Camp Gagnon - The DARK World of Cartels: Cannibalism, Cults & Catholicism

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

Dave Franke joins us in the tent today to talk about his career fighting cartels and their gruesome crimes as an officer for the Secretaría de Seguridad Pública (Mexico's Secretariat of Security and Civilian Protection), which is responsible for public safety, police coordination, and internal security in Mexico...WELCOME TO CAMP 🏕️Shoutout to our sponsor: RelayJoin the Relay App community HERE: http://www.joinrelay.app/camp 👕🧢 GET YOUR CAMP DRIP HERE: http://camp-rd.com🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.com🎩👽 Daily Dose Of History Here: https://www.dailytodayinhistory.comTimestamps:0:00 The Cartels Religious Rituals9:54 Prevalence of Santa Muerte Inside Cartels16:43 Cartels Morbid Killing Methods23:04 Catholic Similarities to Santa Muerte26:36 Cannibalism Inside Cartels30:56 Drug Use In Cartels33:27 Santeria Priests + Adolfo Constanzo34:47 Cartels Showing Public Demonstration of Power #podcast #crime #history

Santa Muerre or Nartico-Tatanismo, which means like satanic narco-trafficking or members. When they capture you, they're going to torture you. It's going to be a prolonged thing. You're going to be dead in a few days and you're going to cut off your head and they're going to stick you in some unnamed grave somewhere or leave you on the side of the road as a message or hung from a bridge. This is Dave Frank, and he has seen firsthand the bloody rituals of Santa Mwerta, the saint of death that is deified by many in the Mexican cartels. He's seen the rituals he's been in the rooms where the black masses are held,

and he's witnessed the chilling grip that Santa Morte has on Mexico's most dangerous people. You'll have people in Mexico that will kill somebody, and they'll have defibrillators there to try to bring them back to life so they can kill them more than once. You've seen this? Yeah. He's seen how faith can be twisted into a weapon, how priests can be used to bless assassins, and how cartels use death itself as a way to control their soldiers and terrify their enemies. And today, Dave talks about how the cartels can be used to bless assassins, and how the cartels.

tells used priests and occult rituals to tighten their grip on power. The gruesome acts carried out in the name of Santa Marta and why this figure's influence stretches from cartel leaders to everyday Catholics. This isn't just crime. This is religion weaponized. So sit back, relax, and welcome to King. Dave Frank, how are you? Good, Mark Anand. Yes, sir. Good to be here, man. We're here in your basement. I'm really excited to talk today about a very specific topic that I've been fascinated by. and I think you're the guy to talk about it with. You've had a fascinating career serving as a bodyguard for a Mexican general.

And spent several years protecting him, getting in firefights with the cartels. And there's a specific subset of sort of cartel occultism that I've been, I've come across. There is. It's a very interesting sort of mix of like Catholicism meets like Centaria that meets like ritual elements that goes along with. Sort of the morality of these cartels. So I'm curious from your perspective of someone that's dealt closely with these cartels. Have you witnessed or even heard any type of ritual elements or sort of almost satanic elements that goes along with the way that these cartels operate? Well, definitely.

I mean, right off the top, you know, a lot of times there will be old people or they didn't even have to be old. But like the cartels, there's one story that comes in mind right off the bat where they'll, they'll, kidnap these people and torture them in their house. It's, I'm going to stay on topic because they could really go off on a rant about what the Bible or what spirituality and religion in general does for most humans. The threat of a hereafter or a punishment hereafter keeps a lot of people in check because they're afraid of paying some type of eternal punishment or damnation. Right. Going to hell keeps people, you know, focus. Going to hell keeps people in check. So in Mexico,

So the cartel, because of Santa Muerte or narco satanism, which means like satanic narco-trafficking or members, they don't have this same type of inhibition. So they'll do stuff like dismember bodies or they'll torture people, have them pull out all of their money and rob them routinely or take over their houses, force them to sell their houses, and by sell, I mean give away to people. But there's one story in particular where we went in and they had kept this guy all week, torturing him and beating him. And they burn his body in two different places in this house. And it kind of hits home because it was very close to where I was where I lived.

