and like that's very demoralizing not only for the country but for the youth who's i mean uh recruitment is not all down all time low uh a bunch of laws were changed recently about uh drafts and people are having a hard time with the drafts and people are having a hard time with the about that because that is definitely something in the fore like i could see it out there you're talking what it would be everyone below age like 29 or something like 18 to 29 yeah i don't know if i'm right about that so we should check something like something like that but a lot of things were like mysteriously you know just started shifting um and what's going to happen when that happened when that goes on and we saw elements of this we uh with this iran uh situation like uh descent from all the way in the top like some high-level people said like hey i've been here before i know where this goes can't be a part of this um and all along that you have this um global uh war going on which you know people don't want to talk about the fact that we're probably in world war three already you think we're already in it yeah yeah i mean uh i have a lot of friends who are fighting on that ukrainian front um oh you have friends that are a part of that yep uh we trained a few people that went over there and trained them and then we started seeing a lot of information coming from there as far as like what they were seeing some of the stuff that's going on right now some of the latest and greatest uh augmentations in technology kind of my specialty right now and what i do a lot of times is i try to make sure that i'm doing the right stuff i'm trying to make sure that i'm doing the right stuff i'm trying to make a lot of security consulting around is uh warfare specifically non-state actors figuring out against bigger opponents so at the start of this war i'm like oh this is this is what this is my bread and butter so i sent some of my instructors out there and we showed them from low means and low means medical medical management trench warfare hand-to-hand stuff um and just like uh mindset things you know how do you defend a city if you don't have a lot of military-grade equipment you know how do you defend a city if you don't have a lot of military-grade equipment you know how do you defend a city if you don't have a lot of military-grade equipment you know how to how to create barricades how some of these cartel forces did their in mexico that influenced some of that going on over there and a lot of the drone pilots are pretty big fans of the brand that i have there's a lot of these tattoos on some of those arms these kids were just uh smoking vape pens and in rooms with these headsets and are just racking up kills yeah you can't get up the way you say that too it's like a that's how these drones are changing everything it's the and it's also desensitizing you to war because it's not you're seeing yeah you're seeing all these camera yeah so russia we just saw like a massive assault in russia i i spoke at a conference about this uh you were talking about thief is that the same thing i'm not sure you're talking about like they attacked that russia attacked the church and then they retaliated i spoke at a conference with like the head of cyber warfare for the army and i went to this big conference military conference and my whole participation there was speaking about non-state actors and how cartels and groups and small groups are like are arming themselves with some of these drones and basically the world introduced drones into warfare and now everybody figured out like oh it's like a democracy now like all of us can make drones and i mean the the iranians are doing a pretty good job holding off the united states with pretty cheap technology with some of these drones the ukrainians are utilizing some of that technology against the russians and they're back engineering all these things and a lot of that technology is coming to mexico and a lot of that is now available online i mean i learned how to three print 3d print a drone and figure out all the release mechanisms on a drone as far as dropping things from a drone 3d printed you can 3d print the body of a drone and just buy the components online and build your own drone there's other scary things like programming math into a drone and having an ai in it and just having it to find a face and all that i had two of those guys in here this year run those companies yeah uh but so i think we're already in that world war three and now what does mexico have to do with all this it's a front it's another front um it's a front from it's a front where countries that are not specifically online aligned with the us's interest are trying to set a fire underneath the us's feet and this is something the us has realized so it needs to get a hold and a control of mexico is the thing that i think i've realized about some of the policies and how it's shifting towards mexico and if a lot of people think this is a trump thing this is a trump administration thing this is a u.s thing it's like a cross across the the the line thing there they realize that this the next front in this probable world war three we're already living through isn't gonna be there might be a line in europe but that's going to be for the europeans to fight um the next one that the united states is probably going to fight it's going to be a continental war and i think we're already in the starts of it okay i see where you're going because a little bit ago before this tangent happened you were talking about like the separation from nato and things like that and now like a potential at an odd time needing to cozy up with like mexico and almost set off western hemisphere versus eastern hemisphere in a way and that sounds like this is how you're painting the war itself this is where we are we're like trended our members being blown up in their houses in ecuador and joint military operations uh you're seeing a joint military apparently the u.s blew him up that's i think the true social account posted that uh nice the video of that and all these boats being blown up in the ocean venezuela was the first domino to fall cuba is on its way probably you think that's happening i think i think the u.s doesn't want to invest a lot into that so they're going to wait for the people in there to basically give up and make some cassations and do like a venezuela type like hey we're going to give you this old 90 year old brother of uh of uh you know because that's i think that's he got yeah castro and then they're all going to fall in line and mexico is probably part of that as well how so uh the people who are governing mexico and all their interests and a lot of their political allegiance specifically the person at that center andres manel lopez over there is part of the change that they need to clear out of the way so they can do the united states can fulfill its international security interests in the continent they need to control um they need to go back to the things the way things were and again this is not me saying it this is not a theory this is not alex jones talking about whatever although he was right about a shit ton of things um this is the fact that you know the cia had presidents in mexico that they were backing and paying for for decades and all of a sudden we have two of them in the past two administrations that were clearly not cia assets meaning andres manuel lopez over clearly not cia backed or or supported assets or at least not supportive of u.s interest in the continent or that's what they want you to think or maybe that's what they want us to think and they're pretty doing a pretty good job of it and they're doing a pretty good job of it and they're they're doing a pretty good job of uh of uh of hiding it but and that's that's that's kind of their saving grace within the u.s populace these guys are clearly not u.s back cia people so we're going to support them is why they're so supported and popular that's got the front that they built for themselves but that's also the 500 pound elephant in the room here in every one of these conversations because on the one hand we're talking about mexico being declared a terrorist or did not mexico the cartels in mexico being declared terrorist organizations and the u.s can now take all these odd actions because of that we see the literal vice president and president coming out and talking about reserving the right to be able to take action in there when this is a high trading partner and there's a lot of stakes that you've just laid out very beautifully but at the same time like the elephant in the room being we all know that our bureaucracy meaning the people that are there before presidents and still there after they leave for decades and maybe not quite a century