Danny Jones Podcast - #161 - How China Is Weaponizing Mexican Cartels Against America | Ed Calderon

Episode Date: November 15, 2022

Ed Calderon is a non-permissive environment specialist and combative instructor with over 10 years of experience in counter-narcotics, organized crime investigation, and public safety in the northern border region of Mexico. Ed's Links: Website: https://edsmanifesto.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/edsmanifesto_ YouTube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCXu84-AhcfCbEdM-gjiVU1Q JOIN OUR KULT: https://bit.ly/koncretepatreon   Danny's links https://www.instagram.com/jonesdanny  https://twitter.com/jonesdanny Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tell people what it is you do. That's a complex question. I'm sure there's not many people that don't know, but for the people that aren't aware. I'm basically an instructor, first and foremost. I train people how to survive and live in and go through non-permissive environments is the moniker that I've been kind of given by the people that I've trained. Specifically, my background is working for the government in Mexico,

And that kind of gave me some experience as far as, you know, how to survive some of the conditions that are down there. When I came to this country about four years ago, I started getting invited out to different security companies and people that offer training of that nature. So it kind of became subject matter guy as far as how to not get into bad situations in foreign countries or in this country as well. escaping from situations of abduction, for example, how to manage emergency situations in places where you don't have the means that we have access to in this country, from osteo-medical management stuff, which I have people that I know that kind of give that specific type of training, and I kind of set them up for some of these instructions,

instructive courses out there in the world. And also, you know, I've become kind of an advocate for people that don't have a voice in Mexico or not a clear voice that you don't hear a lot about up here, specifically people who are in law enforcement and who are a part of that weird undeclared war in Mexico, the drug war, that's still raging on down there. You know, this whole joke about coming to this country and going to a veteran event with some marine friends of mine and they all had hats with the you know where they served on it you know and uh they jokingly made a drug war veteran hat for me and put it on my head you know

uh with the uh with the Mexico symbol so I do a lot of advocacy related to bringing a bit more awareness and a voice to people like myself that went through that conflict uh that have seen things from the inside and are now on the outside of it uh and kind of bringing you awareness and a voice to some of these people who are still in the fight. The honest ones, you know, because, you know, we are, we, any, anytime you mentioned law enforcement in Mexico, they're all kind of labeled in the same way, all corrupt, all evil, all bad. But I know that there are a lot of good ones out there doing the job, a thankless job,

you know, a job without retirement, a job that could end abruptly and leave you without a lot of options. And so in a lot of ways, I'm also an advocate for some of those people. And Mexico as a whole, you know, trying to bring awareness to what's happening down there up here. Can you show us your shirt? Sure. There you go. I was drugged and left for dead in Mexico and all I got was a stupid t-shirt. That's amazing. It's a movie reference, but also maybe, you know, part true was on my end, you know. It's a, it's from a company called Black Triangle Group. Shout out to them. They, you know, sent me this t-shirt and said, you wouldn't dare to wear this on a podcast,

and here I am with it, you know. The thing, the crazy thing about Mexico when it comes to right now is that everyone is distracted with what's going on in Ukraine and Russia. Yeah. And it's like no one's talking about Mexico. That is, you know, like I posted something about that. In the first 72, hours of that conflict, which was basically an armed invasion from Russia into the Ukraine. Mexico outperformed that war zone in the first 72 hours as far as a body count, you know, the amount of people that died in violent altercations related to cartel violence in Mexico in the first 72 hours outperformed a war zone. And this is happening right on the southern border. Not just that, but also if you, you know, I'm not a numbers person, but people can look them

up. The amount of people that have died in this conflict and the amount of people that are missing or reported missing in Mexico is astounding. And the amount of mass graves that are being found all over the country now. And the sheer amount of control that some of these criminal groups have over territories in Mexico, there was a recent leak of military documents that has kind of come to light recently. Waukamaya leaks is our version of the WikiLeaks situation basically. Hacker group basically penetrated the computer systems of the Sedena. I just read this. And a lot of documents that the government itself has written are coming to light.

And I think some reporting down in Mexico has put the estimates that the military themselves have put forth that over 70% of Mexico is under some sort of control over of a criminal group. And that there are, you know, there are no fly zones over some places because they're afraid to get knocked down. And this is happening on the southern border. It's, to me, it's pretty amazing. It's, again, it's a conflict that's been going on for decades. It is kind of, it's interesting, the denial aspect of it that the U.S. has or the media has in the U.S. or in the government as well, as far as not wanting to call it what it is in Mexico, which is basically. a multi-grouped armed insurgency going on right across the border, utilizing in many cases military-grade weaponry,

fitting every single definition of not only a criminal enterprise, but also a terrorist network in a lot of ways. Very much politicized. We have, I think we have a record as far as the amount of political candidates being assassinated in Mexico, and also, you know, reporters. that are reporting on some of these things. So if they don't need the definition of a terrorist organization, I don't know. I don't know what does, you know.

But it's interesting that it's just not being given the attention of a conflict as far as a war. Do you think there's a reason that the U.S. is trying to bury this? Or, I mean, is it because, let me phrase this differently, does the shit going on in Mexico benefit the United States at all? I mean, Mexico is, so there's a few levels to what I think. Mexico is the second largest consumer of American products that the U.S. has, if you want to think about it that way as well. So we're very much dependent on each other. You see a lot of people calling for like, close the borders now and stuff like that.

There's a reason why it doesn't happen, you know. One of the reasons is because U.S. economy depends a lot in Mexico, you know. that's one that's an interesting link that we have um but it goes both ways um Mexicans cross the border and work in this country in a lot of parts of the industry that are very much a backbone of this country in a lot of ways you know you want to think about how indispensable illegal immigration is to this country uh during COVID you know the uh produce aisles were stocked the what the produce aisles were still stocked there's no shortage of oh yeah yeah so we are in the Mexican Mexicans are essential workers in this country, I guess.

Illegal immigration is essential. And the places where legislation has been passed to, you know, stop illegal immigration working on fields. You know, you get the farming industry crashing these places and some of these things get pulled back. They send money back to Mexico. So we're very much living in a, we're very much linked through blood, through commerce, through an economy. And now through basically living next to the largest drug market on the planet, which is the United States, having the experience of seeing the poppy fields down in places like Michoakan. And then training law enforcement in places like Seattle, where I can get to see where that white brown fentanyl infused heroin ends up. And seeing the government actually supply the tools to.

put that into your body, the state side. It's been insane, you know, and surprising to me on that end. And seeing... What do you mean they're supplying the tools? There's government programs out in places in the United States where they supply syringes and means, crack pipes, basically, as well. Really? Yeah.

I didn't know that. There's some government programs out there that supply some of these things to people, which basically they supply the vessels. to infuse things that are coming into his country legally that are supplied by cartel groups in Mexico, which is, you know, again, there's a, there's a weird denial in the United States when it comes to some of these problems and also the mentality that a lot of Americans have as far as it being a Mexico problem, like a foreign problem from a foreign country and it's all that, it's all on Mexico and the responsibilities taken by Americans as far as their role in

some of these things, you know, from from having industry. that is completely dependent on legal immigration and, you know, having the immigrants kind of be the bad guys in a lot of mentalities in the United States, you know, and that narrative of them coming here to take jobs from people. Yes, there is a problem with illegal immigration,

but the problem isn't the people that are coming over the border and working in industries that are essential for the United States. Right. The problem is in it not, in the immigration system and the, basically the enforcing, the enforcement on that border not being looked at closely and regulated.

I mean, people coming here to get a job seasonally should be a thing that could be regulated, I guess. You know, that has happened before in history. Something went wrong. Something happened. Something changed. The only people that benefit economically with immigration being legal are the people that are taxing those immigrants when they cross that border.

And those are not government officials. Those are cartels. Those are criminal groups that basically make, in some cases, most of what they earn comes from taxing people going across that border, paying, getting protection fees by some of the coyotes that work on that border. And putting some of these people in actual slavery. You know, people, there's a big conversation in this country about historical slavery when there's actual still slavery going on in this country. people like myself Mexicans coming to this country illegally and not being able to pay for that process paying a coyote half of their payment or having their families state side paying for that process over a time period and then working and them and then and them working off that payment through labor

slavery you know this happens in this country right now how much does it cost to get across the border You have numbers from 8,000 to 10,000. You know, you have 6,000 in some places. Some people say, well, I'll just go off myself and then get caught by people on that border and say, what are you doing crossing through our zone? So what is that process like? So if I'm living in Mexico, if I'm living, you know, anywhere in Mexico on the border or whatever, and I want to get across, who do I have to go to? You have to go to smuggler. You have to go to smuggler.

I mean, people do it independently. You know, they try and do it independently. Some of them get through. Some of them don't. Some of them die in the desert, you know. Some of them get caught by the same smuggler. So I'm like, what are you doing trying to cross yourself? You need to pay us a toll.

Some of them get caught by the police down there and then get all of their stuff taken because the cops down there. Some of them are really bad and some of them are not to be trusted. Take their, take their meager belongings and then get tossed back into whatever border town they're currently in. The border patrol are working with them though, right? They're paying a border patrol. Are they in cahoots?

I wouldn't say that. No. The U.S. Border Patrol, I'll say this. I've worked as an instructor with some members of the Border Patrol, and I've also seen how they operate on both sides of the border, both on the Mexican side with binoculars looking at some of them, you know, looking the other way as a group of people cross by.

So there is corruption in that, and there is corruption historically in the Border Patrol on the U.S. side. You look at convictions as far as. corruption charges. The U.S. Border Patrol is one of the ones that have the most convictions when it comes to corruption. And it's clear that it is not only underfunded, but it's undermanned. I've also seen them perform acts of great humanity and paying out of pocket for things like toothbrushes and toys and cold medication for some of the people that are in detention centers. You also don't see the fact that most of them are first generation or second generation Mexicans

and do have a vested not only interest in some of these people being treated humanely, but also for them doing well. So it's a complicated issue as far as the border patrol. And yes, they do. And sometimes I've seen when I was down there perform certain acts of corruption as well. Corruption is state side as well. It's not just something that ends at the border. Right. But then you go into Mexico and you see municipal state and federal police,

police agencies also predated, being predators as far as trying to get some of these these smuggling groups and tax them as well. Or some of these people that are coming to the border and it's known that if you're coming across the country to try and cross that border, you probably have some cash on you. So they're perfect victims for anybody in it. for a lot of people that are coming up on that border, you know, specifically authority figures. How did you get involved in Ukraine and training people to go to Ukraine?

It's not even that I train people specifically for that, is that a lot of students that actually came through some of my classes, including one specifically, Vince, he's out there and listen to this. I love you, brother. basically some students that went through some of the training that I provide, you know, basically I train people how to working hostile environments. And some of the stuff that I, some of the classes that I've done, you know, some interesting people have shown up, you know, people that have a background themselves, people,

I've trained people from the military, again, federal agencies and people of that nature. Some of them showed up and said, wow, this material could be put to good use somewhere currently, you know, in a war zone. It's like, oh, that's awesome. You want to go, Ed? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I would want to go, but I'm just no conditions to go, you know, physically, mentally, and I'm at 40 and I have a kid, you know,

and I have my own fights, you know. So some of them, can we take some of the material out there? It's like, yeah. You know, I gave them what I could as far as educational material. and they took it with them and they went out there front lines and trained a bunch of people, specifically how to utilize what they had on hand as far as a medical management emergency, improvising medical management equipment, osteo-medical management type material that I gathered from some of the people that I worked with before.

And also how to get out of bad situations, you know, restraints, how to get out of handcuffs, how to get out of certain improvised restraints like zip ties and duct tape is. a lot of stuff that are using out there. They're very, they're not equipment rich, you know, these Russian forces. So they're improvising a lot of stuff they're doing, which kind of like emulates or mirrors a lot of the stuff that I saw in Mexico as far as some of the criminal groups abducting people out there. So it made sense for some of that material to be spread out out there. What has, as far as like your communication with the guys that are out there, what has shocked you the most or what has sort of surprised you the most out of how they operate

over there and some of the tactics they use, like you just said, using duct tape. I mean, you know, I think both sides are doing a lot of horrible, horrible stuff. You know, it's a war zone. And there is no shining night in that situation, and there is no clear heroic side. You know, some of them are defending their homeland. That's to be admired and commended. And then there's this Russian contingent coming in, coming in, and, you know, some of them are mercenaries, and they're performing some barbaric acts against the civilian populace.

Booby-trapping, you know, farming equipment as they're leaving some of the areas, mining planted fields, leaving improvised booby-trap explosives in schools and places where, you know, people would try and scavenge food and stuff like that, I think, is something that's pretty scary, alarming and unneeded in a war zone like that, but that's happening, you know. And then, you know, not to just focus on Russia. You, I've also heard, you know, from other people going out there to try and fight for the Ukrainians, getting treated poorly by the Ukrainians. Like civilians going out there? Former military individuals. Veterans. Veterans. There's a, there's at least two Mexicans out there that I know of, who I used to work with, who are now out there, you know,

reforming, you know, tasks out there. And they've, they've reported back that they were treated poorly by some of the Ukrainian military, uh, because of the color of their skin. Really?

So there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, a, there's, there's,

there's some elements of the Ukrainian military. There are, there are clearly, um, you know, very racist. Very racist. You know,

culturally detached from the, uh, fact that there are people out there that have brown skin that might want to go and help you know. Yeah, I heard there's a bunch of like rogue neo-Nazi groups out there. There are, and there's some sentiment like that, not all of them again. This is, this is just some stuff that I've heard from people like that that went out there. The shocking thing for me is that the whole, the whole targeting of a civilly populace, basically, you know, how they're, you know,

setting booby traps, man traps, and explosive devices that are going to be probably plaguing that area for decades from now. Who are the ones that are selling those? traps. Is it both sides? Mainly Russian. Russian retreating forces that are letting, letting, letting, uh, letting, uh, retreating and or, uh, moving back and letting some of that controlled territory, or a baby place back in the hands of the Ukrainians.

And this is the kind of stuff that you teach to be able to, I mean, survive and to be able to recognize. I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't show anything related to explosives, but I do show things as far as I trying to surveil over an environment and to see. risks involved and moving in places like that. You know, we weren't exposed to a lot of improvised explosives of that nature.

Well, not improvised conventional explosives because a lot of these things are military-grade explosives that are being utilized in some of these conflict zones. Down in Mexico, we faced civilian drones being used to drop grenades on people. That happened in Mexico. Like the little DGI drones?