And they burn his, when you burn a body, it melts their fat. So I don't know if you, we've all fried bacon or something like that. but when you burn a body, the fat will start melting on the floor, and so you can slip in it actually when you're burning a body enough. And these people, when they have these rituals, they'll do all types of dismemberment, peeling people's faces off. The one person I'm talking about was an older gentleman, and they had tortured them all week,

pulling the daily limit out of his ATM, so robbing them periodically. And it's really a cruel thing to go through because a lot of times when you think about crime or whatever, it's something that happens and it's over. You'll get robbed. They'll break into your house. In Mexico, they'll sit there and they'll prolong it and they'll sit there and torture these people as they go along. And there's no like of inhibition like, hey, my God doesn't want me doing this. Santa Muerre is so prevalent in Mexico because it's such a Catholic country that they're so used to having just a church and saints and these things in their life that they found this saint and mixed it with Santa Santa Ria and different elements of Satanism like combined it to create their own patron saint.

Right. It's basically the patron saint of death. It is the patrons. That's exactly what it is. One of the things that we would do, I mean to finish with cleaning. the, it just really hits you right in the stomach when you try to be, remain humane, because when you're going after these people, there's a certain portion of you that just converts to being just, I don't want to say it because I don't like to try to upplay it that much,

but you become savage and brutal to the point to where you're prepared to confront whatever, the same level of savagery and brutality that they're going to put your way. What do you mean, Dave? like if you see any pictures with my tack vest we have one round that we'll keep in our tack vest well you don't see that on american cops yeah on american cops you're not going to be captured and tortured for a month or whatever and they're not going to cut off your head when they capture and they will there's a wait so what what do you keep in the vest i keep around one round one round and that's for that's to take off my own dome because they're going to torture you and cut off

your head that's how you're going to end and it's going to be painful You're going to give up where your own family members live. You know, I got a wife that I love dearly, man, and you're going to give up your own generals. You're going to give up your own movements. Everything that you know, they're going to get out of you. And I know that this episode is on narco-Satism and Santoria and Santorya and San Martimerte. But one of the things that I want to say is when you put on a uniform,

it's very easy to be that guy. that, oh, I'm tough, I'm the hero, we're going to win every single time. But that only happens when you're not confronting an enemy that has been so over the top dedicated to fighting you every day on your own home turf to where they can get you when you're in uniform or not. And when they capture you, they're going to torture you. It's going to be a prolonged thing. And you're going to convert from being the tough guys.

hero winner that wins every time to you're the loser you're going to be dead in a few days and they're going to cut off your head and they're going to stick you in some unnamed grave somewhere or leave you on the side of the road as a message or hung from a bridge so this guy that was being tortured and they were taken out his ATM and maxing it out every day what is the purpose of the torture like they already have everything that they want from them they're torturing it that's just it there's no moral inhibitions when you live with something because this is This episode's on narco-Satanism and Santomwerte. I'm not a Catholic.

My wife's Catholic. I'm a Christian. I believe very strongly in the hereafter. I believe, for my own personal case, no disrespect to anybody else. But I believe in Jesus, and I believe that it's something that has to play out in my day-to-day life because lip service is just that. Catholic's same thing. They go to a church. They go to Mass.

They have to behave a certain way. Mormons, I know a lot about this church, too. I've read the book of Mormon. Mormon several times, they pay their tent. It's not just words. There's action behind it. And a big proponent of that is the fact that we are admonished to do or behave a certain way.

With Sanamwerth, they're not at all held to the same type of moral code that we are. In fact, they're kind of encouraged by themselves and their own saint, the saint of death. They're glorifying death. And so when they're torturing people, they're doing it just because they're accustomed to it because that's just the way they do things on a daily basis. What's up, people? Let's take a break really quick because I'm going to talk to the fellas. Let me ask you something. Are you stuck? Do you feel like you're strongly with work or relationships or maybe your marriage? Or just feeling like you're not like the dude you want to be? You ever just, you know, thinking to yourself like, man, I should be farther along right now. I'd just get caught in these cycles where I just kind of lose self-control. Well, here's the thing that nobody likes to. to admit, it is possible that porn might be part of the problem. Yes, I know. I said the P word. Now, look, I don't want to be overly moralistic here, okay? But if you're someone that struggles with