but for decades have been effectively moving the real chess pieces around on the board down there including the very chess pieces that we're claiming to target need to target with bombs now you know what i mean so it's like it's a catch-22 yeah yeah i mean i i look at it what is the purpose of some of these motions and movements and i see a lot of emphasis on the northern part of the country see a lot of emphasis in governors that are governing in the areas where there would be strategic resource and industrial things that the united states might be interested in and who is the person or the people behind all these interests and why they're moving towards that that's something that is beyond me it's a it's a high level we can talk about the six letters maybe i don't know uh it's interesting for me it's interesting for me again from the outside banana republic in mexico there is an ongoing realization of how involved the six letters are in mexico we're referring to israel yes that wasn't painfully obvious israel and the side both six letters so yeah they they've been found out to the weaponry has been found in mexico they are involved in one of the biggest uh surveillance programs in mexico and technologies uh with the pegasus uh which was it's an old version i mean the stuff they have now is like completely different but it's still a technology that they supply you know this is the basically like can jailbreak right into anyone's phone without doing anything that that was the old one this is new and it's a surveillance apparatus that they are selling and they have installed in mexico they're they're currently going through a process in mexico right now where they're uh at the end of this month if you don't have your biometrics tied to your phone your phone is going to be cut wait what at the end of this month in mexico if your biometrics aren't installed on aren't sent over to the phone company your phone line is going to be cut what in the 1980 four is that you tell me um the us goes down to mexico and says like we need access to your biometrics the president comes up and says like the us taxes for us we we declined but we're going to build the program where we collect all your biometrics anyway because for our interest you know uh but as of next month if you don't if your biometrics aren't and a lot of people aren't going through with it most of my family is like that so they're not gonna have a phone well they'll have prepaid phones there's ways of getting around but uh it's it's it's a show um there's a lot of suspicion around that and again it's growing it's growing yeah it's growing in mexico now i i've heard a lot of these stories and i think there was a viral clip of me talking about uh israeli training the cartels in mexico that i did i think i mentioned it on john ryan or something um what was the context there uh the ariano felix cartel for a while hired israeli specialists to go to places like where they operated and show them how to effectively do you know cartel hits and how to how to make suppressors for your guns so they don't sound how to adequately train people how to shoot uh how to carry handguns concealed um uh the the head body disposal guy for the sinaloa cartel in tijuana when i was active the el posolero the stew maker in interviews and i think somebody wrote a book about this openly said like he learned this tradecraft from people who were trained by the israelis so is this like private intelligence companies of x guys and i say that in huge air quotes yeah there's like a black cube and stuff like that or is it actual active special forces guys from israel coming over during the kickoff of the drug war it was a gold rush of security companies from all over the place coming into mexico selling off their training their equipment their whatever and the biggest ones of them all were all of them were former idf israeli people coming in there selling bomb detention detection technology um a lot of it some of some had equipment like they had these uh of like what do you call them people that take water with them these rods that they cross what are dowsing rods i think they're called i have no idea dowsing rods i think it's they're what they're called but like people can look this up uh technology sold to mexicans to detect weaponry like these dowsing rods um uh that that were the uh is i i think they were israeli i don't i don't remember but it was it's this is that like saint anthony holding one of those uh it i'll i'll see if i can find i'll send it to you but it's uh this technology was sold supposedly like it looks like dowsing rods you would walk and they would detect where people were hiding guns that's total exactly um and a lot of like dude people made millions with that in mexico because they with all war profit comes um and with all desperation um felipe calderon i i worked under his administration part of my creation no relation to felipe calderon uh but i remember wearing that felipe calderon budget like oh yes uh felipe calderon started off kicked off this drug war and i don't think he was really ready for what happened and i'm still questioning why he decided to do what he did um what makes you think he wasn't ready it's just a total disaster right after yeah the bodies doesn't stack of bodies and mexico being on fire right now morena like morena's main talking point is like this is not the time of felipe calderon where all these corrupt politicians were in play like luna who was his head of his head of public safety is the top top cop in mexico who was decorated by the fbi all the all the all of the all of these prizes and shut up for being this amazing cop and now he's in federal prison up here for being a cartel operative morena used to say like calderon had that guy but now morena has like 11 politicians on a list with the same issues so like we're we're chasing our tail now that's what i'm saying it just feels like it's a cyclical thing it's a cyclical thing and i've said this before many times mexico has an issue with amnesia every six years president comes in everything gets all this was bad we're gonna do this new thing now a shit ton of money comes from the outside paying for technology equipment training uniforms vehicles you wonder you wonder why cops in mexico always drive around in those big trucks and why why is that why would you where else in the world have you seen the federal police drive around in trucks with people in the back sitting down and those benches exposed you think it might have something to do with some mortar companies having a big giant deal with you with the mexican government to sell them vehicles yeah that's probably it yeah um if you kind of do the math on it so there's a lot of money in the war continuing um the mexican military was put on the streets by felipe calderon and i remember him saying that well well they're going to be out there for a while meanwhile our police is going to be professionalized we're going to get a hold of this federal police and all that well the military is still out and we've just seen the levels of corruption that they've engaged in some of the biggest money heist in mexico i mean talk about people talk about mayo and old chapagoo's my man this fuel theft that went on for for that administration keep being right let's go like into the actual nitty-gritty of it you said earlier there's like sea routes and stuff that this has been going on with obviously it's happening with the united states like that's where a lot of it's coming from but like what's the full picture here and what kind of scale from a monetary standpoint are we talking about billions billions billions billions and this is relatively new meaning like the last decade this is relatively new because people were installed that were willing to like go this way and again this is like morena administration animal administration people that we see that's that's who's involved that's at least who we've seen involved at the top this guy who was on a run that went to argentina that he came from that that uh andres manuel lopez administration uh the military was given this ginormous power in mexico to fight the cartels and now we realize that in a lot of ways they became their own cartel and we talk about the zetas now it's a small version of probably what they're now right yeah so where where are we going with all of this um mexico and mexican citizenship is afraid of a u.s invasion like it is afraid you'll see people supporting it on the right side of the political spectrum and they're like lee day is a mexican politician she speaks openly about this she's one of u.s invasion they want u.s participation to come in they want them to arrest all these corrupt politicians because they're on the losing side of the politics in