Yeah, that happened in Syria first and then in Mexico. You know, that kind of, that went that happened in Syria first as far as it being kind of like shown publicly through videos on social media. And then you start seeing it in Mexico. The first improvised explosive that I saw in Mexico delivered by a drone was actually dropped in Baja. It was a grenade that didn't explode in the end, but it was a grenade attached to a civilian drone that was dropped in the backyard of the private residence of the Secretary of Public Safety in the state of Baja. And the first drone I saw used for criminal activity was actually crashed on the road to Playa Zihuana.

It's a quad drone that was carrying a giant brick of meth. So that was like, this was like 2011, I think. I think I remember the 2011. So it's the rise of drone technology as far as where it was going. It was apparent to a lot of us when we started seeing them being utilized for stuff like that, you know. I remember seeing some of the first videos coming out of Michoacan, probably. probably two, three years ago. Micho Khan right now, for people that don't know,

it's basically an active war zone in Mexico. Can you tell, like, paint a picture, where in Mexico is Micho Khan? Micho Khan is a center of Mexico towards the Pacific side ocean. It's next to a hot bit of activity that is related to the new generation cartel, which is one of the largest,

most militarized cartels coming out of Mexico right now. It's kind of vying. for power as far as the Sina Loa Cartel and New Generation Cartel. They are trying to gain entry and control of Michoacan, which is a very rich place as far as the ability to plant and harvest things like poppy, and it's also on a drug route. So it's a pretty strategic place for them. The Mexican federal government is actually allying themselves with the Cartes-Unios out there, which is basically what is the left of the cartels that used to dominate that area.

So they're involved in trench warfare against the new generation cartels. And the New Generation Cartel probably two years ago, I think some of these videos came out. And I remember them coming out on social media and then kind of me sending them off to some of my U.S.-based friends, specifically EOD teams so they can see it. You know, because I thought it was interesting. and they were surprised by the fact that they hadn't seen some of this stuff before. They were basically weaponizing, using mining explosives, conventional mining explosives, in combination with chemicals used to pesticide chemicals. Right.

So basically using the explosive nut to disperse these pesticide chemicals. They're mixed and very harmful if you breathe them in. And they were using them to drop on some of the fortified positions that the federal government and the cartels, the Cartels of the Cartelos Uniles had to fight against the New Generation Cartel. God. So, you know, that whole exchange of information that's going on right now as far as social media and YouTube and live leaks

and all these online sources basically exporting, you know, methodology has been kind of like a really interesting part of all of these conflicts that have recently. kind of dawned on on on the on the world you know how are they exporting the methodology what do you mean by that I mean you you see Barmington uh... uh... back uh... forty millimeter grenades being dropped in Syria to stabilize that grenade as it goes down right from a drone and somebody out there takes note of that and then you see it in Mexico right and then somebody

takes note of the fact that some specific drones are better than others taking some of that methodology and showing it to the Ukrainians and now Ukrainians are using utilizing some of this. So this whole, this whole weird, improvised civilian drone arms race that is going on right now in the world. That combined with the group chats on WhatsApp of them sharing different things and photos and videos and learning.

WhatsApp, signal, telegram, you know, social media, you know, Facebook. used to be like a place.

It's not anymore because of all the, the censorship. Instagram also used to be a place. I mean, I remember, I looked this morning. I was looking for you this morning. And for some reason I couldn't find your history.

I'm shadow ban. I'm shadow ban. Basically, you can't find a lot of, a lot of stuff that I post because of, repeated violations of the terms of service. And usually they come from like news, me sharing news posts from our sister page,

Demo there. Most of my current strikes on, on the page. have been of me sharing news about stuff that's going down in Mexico. So some of the censorship online is pretty crazy. So I had to put most of my educational information behind a paywall on Patreon because of this. You know, because there's just no way that people can access that on social media without me getting some sort of strike on my accounts, you know?

That's insane, man. That's insane that they're doing that. And are they doing that because of like you're posting stuff that it actually violates the terms of service? I mean, I'll give you an example of something that was that got a strike on my page. There was a major, there was a major offensive by a certain cartel in Mexico, and they left a bunch of their plate carriers, basically armored plate carriers that they carry with them behind. And I shared a picture of one of those plate carriers that had the name of one of these groups down there, you know, that's four letters. And that got a strike on my page because it was promoting terrorist organizations. Right?

So that, so you can't, or keywords in the, in a news article related to that group, also promoting, promoting terrorists or hate group organizations, basically. Meanwhile, I was telling you earlier, Luis Shaparo, the reporter in Sudot Juarez, was telling me that not only are El Chapo's kids and family all on, Instagram. Yeah, TikTok, Instagram. As well as El Mayo's family and cousins and sons. They're all over TikTok, you know, all over TikTok, Instagram. They have Instagram accounts. You know, they're using, basically utilizing TikTok as a recruiting arm for them, you know, for some of these cartel groups out there. That's fucking insane, man.

It's, it's, uh, I don't, I don't know how to, you know, describe it as far as like, experiencing it, you know, you see, um, you know, I'm no saint, you know, I'm no, I'm, I'm, I'm, I post things that are, I think, informational or educational in some cases or some funny stuff as well related to PTSD and alcoholism and all that stuff that I'm going through. But it's funny when you post something related to news or dispersing information in this country. Again, we have a sister page that deals specifically with reporting on specific cartel activities in Mexico in English, which is not an easy thing to do. They're based out of Mexico and they're doing some amazing work. But they get reported on and their pages, I think the first page they had was taken completely down by Instagram. Specifically because they get strikes on their page because, again, the wording, the imagery.

And they're very good at blurring everything out. But that gets taken now. And on the other side of the aisle, you see some of these organizations, basically posting videos and pictures of them spreading, you know, some of these, when COVID was happening, they were giving, you know, the Spenceus out there with the name of the cartel specifically, you know, here you go, family, this is on behalf of this cartel, you know, or they were enforcing some of the mask mandates in Mexico. And if you were caught without a mask outside or if you were caught partying outside,

you would get, you would get La Tabla, which is basically a board. the board, the flat board that would use to hit your ass. And you would see that on TikTok. You would see some of that on Instagram as well. And it was up and nothing else. No problems. So yeah,

there's definitely some strange allowances that some of these groups have or at least preferences that I think that we've seen as far as, you know, Chaparro looking at how some of the stuff he posts and how maybe he's being, you know, censored on some of those stuff he posts or how Demolr posts some things that are very much informational dealing with some of the

stuff is going on down there. And it getting, you know, blocked or banned because of it. And meanwhile, some of these accounts that are out there, specifically TikTok, I think TikTok is, it's right now, it's the main platform for a lot of people, specifically in some of these criminal groups who the you know it's out there no problem kids running around uh 17 year olds running around with AK-47s you know beating the shit out of people that that's so weird I've heard the opposite about TikTok I've heard the people have problems getting banned all the time on TikTok or they might get banned all the time on TikTok but I can you know you can you can you can do a search of specific criminal groups on TikTok right now and you'll find hundreds of videos of them really rolling

around yeah what would you search like what would give me an example of like what could we search Cartel de Sinaloa. Cartel de Sinaloa. Yes. El Tres Letters. The Señor de los Gallos. El Chapa Guzman. You can look for us a lot of these things.

And also, they'll just pop up as far as, as, as far as videos and imagery related to cartel and cartel Corridos, for example. Popular music down there that is kind of like glorifying some of these activities, you know. The fact that it's being utilized as a sort of propaganda arm or recruiting arm for them is very, very, clear. And many people have reported on the fact that some of these, some of these, um, anonymous TikToks pop up every now and then I think we, we saw a few of them specifically in Baja related to recruiting people to a certain cartel. Like if you want to, if you want to work for us, you know, reach out. We're here, you know. We had an incident in Tijuana where a bunch of young kids recruited by one cartel.

To put pressure on the government basically burned a bunch of cars and cost a lot of vehicular chaos in Tijuana. It was a specific day. They had this whole orchestrated where they put some cars, set some cars on fire and some major traffic zones during

peak traffic hours. And later on when they put this message out on social media about them what it was about and people basically setting a curfew, people don't go out because we're going to clean the plaza basically. And then later they would find out that some of these kids, you know, after they, they were paid by said criminal group and they skipped town, that a lot of them were basically recruited through social media. A lot of them got like, hey, if you want to make some money, you know, do it through here.

Wow. So WhatsApp group, social media, signal, telegram. A lot of these things are being utilized by some of these groups. to. How long have you been dealing with this censorship on Instagram, like being shadow band? And your account's gone down and come back, right? Many times. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm at 300 something,000. I've attempted to be verified, you know. I've been quoted by Al Jazeera, New York Times, BBC. And I've been on some pretty major podcast. I've worked on some movies, write for a few magazines. I've talked to. I talked to the Senate, some Senate hearings of myself as well. You know, all of this documented. And I can't get a verification of that, you know, because of the controversial. Maybe it's because of the controversial nature of what I talk about or maybe specifically

it's because of some of the taglines and subject matters that I talk about are considered bannable offenses, I guess, on Instagram specifically. Do you do with any of that, like on other platforms at all? Like Twitter and YouTube? I've actually recently started posting more on Twitter and it's a breath of fresh air because a lot of stuff stays up. Yeah, Twitter let you post anything.

Yeah, but not Instagram. And again, it's hard for people to find me on Instagram and some of the stuff that I've been posting recently has been very benign and it's mostly leads people to go and look at my stuff somewhere else but still it's bad. Yeah, Luis Shapiro, his biggest, one of his biggest media outlets is Instagram for his stories too.

The funny thing, the interesting thing about people like him is, especially when you decide to live there near the border like where he is. Yeah. Like him in particular, he is not like a gun guy. He's like he doesn't like to own a gun. And a question I have for you is it, if you're a journalist living down there, reporting on these cartels, meeting with these cartels,

would it be advisable not to have a, a fucking gun on you or is it is it almost smarter to just not even have one and be considered harmless that's an interesting question like i am not a reporter so my mentality around a lot of this is completely different right right right but you come from the opposite but i have trained a lot of reporters that work down there including again our sister page uh demo there who you know they work in mexico and it's not even easy and you know there's there's some issues to that uh arming themselves is not something i would advise for somebody that's going to go into the the dragons then to talk to some of these people

because it basically turns you into a basically turns you into a combatant right um but that being said not being safe or not knowing how to be safe or trying to get yourself out of some of these situations is probably you know ill-advised um the you know the amount of reporters that are killed in Mexico is mind bog. It's one of the most dangerous jobs in Mexico is to be a reporter. There was a lady that actually went on in Magnanero, which is basically the current president of Mexico and Desmondel Lopez Obrador has these daily meetings where he addresses the nation and rambles around about, you know, whatever, whatever thing is in his head at that particular day. and a reporter lady steps up and says,

hey, they've been threatened my life. They want to kill me. Can I talk to you about it? They had an exchange there and nothing happened. You know, nothing was done. She went back to where she was from and was popped. Basically, you know, that is the level of insecurity in Mexico. Now, she told people what was going to happen and happened, right?

She told the president of Mexico. Mind you. I speak ill of the government right now, and I will speak ill of the government that I was a part of when I was working for it, from Felipe Calderon all the way to hear. You know, I think all politics in Mexico is corrupt as hell, you know. But a current government is towards the left of political spectrum, and there's a lot of sentiments of the vision in Mexico right now as far as the left and the right. The current presidency in Mexico said that they were going to make a civilian police force, that they were going to take the military off the streets, that they're going to... It was just the hugs, not bullets.

Yeah, hugs on. And now we have a militarized National Guard unit. The civilian-controlled federal police is gone. And he's doing exactly what his main rival, Felipe Calderon, did back in the day, which basically militarized this war. And it's surprising to me that, people on both sides are in denial about it too. You know,

I get attacked a lot about my criticism as far as the current government, but I criticized the whole of it, right? I was a part of that government as well, and I criticize the shit out of the Philippi-Ga-Lanian government and the Pananieto government and the current government. All of it is, there's no saving graces for a lot of these, these presidencies in Mexico. And we've never lived in a more.

danger assigned to be in Mexico, you know, as far as the amount of violence that is occurring in Mexico and at the scope that it is. You know, 90% of all murders aren't solved in Mexico. If you are a civilian traveling down there, for example, like if you're someone just traveling from Florida going on a surf trip and you catch a ride to, you know, a local beach to go surfing or whatever and you end up getting intercepted by somebody in a cartel, what kind of, like what should you do physically and what should you do like how can you use words to get yourself out of a situation you know so first off Mexico isn't all bad you know there's a part the parts of Mexico they're perfectly safe for people uh 90% of all new houses in Tijuana are being bought by

Americans so I have a friend who lives in Tijuana just built a new house amazing San Diego South that's what they call it now you know a weed traffic King is happening from San Diego to Tijuana, you know, that's the weird thing about it. Mexico has a bunch of economic migrants from the U.S. living in Mexico. They're reviled in

places like Mexico City, you know? Some of them are, they don't want them there because they're driving up prices. So the whole notion of Mexico being this dangerous place is in some parts it is very dangerous and some parts is very safe. Every now and then I see people like, oh,

I live comfortably here. My kids go to town, yeah, but you live in a fucking resort fucking area. Of course you fucking can do that, right? And also you're American. Your passport, even if you don't think that, your passport actually provides you with certain immunity to some of the violence,

because criminal groups don't want to target Americans because that'll bring in a lot of extra heat to them. Oh, really? So that is a product of that. You're more likely to be stopped by a, you know, corrupt local cop and, you know, get asked for a bribe, then, you know, get abducted by a criminal organization down there. So the nature of the beast down there is completely different than the United States.

I always tell people from the U.S., you know, if you, if you, you can't travel with your sense of normal, you can't travel with your legal system and you can't travel with your bill of rights. None of that means anything once you cross that border. So you have to adjust, you know, your normal is a fluid concept. The same thing happens up here. I mean, I've been to, I remember going to Detroit with some few. friends of mine who were in law enforcement and getting to see certain parts of that city. I'm from Tijuana, man.

Some of those parts of that city were pretty gnarly. I will say, first off, you need to adjust what your sense of normal is and what you would expect somebody to react to or what you expect somebody to view as valuable on you or with you to change. People going out to Mexico and getting their, you know, a truck was stolen. They think, oh, the cartels are targeting me. No, they want your truck because that is a resource there. People going off to a foreign country with their iPhone and getting stabbed in the neck for it by a 11-year-old.

That iPhone will pay for a lot of their issues in that place. So it's worthy as far as an object to steal from you and murder you for. So first off, you have to regulate your sense of normal in some of these environments. Mexico is a place that is varied. There's places that are safe. There's places that are safe for the locals. If you're local there, you'll know what those places are. You are a sense of normal for somebody from Tijuana is completely different from a sense of normal from somebody from San Diego, for example.

