Danny Jones Podcast - #171 - Inside Mexico's Narco Battlefield: Sinaloa Cartel are the Good Guys Now? | Luis Chaparro

Episode Date: January 31, 2023

Luis Chaparro is a journalist / producer moving between the border of Texas and Mexico reporting on narcos, drug cartels, immigration, corruption and more. EPISODE LINKS  https://youtube.com/@LuisChaparro https://www.instagram.com/luiskuryaki JOIN OUR KULT: https://bit.ly/koncretepatreon  DANNY  https://www.instagram.com/jonesdanny  https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE  0:00 - What’s happening in Mexico right now  09:42 - The raid on Ovidio Guzman’s home  39:15 - Damaso Lopez  47:12 - El Nini  57:08 - The CIA & El Mayo  1:09:20 - America’s interest in Mexico  1:13:12 - The failed raid on El Nini’s home  1:17:04 - Mexico weed manufacturing plant  1:22:31 - Implications of drug legalization  1:28:58 - Managing relationships with sources inside Sinaloa 1:47:25 - Working with FOX & VICE 1:58:41 - Negative psychological impact from reporting narcos 2:10:46 - Political agenda’s & clickbait 2:19:22 - China’s relationship with Mexico 2:26:25 - Journalism is the deadliest job in Mexico 2:35:38 - Upcoming federal elections in Mex Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Luis Chapado is back. Hey, compa. Thank you, bro, for coming, man. If anybody knows what the fuck's going on in Mexico right now, it's you. I mean, unfortunately, probably. I wish I knew less. Dude, I could not believe what I was watching when I was watching you walk through Ovidio's house after he was captured. Yeah, man.

What gave you the idea to go to his drive to his house and walk inside and start filming? And how, and maybe for people that aren't. familiar with the whole thing. Just give me like a rundown of like what's going on in Mexico right now. Sure, definitely. So right now, Mexico and the U.S. is going full on after Los Chapitos faction, right? The sons of Al-Chapa Guzman. He inherited the, you know, like the power in the Latino cartel to his three sons. Two of them are Guzman Salazar, which are like blood brothers and Ovidio, which is a half brother of him. Ovidio, Guzman Lopez is from a different mom. And this, in 2019, they already had tried to arrest Ovidio in Kulakan.

That's the famous video, right? Exactly. What we call it Kuliacanazo when they went apeshet against the government and forced the government to let a video go to release a video after he was already being arrested, right? And so after, I guess that was like a big shame for the government, it was embarrassing to see how a kid forced a whole government to let him go. So I guess he got confident in like, you know, this is not going to happen again because they know what they're going to face. But it happened on the 5th of January this year. That night, they did a huge operation in a small town called Jesus Maria, which is 40 kilometers north

of Kuliacan, pretty close to. Bula Khan City, which is called the cradle of the Sinole cartel. And they managed to grab Ovidio Husman, the youngest of Los Chapitos. And in 10 minutes, they were already putting him in a chopper back to Mexico City. But the gunfight lasted for like 10 fucking hours. So it was crazy, man. A lot of people killed, allegedly mostly sikarios. But right now there's a lot of families looking for their kids.

for young kids, for women, different men's around town that they say are disappeared and that they were taken by the Mexican military. Who really knows, but, I mean, who really knows if they were part of the organization or not? But the fact is that there's a lot of families with missing relatives from that operation right there. So why right now are they deciding to do this? And it seems like why do they keep going after Ovidio? Is he like a big deal?

Not really. I think they went after Ovidio because he was embarrassing the government. Even before the Culeyacanaso in 2019, Ovidio is very much like his dad. He's flashy. He wants to be seen. He wants to be the center of attention. And because he's the youngest, he grew up differently than his older brother, Ivan Archivaldo, which is the head of the Chapitos. Even Archivaldo is like more cautious, more low-key, but the three of them are extremely violent. So I guess Ovidio, yeah, got confident in like feeling that they owned Culeacan and they owned Tinaloa. He got married in, I guess, 2015, 16. And he basically shot the whole city down, you know, like he had a bunch of cicadios closing streets around the church where he was getting married. So he was already, you know, like doing too much.

And I guess there is an agreement between government and these kind of organizations like the Sinaloa cartel where the government is like I'm going to do like if I don't see you, but, you know, don't overdo yourself. You know, right. Like keep it low. Yeah. On the low. So he was already embarrassing the government by doing that kind of like flashy shit like getting married in a church and then closing the whole fucking town for for. several hours and then the kuleakanaso was another embarrassment so i guess he had a comment what was the kuli khanasa when they tried to arrest him in 2000 oh yeah yeah that's the video of him like casually on the

phone calling somebody yeah he was calling his older brother i van archivaldo because uh even archivaldo had um asked his man to put gasoline on the houses of the families of the soldiers uh participating on the operation. So he sent a message over the radio over the walkies telling everyone that if they didn't release a video, he was going to set everyone on fire, including kids. Their families, houses. Yeah. So they let him go. I guess that was the right thing to do, right, by the Mexican government. Like you can grab a video or you can save, you know, like a bunch of families. So I guess that was the right thing to do. But he had it coming. They started like following him around. And it's not that he was really hiding, to be honest. The last few times I was in Kuliacan. One of those two times I saw him,

you know, like in the streets of Kulakhan. And it was like, I mean, it was a lot of attention. He used to drive these green defender followed up by these black massive SUV with a mount on the on the rooftop to mount like a 50 car and then 40 pickup trucks behind them so it's like dude everybody saw him multiple times one time before before before before before he's a rest and after uh 2019 uh very recently he was it was right riding around kulakan and everybody was like well that's That's Obidio, that's El Raton, right? How they call him. So he was not really hiding.

I guess he was just so confident that he was going to do the same thing again if they try to capture him. And he was just like driving around. So yeah, apparently he sort of like laid low during the holidays. He couldn't spend the holidays with his family because he thought that he was going to be a target, of course, like someone was going to be watching. So he held the holidays. days until a week after new year and then he called his wife his three daughters and his mom to his

house in that rancho in because it was maria um to have a holidays so the house when i was in it was an absolutely mess like there was a lot of fucking blood a lot of like unexploded grenades weapons everywhere, bullet holes, everywhere, but also a lot of decoration, like Christmas decoration, you know, like small Christmas trees, a full nativity scene outside, full-sized, you know. So I guess they had a party the night before. So at 4 in the morning, when the government stormed his house, everybody was asleep. So I guess that's what they And his family was there at that time? Yes, yes.

And there's somebody must have known this, right? Yeah, exactly. So was there like a mole or a rat on the inside who was like letting the Mexican military know about what was going on? No. Did they know that his mom and his daughters were there? They had intelligence since like six months earlier. They, one of my sources inside the Mexican military told me that this was a third attempt to, to, go and capture the video.

Because the other two were stopped like right a minute before you know like having the green light. They were like ready to jump and then something will happen and that will be called off like not not today. Wow. So yeah they were like looking his movements following him

and for these they had unmanned planes you know like I guess drones surveillance drones all over his ranch and And then military members started arriving in these buses that take farmers from the town to the city to, you know, like to sell their tomatoes or, you know, like the products they harvest. Because it was Maria.

When these bus was taking the workers back to, back in town, a group of, you know, like four or five members dressed as civilians will jump in that bus and then stay there. in the mountains, you know, just like watching his movements and slowly putting like more and more soldiers inside Casas Maria into the town. So yeah, they really started like, they had good intelligence. I mean, yeah, is that what they had. So let's pull up your video and let's like walk us through what you're doing there. And how, so how far, what, is this in Kulia Khan? And that's in the outskirts of Kulayakan.

Okay. It's 40 minutes, it's a 40 minutes drive from Kulakhan. It's a small road. It's a small highway. One way in, one way out. And so the morning Obido was captured. I thought they had captured someone else, not Oviedo, right? So I kind of like disregarded a bunch of messages I was getting from my sources in Kuliacan until I heard one of the walkies.

Why did you doubt it was him? Because I didn't think that the Mexican government will go again and face a, another Kulia Kanaso, another, you know, like mayhem like the last time they did in 2019. I was like, they have to be smarter than that, right? They're going to capture him when he's going to try to fly out to Europe or, you know, like to other place in Mexico. They're going to capture him in a plane arriving to Gangoon or some stuff like that. But not like that, not in his own town again, you know. Right.

Can you play this, Austin? That's the entrance to, to his. Jesus Maria, it's all riddled with bullet holes. I was writing with a local contact that he's the one driving. He's part of the organization. He's really well connected. And the guy in the back is a local photojournalist that I wanted to take with me because I thought that it was not going to be the best idea to write only with a member of the...

And how long ago did you record this? this was the 12th of January so this was like 10 days 10 days ago yeah wow yeah that's his house that's like his main and only 10 days after he was taken from there yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so what gave you like what how did you know it was going to be safe to go there because I thought like honestly that was a bit

dumb by me I was um what I thought is like, all right, so I need to go and talk to people. My main goal was to talk with neighbors to learn what happened and to, because I started hearing rumors about, you know, like a lot of like people disappearing, a lot of like young kids getting hit by the military bullets and all that shit. So I was like, I need to go and report on that. But I thought I was going to, I was going to see a bunch of like military. What are we seeing right now?

What is all this shit on fire? That's the night he was captured. That's what his people do. That's the, that's a Mexican government firing down the whole town of Jesus was Maria. From helicopters? From helicopters, man. Good God.

Yeah, that's, I mean, they went full in. Go back to that part where the building's on fire? The operation lasted 10 hours of nonstop of firearms. His soldiers, the henchmen of the Sinaloa cartel. know started like putting fires all over the city oh the cartel henchmen started doing that exactly to bloc block the government of from getting more people to the town of Jesus Maria and also because they thought look at that man that pause that that's that's fucking crazy yeah that's nuts man and

they thought that they were gonna take Oviedo by ground from because was Maria to the local airport so So if they're like right there, if they're in a helicopter firing a machine, I guess this is like some sort of fucking machine gun. Yeah. Are they firing that into his house? They're firing all over the town, man. All over the town. Yes.

I'll show you footage later on from the houses of local residents, an old woman, you know, like in wheelchairs. And her house is all riddled with bullet holes. Their roofs are like riddled because they have these metal roof, you know, like metal sheets roof. and another man was like living a couple of I guess one block or two blocks from the house of Obivio his car was all completely destroyed with bullets and that's the only car he has where he takes his sick wife tell the doctor in Kulakhan so it was it was crazy because why fired all these civilians the government just didn't give a shit man they started like firing all over the town and that's the thing like most I'm getting a lot of hate mail

from people saying that I'm vouching for the Senegal cartel. And honestly, why would I vouch for the Senegal cartel? It's just like, dude, if the U.S. government will be doing that kind of stuff in a small town in Texas or in Florida, whatever, people will lose it. You know, it was like, why the fight will you fire all over a town? Right. Not only a house, especially if your target was already out of there, right? I mean, they got him out within the 10 minutes of the operations start. So this was way after they got him out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was like way out. What the fuck, man? That was crazy. What is the Mexican government's response to all this? Nothing silence. They're not saying anything. What they said is that they kill 29 cicarios of the Sinaloa cartel,

but that it was a clean operation. And I was like, dude, this was everything but clean, you know? This doesn't look like a clean. operation you know yeah it's uh so yeah i basically wanted to go and report on that like what happened what are the neighbors living going through i thought i was going to face a lot of like military up in the hills and in the town of jesus maria i was expecting also maybe like local press so i wasn't feeling sketched out until i got there that's the road to a video's house and those are his lawyers.

And his mom, that's not his mom, his mom was, I mean, you cannot see Griselda Lopez. Go a little farther? But she was there. So when I jumped out of the car and saw that there were no government, no Mexican military, only two attorneys, and Griselda Lopez, who is also flagged by the U.S. Department of Treasury for being part of the Senegal cartel and is the mother of a video I was like, okay, this cool

go very wrong. Like from this on, we need to be like super careful because this definitely can go absolutely wrong. What was the worst case scenario that you were afraid of? I was afraid of,

well, right there, I thought like I can, maybe I can talk my way in inside his house if she allows me to go in because I saw them going in the house taking photos and I asked one of the lawyers

like hey man what are guys doing here like are you planning on doing something when happened he's a video you know like he's good in jail and but his mom was like really jumpy he was not happy

she was not happy to see me or press there so she just pulled on his her face mask and she started like saying no no no no no and then she told one of the attorneys like just get rid of these guys i don't want to hear and that guy like came up to me and told me like you need to stop recording i'm like i'm not recording yet it's like yeah don't don't record anything that while we're here you know just wait for us to leave oh really and then do whatever you want but don't

i mean don't record us here i'm like all right what what are you guys doing like can i know at least And he told me that they were going to sue the Mexican government for abuse of power and for injuring one of the girls entire the house. One of his daughters? One of his daughters, apparently, and for stealing. Like, they looted the whole house of a video. Later on, you'll see photos, I mean video from these Rolex box. And he had a lot, a bunch of jewelry and money around. And when I went in, it was like completely gone.

And apparently it was the Mexican soldiers that took everything. I mean, the closet was empty, man. They took his shoes, his shirts, you know, pants, jeans, everything. And so the house was absolutely looted inside. Wow. Okay, keep going. It looks like nothing when you're driving up there. It doesn't look like you're going into a fucking kingpin mansion.

No, exactly. because it's a, you know, it's a small town, very rural. Most of the people there lives by fishing from a local dam and harvesting tomato and, oh, really? Like, chili and that kind of stuff. So how bad was his daughter injured? Do you know? I have no clue, man.

I entered one of the brooms of Ovidio daughters, and you could see a huge blot stain, like pretty big on, on the blankets. I don't know if that's from, from one of our kids or from a cicario that, you know, like try to, because apparently many of the cicadios try to hide inside the, inside the house after they took O'Reilly.

Oh, really? So, so yeah, man, I mean, I wasn't really planning or expecting to go inside his house. But while I was there,

I was like, you know what? I'm already here, man. Fuck it. Yeah. Let's just go in. And my friend, this local photographer, he told me like, dude, if you spend more than six minutes inside that house, we're leaving.

We're leaving you here, man. Really? And I didn't even say, okay, I just literally jumped in the house from a hole on a fence. I was like, oh, fuck it. Were the attorneys and the mom still there? No, they had left. Yeah. Yeah.

Right behind me, that's the local photographer and another guy who works with the organization. But even he called his people and told him about like these guy wants to go inside the house and all this shit. And they told him like, nah, just let him like tell him to not risk it. You know, it's not worth it. But I don't know, man. I had to do it. I mean, that sneak peek reveals a lot about. Are those all bullet holes?