mexico so they're about to try this late this governor governess in coahuila of uh i'm not not coahuila um not the one we pulled up earlier yeah that one they want to try her for for treason um so it's it's infighting like what are they trying to figure out i mean it's oh you know what i forgot to ask on that because this was back when we pulled this up towards the beginning of the podcast but if that lady did in fact know and dealt with people within underneath her as they're alleging that ended up being cia like let's say you know you're that person that walks in the office and says hey lady uh by the way i work for cia sorry what could she have even done about it uh reported it maybe yeah like like hey there's reports that she's probably dead probably it's like hey there's like cia is working here dismantling drug labs with my state police like is who do i talk to i mean the federal police maybe the state federal prosecutor but she is on the opposite side of the political spectrum so that's like newsome going to trump over something going on in in in her uh in her home state well you talk you talk about banana republic that's something we didn't say either the lawfare of the last decade that's going on across the parties here this is the you see in all these other countries with more failed-ish type governments and stuff where they do political rep retribution using the courts in prison yeah and it's like to be clear i don't ever like the idea of someone being above the law or something like that but the precedent of going after people yeah you ha you need to have a high i'm gonna invent a term here but like burden of need of action yep to do it meaning like listen i don't like james comey a little bit but some seashells on the beach that's below the line yeah you know what i mean like he's an but you the the precedent's worse i think and this you know you're you're seeing now this is an example maybe this lady is totally on the take and is actually a traitor and was like excited the cia was working in which case like that's really bad but other examples it's like you know there's a lot of that right now again on the right of political spectrum in mexico which is the losing side the the party that calderon originally was a part of they're shouting for intervention they're shouting for the us to come in and save the day and that's like that's another side of the argument down there are they right i wouldn't i wouldn't i wouldn't go about asking them in like that because of the history that some of the things that things have and sovereignty is a thing um although it apparently hasn't mexico hasn't been a sovereign nation for decades although it wants to think of itself except for the past two administrations i think that's when it has exerted sovereignty with andres manuel lopez alrededor and with claudia shaymond at least they're expressing some sovereignty and we can be pretty sure that they weren't on the scene but they're expressing some sovereignty and we can be pretty sure that they weren't on the cia take because now they're being attacked by u.s interests so are you defining sovereignty as the ability or as the ability to govern yourselves and make your own decisions as a country yeah but not say that you're on the payroll or actively in discussions within other countries i don't know intelligence apparatus specifically with the united states because that's what all these what all these populist governments across latin america have happened you know they start not supporting the united states and they become really popular because some some people realize that the united states might not be in their best interests or have a long history of them not supporting the right people and the right policies except the policies that benefit the united states itself and that leaves many marginalized communities and people out there in the wind but also look at look at the timing too i was thinking about this earlier you said obrador that's how you say his name yeah he became president in 2018 which means he's like running and running to power, I guess, in like 2017 campaigning. Just look around the world. Start post-global financial crisis. Here we have Tea Party and Occupy, right? Right and left, but they're both populist. And then you look over in Europe where there's all kinds of migration issues and arguments over that. You see a massive rise of populism that even has like Brexit happen. And then all these other governments like the Marine Le Pen's get a big following. Obviously, she's losing elections in France, but like the fact that someone like that with some of the things she says getting that big a percentage of the population, something's happening there. And then you look all across South America and there's the rise of that populism in this case, more left-leaning or whatever. But point being like, regardless of what's left and right around the world, the movement of like the people being separated from an ever-shrinking size, what increasing amount of money, elite class, wherever it is in the world and how, whatever form it takes, whether it's a, you know, to quote Omar from The Wire, I got a shotgun, you got a briefcase. So whether it's a cartel or fucking Bill Gates running a company with billions of dollars, like that class structure separation and the political blowback or like burgeoning pipe bomb that's forming from that in the form of populism, I still don't think we've even seen a slight amount of the dynamite explosion there that could be happening in the future. - Yeah. But all these people that came up and were from that wave, the Evo Morales, the Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the Maduros, you know, the people in Cuba, you know, they're, all of them are like, they're on the chopping block. - The communist ones. Again, like communists, socialists. I mean, can we say that the Cubans, the Cuban government is that? It's a giant corporation fucking with, their kids are living in the US. A lot of them were living in the US, but they're in charge, but they were, they're working. They were working and have been supported by the people that, because they are openly saying like, we're against the, I'm mad at you. But realistically, they're like. - But you could make the same argument with like Soviet leadership and saying the same kind of thing, right? And it's not to, it's not to say like America is like, you know, fucking saints or anything like that. That's not the argument. I'm just saying like, what do the people, what does the average rank and file person in a country like that have as a quality of life? - Yeah. That's an interesting thing you say about America is not a saint. It isn't, it isn't, it isn't, it isn't a saint. There's, name a country out there that is. though there isn't one well so uh nobody's like one of the best pieces of advice my mom ever gave me and it's changed my life nobody's against you they're for themselves yes you learn that and you live a easier life that's a bar um the united states is for itself and we you and me and everybody here is a part of that in one way shape or form um and what is going on right now is a challenge of that is the united states in the decline i've seen the u.s in the 80s and the 90s as a visitor and now in the 2000s as a citizen here and i could tell you that yeah i see it now it is i agree i see it um now what does that mean should we go off to war again and like should we like what is the response to that like how do we get out of that decline well i think people in power at the high at highest levels are saying like we're scrambling to try and figure out how to maintain that and i think it's clear that yeah the united states in decline in a lot of ways but it still has a pretty insane military that is we do but it still probably lost the war with the iranians though with the military power look at all the wars we've lost it's not because we lack the military talent or resources it's also not because we lack the talent of the planners in the military it's because we have fucking interests here and people here in back rooms who haven't even seen a fucking call of duty battlefield who decide to make decisions that make absolutely no sense and put our guys in the worst possible scenario or just straight up you know lift up and pull out of afghanistan and leave all the fucking weapons behind just to not only take an l but make the l six times bigger yeah it's fucked man yeah so this conversation about mexico is about survival and like independently of what the united states and the rhetoric is around the government be it narco-terrorism be it fentanyl be it uh organized crime uh human smuggling and all this all of this uh realistically the efforts put forth by the united states in the