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And you can break the cycle with Relay. So go ahead and use the code Gagdon, Gagin, Gagin, N-O-N for a seven-day free trial if you feel like this thing has just got a grip on you, that you're not able to, to, let go. That is join relay, J-O-I-N, Relay-R-E-L-A-Y. Dot app, APP-P-S-C-C-Camp, and use the code Gagnon for a seven-day-day-free trial. Don't put it off. Be the man you're supposed to be today, today. Now, let's get back to the show. Do you find that Santa Morte is prevalent throughout all the cartels? Do people have tattoos? Do they have insignias? Like, how does it manifest? Well, here, I'll give you some evidence of it. So one of the things that, like I would be tasked, the general that I worked for was the public secretary of security. So he's like the boss of all the police, right? And by all the

police, I mean like all the police. So any of the municipal police, any of the state police, whatever, he's in charge of that whole area of the country or that state that I was in. It was a better way to put it. So one of the things that we do is like in prison or in jails in the United States, they have different gang modules. Well, the same is true in Mexico. They have different blocks for different cartels that they put in, because obviously if they put different members of the cartel together, unlike what Buckele's got going on with 18th Street and Marissela Trucha. And to be clear, Marisovatrucha and 18th Street aren't really that active in Mexico

because the cartels are not going to allow someone else to operate on their turf. And I know I've seen an American outstown point. It's a cartel thing, and you're asking if someone, Santamuerte is prevalent. Here's some evidence. 18th Street and Marisselva-Truccia don't really have Santomwarte tattoos on them to the extent that the cartels will. And even in different blocks in the prison, which we would go in and inspect, to take away guns,

take away knives, take away, contraband, any type of contraband. And a lot of them would have these Santomwerite tattoos all over their back, on their wrist, with rosaries. but the rosary instead of having a cross is going to have a picture of the Santamuerte. And I even had one too because you can go to the store. They're everywhere in Mexico. Yeah, they're everywhere. You can walk down like, we can walk down to 7-Eleven right now and go pick up some Reese's pieces

and a pack of cigarettes if we smoke, which we don't. But the same thing's true in Mexico. Everywhere you go, they have Santa Muerte, altars, stores for buying like the Grim Reaper candles, grim reaper candles in different color, gold, red, green, for different things, money, hell. Wow. Now, do they actually, is it just a cool symbol that people like to wear that represents something, or do they truly worship

di Santa Morte? Mexico is probably the most religious country I've ever seen in my entire life, outside of the Vatican, obviously, or Israel. They might be more religious than Israel. There's constantly marches in the street, glorifying Jesus and stuff like that.

And just because people who are worshipping Santamuerre doesn't mean that religious, I don't want to say fanaticism because it'll sound like I'm disrespecting Catholics in Mexico. I'm not. But they definitely take their religion seriously. And they are completely serious in their shrines that they built, and their dedication to worshiping their God. And one time, there was a guy that we caught. When we asked him him, and he was a Sicari, he was a hitman for a cartel.

We asked him, you know, you know that you're going to probably die or spend the rest of your life in prison. And his answer to us is that he would rather live for a few years as a king that spend the rest of his life living in poverty. And he was completely dedicated to Santamwerte. Like in a religious way. In a religious way. He meant it. He had all the tattoos. He had everything.

He had the pendant. And I mean, I wasn't asking him that question. at that time because he was wearing the pendant was just kind of as a matter-of-fact thing. But his whole mentality was just glorifying death in the fact that he knew that someday he was going to die. And anybody that falls into his hands are going to meet the same fate because they're just completely dedicated to it. And for some contrast, if you will, my general had, the generals don't wear a red ring. They're all in a fraternity. They all go to this thing called colloquial, hierocchio, heroic, Militar, which is in the Distrito Federal, in the federal district in the capital.

So just think of like a major military sorority, and they all got their sorority, and they wind up leaving that place, going to different places in the country and working together. My general had a best friend from school that he worked together, and I'm going to leave his name out of it, but he would tell me all the time, Frank, quit glorifying death because I'm like, oh, we're going to go get the bad guys. I mean, I was gung, oh, man. And he would tell me all the time. there's no glory in death, it's just death.