All those are bullet holes. Pausa? It'll go back to it, I'm sure. It is like the, so people that aren't watching and they're only listening on audio, he has these two giant gates going up into his house through his driveway. And they are like Swiss cheese. There's a bullet hole per square inch of this giant wooden gate. That parking lot, that was, that was an outer parking lot he had.

That's where these black SUV, be with a mound on top was parking like that's where they used to park that that went up um people guarding his house you know like in another white bolts bag in tequila also armored he had all his vehicles armored even to the um to the motor you know um and that's where they were this might just be me being stupid because i don't know a lot about how these kind of things work but i would imagine if they really just wanted to capture him, they would do some sort of like super surgical, tactical, like, in and out kidnapping, not make it this giant fucking gunfight. And I think that's what they did on the first 10 minutes that they got him because they

even sent out paratroopers that landed inside. Paratroopers. Yes, behind those gates. In the middle of the night, they arrived there and they managed to go inside the house. They blew the whole door knob, went inside. They already knew where the room of, Ovidio's room was. They needed to lay out of the house. Yeah, exactly.

So they went in to the right, boom, hands on Ovidio. He, of course, thought of, like, I have my whole family here, my mom and my daughter. So he just like, went. So he's like, yeah, let's go, let's go. They took him outside from a back door, put him on a chopper. He was out within 10 minutes of the operation. Wow, up into a fucking helicopter. No way, bro.

But his people kept fighting. And I mean, that's a thing. Like, the government should have just fucking left, you know. It's like, let's not keep fighting. Let's just fucking go. But they stayed and they, you know, like they kept fighting for 10 fucking hours. And that's crazy. That doesn't really make sense.

Yeah. He was already out. If they had him out, why? What's the purpose of fucking shooting up, wasting all those bullets and shooting up all those innocent people's houses? Yeah, exactly. They shot a 12-year-old team. teenager that was walking to get tortillas to have some breakfast. They shot him.

He's like he's struggling for his life right now. It's crazy, man. And of course, they said he was a Puntero, like a lookout for the cartel, whatever. But there's a kid and he's an armed and he was just walking down the street, you know. It's crazy, man. All right. So you obviously didn't walk through that gate, right? No, those gates were were blocked.

like with uh that that's a hole okay that's the hole right there so there was no other houses anywhere near this house right there are a couple of houses around but not not a single one like this one this this is a huge house okay what are you thinking right now like when you first go over that fence and you're in there with all these fucking cars shot to tell right there i was trying to be seen by the neighbors that i was doing some shots of a video's house to expect a reaction right i was like let's see how they react like with me just putting up camera inside the front porch of his house um no one said anything everybody went back into their houses so i was like okay i'm not getting any like extreme reaction from them the cicadios that

we met as we was uh driving in the town they were not around so i was like okay so probably they're not going to be as catched out with me coming in, probably. So I went out again. Pause that. And then I found these on an exploded grenade.

A fucking grenade next to a modello. Next to a model. Yeah. And that was like... Pappas. That's what they call them. Like the papas, right?

The grenades, the potatoes. And my friend, the one the organization he told me be careful man because that's unexploded and i think inside the house we're going to see many more so if you go inside uh be careful of where you where you step you know right you step because you could you could like get blown up inside so yes i mean on top of everything i had to be careful of where i was stepping you know inside the house that's so crazy okay keep going Austin that is wild yeah man like it was uh it was a

just a grenade you sitting in my backyard next to a modello next to a beer you know but it's crazy because there was like no government whatsoever no Mexican military no police around no one it was like completely abandoned and and then i broke in that that's me walking inside of the the front porch and you can tell as if you turn the volume up a little bit. You could tell, like, by the tone of your voice that your heart rate is spiked. Dude, I was, I was with, like, with a rush of adrenaline. You got any volume, Austin? No, I don't hear it. I had two cameras, my cell phone camera and a GoPro.

No, I got nothing. Oh, wait, now I got it. A little bit more. Someone how I line up. What is that? Those are grenades. And that's like the second bathroom, a visiting room where Ovidio's mom was staying. That's his daughters. And that's the blood on that comfort right there. Yeah, exactly. Holy shit. Look at the nativity scene outside.

And then I'm going to Ovidio's room. A&O, Alejandra and Ovidio. That's the name of his wife. Oh, really? So what happened to his wife and his kids and his mom? Where are they at? Look at the Rolex box. Oh my God, his closet.

Go back to his closet. His closet absolutely empty. Yeah, go ahead and play it from there. Looted. Yes, absolutely. Rolex's gone. Look at that. He had a bunch of boxes with watches, jewelry, you know, like, ring.

that shit I mean I'm pretty sure that the soldiers that took that stuff are everybody trying to get rid of it you know like trying to sell it one of the neighbors told me that they walked the soldiers walked out of Robidio's house with with a pillow bags with a pillow yeah pillow case pillow case yeah packed with shit they they stole from inside like they were putting that like inside the pickup trucks that's gonna that's gonna be a huge problem for the Mexican government and within the next month, man. As soon as the attorneys put like, I guess, a list of everything that is missing from

his house and all that stuff. And as soon as one of those watches pops up, you know, in a market or with someone, that's going to be a huge problem. How is that going to go? What is the justice system like in Mexico when you got El Chapo's attorneys going up against the Mexican military? Like, how fair is that going to be? I think, honestly, they have,

they have good chances of, you know, like making a case against the Mexican government. The attorneys for these kind of people, they have limited resources. They have a bunch of money, have a bunch of contacts. They could easily put a judge on their payroll, you know, on their benefit. Like, they just did. They just managed to get a, in Spanish, call it an empato, which is like a legal figure to stop Ovidio's extradition to the U.S. So like a legal resource to stop him from...

In Mexico? In Mexico. So he's probably not going to be extradited to the U.S., at least for now. He still has an order for his extradition that the U.S. government requested in 2019. That one is unstoppable. You cannot have any legal resource against that one. So that one is still ongoing. But these guys were super quick to have a whole, you know, like to have a whole, you know, like

legal apparatus to stop him from getting extradited immediately. Wow. How close does the Mexican government work with the U.S. government now? I know from what I've heard is that they had like a good relationship when Trump was the president, but what does it like now? It's not good, man. I think the binational relationship in terms of security with. the Mexican and the U.S. government is at its words right now.

It's never been like these bad. The Mexican government wants to stand to make like a point to the U.S. saying that we are a sovereign country and that we don't pledge to any foreign government and all that stuff. And not long ago, the Mexican government literally rescued military atop, I guess the highest top-ranking military in Mexico from the DA's hands. They arrested him in L.A. for drug trafficking as he arrived in a plane with his family because they were going to Disneyland. They grabbed him, put him in jail, and the Mexican government stepped in to rescue that guy back to Mexico.

Who is this guy? He's called Sienfuego. Salvador Sion Fuegos. who was the chief of the military for several years in Mexico. And so the Mexican government even threatened to kick out all the DEA agents that the US had in Mexico. They didn't release Siam Fuegos. So that added to the tension between both governments. The Mexican government then issued a law that requested every single agent,

Mexico to report to fill and file a report if they got contacted by a foreign agent. So let's say the DA reaches out to the, I don't know, National Guard. And so like, hey, man, we're doing these operations. By the moment they pick up the phone, they have to file a report that I was reached out by this DA agent, blah, blah, blah, da, in order to have a green light or a red light, right? Like, no, you cannot share any information with the DA or whatever. So they're making it really hard for them. Yes.

For us, for the U.S. Exactly. Okay, keep going. And right there, my heart really started racing right there. Oh, you heard somebody knock. Dude, I was literally coming out of Ovidius closet, and then I heard someone knocking. And then a woman saying like, and she said in Spanish, call griselda like call griselda ovidius mom

and i was like shit like she was in the house she was like in a house behind but he's her house the house where she was in is a bit higher up than ovidius house okay so she saw me through one of the windows inside his house and she's like mama yeah my oh my god and i'm like fuck fuck fuck and i guess i didn't explain myself fully on that scene. I'm saying it seems like I'm saying that I was

not afraid of being killed. I was afraid of being killed, but I thought that I was not gonna, that was not gonna be like a, like something very plausible right there because they didn't want to bring more heat. What stop right there? Go back to that tunnel. Yeah, play it right from there. A little bit back

right there. Press play and then pause, get ready to pause it right there. So I didn't see that tunnel when I walked in, but I was coming, as I was coming out, I went to a corner. trying to hide from, because I already heard the bikes, the motorcycles of the cicarios that we met entering the town. Oh, shit.

So I could hear the motorcycles like circling around the house. And then my friend outside, he told me like, hey, man, like, I gotcha te. I'm like, lay low. And I was like, what? I was like, no, stop. So stop. Stop. They're outside.

And then he turned and started talking to them. And I was like, shit, man. They already talking to these guys. These guys are Sicario, so they worked? That guy was a photographer. The other guy who worked for the organization, he oversees sort of like the financial things of one of the factions of the Simulauau cartel. But he left and went inside his car.

He was like, fuck it, this is too crazy. He went inside his car. And my friend, the photographer, was just like watching all the me. And he's like, hide, hide, hide. And then he started like, no, we're just here taking photos, you know, like of what happened. And I was like, fuck, man. They're already outside. So this was just a tunnel that was like hidden under a drain or something?

Exactly. It was made to be seen as a drain or as a, yeah, it's like a water sewage system or something like that. And this is for this kind of situation. Exactly. Where does a tunnel go? I had no clue, man. I literally just saw that I was coming out. And it had, you could see that you could get like you had to jump in and then it had like a stair.

like a ladder and then it looked like it went like inside the house you know back back again at least on that direction right so i don't know if that was going like under the house or you know i have maybe it's like a neighboring house or something yeah very probably wow man i didn't have much time to look into you said in the video that you weren't afraid of being killed in this moment yeah exactly i mean not because i wasn't afraid of being killed but because i was i wasn't afraid of being killed but because i wasn't, I didn't think that was like a real possibility because I thought like these guys don't want more heat, right? They, they are already facing a lot of like government. They took Oviedo, a lot of like the military members are around. And if I get killed, they're going to get a bunch more attention, like probably even from the US, you know,

saying like they killed a reporter that was on duty. Yeah, exactly. They can. Obviously, they can. I mean, right. But, but I think. It wouldn't be. like a obvious thing that they would want to do. Exactly because they will have to ask for permission or like authorization from their bosses and probably one man high up will be like no man let's not bring that hit. But when I was afraid of is to be taken into prison in Kulakan by his attorneys. I was like, dude, if the cicadios grabbed me, hold me here until the attorneys get back and then they charge me for entering or whatever they want. Something stupid. Exactly. small they want they have enough resources to keep paying to keep me inside for like inside

jail for like forever my my my dad and my my family they they have a law firm in in mexico they are attorneys as well and i but but in this case i mean we don't have like that many resources to pay my way out yeah these guys have every single resource they want to keep me inside jail and like I guess I'd rather be killed and kept in a prison inside what would happen if you went to what prison would you go to if I I guess I will have to go first into Culeyakan's prison so imagine that like being surrounded by Ovidio's henchmen inside prison inside jail and them knowing that that I broke in his house or whatever and then his attorney is paying every single judge and prison itself to make a hell, living hell for me inside that prison. I was like, fuck man,

I mean, I don't want to face prison here. I need to get out. I was supposed to have a flight that same afternoon because my security team only allowed me to do these reporting trip by promising and showing proof that I was just going to be there for seven hours. Like, I arrived in the morning, go up to the town, and by six in the afternoon, I was already flying out of Kulayakan. But it didn't go that way. I had to overnight in Kulakan. Of course, I didn't sleep like a single fucking minute. So you stayed in a hotel close to here? Yes, I stayed in a hotel because our fucking car broke because we're going out of town. Dude. What's a shit show, man. Keep playing it. So, yeah, I mean, uh, did,

Did you say that they bought off judges in Mexico? Yes, that's something that happens a lot in Mexico. Justice is up for the best bet. I guess if you have enough money, you can get to a judge. What do you think is going to happen when they sue the Mexican government? I think they have a really good chance of not, probably not getting away with anything like money or reparations, but getting Ovidio out of prison. Like, I think that's still a possibility in the Mexican justice system.

And why did they take them to Mexico City? What is special about Mexico City? That's the, that's where the Alti Plano is, the maximum security prison, like the, I guess like the top security prison in Mexico is. But that's the one where Ochoapo escaped for the first time. You can turn the volume, but down. second the second time so i mean it's not you know like it's not that and he escaped basically by paying guards right like he paid people that were in the prison he paid the uh the chief of uh the chief of of of the prison like the security chief of the director of the prison to to bail him out it's called

damaso lopez and he became the oh that's damaso lopez he was the guy who also kid Knapped Los Chapitos. Yeah. Yeah. He was he's the compadry of El Chapo Guzman. He's the godfather of the three of them. Okay. So let's let's let's let's lay out that story for people. So when El Chapo got arrested the second time and he was in Mexico City that Mexican security prison, the head of security like you just said what was, what was his first name again? Damaso Lopez. Damaso Lopez. He's uh, he's known as the eliquel licensio. Okay. And he was the primary way that Alchapo got out. Exactly.

El Chapo paid him and he moved everything around the prison to get El Chapo out of prison, right? When the Mexican government learned about the Maso, like basically he broke El Chapo out, they went against the muscle. So the Maso went into hiding. But he was part of the organization of the Sinaial cartel. Chapo was sort of like his right hand. He was his confidate. He was the godfather for his three kids. And was this only after he got him out?

After he got him out? Yeah, he earned all the trust and all the, you know, like, yeah, well, he was in very good standing with L'Chapo. But when they captured L'Chapel for the third time, then Damaso thought that he was going to step in as the next big boss for the Sinola cartel, right? I mean, I guess in his mind, it only made sense. It's like, dude, he got the boss out. Exactly. Like El Chappo is out. my compadres out and it's only natural that I step in.

I broke him out. I basically saved his life. I'm the godfather of these three kids. So that's me, right? But it didn't happen that way. El Chapo ordered that Ivan Archivaldo, the oldest of the Chapitos, stepped in as the one who inherited the power inside that fashion of the cartel. And then, I guess, Damaso felt, you know, betrayed.

Like the Sinolaa cartel was not on his power. He started to, that's a, I'm getting a lot of questions about if it was Cartel Halisco who kidnapped the chapitos in Guadalajara in a restaurant called Leche. But it was Damaso. Okay, so who is Halisco? The Cartel Halisco, New York. Cartel Halisco, okay. El Menchus Cartel.