You know, a shootout happens and you duck behind the taco counter and then you peek out, everything's fine, and you continue wanting your tacos. Meanwhile, the American across from you is calling the embassy. to get extracted or something like that. I'll say this. First off, you need to realize that you are in another country. If you're in Mexico traveling or living down there, you need to realize you're in another country that has a very different set of rules, that has a government that is pretty iffy as far as trusting it or not.

So they're not going to be the ones that you might have to call for something, maybe. Some of these places are cartel-owned, you know, what you're seeing sometimes in some of these resort towns, with the violence that's going on inside of them is it's a fight for the giant drug market created by Americans living down there. They brought their consumption with them when they go down to Mexico and live in some of these places. So now it's an extra valuable place. So people are trying to kill for some of these drug markets that people are creating. That's another aspect of this whole drug war that people don't realize.

Mexico has drug markets themselves. It's not just the U.S. drug market. Mexico's giant drug markets themselves. And Americans not needing to cross the drugs into San Diego, for example, to feed that drug market and having some of these Americans come down and now live in Mexico and live in a place like Tijuana and bringing their habits with them. That means that there is more violence as far as the people that are fighting for feeding that habit down there. So advice, you know, realize that you have to adjust your sense of normal. even if you're, I'm from San Diego. I'd have my rights.

I'm an American. I live down here. Things should change. They don't give a shit where you're from. I don't give a shit where you're from. Also, the locals will be less empathetic to you, you know, as far as you trying to adjust things there. It's a hard issue.

My buddy told me to tell, my friend told me to say, if I ever got in that situation, say, soy de Montere. Oh, yeah. A Mexican Wakanda. is what I call Monterey. That's where all the old money hides in Mexico. And go down there, you'll see a Lamborghini Murciano just rolling around the street. He said also the white guys, too.

He's like, everyone in Monterey's white. Yeah, that's another aspect of Mexico that people don't realize. There's a lot of white people out there in Mexico who are Mexicans. They don't speak English. I know, right? My foster brother, Alberto, if he's listening to this, shout out to him. He doesn't speak pretty clear English. And sometimes we would go to San Diego or kids, and they would speak English to him and not me.

You know, he was like, okay. and Louis C.K. is Mexican. I know, that's crazy. I just learned that like a couple months ago. Louis C.K. is Mexican. More Mexican than a lot of these Mexican-American comedians out there as far as like, he actually lived in Mexico, you know. That's pretty insane to kind of think of that.

That is insane. But, yeah, Mexico is very diverse. There's this whole, it's another weird thing about American mindset as far as Mexico, that it's, Mexico is a single place where everybody's the same. people from Baja, like even Baja, like that's what state, I was born, I was born in Tijuana. It's actually rare to meet somebody that was born in Tijuana. It's not a common thing. Very transient place?

It's a transient place. So I was born on 7th Street in the Hospital Hospital of Leone, right, which is, you know, a hospital with a lot of people. If you're born there, you're either the son of immigrants that were kicked out of the U.S. or you were on your way to the U.S. and you missed the date of your birth and you got born in Tijuana, right? So it's an interesting little part of the world, Tijuana. It's a city of immigrants.

It is one of those places. It's like a Narnia type place, you know? Anything goes. Opportunity food, street food is amazing there. Drugs are prevalent there. There's a place called La Sona Rojas. a tolerance zone and a zone of tolerance where prostitution is basically legal. On top of that, there's the ocean there, there's Encinada to the south, there's a wine valley there.

It's an amazing place. There's a lot of opportunities for people. There's beautiful parts of it. There's bad parts of it. Tijuana is whatever you want it to be, basically. But people from Tijuana are known, you know, in other parts of the country because when they pass through there, they're predated. upon by people from Tijuana, you know, there, you know, I met somebody on, I think, in Oakland. He had a taco shop out there. And I have this clear, clear English because I actually went

through language school, and I've actually worked on not having an accent. So you want to speak Spanish, and I'm saying my mother-in-media, and I'm a chingale, and all you want, I can speak Spanish, I can speak English, clearly. So I turn off my... If you love diving into culture and comments, like on Danny Jones podcast, playoff hockey is right up your alley. NHL on T&T has the best coverage, making every game feel intense and unpredictable.

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TBS, True TV, and HBO Max. I turn off the Spanish when I'm in the U.S. For no other reason that I don't want to be treated differently, right? So I'm there. Some friends of mine are there, and they're kind of joking with this taco guy, the tacharia guy. Great tacos, by the way.

I wish I'd remember the name of the place. It's in Oakland. It's a needle of swap meat. Amazing place. Speaking jokingly, he's from Puebla. Speaking jokingly with him, he was like, ah, what do you think about people from Tijuana, right? And I'm like standing there, you know, eating the tacos, you know.

They'll steal the t-shirt off your back and sell it back to you. It looks at it to be like, like, why do you say that? When I went through there to jump to try and jump that border, I bought some gold necklaces for my daughters. I said, oh, these are beautiful. Thank you. Do you want a gift wrap them? Yeah.

Which box do you want? That one. Grab the box. A few weeks later when he was up there, he opened up the boxes and the chains were gone. So they don't have to. So he got duped. Wow. This is Tijuana.

This is part of Tijuana. Also, there's a lot of that going on there. And, you know, then you go to places like Puebla, which people are beautiful there. It's a beautiful place. most of the, you know, most of the best food or the best people that make good food come from there. I think Bourdain had a chef that worked on one of his restaurants that actually came from, but he had a whole episode down there. But it's very innocent.

It is a very, you know, close-knit town. There's not a lot of shady shit happening down there. So it's a completely different place than Tijuana. Then you go to Monterey or some of the old money is and some of the people that have a lot of opportunities and not a lot of Mexicans have live and there's there's a certain aspect of almost like a bubble around a lot around some of the richer communities that they don't get affected by some of the stuff that happens in other places and then there's Sinaloa where everything goes it's a wild west you know people from Sina Lua are known for known for their

things I think there was a ban on people joining certain aspects of the military from you know, for a while in Mexico. It was that kind of note for it. But all in all, I've met people from all over the country of Mexico up here in the United States. Every time I'm up here, like I see somebody's like, hey, what are you from?

And from Wallachara and from here. And like being so far away from home, we just, you know, the feeling of warmth, like, oh. Instant connection, right? Oh, it's a connection. The connection of, we have to earn our place here.

We have to. You know, it's like a responsibility for us. Not only our place, but the place of our children, which is something that I think links, most immigrants are every immigrant. We're always looking for a better place, not only for ourselves, but for our kids.

But there's another side to it, you know, there's a doggie dog eat type mentality in some Mexicans as well. You know, I've always said, this. My biggest critics here in the United States are Mexicans or second generation, third generation Mexicans that have lost sight of what that struggle. That say that I talk too negatively about Mexico or that I don't know what I'm saying, even though I came from that place. You know, they might know better if they've never been down there or if the only experience with Mexico

is going to a resort town somewhere or visiting La Vuelan de Rancho, you know, every a few few years, I guess. But Mexico is a very diverse place. If anything, you can't compare it to United States. I think I've seen more of the United States than most Americans. Every weekend, I'm in a different state doing a class with the locals or doing a class for law enforcement. In the last two weeks, I was in Atlanta, I was in Los Angeles, I was in San Diego,

I was in Texas and a few parts of Texas and now I'm here and I think going back to California. Like understanding Mexicans and Mexican culture and Spanish is such a important part of living in Florida. I grew up in this town right here and I am just like it's been such a part of my childhood. I'm growing up and working and, you know, like I'm trying to teach my kids Spanish at a really young age because to be it to be a, to be a able to communicate and with with the Mexicans around here because there's so many of them it's such an advantage in life yeah and and I mean that's another aspect of it the the whole the whole fact that Spanish is very important and I've been I remember having this you know people talk about racism here you know or and if I've experienced it the I've experienced a few

cases of that and you know i've lived in kentucky for a while you know so and i never experienced any of that there um i've been through this i've been through all throughout the south and and and parts of certain parts of the east coast are considered kind of rural and and the only time i've been experienced that has been in california really yeah um two times one of them was in a grocery store in California and I won't say the town but it's in California and it was by

probably a second generation Mexican berating me for the fact that I was speaking Spanish to my kid in a restaurant it was a restaurant attached to this supermarket and

she came over and said you need to speak English where you're in the United States and you need to adapt. And also if your kid's going to be here, she needs to speak English too. And it was a weird moment, right? Because I turned to her and I could see,

I could see the brownness in her, you know? Yeah. And I could see some of that. You know, that was, that was odd, you know? And another occasion was, uh... Did you understand her? Did you think she had good intentions? Or do you think it was just...

I was, it was, it was, uh, I switched to Spanish with her, so see if she can talk back in Spanish. And I just caught the fact that she had lost that Spanish. Whatever Spanish she had was broken or that completely unrecognizable to me. So maybe it was a, maybe that was it being expressed when she said that to me, that she couldn't speak it anymore or she lost that. And I don't know, that was a weird one. And the other one was related to my faith.

I come from Mexico and I have a very weird faith to a lot of Americans, I guess. In Mexico, we have a really close relationship to death. You know, we party at the graves of our ancestors. We have ancestors. That's one of the coolest things about Mexico. We have that, you know. And I've been trying to give that to my kid as well, that culture. I don't want her to lose that.

And I had the situation that where some people were calling me out on the fact that I was wearing something very satanic or demonic. It's usually, I don't usually carry it out, but I usually carry... Can you hold it up like by your microphone so we can see it? Okay, that's cool.

The Reaper. So I usually carry La Virgin of Guadalupe, which is like Mother of Mexico and La Santa Morte, which is something I grew up with. as far as a faith. And I had some people calling, oh, satanic, that's devil worship. And that's,

that's the reason why Mexican, Mexico is so bad is because you're very satanic and you have this demonic relationship with stuff. And I, in my mind, I was like, you wouldn't have the balls to call somebody out on that if I was a Native American now and I was expressing some of my Native American ancestry here. You wouldn't have the balls to say anything about it.

But I'm from Mexico. I'm from I'm an immigrant here and it's I'm a I'm a fair game person to say that to right and I just found this weird like openness to to attack that faith aspect in me is interesting. Maybe not racist, but pretty interesting as far as the ability to be able to to say something about that openly and freely, you know? Yeah, that's odd. In California. I feel like one of the most. One of the biggest misconceptions, at least from my point of view, with Mexicans, is that they're all concerned, at least all the ones I know, they're like conservative country. Yeah.

Like a lot of them I know, they walk around in cowboy boots. They, they're conservative minded, like when it comes to politics and love country music, driving jacked up trucks. The identity politics that I encountered up here has been also pretty fascinating. You're Mexican, you should be to this side of this. Right. Right. Or the discussions that I have with Latinx terminology. Oh, yeah.

That people want to Latin X, like, like, what? Yeah, they get something. Latin X. I have no idea that terminology means the assumption that I'm an immigrant, so my politics should be of one end or the other. Right. So first off, I don't like both sides usually. Right.

From my end, I'm with you. I don't like both sides. I don't particularly agree with a man in power that is completely detached from the general, my generational needs and the generational needs of most of the people that I know. The fact that he probably, he's clearly not mentally capable to be in office. And on the other side of the political spectrum, there's this reality star who, you know, We can talk about some of the stuff that he said about people like me and about some of the, some of the places where I come from.

And his politics, I mean, you know, to each his own, I'm not here to talk about that specifically. But there's assumption that I should, that we should be on one side of the political spectrum or another. Yeah. I come from a country where we're not allowed to have guns. And I know what that freedom would mean to a lot of Mexicans. If a lot of Mexicans were allowed to have that freedom, which is in our constitution.

In Mexico, there's a constitutional part of it that states that we have the ability and the right to bear arms in our homes for protection. But we have one gun store. And we have a military that has monopolized that right. And if you are not a member of the officers club in the military, you can't own or possess a firearm and carry it legally. or if you're a member of a police organization, you might be able to carry one as long as it complains with the license. Other than that,

you have to be upper middle class to afford a plane ticket to fly to that single gun store and buy a gun that you're not going to be able to carry. Meanwhile, on the other end, you know, criminal groups are carrying around great-launchers and can take down helicopters, right?

So coming to this country and seeing the right to bear arms, I have a weird relationship to that, you know, because I know what that means to people here. And I know what happens when that right is gone. But on the other end, I also see things like Fast and the Furious and how the proliferation of firearms in Mexico.

And most of them, it's probably 70% of weapons in Mexico, come from the U.S. Civilian-grade AR-15s and handguns that are converted into full auto in Mexico. For example, not all, but a lot of them do. Can you explain what Fasten the Furious is for people that don't know? Fasten the Furious was an operation that probably started during the Bush administration.

It's not a, no, people like to use that as Obama. But it probably started during the Bush administration, what I know of it externally. It started during the Bush administration and basically a program that the ATF had to track firearms, small firearms purchases by gun runners. in the United States. Let them basically buy a bunch of firearms that the cartels wanted. Know about it. Tell gun stores that,

hey, let these walk. I know that's a very suspicious purchase, but let these go. Let these walk out of your store. It's fine. Them looking at these, following these gun,

straw purchasers, take them to a gun runner. The gun runner loads them onto a car and then drives them to Mexico. And nothing happens. because they were attempting to follow these somehow. They were attempting to follow where the guns were going. Yeah, they were trying to track them. But of course, nothing was tracked,

and a lot of these guns were found in murder scenes across the country, you know, including, I mean, specifically have this memory of these FN-5-7 pistols, high-velocity around in these pistols that is able to go through soft-body armor. And 50 cows. in the box with the, with the, with the, with the manual and everything, basically bought off an American gun store and sent down to Mexico. Some of them were used to kill a friend of mine.

And I remember finding these, you know, in the murder scene. And not knowing where they came from or they were pretty new and like, almost like out of the box. And you started finding them everywhere. I only found out about them by watching the hearings related to the shooting of Ryan Terry, federal agent shot with some of these guns that later were traced back to the ATF's Fast and Furious program. It is amazing that we know the names of these federal agents that were killed on the U.S. side with those guns,

but we don't know about all the Mexicans that were killed with those guns on the Mexico side. and for people that might want to say that I'm being anti-American with this. And somehow I actually raised money for the Ryan Terry Foundation during a charity event for them, despite the fact that, you know, I know that some of the people involved in this whole situation might not know about some of the victims in Mexico about it. So I'm trying to be fair and bounce about my views and some of my activism work that I do in on both sides of the border. But that operation did great harm to Mexico.

There was probably some government participation as far as keeping it quiet after it was found out in Mexico by the Caldera administration. I'm probably almost sure about it, which was the administration in Mexico during that time, the administration that I was working under. So there was shady stuff happening across that border. But the sentiment or the mentality of Mexicans towards the United States after that happened, change.