continent i think are about survival uh the world is global globalism is is ending like the u.s patrol yeah the u.s patrolling the oceans and like guaranteeing the straight or four booze and guaranteeing safety like sending its millet that shit is going away i think but it won't be filled that sucking sound won't have someone else fill the role you don't think you think it'll be just be a series of isolationist ideas where everyone goes back to policing themselves well we're going back to like theory and i don't know for me china is not going to be it no way they never fought a war outside of their continent you know taiwan is right there and they're kind of figuring that out they have two like aircraft carriers yeah they can build a lot of ships and a lot of fucking weird sand islands and shit like that but so what their population is declining uh there there's a giant cities that are empty yeah they have a lot of capabilities and shit like that but i don't see them being the world police i think they're more about themselves uh who is who else is out there yeah russia look at the gdp perspective russia is not even you know it's not to say they don't do things that you're not like all right that's not great but like from a gdp perspective they're similar to the size of italy which means they're not on the map when it comes to china the u.s so it's not in russia uh the germans man about india two billion people nah no not them no not them they try they will try probably but not them uh i don't know like who's there you know who is there who's behind the ukrainians you know um who's in europe yeah the germans the germans are arming up again like everybody's fucking getting back into a war footing that's nice and we have a state actor in the form of the six letters in the middle of the middle east like picking battles yeah just pissing everybody off so there's no world police coming like i think that those days are over i think this was the last foray into that as far as like you think there's going to be another u.s intervention in iran some sort like this or like maybe some sort of intervention somewhere out there i think the u.s is done with that type of stuff for now i hope so i think it's going to focus on its own continent though you really think it's going to focus on its own continent you really believe that even it's already happening it's already happening it's already happening from this week i mean we're already seeing venezuela uh where q was probably on the on on the line uh all we needed to do was get rid of this background noise which is iran and i think i think we're going to see some some fireworks but if you retreat too much right and you retreat into your own continent you still have the issue of like the fact that so much of global financial trade has been settled in the dollar which despite all the fucking damage we've done to our own dollars money and shit like that it's still it's still the king at the moment but if you do pull out and go from and again i'm obviously the farthest thing from an interventionalist but if you go full-blown isolationist just from like a global stage of like participation whether that mean leaving nato leaving some certain trade partnerships and things like that you could risk long term you know losing the spot of the dollar as top currency which you and me don't know a world no where that's the case no i i've never lived in a world where that isn't that the dollar isn't at the center but we might be moving towards that though like but then america is not america it still has a military that can blow up most of the other militaries backed by the u.s dollar though it's backed by other things i don't know about the dollar i think it's backed by the u.s's ability to control resources the u.s's ability to control what goes where uh specifically the u.s is in a very strategic place i mean it's a pretty good thing to be in the place where there's oceans yeah um but if you can't to control resources though you need to control the money or am i thinking about that too simply i think you're thinking about it too simply you need to control who controls and i think that's what we're seeing here on this list yeah you only got the page two in your notebook here yeah what's in the other fucking 600 pages a bunch of like uh things from my group therapy sessions okay but i i think i think i think uh i think we're probably i think that's where we're probably heading where the where the u.s retracts into this continent it figures out resources here it regroups it figure out figures out a new china in mexico because that's that's that's that's the next china mexico china in mexico the the only issue with mexico being the next china is its lack of a ability to process resources it doesn't have that realistically um china does it makes its own shit and makes it makes its own aluminum and titan all that all that shit it just figures it out we don't have that in mexico and i think but how could you create that in mexico well first you have to stabilize it and who's in the way of that it's criminal organizations unless you work with them or you work with one of them to disrupt all of them and then eventually make your way to the government which is supporting some of them and now you have your own government there and now the cartels are gone so are you saying it's in a lower that they would choose as the horse there it's where all it's where tbd it's where it all started with the abduction of el mayo zambada and it's probably where it's going to end if they hand over the governor of sinaloa and hopefully that's where it ends or else they're going to have to go after it after our maduro our figurehead i'm going to come back to the el metro thing because there's still a lot there that we we got off but the el mayo thing because you and i talked about this last time it was about at the time i think maybe seven eight months after it had happened when we talked in march 2025 but is that has there been have you seen any more information or picked up on any more information surrounding that since then that makes you i don't know change your opinion on what that was you touched on it earlier that there's some sort of intelligence involvement for sure and also involvement of like you know a tit-for-tat with el chapo's kids but is there anything else we're missing there that we should be looking at um the extradition of el raton uh the first brother of the chapo guzman said was responsible for the uh the culiacanazo being arrested and finally captured by the mexican government extradited to the united states and then probably some sort of deal being done with the united states that shielded most of his family members who were then secretly flown to tijuana then crossed into united states and given uh protective custody why did they have to be where were they flown to tijuana from from tina loa or from wallahara where they were hiding they were hiding somewhere got it they're probably not to the law probably most of them went to hide in wallahara mexico city i think i'm not sure where they were flying from but they went to tijuana and they were crossed in with all their suitcases and then my suitcases it was like it was a whole spectacle um there's some pictures of them online but uh they're there seemed to have reached the deal there, right? And the deal was, hey, immunity, protective custody, and we'll help you figure out how to do what, you would say. Eliminate the Sinaloa cartel? No. A bunch of indictments for politicians came out of that. So I think they're key there. Sinaloa is key, and the Chapitas are key there. Now, the remaining brothers out there are Chivaldo and I don't remember the other guy's name. The remaining brothers out there are being rumored to have been trying to negotiate their own surrender and deals with the United States. They're on the run. They're being dismantled by the Mexican government. That's who's targeting them specifically, and we just had the Harfush, which is the head of the new police force in Mexico, come out and say that the alliance that they have with the Mexican government between the New Generation cartel and the Chapitas is over because a lot of the people who were in charge of that, including El Mench, are dead. So that's gone. So you can see that the Mexican government is targeting the Chapitas specifically. Are they aware maybe that they're being utilized by the U.S. and the U.S. interest as a proxy? Meaning like the soldiers on the ground? Yeah. I don't know. It's interesting that that's who's getting decimated. Do you have sources in there? Like any good sources? Obviously, I'm not going to say who they are, but I'm saying like, do you have, in the last two years, have you had a chance to speak with someone that's