And then you go to there and you start working and you see it, and you realize that there is no glory and death, it's just a dead person laying there. Their soul is departed. They're not there anymore. And getting into like my coworkers or other people that have self-deleted, a big component of that is you start seeing dead people and you see them without the soul

and you realize there was a guy that I folded up on a tabla in Spanish. I don't know what you call it. It's kind of like a stretcher, a wooden stretcher that the coroner uses. And we had to fold his body up like a butterfly because he was all broken in different pieces. And we put him on this stretcher. And you can tell that it's just a pile of bones and meat. I'm not trying to disrespect that guy at all.

And I've never taken pictures of the dead. There's a lot of people that do take pictures of the dead. I don't. But this general will tell me that hey you know you can't glorify death because it's just death it's not good someone's departed their soul's gone and it's just a pile of flesh there so you start seeing this and it gives you a callous but on the other side of that you have people that glorify death in santamwerth they look at it like it's something glorious they look at like depriving someone of life or torturing them or making them suffer is building their own power and they do believe that. I mean, they're just like with the vacuum that we've talked about

in other episodes, there are people that strive to live their short existence and because it's going to come to a violent end, either at the hands of the government or the hands of infighting amongst themselves or at the hand of another cartel. And then even once you become the man and you haven't fought anybody else in the cartel, even members within your own organization, also worship the same thing and are looking at trying to approve their own status within their same organization. And you see it even in different members of the mafia in different countries. But there they take it to another level.

There they have the spiritual acceptance or not even the acceptance, what's the word, approval, to try to be as bad as possible. You've had people in Mexico. Here's how bad it goes. You'll have people in Mexico that will kill somebody and they'll have defibrillators there to try to bring them back to life so they can kill them more than once. No, that's happened. That's a fact. You've seen this?

Yeah. Yeah. They've had defibrillators. They'll kill somebody and they'll bring them, they'll kill them, and they'll sit there and try to bring them back to life so they can kill them again. And is there, is it just brutality or is there a ritual element where they think that by killing them again, they get more energy or more power? I have to think that there's a ritual element. to it too because I mean you'll see things like there's a cartel video where there's killing someone in a gunfight which happens I mean that's just like whatever and I'm not being disrespectful or

dismissive of the value of any person's life be they a government soldier agent or even being a criminal because all life has intrinsic value and I want to say that to the camera to make it clear all life, your life, my life, your life has intrinsic value because there's something there that we as humans cannot give to us, which is a living, breathing soul. And so there's killing people in the course of fighting. And by fighting, I mean someone's not going home, not UFC play fighting, which I've done. Combat. Someone's not going home. But then there's torturing people and killing them and taking joy and pleasure in it, or trying to promote your own self-power with your own evil deity.

And that does happen. And I know that happens because they'll sit there. And the reason why I know that it happens is I've seen instances where they've peeled the face off of people like masks and then played with it or other instances where they're torturing people that have legitimately done their cartel wrong. There's, it's got a punishment or Castigo in Spanish. There's a punishment element to it because they've done something incorrect. An example off the top of my head in Cincoinginos at 5 o'clock in the afternoon,

they killed a transit cop and his wife. And they had tortured him for like 24 hours. But the guy was working for them. He had done something incorrect. And so there's a penalty to be paid for that, obviously. However, there's certain levels to it. And when you're like peeling someone's face, off where there was another guy where they had cut off his uh cut off his knees or his lower legs

cut off his forearms and then we're cutting out his stomach like the fat off of his stomach and then they were um beheading him and when they were beheading him the human body has like an instinct to it to where he's intuitively trying to defend himself from having his head cut off and this isn't just one or two people. This is several people taking glee in it. So they're operating as a group being that gruesome of people. And it's doing one of two things. It's either improving their power on a satanic level or it's sending, or both, sending a very clear message to the rest of the people that this is how we operate and this is the way that we're going to do it.

And if you cross us, there's a definite price to be paid. And that's what's going on. So is human sacrifice, like a very clear element of this where they try to, like, they'll create an altar and have like a ritual sacrifice or someone? Yeah, that's definitely an instance to it. And I have to say that that's an instance to it. I have tattoos. Other people have tattoos.