You know, the trust in certain circles as far as the U.S. changed. And it's all, Mexico has had a longstanding relationship of good and bad with the United States. We had a, we had some suit massacres that were related to CIA activities. Mexico. We have heard about those. We had, uh, I watched that documentary the last knock. That was a very, very dark, dark story. And, uh, you got Kiki Camarena, the DEA agent and the CIA agent. I mean, there's, there's, there's clear involvement of the CIA in Mexico utilizing drug running at that time to basically piggyback weapons trafficking down to the Contras. Mm-hmm. but there has not been any apology about that, you know.

Is that story, has that been verified or is that still like quote unquote conspiracy theory? It's not in my, it's not, it wasn't in my time, of course. You know, I started working in the early 2000s, but I've met people that were from that age in that time, you know, people that worked around that environment. CIA and CIA involvement in a lot of stuff in Mexico has long been known, you know, uh, Mexico City specifically has been a hotbed, for, you know, back then Soviet era, espionage and activities. You know, there's a few cases of Soviet spies being assassinated in Mexico. Fidel Castro spent a long time in Mexico City, you know. Some of his revolutionaries actually trained in Mexico before they went off and took Cuba.

So it's been a hot bit of activity. If people want to equate it to something, Mexico has basically been a staging process. oxy war area for the United States and its enemies for decades. Yeah, you're starting off with the Soviets, I guess. And now you see influences from China in Mexico that seem to hint at some of the same kind of activity as far as a foreign entity influencing or involving itself in certain aspects of Mexico and the United States trying to combat that. So, I mean, now it's no longer spies being sent to Mexico to spy on.

on the United States. Now it's a pipeline of fentanyl being prompted to Mexico to feed an American habit. Before we go into the whole China thing, I wanted to, like, for people that are listening, if they're not familiar with the last NARC, basically the story of that is there was a DEA agent

working in Mexico. I believe his name was Kiki Kamaena. Kiki Kamaena. And he was kidnapped and taken to some sort of house. And he was tortured for days. And eventually, I forget how he, it was really how who blew the whistle on it but essentially one of the guys that was in there torturing him his name was felix rodriguez who was a CIA officer uh he was actually

the CIA officer who was responsible for the capture of chagua vera i believe yeah there's there's there's a there's a there's a there's a weird connection between that the bay of pigs cuba and the bay of pigs yeah there was uh and again this is uh cuban intelligence uh cia operations all over mexico this has been going on for decades. But that specific case is interesting because to this day, you know, we just saw the recent recapture

and arrest of Carl Quintero, who was one of the guys that was fingered for that. Yes. And he was, when they interviewed him, they brought him in front of the media for some sort of thing after that.

And he was just sort of like laughing and joking with everybody. He's a scapego. He's like, fuck you guys. I'll be out of here in two months. No, I mean,

he was a high level cartel guy. He got arrested for, it that was pinned on him. He was never extradited, which should be something that people should look into, you know. He was freed under weird circumstances, you know, then made a run for it again. Then he was placed on the most wanted list by the U.S. recently. And then he was arrested again in the law. Some people say it was betrayed.

But he's never going to be extradited to the United States, I don't think. and they should you know I wonder why that is you know what does you know I don't know the but the interesting thing is that it was all pinned on him by the U.S. government has always considered him to be the responsible

guy as far as that murder that that torture and murder of Kiki Kama I don't know you know the there's a lot of questions there there's a lot of you know again the whole aspect of corruption only being on the Mexican side or shady

shady stuff being done on the Mexican side. I was going to kick out of the comments section when I post something about Mexico. I recently posted about this woman assassinated, one of the ladies that led one of these let's find our children groups, basically. It's a phenomenon that's been happening across the country where women organize themselves and parents of people who are missing, organize themselves to go and find their kids by trying to find Klandishang graves or knock on doors, basically doing the job that the police don't do that on there because they're

either don't care or overwhelmed or whatever and she was assassinated outside of her house. Two guys in her motorcycle came in and shot her. And she's one of five, I think recently that I've been killed in this way. Now

you see this and in the common section like, well, the U.S. should get involved somehow. Or we should send I don't know, some sort of intervention, I guess, is what people think about. And I'm asked like, what does the public sentiment as far as U.S. intervention in Mexico feel like? Right now?

Yeah. Nobody wants it. Really? It's, uh, they feel like the U.S. is responsible? They, they, they don't view the, a lot of them, Mexicans don't view the U.S. as a innocent party or a savior of any sort. They see your foreign policy, they see the U.S. as foreign policy history recently as not good. So how come we can protect a guy like Cato Cantero, but we have El Chapo? How did we get El Chapo?

And why do you think we were able to get El Chapo? I mean, well, Chapo wasn't, you know, I don't know, people paint him as this major leader of the senior law cartel, which he wasn't. You know, he was probably, he was a member and leaders, it was a member in a leadership part of that, that federation of cartels, which the cartel groups, which is the Cinellao cartel is basically a federation of smaller cartels that are all allied themselves and are based out of Cina Lola. He was arrested and paraded in front of the press as the main guy, you know. That's the biggest misconception of him. He's like the head honcho that everyone thinks of him as the boss of the Cinelloa. Which is, you know, it probably was beneficial for the government at that time.

time in Mexico to parade them out as that and also for the U.S. government to kind of push their drug war policy as like, oh, look at this success. We just arrested this guy. But nothing change, you know, drug prices remain stable, you know? There was no, oh, no, we have, there's a shortage of cocaine in the United States now because we arrested this major kingpin. Nothing changed. Why was he caught? He was caught because he was, I think, this is my theory. I don't know if it's true or not, but you know, you saw his arrest after his meeting with Sean Penn. And Cate del Castillo, who was a Mexican della novella star, you know.

And I think that conversation or whatever was happening at that point as far as El Chapo's intentions were to put his story or his narrative out to people. and utilizing Hollywood for it. And whatever he was going to say about that was probably not something that people wanted to want and out there. That's my theory. I don't know if it's true or not. But you saw his capture pretty soon after. So somebody got scared that he was going to put his...

I mean, he was talking to Champagne, you know? Right. So that's, you know, he wasn't arrested by the, the Mexican military, by the way. That's another misconception about it, which is, there was a raid on his, on his,

some of the safe houses that were he's at by the Mexican, Marina, the Marines. But he escaped. And he was stopped a few miles away by federal road police. That's who,

that's who he was arrested by. He was stopped by two federal cops. Near, near the area where the raid happened. He was, with his head, what his head bodyguard, covered in mud because they went through some,

some sewer tunnels to get to a road outside. Common, they carjacked somebody and took his car, and then he was stopped by these federal road cops. And then the Marines showed up, right? So, again, narrative is very important in Mexico and how to construct that narrative as far as who arrested him. So you see these,

you see the military parade him around. You know, they dress him well and they parade him around. And we arrested him. but there's a lot of stuff that happens down there. Again, the narrative has to be controlled. And who's seen as the victor, who's seen as the guy that,

the group that is specifically involved in harassing him. It has to be the military, you know, because that is a narrative. So that, that, that, on the other side of it,

you know, there's a lot of narrative influences as far as the cartel and what's happening down there, but it's also the military is also doing its own, uh, narrative. influence in Mexico. Who is El Mio Simbada and how important is he to the Sinaloa cartel? And how is, how is, what was his relationship with El Chapo? So what I know about him. And again, I'm a street level guy.

I worked on the streets in Baja as an agent and then a few other parts of the country, but specifically Baja. And what I hear about him comes from people out there working in that field. Elmayo Sambala was somebody that learned his trade craft as far as how to move traffic and figure out drug routes all the way from Colombia up into the United States. He learned his craft in Los Angeles, not in Tina Loa. So a lot of people want to think of the Cina law cartel as a Mexican creation and or virgining or originating itself in Mexico, but actually started in Los Angeles. Angeles. So it's a it's a very much an American originated origin story. Through his through his relationship with, uh, with somebody that was, uh, you know, by marriage linked to him, I think a Cuban national, uh, if I'm not, if I, if I don't, uh,

misremember about it. Um, he learned some of the trade secrets as far as, uh, getting contacts, learning how to package what, uh, what distributors, distributors in the the U.S. to get to how to work distribution in the U.S. And how to finance and figure these things out. He learned it in L.A. Later on, he went back to Cina L.A. and started setting up some of his network from Mexico and started figuring out how to get people involved in it.

He's never been arrested. The pictures we have of him are probably almost a decade old now of an interview. He himself had asked for. with a magazine called Proceso down in Mexico. Did you say he asked for it? Yeah. He asked to be interviewed by somebody from that magazine. He wanted to talk about, you know, some things that were being said about him, I guess.

But he's in the shadows. He's a shadowy figure. You don't, you don't hear a lot about him. That's interesting to me that nobody knows about. Most people have never heard his name. Well, it's, it's, I think now a lot of people have heard it heard, heard, heard his name through his son being arrested in the U.S. His son was not arrested in the U.S.

He was arrested in Mexico, but he was arrested to the U.S., and there's a very amazing book written by a reporter, Annabella Choa, I think is her name, that is basically an interview with his son, the son of El Mayo Sambada, and his experience in that family and the whole process of how he became involved in that business and how that business is, you know, It relates to a lot of the corruption, not only in Mexico, but on the U.S. side, there's this whole story about that.

And she's, ask her on. She's somebody to talk to. But yeah, it's an interesting aspect that he's never been arrested and that not a lot of people know about him. What ended up happening to his son? He probably, I think he turned state witness, I guess. So that's at least what you gather from. some of the subsidy talks about in that book.

So he's probably in some sort of protective custody somewhere, probably. His dad wants to kill him. I don't know. Jeez. But yeah, it's interesting that you don't hear a lot about him. And it's, you know, there's, there's some aspects of some of these criminal groups down there. You know, El Chapo was one of those where I think they turned into some of kind of celebrity figures, you know. El Chapo escaped from

captivity a few times in a very dramatic way. One of them he was probably led out by the president guards. There's a story about him being in a laundry cart and stuff like that, which again, I think is completely BS that the government kind of said to not be embarrassed.

He was probably led out of that prison. And then the other one was a drug tunnel that was, you know, dug underneath the prison where he was at. And he was kept on the ground level for some insane reason. And if you see the drug tunnel, the drug tunnel is shaped like that.

It's like you see some of the drug tunnels underneath the border that are shaped the same way. Why are they shaped like that? It's the quickest way and the most stabilized way to create a tunnel in a hurry without having to create a shaft with support beams on it. So you make something that is shaped like that.

Interesting. And that was probably made, by some of the same people that make the tunnels across the border is a going theory. It was wild seeing the video that Vice did on that tunnel. Like there was electricity throughout the whole thing with lights. It was it was it was a major operation that cost a lot of money. And all the people that worked in that jail were, you know, they had to have been complicit.

But you can see his celebrity or his almost legendary status kind of build it from all these exploits he did. And, you know, it also tells you a lot about sentiment in Mexico, you know, how people that are working for the government are vilified because of all these major issues with trust and the violation of trust and corruption, you know, I understand that aspect of it. You know, I'm considered a villain because of where I worked, you know, even though I despise and fucking say a bunch of shit about the government that I used to work. But I'm still, I was still an agent.

Mexico, the policeia. So that means all of us are correct and all of us are evil. But on the other side of it, you see the Netflix series where, you know, the romantic, romanticized version of cartel members who are, you know, Robin Hood characters almost in all these cases and are romanticized. And you see, you know. Why do you think that is? Why do you think American culture is so fascinated by, by, by, you know,

cartel lore and cartel and drug stories it's a robin hood you know you can't help but uh root for the uh for the robber in this in these cases it's a robin hood figure i guess i don't know so one of the one of the oldest oldest examples i think mexico has of this kind of phenomenon of rooting for the uh for the i won't say bad guys because i think mexico is beyond good and bad right now there's uh there's uh devils on both sides um but one of the first uh cases of this robin hood type sentiment was a guy that later on turned into the saint of cartel of traffickers a malverde jesus malverde jesus malverde is a folk saint in mexico that came out of sinola you see him depicted as a as a man well dressed with a mustache usually carrying around

money bags or weed on the bottom of them it's like in these statues that they have of them they call them the santo el el the saint al colgatel or the hanged saint basically. He was a, he was a bandit, a bandit that lived in the state of Sinole, back when, you know, turn of the century. Rich landowners used some of the rural roads to go in and out of the area. And he would rob them, you know, just like Robin Hood would, you know. He would rob them and he was known, hard to get, you know.

He would know his ways around the rural area, so he would escape. these government troops that were after him. So he became legendary abandoned. Eventually, the government got tired of his shit. He tried to rob a rich landowner somewhere out there, and he got shot in the process. And wounded, he hit himself in the hills. He knew he was going to die,

so he told one of his friends to basically turn him in. There was a, I don't think I remember clearly, but 10 gold coin reward on him. 10 gold coins for him. So he said to his friend, turn me in, get the money, just give it to the townspeople. And, well, that's the legend.

He was caught. He was hung. And there was an order for him not to be buried. So just let him rot. Eventually, his bones made it to the ground. And the townspeople, one by one, put a rock over his remains. There was a mound of rocks there eventually. People started praying to his anima sol,

which is basically this soul that's stuck in purgatory type belief that a lot of Catholics have. They view people that died unjustly like that as a link or as a way to ask for favor or ask for intervention. So he started granting miracles. And there's a big shrine to him in Zeno, Loa. And you go there and you'll see pictures of some of these traffickers in the U.S. with their big trucks and their big houses. And like, thank you, Malverde, for granting me this miracle, you know. I think that is an interesting aspect of the psyche in Mexico,

this almost rebellion against authority or government that we have in us. And specifically higher in places where people don't have a lot of opportunities. You know, the reason why some of these criminal groups are so large and so powerful in Mexico is because we have a lot of youth. We have a lot of expendable youth bodies that have absolutely no opportunities other than going to work with some of these criminal groups down there. Right.

So. They start working for cartels as young as like 11 or 12, don't they? Yeah, you can work them in the fields and then they turn into the Alcones. You know, you'll see 13, 14-year-olds with a cell phone and radio on the rooftops. They know, their eyes and ears. There's no way you can get close to any of these towns that are cartel control without them spotting you from a mile away. You'll get, then you'll be able to ride a motorcycle. So now they're falling around military.

convoyes in a city so they can report back all their movement. So it's and then you'll get an A-K and you'll be in back of a truck or you'll get a gun and you'll get a task with going to shoot somebody. You know, this is and the dream they used to have was through music. You would hear about the exploits of this. This guy, this cartel guy. You would hear Corrido about this guy. You would hear, you know, stories about this other guy.

