Julian Dorey Podcast - #293 - Cartel Insider Exposes Elites Secretly Funding Syndicates | Ed Calderon

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

SPONSORS: 1) Download DRAFTKINGS CASINO app & use code "JULIAN": https://shorturl.at/e8zhM 2) Get 15% off with code JULIAN at oneskin.co (***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Ed Calderon is a cartel expert, former cartel cop, security specialist and combatives instructor with over 15 years experience in public safety along the northern border area of Mexico. PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey ED'S LINKS - IG: https://www.instagram.com/manifestoradiopodcast/ - X: https://x.com/eds_manifesto?t=mHTfUjf5CPPxGcS7lxBBfg&s=09 - WEBSITE: http://edsmanifesto.com FOLLOW JULIAN DOREY INSTAGRAM (Podcast): https://www.instagram.com/juliandoreypodcast/ INSTAGRAM (Personal): https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey/ X: https://twitter.com/julianddorey JULIAN YT CHANNELS - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Clips YT: https://www.youtube.com/@juliandoreyclips - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Daily YT: https://www.youtube.com/@JulianDoreyDaily - SUBSCRIBE to Best of JDP: https://www.youtube.com/@bestofJDP ****TIMESTAMPS**** 00:00:00 - Story of Ed Being Approached to Work Cartel 00:19:02 - Operation Targeting New Gen Cartels 00:27:50 - Mexican Panama Canal, Proving Citizenship in USA 00:49:10 - 1st Time Realizing Cartel Exist 01:03:02 - Psychological Impact on Torturing & Working with Governo 01:09:07 - Ed’s Parents & POV on Mexico Cartel (Cartolandia) 01:19:22 - Ed Missing Dreamless Sleep & PTSD/Trauma 01:30:34 - Finding the Missing Friends/Colleagues Horrible 01:42:20 - Cartel Issue is Bi-Partisan 01:49:22 - Mexico Deporting & Extraditing Corrupt Politicians 01:56:00 - Media Downfall, Tracking Sources and Weeding Out 02:06:35 - US & Mexico strange relationship, People are not their governments 02:11:49 - Ed's PTSD 02:20:31 - Ed learning how to live clear 02:24:32 - The Opportunity of America 02:29:01 - Ed is going to have updates soon CREDITS: - Host & Producer: Julian Dorey - Producer & Editor: Alessi Allaman - https://www.youtube.com/@UCyLKzv5fKxGmVQg3cMJJzyQ Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 293 - Ed Calderon ****YOUTUBE REVIEWERS DISCLAIMER**** This episode is an *educational history and current analysis* of the Mexican Border, South American Cartels and related topics. There are no images/videos depicting illegal substances/violence of any kind. This video is strictly a taped conversation discussing the cartel topic with a former cartel detective and current cartel crime expert covering the Border. None of the language, phrasing, or stories told herein “glorify” violence, drugs or any other related subjects. At no point in this episode do we delve into territories that are not educational and analytic in nature. We have taken careful measures to follow every single monetization guideline to ensure that this video is marked as “Fully Monetized.” Thank you to the YouTube Review team for your understanding on these matters. Music by Artlist.io Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There were two guys that I worked with, some of the first people that I lost. We never found them. They disappeared completely. It was this mystery for years, and then there's some that we did find. One of them's last name was Arenas. He got picked up by dudes dressed as federal agents. When we found him, he had his ID screwed to his forehead. Now, there was this big corruption thing uncovered in the institution that I was part of. Everybody was brought in, basically, for questioning.

So, there's a military barracks where they have the giant Mexican flag in in tijuana every now and then you would hear music coming out of the military barracks weird music sweet child of mine like that sweet child and then you said the volumes would crack up they called me to the office and then all of a sudden i find myself in that same military barracks this time with a hood over my head which is a sign for special operations this was a plastic bag that was utilized multiple times to try and asphyxiate me. And then I realized why the sweet child of mine would be playing in that military barracks. Oh my God, they're drowning it out. I was let go. Then I got a call from the director of the job that I was in and I got...

But that's sick. Because they said that I just passed the most rigorous confidence filter in Mexico. Hey guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review. They're both a huge, huge help. Thank you. There was definitely an effort being made by powers that aren't too clear to me, that are fostering an animosity between both of our countries, a political animosity. There are certain powers that be on both sides of the border that are fostering and fostered for years, and this past administration is a clear sign of that, this wave of migration that has not done a lot of positive things.

And if anybody says, like, what positivity did that bring? I don't know. Like, people got away from the communities that they were at risk from. Yes. Venezuela emptied out prisons. They emptied out prisons? They emptied out prisons? Venezuela emptied out prisons and said, yeah, go that way.

So that's why we got the Tren de Aragua. And now the Venezuelans are coming out saying that the Tren de Aragua was actually a U.S. operation group of people that they were trying to foster. So it's a shit show. It's a shit show. There are powers that be that are trying to destabilize shit that's obvious yeah um and in the middle are kids who want a job

and read a classified ad somewhere in jalisco fly there or go into a... or arrive by a bus, then get pulled into a yard somewhere, and they get a knife tossed in the middle of them and say, whoever fucking wins this match gets to join us. And somehow that's being funded by people buying avocados at the grocery store in the US. Somehow that's being funded by people buying avocados at the grocery store in the U.S. Somehow that's being funded by federal programs in parts of the U.S. that are very permissive to drug uses and creating these giant drug markets in places like Los Angeles and other parts of the country who are

indirectly or directly basically fostering these businesses that these organizations are have um somehow um us you know in the u.s um trying to be a good person and kind of like hey this is just an addict this is not his fault you know um sometimes people saying like hey the borders the borders crossed us yeah yeah but but there's a border there now and people are paying to get across it to a very evil organization that does horrible shit and once they get across a lot of them don't achieve the american dream a lot of them actually get eaten that's right um so there's no way of of tracking numbers of the disappeared once they cross the border because they're undocumented so we can't even track the numbers of people who just come over. Yeah.

So I'm all about people finding a better opportunity for themselves. I'm an immigrant myself. I understand it more than most. I also understand that there's people making a business out of that. Absolutely. I also understand that there's people trying to virtue signal through their support of immigrants and the open borders policies and all of these things and will call me a fucking sellout for speaking against immigration in that way. You've spoken on to be clear to defend you. You've spoken on both sides of that very strong yeah it's interesting because I have to be I'm gonna get from everyone it's I mean for me this this is this is who I am yeah

I raised over three thousand dollars for the Ryan Terry Foundation one of the Border Patrol agents that was that were killed by some of those fast and furious guns I did that because I get it. And also to get an opportunity to say, yeah, I raised money for that man and his family. And also for the ability to say that there are other families in Mexico that have no names, that have no funding, that have nothing behind them, that were killed and murdered by some of these guns that were directly put into Mexico by the authorization of a man named Eric Holder Eric fucking holder who's somewhere out there enjoying his fucking life and There's a there's a kid in Mexico a girl that doesn't have an arm because of some of those guns It's crazy and doesn't have a father and doesn't have a father, and doesn't have a mother.

I'm trying to bring light into some of these voiceless, empty stories that you don't hear a lot about out here. I'm very suspicious about the media in the U.S., and its blackout on all of these issues until now. Until now. Yeah. You want to talk about the essence of good that I've managed to kind of figure out for myself in the U.S. If I can see a light in the U.S., it has been places and platforms like yours that allow somebody like me who, dude, I didn't, I didn't, I have a fucking, basically went to high

school, you know, and then I did some shit for the government, and that fucking left me heavily damaged and traumatized. And eventually, they got rid of me. They got rid of you? Yeah. That's what they do with everybody, that once they're done with you and the government, they get rid of you somehow. How did they do that for you? For me, it was a clear choice between work with us or die, basically. They put me into a room and they said, hey, we're going to work against this cartel only.

You want to join us? And I said, no. Because eventually the institution that I worked with got to a level of corruption where it just wasn't sustainable for me to stay. Did you discuss that? Did you call people out in back rooms and say, I know what the fuck you are? At that moment when I got that offer, I had no backing left. For a long while, I worked in that office with backing of powerful people, including ex-governors, including people that are in politics, including ex-military members.

I have a military recognition by the general that was in charge of all operations in that region. I have him on my podcast. So I had that level of trust. And then all of a sudden I found myself in a room with somebody telling me, like, you're going to work for this cartel. I resigned that same day. Are you worried about getting a

bullet in the back of your head when you walk out yeah that's why i left that's why i left and that's why i live with a with a navy seal friend of mine for a bit in california while i was figuring out my immigration um the the level of the level and i'm just one story, man. Like there's people like me all across Mexico. People that were trained, fostered, brainwashed, built up to be this force, set loose. Yep. And then after everything was done, you're like, well, some of the shit you did was probably not good. Some of the people that you were boss were probably bad. So it means you're bad and you're like well some of the shit you did was probably not good some of the people you were your boss were probably bad so it means

you're bad and you're corrupt all this shit you did over here yeah we're not gonna do that we're gonna do this stuff over here now because we represent a different political candidate now so you're the villain now so it's basically what do people like me do like what do what did the people that I work with back then did do they all of do what did the people that I work with back then did do they? All of them had the the opportunity that I had immigration wise So a lot of them went to work, you know And they and we talked about it earlier in the really heartbreaking example of your friend where you told the story about

Seeing him him telling you to get out of here and then you know 10 minutes later he's gone and i said to you like what choice does someone like that have this is someone who just disappeared one day when you were 16 because he was tapped on the shoulder by the wrong guy because he lived in the wrong place at the wrong time in the world and it makes you think it's like you know you mentioned the ukraine russia war as well and And I see all kinds of problems there, obviously, with the governments. But who's dying down there? Is it the fucking guys in the suits or the tracksuits in fucking back offices or whatever? Is it Putin? No.

It's a bunch of boys. Twenty, 21-year-old kids dying by the hundreds of thousands because men in suits in back rooms decided that this is the best way for them to solve their little fucking sandbox disagreements together. And I don't see any difference in the war. And I put that in air quotes. It's direct quotes. It's not air quotes. That's going on in Mexico in this case where kids are just born into an environment and they're told at some age hey you're on team a and you're on team b and by the way if you got to team b and team b happens to be the government eventually that's going to turn around too and you're going to be playing for team yeah

yeah it's fucking crazy um it this this war has eaten many like myself and i didn't get like people you got you're so lucky uh if people only knew the amount of issues that I live with because of it. It's a pretty hard life. I mean, a lot of the work that I do moving around and training people and doing all this shit is basically a way of doing therapy, like fucking sustaining myself, just giving myself a purpose. I sent a training cadre to the Ukrainians. A training cadre to the Ukrainians. A group of people that I trained and have some training from me to do medical training for the Ukrainians. When was this? This was probably three years ago, around that time. And, you know, more so than anything, I just wanted to, like, listen.