That's a separate cartel from Senalo. Yes, exactly. That's a different. I guess that's the, uh, second biggest cartel in Mexico right now. C-J-N-G. Is that the same as the new generation? Yes, your new generation,

the Calisco cartel. Damaso tried to make a, you know, like a deal with the new generation cartel to go against the Cinelloa cartel against Los Chapitos faction. And that's how they managed to kidnap Los Chapitos in Guadalajara in Jalisco in that restaurant.

El Mayo had to say, step in to set Los Chapitos free to negotiate between El Mancho and Damaso to set him free. So they set him free. They go back in Kuleakan. They start preparing for war. And then Damaso. So Damaso, he just had so much confidence. He thought, okay, El Chapo, I got him out.

He went back, got arrested again. This is after he went back to the U.S., right? Exactly. So he just thought, I'm just going to kidnap his kids. Yeah. So I can take control. Exactly. Yeah. And he always denied that that was him. So he sent out a letter to O'Mayo,

to El Juo and Los Chapitos asking them for for a meeting because he wanted to clear out his name. He was like, I wanted to clear this shit out. That was not me. They didn't have any evidence. They didn't have any evidence, but they have like had a lot of people, you know, like saying it was Damaso. So he got every single one of them together on the hills of Sinaloa. Meaning like, so Damaso, he got El Mayo, El Mio, El Guano, and Los Chapitos. And El Guano, for people listening, is El Chapo's brother. El Chapo's brother, yeah. It's another faction with the Sinaloa cartel.

So there's, let's lay out the factions for people that don't know. There's four main factions of the Sinaloa cartel. Yes. El Mayo's faction. He's the founder of the cartel. El Guano. which is El Chapo's brother. Chapo's brother, Chapitos, which is his kids.

Uh-huh. And then Los Alasar, which is like another big player, more like regional to Susina Loa, Sonora, probably Chihuahua, but not as huge as the other factions, right? Right. So when they got there, Damaso was nowhere to be pounded. He was not in that meeting. And then they started to get a reign of bullets. Like, it was a setup, right?

Damaso had set everyone up to... So El Mayo himself in person showed up there. Shut up there. El Mayo, El Juano, and the three of them, Los Chapitos. What kind of security do they have showing up in the hills of Sunaloa like this? They felt pretty confident because they were like, yeah, this is our turf, right? This is our hills. And it was at a commonplace of all of them.

Still, they had their cicarios with them. They had of cicarios. Los Chapitos had, I think it was Eluelo Rannas back then, which was the head of cicarios before El Nini. Ivan Archivaldo had this guy called El Panu, which it was a former special operations from the Mexican military. Okay. He did like similar to what Ed Calderon did.

Similar to that? No, I think it was more like a special force, a special task. Oh, okay. They're called Fuerces Speciales. So he was like they're very elite groups inside the Would these be the same type of guys who kidnapped Ovidio? That got a video, yes. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

One of the Chapitos got hurt. I think it was Ivan Archibaldo. So they had to take him to a local hospital all around. And they managed to get out. And that was enough confirmation for them that Damaso was trying to take over the Senegaloalwar cartel. You know, Damaso at the end had to, well, was arrested. He was extradited because he was putting a prison in Tinaloa.

And he was like, of course, fearing for his life. He knew that he was going to be taken out. So they extradited him on his own request to go to the U.S. Really? And then his son. What year was this? That was, I think, 2019. Okay.

2018? Something around there. Okay. And then his son stayed in Sinaloa, kept fighting for a bit. And then he also went to Tijuana at the border to ask for, you know, like to basically be arrested and taken to prison in the U.S. because he was going to get killed in Mexico. So he's also in jail in the U.S.

And during that big shootout in the hills too. So during that shootout when he basically ambushed everybody, Los Chapitos, those guys, Ovidio, they were all there. Yeah. And then that was when El Nini kind of like showed his stripes for the first time. Exactly. El Nini was a kid from Tijuana that, I'm sorry. A contact recently called me. He's very close to Alini and to those people.

And he told me, can I tell you a funny story? And I was like, yeah. And there's like, El Nini grew up in Tijuana. and his mom thought that it was not a safe place for a need to grow up because she didn't want him to like get to into the you know like the malandros what we call the malandros like the bad people you know like the cartel people so he sent him he sent she sent him to cooliacan she thought that she was going to be better there and he became head of security for los chapito so so yeah he showed up to to el ullo rano and and to O'Bano and all those guys working for the security of Los Chapitos. And he proved himself during that gunfight. He stayed there. Everybody took off to take care of Los Chapitos in El Mayo and El Hano.

And El Nini put together a group of very young soldiers for the Sinairoa cartel. And he ordered them, like, let's stay here and fight back. And they stay there fighting. Elmini is a weird, it's a rare, you know, breed inside that's in Aloha cartels. He has brains and he has muscles. There's a lot of them that only have muscles, right? They know how to fight. They're well-training the use of arms.

They are like, you know, coronel, colonel. But these guy is also smart. He knows. He's very sneaky. How old is he? He should be around, he should be around his 30, 31 years old. he's pretty young but he started with the organization when he was like around 20 you know so he started like really young and what was his background how did he have like how did he have like

did he have a military background before that or no not at all he did i think he didn't even so he learned all this in the cartel into cartel yes by by having the right or the wrong connections inside the uh cartel one person introduced him to another and then to another and at the end he started working as a Sicario for the Chapitos as you know like one of those

disposable kids that they use as cicadios Right But he he started like To prove himself With the cartel

And started like going up And when they killed Eluel Ranas Which was The former head of security For the similar Cartel He stepped in

Ivan Archivaldo Bouch for El Nini to step in As head of security for for the los chapitos and up until this day he's still had of security for for the chapitos and there was a another big attempted raid on him so they had planned to take out um a video and then el nini yes they also call what do they call him they call him uh chicken little chicken little yes they call him chicken

little because he's a is a you know like slim guy he's a super young he looks even younger because he's really skinny you know like white skin and he looks like fucking chicken little man so he is one of like the most wanted people in the cartel by the Mexican military yes because they know they know that he's a big player in San Luisinole cartels not only like this security chief for Los Chapitos he's a he's a big player he's very volleyball to the organization. And I guess what the Mexican government wants to do right now is to demoralize that faction to make them feel that they're not powerful. They want to make a point and that's

what they took the lower hanging fruit of the faction, right? Ovidio. He was not the poncho of the cartel, you know, he was the youngest. He was the one that El Chapo wanted a different life for. Chappos sent him to a private, very exclusive school in elementary school in Mexico City when Ovidio was really young. Why did he want a different life for Ovidio? I guess he already had fucked up too many of his kids, like Ivan Archivaldo, Jesus Alfredo, Joaquin, who ended up being killed in 2008 in Culeyakan. So I guess he wanted something different for Ovidio for his youngest. and he sent him to school. He sent him to this very private, exclusive school.

So he's kind of like the most vulnerable one in the cartel for them to take out. Exactly. So they have the old guy, have a chapel. And that's demoralizing enough for that faction. Now they have a video and now they want a Nini. Because they want to bring down the whole Chapito's faction of the Senaloa cartel. by first demoralizing them. And then when they're demoralized

and like the other factions of the Sinaloa cartel see them as weak, then they're gonna go after Ivan Archibald. They're gonna go after who? Ivan Archibald, the oldest of the Chapito, the one who's the really head, the real head behind the Chapitas faction. So let's go, what happened with the raid of El Nini's house?

So that happened two days after they captured of Edio. And pull up, Austin, pull up, I think it's your latest YouTube video. Yeah, that's the latest YouTube video. If you pull up his latest video, he shows some footage inside of El Nini's house on Luis's YouTube channel. By the way, which is YouTube.com. What's the name of your, it's just Luis Chaparro? At Luis Chaparro, yeah. All right, we'll make sure we link it below for everybody.

Yeah, that's it right there. So, yeah, basically they started these operation. pause that they started this operation around idalgo neighborhood which is a very middle class neighborhood in kuleakan two days after they captured a video some of my sources also started like sending me messages like there's something huge going on because we were seeing a bunch of pickup trucks from the military but lights off you know they're

like driving around the town with the lights off circling this neighborhood and one of my other sources told me that's where el nini's um el nini's mother-in-law leads um so apparently i was like oh shit they're after him the mexican government never said that they were after alini many local reporters said like no they didn't capture anyone they actually killed an old man by mistake again another casualty of the mexican military Elini and then I started like looking into you know like Eleni is or used to be huge on social he's very flashy with his watches he has like these hobbolts you know like super expensive and exclusive um versions of watches he loves watches and he loves his mini guns and you know like

those kind of like is he one of those guys that was like a tic-tok a cartel tic-tok kid he's driving his Lamborghini uros oh yeah he's got so he drives the uh the s ux V Lambo. Yes, a red one. A red one. So he's flashy as fuck. So he doesn't give a fuck. He doesn't give a fuck.

He has enough men, enough power to go around with a lot like that. He's not afraid of any sort of military? Not at all, man. Because I mean, a lot of them are on the payroll as well. So they feel safe. They felt safe. But when they raided his house, I saw the photo on the right with a black stripe and the white style with a bunch of weapons that he had on the house.

he had on the house so is this photo of of after they raided his house yes exactly and they only said that they raided a house where they found a bunch of like heavy weapons uh in tie right they never said it was elinis or or his name or whatever you keep playing in austin and then i remember that tile that is very particular with that black strip um that is the same from that photo of that that's a last photo of alini with the richard mill watch yes it's it's a Exactly. Look at his shoes. I think it's like a half a million dollar watch.

Yes. And that's the black stripes again with the white tile. So for me, that was enough confirmation that they were after Alini. And then after making a couple of calls, they told me, yeah, they're after him. If you love diving into culture and comedy, 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. Playoff hockey is a different level. Over time, big hits, and no one coasts. The studio crew with Paul Bissonette cracking jokes and Wayne Gretzky breaking things down

makes it even more fun to watch. Every shift matters and the personalities keep things lively. Watch the Stanley Cup playoffs on TNT, TBS, True TV and HBO Max. So, I mean, again, like, I, these this video I just uploaded on YouTube and I said this is the end of Los Chapitos I'm also getting a lot of like messages from I guess I don't know if there are part of the organization or just fucking

alusiness as we call them you know like fucking wannabes but they think that I'm saying that Los Chapitos are you know like are ending and I want them to I want to see them down or arrested or whatever what I'm saying is like

this is a plan this is this is the plan of the U.S. and Mexico government to go against Los Chapitos specifically. They're not going to go against El Mayo. They're not going to go against El Mado. They're going to go after Los Chapitos. You know, that's the next target for the, for the, for both of the governments. But what's the point? I guess the point is to first of all, and again, I might, I might not have enough proof of this, but I guess if you look closely around El Mio, and look how he started to be who he is, his first connections, the guy who introduced them to the truck trafficking business. It's very possible that Elmario has strong ties with the CIA, at least with someone high up in the operations of like foreign, you know, intelligence in Mexico. That's how Amayu has managed to keep safe and to keep, you know, alive.

And he's 70-fucking three and he has diabetes. But he's still out there. I was just there. I'm posting that video in a couple of weeks on my YouTube channel where I'm hanging around with his cicadios. Very young man as well, very similar. With Amaya Sicario. With Amio's his first security ring. Amiou was not more than 10 kilometers away from where I'm going.

was that night. And it's a ranch, a rancho really similar to Jesus Maria. His house is really similar. His people, so they live very, very similar. So if the Mexican government wants to go against El Mayo, they could easily get him. Easily, he's an old man. He doesn't even have enough power or energy to run like a video or all that shit. He's a 73 years old, diabetic man. But he's really well protected and the people in Sinaloa really loves them. The people in Kulayakan and a lot of other places in Sinaloa, they love Omaio. They feel protected. A recent survey by a Mexican institution found that more than 50% of the people living in the three major cities of Kuliacan feel protected by the Sinaloa cartel. That's 50% on the major cities. That's not even taking

into account all the small towns like Jesus-Marie. and these places where Miami leaves and all the shit. Who put out a survey like that? It was a Mexican institution to have an impression on how people felt about, you know, the security forces in Sinaloa. And it turns out that more than 50% feel protected by the Sinaloa cartel. So they've managed to earn a lot of like social bases in Sinaloa. And regular people, they said they started saying before, before Avidia was captured,

they started putting out the word that Los Chapitos were getting too violent. They're like they're getting too violent, man. They're getting too powerful. And they were basically asking Almayo to step in. They were like, El Mayo's not like that. Amayo's going to put an end to these guys because they're getting like too violent. El Mayo was taking out of Culeacan by Los Chapitos. He was displaced by Los Chapitos.

So Culiacan is owned by those chapitos. Elmayo didn't want to go to war against them. So what he did is he complied with what Los Chapitos asked him for, which is paying 30% of all his operations in Kulakhan. And Elmayo is currently paying Los Chapitos faction a 30% caught to use the territory of Kuliacan. Didn't he help get Ovidio out in 2019 when he got caught? Yeah, I mean, there was a lot of beef as well. that operation because people started saying that El Mayo's man didn't step in to rescue Ovidio, but it turns how he did, like he did. He stepped in. I guess El Mayo is called with L'Chapitos

and the Chapitos respect a lot of Mayo and they owe El Mayo for that rescue in Calisco from the hands of Damaso and the New Generation Cartel. But still, they feel like they own Kulakhan and that O'Mayor has to pay 30% as a cot to operate in that city. And O'Meis a strong man. I mean, what he decided to do is like to pay and comply with what he was requested by Los Chapitos. But he started owning most of the border cities like Tijuana, San Luis Rio Colorado, Mexicali. He owns that strip. So when Los Chapitos needs to stash drugs on border cities or to get to get.

trucks across, he asks again for that 30%. He gets it back. Yeah. So it's a watch. Yeah, exactly. He's a smart man. And I don't think he is or was behind Ovidio's capture, to be honest. I don't think that's the case.