at least in some position to know something? I'm not saying like a top guy, but you know. Yeah, yeah. I hear things about around them, and they're, yeah, they're on the run. They're on the run. They're on their back leg. You just walk outside and listen in the wind? Yeah. They're on their run. They're on their back legs. His head of security was grabbed. A bunch of family members were grabbed. I think they almost caught him last year. I'm talking about Archivaldo, the head of Los Chapitos. They're on the run. And like, again, okay, so they're on the run because those Mayos, the family of El Mayo Zambada are after them for vengeance. Clearly, they're motivated. Then the Mexican military is targeting mostly them specifically, although some of this targeting has happened to those Mayos. And you see this airport bombing of these two individuals, and one of them is cartel aligned, and his allegiance is with the Mayos. And if this was a CIA operation, why did they target a Mayo guy and not a Sinaloa Chapo guy? So it's, I don't know. It's like you start seeing all these lines. I don't know. It seems like there's, the Mexican government is supporting one side of this organization and the U.S. side might be making deals and some sort of effort to disrupt and to manifest its interest within Mexico through. Some of these organizations. Do you see any scenario where like the El Mayo's faction and the Chapito's faction re-congregate at some point? There's no way. That's totally ship has sailed, right? There's no way. Bad blood. The worst of the sins. Collaboration is the worst of the sins amongst them. I don't see that happening. I do see them coming out as a survivor. I see the Mayos being pretty, in a pretty strategic place where they could probably weather this out and get smaller and maybe fragment into smaller regional groups that don't really deal in the whole transnational thing anymore. What would that, so what would their business look like? Just like the Gamora, the Italian Gamora or like some like, some like a mafia, like a localized organized crime element. That's what most of these organizations are probably going to turn into. Growers and local smugglers that take it to somewhere bigger and then hand it off. Yep. Interesting. Yeah. That's the whole head of the cartel guy and all this openly moving around with trucks. And that's, I think that's on its way out. Yeah. So you used this phrase earlier, we're going through a mass extinction event. Yeah. With cartels in general. With cartel heads and people who are very public and with a lot of notoriety for being cartel heads is what you're seeing ending. And maybe there's some shadowy figures out there who are heads of giant cartels they don't see, but they're, all of them are being outed and targeted. So it's. You don't think the styles could change? Cause like that, by the way, that's what made El Mayo so effective for so long. Cause he was so quiet. He was known from the old days, but. I think the child, the style has already changed. That's why you have an American as the head of this, you know, the head of the new generation cartel. Or at least that's what they want you to think. Right. Although they've caught some of them up here. And I think again, like a lot of the rhetoric out there is like Mexico, build the wall, keep that shit down there. Don't bring it up here, but it's been up here growing. I mean, it's quieter. They're not as overt up here, but it's here. Yeah. Cause that like, I, you know, I'm picturing the imagery in my head. And when I think mass extinction event, I think exactly what it is, which is that I'm just going to throw round numbers out. Let's say you got, you know, 10 million people operating as active people in the cartel across the cartels, the different factions and groups across Mexico, you know, suddenly, that goes down to 500,000, 10 years from now, that would be like an extinction level event to me. I haven't heard like scenarios where that's realistic. And even in hearing you talk today, this is the way everything is, is that people, young kids are being recruited and that's what it is. Yeah. But you're looking at it from, if there's no more major, I don't know, figurehead cult leader. Yeah. If you will, just not having that as like a propaganda tool is a mass extinction event in and of itself. I don't understand how it is. Not having the figureheads being supported by politics, local federal government. There's, there's a pushback against that now. So they can't have that support. So they are going to have to hide a bit more. Again, Durango is a pretty good example of this. They're hiding in the fucking mountains right now. Durango. And Durango, there's a giant military operation right now, but it's Tora Bora, man. It's high sea. It's a golden triangle. Uh, it is going on there. Can you explain it? Uh, there it's a massive military operation around the area and they're blocking roads to try and cut out, cut, cut off resources to that feed these cartels that to which cartels, uh, remnants of the scene, the long cartel that are hiding out out there. Uh, but they, they, they go in through mines and like there's caves and can we pull this up on a map? This is like Tora Bora. You said, I actually posted a video on my Instagram account and it's like an aerial view of this place. So you could see it. I think that's, that's probably going to be what's going to be in the news in the next few months as far as like, uh, yeah, everyone go follow Ed down below. We'll put the link to, to his Instagram. That's an area. That's an, that's an aerial view of some of the, uh, some of the golden triangle. Whoa. Oh, this is like, no, this is like literally like Tora Bora. Yeah. That there's been like a lot of, uh, and so there's just cartel people living in these. You'll see, you'll see some, uh, you'll see some of the cave systems in a bit. I did cave systems like, look, here, here's one of them. That's how they like, how, how, where are they hiding their cars? Oh, they put them in my mine shaft. Holy shit. Yeah. That's the construction companies to get these fucking contracts. I mean, they're probably old minds that they just realized and Mexico, Mexican army doesn't have a mountain division. So we, we just have special forces and they basically get sent to for everything. Those guys just by seeing their equipment are not equipped to go in there, but they're, that's who's getting going to head in there. Um, I think that's going to be the next open front in Mexico. That some of these rural mountains open front they're, they're surrounding it right now. They're not going in there because they know it's, it's, I mean people who are in the military and people who went through Afghanistan can tell you more than I can about that type of warfare. It's not, it's not an easy place. Um, it's specifically since they've been lived there, grew up there, know all the towns, know all the places, know all the holes. Um, they're not going to do you any good. They're not going to do you any good in that place. So I'm not saying they're, they're unstoppable or undefeatable, but it's not going to be an easy battle. That's the thing though. It's like when you look at the history over the last four or five decades of cartels, they always find a way to adjust. Yeah. They've always found a way to get literally more powerful. They adapt. They adapt. At the beginning of my career, they would. Dress like federal agents and move around in big trucks in the middle of the city in Tijuana. And then they got freaked out by the fact that we started utilizing kind of guerrilla tactics against them. So they shifted to taxi cabs and low and lower profile vehicles. And they basically just shifted and all of a sudden they were harder to find. Um, so yeah, the, the, it's like a hammer trying to get a fly. They're always shifting. Um, but I think right now what we're seeing is that whatever that classic, uh, cartel organization that you, you grew up with, uh, watching Marcos, Mexico, or just seeing some of the Sinaloa stuff and El Chapo Guzman meeting Sean Penn and Ketel Castillo and the mountains and all that shit. That's that's, I think that's what's what's going away. I think a lot of this stuff is going to evolve into smaller fractionalized groups that are controlling their areas. This is an example of it. They're pretty cut off right now. but they have a stockpile of weapons there. they can hold out there for i don't know how long how many men do you think a faction like that in the in the mountains has ballpark tens of thousands but that's like a small action yeah but but you well so you're thinking all of them are going to have a gun some of them are going to be women they're going to feed some of these men some of them are going to be transport