Like, hey, like, what the fuck do they fucking think out there? I got a lot of stories about foreign fighters showing up there. Some Mexican foreign fighters showing up. Mexicans showing up in Ukraine? Yeah. Basically fighting for the Ukrainians because they believed in this defense of this. Wow. So there's a bunch of South Americans in there as well colombians from all

over the place holy shit and how quickly the dissolution of what they were doing there started kind of like manifesting the corruption on the front lines as far as equipment black markets uh around firearms and shit like that um just the mismanagement of that war Yes, the Russians were clearly the aggressors and like all that Happened and but also they Putin did warn the many times not to not to put them in NATO and whatever But the main thing I got from them is just as clear just War and conflict is sold to youth yes as this i don't know man saving pride ryan i don't know like a a war like that war is

gone like there's if anything uh the the the the concept of an enemy. You know? Like this Nazi guy, he's an enemy, the Nazis, you know? Yeah. That's an enemy. Hitler, the screaming, that's an enemy. But now, like, who's the enemy? The Great Rewards Hunt is on,

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Non-withdrawable casino spins valid for featured game only and expire in 168 hours. See terms at casino.draftkings.com slash promos. Ends April 27th, 2025 at 1159 p.m. Eastern Time. You know, there's moments that happen in this job. Today when we're talking is five years to the day since I started doing, and I've been really privileged to talk with a lot of amazing people from a lot of different types of life. I do all different topics on here. But there are moments in many of the podcasts I do that I don't know how much people can see it at home on the cameras, but I'm here in person, and you can – there's just a different feeling, and you're like, well, I'm going to remember that tape right there. And it kind of, it forms a pattern

over time. And I've had Andy Bustamante on this podcast six times before. Okay. So when he was first coming on, we were in my parents' house and I told him not to cut his hair, which was good advice if I may say so myself. But I remember the second podcast we did, we recorded it the end of June, 2022. It was episode 107. There is a moment, there's a couple moments in that podcast that really stand out. But as far as like seeing how the world moves

and how some of these people think, because, you know, Andy was CIA and probably still is, you know, he had this line in there, maybe like a couple hours into that podcast where he's explaining the mentality of society and how it turns in on itself when it can't operate around a common goal. And he literally like is going through this and he goes, we need an enemy. And I'm like, yeah, play that, play it back real fast. And this is a guy who I'm not allowed to say yet where he was undercover, but he goes on and he discusses a lot about China and from a place of like he understands that and what that is from much of that is not Andy, but a lot of people who, you know, have like him, who have been told like, hey, this is what it is, and then have anecdotal experiences that may be

able to back that up, start spreading a message that then gets to everyone that starts to train their mind that this is the thing we all need to coalesce around. by the way that's the bad guy so let's go to war yeah i think about that a lot yeah and you know um i remember watching sicario uh and seeing the terrorists make it across the border and blowing themselves up next to the uh border patrol agents um and this this whole cia being sent out to me Mexico and basically how that kind of cast out this signal. And that's usually what happens. I don't know how much the CIA is involved in Hollywood. But there is a clear effort, I guess, being done to make whatever enemy is Mexico. You see it as Mexico.

I mean, that's what we hear on the news a lot. That's what we hear from the White House right now. So I don't know. And I don't see the whole aspect, the whole thing I've been trying to kind of explain throughout this conversation is both sides are to blame. Both sides have villainous actors. Both sides have politics that are fucking very contrived and very evil in a lot of ways. And both sides are being told by their elected officials that the other side is the enemy. Yes. You know what's crazy to me on what you said a little bit ago?

And I didn't respond to it, but I should because you make an amazing point. I was talking about the corruption in the Mexican government. And then you said, well, what about the corruption here? And you know what my mind did right away when you said that? My mind here went to stocks and bonds and oh they're just paid off and you know they help out big pharma and shit and then my mind in mexico went to bodies and fucking blood and guts and gore one has an image that i can see in my head that looks violent the other one has money sloshing around that leads to those things not just there but also here yeah and so maybe to

look internally the corruption here actually isn't all that different from there. I think you make a good point. It's just, it just goes the long way about it. Yes, that's exactly right. You know, it's very different to go into a room and shoot up a party with a bunch of kids with AK-47s because they represent an antagonistical cartel of the political campaign that you're running, you know? And another thing is basically allowing a pharmaceutical company

to just sell billions of dollars worth of a very specific drug that just makes everybody junkies. And that creates this epidemic that somehow has influenced even fucking drug markets in Mexico, in cartels, to produce more of this substance, to feed a giant hunger in theels to produce more of this substance to feed a giant hunger in the u.s. to escape reality and also to see the amount of people that are truly innocent mm-hmm kids kids go into a party trying to experiment I mean

remember when you were a kid and you would find a fucking joint on the ground you'd be like yay now It's like what's in it right? Medication bogus magnification. I mean cartels have been utilizing pain Pill presses and stuff like that to make medication like objects that are Laced with fentanyl and you think you're taking a pain pill and it's you're not you know So some of these places you were saying are in the US where they do that. Yeah. Yeah and again the whole America's need to just fit just fucking get this through their head Yeah, the cartel issue doesn't end at the border and never has ended out of the border

Elmayo Sambala learned most of his tradecraft by a former castro police officer who then moved to florida somehow and then may or may not have been involved in the bay of pigs i don't know there's a bunch of stories around that um he learned most of his tradecraft through that guy yeah in los angeles and then went back and we're here now. This has never been a Mexico issue. This has been a regional issue, originated itself in the US. They utilized Mexico as a training ground for the Contras.

They also utilized Mexico as a training ground for some of the revolutionaries, the Cuban guys. I mean Che Guevara and Castro would, like, fucking drink coffee at this Café Tacuba place in Mexico City while they were planning the liberation of Cuba. So Mexico has been a fucking center of operations for a lot of shit in the past, you know? And the U.S. in a lot of ways has been directly responsible,

first through its combat... first through its combating communism and the spread of communism in Mexico while that was going on in the 60s, leading to a fucking massacre of students and a president that was on their payroll. that it's now seeming to prioritize by making cartels a terrorist organization and, like, focalizing all their efforts against that. And just pointing the finger and the problem is over there. And we're all... What about Chicago, which is a hotbed for cartel activity? What about most of the Midwest, where the drug route goes from Texas all the way up into the East Coast?

What about California, which is basically crazy? What about all the kingpins and distribution cells in the United States? We hear every now and then operations like, oh, there was an operation called Operation Anaconda, which caught up a bunch of new generation cartel members in the U.S. So I know that they are happening. But like where are these major figureheads of organized crime in the United States that distribute and that maintain control? Like where is this drug just materializing itself once it gets across the border? No, it's turning a blind eye i agree what was this operation anaconda though anaconda yeah it was a a federal operation in the u.s

probably five years ago okay uh that uh this isn't targeted no it targeted targeted specifically new generation cartel members i think it caught one of like el mencho uh the head of the new generation cartel daughter i think was caught up in that can we pull this up alessi um so it it's like i get it that their operations have happened in the u.s um but it's yeah we got it okay yeah just hit the Wikipedia one. Oh, no, no, no. Operation Anaconda Cartel. The New Generation Cartel. My eyesight is fucked.

Sorry. It keeps on bringing up this Afghanistan thing. Oh, no, no. But that's not it. Maybe I'm misremembering the name of the operation. So New Generation Cartel arrested U.S. members of Operation. Okay. That's 2025, so that's a no. This is 2024.

12 cartel members sentenced to drug trafficking in 2024. Okay, so they're sentenced. So 12 drug traffickers tied to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel members sentenced to drug trafficking in 2024. Okay, so they're sentenced. So 12 drug traffickers tied to the Jalisco New Generation cartel have been sentenced in between four and a half and 40 years in federal prison, announced U.S. Attorney for Northern District of Texas Leah Simington. Francisco Javier Rodriguez Areola, a top source of supply charged in the case, was sentenced Tuesday to 40 years in federal prison for conspiracy to possess with intent. Apologize. I'm misremembering the name of that operation. Again, a lot of head injuries. No, all good. But there's basically, they have done sweeps, but it's usually just like a barrage of them and then they just...

And these guys get replaced like the next day. Yeah, they're like weeds. But, you know, people living in Arizona can tell me if I'm full of shit. I mean, the cartels are definitely operating in Arizona. Oh, for sure. And it's very overt. You make this point, Ed, about the U.S. and Mexico being kind of trained to dislike each other

or see the enemy in each other? The current programming is of that. So who do you think's doing that and as a layer to that question maybe the better way to ask this is as best as you can tell with all the micro investigations on a global scale that you've done right yeah who runs i mean who I mean, who's the money behind Kala Sheh mom and her presidency? And, you know, yes, we can say cartels were involved in that.

Yeah, but there's bigger money and bigger influence behind that. You're talking like Black Rock? Yeah, I am talking about... You're talking like the core four here? Yeah. Okay. And who is not on behalf of the current administration here in the u.s the same people right so i think there's something to be said about that and the fact that they're both being antagonistical against each other

you know the people of the u.s love soros and they Soros, George Soros. Yeah, he's real. Like the current president of Mexico, Guadalajara, who is to the left of the political spectrum, who's all about all of these woke ideologies that are now kind of being shit-canned in the U.S. They're going the other way in Mexico. So if we want to talk about power structures higher up, I mean, the cartels are power structure, but they're not, you know, they're not the Illuminati. Right. Like who's above that? I don't know.

I just see BlackRock, Soros entity around the current administration in Mexico that is like fostering that. And I see an antagonistical administration in the U.S. by a dude that was probably almost murdered by some of these interests. I don't know. Maybe. Maybe. So you see, I don't know. I mean, that's what I've managed to see.

I'm not a journalist, by the way. I am a guy that worked operations, and I worked intelligence, and I just did a lot of research, and I studied a lot, and I've worked against some of these organizations at a macro level, in a regional level, in a way, in a very successful counter-narcotics operation that is probably the only successful ones that mexico's ever had in north and north and uh northwestern mexico and the areas that are operated in we took tijuana from the

number one city uh most dangerous city on the planet to not even being on that list and we were allowed to do the job that we had to do for a moment and then that went away that's where i get my experience from and when i start looking at people at this global scale now, which is, for me, it's surreal to be here on this platform with you guys talking about some of this shit like this. Whenever I talk about villainy, the media, the traditional media is one of the biggest fucking villains out there. And I say that as somebody from Mexico

that never saw the atrocities that I went through being covered by U.S. media. It would all just like... When I look at some of these things, it comes from a few places as far as how I try to figure things out. Number one, the money. ¿Dónde va el dinero?