But when you see everybody in their organization branded with the same tattoo, worshiping a deity that is the literal saintly representation of death. and it can only mean one thing. And then they go and they build altars to it. There's like narco cemeteries in Mexico. They're in Sinaloa. They're very expensive, very ornate. Everybody's seen videos of them.

That's really the only region of the entire country where they've been built because the rest of the country, they came down on it so hard that they haven't really built them. But even there, they have images and saints to Santamuerre, and then they'll go out and they'll build the altar. So they've got their tombs. adorned with it. They've got their bodies adorned with it. They've got altars on the side of the road. They've got altars that they've built where they've had bala serras or combat have ambushed government

soldiers or agents. So I definitely, and you know, this could get me into trouble making this video because some people might be like, you know what, we're going to go shut that gringo up. But just what I have seen, they definitely, yeah, there's definitely rituals and musicians. a human sacrifice. And the reason I know that is because they'll just disappear people that they didn't have to. There are videos of this, of them just killing people indiscriminately for the hell of it, that they didn't have to kill migrants passing through Mexico. I think they took a board and killed like 138 people or something.

The exact number escapes me. But it was about 100 to 150 people. And it was a caravan of migrants crossing through Mexico, men and women. and they just decided, you know, we're going to kill them all. And that's the level of value that life has for these people. And the only way it can be that way is if they are purposely doing this to try to perpetuate or promote themselves within their own religion. What's up, guys?

I'm on the road. I would love to see you guys there. Obviously, if you don't know, I'm a stand-up comedian. And stand-up comedy is my passion. It's the thing I love to do. And seeing you guys all come out to the shows truly makes my love. life. I hang out after the show and say what's up to everybody. So if you want to come through, check out the show, say what's up to me. It would mean the world. You can see me at all these

dates and more on my website, mark Agnon Live.com. And I'll see you guys on the road. Do you think that some of these people that sort of practice Santamarte and sort of worship this saint of death are also Catholic? Like, do they do both at the same time? If you're Mexico and you came from a Mexican mother, you're definitely Catholic, without a doubt. Right. So they do both. kind of like they'll yeah I mean it did well I mean Santa so that's like obviously the in Mexico everything's either masculine feminine or or neutral their words so you either have Santo or Santa Santa Muerre so that's their name for saint right and then with Saint death that's

what's the only religion that has saints I know you're studied you know what's up so I mean the Catholic religion is the only religion in the world that has saints well there could be Greek Orthodox, I think they have saints, but basically It's a Christian offshoot, and they're basically combining them together. Right, exactly. So they're able to kind of do both. They are. So, yeah, it's definitely them venerating death as a saint itself. Wow.

And do you think that goes all the way to the top? Like, obviously, some low-level guys. No, it's, when you arrest or capture cartel, no matter what cartel member, no matter what cartel they come from, when you're asking them questions, there's a peculiarity that it'll come about. If you were an example, capture a Crip, if you're an American cop capturing, a Crip gang member, blood gang member, vice lord, folk nation, and you start asking them certain questions, their answers aren't going to be the same. But when you capture members of different cartels, whether it's Gulfo, Zeta, whatever it is, and you start asking them,

questions about certain things. All of their answers are like paper cutter or cookie cutter answers. Like how long have you been a member, two weeks, how often you get paid? Well, I haven't been paid yet, so I don't know where they call it the kaha. So they don't know where it's at. All of their answers are like cookie cutter answers when you're like interrogating these guys. And I'm not going to get into that more. But I'm going to say that it's very much the same across organizations, right?

That's really interesting. It's very interesting. It's peculiar, too. And one of the reasons why it's peculiar is from the top down, before they took out Wap, or Chapo, Wachin Guzman, the older generation and even the Adiano brothers in Tijuana, these are sons of Catholic mothers that brought them up a certain way in the church. If you're a Mexican and you don't go to Mass,

there's something wrong with you type deal. very respectful, very honorable, hardworking, even though they chose the course that they did, very much backed by the church. But when they took them out, they created a newer generation. And this newer generation has been a lot more exposed to Santamwer. Where it's a lot more prevalent, the way that video games are prevalent amongst everybody and their mothers

played call of duty these days or whatever it is. The same thing in Mexico, except with religion. and this religion is Santamuerte. So everybody that comes in, their brother has it, their friend has it, every member of their cartel has it. And so, yeah, it's definitely growing and very much from a top down. These people move up in their organizations. Are there other ritual elements that you've seen?