You would see a Mexican beam who. and VHS about, you know, so-and-so and you would get inspired. But now we have Narcos Mexico. Now we have a bunch of these online series related to them. Now we have TikTok. Now we have Instagram. Now we have a lot of things that will give youth a window into some of these lifestyles.

And like, I want to be that. That's the way to get out. That's the way to give my family what I didn't have. You know, this is the way, I guess. This is the lottery ticket. Although, it's like the easiest way to get out of poverty, right? I mean, it's the way, you know. The way.

It's the way. There's no other options. In some places in Mexico, there's no other options, you know. Where, you said you were born in Tijuana, were you, were you raised as young child there? Or where were you? Tijuana, Tijuana, Tijuana, Tijuana, so basically the two municipalities that are joined, you know, we had a ranch with a pig farm on it. So I would go back and forth between the city and this pig farm area. Is there like a key moment you can remember or reflect on in your life where you ever made a choice, like, to go in that direction?

Or where you had a choice to enter that world? Yeah. I mean, again, when I was my teenage years were in the late 90s in Tijuana, where the whole Narco Jr. phenomenon was happening in that part of the world. Narco Juniors were basically middle-class kids being brought into cartel activity. I think at that time, the Ariana Feud cartel was the main cartel in that area. So they were basically bringing, the Tijuana was thriving. It had poverty in it, but it also had a very big middle-class population.

And they saw in this middle-class population opportunities for them to infiltrate, regular industry to utilize some of the sons and kids that some of these families that are well off to gain entry into

industry, gain entry into transport, gain entry into means of moving across the border through regulator legal means

by utilizing transport companies and stuff like that. So, you know, I saw friends in mine in that in that time frame that went off to work for some of these criminal groups and saw them go from not being able to. I was a skateboarder back then.

You know, that was my thing. I played in a punk band. I think a lot of that mentality that I got from that culture kept me out of it. But some of my friends left that behind or some of my friends were never part of that whole kind of culture, counterculture type of thing. So I saw them go from, you know, driving around, you know, beat up Hyundai, Hyundai Excel to then showing up in a RAM, Dodge Ram, a brand new Dodge Ram, a sport, a sporter one with blue and a stripe going down the middle of it and then showing them they're showing me their AKs, you know, at, at, at, at, at, at, at, uh, at, at, uh, at, at, uh, at, uh, at, uh, at, uh, at, uh, at, uh, at, uh, at, uh, what about the old for lightnings. Yeah. Remember those, the, the, the old school, F. F. F. F. F. Happy lightnings.

Yeah. I mean, you would see these guys go from nothing to everything, you know. And they would come and like, hey, yeah, check this out. I'm standing there wearing dickies,

wearing air walks. And people, you know, my blind skateboard that tails were all worn down because that's, you know, I've been riding around all this time and independent trucks. So people know that I'm legit. I'm just talking about my board.

but I'm sitting there holding this and these these guys show up and they're like walk out of this car wearing, you know, Italian stuff on them, you know, clothing and boots and flashy, you know, money is everywhere and women are there. And it's like, what the fuck am I doing? You know, you have these moments of like, where am I going, you know? Right. But there was a specific place I used to hang out. It was a straight street, and everybody on that street, all the kids went to work, went to work in that industry, you know. And I remember when I was active, it almost became like this list that I would go down. Because I kept finding them in murder and executed scenes, you know.

A lot of these kids that I remember from that time, all of a sudden are found in pieces over here. There's another kid that's found dead over there. Their houses were fucking raided and burned, you know. And you saw this whole generation of people just get eaten. I think there was one night when we found 12, 12 kids ranging from 17 to 28. just tied up, beaten, tortured, and strangled and shot some of them in one night, 12 of them. And going through and looking at them and seeing, oh, I think I know that guy. And some of our other guys that were there, like, I think I know him.

And these were kids, you know. And they were part of this machine that was trying to gain control of that part of the country to control the port of entry into the largest drug market on the planet, which is California. And that's why they're dead, you know. Do you see an end to this in the future, like even if it's the long-term future, or are cartels forever just going to be a part of Mexico? That's an interesting question. And I've something that I talk, like I consider, like, people talk about fully legalization

or decriminalization of some of these substances across the board. There was a moment in a time when some of these criminal groups only focused on moving narcotics across a board. I mean, we've found, seen a long arthal activity all the way in Europe and northern Africa and Southeast Asia. You know, they're everywhere, you know. It was a time in place when that was their only means of money making, but now they're local drug market, giant local drug markets in Mexico as well. So you can decriminalize things in the United States, but that's not going to end anything in Mexico.

So that's an aspect of it that is no longer just like, Mexico is no longer just a drug route. It's also a giant drug market itself that is feeding a lot of these criminal groups. So unless it's going to be like a regional decriminalization of narcotics of all kinds, to regulate that. That's not going to be an issue. We already saw the legalization of marijuana in certain parts of the United States. And all that did is it turned marijuana fields

into poppy fields. That's what happened. So they just, you know, shifted or adapted. The reason why they started putting fentanyl in the in the poppy and the heroin was that a lot of these places where they were planted. think these poppy fields were already leached as far as nutrients. And they didn't, that, that wasn't

their industry. So the potency of this lighter colored heroin was low. So, you know, this is kind of legalization of pot in places like California was kind of around the same time that the, the, prescription opiate epidemic was ending, was kind of petering out in the United States. So it was like perfect storm, you know, you started seeing these marijuana fields now turn into poppy fields and people started putting, you know, an extra kick fentanyl into the heroin. And it became the product. Isn't it the fentanyl cheaper? Yeah. I mean, it's a, it's a time dependent. So during COVID it was not cheaper. Oh, okay. Because the shutdown, although a single cartel was the one that was getting most of it. I think there was a case of

seen the law cartels actually smuggling some of the fentanyl from the U.S. into Mexico to load their drugs. But it definitely gave it a kick, you know? I mean, as far as whatever potency heroin had coming out, coming from now and there, they added the fentanyl in it and just turned into. And not only drugs, but isn't the cartel also involved in like lots of other main industries? Like even if like we have a Ford factory down there. Isn't the cartel somehow like doing this?

Any major industry in Mexico is either in some way, shape, or form financing criminal groups around it by paid protection schemes, by racketeering, rackets related to robberies inside of some of the mining industry, for example. Oh, yeah. And by feeding some of the drug habits in the communities around some of these industries, they have their hand in human trafficking. they have their hands in regular industry. There's been a few tequila companies that later were found out to be owned and operated by families that are attached to some of these criminal enterprises.

So, yeah. I mean, the interconnectivity of the United States and Mexico as far as all of these illicit activities, the whole aspect or concept that Americans have of this is a problem that is all the way out there in Mexico doesn't touch us. It's like I think about is there a time in the future where like the cartel could just evolve into it's now the government.

Well, that's some of these leaks. We're going to start making our own rules. Like we're going to develop our new constitution of the cartel. The reason why you're seeing so many political candidates being assassinated in Mexico right now is because that's what they're already doing. You know, they already have their candidates. They already have their governors. You think the governor of Sina law can be the governor of Sina law without the Sina law cartel saying that he's going to be the government's seen law? I would bet no.

So that's an example. Okay. That's an example of that. And the Mexican military doesn't work with the Marina, with the Mexican Marines. You know, they don't work together. So they don't trust each other. So if members of the federal government don't trust each other in that way to work together in conjunction. something's at a very high level wrong or broken,

and they themselves are admitting that they are compromised in a way. So when you ask if the cartels will one day govern, they are already in a way, criminal groups are already in a way governing large segments of Mexico through influence. It's already happened. because one of the presidents labeled them a terrorist organizations, right? So the I think the people will think back on Trump talking about the fact that these groups would be labeled or the possibility of labeling cartel organizations as terrorist organizations. And this happened after the massacre of American Mexican American Mormon.

Mormons in Sonora. There was a massacre over this family group in Sonora. Now, there's a bunch of stories out there as far as if they were involved in cartel activities or not. If they had some sort of connection to any of that, you know, conspiracy theories abide out there as far as that. I'm not here to say exactly what the motives were. I know that it was a bunch of women and children in cars that were basically shot and burned

alive, you know, that's what I know. I know that they were Mexican Americans. They had American passports and they had Mexican nationalities. So they were, they had both nationalities. When that happened, there was also this surge of the migrant carabans going on as well. And this was at the beginning of the Trump, kind of the Trump administration's efforts. And also we had a new leftist president in Mexico who was utilizing all the anti-American sentiment. Just Lopez? Yeah. It was utilizing a lot of the anti-American sentiment that Trump himself created as a political

pressure point, you know. So when the migrant caravan happened and all these people moved through the country towards the border, Trump was trying to figure out a way to pressure the, the Mexican government to reinforce its own southern border. And one of the ways that he put political pressure on them was to put this threat out as far as the United States labeling cartel organizations as terrorist organizations, which never happened. He just made the threat, you know.

It was used as a political pressure, pressure thing. What would that mean if he labeled the cartels as terrorists? It means that anybody supporting them, relating to them, harboring them, working with them, financing them, moving their money, or anything of that nature would now be fair game for the U.S. military to go after. Think of Saddam Hussein and what happened in Iraq when that happened and the Taliban. But Iraq had a lot of resources that we wanted. What would the U.S. gain by going in an invading Mexico? Well, we have most of the mineable lithium on the planet underneath the same place where all those Mormons were. Really?

If you want to talk about resources, Mexico has a lot of resources. Not in, I think it's main resources. It's people, you know. But there's also a lot of... I had this conversation with a former CIA aging yesterday, and I asked him this question. And he said the biggest incentive for any country is to improve, GDP, to grow its GDP, revenue is resources and money. What will we gain by doing that to Mexico?

That was his question. Most of the mineable lithium on the planet is. It is the number one deposit of lithium, I think, right? It's what's the biggest mindable deposit of lithium on the planet, I think. And if you see what has happened to other South American countries that have lithium, that has had regime changes recently in the recent history, you would see some of the influences the United States have had and some of these regime changes. South America is going to the left and this this this sentiment against the United States

is prevalent throughout Latin America right now. When the when that threat was made of labeling cartels as a terrorist organization, it moved whatever whatever apparatus was there to fortify the, southern border to admit the whole policy that United States now had as far as them saying, hey, I know you're coming here illegally. You wait in Mexico while you wait your turn, but in Mexico. And the only reason all of that happened was because of some of the political pressure that happened with that threat.

Now, think about it. You label cartel organizations terrorist organizations. Now, do they meet that definition? Are they politically motivated? You see all these political candidates get assassinated. You can say yes. Do they have an ideology they do want to put forth? They're the heroes in their own story.

So there's an ideology there. There's some certain cartel groups and leaders in the past that have actually turned themselves into saints in some parts of Mexico. There's a case of a cartel member. They nicknamed El Masloco, who turned himself into like a crusader type saint and made statues and shrines to himself out there. So there's clearly some of that to be said about some of these organizations.

They utilize assassination, murder, torture, and terror-related tactics to further their their, their intentions as far as what they're working on. A lot of the ISIS, of highly produced ISIS videos of executions and stuff like that that came out. Back then, we're actually influenced by some of the narco blog and execution videos that the cartels had. So even there, there's like, you know, they've been influencing that type of stuff. Now, I consider that they meet every single definition of that terminology. I don't think they will be labeled that because that means. means that the United States will have to fight that battle on both sides of this border. You know, if they cartel organizations are labeled a terrorist organization, it means that any

industry government or people that are harboring, helping, aiding, supplying, all of that will be fair game. And I think there's a lot of that industry and stuff like that in the United States as well. And there's a lot of political influence. The U.S. government helping create terrorist organizations. The U.S. government not being too far-sided with their foreign policy, specifically in Mexico. It's probably fair to say. Well, I'm just looking at what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So, like, somebody that's not from here, and I don't know a lot about that war. but the fact that you were attacked by a bunch of Saudis and Egyptians and then you went off and took down the Iraqi government and the and now looking at it now and seeing the Taliban back in power that that's that's an interesting that's an interesting lesson for other countries that are looking to the US for solutions like the lesson is learned by the international community specifically your your neighbors down South. Like we don't, like Mexico doesn't want the U.S. and Mexico to intervene or come as a

savior. That's not in the mind. That's no longer in the headspace of most people down there, which again, it's, you talk about looking for solutions and stuff like that. It's, it's hard to come up with any sort of solution that doesn't involve a bottom up transformation of Mexico that includes its people, you know? If you want to, want to talk about true change. I think it comes from a grassroots effort from the people in Mexico that doesn't include the government and doesn't include the military in Mexico because I think and these recent leaks of documents have shown that they are completely under-equipped and under overwhelmed by this problem down there. It seems like if you could just alleviate all the

fucking bloodshed and violence and brutality in these cartels that you can, could make shit way better. Do you see any sort of way to just fix the problem when it comes to the killing and the murder? Like if you could legitimize them somehow or give them some sort

of power like, look, stop the killing, stop the murder. Let's make this work. Keep the cartels, lose the death. It's interesting that you know, the drug war that was kicked off by this

President Felipe Calderon chopped off the heads of certain leadership in some of these criminal groups, which basically meant now one group is two. Right. This group over here now

has a vested interest in attacking this one. So it was basically kicking a beehive and not having a bee suit on is the analogy that I want to give it. I think whatever options we have had of pacification or I don't know what to call it

are gone. I think these groups are fractured like the Cinaloa cartel is a fractured entity. I mean they have killings going on between their members. You see places like Baja in Tijuana specifically

where you have one side fighting the other for control of the local drug market. Most of the murders that happen in Tijuana are related to local drug sales so they're killing each other's sales points people right and then you see

some of these criminal groups that are no longer able to maintain their organization through trafficking means so they start going into local extortion going into abduction for ransom going into people trafficking and going into other sites

of things and making the worse and worse and worse the situation worse and worse and worse and worse. And all we have to combat that in Mexico is a government that is in complete denial about the fact that every five years, six years where a president comes in, all the stuff that was done before gets completely discarded, even if it was successful, demonized. And all that is bad. Now we're going to do this new thing.

An example of this. Current president Lopez over there. And again, I'm not, I'm not to the left or the right of political respect. And people want to say that I am to the ride or something like that. I want to smoke a joint and take mushrooms at my gay best friend's wedding with a gun on my hip and I don't want the government to come in to say. Those are my political views, right? You can't put Ed Calderon in a box. No.

I mean, I'm cool. I'm cool. Everybody wants to live their own life. I'm fine. I'm about small government. I'm about responsibility. You know. If there's one thing I would change in the world, it would be to declare the,

the ability and the means to protect yourself and your loved ones as a human right. And that would mean firearms. Right. That wouldn't mean to be able to take that responsibility for yourself because in places like Mexico there, that's not available to people. So if people want to see my politics, that's pretty much it. It's about responsibility and about being able to do that for yourselves. The president right now in Mexico is doing this call, then called Guarda Transformation. young. And he's being, he's highly popular as far as the, the, the masses.