La mano que roba se esconde. mano que gasta la de lata so the hand the hand that steals hides itself but the the hand that spends gives the other one away right it's something I learned from a fucking very brilliant looking man lieutenant colonel is all the heavies out there I can shout out to that guy. A lot of the money in Mexico right now is betting on Mexico becoming the biggest industrial plant on the planet. They're seeing China going, probably going to take a walk in the park pretty soon. Ten years on the line, who knows? That's what I hear.

So you're from this eye-hand perspective? it's not even that I'm from that perspective I mean you see all these people showing up at the border they might be all part of a giant military operation to invade the United States covertly or they might be people that are like fuck China sucks let me figure out so both or both yeah but I think I've managed to see a bit of both okay there's no fucking migration to China that I can see. There's a bunch of empty fucking cities out there. There is a bunch of companies. And again, this is not – I've followed Peter Sahan.

I've never talked to him before. And I've heard some of his opinions. Some of them are interesting. Some of them, I don't know. He speaks on a lot of things. He speaks on a lot of things. But I'm probably on the same boat as him as far as it china's going under in in a few years probably i don't know how long 10 years maybe i don't know um but if people are doubting that like oh yeah you're full of shit china's about to

fucking take over the world then why aren't all their fucking industrial plants moving to mexico i mean my counter to that would be they're moving a lot of not just industrial plants they're moving a lot of things around the world to buy influence they're moving to Mexico because they're running out of hands I think that's what's happening and also the the cost of moving things from Mexico into the United States which is their fucking biggest market would be fucking right there so there's So there's a few things. Mexico's about to become this giant industrial plant, probably going to replace China in

the next 10 years, and the U.S. probably knows about that, and also your enemies probably know that. There are talks and plans of a new Panama Canal going across Mexico. Yeah, what's going on with this? I've heard whispers, but I haven't looked into it. They're trying to figure out a way to basically make a Mexican Panama Canal. Okay. And that would be huge if that happens.

And that would benefit the Mexican people greatly, maybe, depending on who's in charge. Or it would benefit foreign powers and people that didn't give a fuck about Mexico and its people. So I don't know. There are many things that are setting the stage for Mexico to be basically this giant economic powerhouse that could have control over its own destiny or can have others controlling its destiny.

And I think in a big way, the United States wants to control that destiny because it's thinking about America first. And I get it. I understand that aspect of it. And on the other end, there's a bunch of foreign entities trying to influence Mexico and its government,

foster dissent and conflict, pump substances into Mexico, influence political candidates on one side or the other, and basically foster this lawlessness and in parts of its institutions that are now fostering this again this phenomenon of narco narco politics think you only need sunscreen in the summer UV rays are sneaky not to mention things like pollution and blue light exposure that quietly wreak havoc on your skin, speeding up cellular aging. That's why you need a broad spectrum sunscreen every day. My favorites, OneSkin's SPFs for the face and body. OneSkin is the only skin longevity company proven to reverse cellular aging. Their SPFs block UV rays

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to help your skin look feel and behave like its younger self and you can get access to it along with 15 off one skin's products by using code julian at oneskin.co today that's 15 off at oneskin.co using code julian please support my show and tell them julian sent you invest in the health and longevity of your skin with one skin your future self will thank you and those countries deal directly with the cartels, in many cases themselves, to be able to do this business and get permission. So the cartels are basically just for sale.

Yeah. Mexico is part of a giant proxy war that's probably going on. And some of the people on the other side of that proxy war are probably the People's Republic of China. And that's an aspect or an element of it that doesn't get talked about a lot, I think. And the final part I think that people should really pay attention to as far as this whole issue is the, you know, if immigration is such a big issue in the United States? Where are, where's all the immigration reform? Well, I, I've been saying that forever because like, even before Trump came to power or came up in 2015, the big issue here was you didn't have any good situations or, or any good scenarios in the sense that there were people who were either totally anti-immigration and like not looking at where it could be beneficial and where a country was kind of built on that. Or there were people who were either totally anti-immigration and like not looking at where

it could be beneficial and where a country was kind of built on that. Or there were people who were like, well, since our system's fucked, we got to let everyone else in. The system's set up for people of means. It's set up for people who need to hire a lot of different lawyers, go through a lot. I mean, you've lived it yourself. I'm preaching to the choir here. I had to prove my marriage was real and i had how do you do that how do you prove it so this is weird oh they take you to the back room and they say get it on they separate no that'd be they separate you they separate you they ask you questions i had a i had my daughter with me right oh man i had my daughter with me and a

and an album of pictures of me and my and my ex-wife all the way back to like when we were 15 or 16 because we've known each other for years yeah our families were like friends and that wasn't enough i had to go through three or four, if you count the last one, four interviews. Obviously, probably my background was like a thing I was trying to figure out. But I had to go through four interviews. Meanwhile, a person of West African descent next to me who was going through the same process, got his greeting card the first, this first meeting because of a quota that they had. A quota?

Yeah. And he couldn't speak English. He couldn't speak English. And you speak American English. And I'm like, hey, I, like, and also like I'm, and also I have a kid and then, and I kind of worked like, can, no, you need to come back again. We need more. That was wild for me.

The other thing that was wild for me is coming out of the immigration process and getting handed a bunch of information pamphlets and ways of getting government money. Ways of getting government money? of getting government money yeah so like hey welcome to the united states this is how you can get on all this type of welfare and you should live here because if you live here this is going to get you access to this this and this and this oh my god mind you i'm a mexican in mind I'm like I had a fucking workout I gotta go to work right and all of a sudden I have this like this portfolio like hi I qualify for this I qualify for that I should get medical exams and I can qualify for this money so that's the that's the reception that the United States that's the reception that some parts of the United States have to people coming into this country legally.

A shitty, horrible immigration process that is very unfair, with a giant fucking line across the street that people cross or jump over. Every now and then I get like, hey, Ed, you're fucking very anti-immigrant. Like, I'm not. I'm not not at

all as a legal immigrant it makes me feel a certain way when i see a bunch of venezuelan dudes riding around mopeds in new york with a debit card full of fucking cash living in a fucking hotel yep comp i didn't get any of that i had to beg people to be able to like fuck hey i just came here like i'm trying to figure it out can i look at fucking stay at your place for a bit and get i need to get a job or i had to fucking beg people yeah figure shit out i had at that time she was two and a half almost three an american daughter yeah yeah yeah um her mom's american um her her mom's parents are americans um and i'm and she's working but it's california so we i have to she from san diego yeah okay so that's how i knew each other yeah so i had to

i had to figure out yeah and i can understand why a large segment of people who are of my descent get pissed off when they see the immigration process now. Yep. And they see all these people get free money, free stuff, free plane tickets. Crazy. Flowing around. What was that app? Like the one? The CB1 app.

Oh, my God. Again, I understand. Yes, some of these people were at risk, but we can't generalize it, though. Some of these people were at risk, but some of these people were fucking gang members. I remember going on a flight. I think it was Dallas. And there were four of them, Venezuelan dudes, with a portfolio thing they were carrying for their paperwork. Because they don't have IDs,

so they had to fly with this paperwork they give them. All of them were wearing hoodies, covering up their heads and their arms. It's fucking hot. It's Dallas in the summer. Covering some pets. I'm not vilifying all immigration into the U.S. I understand completely. But you have to realize that as an immigrant myself, seeing some of the shady shit that happens around it, you're like, motherfuckers.

Ukrainian refugees come and camp out on the border in Tijuana. Oh, they go to Tijuana? Yeah, they spend probably, I don't know, let's say a month. And now they're all across. So now all of them are in the US immediately. I'm not saying it's because they're white, although it might have something to do with it. I'm not saying it's that.

But then you get the Hondurans and the Venezuelans and stuff like that. They're like, fuck them. They make a giant camp in the morning. So I don't know, man. There's a lot of weird shit. Again, I'm not saying, I don't know. Maybe it's because the war was going on, so they qualify for refugee status.

But, you know, we have to realize now, more than ever, that this immigration system is fucked. Yes. It's so fucked. And people need to realize this. And again, something I said five years ago, four years ago on another platform. Every single Mexican that makes it across that border illegally now has a legal claim for asylum. Because they're fleeing a country that is being torn apart by a terrorist organization.

Yeah. I don't think they thought about that one. Hopefully, there's somebody in charge that is thinking about a lot of these issues, but people asking for a path to citizenship right now, everybody that made it across that border after the kickoff of the drug war, like I started being active in 2004. I think the drug war probably kicked off in 2006, 2007.

Again, hazy. Got hit in the head a shit ton of times. Timeliness is an issue. Legit. You're doing pretty well today um so all these people that made it across that border illegally have a legal have a have a claim yeah like hey why did you leave like why did you leave fucking nogales terrorista terrorista taliban is you know there's like a there was like a cartel group that actually called themselves the Taliban so

now they have a claim and I don't know if there's going to be some sort of, I don't know immigration reform should be at the top of the list yeah, build a wall do everything you want but immigration reform is not even being fucking talked about

it hasn't been forever. It's a huge problem. So, again, I don't think the claim that this is being done for some sort of national security aspect or that it's being done to work against a terrorist organization, there's something off about that whole process. Immigration is definitely an issue. Illegal immigration is definitely one of the biggest drugs that's being utilized by the American population as far as their work that they do for us. Oh, right. We're addicted to it. Yeah.

And you have – look, you also have people – so if the system is broken and it's like impossible for someone of no means to even try to get through it with a lawyer or something like that, I understand why they want to try to come here. Yeah. We've also just had an open door that allows them to come here by the way often with the help of coyotes and the cartels themselves who have made an enormous business out of this that you already laid out earlier the legal coyotes because there was also government legal coyotes in the states that's right that's right move them to different parts of the country for what reason i'm not going to say electoral reasons it's weird it's weird i'm not going to say for electoral. It's weird. It's weird. I'm not going to say for electoral reasons, but it was probably for electoral reasons. It was something weird for sure.

But I'm saying like even forgetting that for a second because we've covered that in here. You're 100 percent right. The fact that the cartels made business out of this and continue to make business out of this, out of people and that's not being viewed as as a humanitarian crisis by people in this country who are so concerned about like having love for everyone what about that what about the kids you talk about who are coming across the border with coyotes who then are sold into sexual slavery yeah or killed yeah and again i get it the, build a wall, build it high. I remember speaking to the smuggler during the whole caravan thing. And I said, like, hey, dude, this is the first Trump administration. It's like, hey, the Marines are across the border now.