Are people saying, are some people saying that? Yeah, there's a lot of people saying that. Not what I've heard from people knowledgeable, people close to El Nini, people close to Los Chapitos, people close to O'Mayosambada. on the contrary, they say that Elmayo Zambada sent out a bunch of his henchmen to try to rescue Ovidio. But at the same time, I think El Mayo is a happy bystander

of what was happening. He feels that, I guess, if I know that people is saying that Los Chapitos were becoming too violent for Kualakhan, I'm pretty sure he's heard that too. And they respect a lot El Mayo. and they feel protected by El Mayo so most of them are not even asking the Mexican

government to help them out with violent input that Los Chapitos are having in Kulakhan. They're asking El Mayo to step in. If El Mayo was working with the U.S. government or was working with some sort of U.S.

intelligence, would the Mexican government know about that? I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think even that many I mean, who knows even if Elmayo knows himself, you know, that he's being used by one of these operations. But if you look deep enough into O'Mayor's background, you'll find these Cuban men that used to be a police officer for the Cuban Revolution for Fidel Castro. And he fled to Florida. And from Florida, he was arrested.

This is the guy from the last narc, right? Exactly. The guy who, the CIA agent who killed. Is it Felix Rodriguez? No, no, no. No, that's not Felix Rodriguez. Okay, okay. He used to be a police officer.

Then he flew to Miami. And then he was charged with drug trafficking. And then something like there's a blackout on his history. And he pops up again in Cuba doing some shady shit. And then in Nicaragua and Colombia. And then he pops up in L.A. Way back during. During Fidel Castro's Revolution.

Really? And then he pops up in L.A. where he meets Modesta Zambada, El Mayo's older sister. And he fell in love, falls in love with her. They moved to Kulakhan, and then he starts pulling the whole Zambadas into the business he owned.

He's like, dude, have this multimillion business of selling and trafficking weed to the U.S. I have all the clients. Probably he said, I have all the green light from the U.S. government. But this is this is what you need to do. And it's known that he was an operator for the CIA.

He was operating for the CIA. And he was the one that got El Mayo into this business. Through El Mayo's sister. Oh shit, I kind of remember her name. I just said her name, but I completely forgot her name. Is this dude still alive? Yes, he's 73. What's his name?

I don't know, that guy. The CIA guy who got Elmio. He's a shadow man. There's like, one photo of him and you have to really look deep into to find his name. I can remember his name, but I'm putting out a short documentary in that in two weeks on my YouTube channel. So, yeah, if you want to watch that, I have a photo of him and his whole history, how he

moved around and how he got Modesta Zambada in love with him. And he brought, he was like the dad for him. That is wild. I had no idea about that. that. It's crazy, man. Yeah, there's a lot of shit going on that we don't really know you. You really need to go in like that fucking rabbit hole. Yeah. And still, I'm still, I can't be wrong, right? I mean, I can't be wrong. That's, that's a reality. I'm not saying I'm right and I have the truth. But that's, that's factual. That guy existed. That guy was married to O'Mayo's sister. That guy was

an operator for the CIA. So that makes everyone very suspicious about El Mayo, right? Why he has being captured and did you say his name already did i miss that no i can't remember his name i can't remember his name but but i'm sc do some research if you can find him um no that's kiki camarena that's the guy who was killed in the safe house yeah i no so fee so i've brought up felix rodriguez many times in this podcast even with like i had a former cia guy yeah and i was telling him the story and he was like there's no fucking way and i was like i looked him up and we pulled him up and then we saw that he was involved in like the bay of pigs yeah like Not a lot of people know about that story either.

Exactly. That's a thing. I mean, people really think that the CIA foreign operations are not real. They think that that's like a movie, a 007 or whatever. But they do operate. I have a contact also who was a contractor for the CIA. And he was all over the place in Latin America doing all sorts of shit. And what they do is like they basically destabilized.

I had the same fucking problem saying that same word on the last time. I was here. What word? Destabilized. De Stabilized. Destabilized. De Stabilized. Distabilized.

Dude, I had the same problem saying that word. That's what they do. That's what they do. They operate to destabilize certain regions. Either that be by blowing up a single bridge, you know. If you have a bridge that connects rural country to the city and then you blow that up, you're going to make a war, you know, like you're going to make people angry, protest, and you're going to make a lot of the, like, destabilization in that region.

Either that be, like, giving a lot of fucking power to one single cartel member, or putting shit like divide and conquer, right, in between a single cartel. And if you start pushing the version, that'll mayo, betrayed los chapitos and los chapitos are becoming very violent and then el juano who the fuck knows who that is and you start like beefing around them they're going to end up fighting and if you just stabilize the sinolaola cartel and you bring down hypothetically bring down the sinola cartel isn't that just going to create a massive power vacuum yes exactly and that what what's that going to create in mexico is going to be a weak government a government into

a lot of shit, you know, that they're going to try to put out those fires. And probably, I don't know what agenda could be thrown in when a government is like asking for help. Is desperate for help? It's desperate for more training, for more weapons, for more money, for more whatever. So who would rise up in that case? If the Sinaloa cartel went down, would it be the new generation cartel? The new generation cartel. Now, I'm very positive that the Sinaloa cartel is not going to,

like go down. I guess just this faction of this of the similar cartel of chapitos. The Majos faction is always, well, maybe not always, but it's it's still going to go for a while, for a good while to be like the dominant fashion. What is America's interest? What would America's interest be in doing this stuff and destabilizing these cartels and there's a lot of interest especially in Mexico. In Mexico, Mexico is a it's a third world. country with a lot of natural resources with a lot of potential to we do a lot of good business like we have like the u.s and the and mexico have a very good partnership right with like production and manufacturing and but that's the thing i mean it's a very good relationship i don't know what

the trade i don't know exactly what like the dynamics are of trade but i know i've heard they have a good trade relationship after nafta i guess it's it has been a very good relationship for the u.s right it's not being that good for Mexico or Latin American general. It's a very expletive relationship, right? That's why you, if you want to make a factory, you set it up in Mexico and you pay shitty wages to people that faces a lot of fucking, you know, poverty and scarcity. So that works for the U.S., not really, not that much for Mexico, right?

So when Mexico tries to step in with a precedent like we have now, that he has many flaws and he's a shitty president, but he has knowledge of the working people. He knows the working people. He knows the people who's the, you know, like the working class and the most, like, you know, impoverished population of his country. And he tries to step in and say, like, no, let's renegotiate or trade. Let's renegotiate our security relationship.

Let's renegotiate or policies and politics. I guess that's carry for the U.S., right? And probably not for a single president, you know, because a president is there as a king is there. You know, like the kings are just the face of a monarchy, but they don't really do shit. And that's the same thing for a president. But who's behind that president?

Probably corporations like Walmart trying to set up better businesses in Mexico So corporations like the arms factories, right? There's a lot of like- Car manufacturers. Car manufacturers, McDonald's, all those big corporations that wants to have a better grasp of that country. Car manufacturers right now are stepping into electric cars, right? Tesla's big in Mexico, right?

Tesla's huge in Mexico. Ford is going all the way to try to fight Tesla for, you know, like lithium power cars. and Mexico just recently discovered the fucking bigger deposit of lithium after Bolivia. So, I mean, that's that has to be one of the main things that these companies are pushing for the U.S. government to fight in Mexico, right? To lobby in Mexico. Now, lobby in a politician's world looks like a lot of like men's in suit trying to convince another man to do business with him or to go his way. But lobbying in Latin America looks like the fucking new generation cartel, killing a bunch of people in a certain region to get him out of there. Lobbing in Latin America means something very different than what it means in the U.S.

So when you destabilize the country, when you put fires that only you can put out, you earn leverage. You get a lot of leverage. Wow, man. in the country. It's a fucking wild. It's a bit, yes. I mean, it's crazy. It's sad because, I mean, a lot of, like, regular people are being killed by these

wire and drugs that has anything to do but with drugs, man. I mean. So going back to when you had your sources calling you about trucks like pulling down Kiki or pulling down El Nini Street or his mother-in-law's street with their lights off, they, what happened? what went down with that rain and what happened to el nini so basically i grabbed these neighborhood where they know el nini is or was and then el nini puts up these um helmet jumps in a puntero's bike which is a lookout bike it's like these you know like a dirt bike like shitty dirt bikes

and he left he leaves the the area and of course like the militaries are like stop that guy but then they thought just a fucking lookout just let him go uh and he was out of there and they got another man because he he put a group of people saying he's he's known as a nini chicken little 09 o nine or nine the 19 el djc 19 why why does that mean i have no clue but i think that those are his uh codes on the walkies right if you go and say like hey zero nine you know that is El Nini. Because I've heard Sikarios getting

like super scared when someone is like talking on the to on the talkies and they don't know who that is. And then he says like, So you're like, hey motherfuckers. I'm the 0-09. And they're like, oh shit, it's

0-9, man. They're like, oh, wait, what? So they squared up to El Nini, of course. And he put a group of people to start yelling there's the 19. There's a 19.

So the military was like, where is him? And he went after that guy. And of course, that was just one of his, you know, like cicadios or whatever. That was not Al-Nini. So where is El Nini right now, do you think? I think he's hiding. He's hiding. I have no clue.

And I don't want to know where he is. But of course, he's hiding in the mountains of Sinaloa. Sinalo is a tricky place geographically. I mean, Kuliacan. is a plane in the middle of a bunch of very tricky mountains. So they know all those mountains. They grew up there. Ivan Archivaldo, Vibio, El Mayo.

All those guys grew up from those hills. So they know those hills. Better than anyone else, better than the Mexican government. So if Los Chapitos are gone, who takes their place? Does anyone take their place? Or does El Mayo and El Guano just, sort of like absorb that. Yes. I think I think that's if they go out, if they really go out, there's going to be a huge gap in the Senalo organization or at least in that brand because I don't

think it's an organization anymore. It's just like a brand, right? There's going to be a huge, huge gap. And one of the possibilities, and I guess that's why they're going after Nini, is that Al-Lini steps in. Instead of Lini is like, okay, so. Because they imagine that he would be the first one to step in. Exactly. So I guess that's also why they're going. after Nini and not not right after Ivan Archivaldo right the real head of Los Chapitos but yeah where is he Ivan Archivaldo is like he's he has been seen around Culeyakan because he also drives up with like 40 pickup trucks

behind him and that kind of shit but but he's he knows better you know he knows better than Ovidio to don't show up in a you know like the only Starbucks in Culeacan with a with a line of pickup trucks and driving a G-Wagon. He's more low-key and he's definitely more violent. He's definitely more in control of the Cinelloa Cartel, Chapo people's faction. I was recently inside the weed manufacturing operation they have in Kulakan. Because after the U.S. legalized weed in most states, they lost a lot of money.

that's what they went all the way to to um math emphetamine and fentanyl right to make up for those losses i heard that they were actually like using when the u.s legalized weed that they the the cartel started because these dispensaries they're only allowed to take cash so now they keep all this cash in a vault in the federal reserve they have these big armored trucks to take it so the cartel have been using that to launder their money yes they use that to launder money but they used that out to it's um it's a trial in their face right They're trying to, they're taking a lot of, a lot of intel on how California and Colorado is making it, right? So they grab a bunch of kids from Sinaloa that were leaving in California or living in Colorado, that they love weed and they know how to grow that.

And they set up a bunch of like a huge setup to start growing better quality weed. I went in greenhouses, state of the art. They play music 24-7 to their plans. You know, they played like four in the morning to six. It's Oprah and then soft rock and then hip-hop. And it's crazy, man. And then they have these huge manufacturing places where they do the pre-rolls and they do like these addibles and all the shit.

So the cartel is copying this shit. Exactly. Yeah. They have like really cool brands. I cannot say the name of the brands because that's what got me into a lot of fucking hit with those guys because they allowed me in they showed me everything they even because their brands are being sold in the u.s that's why you can't say the name no because apparently i mean apparently i was not allowed to to say their brands they showed me everything but i think they forgot to tell me

not to you know like public uh to publish their their brands and i fucked up and i did a story for business insider where I put one or two of their brands or their best best brands in this story so they came up made really hard they started like calling me and threatened me and asked me to not ever put a a foot again in in Sinaloa and here I go again like I wanted to fucking Ovidio's house fuck me right so yes yes I'm getting a lot of heat from for for for that document I mean in that was only one story with business insider I have a full fucking documentary dropping soon on my

YouTube channel from inside those places. They were pretty cool. They were not intimidating at all at all. They even let me press you know, like wax on one of their machines and I got like super stoned in one of the manufacturers. So if they're doing all the shit

that the dispensaries are doing, like as far as like the pre rolls and all that stuff, who is that going to? To the Chapitos. All that money was put in by Los Chapitos and all their everything they're selling is going back to Los Chapitos. It's only allowing these guys to play with weed, right?

Because they want to play with weed. They want to grow their own weed. They want to be Rafael Caro Quintero all over again, one of the founders of the Sinaloa Cartel, that who was in love and he who invented the Sinsomella, right? These Mexican break weed with no stems on it. It's called Sinsomella. Okay.

It was like super popular back in the seven years. And who in the U.S. is buying these things, this type of weed? That's not for export. They're making a business in Mexico. Oh, it's not even exported. That's only for a Mexican market because they're trying. Like tourist markets? Exactly.

Tourist or local people. There's a huge weed market in Mexico because a lot of what started happening is that a lot of people started trafficking weed the other way around. They went to L.A. or San Diego. And then they packed the whole trunk of a car with high quality weed and drove all the way back to Mexico City and sell that shit like crazy high prices. And this was not like cartel or anything. It's just like regular people that thought that it was a market for better weed in Mexico. And it was probably really easy to get weed into Mexico. Exactly. Yes, exactly.

I wrote a story back in 2009 saying that this was about to happen in the U.S. was to legalize weed. Yeah. And it ended up happening that way. And so Los Chapitos are like, you know what? This could be interesting. This could be, the national market could be like a good money making for us if we are the first ones. And if we monopolize the whole fucking industry. So let's start now when it's still illegal because we have the power and the means to do with legal shit.

But also, that could be their way out and become eventually if Mexico legalizes weed. they're going to go from nauticals to business owners, like what happened with alcohol. Well, they already are kind of business owners, right? They are. It's like the drugs just got them the original huge flow of cash, and now they're into everything else. Exactly, and that's the thing.

I think what they wanted is to have an exit strategy from the nautical world and say, if weed becomes legal, we might have a very well-established multi-million making business. How would that happen in Mexico? The same way it happened with alcohol. When prohibition in the U.S. was still in place, a lot of people, a lot of Mexican were alcohol traffickers. They will produce a bunch of whiskey, tequila, and export, illegally export that to the U.S.,

making huge profits. And when the U.S. legalized everything, they became who they are. They own the biggest business owners in Ciudad Juarez, you know, the guys who own the city in Juarez, in Tijuana, in Sonora. It's people who were traffickers. They were criminals. There were a chapel back in the prohibition era of the alcohol. And now they are like, you know, like family, you know, like wealthy, wealthy families, like probably one of the most wealthy families in northern Mexico. And I guess that's what they're what they were aiming or are aiming for.