To the right of the political spectrum down in Mexico, there's the conservative people that, that have done a horrible job at governing Mexico. And it's clear now because of the complete disdain that the populace has towards them. They have no political candidates that's going to rival anything that the, Andreas Madre López Obrador, is going to put forth as far as the next person that's coming into the presidency in the next two years. So, but the main thing that the, that the current administration does is criticize their right for their handling of, you know, the drug war, criminal, the drug policy and all these things. And they're doing exactly the same things that the past administrations have done,

which is basically militarized the police, militarized the counter-cartel activities. Go into a fragmented effort against all cartel organizations out there, favoring some, not favoring others. And the main thing that they promised was to create a civilian police, federal policing organization across the country, which they didn't. They basically changed the uniform of the military from green to white camouflage and put a military member in. in charge of this new police group, which now the federal police is gone. All these guys who had a lot of training, a lot of the counter-narcotics operational skills and experience are gone. Where are they? This mass of people that work for that institution. Where are the skills? Probably at work somewhere else, right? A lot of these criminal organizations are recruiting somewhere else,

So they're probably somewhere currently working against our best interest. You can turn this and then about that. Okay. So where are they? And this is basically us shooting ourselves in the foot again. When I left the job where I was, the same thing happened. We, the group that I worked with and some of the people in the leadership that I worked with did an amazing job in Baja. We took the Tijuana specifically off the most dangerous city list.

on the planet with the work that not only we did but some of the local government did there. We were given a clean slate to try and figure that out. And when that ended, political rivals came into power and everything was vilified and demonized and all of us were now the villains, right? Because there's a case of systemic amnesia that happens every five years. so it's going to happen again things are really bad right now in Mexico as far as as far as control that some of these organizations have over vast amounts of the population the leaks that just came out this Wakamaya leaks that just came out that basically put

bare all of the mistakes that this current administration has had and also past administrations have had how it taints all of their hands from Felipe Calderon to the current administration, how the military is completely underprepared and ill-equipped to fight this problem and how they're holding on to the responsibility and the power that was given to them by letting them go out of their barracks

and do this stuff on the streets to try and gain control of it. We just had some legislation passed that's going to put them on the streets even for like five more years because they were trying to be put back into their military barracks. Now they're involved in creating a hospa

and creating airports, trains. They're trying to create this whole, they're involved in all this infrastructure work down there, which is making a lot of people some money. So you see all this systemic problem basically cycling

and people are fighting as far as the political left and political right. When there's the same problem, it's just repeating itself just under a different banner. So, you know. Sounds just like the United States, but with different issues. Yeah.

I mean, that division is what it is. God. We never explained it, but what were you doing specifically in Baja? I was a member of a state organization. That started as a state organization, basically. It's an attempt in Baja to Americanized police forces. It's a modern police force that they attempted to create. They were successful in some and some of it, basically,

the initial efforts of it. We were put through FBI background checks, our backgrounds were checked, financials, house visits, put through a paramilitary style training regiment. And we were basically used as the tip of the spear,

basically, to work against some of these cartel organizations in the area. When I started, the federal police were soldiers dressed in gray, and they would ride around the back of the train. truck with us. It's funny now that the soldiers are dressed in white and the same thing happens.

They're riding in the back of the truck. So I was part of that organization for 12 years. I did a lot of stuff in that organization from working in conjunction with federal agencies, the military, you know, sometimes I would get embedded with military with the military units because they would know their way around because of the way the military works in Mexico. So if you join the military in one part of the country, they send you to another. So sometimes these specialized military units were doing counter-narcotic operations, counter-cartel operations, but they didn't want to know their way around. So we would have to have us as guides in some of these areas.

So I worked with some of these mixed groups, basically, doing some of those jobs in that area, not just in Baham. I worked in other parts of the country. And also the U.S., I got to do a lot of, executive protection and bodyguarding with some high-level people, including the governor of Bah, and actually got to work here in the United States of protecting him and his family. Oh, wow. So that's another aspect of some of the work that I did.

That led me to get exposed to American military training. We did some time in Coronado and actually trained with some of people in NSW and NCIS. So I remember getting this feeling or this taste of what. we could be as a law enforcement and what our military could turn into if we if we had the backing of our government and if we had the confidence and faith of our people but we don't so um i did that for 12 years until it became completely unsustainable for me what i mean by that is i could no longer do that job without being compromised as far as you know my person uh i was never i was never on to take in any way, shape, or form.

Like, and people that doubt that, you know, I currently have a contract with the federal government, and they looked at my background before I could get any of these. So I train federal agents in the United States and have in the past. And I left that job with nothing, basically, you know. There was a, there was a moment where I was basically brought into the office after after most of that situation was ended and I was offered either to work for a team or not and I just resigned and I had the opportunity that not a lot of people have of coming to the United States through marriage. I had a marriage. I went married and American and came to the United States.

I'd never envisioned myself to come to the United States and living up here. Like I was married for a few years down there and our plan was. to live in Mexico, it's, you know, it's not, it's not expensive. We figure it out. Never in my wildest dreams that I imagine I was going to leave that job alive or not just do that for the rest of my life. But it became less and less sustainable until it just became like corrupted at the highest levels. And, you know, when I was up here, going through my immigration, process and finally finalizing that I remember seeing the arrest of Martinez Luna Garcia Luna the guy that was head of counter cartel operations

for the federal government when I was active and now he's up here in the United States on cartel charges and this is somebody that was awarded the FBI recognition and like the government was saying this is the best guy out there He was the guy that was in charge of overseeing the organizations that would keep us honest, you know, the people that would go and put us through polygraph examinations every year, you know, or if something would happen, they would, you know, evaluate us and investigate all of us. And all of a sudden, you know, this is our boss and now he's under arrest up here for cartel charge. How many times did you get approached when you were doing this?

that. Many times. And what, what are their tactics to doing that? They try to like, blackmail, leverage. Like, what do they do? Through others, through other people that are working in the same organization as you, basically. You'll get approached by people inside. Okay. And there's a culture in Mexico of, you don't, you don't want to tell on people. Right. You know? And it is understood that there's people in there that have, they're on the take and there's people that are not on the take. So you just work. Drive a nice cars, living in nice houses. So yeah, people suddenly get a, a, giant house and you arrive at work in a Hummer H-2. There's a, there's a, and people that, there's, there's, there's some people out there are going to listen to this that work with me and they're, they're not going to let me lie about this. There was a, there was a guy that showed up to work one day in a yellow Hummer H-2. And everybody there was like, what the fuck?

He was later, he was later to let go of the job and he got into some shit and arrested and all this type of stuff. But at that time, I was working for, as a bodyguard for one of the directors of the group that I used to work with. And I remember him looking out the window and being like, he looked back at me. And I was driving around a sunfire, Plymouth. I think it's Plymouth Sunfire. It's shitty. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I know what car you're talking about. Shitty-ass car, you know, but that's what I could afford on that salary. and this fuck arrives in that car I was basically driving a loaner car from my, it was my brother's car and he loaned me that car because my truck was all fucked up and this guy just shows up in this car it happened regularly

or just getting, we would change our phone numbers every now and then just to, you know, for security and my phone would always get you know, somebody would call me and threaten the people that I was working with. Hey, tell your boss that he's going to be fucking die. It's like, shit, who's that? I don't even want to know.

You know, our information, our emergency contact numbers and personal information found in photocopy form at a safe house somewhere, you know, and all of us having to get a call and like, hey, your information was found somewhere. We were everything around, you know.

Um, it was a constant thing. And also, there was a lot of cases where you would approach people. And they, they were clearly, clearly more of them than there were of us. And really, you would have to just, you know, stand, stand down or stand back. Or getting a call from high up and say, whatever you're going to, yeah, don't go. Okay. There was a lot of that. What were the guys thinking that would show up?

Like, the guy driving at H2. Like, he must have known that. everybody it was obvious right he's it i mean to when that happened i remember everywhere it's like it's obvious uh but it was at a weird moment in that institution's uh time where we didn't have a lot of backing and we didn't have a lot of people basically looking out for everybody's interest we were kind of compartmentalized and these guys over here were doing what they were doing these guys over here were doing what they were doing it was true throughout it's uh throughout my time there where we had people that we knew who we recognized who was cool to work with and who was not

doing shit and we recognize who wasn't um there was a there was a very influential man that came and was in leadership during some time when i was there his name's uh lieutenant colonel isaola who's a very famous character in mexico one of the one of the one of the most famous lawmen And in Mexico basically, he had a documentary done on him. Oh, yeah, I've heard of this. Incorruptible dude, Señor, sorry, not dude, man. He's still out there, and I'm probably going to talk to him pretty soon. He came out of the military.

He's a tenant colonel. He was a lieutenant colonel. He came out of the Warwick College. Amazing man. Fearless. when you talk about like superhero characters like these these these these men that you meet that are supernatural he that that has to be one of them for me um the first uh the first time i i met him uh he came to tijuana to take control of the institution that i was in the the organization that i was in

and the guy that I was working with is the party guard said you're going to drive him around so I go over and I introduce myself he looks at me he looks at my equipment he looks at all the stuff like he looks at my firearm and things that are on it and he says he says who who got you this equipment it's like I did how'd you pay for it with my salary do you like this job So yes, what don't you like about it? I wish we had more support. I wish you had more training. I wish we had more equipment

and I wish we had better firearms. And he just nodded. And then I got into a car with him and we started patrolling Tijuana the first night he was active. He would walk out of the car straight into shit, you know? And I was supposed to be guarding him.

And I was like, sir, you can't look. kind of shit what do you walk into? I thought he's got cartel members being stopped somewhere and you're just walk in there like who are you like who are you like who you're working for? Like this man was fearless you know he was a fearless man um

had several assassination attempts on his life several like they tried to poison him is that something that the like when you walk into those situations like that like you explained him walking into just a group of cartel guys and he was fearless

Is that something they can sniff out very easily? Can they sense people's fear and they take advantage of that? Yeah. I mean, they sense that people not being too sure about what they were doing or like, oh, who are these guys? Are they who they say they are? Who are they calling? Who did they call before we stop them?

You're watching your backs. You would stop some suspicious people and you wouldn't have to put people on the sides of the road pointing at both ways in case you would get ambushed by somebody trying to rescue them for something like that. But he changed a lot of the ways we operated. He basically turned us into a counterinsurgency in a lot of ways. He started developing these nucleuses or cells of people that would move around the city at all hours of the night and operate.

And we were, nobody knew what was going on. They would just move around the city. And he would keep some of these groups on edge because of where are these guys going? What do they know that we don't know? He got us better firearms. I remember we had one AR-15 in 2-2-3 and one in 9-millimeter in the armory. And that's what we would roll with every night. Some of the cells that I would work with at night, that's what we had as far as to arm ourselves.

We were moving five, six-man strong groups. And all of a sudden, all of us were carrying around G3 assault rifles and G36s. And we had the full backing of the military. And now we were a thing to be feared. And we were operating very much almost in, again, counterinsurgency way against some of these groups. And we had the backing of the government at that time. So they were pretty behind his efforts. He changed a lot of stuff in there.

He changed a lot of it. I think I remember the first thing that I kind of noticed is that he had a selection process as far as who was going to be in charge and he put the standards in front of us. So it was no longer who you knew or who your compadre was as far as if you wanted to be in leadership. Now you had to prove yourself. It didn't last though. It lasted a few years and he was moved.

He did some great work in Tijuana. He was then he was a police chief of the Tijuana Police Department for a while as well. Oh, wow. He was the one that disarmed the whole of the police department in Tijuana, which was insane. The Tijuana was basically without an armed police force for a few weeks because of him. How did that happen? He had the military with him. Oh, shit.

He surrounded them with the military. And they said, give the guns up. Specifically, he wanted those guns to go through forensics because a lot of them were being utilized as the, murder weapons because a lot of the municipal police department in Tijuana was undertake, not only undertake, but they were being utilized by some of the cartel forces to move drugs around and perform hits. He did such a good job that he was then sent by the federal government to take leadership of the police precinct in Juarez, and he did the same out there.

He lowered the violence out there with the same approach he took in Tijuana. politics change you know Abnesia comes in so he was on his way out of Juarez and he was with his one of his kids and he was shot in the back in his last assassination attempt and lost to the use of his legs

Jesus and that happened you know all of us were like it to the people that knew him and that worked with him And, you know, it was kind of hard. But then he came back. He came back with a vengeance and he politicized.

He wanted to be the municipal president of Tijuana. So he's made the run on the office of that three times now, I think. Really? Yeah. I held a political rally for him at my family's house. Where does he live now? He's around. He's in Mexico, but he's in Mexico, okay.

But he's, he's hard to find. Right, right, for good reason. But he is, you know, if there's anybody that people should look at as far as like, I don't think, I think Mexico's lost or I think there's nobody out there to trust or nobody out there to kind of look at, they should look at him. I think he's what we need as far as a leader in Mexico right now. he's not only proven himself as a leader as far as some of these problems that we have in Mexico but he's also uh there's a reason why they try to kill him so many times is because he could

buy him off that's the reason why they tried to kill him so many times um what was the most optimistic point of your career working in Mexico doing this stuff working on these on these counter narcotics operations or what was like the most successful successful point in your career where you thought like, like, I'm working for something that's greater than me that could actually fix this country. And then at what point did you lose hope? I remember this, it was almost a joke every night as far as how much bodies we would find. Like every night there was three over there, five over there, six over there, 12 at one night, you know, shootouts in the middle of the day.

I remember coming to this point during some of the time that I was actually working as a bodyguard for the governor of Baja towards the end, where I was sent to the police academy for retraining. And during that retraining process that we got, we were basically told to tone it down a bit. they said your militaristic approach or this sense that you're still in this war and doing this job that you used to do is not what we need anymore we need more community policing so you need to chill out and then we were shown some of the numbers and how the state itself was actually more peaceful than it was a few years back and how some of the work that we did

made a difference and now we were being told to chill out basically so murders were down and some of these things kind of pacified or calmed down you know the Juana was no longer on the most dangerous city list on the planet and I had like I was like I had this moment of

well it worked but then, you know, then it came back with a vengeance. And it's been back for a few years now. People forget. There's a short memory in Mexico, I guess. And what was done correctly for a while was forgotten or suppressed or pacified. You know, they saw no wolves, so they shot all the guard dogs, basically.

is what I kind of got gathered from their, the political efforts down there when I was, when I was coming out of that experience. And it wasn't, whatever was successful wasn't popular anymore because it was, it represented a past administration. Hmm. What was it like leaving? Was it difficult to get out of there?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, I've invested my 20s to it. My, my life, my, my, my body to it, you know. There's a few teeth missing. My nose is a pretty good example of some of the shit that went on as far as that work. Some of the shit I saw is stuck with you.