Like, is that making things difficult for you? Ha! Navidad. Like, what? It's Christmas. hey, the Marines are across the border now. Like, is that making things difficult for you? Ha! Navidad. Like, what? It's Christmas. What do you mean? Yeah. All of the army is here, and they're very visible,

and they don't separate. They don't leave each other, because that's not what you do. So like, oh, all right. Let's go over here. Right? Also, he said, yeah, a lot of those marines son paisanos like they're countrymen

so like they hit em up again corruption is on both sides yes I grew up on G.I. Joe too you know but that's not the reality that we live in no

immigration needs to be dealt with But that's not the reality that we live in. Immigration needs to be dealt with. Our dependency on illegal immigration that is kept illegal for a reason needs to be dealt with, or else none of these solutions being put forth by the current administration are really serious about anything. That's what makes me kind of doubt what's going on. And I think the play, realistically, the U.S. is not trying to end terrorism in Mexico. Yeah. There's something else there. It's trying to get a handle or a control

over the future of Mexico because it realizes the importance that it has and holds for the future of the United States. Do you remember like your first time as it – because we haven't really talked about like you growing up today yet. Can I – can I – Oh, yeah, yeah. Quick break. Quick break. Hold on. Perfect.

All right. We're back. you though like what the if you can remember as a kid your first time like i don't know what age you were but where you realize like oh there's this thing called the cartel and maybe they run some stuff around here um i can actually really i really have a clear memory of this um my my family was was lower middle class for a while, and then it was upper just for like a few, let's say like six years, I think. My dad's business did pretty well. Got it. So some of my brothers, I have two brothers, bigger. I'm the smallest one. They went out at night and partied.

This is early 90s. So this is the Ariana Felix era. So cartels were around, but cartel members were around, but I didn't know who they were. The first armored vehicle I ever saw was outside of a private school in Tijuana called El Mentor Mexicano. It's a prep school.

Elmayo Zambada's son was in that school. And he had an armored vehicle. That's the first armored vehicle I ever saw when I was a kid. But I thought he was just an important man with an important son, and he's money, so that's why they're guarding him um there was a very weird famous shootout in Tijuana like some of the earliest ones next to a an open-air Market called El Mercado de todos in Tijuana it's just uh you know it's an open-air Market basically like a tianguis, like a swap meet.

Cartel guys show up and get in a firefight with other cartel guys. Turns out some of them are federal cops, some of them are state cops, and both of them are basically bodyguards for rival cartel members. So they get into the shootout. So that makes people like, wait, what's fucking going on? That's never happened in public like this before. That was the first time it kind of manifested itself. And I started hearing the La Maña. La Maña?

La Maña. The mania or the tick is like a nickname for criminal organizations in Mexico. So I would hear, like, who was in that shootout? Era La Maña. It was the tick, you know, La Maña. La Mano Peluda, the hairy hand, was another nickname for cartel. So cartel as a word wasn't, like, the one used. It was always, like, a weird nickname.

La Maña, La Mano Peluda. You know, these funny, weird names. But you would start hearing about these people carrying around guns and like, oh, they're policia. No policia. And a very interesting phenomenon happened in Tijuana specifically, the Narco Junior phenomenon. So basically rich kids or people in the middle class getting into cartel work uh some of these ariana felix cartel affiliated members uh wanted to have inroads into industry or inroads into nightlife so how do you get the kids so you start they start getting some of the kids involved in

recruiting them into you know hey i need access to middle class or upper middle class Tijuana people that cross the border a lot so I can use them as drug mules. So that's how it started manifesting in my life when I was a kid, seeing some of my neighbors being caught with fucking a kilo or more trying to cross the border with, you're like a rich kid, like, what are you doing smuggling drugs and then and you realize that they're not it's not it wasn't about the money it was about the lifestyle that's right um power influence lifestyle i know these guys don't with me or a suburban is going to show up and that would happen like when i was in high school um there was again i was a skater kid so i i didn't i didn't

go into the materialistic shit myself but some of the people that i went to high school with did um they would go to some of the famous nightclubs uh that there was one called in monte picacho it was fucking cartel fucking full i don't i don't know if it's still open but if it is like don't know if it's still open, but if it is, don't go there. Cat Schultz is going right now. There was a friend of mine went to that bar and danced with this chick there. Turns out this chick was the ex-girlfriend of a guy that went to the same school. I thought you were going to say she was a dude. No, that's not one of those stories. Not yet.

If you want, we can go into some of those stories. But not now. But this guy shows up outside of the school. This is a fucking, this is a private school in a very nice part of Tijuana. In the middle of the day, gets out of the car with a Draco. A Draco is a very short AK-47.

It's not that big. And gets out of the car with a Draco. And I'd never seen one in real life. And I thought it was a toy. No. And then he just racks that thing and lets three rounds up into the sky. Everybody's on the ground. This kid walks out, and he, like, fucking beats the shit out of him.

Two other guys come out and kick the shit out of this guy. Take his wallet and his car keys, and then they leave. Ambulance comes, picks him up, and i'm watching all this i'm a kid i'm probably 16 15. and i'm like i'm waiting for the cops to show up i mean there's a guy just showed up with a ak in front of the school shot three rounds into the air on this high valley neighborhood beat the out of this kid left him like an ambulance had to come with him the cops are gonna show up cops never show up and that kept happening over and over again during my life now you know whether that now i knew it's because well maybe some of the guys that were in that car that came out and beat the out of that kid were actually cops yeah um maybe they have uh

communication so they can tell like hey don't show up to this it's us so it started manifesting and showing itself in different ways while i was growing up and again the whole influence it had and again the enamorment that all like kids would see this lifestyle like i can carry on guns you can go into nightclubs like that nightclub, Tangaloo. I want to go to Tangaloo and fucking get over the line. And you start seeing all these. It's sexy. It's romantic. Here, get a corrido written about you and seeing basically the whole Robin Hood type scenario,

celebrating these guys that fucking made it. So you have like a, it's kind of like as a kid, you know, just trying to figure out the world. You kind of have these mixed emotions about them at first. Yeah. mean they're romantic they're cool in a way uh it's cool that i have friends that have influence with them and if we were picked up by the cops constantly and do you wanna skateboarding oh you were yeah why skateboarding is a crime and do you want what well there was no skate parks and we were kids and we smoked weed in public and we destroyed fucking property and shit like that. That's what they

arrest you for down there? Yeah, they would pick us up. Seems like there's some bigger priorities, but it's just me. We would skate at a... There's a military barracks where they have a giant Mexican flag in Tijuana. Outside there's a military barracks where they have a giant Mexican flag in Tijuana.

And outside there's a park. And we would basically bring our own skate gear and fucking skateboard out there. Like we welded this pole and these legs on it so we could fucking board slide and shit like that. And every now and then you would hear music coming out of the military barracks. Like weird music, like fucking Sweet Child of Mine and shit like that we just fucking play uh and he was saying sweet child and you said the volumes would crack up and we'd be outside fucking skateboarding right and it was this mystery for years and every now and then the cops would show up and fucking just pick us up and fucking Take our money steal our boards

Or if we fucking had cardio fucking outrun those fuckers, right? Everybody would spread Years later I find myself in that same military barracks only this time with a hood over my head a hood over your head? When I was working for a past administration, there was this big corruption thing uncovered in the institution that I was a part of. And there was a baptism, a narco-bautismo, they call it in the news. It was a baptism when a bunch of cops were swept up in this raid that the Army Special Forces had there. So while they were trying to figure out who was in on it, some of the people that were in charge of the governor's security were actually in on it. And some of those people were working with me and my team. So everybody was brought in,

basically, for questioning. They put a hood over your head. They called me to the office, and then all of a sudden, I found myself in a truck full of people wearing black helmets, which is a sign for special operations. Ooh. And I never saw it. I never told this story before. And I recently talked about this publicly.

I've never talked about my time that situation publicly realistically like I still have the the scars on my wrist from the handcuffs yeah because they were fucking torturing me as I had them on so I was trying to get free of them

so skin peeled they were torturing you yeah well they were interrogating me this is what they said right um and then i realized why the sweet child of mine would be playing in that fucking military oh my god they're drowning it out i had this moment of fucking time travel i had this moment of fucking time travel. I had this moment of time travel when I was both 14, 15, fucking with my skateboard and trying to hear this music, and all of a sudden I'm there. um the

I got a promotion afterwards so there's like a happy ending to it we like how you responded to how we honestly honestly they did some of that um but that's so sick.

That's so sick. I mean, that's not normal. No, but it is there, though. I wasn't the only one. There was a bunch of people were picked up, and God knows what happened to some of them. I was picked up. That happened for a while. And then I was let go.

Somebody from my office went and picked me up. I went home. My ex-wife wasn't there at the time. We were already together. And fucking did my best to kind of wash myself off, I guess. How do you, like, you've got to be a mess. Meteolate, which is like a Mexican antimicrobial solution. You fucking use it on cows.

But that's what I put on my wrist and I wrapped them. I had a bunch of internal cuts and wounds in my mouth from just being slapped and being punched in the face so much and a few other things. So I just fucking took a long-ass shower and drank less than half of a bottle of tequila to kind of chill out. I was a functional alcoholic back then, so easy.

And then I got a call from the director of my the job that I was in at that time and I got and I got a and I got a promotion because they said that I just passed the most rigorous confidence filter in Mexico meaning that they had determined you were not one of the people that turned. You were tortured. And they're like, well, I stood up. And after that, I became the head of security for the governor of Baja. Okay.

But that's, again, that's the realities of shit down there. Oh, yeah. Extreme. That dichotomy is insane. You're going from the skate part to hearing this music, wondering what the fuck dichotomy is insane you're going from the skate part to hearing this music wondering what the fuck that is and then you're in it yeah i'm in there with a hood on um and when i say a hood people might envision like this black cloth hood that the american cia would use no this was a fucking plastic bag this is a very gray thick

plastic bag over my head that was utilized multiple times to try and asphyxiate me as far as their interrogation. So when I – but you have to realize that these people then turn around and say like, hey, we're cool. All that shit stays with you yeah what does that do to you psychologically because now you're running security for the governor and you're not into people in the hallway who were doing these horrible things to you yeah again uh it's programming. It's training. People that have been through military training and have been through these fucking rigorous programmings and brainwashing

will tell you it's like in some way, shape, or form, they convinced me that was justified and I had to just fucking go through it. They rewarded me by giving me more responsibility. And I relished it. I would like to tell you that i was like bitter about it or angry the bitterness and anger only came years later when i realized it was at the

root of a lot of my puck and problems from my alcoholism to my insomnia to my weird issues with authorities and authority figures around me uh with my there's a bunch of shit that produce it produce itself around that and you know this this uh the normalization as you say this is normal like when i would i never spoke about any of this for years until recently. I was on this podcast in Mexico with Agafe. And the reason I talked about it publicly with him is because he was a part of the institution that probably did that to me. And when I was describing the torture, he was like, he's nodding. I'm like, he's nodding because he knows, right? He knows. And the...