So to wait for that to happen, to lobby. Because the people from those Chapitos told me that they were lobbying in the government to legalize weed. And I guess that that's a, that's an exit strategy. Do you think there's a better chance of weed being legalized in Mexico if it's legalized federally in the U.S.? Yes, absolutely. So you think that'll be like a domino effect if it happens in the U.S. and it'll... Yeah, I mean, not necessarily like a domino effect, but definitely going to put more pressure

in Mexico to legalize weed. More pressure, right? And also, Mexico's looking both in the middle of both, rightly, in the middle of Latin America, like places like Colombia, who's planning also on legalizing weed and the U.S. who is planning also on legalizing weed, the federal government. What if the U.S. legalized weed, like all drugs, weed, cocaine, heroin. That's going to create a fucking hell in Mexico with the criminal organizations, man,

because they're going to stop from being drug traffickers, and they're going to have to find new revenues. And those for new revenues are always kidnappings, extortions, all that kind of shit. Every time that their business go down, they jump immediately into, like, kidnappings, extortions, carjackings. Really? I wonder if this may be the stupidest thing I ever said, but if Coke became illegal in the U.S., if like big pharmaceutical companies that are now legally selling Coke would start working with the cartels. That would be the best case in area if they actually manage to work together, the U.S. and Mexico, right?

Where Mexico says like, okay, maybe we don't sell, you sell it, we produce it legally for export. And that will be good. Right. Right. But Mexico will have to legalize production of, you know. I mean, first of all, like cocaine, like the coca plant doesn't grow in Mexico. It only goes in certain altitude like Colombia, Bolivia, but a while that shit. Mexican cartels have been attempting to grow coca in Mexico for a while, in Guerrero and in Chappas.

But they haven't succeeded. The Mexican government has found small regions where they planted, you know, like a couple of hectares of coca leaves. Really? But they don't grow up as much as they grow in Colombia. I had a guy in here who lives in Brazil in the rainforest, in the Amazon rainforest, and he said that one week he went on a solo sort of like adventure through the Amazon, like up the river and like. on a crazy, dangerous solo journey. And he saw whole parts of the Amazon forest that are, like, hollowed out for airplanes to, like, fly under the canopy of the forest and land there and load up. And then he also ran into a group of dudes on a boat.

He actually, I think he actually caught a ride with them. There were a couple of dudes that were just had a boat full of bricks, of cocaine, bricks of bricks of bricks of bricks that were just going. going down the Amazon and I guess just transporting it, but I guess there's a lot of little pop-up factories in the Amazon that are manufacturing Coke. And are those, Sinaloa, are those like Mexican cartels? Those probably are providers, right, for the Mexican cartels. Now, the biggest factory in Latin America for a cooking production

is a national park in Bolivia. It's in a national park. That's wild. I put up a story like a couple of months ago about that park and how they're like huge operation there's not like it's not like they have like this small cook cooking sites of cocaine right it's huge operations really massive fucking operations because it's a massive national point did you go there i didn't but i i got photos from the from the bolivian police that raided that plays and dude it looks so if you find pictures awesome

i think i think i have them somewhere on my instagram account at least one of them but if you Google let me tell you what the name of the other of the national park because it's it's fucking crazy man it's uh it's crazy that that's the biggest factory right now that's the that's the place where most of the cocaine is being and the government there they obviously they can't you know like they can't have their hands on everything at the same time it's just so huge yeah so so what is this that we're that we're that's uh that's a photo from from one of the national parks being rated after finding a massive cocaine lab. And that is happening almost on a weekly basis,

that they're finding a new kitchen in that same place. So they're cooking a lot of cocaine in that part, in the national park in Bolivia. That's kind of like all news to Bolivians if they keep finding labs in that same part, like almost on a weekly basis. Yeah. So I'm interested.

What is it like being, being you reporting on this shit every week, finding all these new stories, dealing with all these sources in the different cartels and reporting to all these different news sites. Like, that's got to be, like, it's got to make it hard to sleep at night when you're dealing with all these fucking violent people. Sort of, man. I mean, I've been doing this for 15 years now. So at the beginning, I guess, more. at the beginning, I was still having like adrenaline brushes all day and like getting like, you know, hard nights trying to sleep and that kind of stuff. But you still like get used to it. You know, like to me right now, it's not that it is only a job, but I have a mechanism right now.

You know, I have different cell phones for starters. Like that cell phone you, you message you. message now, I give that phone only like to very specific people, right? Because I know that that's my personal phone. And I'm going to answer every call or message I get from on that phone. Because only very specific people has that phone. And I always ask the people who have that phone not to share it with anyone. I was like, don't share this with anyone. And as soon as I find that.

I haven't shared it, I promise. Thanks a lot. And as soon as I found that my phone has, has been shared with somebody, you know, like if they told me, hey, I'm these or that, and I don't know, like Danny shared your phone with me. Yeah. I need to change my phone back again because I start losing track of things. I'm doing a hundred things at the same time. So I need not to worry about my safety on my cell phone or at my home.

Like my house, I mean, I guess less than four people knows where I leave, you know. I'm very cautious about my address and where I leave. And you're no longer living in Mexico at all, right? I'm not, yes. I'm not in El Paso. I'm not that that would make you any safer, would it? No, I mean, to be honest. I mean, I could very well be in Japan and still be on a handgrache from these people, right?

I mean, if they really want to put money and resources until, like, getting me, they won't. Right. I think it's not, I'm not that big of a fish for them or a threat or, something like that. And I get hate for both sides, right? Because I mean, a lot of people say or send me messages on social saying that I work for the Senegal cartale. Of course, you're in the payroll. That's the only way that will give you access. And I get that. It's really, it's really complicated to understand that a guy like me could just walk in time, a video's house. That was at my own risk, taking a lot of fucking risk into doing that.

For some, it's very unbelievable, right? It's like, there's no fucking way. I mean, if there was another way, I would have said it, right? It will be even better and easier for me, maybe I will have had more time inside his house. If I had the permission of someone, of the organization, you know, like touring me the house, that would be fucking cool. That would be even better than just being inside for six minutes all, like,

scared and out. Right. I would have someone touring me the house and saying, like, yeah, this was Obivio's room or this was his backyard and he was here when you know like the military arrived and all the shit yeah i think people don't understand like to be you you have to maintain a you have to keep a good relationship with these people absolutely man you can't just be there fucking questioning them pointing your finger in their face or else you're not going to be who you are you're not going to get the stories you get exactly and at the same time is a thin line because

you whole end up doing PR for a fucking cartoon you know right yeah so how do you how do you maintain sort of or like how do you vet out stories from these from your sources and know when they're trying to just make you a PR mouthpiece versus when they're actually being honest with you i just recently burned a bridge from one of my sources in sinaloa for the weed story and i'm heard by that because he was a is a good source and he's a good man but that's what happened when when I mean that guy told me something that is very true and that when he told me that I was very hurt by what by his words because he told me I understand that you are more a journalist than anything else basically saying that I'm more a journalist

than a fucking human being or something like that and I was very like hurt by his words I was like what what are trying to say man and This was like face to face or was this? That was face to face. And I was like, what the fuck? But I kind of like reflected on it. And probably I am. Probably journalism is first than everything else for me.

Like it's not saying that I don't care for human beings. But I mean, to be a journalist, you have to be a good person, right? You have to respect every single human. Not really. Well, I mean, to be, I guess, a good journalist with yourself. you're never going to be a good journalist for everybody you know not for editors not all journalists are created equal dude I made pieces

with like taking shit for my editors taking shit from my family taking shit from cartels taking shit from governments taking shit from the US or Mexico taking shit from my day you know like I take shit from everyone and at one point I was like no no man like I want to like be cool with everyone it's like dude you can I mean I'm gonna make peace with that

and be in peace with myself and the kind of journalist I am and just keep fucking walking my way, you know, doing what I feel that I need to do, like walking inside Ovidio's house. At that moment, I was like, I don't know if this is on the ethics books of journalism or not, but to me, it is fucking important to go in. And this might be my last chance to have a sneak on how Ovidio was or someone like Ovidio was leaving and what happened inside his place. I care about, you know, even criminals because they're fucking human beings, you know.

That's why we have a justice system, quote unquote. That's why we invented jails, right? If you're a criminal, you go to jail. You just don't end up dead. If you have a family, I want to understand that, that side of those criminals. They have families. They have daughters.

They named their daughters after their grandmothers or their kids after their grandparents. grant that. It's regular people. And I don't know. To me, that was a major opportunity to go inside to the house, to the room, to the closet, to the kitchen, to the bathroom of one of the major targets of the U.S. Because in the U.S., it's all like politics, right?

We're handing $5 million for a video, man. And you keep hearing that on news outlets. either it be Fox News or Vice News. Both of them keep repeating the same thing, right? Ovidio is a huge narco. The Cappo is a huge narco. El Chapo was supposed to be the major truck trafficker in the fucking world. He's in jail, and the trade hasn't stopped.

It's at an all times high. Right. So was he really? I want to find those stories. And so... So when he said to you, he said, you're more of a journalist than a human is what he said exactly he told me he told me like si entian do you're more of a journalist than anything else he of course it hurt because i was like

and he said this because of the weed story when you outed his brand yeah because i i had to i had to burn that bridge for journalism because so that was a decision that you consciously made you you basically had two options it wasn't something that was like a mistake or something that was like a mistake or something something you overlooked. You know you consciously decided I got to sell this guy out. Yes, I mean not sell him out but the thing is I'm pretty I guess that's what makes me respectable with these people with these kind of people with cartels. I never I never ever say something that I'm not going to do or that I'm going to do if I'm if I'm planning on doing something different right you tell the truth that's how you maintain your relationships.

100% I'm always always telling the truth if I tell them your face is not going to show I'm going to make sure their face is never going to fucking show. If I tell them, I need your face on camera because of this and that. If they say no, I totally respect that that's cool, man. If they say, let's do it, then let's do it, right? I mean, I don't back up on things. So this time around, I asked as many other times around, I need to go inside the whole fucking weird business,

and I think it's a very cool story to tell. I want to go in and show how they are making a national business, a national market, that it's not being fulfilled, right? But also how all these money goes back to Los Chapitos and how they are putting money into these. I want to show that. So these guys told me like, yeah, come over and let's do it. I went there four days. We had a blast. It was pretty cool.

But after I came back home, he called me and said, like, dude, I mean, just don't write anything about L'Otapitos linked to these stories. And I was like, how come what happened? And I sort of like felt that something was not right when I was reporting. Because every time I would ask something, I would ask like, so this is an operation, this is an expensive, expensive operation. I guess this is coming from the pockets of either Ovidio or Ivan Archibaldo. And then when the guy in front of the camera will answer and say like, Z, this is coming from Los Menores, the Chapitos, this guy will step in all nervous and like, no, no, but this is a different thing.

You know, like, I mean, yes, yes, but it's a, it's a national market. You know, like trying to, I don't know, like trying to stop me from asking or saying the name of Los Chapitos. And I felt weird, but he never said anything about anything. Later, I learned or I figure that he didn't really disclose what I was going to do to the people he was introducing me to, right? That I was going to write about Los Chapitos and about their multimillion business on weed in Kulakan in Mexico. But that was not a me. That wasn't him. I was very honest and very clear about what my intentions were, and I was making the right questions all through my reporting.

And then after I back home, he asked me not to put or link Los Chapitos to the weed business industry. So I had, that was not a story. That was half a story. And I told him, dude, if I do that, that's going to be fucking PR for the Sinaial Cartel, man. showing just how good of a weed you guys are doing like are making or growing in cinema right that's fucking PR that's not journalism and I didn't say that since the beginning I told you what I wanted and what I wanted to do he told me yeah man but I I don't know things changed and I was like what changed it's like I mean they're

getting they're getting like super sketched out about the weed business and I was like I didn't feel anything like that. Like, no one was real sketched. We even, like, smoked a couple of fucking blunts and, you know, have beers and everything. And he was like, yeah, but you can't put that out. I was like, dude, sorry. I know that you might get in trouble. I know that you're not going to get killed because you're valuable for them and they're

your friends and they love you and they respect you. You're not going to get killed. I know that for a fact. I'm going to put out my story, man. I signed up for that. And probably you were not clear or honest, completely honest with those guys. But I mean, I have to. But this is what I sign up for, right?

And I published a story and he got pretty angry at me. A lot of his people also started like threatening me and telling me that I should not be saying the name of those chapitos and all that shit. at the end, nothing happened, right? Everybody knows that Lachapitos control that fucking weed industry. I'm not the first one, you know, calling them out. I think it was a matter of him not being completely honest with the people he introduced me to. So that was it, man. And I'm still having second thoughts on putting out the documentary.

Of course, I caught everybody's faces from all their brands showing on the documentary. I cut all that off. But I, that's, I mean. It's got to be a difficult line to dance. It's hard. That's kind of like the things that keeps me awake at night. You know, like, am I doing the right thing? I'm not doing it for fucking likes.

I'm not doing it for fucking views. I'm not doing it for that. I'm doing it for the story for my own path as a journalist to explain things, to know and learn things. And that's why I want to be very honest every time I go out. Because I don't want to have to face this kind of bullshit. When someone calls me and said, like, no, you can't publish that. Yeah. I want to make sure that since the beginning, my intention.

They want to have their cake and they want to eat it too. They want to, they want to have the attention. They want to bring you in, but they want it to be just their way. Exactly. You can't have it that way. Not long ago, the attorney for one of all, Mayo Zambada's son, called me as well on my other cell phone. He gave me a call because I published a story saying that El Magito Flacco, one of the, Mayo's sons who was arrested in the U.S. for cocaine trafficking and who was recently released.

I published this story about him going to Sonora to places like Avorka in Sonora to still make business for the cartel on behalf of Olmeo Zamada. And his attorney call me, he's a U.S.-based attorney. And he called me and he told me that that was not true, that his client wasn't even allowed to go into Mexico. Mexico at all so that I needed to correct my story and to, you know, like make things right. And I was like, I'm going to stand by my sources, man. I have really strong sources in Sonora that have seen El Magi To Flaco in Sonora making business on behalf of his dad. And he then texted me something like a full fucking paragraph and he told me, you need to put that out.

And I'm like, I'm going to quote this. But who I'm quoting? I thought that it was a statement. And it was like, no, no, don't quote me. And I was like, so I'm going to quote your client. Is this a statement straight from a Maito? And it's like, no, no, that's what you need to write on your story. And I was like, fuck no, man.