Transformative, you know. I had this notion that I was going to die in that job, you know. I didn't think I was going to live to see 30. But I was okay with it, you know, because I was. was doing something. I felt like it was doing something. And for people that are involved in the military or that do work like that in the world,

it's never about the politics behind it. The people that went to Afghanistan and are seeing the exit of that whole conflict and stuff like that, they're not worried about the politics. They were worried about the people that were there with them. They were worried about things mattering, life and death shit mattering

at that moment when we're there. So that was similar for me. I wasn't in a far off land. I was where I grew up. So it really mattered to me. And I was worried about the people that I was with. I was worried about some of the people that I was going to leave behind. When I was in a command position, I had a few people go to school because of the influence that I had.

So I left a few lawyers and a few psychologists came out with careers, came out of the time that I was. was in command down there so I left at a better place in a lot of ways I I had a lot of invested in that and all of a sudden I found myself in a place where I'm you know being told to either work for one side or the other and there's no backing anymore like I you know all the people that I mentor I'm mentored under were gone or not in a command position some of the politicians that I work with are gone it's a different place so I just made the choice to jump you know it wasn't easy it was I felt a sort of abandonment by the people that were behind me at that time and also a betrayal of a sort from the government that I gave so much to when I was in this

position and I had nobody to look to I'm still waiting for my severance pay They never paid me when I left the job. I asked for a license, basically, to leave the job and come back to it after I did some things because I was under a lot of pressure and I had a lot of shit going on in my personal life. It wasn't given to me. So it was one of those moments where like, fuck it.

And I just fucking risked everything, literally risked everything. I had a two-year-old at this time and no other means of supporting her. And I decided to say, well, it's either me being dead and her getting life insurance policy or me being alive and struggling but figuring it out. So I had a lot of threats when I left, you know, like why are you leaving? This doesn't make any sense. You have a good salary.

You have a category in the police. Basically, a category there is a, they would have categories as far as your level and in how much time you would work there. So I had a good category. Had a very good salary. And why are you leaving? That's suspicious. What you're working for? What's going on?

You're like all this type of stuff. Like I got called like a bunch of calls, threats. I grabbed all my stuff and left. They question your motives, like what you could be doing. if you could be going to the other side. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it was odd, I guess, to them and also suspicious. So, but I just couldn't continue on there.

So I left. I found myself in the U.S. During the election of Trump. So that was a unique time, you know. It wasn't easy at all. Very unique time. It was not easy at all. Luckily, I had some pretty good people with me,

that uh friends that i made uh on the u s side during my time active helping me out through some of the process of making my way up here and um i found myself in a place where i was trying to forget or leave that shit behind me you know leave that whole experience behind me and then finding out that the only bankable skill that i had was that past behind me you know my experience and some of the right here. There go. It's just lowering slowly. Yeah, is it really? There you go. So, you know, I find myself in the U.S. and I find myself in the U.S. without what I thought was in no bank of skills and that experience is what I was looked out for. I mean, I started doing classes related to some of just a counter-abduction, for example,

and like, what's your experience face? And I'm like, well, you know, I did 12 years here. And they would be like, oh, that's an interesting experience base. And I just realized that one of the things that I could do as far as changing things was to take that experience and take some of that voice that came from that experience and use it. And you were, it was, you moved here for the first time. it was right in the beginning of Trump when he was running for president? Yes.

How did you meet Joe? So that's a whole. That was like right during the time you first went on his show up. Yeah, so. It's like you came straight from here and went straight to his studio. No, not at all. I was going through my process of, basically my immigration process.

And I got it. It was very complicated. The thing that made it complicated with the, election with Trump is that everybody thought that window was going to close for people. So everybody went after it. So a process that would take eight months turned into two years. I started being involved in going off and training people, specifically people that wanted or needed to know some of the things that I knew about moving and operating in a place like Mexico. Just for personal safety, what to carry, what not to carry, how to social engineer certain

certain things and I realized that oh I have this whole experience base that I know about one of the first companies that hired me in the US was a company called triple lot design it's a clothing company but they they used to run a training wing based out of San Francisco shout out to those those people great people great company and I started doing training open classes for people basically there and they would sell out and I was like man I'm on to something at this time as well I had a blog that I was running a first off Tumblr, then Facebook, then Instagram. And I had a lot of people following since I was active when I didn't have my name out there, what I would just blog about

some of the stuff that I would see. So my name started kind of being known out there. Did you call it Ed's Manifesto? Yeah. So the Ed's Manifesto thing was actually something that came out of my time in Coronado training with the NCIS guys and NSW people. They would see me write down everything in a little black moleskin notebook and they say what are you writing in your old manifesto that's where that's manifesto came from um that's cool so i i started posting a lot about uh mexico and then when some of the horrible violence started happening in mexico again and uh it was at a time when social media and people would camera phones and cell phones and videos were more prevalent and a lot of the people that i used to work with would send me some of this stuff that would they would gather directly

from the field. So I started sharing some of these things on my social media platforms and talking about or commentating around. That led into me being invited to write for a few magazines and then to talk to the news and to be quoted by a few news agencies. And then all of a sudden I would look at my following and I would see different people on my following that were known. you know um he had a he had uh joe rogan had a guy on uh an author that talked about cartel activities was it uh grillo i think yeah i think it was him um and a lot of people in the common section said you would have you would you should have ed to talk about some of these issues i mean he was actually working down there uh and uh and then he just reached out directly

that's amazing i got a DM and and then i realized that he been following for a while, not only following, but also kind of like actually legitimately wanting to learn about some of the issues down there. He asked me a bunch of questions, and all of a sudden I found myself, I found myself in a studio, you know. That's incredible. He did two episodes with him, and it's, you know, it was life-changing, you know, life-changing to be certain. But specifically for me, all had changed. was now more people know about me.

Right. But as far as it changing my life in other ways, I mean, I've been, since I came up here, I basically been on a road not only training people, but also learning stuff for myself. You know, I go out there and train with other people myself to better myself. And I've been on this weird, you know,

kind of pilgrimage to try and figure things out as far as my own, healing after my experience down there and kind of how to make sense of all of it you know um so how long how long has china been an influence in mexico and when did you first find out was this happening or were you aware of this happening when you were in mexico not not not not uh not specifically i think uh there was an arrest of a of a mexican chinese national in mexico who had a record as far as the amount of money that was found in his house. Zen Shi Legong, I think.

I don't remember the name clearly, but it was basically somebody that was involved in the pharmaceutical industry of Mexico. Chinese, Mexican American, Mexican national. He had over $100 million worth of cash in his house. The stack was about the height of this table. Gold, all, you name it. His house was basically this giant money bit. And the federal government obviously took this money and, you know, made it disappear. And, you know, he got involved in some, and some, so we sued the Mexican government.

There was this whole case around it. But that was the first sign of public, kind of very public sign of Chinese national involvement in some of the issues related to precursors coming into the, country and what the pipeline might look like as far as some of these products and and precursors to create meth or to construct meth in Mexico and also the proliferation of some of these chemists Chinese chemists actually teaching or bringing some of the equipment to Mexico to create some of these substances in Mexico some of the first fentanyl production facilities in Mexico were kind of found around that time and this is this Philippic other on administration era So that kind of started being a thing, you know,

specifically around meth production, not fentanyl, but fentanyl started kind of looming in the background. Meth production in Mexico and the quality of meth that was produced in Mexico that was better than anything was being produced state side, you know, the things that inspired probably that,

that series here in the U.S., the Breaking Bad, yeah. The whole finding these giant, crystal shards that are clear and the quality in them coming from Mexico into the United States and some of these industrial level laboratories in Mexico kind of popping up and who was showing them how to cook it, how to create in some of the equipment to make it. And the precursors to make these were Chinese source. So that's kind of as far as on my radar, that's when they first kind of started popping up as a player in Mexico. What is the motive? What do you think the primary motive is

developing and helping produce all this stuff in Mexico and traffic it around the world. Do you think it's financial motivations or is there something else? So there's no criminal enterprise in China that's happening without the government knowing about it. Right, right. There's no Chinese mafia moving fentanyl and having an alliance with Mexican cartel. that that doesn't exist that shouldn't really kind of make sense to anybody so it's impossible to have some rogue organization that's not tied to government there it's impossible for anything coming in and of china without the chinese government knowing about it and not doing anything about stopping it

okay so it's that's what i'm saying okay so there's a pipeline of fentanyl coming out of china into Mexico and into United States as well through there through a lot of ports probably Canada as well so there's a pipeline of precursors to make methamphetamines and also to make to to fentanyl coming into Mexico and other parts of the world but specifically Mexico that is happening under the watchful eye of China right this is produced in laboratories and in chemical plants in in China then are clearly under supervision of somebody up there. And there's people have gone out there to report on these things. You know, all you have to do is change a molecule and some of these substances and it turns

into something else. There's people out there manufacturing and making these things and kind of circling back and engineering some of these things. But whatever it is, it's coming out of China with Chinese know-how. They know about it. I don't know if they're making money off it and the government's like using it to fund anything, but they know about it and they're not doing anything about it, basically. That's one part of it.

Another part of it is basically all the money that's made off some of these processes and some of these trafficking and distribution networks, sometimes goes into Chinese money laundering networks and banking networks. Two years ago, there was newsbreaking about Chinese banking apps used by Chinese money broker stateside to basically take money earned from sales and distribution in the United States to go into the Chinese banking system basically disappearing from the USIs and then materializing in Mexico with another money broker down there so even in that case there's an involvement you know as far as moving money and moving funds from one part to another to another now this is a place

where people have social credit, you know? Right. People are being watched where there's people that can't move from one part of the country to another. Right. This is a big brother area. So there's nothing happening there without them knowing. How is it possible for this criminal enterprises to be operating completely in the open

and utilizing some of these systems that they're completely supervising under supervision without the Chinese government knowing about it? And knowing what they do or what they do. do with those funds or where those funds come from. They either don't care or they are seeing it as a way to affect this country. And saying, oh, that's a pretty interesting thing that's happening with this whole process. Let's just not do anything about it.

Is the United States the biggest country or is it the most affected by fentanyl deaths? Do you know? I don't know about if it's the most affected by fentanyl deaths. I think it, from what I see in the amounts of numbers that are being reported, it's clearly that that's killing a major amount. A major amount of people and in youth. Some of the arguments I've heard of China trying to specifically disrupt America is that this is happening in a bunch of other countries that no one just talk,

just nobody's talking about. I mean, there's fentanyl deaths in Mexico. There's a giant market in Mexico, but that doesn't matter to Americans, I guess, people dying in Mexico from fentanyl-related deaths. but it definitely happens I'm not I don't come from the war college I'm not somebody that's involved in

international geopolitics or war war scenarios but if you wanted to affect the United States in a big way you would you know if you can't attack it directly militarily because you guys have spend more than any other country on the planet as far as your military

industrial complex right you attack it indirectly. Yeah. And one of the most indirect ways of attacking it is through your youth, you know, and influence, you know, I think the fact that the NBA can't say things like Taiwan is a country is mind-blowing to me in this, that to be living through a day and age when the

U.S., when a, when the private entity like the NBA can't have its players say that China, that Taiwan is in a country, that they want a country. Right. else they'll get you know so you there's you know to talk about the influence and censorship it's going on you know so that that i think i think they're they're very much playing the long game as far as influence in this country and the their their their pipeline as far as fentanyl and they're completely um passive uh reactions to it's banking institutions and and monitoring systems being utilized to move around money is just a clear sign that they're not looking

out for the passengers in the United States. And I'm sure, I'm sure the United States is doing the same. Oh, that's just the number of deaths. According to the CDC, 107,000 people in the U.S. died of drug overdoses and drug poisonings in the last 12 months ending in January 22. Staggering, 67% of those deaths involved synthetic opioids like, fentanyl. Okay. So fentanyl is an opioid. Yeah. Some of these deaths were attributed of fentanyl mixed with other illicit drugs like cocaine. See, that's what I don't understand. If you're selling cocaine, why would you mix it with fentanyl? That's just going to kill somebody. Like fentanyl is the opposite, right? It's insanely cut down maybe. They're their small time distributors

that are trying to figure out how to give a kick to their product that is extremely cut down. You know, you want to make more money. You're greedy. it's in illicit market so nobody's going to supervise you. Hey, when you buy these drugs? Right, but what I'm saying is like if you, if you got clientele buying cocaine and it's killing everybody,

they're going to stop buying your coat. This isn't Ford Mortar Company. They're not worried about being sued or anything. No, but right, but they're worried about making money. They're worried about selling their cocaine, right? They're not,

apparently. They're not, apparently. They don't give a shit. Some of these people don't give a shit. Do you think it's deliberate or do you think it's by mistake? I think it's by mistake. I mean,

being able to, to, give percentages as far as the mixture of the amounts is these people on chemists. Some of these guys are getting some of their product from Alibaba through weird underground black market means arriving at their houses and they're just cutting the shit at their basement just to make a quick buck. And how you're seeing the change right now is not specifically related to putting it into existing stuff like heroin.

Now they're actually involved in manufacturing fake pain pain medication and camouflaging or creating their own packaged pills. So not even that is safe anymore. I saw that when I was in. I forget where. I think I was like, I forget the name of the town, but it's like one of the biggest tourist destination places near Punta Mita. Okay. And what I remember going through town, there's all these pharmacies. Every single drug, every prescription drug.

every prescription drug was there. Biagros, yalis, Yalas, white people meth is what they call, white people meth is what they call some of that down there. right people meth. Yeah. And basically, a lot of stuff is over the counter. And even if it isn't over the counter, you can go down there, get a prescription. Like, hey, you need a prescription for it. Okay, where can I get it? And the guy just turns around, you know? And hello, I'm here to do it. You know, that's one aspect of it down there. It's interesting that there's a giant pharmaceutical industry down there. Should, People should question that.

Why is there so much, so many pharmacies and giant pharmaceutical industry down there? It makes you wonder what else are making, you know, behind that. Are there U.S. pharmaceutical companies based down there or operating down there? It's a lot of the bigger ones are mostly Mexican ones that are operating on there,

the guys of making similar pharmaceuticals as the major ones for the, for the populace that are more affordable. Oh. Wow. And right now what you're seeing... What China does. It's... With everything else.