Again, this... People are wondering, like, hey, why doesn't anybody do anything? Why doesn't anybody raise their hand? Why isn't there a youth movement trying to fight against cartels? There is. There's a lot of people like myself that are very idealistic,

that want to do something and make a difference, that get programmed in some of these institutions to do the job that needs to be done. And all of a sudden, once we're done with us, or if we get fired from some sort of stupidity we did, if you're a cop in Mexico, at least it was like this when I was active. If you're a cop in Mexico, y te das de alta en una institución, or you become active in an institution, you immediately become disqualified to belong to another police institution all over Mexico. What's the logic with that rule? They don't want people moving around. So I could be a law enforcement professional in Baja when I was active. Maybe this has changed now. But I was a law enforcement professional in Baja when I was active. Maybe this has changed now. But I was a law enforcement professional in Baja.

If I quit the job there or I was fired, if I quit the job there and I try and hire myself off into another institution, the first question is going to be, have you ever belonged to a police institution anywhere in Mexico? And if the answer is yes, you immediately become disqualified. So what options do people like me have? You don't. institution anywhere in mexico and if the answer is yes you immediately become disqualified so what options do people like me have you you don't so and this is just like systemic internal systemic that is just like there's a reason why and i i repeat this a lot but it's true when i started my police work in Mexico, we were patrolling the city with a bunch of federal guys in the back of the truck with big rifles, dressed in gray. The federal police back then were army guys

that would just get a different uniform. They would gray uniform instead of the brown one or the tan one. And right now, the solution that the government, that Klauele Sheinbaum has as far as patrolling and securing the border after the tariff threats was to send 20,000 troops that were already there on the border dressed in gray to patrol the

cities in the back of trucks that's not gonna do shit for anything 20,000 seems low too and what I mean that the whole it's a snake eating its tail over and over again. Every time there's a new administration coming in, they forget about everything. They shit can everybody. They send everybody away with any sort of experience and talent leaves.

I mean, I know some things I've worked with people who are way more talented and fucking skilled and know more about the world than I do. And a lot of these people were shitcanned. Fired. Fired. Or let go because they just didn't have any use for them anymore. Or they wouldn't play the game. Or they wouldn't play the game.

And where do you think they're going to go when you end up with? They end up in the cartels. Do you ever talk with any of those guys now? Every now and then. Do you have sources? Every now and then. Or now in the cartels? Every now and then I have some offline conversations with some of them.

But again, I don't look for them. I don't try and travel to them. Every now and then I'll just get this random message out of the ether. Like, hey, remember me? He's like, yeah, what's going on? Holy shit. to them every now and then i'll just get this random message out of the ether uh like hey remember me he's like yeah what's going on and holy shit um and i and i and i'm aware of of that and i'm like i've always i always go hands off but i have my ear to the ground and i hear you know i hear i could say this. With one of them, I heard regret that they went to work for the government.

They should have started there. Oh, in the cartels? Yeah. And what was his logic? They take care of their families more. They have better pay. They have actual support behind them. What about the shit they do, though? Did you ask him about that him about that yeah what do you say it's worth it for their families which is something i guess

i can understand um the acts of villainy being justified by the ability to have kids and being able to see them into the future so that other people can't though again um mexico was all about yeah let's see the whole aspect of it later um what did your parents like did you ever talk with them like growing up once you kind of found out about the cartels you see these robin hood type figures what did they have to say about it? And my mom my mom was a character. It's actually her birthday today She passed away a few years back, but I'm sorry, but it's pretty cool that it's her birthday and I'm here My mom was a character. She was a ninja. She grew up in a very very dangerous part of Tijuana shantytown It's gone now and it was swept away by a storm but a storm yeah it

used to be called carton landia or the cardboard land basically there was a storm and it was right on the river Tijuana River estuary that's where she lived horrible family situation dad abandoned them when they were when she was about 12 I think mm-hmm she always carried a knife since she was a kid that's why I learned that from she was a very religious Catholic she hated yeah that's that's where she grew up whoa that was her neighborhood that was her neighborhood carton on ya there was a giant storm in DJ not swept all that shit away I now That's where she grew up. Whoa, that was her neighborhood. That was her neighborhood, Cartonlandia. There was a giant storm in D.J. and that swept all that shit away.

I now see what you mean. That's where she grew up. I show a lot of tradecraft stuff to people in government. I show them how to do a lot of sneaky shit. I have to say that my mom was probably the biggest ninja I ever met. She was a nurse. If you're a nurse in Mexico, you're basically like a surgeon general. If somebody needs an injection, they'll knock on the door.

If somebody gets shot and they want to go to the hospital, they'll knock on your door. My mom was a community doctor in a lot of ways. So that's where I learned most of the ways I am, I guess, from. My dad, on the other hand, a dandy. He's like a fun guy, party, carefree dude. None of them involved in any sort of criminal activities, like none of that shit.

Both of them are God-fearing, fucking fairness, the law, and just fucking do things. Both of them clean in that way. When they start seeing a lot of this shit just creeping into our lives I get warnings about it basically They didn't want that for you obviously no so you could imagine their surprise when their kid with spiky hair and It's spiky hair. I had a spike yeah I'll show you a

picture if you want yeah you took it I was gonna ask you like were you emo didn't I guess you went the whole way no I exploited like I used to listen to the exploit a lot UK subs the Branson then I was into a weird sky shit for a while but I was like a spiky hair you know operation IB that was my thing I was into weird ska shit for a while. But I was like, spiky hair, you know? Operation Ivy. That was my thing. I was spiky hair, you know? And all of a sudden, I shave all that off,

and I hand them over my orders. And they're like, what the fuck are you doing? So I'm going to go be a part of this. And both of them obviously viewed it as a death sentence. Because you're going on the right side of things, and the other ones are so powerful. Yeah. So both of them viewed it as a death sentence.

And this is from parents that had lost a child already. Yeah. What happened with your brother? He passed away in a very traumatic way. I don't want to talk about it. OK. How old were want to talk about it. Okay How old were you 13, okay My mom went psychiatric and my dad went alcoholic when that happened

so in a lot of ways I kind of raised myself after that and While they were kind of getting their shit together And they became president again in my life is when I dropped the whole i'm gonna i'm gonna go off to do this shit um they were horrified my mom specifically was horrified by it uh she's like um and more so that about the fact that they were going to use me like that she was she was onto, but I refused to see it. Um, both of them gave me some pieces of advice when I graduated. Don't get into anybody's pocket.

Don't let anybody own you. And nobody's against you. They're for themselves. Learn this and treat everybody like a friend, basically, is what my mom told me when I graduated and I got this gold-colored shield badge and a radio, a handgun that I've never shot before and two magazines fucking cheap ass second-chance best and I went you know they they give you this programming inside where you're like capable of everything in the training

you get and all this you know you're this machine of everything and the training you get and all this you know you're this machine now and all of a sudden you get you go outside and you realize how outnumbered you are yeah um it's insane to realize once you're outside and i mentioned the badge because that badge rarely came out because it was a bullet magnet mmm you put that badge on fucking walk around absolutely it dawned on me a few years into my career that we were the enemy that we were the villains in the story like I didn't figure that out for a while I was frustrated like well of you i mean a lot of us were i guess um the corrupt ones no um we were cops in a place where we where we were going after the people that sustained families that paid for school we were we were putting people away that were head of households and leaving their kids to now figure out shit for themselves.

But hold on. You thought that even though the people you're putting away. It's independent of that. That's the sentiment we got back from the people that we're supposed to defend. So you're saying you realize you're the bad guys because the people looked at you as the bad guys not necessarily because you are the bad guys yeah okay so there's there's no there's no positive feedback there there's no hey you did a good job with this here's your commendation here's your reward no there's like being spat on or hiding the fact that you work

in that field because that's fucking suicide socially for anybody. Hey, you want to date somebody? Yeah, if you want to became if you want to become celibate in Mexico, just tell all the chicks you meet you're a cop Like back then I Don't say gay porn actor will be way fucking better. I Mean they would get fucking away from you as soon as you like they you mentioned you're what fuck that wow um and society and like generally even in u.s i say what did you do for a living i was a cop in mexico immediately they're like corrupt they imagine me you know with the money bags you know i don't know there so

imagine if that is all the way over here imagine close by so the villainy aspect of what I was doing just became apparent it's thankless as shit treated like shit you couldn't get a bank loan of any kind or a credit card because the banks are in the cartel pockets because Because there's no way they're going to give credit to a cop. Who's going to pay for it? Oh, because you're going to get shot. It's another thing that people don't realize. I don't know if it's changed now, but back then

the first credit card I ever had was in the U.S. Whoa. I remember going to fucking Wells Fargo and they were like, yeah, you can get a credit card. I was like, what? What? That's another aspect of my life that people don't realize.

It's like I lived in this bubble where everything was being fucking supplied to me. I was living in military barracks sometimes, hotel rooms. I would get a fucking debit card and the government paid me through that and cash. Like I didn't know anything else. I was just fucking in this bubble and all of a sudden I'm outside of it. So I started learning things, you know, like credit cards are a thing. I could never get one. I'm almost surprised though because of where you were.

We haven't talked about this on the podcast yet, but you were talking about this off air before we started today. Where you were in Tijuana, you were in a border town and you were saying you can go back and we started today where you were in tijuana you're in a border town and you were saying you can go back and forth to the u.s all the time your yeah future wife came from the u.s cash so like cash yeah but you're using cash but you didn't like pick up on things they're like oh wow they have this yeah yeah i mean i knew about them but i just never had any like i was i was a fucking 30 35 year old teenager in a lot of ways just fucking coming out of that fucking job where i'm like oh hold on there's credit cards yeah like this there's there's this this is a thing or like simple thing man and and my marriage ended because i was

fucking feral you know not not not not in, I was this fucking giant kid coming out of that job. It's like I didn't know how to fucking be normal, I guess. So my sleep patterns were all fucking disrupted. I thought it was normal to drink yourself to sleep every three days. Well, you had massive trauma, too. But I didn't know. I didn't know PTSD was a thing. Although people up here now seem to think it's not a real thing.