related some of them are going to be municipal police officers or state police officers that are on the take still a huge tribe a ginormous tribe and that's the issue like the you think these men and women and again god bless them i know like uh i know many members of the mexican special operations some of the best war fighters in the world because they get a lot of experience they they don't get uh they don't get the praise that they deserve they're amazing people some of them sadly they are in a war against themselves which is one of the worst wars to be at all right a war against themselves yeah um when i speak to some of my friends in my therapy group uh some of them went to war in afghanistan in iraq and they fought people that didn't speak their same language and didn't have their same faith and then they came home these guys are fighting in their own country shooting at people that speak their same language that pray to the same uh catholic uh at the same catholic church that they do uh the damage that's being done to them is just a lot of being done internally uh and generationally there is pretty wild uh but they're they're not the heroes in that story when they arrive there yeah some of the citizenship is going to be pretty happy about the fact that some of these cartel guys are going to be like laying low and not not uh robbing people not extorting people yeah there's a lot of that but also some of these cartel members have their families there and the extortion money goes to them and some of the schools so there are enemies there and they're not going to be able to do that they're not going to be able to do that and that's another factor of this war that a lot of people just don't realize some of these large cartels and some of these communities are funded and fed by these cartels so when the army comes in there and disrupts that they become the enemy and they inspire a lot of these kids to go into the same line of work yes um so again as you said this is a cycle yes and i think at least what i see now with the current administration and what it's doing the cycle hat is going to end though it for the reasons behind it might not be the the best ones the way it's being done the interventionism in another country might not be the most ethical thing ever but you have to realize that change is happening yes a guy who was untouchable a few years back got murked by the mexican special operations after they landed on the in his backyard and he had a leisure just like this one where he had this amount of thousand for the federal police to watch my back this amount of thousand for the military to watch my back so you have to hand it to whoever was in charge of this operation despite all that they went in there and they fucking put a bullet in his head now we never saw the body we have like there's a there's like an osama bin laden element to this story of all mentioned god damn it and you know and i have to have to say it or else i just had rob sitting right there the guy shot him shout out rob uh uh he's a cool guy i follow him online funny funny dude that's that's how you can tell i do believe he shot him too i know people have like argued about that yeah i believe i i i we never saw mencho's body right is is is one thing that you know and there was a whole thing around his body then there was a giant funeral for him which i think the roses were like you can get them in the area because they covered his yeah you were saying it was like a month without roses in the area it's insane they just it just every day they would just cover his grave propaganda is important uh but you would say like hey you just you just killed bin laden of mexico right and then all of his cartel family that has warrants showed up to the funeral and nobody did anything so has anything really changed that's what i'm saying that whole thing was fishy just real quick before i go to that because i don't want to lose this point but then we'll come right back to that because that's really important i've had that question held up all day but when you're with the mass extinction event now that you've explained it i don't know if i'm misreading this in my head but what it feels like to me based on that whole idea that you're like okay now long term without the figureheads it's gonna boil down into just a bunch of factions and more tribes it feels less like mass extinction and more like trust busting yeah right so like think standard oil and then it turned into all these different oil companies that actually grew in power over time there's just more of them yeah yeah that's one also a lot of them are just going to go into legitimate businesses of various kinds you know marijuana legalization in mexico is in a process that has been taken years uh vapes are federally illegal in mexico they're federally illegal yeah interesting so there's already kind of the settings of some of this drug trade being legalized and then some of these people just going into legitimate business you know the mafia got disappeared here because they went into construction and into politics that's right they did a nice job and looks good and in mexico that's the same thing they went into tequila they went into politics and but is that just how they launder money because they still do all the other shit i think i think i was going to do the other shit they're just not going to do it at the volume that they have and they're just not going to be their own government as they have been got it um again we we in the past you would see el mencho and jalisco and you wouldn't you the government would be like the government was afraid to go after right because he was governing there and if they don't believe that once they kill them most a lot of mexico burned because they told their soldiers that govern in these areas to go and burn shit so you have that level i think is going away right that's what's going away um the amount of firearms and bullets and everything like that coming into the country unless the united states is ready to do a naval blockade of everything coming in and out of mexico that's probably not going to go away as well um and unless the united states decides to change it's a it's a kind of a gun rights and people want to sacrifice that somehow and get rid of all the millions of guns so this shit is going to still go on and also like technology is going to change like it's already as it already is cnc machines can manufacture an ar-15 in a room somewhere a lot of the rifles that are being found in some of these cartel hands 3d printed or or made like some of them are now going that route uh they're holding off whole military battalions by dropping bomblets on them from you know drones so it's modifying itself yeah shifting uh i think where we're headed is the whole classic el chapo el mencho el mayo figureheads governing a whole region and just leading through fear that's the simp it's fading away it's like thanos snap are they going away it's criminality and violence in mexico going away no no but that is leading through fear the way i understand it i mean it's it's uh turning a giant criminal organization that would govern a region and it would blow up helicopters in the sky that tried to arrest them it's turning them into smaller groups that are harder to see that are more infiltrated and more entwined into everyday life it's uh it's them getting into legitimate businesses is then getting into other types of things that might not draw the attention of a u.s government but again i don't think this is about drugs and cartels i think this is about regime change that's what this is all regime change yeah the the united states wants to put people in power in mexico that it can go back to the way that things were in the 70s and 80s and that could include people that are now doubling this legitimate businessman who used to be could be i mean they did put a guy in charge who used to run al-qaeda in syria so i guess it's not out and they invited him to talk about basketball talk about surreal yeah he seems like a nice guy right seems like you know likable likable likable terrorist like a cool watch i say that smiling and people cool watch like all respect to them i i don't know i i've i've met people like that i guess in in my own way in a different part of the world and i i know you know who is going to like that's a great question like if they do a venezuela in mexico which i think that's where we're going probably um it doesn't make sense to take out claudia where she is right and again she i don't think she's targeted i think it's going to be more about changing the whole morena movement and shifting it to something that is more aligned with the u.s interest that's right and i don't see them putting in a strongman in there now