That's fucking PR. I'm not doing this. This is not how it works, right? Right. Hit me up, call me back when you're ready to give out a statement on your behalf or on the behalf of, of El Maito, right, on the record. but I'm not getting I'm not doing PR for anyone so I I knew that that could get me in trouble as well but dude that was the right thing to do that was the right story I was telling the truth

so yeah I mean I've fucked up many many fucking times before and I know that I'm still going to keep fucking it up many times in the future because that's what I do we do breaking news when things are happening especially coming writing about drug trafficking all operations. It's shit that you're not supposed to know happening at that minute or during those days. So the chances of fucking it up are huge. And I guess people don't understand that, right? When you put out something real quick, when you put out an article about the capture of video and I talk to different sources and I have a million different versions. I have to go for the one that makes more sense to me at that moment and maybe clear it out on the next story. But you get a lot of shit. It's just a long process of putting together so many puzzle pieces and triangulating so many different sources and finding out what's right, what's bullshit.

How do I make sure I don't fuck these guys over and make sure these guys are safe? Don't compromise my swords. Don't compromise myself. Right. I still have like a decent story for my editors on time, which is like two hours from the time I learned that Ovidio was arrested. You know, it's fucking 5.30 in the morning to me and it's like a shit. So you fuck it up. You fuck up.

You fuck up in your stories. You fuck up by trusting a source that wasn't really reliable. That happens all the fucking time. It's normal. But people tend to believe that journalists need to have it right 100% of the time. That's not possible. That's not something realistic, you know. You fuck it up, especially writing these sort of stories where there's a lot of things going on.

Now back to your question, it's you have to have a thick skin and a cold blot and the right mindset to keep doing this. Yeah, because people are, a lot of times people are not going to be happy. Most of the times, man, either I get accused of working for the Sinawiluul or Sinaloa cartel or Sinaloa cartel people starts like telling me that I work for the U.S. government or the U.S. officials say that I work for the Mexican government and the Mexican government. and the Mexican government said, you know, I'm always in the middle of something. Always, always. It recently happened with that story from Ovidio's house. I entered with this photographer from Kuliacan,

and he took a bunch of pictures. And as you could see from my video, the scene has been manipulated many times before, probably by the attorneys or the neighbors who entered before, or the Mexican military, or the cicarios who stay there. Who the fuck knows? But when we went in, we made sure that we didn't fucking move anything, that we didn't touch anything. So we saw those bullets lined up on a table, that grenade lined up to a beer bottle, all that stuff.

And one of the things the photographer found was unexploded bullet poked in a hole, on a bullet hole. Oh yeah. Yeah. So you're telling me about this before we started. So someone, obviously someone poked that bullet inside that hole. Where can we find a picture of this online? I think it's on my story also with Vice. Okay. Just go to just search Vice Luis Shapiro and there'll be a list of all your articles, right? Yes, exactly. And if you go to that story. So. And this, so that bullet hanging out of the wall, that was at his house? That was at his house. And it was just like a one of a hundred photos we took from inside his house but somehow uh these uh super like right wing comedy webpage um got a hold of that photo and made a huge campaign about how liberal media was so fake

and that that's why you shouldn't believe my stories because it's all bullshit because of that photo and first of all it's like dude i didn't take the photo second of all how does that mean liberal media was fake if there's an unexploded bullet hanging out of the wall. Because they thought that I was, they thought that I didn't know how fucking bullets work. Oh my God. So they thought that I thought that that was actually a bullet and I was trying to make people believe that that was a fired bullet. A complete unexploded bullet. Dude, I've been doing this fucking job for more than 15 fucking years.

I know how bullets work, you know. Which one is it? It's entitled Chapo's Sons House. That one? After the other league going to fight? Yeah. That one. And if you scroll down, you'll see that photo somewhere.

There it is. Look at that shit, man. It's obvious, right? That it was manipulated. Yeah. I mean, at least to me is obvious. Now, the photo. Somebody just stuck the bullet in the hole.

Exactly. And that was interesting enough for a photo. It's like, wow, someone put a fucking bullet across a bullet hole. It just looks cool. It looks interesting. But it has nothing really to do with a story, right? It doesn't really affect the story. in general, especially when in the story, I'm saying that the house, many of the stuff

inside the house was already manipulated. One of the first paragraphs says about these lined-up bullet caskets on a table. But I guess that was a campaign. And I'm in the middle of those fucking campaigns all the fucking time, man. A girl just disappeared in Mexico City. And then three days later, she was found inside a plastic bag alive all completely naked. What? The Mexican government is saying that she did that to herself, which is confusing.

And it's bullshit. And I tweeted like, this is fucking bullshit. This is the same thing over and over when a girl disappears, the Mexican government goes out and say, it was herself. She fell in a fucking pole. She killed herself. She, you know, always, it's always the same fucking pattern. Yeah. And now everybody's like accusing me on Twitter of being a fucking white winger against the president of Mexico and having a U.S. propaganda, you know, against the Mexican press.

Some shit like that, man. And it's like, dude, I don't even pay attention to that shit, man. I get that. I get that from everywhere because I'm writing the news as they happen. Do any of the different, like, obviously you're doing a lot of work for Vice. and I saw recently you just did a little segment with Jesse Waters. Do you get them talking to you like, why are you doing Fox? No, not at all, man.

You can't do Vice and Fox. Not at all. I guess my editors, they're cool with everyone. But it's weird to be in the middle of stuff like that bullet because Fox News, Digital, who started the whole campaign, had just contacted me to start writing for them, right? Oh, really? Oh, hey, man, can you write a couple stories for us and these and that? And I'm always, as I'm telling you, I was very honest with everyone, with the editor with people.

So I told that editor with Fox News, one of the things I told them was that I just wanted to write stories that I feel personally engaged, that I find them interesting enough and that were not part of, you know, like a campaign or some shit like that. So I will only accept or pitch assignments that I feel comfortable enough and enticed enough to write them. right and that's the same thing that I did for provides and that I do for everyone you know like who who wants me to write for them and what do they say they said of course they's like yeah yeah man like pitch me stories that you want to write that you feel like it's a good angle and that shit and and i'll pitch you stories and if you feel that that's uh enticing enough for you yeah you know the new year post also recently uh send me an assignment but it was a boring assignment it was an assignment that didn't really want to take.

So I told him like, I don't think this is an assignment for email. Thank you for reaching out. But I'm not happy with this assignment. As cringe as Fox News can be, the one thing I will give them is that they'll have on people from the right and the left.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will give them that. And I mean, that's the thing. And as soon as somebody from the left goes on Fox News, people on the left will fucking throw them to the wolves. Exactly. And when these happened,

Fox News is trying to get me as one of their freelancers, at the same time, they're publishing a story about my story with vice. So that's how hypocritical media works, and that's what people need to fucking know. I don't stand to the left or to the right or to the north or to the south. I stand only by my fucking self of Abouz bin. I usually report on my own. I usually go on my own with my own resources, with my own risk, with my fucking backpack.

I'm always alone, man. I'm walking everything in Latin America and the U.S. writing stories alone. And I don't need more people to join me, you know? Right. And that means that I don't need the left to support me or their right to support me or north or south or Mexico or the U.S. or whatever. I go there and tell a story, you know.

You have a unique perspective. I try to think of every story as a fucking story. I don't get, I couldn't give it. less of a shit about, you know, a U.S. political campaign or Mexican political campaign. I don't give a shit about that, man. If I find a story and I try to find a story that interests me enough, I will go and write the way I feel that that story needs to be written. Was Jesse Waters dead fucking serious when he asked you if the U.S. would do a tactical drone

strike in Sinaloa? This is the thing. When they call you. couldn't believe you kept a straight face. Dude, at that time, I was just out from Ovidio's house. My fucking adrenaline was still pumping because they call me and they're like, you're going in at 5. And I was like, at 5.30.

And I was like, shit, man, by then I should have been in Mexico City already out from Kulakhan. My fucking car broke. I just literally walked in the hotel and looked at the van in front of me, which was the of the attorneys, they were staying at the same fucking hotel. Oh my gosh. So I put on my fucking hoodie. I was like, fuck, fuck, fuck.

And then as I- I forgot about that, at the end of that video, you're in the hotel and you're like freaking out. I'm freaking out. And as I walked in, I received a call from Jesse Waters producers and they're like, you're up in five minutes. And I was like, fuck, I still need to set up my lights and everything. And that was from in the hotel. In the hotel, like right after going that fucking adrenaline rush.

so and then they told me something like just answer straight up answers you're not going to have like much time you're going to have like five minutes or some shit like that so we need your answers to be you know like super fast and yeah don't know that right and all of us are like right there with fucking jessie waters asking me if what will happen if the u.s will bomb strike me

what the fuck was that about when i hung up that fucking call i was like boom i need a moment man i need a moment to fucking debrief. I put tricks on myself to make sure that I'm coming back from dangerous assignments. And one of the things I did before taking off to the mountains of Oviedo's town was that I left everything ready for a shower, and I didn't shower in those two days. Because when I was trying to get out of Avidio's house, and I felt that that was not going to happen, I was like, fuck, man, I'm fucked here.

I was like, no, I left everything ready for a shower. I need to go and take a shower. I haven't showered in two fucking days. So I'm going out. And that's what like pushed me to go out and say like, let's fucking go. I'm not a mechanic. I don't know much about cars. But when the car broke, like my mind was like, boom, fix it.

I was like, is the radiator man? You need water and you put water here and that. I fixed it in a fucking second. I let's go. It's fucking adrenaline. So when I finished the interview with Jesse Waters, my adrenaline was like intoxicating. I was intoxicated of adrenaline. So I laid on the carpet just like thinking what the fuck just happened.

And I remember that I felt like I really wanted to cry a lot, you know, but nothing was coming out. I just felt like I wanted to cry a lot. And I was like, fuck, man, I'm feeling so bad. but not like tears are not coming out it's just a weird feeling i don't know what i guess i was from i think i was intoxicated by i think it was just like a come down from that adrenaline yeah i think i was intoxicated by adrenaline i think it has been a while since i didn't feel that scared during a reporting a story um i think also that i realized that that those words make made sense for me you know like you're more of a journalist than anything else and I'm like fuck this is probably too I'm

risking my own life you know right here a lot and for a story and I still feel that it's worth it um I don't know man that I guess it was all that like it was a reflection I've heard stories like that from other journalists like war reporters that I've been like specifically I believe actually the guy who I'm referring to was either working for vice or the BBC and he was explaining the same thing you just explained to me that he was in the middle he was in the middle east somewhere and he was holding his video camera and he was in the middle of like a firefight between american troops and like the taliban or some shit and uh in the moment his adrenaline was so piqued that he wasn't scared he didn't feel anything he was just looking in that viewfinder just making sure he got the shot

yeah exactly that's that's what happened um i i because you get so excited you know what i mean because that's why you're there that's your purpose like you want to go home and have the most fucking mind-bending shots of fucking firefighters between terrorists and american troops and that's fucking all that matters in the world exactly and and the other thing is like that's a distraction from your brain from realizing that you're about to die yeah you want to get away from that thought that you're you might actually die there and you're like yeah but i'm doing my job you know i need a so you hyper focus on something else than the fact that you're fucking going to die. But yeah, I mean, I'm, I go regularly to therapy. So I talk to you really. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, that you have to because, because going back from that shit to your little suburban city with a super like quiet neighborhood and your kid and your wife and your regular life where you still have to shower your kid and, you know, make the bed and brew some coffee or make dinner for them. Debriefing from that adrenaline and feeling that you just went inside of Edia's house. And all of a sudden, the next day, you're back home. Just being you, washing the dishes, you know, making dinner for your kid, facing regular shit, that could be hard going like back and forth.

And then al-a-zahn and you wake up in the morning and someone tells you, Ovidia has been captured, you need to go to Jesus Maria. And boom, then you're like, I'm gone again. And then you're back again. And then you're gone again to the different thing. And then you're back again. And then you get a call from Jesse Waters or a DEA agent or someone in the Mexican military or Anarcho in Sinaloa or someone from the new generation of Calisco cartel.

And still, you're talking to those guys, watching your kid play Nintendo in your living room. So you have to really have your feet on the fucking ground so you don't like mix everything up and slash at your family or fuck up that or, you know, like, or stop reporting and, you know, send everything to shit. So I spoke with my with my therapist and I told her what happened. And she was like, and how do you feel? And she started taking me into this journey about how I was worthy as a human and not only as a journalist and all that stuff. And I was like, wow, that's interesting that she received that for me, that I might be putting my life at WIC to prove myself valuable in some way, some shit like that. So I started reflecting on that. And I'm still kind of like digesting the words of that guy from Sinaloa from my therapist and all this shit.

Because I felt that I'm getting to a point where... Oh, and I remember I called a former DA agent who was... Dude, he's fucking nuts. So I'll share a couple of stories of him later. But he was basically this 007 agent undercover in the Sinaloa cartel with the cartels in Brazil. He's fucking nuts. He's retired now.

And I told him what happened and everything. and he's like you know the most dangerous thing is that adrenaline you just fell because that's a big tip and that's what's going to get you killed so you need to take it down like that that has to be your roof yeah nothing more from there that's your roof and go down from there and I was like yeah you're totally right and he's like yeah don't go down the fucking adrenaline road man because that's what's going to get you killed it's not going to be a cartel it's not going to be anything. It could be driving at a super high speed just because you need that adrenaline rush. So you need to be aware that that's going to be your roof and nothing's going to go over that

adrenaline you just fell on that assignment because they're broken. I think what you see with a lot of people who are really good at what they do, like what you're doing with your journalism is people get, they become or they get lost in their work. Yeah. And they neglect everything else in their lives. Exactly. Their family or their kids. And there's a lot of people who are just okay with it.

A lot of people who choose not to have families, not to do any, not to, you know, maintain friendships with anybody. It's just it's their career and their work is everything in their lives and nothing else matters. Exactly. But that's a choice you got to make. If you can live with that and you're happy, then good for you. But, yeah.

But, I mean, you have a kid and a. wife and you got to balance being a father and then going into these life and death situations. And that's got to be, that's got to be brutal. Yes, exactly. That's the thing. I saw myself in the eyes of this guy. He's an older guy, never had kids, never got married. He has no friends because he, all he did was is work.