I don't know if it's real. Who says it's not a real thing? A few high-level people are saying that PTSD is not a real thing. It's just an overlapping concept that is covering up substance abuse and other things. Oh, that's actual shit. Well, I don't know. In my view, like, again, when something would happen at work, something traumatic, something horrible, you don't say shit. Yeah, you compartmentalize it.

Because if you say anything, you're going to get sent to the psychologist. And what do you think disqualifies you from the ability to carry a firearm in Mexico legally? Talking to the psychologist. So nobody fucking talks to the psychologist ever. Because it's going to disqualify you from being able to carry a firearm in mexico legally talking to the psychologist so nobody talks to the psychologist ever because it's going to disqualify you from being able to carry a gun if you can't carry a gun in that job who the are you so anytime something horrible would happen you're just like hey oh you can get the next chambers just drink some beers and you're fine two days later just show back up. And all that shit gets kicked on.

And if people want to understand what alcoholism is, or at least what it was to me, and what I miss about it, I miss dreamless sleep. Dreamless sleep. Yeah. Dead silent sleep. Dreamless sleep. Yeah. Dead silent sleep. Like I don't miss yingling. My favorite beer in Kentucky. Yingling, if you're hearing this. Company. Great beer. Just that I don't

drink it anymore. But I remember like seeing people drinking Bud Light and shit like that or it's like, why are you drinking this light stuff? It's taking too long. It's fucking, just fucking dark beer, tequila, mezcal. I just like the sleepless, dreamless, the dreamless sleep, dead sleep is what I miss about it.

And in a lot of ways it was a pause button. It's like, I don't wanna deal with all this horrible shit. Turn yourself off. And it manifests itself in your life in a lot of weird ways. but yeah it's like i don't want to deal with all this horrible turn yourself off um and it manifests itself in your life in a lot of weird ways um i i had a moment in my life where i went through something horrible like shooting everywhere um when i got back home, I was about to take a shower. I turned the shower on,

and I went to the fridge to grab some beer, and there was no beer, so like, fuck. I went to my alcohol cabinet, and if you're an alcoholic, you have shit hidden. Yeah. So I went to my alcohol cabinet. And if you're an alcoholic, you have shit hidden. Yeah. So I went to all my spots and all I could find was some peach-flavored schnapps. It's not schnapps of... What's it called?

I don't know. Some fucking alcohol. Horrible fucking alcohol. Sweet. And as I'm... This thing down, because my body's just like now, now, now, now. I'm taking,

like I'm thinking through my hair and I pull out a piece of a molar. Like a human molar. Like a tooth molar? Like a tooth. Like a piece of one. And if you've ever smelled an open cap, like when somebody's getting dentistry done

and they open up a tooth enamel cap and smell, it just hit me. And something happened, like something just, my body just came, like something happened to my software, I guess. I woke up like five hours later, I guess. The shower was still going. Oh, so you just shut down.

You like fainted. Yeah. I don't know what happened. Just blacked out. out and to this day like I have this fucking teeth dentistry all that shit just freaks me the fuck out there's something about it do you know what that was from somebody got shot somewhere around me and I got I got that left as a, like I, you become desensitized to smells. Yeah. And to like being dirty, to self-care, like all that shit just, there's no time for it.

So you're, you know. Mm-hmm. And after a while, it's basically a dopamine addiction. Or, I mean, if you're in that life, dopamine gets fed constantly. And when that stops, you look for it in other ways. How does dopamine get fed constantly? I mean, you're involved in shit. The thrills of shit.

Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to say I didn't have fun with it. It was fucking great. Imagine you're fucking 26 years old and somebody says, hey, you know how to operate a grenade launcher? It's like, you're like, fuck, did I say no? Do I say yes? It's like, I watch a few movies.

I think you're supposed to whine it. I'll figure it out. You're supposed to whine it and put the grenades in? So this is your reality. And you're fucking running around doing wild shit with wild people uh but then that ends that ends and then what do you do then you can't fill that void there's no way like i've talked to a lot of my friends who you know were tier one operators talk

about that yeah they talk about how you know war is hell but when you're in the middle of the shit in a mission doing the things you've been trained to do at the highest level where it's life and death at any given moment the adrenaline rush and the feeling and the high you get from that like it can't be replaced but they'll when you come back a lot of them talked about you find some weird ways to try to fill it yeah you know doing stupid shit self-destructive way yes it's like hey it's a good idea to date when you come back a lot of them talked about you find some weird ways to try to fill it yeah you know doing stupid self-destructive way yes it's like hey it's a good idea to date that girl over there who is really horrible probably right all the red flags are there and you're like dude

if you're my friend don't tell me not to date somebody because of all the red flags because my brain is like right dopamine because my brain is like dopamine. Because my brain is like dopamine. That's where you... Or alcohol. Like I remember just being an alcoholic up here in the States and having my friends drink with me and all of a sudden everybody's gone and I'm like at the end of this fucking drinking everybody on the table.

And it's a thing to boast about at that time with me and I was like, fucking, I'm a horrible person. But you would start dealing with alcohol sounds like early on while you were on the job dude i i was functionally drunk i was a functionally drunk alcoholic since i was 21. what do you mean was there like a certain event that caused that where you used it it was just monkey see monkey do everybody we would come back from something that was like oh that was close or hey you would see uh you would see an empty seat in the backs in the back of the car

or you would see a face you recognize on the news of somebody being found somewhere uh you lost a lot of friends on the job right yeah and it was weird some of them some of them are weird and hang with me because it's not like we had bodies sometimes they just go um every now and then like i was every time i stay at a hotel I have the same kind of weird feeling we used to live at hotels so I think that's

I think that's a reason why I still kind of do it I guess you would live at hotels? yeah we get moved around a lot we're doing shit in places so we would live in hotels for periods or sometimes military barracks or wherever um uh we would we would take turns you know watching our asses you know so

somebody would send watch at night there was fire watch at these hotels sometimes i would wake up in the middle of the night and just peek through the window and one of our guys was outside smoking a cigarette with a rifle and a blanket over it just covering us. And the assumption happens, you know, you have somebody watching. And every now and then, you know, it's a discovery at work, so a single hotel room with two beds, it means that there's five people sleeping there or six close quarters um there were two guys that i worked with some of the first people that i lost um brilliant people um one of them was lame leon lion he would he would call his uh he would call his girlfriend

and like sing her songs and after like she would go do shit at night fucking come back three in the morning fucking calling this chick and singing fucking these fucking love songs there and the other guy strong dude first time I was uh I was made to do watch fire watch I didn't have a watch wristwatch because I was like skateboarding idiot kid I know anything about responsibilities so he gave me the wash off his wrist so i could take time it's like dude you need to have a watch he gave me his watch um one night uh i was coming back and they were going out um and i remember them clearly because they're smiling and like that like that, but a bunch of idiots Like going out on the town

They would know that there were there were there were they were going on going out to work on a patrol Okay, some some sort of work We say patrol now, but it's they're probably gonna go park somewhere and look at a house or got it chase somebody of some sort Both of them give me a lot of shit when i get there both of them we all make plans to go out and eat and get drunk the next day i hear him talk to his girlfriend before he leaves i hear my other friend talk to his wife and then they're gone they just leave and i remember when when there's a hotel door the way that it snaps closed it always makes me remember them um we never found them they disappeared completely like nothing do you know who did it? God. Now, there's no closure there.

There's no, I don't know. It's this weird void. And there's a few of them that went that way where we never found them and then there's some that we did find which are at the other fucking side of that spectrum um one of them was right like again my generation uh he came out with my generation his um his last name was arenas a lawyer who got poured with the whole lawyer career and decided to join this group that we're um he got picked up by dudes dressed as federal agents outside of the hotel, along with somebody else. And in the span of a night went through, I can't imagine.

Whatever I went through was nothing. When we found him, he had his ID screwed to his forehead. To see somebody that you celebrate with, that you eat with, that you go through this hardship with, training-wise, that you meet their families. I mean, I can remember the graduation meeting his family.

And all of a sudden, he's gone. But you have a clear understanding of how he went obviously this makes you I mean all of us were vengeful bloodthirsty and angry about this and I know a lot of us basically

lost parts of our soul being that way and a lot of us basically lost parts of our soul being that way And a lot of people like to glorify if I can gung-ho shit and stuff like that I don't it's fucking horrible And People that I've heard people kind of glorify some of that shit and I guess like going back for vengeance war violence that type of shit I think people that do glorified or like or like nonchalant about it have the I mean they had the privilege of being able to go home after war yeah I can I've heard people talk mad about some of the stuff they did in afghanistan and

iraq as of jubilant experience but i just can't do the same on my end it's it's too close the people i'm the people i was facing spoke the same language sometimes uh burials would happen at the same funerary service of ours and theirs so wait burials would happen at the same funerary service of ours and theirs. Wait, burials would happen at the same... So a funerary service basically where they would do the wakes were hired sometimes by their families and ours. So sometimes we would have some of our guys being in funeral wakes and... Oh my God, in that cart, oh wow. So sometimes there were like truces where we were like, hey.

That's so cool. Let's just bury these people. It's just, it's a different conflict down there. Yeah. It's its own thing. If people want to equate it to something else, if people want to call these cartels terrorists and equate them to Al QQaeda, they're fucked.

That's not the same thing. They're different. It's a different problem. And it is producing a whole generation of people like myself with a lot of skills that are not going to be able to implement those skills in other ways other than what they do now. So I think that's going to be the resistance

that people are going to meet in the future. Wait, what do you mean by that, other than what they do now so i think that's going to be the resistance that people are going to meet in the future wait what do you mean by that other than what they do now i mean um speaking to my friend gaffe in in jalisco he was trained to be like this elite war fighter like gaffer is a scary dude like i know but i'm scared of him you know he knows how to take down a fucking small government probably and then he was let go hmm like there he's one of many out there like that I think somebody a friend of mine shared this quote from true detective you know be careful what you get good at. Oh, yeah. And Mexico has a lot of people like myself that got good at just a specific thing.

And they're out there. What are they going to do some sort of incident in Mexico that's going to make the U.S. act directly on the ground at some point. I said that five years ago. And here we are with open warnings for the Border Patrol that certain cartel elements are planning on using drones to drop bomblets on them. What's going on there? I don't know know that doesn't seem like something that would happen that cartel is going to say that would announce it war now right i think that would be an excuse for the united states to do what it wants to do anyway which is have control over the future of mexico as a country and its potential.