Like, are there, like, black masses? Are there, like, is there cannibalism or anything like that? Cannibalism I've heard of. Like, they will get their enemies and they will take out a body part. typically the heart or a liver and they'll eat portions of it to try to grow their own power. But I don't think, I mean, I don't know how much that would cross reference with that happening in Africa, as I've heard, to where even in some of the indigenous tribes in certain places, I think that when they've had war, they do that. But definitely in Mexico, I've definitely heard of that happening. Really?

Yeah. For real. And they're doing it to gain some type of power, sometimes. of like sacred energy or something. I think they are. I mean, why would you do that? Yeah.

You're not hungry. I've had, we've had nights where we've gone out and been at work, had something horrible happen, and then we go hit the taco shack on the way back to base or whatever. I mean, you're going to eat. It stands to reason.

Something that we've never done in our uniforms to sit there and think, hey, we just killed that guy. We're going to go over and cut out his heart and eat it. I mean, and that does happen. And I'm not the only one to say that. There's a lot of people that said that.

And I'm saying that. For the audience, I just want you to know, I didn't know my life was ever going to go this way. I didn't know I was going to be having this interview with you, and I'm grateful to have the opportunity to do it. The whole reason I'm trying to do this is try to help the American people and the Mexican people. So it's important that I'm honest in what I've said. None of the videos I do are monetized. I'm doing this because it's a subject that's important to me. The American people are important to me, and the Mexican people are important to me.

and if I ever have to pay a certain price talking about any of this, because I might get someone out there that sees these videos and think, hey, I don't like that guy talking about us the way that he does, and it could be costly. I'm saying this because I care and everything I'm saying is as truthful as I can be. And I know with the brutality that I've seen in Mexico, that the way people are treated has to be something other than just terminating an enemy or terminating that someone that's an obstacle in the way of something that you want financially,

politically, because, I mean, in Mexico, a lot of people have been, a lot of politicians have been murdered, a lot of stuff that we would do is create VIP escorts, security details, and what have you. There's a thing with assassinating a politician to try to advance a political goal, try to advance in a criminal goal, whatever it is. and then there's going out and hacking people up and trying to bring them back to life, and then kill them again, cutting off their skin, and making them suffer as much as possible. And the only reason to do that would either be because you're psychopathic and you just get off on it

or if you have some type of religious motive to do it. And when you see altars all over the place in Mexico the way that you do, and this isn't something that I'm saying, you can look it up online for yourself. There's ample evidence. There's a cornyucopia of evidence, if you will. it's spiritually related. Wow. It has to be.

Yeah, I guess the, I guess the nature of it and how widespread it is. It's in every state. Right. Top the bottom. And then it's in so many of these cartels. After Calderon decided that he's going to declare war on the cartels. He went from four or five cartels in the country. And even before that, I think there was only two or three.

Around 2008, 2012, right when I was getting in there. it just exploded. And then all of a sudden, four cartels becomes eight or nine. And you've got these major cartels. And then you've got even regional cartels that are offshoots with that, Los Templadios and other ones, all of them with their own kidded gear and their own badges, and they wear it as a badge of honor.

Every single one of these cartels are all supporting Santamerte, tattoos, pendants, when you go in and inspective prisons, all the furniture they're making have carvings of it on it. They have altars in their cells. I mean, it's just, it's everywhere. It's so prevalent. It's like going to, it's like going to the Bronx and not seeing graffiti. Right.

It's that problem. It's everywhere. I'm curious if there's a drug component. Like, obviously the cartels are trafficking drugs and creating drugs and facilitating that trade, but are they doing drugs as well? I would have to say that depends on who you are. when you get to Mexico, and I've talked about this before, when you get to Mexico, as I did it, as a tourist, you don't know what's what. In fact, you're going over, you're buying your yogurt from Extra, which is a Mexican version of 7-Eleven.