Right? And I found myself like losing more and more touch with, you know, know, like my friends, my family, you know, like going into a shell of my work and, you know, feeling always better when I'm working than when I'm not. And so I'm like closing my CF in. And I was like, fuck, man, this is how it starts. I need to go back again to enjoy my fucking life other than journalism. And then leave, actually fucking leave, you know, enjoy again my friends and get back in touch with them.

because every time they give me a call, I'm fucking busy. Or I start losing interest in, you know, like, or day-to-day talks, you know, like, when they told me about their businesses or about their jobs and their wives and their kids. And I was like sometimes I find myself like, oh. Yeah, you got to like, you got to be get around people too and just like get, just disconnect from it sometimes. Just turn your fucking mind off one way or another and just get around people who, not that they don't give a fuck about you, but just like talk about other shit.

Get around people who aren't in the same world as you are. Yeah. And that's, that, I mean, this is kind of like cyclical to me. After 15 years reporting on the same fucking things, I faced like the same thing in spiral,

right? Every time I feel that I'm going that rabbit hole, I kind of like take a turn and then go back and enjoy life. And that's like that's like that. I feel it's a spiral because I feel that my, professional life is going upwards and not you know like backwards or in circles i think that i've been growing a lot yeah since um but yes i i found myself in this position many many times before also with uh with um alcohol or um drugs you know like at one point in my life that was my

yeah like i can only feel good if i'm like extremely uh you know high or drunk right Right. Which was pretty bad for everyone. So I was like, no, I need to take a turn. And then I think I managed, because of like therapy, I've managed to dodge that, those bullets that are like more like on a personal note. And by now I can see myself immediately going down a rabbit hole. That's why I decided to, I've been out. I've been like a super lonely guy, you know, like I'm not very much with a lot of people around me.

that's always that's also like something that has been really I don't know like weird to me to have like more social media life with a lot of people but I think that's also what has been helping me navigating like a bunch of like messages requests and hate males or love males you know and that stuff that doesn't really move to me because I've always been you know like a lonely guy someone like a loner. Yeah, I've always been a loner. And my editor recently told me also like, hey, man, you are with a team now. You're not that fucking lonely wolf just going on and reporting. You have to keep that in mind. One of the best lessons I learned when I was young was that only drink or do drugs when you're happy and you're celebrating. When you're sad, don't drink and do drugs. That's the worst. Yes, exactly. That's the worst. It's pretty simple. Yeah, yeah. But it's worth. Like it could get you like in a very fucking. fucking bad mood when you start drinking or doing drugs when you're not happy or don't feel good or when you're using it to to mask bad feelings yeah exactly coming down from adrenaline of being in the fucking middle of a narco's house exactly being chased out by cicarios and that's the thing i when

i feel like that i don't touch um more than one coffee nothing that cool alter my my brain a lot you know like no alcohol no coffee not a lot of like spice um i do intermittent fasting for several weeks so i can like start regulating myself back again you know i'm feeling well and then when i feel good i start like you know having a beer or two when i'm with my friends and enjoying conversations and i decided not to have any journalist friend or do you do you do you do do anything like a lot of people like have different habits to get out of their own heads, you know, like it kind of can be really miserable if you spend a lot of time just thinking about different things and whatever is going on in your life.

And some people go on like fucking 10 mile runs every day just to like get fucking turn their mind off or they go to the gym or they do fucking ballet or jiu-jitsu, whatever it is. Do you have anything like that that you do to try to just like turn their mind off or they go to the gym? turn your mind off and just get out of your head. Whenever I can, I try to meditate. I do meditation, morning meditations. Sometimes when it's super cold, because I'm always like on the backyard. When it's super cold or freezing temperatures, I don't meditate.

I don't like meditating into my house. I used to run as well when the weather allows me to go out and run. But another thing is I play the guitar or read a lot. I read a lot of poetry, so poetry takes me completely out of that shit, you know. And so I spend many nights just reading poetry or playing the guitar, even if it's just like the same three notes all over and over. Like in a loop, it gets me like into like a meditation zone. Yeah. Like just, yeah, going, like playing the same arpeggio all over and over and over and over and over for maybe one or two hours.

And then I feel like reset, you know, it's like, okay. That's good. You got to take care of your brain, do you? That's important. Exactly. And I try to. I mean, I think I'm getting better and better after more and more years of doing this. It's not easy.

You have to keep yourself. You have to keep examining yourself, you know, like, am I good? Am I feeling good? Why am I feeling like that? All that stuff on a constant daily basis. And yeah, I mean, most of my days are very fucking unpredictable. Like, I wake up every single morning at 5.30 in the morning to read. certain different newspapers in Mexico and Latin America, newspapers from Venezuela, from Brazil,

from Paraguay, in the U.S. I have like 10, 15 different newspapers, mostly local newspapers. So you read from like multiple different countries and see what every angle is on Mexico? I start on local newspapers and then go to national newspapers and then to international outlets. And then like an hour later, 630 probably, I know if there's something that I want to to write if it's a good story to follow up and I put stories like middle-term story, long-term story, short-term story. So probably I can find a story that it's a daily hit. I'm going to be done with this story in two hours. That's going to be a super quick turn-out turnaround. And then a middle-term story, something that's going to take me up to one week, two weeks, three weeks, and then longer-term

story, something that it's going to take me up to six months, eight months, one year to report. What's the longest story you worked on? I can't remember, man, but I don't know. I mean, it's weird because it's weird to talk about one single story. And there are stories that takes a lot of fucking time and it has nothing to do with the story itself. It has to deal with the fucking legal department to approve a green light and then, you know, the security department and then the police and that, that, da, da, that. Like right now I'm writing up a story for these guys You mean the legal department of like the publication?

Yes, exactly. Sometimes, most of the times like every not every single time, but many of the stories I write needs to have approval from the legal department because they are on sensitive issues or you know, they involve the government or that kind of shit. Right. And then I just cut you off. You said you were working on a story with a guy. Yeah, well, these guys called Rest of World.

Dude, I love those guys. They focus on technology to tell very compelling stories. You guys will check them out. They're super fucking cool. Rest of world? The rest of world. And they're pretty new. They're pretty small.

But they're doing great fucking job, great fucking reporting all over the world. And I'm writing a story for them about how Uber is enticing criminal bands to do a lot of fucking crime, you know, from sex trafficking to, migrants trafficking. I don't want to blow up the story, but I'm writing this story for them. But it's taking a lot of time for security to approves me jumping into that story. I've already

done most of the story. 90% of the reporting, it's already done. But I still need to go feeling of shit tons of paperwork and all that's going through their security department, their legal department, their editorial. So sometimes stories will take

a long time because of that kind of stuff. before I can just like jump in and write those stories. I'm also currently writing a story for Rolling Stone about how cartels are laundering money through record labels for Narco Corridos. What? And it's pretty cool. I don't want to blow the stories as well. I'm nearly there. I'm on the last editing round, hopefully.

Do you ever have to deal with editors where you're like working on a story and you're working with an editor and then all of a sudden you're just feeling. like the editor is going is trying to take this thing in a different direction that's not meant to go yeah like a like a non-natural direction yeah definitely yes i've had that i mean and sometimes it's well at least in my case i felt that but maybe not because they want to feel an agenda but sometimes it's just like clickbait no click bait is the main thing so yeah what about it have you ever gotten the impression that one of your editors is dealing with intelligence or like i just talked to a guy who was working on a story for a big publication about a CIA operation going on in the Ukraine in the U.S.

And this was like he was working with a really big American publication. And he was working with them for six to eight months on this story, going back and forth. Great, great communication, great rapport. And this guy had a lot of former CIA sources giving him this stuff. So he was like, this was like very solid information. whoever was their point at the CIA somehow got into the editor's way and essentially killed the story

and tried to change it and like change the whole entire thing after eight months of working on it and he ended up publishing it on his own website after that because he just couldn't work with the editor anymore that's that's a thing that's a way to go man like when you're a freelance you have good things and bad things about the industry

the bad thing is you on top of like writing a lot finding sources getting compelling stories enough compelling enough to compete with all the staffers your publication might have because otherwise why would they choose you as a freelancer if some of the staffers will do the same stories right so you have to be a step above the rest of the staffers but you've never you've never been the situation where you thought like intelligence was trying to like get in the way of your story or like whether or it be like the state like somebody in the u.s or somebody in mexico no i guess i guess i guess i guess not or not that i've noticed um i've had stories killed for kind of like those situations where someone feels that you know like uh i don't know this is not going to be a good

fit for us because of legal and legal talk mostly like brands you know like we're i don't know where we're supported by that brand and you're talking shit about, I don't know, like, let's, as an example, it's talk Uber, Uber reached out and Uber is a big sponsor for us. Yeah. They don't say that clearly, you know, but, but it's, I know that that's what's happening. Right. I'll just, when I get an assignment or pitch an assignment with a publication that it's my first time working with, I always ask if they have a kill fee.

A what? kill fee there's a there's a fee for they kill your story right um usually should be around 50 but some of them just give you 20% of the agreement upgrade payment uh but if you're freelancing you have to know about the kill fee man and ask before you even start working with them like do you have a kill fee they'll tell you yes it's a fixed two hundred dollars rate or a 50% of what we agreed upon payment Right. So when you find that yourself in that, like, kind of shitty or tricky situation, you're

like, you know what? I'm just going to take my story back and just give me the kill fee. And they'll give you like 50% or like a percentage of that story. And then I will take it to another publication, disclosing everything for that publication. Right. I'm like, now if you're not going to go through with this story, I'm going to take it to someone else. It's that cool.

Right. And they're usually, yeah. Yeah, that's got to be another hard thing to deal with when you put so much effort into a story and they try to like change it or try to like put a spin on it and you just got to make the decision like do i take this out do i take this somewhere else or publish it myself or do i just let it go and get paid exactly so yeah i mean not i guess 80% of my my day is dealing with the paperwork editors also want to submit i couldn't give a shed less of a shed about prizes and you know um those kind of stuff i don't i don't give a shit about that like at all

and I'm barely perfectly honest. But sometimes publications will ask you to submit your own stories to different prices, you know, and that's a massive fucking work to do. You have to write essays and to go and follow the guidelines and all that shit. So I have to do invoicing. I have to do my own fucking expenses filing, file my stories, go through edits, go with the legal department, security department. everybody listening this is a good time to subscribe to louisa's youtube channel please do at louis chaparro on youtube

it's linked below i'll even put a little fucking whatever you call pop up on the video please um what what uh what is like china's you said you read the publications of other countries that are talking about what's going on in mexico what are what is china's perspective or like that part of the world's perspective on what's going on in mexico China has never been closer to Mexico than what it is now with this government. And I think it's because they know that they can bank on this government being lefty, you know, being more prone to the left side of the world, you know. And the embassy in Mexico, the China embassy in Mexico, is now booming.

It's having a lot of parties and celebrations and meetings and all that stuff. Dude, I mean, and their investment is, I think, twice or three times the money that the U.S. is putting in Latin America. The China investment towards Mexico and Latin American general, I think it's twice the budget of the U.S. With money. Wow. So they're putting a lot of fucking money, man. Yeah, they're putting money everywhere. A lot in Africa, too.

Yeah, exactly, man. They're using Africa as a proxy. And I don't think it's a coincidence that the new generation cartel is also like having massive operations in Africa. Are they really? They're having like a massive, massive fucking operations in Africa. Africa has one of the, if not the largest local drug selling industry, right? The street selling. The local market for drugs in most African countries like,

Burkina Faso and, well, different countries in Africa. It's a huge market. And El Chapo tried to earn that market, but apparently he couldn't get his organization to break a deal with the local organizations in Africa. But the Cartel-Halisco, the New Generation Cartel, is popping up really hard in Africa very recently. And if you go to my Instagram as well, you'll find a story about... But it was Instagram.

About this guy. I talk... Are you talking about... I think we've talked about this before. Or maybe I talked about it was somebody else. But there's like... It's called something Guinea-Bosau country in like northwest Africa where like the head of the Navy in the country was importing all the fucking cocaine.

Very, very fucking probably with it. I mean, I guess in Aloha Cartel is now huge in places like the Netherlands and Spain. Netherlands in Adverb, they're popping up huge, Spain. But they need Africa because most of the trucks coming from Latin America places like Bolivia or Panama or Colombia that are meant to be for the Europe market, they stop in Africa. They come through Africa. So I think the new generation cartel is a step. It's, you know, it's reading that through the lines and saying, like, well, I need to get a hold of Africa because this is the only way I'm going to overthrowing Sinaloa in Europe.

Right, right. That's pretty smart. And, yes, I mean, I can't remember the name of the guy and I should have it somewhere around my. So what is, as far as like the media and like what's being published in the media in Europe and China and wherever else Latin America, what is like the media narrative on what's going on within the cartels and their relationship with the U.S. And like I'm interested like what does the Chinese media say about these cartels? Honestly, I don't know because I mean, what we get from? from the China media in English is mostly English washed. Right.

So it's kind of like the same. If I cold-bred Chinese, probably, I will have a really interesting knowledge about how they're looking into Mexico and criminal organizations. But for what I know, China has always said that they don't have a precursor's problem, because all of their businesses making precursors that are used to make fentanyl and meth are regular legal established business in China doing, I think it's like cleaning products precursors, right? Precursors to make cleaning products?

Cleaning products. That's what they call it. but I mean they're sending shit tons of fucking those precursors to Mexico through Manzanillo and Acapulco and Mazatlan so and the U.S. have been going hard against this guy called Fat Yep which is like El Mayo Zambada in China and in China he's one of the most respected businessman and he operates freely a guy writer and journalist that I just recently met and we're putting together a conference call from China to Mexico, the fentanyl trade. When I was inside a laboratory in Sinaloa, a fentanyl laboratory, he was meeting Fatyap in China,

playing a buyer from Mexico. Who was meeting this fucking journalist from the US. Oh, shit. He has photos with Fatyap and his daughter. And dude, we're putting together this fucking conference that I think. it's going to you know like because we're going to tell the whole fucking story from inside these two major organizations, Korean organizations sending shit tons of fentanyl to the US. I guess he's the only one or one of the few that have had access to that guy in China.

And I'm probably one of the few guys that have had access to laboratories in in Sinaloa. So we're trying to put a narrative together to have a like a touring conference, you know, about how this fucking trade works. Wow. I think it's going to, I mean, I was, I was completely blown up by his story, and he felt the same way about me, because when we met, I was like, dude, you were in fucking China with those guys? I was like, come on, dude, you were in fucking Sinaloa with the fucking Maya Sambaras people,

you know, in the laboratories. So we're like, we have to do something together, man. That's incredible, man. So I think it's going to come up well. It's going to come up interesting, at least. Are there still a lot of journalists? that are dying in Mexico? Yeah,

they're getting murdered. Yes, man. Why? How are journalists getting murdered? How the fuck do that, are they ended up getting murdered? Are they working for the Mexican media? Yes.