Through a potential invasion type scenario? Yeah. You think that's a possibility? We are in a country that had two buildings knocked down by a bunch of Saudis and some Egyptian people. And then we proceeded to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. Yeah. rack yeah so yeah i think it's it's in the realm of reason that something could happen on that border real or staged that could cause the united states to put foots on the boots on the ground in mexico uh i think more realistically what's going to happen hopefully none of that happens because that's going to be fucking horrible for both sides.

People thinking it's going to be a cakewalk are fucking fooling themselves. They should actually look and speak to some of the people that are actually involved in military planning. And plans to invade Mexico are already on the books out there. You can research. There's some, there's some people online, there's a YouTube video of some generals somewhere talking about what, how invading Mexico would be kind of difficult. The main thing I think is the economic effects are going to be felt right in front door. So this is not going to be like, you know,

there's a war in Afghanistan and all we hear about is on the news. Now we're going to feel it economically. Products are going to be on the, products are not going to be on these on those aisles people are not going to show up to work maybe people are going to have to go back um i don't know it's not going to be and it's not going to be a we're going to feel it if it happens like directly um that could happen or what would the cartels do in that scenario would they team i mean they already are teamed up with the government but would there be some official insurgency

teamed up with the government i had this conversation when again gafe um who is badass he's a ninja um he his response was this if the uS. decides to attack in a very overt Afghanistan, Iraq-type way, shock and awe-type way, a criminal institution or a cartel that has some sort of governments in the local area that it operates in, it's going to turn them into martyrs. And it's going to turn them into freedom fighters instead of cartel members. And in that case, we're currently living in an antagonist, Mexico has an antagonist government against the U.S.

So if the U.S. attacks one of these cartel groups and affects a local populace in a direct way where there's a lot of collateral damage, it's going to be hard for them not to decide with whoever was attacked oh yeah um and the sentiment that he expressed to me is that if the u.s makes the mistake of doing something like that it's game on and yeah the army the mexican army doesn't have a lot of technology technological advances but they're very experienced people they don't have the ability to send a fucking cruise missile into the middle of the u.s

but they have people that have clear spoken english like i do they have people that are into fucking espionage sabotage explosives there are people that are going to take off their uniforms and go into the fucking local populace and do what the Zetas did. And there's also a significant population here in our country as well. Yep. That would be very reachable in many cases. Yeah. I mean, if we were talking about fucking

Alex Jones-level conspiracy shit, you know. It's all the Mexicans coming for us. But realistically, if they wanted to do something against the U.S., poison a few drug loads. Yeah. It's not like that's the scary thing. It's not hard. Poison a few drug loads. Target infrastructure on the border.

You're worried about your planes? They have abilities to take out planes. Anti-aircraft missiles and stuff yeah um also just a drone a drone can take out a helicopter if you put your mind to it um there's it's it's an enemy i don't i don't think that the u.s realizes and i hear people online talk about this a-10 warthogs and we'll kick the cart cartels ass. Yeah, you'll destroy the overt side of it But there's other parts of it that are gonna hide, you know, you can swat a few flies at the start this happened in Iraq Yeah, you know they went in guns blazing and then they adapted and now they started blowing them up from afar

Yeah, think about Afghanistan to you were fighting the geography. That's why the war Over time you even ended up turning took a long time like obviously the u.s did well at first but you're fighting with the mountains as much as you're fighting with the people the geography in mexico is all over the place i want i want yeah that's the main thing that i like the sierra madre that geography is gonna kick ass i mean as far as trying to try to figure out a control aspect of it i'm predicting that there is going to be a targeted drone strike somewhere in mexico of a high-level cartel member that's why the us by the us because it's very on it's very it's very on point for them when i say them

sulamani sulamani yes you know general solomon yeah iran he got hit by one of those ginsu knife Sulaimani? Sulaimani? Yes. You know General Sulaimani? Yeah, yeah, Ren. He got hit by one of those Ginsu knife missiles. So it's a Hellfire missile. I might be wrong. It's on my fucking wheelhouse. But it's a missile that will put out three surgical katana blades out of it. So it's designed to be very targeted. So you can be in the passenger seat of a car

and this thing's going to... That's what I think we're going to see in Mexico at some point. That's what I think is... I think that's in the realm of the possibilities of predicting right now. That or some sort of incident on the border that is going to justify the use of boots

on the ground. And again, I think this isn't about fentanyl. This isn't about cartels. This isn't about any other thing than the global economic security of the United States into the future and figuring out a way to control the destiny of mexico into the future because they realize and everybody does now that the whatever future there is for north america it includes mexico as an industrial plant and i think that's what everybody's looking at and the reason i say this is because no and

the whole designation thing and the whole anti-cartel thing, it's very bipartisan in the U.S. If you look at it. What do you mean? Both parties are, like, signing off on all this. Oh, yeah. I thought you said something else. I'm sorry. I thought you said it's bipartisan.

You said it's bipartisan. Bipartisan. So that should, like, holy shit. They're serious about it. They love a good war I get it the economy gets fueled by it yeah um the Ukrainian war is winding down so that money is drying up uh when people talk about hey we're sending billions of dollars to your grain no you're not you're sending that money to the

people that are supplying them with arms. And that's going to be cut off. Yeah. So who are we going to feed next? I don't know. There's always going to be someone.

Yeah, there's always a war on the horizon. Again, I'm not a war monger. I don't want this to happen. I think the worst thing that can happen to Mexico is a full-on invasion by the United States.

We've seen what that is like in other parts of the world every now and then. Like, oh, sometimes we do it right. Like, look at Japan. Mexico was in Japan. Mexico was in Germany. It's not good for anybody. And if this is about migration, attacking Mexico is not going to do a lot

of good things as far as migration. It's going to make it. You can line up all the army and the military and the individuals you want on that border. It's not going to be able to stop the wave of people leaving Mexico. Great chaos. Absolutely. So that's not a solution.

I think, again, realizing this is a fucking regional issue, realizing that the federal government in Mexico is not to be trusted fully and that there are some elements of it that are probably corrupted and or compromised. For sure. Realizing that Mexico itself is being utilized in a proxy way from foreign powers to fuck with the U.S.

and fuck with its interest. And the U.S. is doing the same in Mexico to fuck with the foreign interest there. So, and it has been doing so since at least the 60s um its foreign policy is to blame for a lot of the things that are happening in mexico now the conscious were being trained in cartel fields and vera cruz um uh we're celebrating the the uh the arrest of uh

caro quintero now because he was directly responsible for the da uh agent akikamarena's murder but everybody in mexico was like no the cia did it well yeah they're saying the the allegation is that not or felix rodriguez allegedly was the undercover cia agent now he swore to danny jones that he it wasn't him. Okay. But, you know, who knows? A lot of people who were around for that that I got to talk to, they were all like, yeah, the CIA was operating here, and he ran into something that was way beyond his pay grade, so they had to take him out.

That's the narrative, and I don't know if that's true or not. Again, beyond my time, I'm just stating what the sentiment of most Mexicans are as far as that. I share that sentiment. So it's a clear indication that both sides have a lot of soul-searching, have a lot of fucking things they need to get straight as far as their own narrative, and realizing that there is a reason and a rhyme and a reason for a lot of the stuff that is happening right now as far as Mexico

and the designation of these groups as cartels, as terrorist organizations. And if we're not seeing immigration reform on this end, we should question that. If we're not seeing a doge-like audit of the money that has been spent on this drug war for the past few decades, we should not question some of that stuff. If we're not seeing any politicians, private institutions,

actors, singers, a bunch of arrested or detained because of some cartel-affiliated ties now, because now it's terrorism, then we should be questioning that. And we're not seeing any... We're not seeing a lot of dramatic movements with this destination on the

U.S. side, which makes me dubious that it is actually a serious attempt to go after these institutions. And it's not more than a political pressure point that the U.S. is going to pressure on these guys. I mean, I hope for obvious reasons for everyone involved, not just my country, but Mexico and all the people that would be caught in the middle of it. I hope nothing like that happens. I hope there is some cooler heads to prevail i recognize that in that type of scenario you know cynically speaking you're going to be accepting some evils of the world yeah sure there's going to be things that do continue business as usual that you and i both know are just completely wrong on on both sides of of the border but i think we can all say that you know you'd rather see things wrong that still need fixing that we're gonna have to find new solutions for rather than hundreds of thousands of people

dying in some fucking war that you know people invent so you know it's scary to hear you talking like this but i take it seriously because like you've lived it. You've lived and obviously lived on both sides of borders now. But like you've seen what these guys are capable of. You've seen what corruption in the government is capable of. You've seen it from our side to what it's capable of. And naturally, you know, there's there are consequences that can happen from that. Mass graves are being discovered across the country in Mexico right now,

and they're being put on media as a new thing. They've been going on for decades. We've been outpacing most of the global conflicts as far as body count for years. It's just people don't keep numbers, and the numbers that are being kept are skewed by the government. There's a war.

Nobody can... The drug war? Like, I remember as a joke, some of my veteran friends, they would take me to these veteran events. And then I, because, you know, fuck, I didn't have anything to do. So I would get asked, like, oh, like, what theater did you go to? Theater operations. Like, I'm fucking fucking i'm from mexico um so they made me a

drug war veteran patch for and put on a hat as a joke and it's real though but that's the thing for me that moment was a joke but then i turn around and i look at all the people, like there's, like speaking to Goffy, for example, he's a veteran, just as traumatized and as damaged as many of my friends who went through Fallujah, except that he doesn't have any sort of recourses or veteran service or any sort of recognition

or any sort of discount at a store, none of that shit. He's just like, ah, we used you. You went through the fucking dog shitter. And now you're out, and we don't fucking disavow you. What do you think a person like that will turn into? Yeah, exactly. And that's...

What's interesting, though, is you talk about those, the guys that you lost. And you mentioned, maybe like 20 minutes minutes ago about how everyone in there when after especially after your buddy was found with his id drilled into his forehead and people knew the kinds of things that happened to him everyone in there wanted vengeance they had hatred for what had happened to him and the people who perpetrated it and what i what i had in my head there and we got on to some other things but now it feels right to go back to it is how do people like that some of them end up forgetting that feeling they don't hold on forgetting that feeling to the point that that we're compartmentalizing it to the point that

some of those same people obviously not point that some of those same people, obviously not you, but some of those same people eventually turned and went and worked for that which they hated. How did they get to that point? DNA. DNA? Yeah, your kids.

A common denominator I've found with all these people, from cartel members to former operations guys to everybody, people are capable of doing wild shit for their kids. And in an environment where you're not going to be able to put food on the table, or you're going to go work for a cartel and do some horrible shit for them, and not only put food on the table, but actually put them in a good school, society is going to lose every time when that selection comes in.