You don't know what's what. And then once you get into it, you see that there's lookouts on every corner, and you see the prevalence of how many people are actually involved in what we termed the cartel, I mean in quotation marks. It's so widespread and prevalent because there's no jobs there that there are some low-level people that work and do cartel lookout stuff on the corner. Yeah, they're probably going to be doing drugs. Some higher-level people that are maybe like lieutenants that are in charge of selling drugs, small amounts of marijuana and methamphetamines and whatnot, they'll be doing drugs. But when you start getting into your upper echelons, the people there,

do you think that if there's someone that's going to be charged with taking out, bunch of politicians. They're not going to be sending a bunch of drug-crazed wackos. But I'm curious if any of these guys, if you have a soldier and you're like, oh, yeah, give them, you know, methamphetamine. That'll make them more courageous or that'll send them into battle with more, you know, ferocity. But they have different levels of people.

I can tell you what, the Gaffes aren't doing drugs, like the people with military discipline. Yeah, they might have a drink or something like that. It depends on where they're recruiting their people from and what specific function in that cartel that that person is going to do. Example. We all know that the FBI or even the CIA will use Humintel. So you got human intelligence, signal intelligence. You got your different forms of intelligence.

So when they're using Humintel, a lot of times we'll be using confidential informants and other things. These people are definitely using drugs. Part of the same function, working for the same team, definitely doing drugs, but your special agent is not doing drugs. And the same thing in the cartel, you're going to have different people when they're doing drugs. If it's just some street level hit or if you're just going to engage in war with your buddies, yeah, they definitely will be on drugs. But if it's someone that needs to hack into a banking system, which is some tech, it depends on who it is, Mark.

Yeah, that makes sense. And I'm curious, like, have you ever seen a cartel utilize like a priest, like a Santa Marte priest or some type of Santa Maria, like, practitioner. That I haven't seen. That I don't, maybe you could, I don't know. Have you heard of this before? I've heard of it, but I mean, I haven't seen it. I'm just, I want to stick to what I know. No, that's fair. That's fair. I recently was just reading about Adolfo Constanzo, who was a practice, like a practitioner.

I've heard of them. I've heard of it, but I don't know enough to like really expand on it. No, that's fair, but his story's fascinating where he was basically like working with different cartels and like doing rituals and, you know, performing these sort of like ceremonies to try to help them. in their pursuits and their business deals and their different wars that they were in and hoping to kind of channel this like sort of dark religious energy to help them. I totally believe that they got like a negative energy going on without a doubt. I mean, who in their right mind thinks, hey, I'm going to go out and choose on a fight with my national government today or the local military just.

And then if we win, we're going to torture them because they're not just torturing civilians. They're torturing agents and soldiers when they get them too. And they do get them. They're filming it, glorifying everything about it. And then they have these altars everywhere. I'm completely convinced that they have a priest or whatever doing it. What is the purpose of filming it? They filmed these terrible acts of torture and then send them to journalists and television.

Is it just to exert their power and illustrate how dangerous they are? 100%. You and I are communicating right now. We're communicating with words. and as I told you in the other episode, when I went to Mexico, one of my chief functions was creating technical documents for Spanish-speaking people to be able to produce something that was originally in French or in English.

And so one of the ways that I would do this is with visual work instructions, is what it's called. So you take a picture of something and put an arrow on it and be like, do this, red circle with a line through it, don't do this. And that's how you can quickly convey photographically in any language to someone that speaks any language, how to do something, visual work instructions. When you hang a body from a bridge or when you film something,

you show it to the entire country and world, look, this is what we're about. It doesn't matter what language you speak. It doesn't matter if you're fluent in Spanish. You are telling everybody, including the American government, U.S. military, D.A., anyone that's going to get involved with is, hey, this is the price of admission, this is what we're about. And while I'm at it, because I've got this altar over here and this priest blessing me, I'm doing this as a demonstration of my power and what we will do to you.

Right. And one other thing, nothing. There was not one instance where during the course of my work, we would even think about doing something that was against the orders we were given. And the cartel, how much even more so if the price of that is going to be the price of your family's life if you go against anything that they say. So when they're doing that, it is the head of the cartel saying this is the way we want it done. This is the way we want it presented.