there's one name that sounds a lot as far as the next presidential election in mexico who's that omar garcia garcia harfush omar garcia harfush yeah it's a hard name omar garcia harfush uh sounds like a fucking terrorist from 24 he came out of the uh that's him he seems to be doing an amazing job um secretary of security and citizen protection of mexico doing an amazing job he's doing a pretty good job citizen protection well um he's taken down a lot of high-level cartel guys okay he's doing he's in charge of those swarm uh operations going after local governments and arresting municipal police officers and municipal uh um governors uh he they try the the the four that's cuatro letras the four letters the new generation cartel tried to assassinate him at one point in mexico city when he was in charge of security in mexico city proper um he is uh at the head of all uh federal operations right now in mexico apparently intelligence wise and he is the strongman of mexico people call him batman and batman yeah and ladies swoon over this guy i mean he's a good looking dude he's a good looking dude there's like uh and i think he i think he's on his way to being the next president of mexico and i think he fits what the united states would like well how would you describe his act his personal politics like can you put him in a box there no he's a he's a career he's a he's a career cop like he made his his name in the federal police he went through some of the same training that i went through um he had family members in politics and he was in he had influential family that's who's been basically got that's who probably got him into some of the positions that he's had he was named as somebody involved in the disappearances of those uh students those uh normalista students uh way back uh but i don't he was just in the room with some of the people that were were he's a key figure he's a strong guy he's your age too do you know guys who know him yes i do yeah what do they say about him they trust them with their lives really yep that's a good sign it's again i i think that's what we need in mexico right now you thought you want to talk about true change how do you change mexico from within well you get a career guy like that guy who's actually seen everything from the inside you get somebody that's actually been involved in successful uh policing operations and and operations related to public safety who has actually changed things in mexico that guy's changing shit all right not to be a cynic but how does a guy like that not get killed on the way to getting office by people who don't want him or once he actually gets to office not get completely undermined by other people around him who are not operating on the same team there's no way and yeah he has a giant target on his back right yeah i agree with you how does he do it i have no idea uh right now he is in a very hard spot because he is basically next to the president of mexico uh he is a man who has to toe the line as far as the political rhetoric and everything that's happening toe the line yeah with her like with what she okay got it and uh but i've heard some of my american friends who have actually interacted with him uh say he's like they like him here in the u.s the americans like yeah like some of your navy seal guys or some of the people that i talk to okay like him and that who are involved in decision making like him las tres letras no not las tres letras um but some people who are involved in politics and decision making like him uh i don't know i think that i think he's probably in the running there's no other name out there sounding as far as the next president of mexico and we're still off a way is off off elections but keep an eye on this if he's in the running he's probably in the running he gets put into the cabinet position of secretaria de gobierno de gobernación which is basically our vice presidency oh wow if he gets placed there he's in the running yeah he's the next in line he's the next in line that's my prediction it's one of my predictions i guess i'll pull it out there you've had a lot of good predictions over the years yeah if you run the tape like on your old rogan podcast in like 2018 2019 i think it was 2019 where you did both of them yeah and then you run again last year but like a lot of the shit you said you're not going to yeah strangely tracking yeah august i said on the on that rogan show i said somewhere in the hills of jalisco some shit's going to go down i thought the americas were going to be it but you know they were at least with the drone and the eye in the sky um i think i think he's in the running um now is that going to change anything i think things are already changing mexico and the government right now right right in mexico right now is under pressure to make the all the changes now that's why they're going so hard off all these people that's why they probably went after lomencho directly even and took that hit think about it they went after lomencho right before the world cup in the state where some of those games are going to be held that doesn't sound like a political decision that sounds like a desperate decision by some people in charge or somebody in charge at a high level saying you know what we'll take the hit cleaning up the streets before all the people come in maybe but why would you cut like mexico was on fire before the world cup that's what i'm saying like the opposite effect yeah but apparently the world cup's going pretty well uh people are liking it there's a bunch of violence there's there's schools with dirt floors in mexico there's a lot of horrible shit that money could be put forth but like you know soccer yay soccer football you you called it a disgraceful event or something earlier i hate you're not a fan i hate fucking i hate all that shit why uh it's predatory it's predatory yeah fifa is the correct word i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i mean there's a lot of documentaries on that but like the actual fifa seems to suck for sure but like the actual event of like a lot of different countries coming together and like kumbaya and over sport a little bit you're not into that um the iranian team is staying in tijuana my hometown right now because they can't stay in the u.s uh it's cool but it's being utilized as a political tool by morena to say like hey they can stay here in mexico where they're safe they don't want to stay in the united states and if you go to the hotel where they're staying at there's a flag iranian flag and a mexican flag outside which is like pretty interesting to see um so it's politics there um you know one of the things that really caught my um every now and then i'll go out with some of the madres buscadoras the madres buscadoras uh there are organizations across mexico where they're basically looking for the bones of their children that were that have been missing for years so they look for they're they're basically mothers who organize as in search parties to look for the bodies of their missing kids um i i can't even begin if if anybody wants to see the effects just go down there and if everyone wants to support like an actual good cause what's the name of that again las madres buscadoras and it's like it's it's it's a name that basically a lot of organizations use out there yes some of them have been compromised and used for political means and and shit like that i get it um morena doesn't like those women calling them out constantly about the fact that they not only inhibit their searches sometimes but they don't send any protection with them uh one of those madres buscadoras actually went to the president and said like hey they're trying to kill me and then they did so looking for their kids bones for their bodies something they'll go around uh dirt dump sites with uh with steel probes poke them in the ground and if it comes out smelling like body we dig um wallets shoes are found and documented ids um a lot of them were setting up protests in mexico city around the world cup because of i mean like how how can we be in a jubilant celebration where there's thousands of people missing yeah and where there's industrial level body disposal and mass graves being found like that's their and i'm i'm with them and the president of mexico comes out and mockingly says that they're being utilized as political ploy to make the morena party look bad that it's because it's like how how are we dedicating all these resources to this soccer event when there are women who are like fainting in the sun without any sort of police protection going into some of these horrible fucking places getting shot at sometimes for simply looking for a body to bury that's what i don't understand on my end um it's crazy when i started my career and