It's the same fucking profile all the time. It's very, how do you say this? It's very low wages jobs they have with hyperlocal publications. They're always exploited by their bosses, by the owners of that media or its independent journalists

trying to put out their own little operations, either a radio station or a website or stuff like that. Mexico first, first it was, Mexico was using the cartel to kill these guys, right? I mean, back in 2010,

2015, I think. The Mexican politicians, when there was an uncomfortable journalist that would use the narcos to go and kill journalists and say they were them. It was them. Then they changed strategy, and they started hiring cicadios.

And, you know, like doing the hit themselves, like a governor. Let's say you are an uncomfortable fucking journalist, getting into my thing or my business as a governor. I wouldn't call a cartel. I will just hire a fucking hitman and have you killed. And then no one will blame responsible, right? Like, we don't know.

But it's always always as being politicians. It's always when you get in the way of politicians, that's what you're in danger. You can go to Maya Sanbadas house. You can break in Ovidia's house. And something can or cool happen to you. Mostly sure is that you might just get fucking beating up and be sent to the hospital or shit like that. Right. But if that house was from a governor, a congressman, or the Mexican president man, I wouldn't be here, man, at all. The most dangerous story I've ever reported was on Chihuahua State Governor and all the houses he had in El Paso, Texas, from public money.

That guy is now in jail. He's behind bars. But when he was on the loose, I found him. I found what he was. living and I knocked on his door in El Paso. He got so fucking pissed. He sent an armed man outside my house in Juarez for a full week. There was a man with a fucking gun on his hand outside my house. And I'm friends with the son of his right hand. So the right hand of this governor has a son who is my friend. We went to school together. And one night he called me and told me, he calls me Cholo. And he was like, Cholo, you need to be careful, man. My dad just told me that you're in big shit trouble for that story you published about

Duarte. It was the cover of the main publication in Mexico. It's called Proceso magazine. And he wasn't the cover. My story wasn't the cover of that magazine. And right the next day, they put that guy outside my house for a full fucking week. And I've never had something like that. reporting on cartels. It was just that time that I reported on a classroom

politician. That's fucking crazy. It's always it's always the fucking politicians man. It's always it's always them and now they're not doing that now because of all the shit that it's been going on like they've killed so many journalists and us journalists have been paying attention to those stories and telling their stories and everything they know that they were counting and that we're paying attention and international organisms have been paying attention. So what they're doing now

is they pay major publication to start a campaign against a single journalist and start calling him out as a rapist or as someone who stole money or he's working with the cartels. So he will be left alone without job, without anyone to hire them And then they will go after them for a crime.

And that's been happening a lot. The fucking Mexican jails are full of journalists wrongfully accused of rape, of sexual abuse, of stealing, of taking bribes or money from an arco. I just recently helped, last month, I helped this guy from Cancun who arrived to Juarez after being raped by several men in Cancun. All of them were working for the government, where he got it for the government. And this was because he found that the electricity company in his state was stealing shit tons of fucking money through fake contracts. And he published that story. They fire him from the paper. And then another one hired him.

And then three days later, they fire him. And no one will take him again. So he was jobless. He put out his own publication. He got threatened by arm. man that they were going to kill him. He kept writing about that. And then they kidnapped him,

have him captured for three days, raped him with a, with a fucking, um, how do you say it was a co-a with a broom. Oh my God. Fucking broomstick. Um, and he,

after that, he fled to Juarez and he tried to cross the border illegally to hide from those guys. I helped him put him in touch with an immigration attorney. And he managed to, claim he's a asylum process and he's now in new mexico hiding from those guys and dude that's just the latest case in a case where i could personally help a colleague to get out from the fucking mexican government man it's it's bad it's getting

jesus christ man yeah man he's a fucking brave man he's a fucking brave man he of course when i met him he was he's a tall dark man like you know with a strong face He's a brave man. And when I met him in Juarez, he was crying like a fucking baby man. He was completely hurt. You know, like he was demoralized. He was feeling like shit. And he was like, dude, I was a journalist.

And now I'm a fucking migrant trying to sneak into the U.S. And I put him in talk with his attorney and he helped him up. And I'm glad that he's in New Mexico safe. We speak often. I help him with a, he had his files. everything he had was his computer and like five different hard drives and he's like do it this is how i have this is all the information from those fucking guys stealing money and i'm still planning on publishing so help me and i was like give me all of that shit i'm going to hide them in my house

and when you're safe in the u.s i'll i'll hand them back and when he called me and said like do it i made it this attorney helped me to go um the right way to do it like through an asylum process. I handed him over all the information and he's about to keep publishing all that shit. Oh my gosh. Mexico has the bravest fucking journalists in the world, man. They really are. I mean, I feel obviously, I feel like a fucking joke, you know, like to the side of those guys.

Those are the real fucking guys reporting on Mexican corruption or Mexican politicians. How often do you report on the corruption that's going on in the government there? Not often, man. Do you have any sources that are close to that or are they fucking hard to come by? I mean, the hardest part is they always, if, if it's, they always have an agenda. So I try to stay away from filing agendas for, from one side to another. Right. They always haven't, they either have an agenda or no pulse. Yeah, exactly. So.

It's fucking crazy. It's crazy. But yeah, man, that, that guy, that guy, that guy is. is Alfredo, that's his name. And I don't know if he's going to be listening to this. He doesn't speak English, but still I pledge my respect for Alfredo, man. So where does this all go from here? What do you think is on the horizon for this whole fucking war going on right now in Mexico? And the future of the Sinaloa cartel and just the whole balance of power in the cartel world down there? I really think that things are still yet to get worse.

The whole thing about the Sinolao cartel and Los Chapitos faction is going to make a huge fucking war and a gap, huge gap in Sinaloa, in Kuliacan, in a place that had been as safest as El Paso, Texas for a while. I think we're getting closer to the federal elections. and that's always a turmoil, always, always a bunch. That's where I want to stay away from Mexico as far as possible when every single time elections come. Are there any good options? Are there any good options for like new presidents to take over from Lopez? Not really.

Not really, man. I mean, the two, I guess, more popular options. One of them is the foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, which I think is a great, foreign minister but I'm not sure if is the right president he thought I don't I don't think he has the sensibility that Mexico needs on a president he has a political knowledge he has the yes basically that's why he has like the political knowledge and the career long enough to be a president but to be a president in a place like Mexico you have to have a lot of sensibility

towards your people and if you have never walked Mexico you know, the streets of Mexico, the little towns, if you don't know about Jesus Maria, El Alamo, El Salado, those little towns where the criminal organizations have earned such a big social basis. If all you have visited is Mexico City, the wealthiest parts of Mexico in Monterey, you know, and you are a foreign minister that are always in Spain, in Qatar, in Canada, you know, what kind of like? sense of illyical you have towards your people right and the other one which could be an interesting outcome it's a woman she if she gets to be president she

will be the first woman to be president of Mexico it's called Claudia Shinebomb but I think she is till of the same of Andreas Manuel Lopez Obrador the current president she's basically a clone of andres Manuel she has strong chances because she's the favorite of the president so far. So she has some chances. But she's going to be more of the same stuff, you know, that we're facing that. What it's hard to imagine these cartels going anywhere anytime in my lifetime even.

It's just there's so much power and influence there and here. Do you see any possibility of them like setting up shopping to the United States? I think they have already since a while back, man. Yeah. Those guys. And this is a, I think this is like you back in the days, like you were talking earlier in Prohibition, how the Prohibition basically essentially created like the Mafia, the New York Mafia. And then they eventually tied their way into the U.S. politics. Yeah.

So I think that this is a thing where we need to entangle what stance is a cartel. And what we understand as a cartel in the U.S., it's not what a cartel is. A cartel in Mexico or I guess for everyone. A cartel is the armed branch of an organization, right? It's the guys with a bullet, proof bass, with the guns, those guys are a cartel. Right. The rest of that is the drug trafficking organization. And on top of that, it's what I call this.

criminal insurgencies. Drug trafficking is just one branch of a, of a white fucking portfolio of a criminal insurgency. Back then, in the 70s, 80s, and I think we need to update, like a general population, we need to update those terms because we're still using terms used in the 90s, in the 80s, about drug traffickers. I guess that's because while we see in mainstream media or in entertainment productions, right, Hollywood and Netflix. But that used to be the main branch back then. Drug trafficking was making money from trafficking drugs, right? That's just one branch now of these criminal enterprises. They are banking on extortion and corruption, on natural resources, like monopolizing water,

monoplycing certain goods like alcohol in certain places, cigarettes in certain other places. even tortillas or chicken or avocado are being monopolized in certain regions. And that's where they're getting a lot of money as well. And one branch of all this criminal enterprise or these criminal insurgency, one branch is drug trafficking, that it's not even the most profitable right now for these criminal enterprises. And that branch, drug trafficking, has cicadios, an armed group, you know, that's called a cartel.

Right. That cartel could serve the different portfolio actors. If a guy who's in charge of breaking corruption deals with the Mexican government to build hospitals or highways or whatever, he needs to earn that contract from the government. But there's a lot of people leaving in that area, a lot of farmers, you know, that have their cuddle and their farming places or whatever. this guy will call up one of the cartel guys, the enforcers, to make a lot of fucking violence in that territory. So people will just leave or be killed or sell super cheap their lands because they don't want to ever do anything to do. The government will step in and say like, yeah, we're helping these guys and then they will break into a huge fight. And then the Mexican army is the law enforcement for a corrupt government.

and the cartel is the law enforcer for a criminal enterprise. And after all the people is out of that town, they're going to make a pact. They're going to be like, yeah, we're going to pacify this territory because we need peace. These people have suffered enough. The government is going to look well because they pacify the territory. And the guy is going to bank on corruption building new school, new development, new residential houses, super expensive, spiking up the prices of that territory. Right. So do you think we'll ever see these like criminal insurgencies in cities in America? Like we traditionally used to see gangs and, you know, we still see gangs in Chicago, but there's like famous like the bloods and the Crips and LA and the gangs in New York and like small criminal like mini insurgencies in these cities in America trying to like start small and like work their way up?

I don't think so, man. I think that's that happened during the 90s probably early 2000s. You don't hear about it anymore. No, because what happened with the drug trade is as the 2000 started, we started seeing a worldwide gig economy, and that also impacted the drug trade and the criminal enterprises. So they don't work as an integrated organization, right, like as a vertical. They are horizontal and mostly working as a gig economy. So everybody's a freelancer for everyone. Got it.

And the Mexican cartels or the Mexican criminal enterprise organization, What they did is that they stopped trying to deliver or to move their own drugs in the U.S. And they just sell huge bulks of drugs to gangs in the U.S. to the cribs, the blots, the Mexican mafia, Los Aztecas, whoever. The guys that weren't, who were the guys that weren't Chicago, the guys who were part of, like, getting El Chapo arrested? Yes. I forgot their name. Yeah.

The two are their brothers, right? Yes, the Flores brothers. Flores brothers. Yes. So guys like them that are part of a gang, you know, are buying in bulk from Mexican organization. So if you have 10 tons of cocaine, you're not going to distribute them on your own. You're just going to move them to Tijuana and then have a buyer on the other side, usually a bikers club or a gang. and they're going to pay you in full in cash for the whole fucking bulk and that there's

going to be their travel or their business to distribute that and that's where it stops and that's where Mexico stops that's where the Mexican cartels or a criminal organization stopped they're like okay so that's your um back they have no interest in having like distribution more distribution than the U.S trying to make more off of it they try to like it'd be better because like you got these fucking people in the U.S. cutting shit with fentanyl and trying to mix shit and people that's why the that's why the drugs the drugs in the street started changing so much because it's a huge market in the u.s right now it's um and it's a u.s-based market and a u.s based operation it's not operated by mexican organizations yeah and that it was if it stayed mexican all the

way into the u.s we could trust it yes man i mean they will that it will be the same fucking dealer right right it's too many hands already on in that in that drug. So if you trace what's on every single drug you get in the streets, you get a lot of different shit that they caught their shit with. It's changing the whole game in the street selling. I don't remember if it was you who told me this or somebody else that told me, but there was like some sort of like very strict policy the cartels had that none of the cocaine was cut with fentanyl. They wanted to make sure that there was absolutely zero fentanyl any of the cocaine that they were shipping out and they were somehow like testing it.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Is that real? Yes, yes. That's what the Cinalo cartels putting out. Like, fentanyl is for export and you can use fentanyl in Mexico. There's a couple of guys that have been using and they, most of them they get what they call the tablasso. They get spanked in the ass with this massive like sort of like the cricket thing you use.

No way. It's called the tablasso, man. And I mean, they go hard on you. Boo. Yeah. So that's what they used to. I have this video that I'm going to put up next on my channel where I talk about the constitution of the Sinaloa Cartel. And that's the constitution, the fucking table.

So that's what they rely on to keep people, you know, in a straight line. I need to get one of those for here. Yeah. Fuck yeah. I can get you one. Can you easily get your rights? Yes. That would be sick.

I'll let you. Are you an Ed? Calderon going to collab. I saw somewhere that you guys were doing a podcast, but never happened. Did it actually happen? Yeah, we try to. And then he recently invited me on a live, but his connection kept breaking. Oh, really?

And yeah, he just, yesterday he reached out to invite me to his podcast. That would be a, I would love to listen to you guys talk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, he's an interesting guy. And I think it's going to be a great conversation with that, for sure. Well, cool, man. Thanks again. Tell people where they can subscribe to your YouTube on your Instagram and all the stuff that you're doing all your independent work. Yes. Please go to my YouTube channel and subscribe. It's at Luis Chaparro, double R, single P, because many of the people confuse that.

They write them as double P. Two P. Single R. It's Luis Chaparro on YouTube. I'm going to try to keep that up, keep that channel. That's my exit from taking bullshit from Maddie Tours and shit. Hell yeah, man. That's my long run project. More people that go and subscribe and follow him on all social media, the more freedom Louise will have to report him whatever the fuck he wants. Definitely, man. Thank you very much, man, for getting me here. I really appreciate it, man.

Tal was pretty cool to talk for hours. Dude, this was great. This was great. We got to make this like at least twice a year thing. Every six months, we come back. I'll be happy to. Hell yeah. All right, everybody.

Thanks for listening and good night, world.