That's the influence, I guess. What you're seeing now is the evolution into fake medication and fake pain medication and things that look exactly like a prescription opiate, which is fentanyl-loaded fake opiates. Pain pill presses being found in safe houses and manufacturing facilities. in Mexico packaging. So why would I risk smuggling a break of something when you can just put it in medication,

just put it in a purse crossing board? So that's what you're seeing now as far as an evolution of some of these things as far as the US. So they're sending chemists over here and the cartels are working directly with Chinese chemists and they're teaching them how to manufacture

this fentanyl. That's something that's been documented. It's happened a few times, yeah. That's already documented and that's happened. And that is, and how does that benefit these, like the Sinaloa cartel. Does that just save them money? Yeah, it's a money saver. I mean, they don't have to go to, even though.

So another thing to kind of think about as far as some of these criminal groups in Mexico, they operate in all the way down to Colombia now. There's, there's factions of the Sinaloa and Generation Cartel operating in Colombia at the source. I mean, they're not taking control of the whole operation, but they're already down there, kind of like basically doing this. Canada, you know?

Wow, man. They're in Northern Africa. They're in Europe. You know, there's a network of them that are now trying to find a way into like places like Australia. You know, they're everywhere. Jesus. As far as they're, you know,

if you, if they, if they, if they can figure out a way to produce and not depend on anybody, that makes it more money, you know? When COVID happened, it was a big hit to some of these groups because they couldn't get access to precursors and fentanyl, specifically. It was interesting that you had cartels that were on the Pacific side, that had control over some of the Pacific side ports in Mexico, like the new generation cartel actually grow during this time period

because they had access to the Pacific side ports, which led into a route directly to China. Even during COVID, they were getting supplied. So that's, again, an interesting phenomenon of that. But you see this whole proliferation, specifically around fentanyl and kind of cartels and criminal groups moving into manufacturing and creating it for themselves.

You know, that's going to be the moneymaker in the future. They can figure out how to basically develop that industry and stabilize it there. It's going to be just a supply line. What else is China doing in Mexico? I mean, lithium, buying mine, buying. There was, there was rumors of them gaining ownership over a Canadian mining company that was actually a Chinese-owned company that wanted to gain some of those mining rights

in the state of Sonor. You know, there was a massive exodus of American companies during the Trump administration when he was basically, you know, bring our companies back that whole policy. That didn't affect the economy in Mexico at all because Chinese interest, Chinese interests, Chinese interest just moved in quickly. Jesus.

So there's a lot of influence as far as China, as far as industry in Mexico, a big influence. Politics in Mexico, again, is moving far from the U.S. for a lot of reasons. It's popular to be anti-American in Mexico. Really? Yeah.

You know, the Ukrainian thing. thing, they voted it, they didn't, they abstain from voting for the, uh, during the, uh, Ukraine resolution thing, you know, um, during COVID, they, uh, got supplied with some of the Sputnik, uh, the Russian, uh, vaccines. So there was a, Mexico did. Yeah. So it was like, uh, there was a, this, this, this, this relationship of, you know, pro Russia thing in Mexico. Interesting. For a lot of people in Mexico, Putin seems like, uh, you know, he kind of like fits into the, into the macho. Well, it's kind of like, it's interesting to hear that.

I've heard that from other people too. And what's interesting about that is how we have the, in America, you have this constructed lens of Russia. Like we have, we're under our own propaganda. We can't see it clearly because the way our government, our media feeds it to us is different than how people in Mexico see it. Yeah. Can you see, do you notice a difference in like the propaganda in the U.S. compared to Mexico on what the views? of Russia are? I mean, I think

a lot of ways, I don't know, like you get the sentiment in Mexico that Russia is basically trying to unify its historical territory. That's a sentiment down. That's a sentiment I get from a lot of the, a lot of people that have talked to down there. And the U.S.

is basically destabilizing and pushing its influence in places where it shouldn't. And it's propping up a corrupt regime, which is a Ukrainian regime. regime that it's currently there, right? They see its current president as an American plant. Right. They see, they saw some of the troubles that happened there as American-backed situations, yeah. So they see that, again, the whole aspect of the U.S. being like a, like meddling in foreign

affairs and putting its influence and, and supporting things to an extent and then leaving those people behind or abandoning them is something that is kind of in the hearts and minds. of a lot of people out there. What happened in Afghanistan? What's happening in Ukraine now where you're sending, you know, armaments and, but you're not, you know,

you're not going to be there if the Russians actually didn't get to get to the capital, you know? Yeah, it's like with Ukraine, we're just, it's like an excuse for us to use up all of our surplus weapons and war machines that we have and be able to test new things for when the time does come that we have to face china this is like an excuse for us to i think it's

an interesting it's an interesting uh you know example of the fact that you know russia wasn't everything it everything they said they were right wasn't that crazy but also the u.s isn't really backing the ukraine no they said and also all this uh green energy um sustainable energy politics in Europe have made it completely a slave to Russian energy. So that's an interesting aspect of it that people are now kind of realizing that this whole thing about how people were moving green and stuff like, we're really not green. You know, they're kind of dependent on this energy, this dirty energy from Russia. And as far as the visuals of it for other people, including my friends,

myself, seeing the exit from Afghanistan and what happened to the people that you supported in that country and now they're left to their devices. What might happen in the Ukraine, I don't know what's going to happen there. People are celebrating Russian retreats and people are leaving Russia's retreating and stuff like that. And you see it in the media as a major victory. But then you see the Russian media and they say it's a. And then you see some military advice or so that looks like a tactical retreat and they're gathering forces.

They're probably going to do an offensive on this side of the country next. So you don't know. The fact that some of these weapon systems that are being sent to the Ukraine are showing up a black market, Stinger missiles and remote control guided missiles and stuff like that. They are. That's something that's been documented out there. Some of these things are going to disappear off that battlefield. field and a remote control guided missile of that nature might show up somewhere.

Do you imagine if one of the cartels got their hands on a nuke? I don't know about a nuke, but. They got submarines. Why can't they get a nuke? I mean, I don't know what they would do with a nuclear bomb, but specifically with a remote guided missile, you know, the ability to take down a helicopter, which they already done, you know, the ability to take out a plane, which may or may not have. already happened, you know. It's scary. Capabilities like that are scary, you know, and my,

my whole fear is, you know, the, some of, some of the stuff that is being now kind of in the wind, you know, like a rocket launcher, a rocket launcher can do a lot of things, you know, a 50-cal, a 50-cal rifle, which is a civilian-grade rifle here in the United States, in some parts, you can buy a 50-cow. My father, yeah, my father-in-law has one of my buddy just bought one. Yeah, a single one of those rounds somewhere in the power grid. They're like that big. A single round like that somewhere in the power grid. Right.

Right. You know, if I can, there's, there's a. Well, yeah, because the power grid's already going down everywhere in Ukraine, right? Yeah. So the, the amount of fuckery, basically, that we can do with military grade equipment that is now out there or with something small. A drone technology. No. We're going, the, the thing that people should wait for and see is swarm technology related

to drones. Cheap, swarm technology, militarized in this war field that we're seeing right now in the Ukraine. I think when people see that, that's when we all of us have to really worry about. What is that? Swarm technology. Basically utilizing a bunch of, a bunch of drones in unison. to attack a specific target.

Let's say 100 drones in unison swarming a specific target. You can have military-grade technology trying to take all of them down, but not all of them. One of them will get through or a lot of them will get through. So imagine that ability,

which has already been showcased by China, I think, has already done some public demonstrations with that technology. And it's viable. It's accessible. It's possible. So seeing some of that technology

in the wrong hands, people worry about a nuke. I worry about swarm What do you think about those fucking things that those fighter pilots are seeing off those ships

off of San Diego? Those, I don't know. Is that cartel technology? Could be. I mean, they have the money to make some shit like that. I don't know.

I've seen some weird shit in my life. I've seen some weird lights and shit like that too. But like, I don't know. I don't know what that is. You know, you see them how they move.

The fact that the military and some of these pilots are reporting on it, those guys are, You want to talk about people that go through a lot of scrutiny. Yeah. I mean, those guys go through all the filters. The crazy thing is they just started seeing it when they got the upgraded radars on their jets.

Like they never saw it before. Then they all upgraded their radar. Now they were seeing them everywhere. The weird thing about them that gets them like, again, I'm not, you know, I'm Alex Jones. Yeah. But. The Mexican Alex Jones. Ed.

There's a cartel alien drones. No. I worked on that for a while. I got a shout out from him once that was weird. The, the, the, the ability, these are, the ability for them of them to go into the water and also go into like a hillside, which have seen, you know, evidence of that kind of like talked about. That's weird. The fact that they interplay with what's observing them is also kind of weird. I don't know.

I don't know what they are. Like, I have no idea. For me, I don't think they're for me. I don't think they're aliens. Yeah. I don't, I don't, I don't see that. I don't know. They very much perform or act like drones,

like something you would send like a probe or something like that is what they seem like. I don't know. I don't know if there's something in them, but I know something's controlling them probably. Right. That's what I think. I don't know. I mean,

I dread the day that those things are what are being used for warfare. I can't fucking imagine. Yeah, I don't know. Again, this is me just talking. They don't seem like they're, they don't seem like war technology they seem more like surveillance maybe yeah well there's a lot of stuff that's being

classified of them appearing around nuclear facility yes yes and you know the the the historical presence of them as far as mass the mass of people knowing about them was around nuclear testing right yeah there was more

there was more UFO sightings during all the nuclear jet yeah there's a great documentary called the phenomenon and they actually show a graphic of like the map of the world and they show like the timeline where all the nukes were detonated in history and like the time, the period in time where there was the most detonated nukes

like when they were doing all the nuclear testing in Arizona and shit. Yeah. And the Russians were doing all their nuclear testing. That was the biggest spike correlated in UFO sightings. That's a weird thing. That's a weird thing. That's my funniest alien related thing I like a lot. It was that, you know, you go to Egypt

you know, aliens made this. You go to Mexico, all those pyramids out there, Mexicans made them. Who says the Mexicans made them? All of us. The Aztecs? Yeah. We made those, man.

I saw those pyramids like, can I? Aliens didn't make this shit. You can see the mortar and she's like, we made that shit, you know? You can see it. You can see the hand of man there. Man, there's a lot of fucking pyramids in South America and Mexico. Yeah.

A lot of crazy like temples and pyramids and shit. The interesting thing about some of the stuff in Mexico, as far as the culture-wise, we're very advanced. You know, there's the cradle of culture in Mexico as far as, you know, the astronomy,

math, writing, you know, when the Spanish came, there's this whole misconception that the Spanish took down Denostitlan. You know, they took down the Mexica empire, the ethnic empire,

as it's called now. That's not true. They came and they allied themselves with all the enemies of the Mexica Empire. Their enemies are the ones that took down that empire and they were aided by the Spanish. But it was basically a cultural implosion what happened in Mexico. We took ourselves down in a lot of ways. Interesting thing about the Spanish coming to Mexico and doing that conquest. They were conquested themselves before that.

They were coming off the Moorish conquest. So a conquested people that got liberated. went to another part of the world and conquested in other people. My maternal grandmother is from, I think she is Tlas-Kaltaken ancestry. They're the ones that allied themselves with the Spanish when they came. Really? Yeah, warrior people. Wow.

They got finished taking down the Aztec Empire and they got on a boat in a place called Barra de Navidad. It's a little coastal town on the Pacific side of Mexico. I went there a year ago. There's a big placard there. This is where the expedition to the Philippines went from. So when they got done doing what they did in Mexico, they got on a boat and went to the Philippines and do the same thing. Oh, shit.

At some point in history, Mexican warriors fought samurai pirates in the ocean in the Philippines. I want to see a movie made about that. Wow. That happened somewhere in history. That'd be a cool movie to watch. That would be a cool fucking movie. Holy shit.

Yeah, Mexico is a, like, as far as a place and a lot of the stuff that happens in, it happened in Mexico historically and where, why it is, how it is now, you know. So much history there. The, you know, we're so rich in culture and history. Like, you want to talk about old things. And I remember going to Boston and somebody, well, this is a, this church is from this. Right.

And I'm like, that's not old. I've been to, you know, I've been to the, I've stood on top of the, the, the, the pyramid of the sun, you know, that's old. You know, I want to talk about old things, right? Yeah. And I don't know. I think it's something we forget as Mexicans about how old our culture is, how rich it is, and how many times people have tried to destroy it, take it over, the deconstructed,

suppress it, and it's still holding on. I just learned that El Dia de los Mueros was based off of the younger dryest cataclysms. So, like, El Dia de los Mueros was supposed to be a couple days before a crazy comet impact wiped out civilization. And that's where the stories of, like, Noah's Arcs comes in. And that was like somewhere between 11,500 or 12,500 years ago. So Diada Los Mueros, a lot of people consider it like a native celebration of some sort. That actually came as a nationalistic movement in Mexico during a presidency. We had a president down there who nationalized petroleum and did a lot of stuff from Mexico.

And part of his efforts was to create a nationalistic sentiment about the culture in Mexico. So he created Diada of Mueros. which is not a native celebration actually. It is kind of a created institution or celebration that wanted to rival some of the other celebrations out there in the world as far as Halloween and stuff like that. So it doesn't go all the way back to Aztec or Mexica culture. But it definitely has some sort of influence

as far as the ways other parts of the world celebrate in that specific period in time frame. I don't know if it has anything. Maybe that was Halloween specific. Specifically, maybe it wasn't an LD do this much. I just thought there was a connection there. Anyways, thank you, man, for doing this. Thank you for the invitation.

Fascinating. Where can people find you? If they want to find me, I'm super shadow band on Instagram. But Ed's Manifesto underscore, at Eds Manifesto underscore, if you want to find me on Instagram, I have a website, www.edu.

Edsmanifesto.com. You can find out about the training I do, classes I do, the appearances I have. And you can also find your way to the Patreon that I have where I kind of put everything related to my personal notebooks, observations, video interviews. And I have a podcast, too. Oh, you do?

Yeah. Manifesto radio. Manifesto radio on YouTube, specifically focusing on talking to people that have similar experiences of mine. People that I've met and learned from. My first guest was a rapper named Conejo. He was arrested on murder charges in Tijuana. He was wanted by the FBI back then, and I was part of the organization that arrested him.

And he was my first guest. Our kids were playing outside while we're talking. So it's a pretty good example of how time is a flat circle. So some of these conversations are on my YouTube channel, Manifesto Radio. Are you going to get that guy on there? who was the leader of your group in Mexico? We're trying to get a, we're trying to get him on to basically have him,

you know, one-on-one conversation with him. I can't wait to hear that one. He is, he's going to run for mayor again. And if people want to look at an example of somebody that's actually providing hope for people or somebody that could make a change,

you know, look him up. Cool. All right. Well, thanks again, man. Goodbye, world.