it's a story i've told a few times and it's like it it communicates everything about mexico and my experience there mexico is a beautiful place it has amazing people not all of mexico is bad not all mexicans are cartel members or or anything like that but it's it's just it's just like not all americans are the tres letras that's right um there's like good people on both sides and people that just want to be fucking left alone they want to have the ability to make the best lives for themselves and their kids and just not be fucking harassed extorted taxed fucking all that shit i get it we're very much alike as a as a country with a lot i see the similarities between both of us we've been told this whole story about being separate we're the same um when i started my career uh they told me like hey let's go go get the bolt cutters i was like fucking excited about it it's like oh fuck we're on a raid uh should i take the battering ram no just the bolt cutters uh first thing i did uh in my career was cut a kid down from a bridge who was hung with some electrical wire with a sign on him some sort of vengeance from one cartel to the other um while i was cutting him down we put a truck underneath him so the body wouldn't fall is we're doing a favor because one of the guys that i was working with was banging one of the forensic women the weird fucking story of that but i was there doing that it's like fuck what the fuck am i into um we're slowly trying to let this body down it just flops down uh family shows up uh you you can dehumanize and i i got some of that programming during my training where like you know the fuck those people those mugrosos the bad guys malandros i bought into all that shit that's programming but at that moment like that was a red pill for me that fucking changed it um the women that showed up i think were mothers and sisters um this body that i was treating as a thing that i was just annoyed with was the most valuable thing to them son brother that's life gone yeah um i went over to my friend and i said like fuck that is the cruelest thing i've ever seen somebody do to a human being and he turned to me and it's like you're dumb that is an act of kindness an act of kindness yeah at least they have a body to bury that is a low bar but that's what we have down there sometimes yeah we are horrified about that normalized it for years you'll hear you'll see somebody get shot across the street you'll look you'll duck and you'll finish eating your tacos and then step over the body and i'm glad it wasn't me you know we are we have normalized this shit for decades and you know mexican normal in some places is an absurd normal yeah um and there's some horrific shit that happens up here that horrifies me you know you know you talk about being afraid of cartels i'm afraid of a weirdo showing up at a school yeah yeah uh you talk about uh people smuggling and and and child trafficking and we're standing in the country that is the consumer of most of that yep uh we talk about drugs and proliferation of violence in mexico but then we're in the place that consumes a lot of that and then sends a lot of those guns down there as well yes um so we're this is like a very toxic relationship we have going on um we need each other more than we would than we're being led on to think both of our countries are tied to the hip genetically yeah yes there's been a i think i don't remember there's like a viral ad where they were uh talking to some people in texas who were pretty adamant about them being american and not mexican at all and all of them got dna tested and they all had some mexican in them you know i can't have that um it is a travesty i think that we have been led into this position where you know there's a you know i'm all about i'm all about people with the rule of law and just people you know being able to live uh most mexicans that come up here you know what their dream is they go back home yeah to make make a better life be able to send money home and then make enough that they can actually make a life where they came from yeah a lot of that from a lot of um but why can't they though it's because when if they go back home or or they hear news from back home what are they going back to yeah so sinaloa is on fire um durango is about to turn into a new front uh jalisco is pretty spicy in some parts uh baja and some ways it's getting gentrified and in other ways it's a lot of the people who are leaving sinaloa who are now setting up shop in places like baja are gonna maybe turn it into another sinaloa later um we're in a cycle the cycle yeah but whatever this is going on right now politically within the united states and its current attention on mexico independently of the ethics around it independently of its if it's good or bad or whatever you want to think about it it is changing the game down there things are changing people who are untouchable are dead now right government officials who have always been on the take or have in some way shape or form been involved in all this are now being hunted internationally with red notices and that is something that's never happened before so we you have to realize and notice that that is actually happening and it is a thing that many mexicans have wanted for years it's a start maybe something but a group of marines crossing into tijuana different story and having a having a shootout somewhere in downtown jalisco uh with the police because that's the cartel in some places that's a different story um it is a very dangerous thing to think that you can go to mexico with all the military force that united states has and not turn a single cartel head into a martyr and now yeah yeah and now you want to talk about something scary yep think about a mexican taliban you know mexicans are true believers as war fighters you know we've been fighting it out with each other for a while yeah i get technology and all that but uh think about it you have a very antagonistical country in mexico if we go into that is now inspired to defend its uh sovereignty um you have the social movement now kind of moving in within the united states of all the people that are living up here that have direct family ties and blood in mexico yeah dissent is going to happen here sabotage is going to happen here um most of the uh the the jose's luis's and fernando's in the mexican uh and the in the u.s uh marine corps uh are probably going to be conflicted with their uh new travel with their new travel arrangements and their their their designated enemies now oh that's interesting um so i i there's a lot to be avoided that i would recommend the united states going to think about before they try and attempt something of that nature um which is again why i think they're going to focus on these political figures yeah because this isn't about that i don't think they're going to go into a ground invasion although they say that a lot i think it's probably going to be some sort of targeted mass arrest which is what that list is or a single figurehead that symbolizes corruption and come and union between criminal organizations and politics in mexico and after that happens moving forward with a more agreeable uh government yeah but again this is not about good versus evil this is not about the right side versus the bad side this is uh this is a survival on both sides i think in the united states is looking out for its best interests nobody's against you they're for themselves in this case the united states is out for themselves yeah all right let's call it a day back to the elementary thing but before that i just gotta go to the bathroom real quick go we'll be right back all right guys so it turns out ed and i did an entire second episode after we got back from the bathroom break so that will be coming out on my channel soon if you are not already subscribed please hit that subscribe button so you don't miss it and if you'd like to join my clipping community for a chance to make money doing edits of the show you can join via the discord link in my description below finally if you'd like to join patreon that link is also my description see you guys for the next one this episode sponsored by she's birdie you lock the hotel room door then check it again and maybe one more time because even the nicest room can feel unfamiliar at night that's why she's birdie created birdiebox with she's birdie you can bring peace of mind with you birdiebox is a portable travel door alarm for hotels dorms airbnbs and anywhere you stay away from home just attach it to the door frame switch it on and if someone opens the door birdiebox blasts a loud siren and flashing alarm to alert you and everyone nearby because the best part of travel isn't worrying it's 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