They have these things called narco mantras, which is basically a big sign. It's about the size of my carpets here on the floor. And they'll paint on it in big letters and hang it somewhere very publicly that we, this cartel, know that this cartel, know that this cartel is operating here and this is the price and they'll leave a cooler with heads in the center of the town at broad daylight and their heads will be severed and wrapped in a plastic bag or whatever and you see this so often that that's exactly what they're trying to do is promote santamuerthe promote their cartel and promote their own power yeah i mean i i know that it's obviously it's communicating Yeah, it's a tactical thing.

Even in America we'll see these videos. I'm curious, who is off limits? Like, are American tourists generally, you know, left alone? We've touched on that, the other one in the other video. Usually, yes. And the reason why Americans are generally off limits, there's been a few. And I do mean a few distinct instances where they haven't been recently with the people that went over for some type of cosmetic surgery that wound up, two of them being murdered, unfortunately.

They were African-Americans, didn't blend in at all. They weren't Caucasian. They weren't Latino. So when they're in Mexico and the north of Mexico, it's completely obvious that they're probably American, shouldn't have been touched. The cartel that was involved, notably got the specific group that had murdered those people, front of them out or told them, hey, these are the people that have done it. they're being punished for it.

We don't do that. Why? Because the amount of influence that the American government wills, it's best to leave those people alone. There was another instance with the Mormons fighting over their land. I think it was on the Texas border. And the cartel killed somebody that had something to do with Mormons or maybe it was an American in Mexico.

There was another instance of that. But when you think of Mexico, since 2012, they have a thing called, the Institute of National of Statistica and hierography, which is a negi. It's the Mexican Statistics Institute. They track all the killings. Anything that you want to know in Mexico,

they track it. I-N-E-G-I, if you're going to look it up in English. This Mexican Institute that tracks all this data, statistical tracking, of everything in the country. And then one of the things that they track, for example, in 2012, there was like

33,000 people murdered 2000, and they track even the amount of, they call them feminidios, how many women are murdered. Since 2012, there's been like 100,000 people disappeared. And when you think about that, just think about like what the population, 35,000 people on average a year since 2012. And now we're in 13 years, 2025. So every 10 years, it's 300,000 people. we're talking like half a million people have been disappeared or murdered in the last 13 years in Mexico. All of it at the hands, or not all of it, but most of it at the hands of a criminal element that worships a satanic God

that has priests doing satanic rituals, and they're told by their top leaders, this is how we're going to operate. I mean, you know, what are you going to say to something like that? They're definitely sending a message. Wow. Yeah, I'm just fascinated by the way that, I guess, religion and faith and ideology can sort of be, like, warped and used in a way to perpetuate evil and not to perpetuate good. They do it here. They did it with Jeffrey Fielding Smith or whatever with the FLDS. Yeah, the FLDS church. Oh, fundamentalist Latter-D-D-Sense. Yeah, that's right. No, it happens all the time. It's not strictly a Mexican phenomenon. No, but I mean, in Mexico, they definitely did.

They've taken it and twisted it into or contorted it better. I mean, I think every religion has a version of this, right? Like, I think, like, you know, radical jihadist Islam. I think Mexico takes it to another level, though. Sure. Yeah, yeah, no, there's always, like, ways that people can utilize ideology, whether it's Christianity, Judaism, Islam, to then create a sort of negative evil force out of it. And it's an interesting element in cartel and narco culture that I think is sort of under-discussed under-highlighted.

because to me, I think it plays a big role of sort of the ideology, as you've pointed out, right? There's just such direct and deliberate brutality that's not fueled by drugs, generally speaking. It's not for any type of financial or political purpose. It's just torture and evil for the sake of torture. It is for the sake of evil. And once you understand that there's a spiritual and a cult element, I think that actually really contextualizes everything. But, Dave, I mean, this is fascinating. Thank you again for sharing your insight and your expertise in this.

area. This has been awesome. Hey, man. I appreciate the opportunity to chat with you. You guys are always welcome there wherever you want. And thank you. Thank you, brother. I'm looking forward to chatting again. Definitely. Most definitely. Thanks.