Because again, they don't get any support. There's no infrastructure to support them in and out of that job. There's nothing there to keep them honest, realistically. Everything's temporary, right? And the government only cares the government only cares about is just like fucking keep shit quiet when something's not popular let's attack it when it's not fucking fuck that and every five years six years it gets amnesia and everything that it did all the people that it supported all the people that created get fucking cast aside because

now there's a new administration coming in and we need new blood and ideas in this So it's basically a snake eating its tail over and over and over human nature takes over Yeah If I could wave a wand around I would say The u.s. Needs to take fucking close account of all the money that's been spent on that war and who? Lined their pockets with it. That's something I would ask immigration reform right um realizing that there are fucking high level i don't want to say high level presidents in the past in mexico that were completely involved in

cartel operations and funded them their political campaigns and Maybe line their pockets with some of the money from these organizations It's clear as day to anybody that looks at this from any angle. I actually didn't ask you this We talked about this way earlier but then we got off it when you said if they're like you would You think there may need to be a scenario where some of these people are brought to justice i think that's where we're headed did you mean that that i couldn't really tell did you mean that that means the mexican government acting on its own brings the people to justice or the united states government acting through them or the united states government itself somehow

brings them to the united states government itself issues an arrest warrant and or like fucking outs them as like hey and they get deported or extradited hopefully interesting although you think that they would do that if if they do that to AMLO which again I know there's a lot of people here love that man who says that he's like a force of change and but we have to be honest with ourselves yeah i mean the evidence is there as far as uh as far as involvement as far as people being intermediaries as far as facilitators as far as conversations happening between lawyers on el chapo and him him going to like uh um el chapo's home um hometown six times during his administration and saying in front of the press that we shouldn't

be consuming this chinese we should be using the local drugs instead of the chinese stuff coming from from china right so you have this guy you have this you have you have him i don't think he's going to be handed over by the by by the mexican government i don't think so um all of the former presidents of mexico the a few of them fox not so much because he's a pothead. I don't think so. All of the former presidents of Mexico, a few of them, Fox, not so much, because he's a pothead, and I don't know, he's just a wild card. He's funny as fuck, actually.

He's funny as shit, corrupt. In my opinion, he was probably fucking... Remember when they were talking about the wall, he was like, fuck you, or whatever. He was famous for a few things. Fox was our Bush. Ah, that's Fox Fox Fox was our Bush Fox Fox was our Bush he's a fucking idiot a fox told Fidel Castro to leave uh like a summit like he called him directly said hey the U.S. president is coming or something. Can you just leave before he gets here? Because he doesn't want to see you.

He called his fucking, Castro put that fucking shit online the next day. Oh, I'll bet. He said some pretty racist shit in the U.S. in one interview, I think. I can't say it here. But he said something about Mexicans doing jobs that other ethnicities wouldn't do. He was a fucking idiot. Anyways, I don't think he's going to be it. It might be Calderon and Enrique Pena Nieto

both live in Spain for some reason. Don't they have poor extradition laws there? They both live in Spain for some reason that I can't elaborate on. They speak Spanish over there. They speak Spanish. And they probably have some pretty decent laws as far as, like, they have some sort of government protection there, probably.

Gotcha. But not AMLO. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the former president of Mexico, built a finca, which is like a private ranch, with a military barracks right next to it, and a hospital. Was he in business before he was in politics? I mean, politics is business in Mexico. Exactly. Everybody's Nancy Pelosi in Mexico.

That's what I'm going to say. He's like fucking Nancy Pelosi. Everybody's fucking, apparently becomes really good at fucking speculating when they join politics in Mexico. But yeah, that's why, again, this is just judging from what I'm seeing. I think what's coming next is the naming and or the prosecution of a high-level political official in Mexico. I think that's what's next. Do your sources tell you that? That's what the winds tell me.

How do you – I haven't asked you that yet. How do you track down sources these days? Obviously you know people from when you were in there, but you've been out for some years now. How do you track down sources? How do you communicate with them and how do you weed out like who's full of shit and who's not? So number one, I'm not out completely because I train people constantly. Right, right. So from people on this

side of the border to that side of the border I've trained both and I get information they fucking send me like a messages about what's going on I questioned some of that as well I gotta verify it I have an amazing network of security professionals and people that I work with and in journalist we chop otter was a fucking amazing dude and i support what he does constantly and i share all of his stuff and i follow his stuff really closely um there is another news agency that i want to plug right now um that i i don't own people think i own it or like i have some sort of involvement in there i support the people behind it fully it's a very non-biased news organization

that is specifically on instagram because social media is just fucking as soon as you say cartel you get fucking shit can and shadow band um demoler is the name of this uh news institution D-E-M-O-L-R-E. Demoler. Okay. No, E-R. E-R. I'm sorry. Second language.

And they do a fabulous job of investigating things and fucking sourcing stuff. Every now and then I get people that come like, hey, Ed, I have this information. I'm like, cool, go talk to all these other people. Right. So I have people reaching out constantly around that. hey ed i have this information i'm like cool go talk to all these other people right um so i have people reaching out constantly around that and again uh yeah demoler oh they're back they were off they were gone for a while um they had some issues with social media and a bunch of stuff but they're back so i'd really recommend people follow them all there that's a very unbiased everything i get as far as like contacts and,

and, and information, they all go there and they, they cut out the bullshit from the real, real stuff. It's, it's, it's,

it's, it's a savage world. I was telling you this, this, I don't trust the media. The traditional media is poison. They're owned in Mexico. We have a lot of that still.

Oh yeah. It's bigger than here so Like I've never been on any single media outlet in Mexico Think about that doesn't surprise me think about that. I've been on I've been on I've been quoted by Al Jazeera New York Times Fox yeah, and I've been in I've been on a bunch of platforms here in the US across Political affiliations, but I've never been on a bunch of platforms here in the U.S. across political affiliations, but I've never been in a single Mexican one. It might be because I'm full of shit,

and they're, oh, this guy's full of shit. Or it might be because I'm saying some shit. My bets are on the fact that I'm saying some shit that you probably don't like. But we have hope. We have hope, and the platforms are growing down there. These independent platforms, just like the one that I went on with Goffit, just like this one, where people like yourself are taking their curiosity as far as what's going on in the world and adding responsibility to it

and saying, hey, what is going on here? And I don't want to talk to that analyst guy over there yeah I want to talk to this dude over here who has some fucking stories and also went through it himself like yeah let me see his perspective that is something that gives me great hope I hope we can follow through on that for you too yeah you. You know? And more so than anything, just if you guys weren't here, if these platforms didn't exist, all the shit that I saw and all the details that I've been expressing the past few years, they're not going to be anywhere.

They couldn't be anywhere. I wouldn't be allowed into the door to speak about some of these things. That's crazy. And that's the reality we live in right now. So in my mind, the traditional media is definitely an enemy. Well, yeah, I think a lot of people out there listening right now completely agree with you. And they've earned that by making so many mistakes, just overtly,

like straight up things that you want to talk about not following journalistic integrity. I mean, where do you even begin? The thing that I do always try to think about is, I mean, obviously I can only control my actions and stuff, but there's so many people in the independent space that I respect who have brought this in. You start all the way at the top with Joe Rogan and work your way on down to so many people that have been pioneers in that way. And I think what we all got to be careful of is not over time, like this

moment we're in right now where we are able to bring on people and discuss difficult topics and do it in such an unfiltered way. We can't lose that. No. You know, and I do think about that often because like i think about even from my perspective starting this in my parents house with nothing you know just want to talk to people and i'm five years in today as we're recording and it's like we've kept that i have my own studio now but it's the same shit as it was day one and i want to be sitting here five years from now saying the same thing and five years after that saying the same thing it's important yeah it's important um the only reason I got on Joe Rogan was because a lot of the former people

that I used to work with were sending me videos of live shit that was going on during like some of the time some some of the time I was active in Mexico and further on like that's the only reason why i got his eye right because i was sharing shit that later on i would see like go on traditional media and they were fucking quoting me about it you know um my instagram account became legendary for like dropping like videos of shit that was happening live in mexico and it was funny that i would see a video that i posted that i knew where i sourced it from, posted online, and it would show up on traditional media both sides of the border. And I've never called myself a journalist, and I never will.

So people have to go to school for that. Yeah, I've called you that. I know you disagree. But the reason I do is because you are whether you realize it or not this is a compliment you are reporting on things and you've been doing it for years that literally at points no one was sharing yeah and you should be commended for that for me for me i'm more of an activist like that's what i want to take about myself as and i have people like i mean people ask me for news you know i'm like, I'll give you some opinions,

but if you want news, Luis Chaparro is fucking amazing. Go talk to him. Demolair is great. Independent journalism going on, just straight to the point fucking facts. On my end, I'm emotionally invested in all of this. I have hatred in my heart for some of the people that did some of the shit they did to me and my people I have anger in my soul uh for the ways that some people in the U.S.

speak about some of these issues as a Mexican problem only and like we have no responsibility over this when we do like all of us have some sort of responsibility around some of the shit that's happening um so then that way i can't be you know you know i can't i can't i can't call myself a journalist because i have a lot of emotion invested in this skin in the game uh but um all that to say that there are many people like myself that went through this process that are many people like myself that survived a lot of this type of who are you know not doing podcasts who are not trading government people to do weird and weird places who are quietly living a life after that uh working somewhere in a kitchen somewhere in philadelphia or who i've met at the airport

manning a bar somewhere uh who have this fucking special forces training in Mexico somewhere, and they just fucking made it all the way here, and they're just quietly living their existence. There are many quiet people out there with no voices who are never going to be able to be here and sharing this with a big part of the U.S. populace. I hope I'm doing them a service i hope i'm bringing them some sort of uh recognition um most of the criticism i've gotten here in the united states has actually come from mexicans and mexican people uh because either they're too detached

from the realities of mexico because when they go down there they go to a tourist park and they don't get to see the bad parts of it. Or they've spent their whole lives up here and all they hear about Mexico is what they hear through their gender studies teacher or whatever. And again, my politics are these. Like I want to be able to go to my gay friend's wedding with a gun on my hip and be able to smoke a joint of mushrooms afterwards. That's what my politics are. I want to be able to go to my gay friend's wedding with a gun on my hip and be able to smoke a joint and eat mushrooms afterwards. There you go.

That's what my politics are. I want less government. I want more responsibility on the part of the citizenship. I have skin in this game. I want everybody to be fucking great. I think we have the potential to be a superpower both combined like a fucking light into the future. But we're not going to get there by invading each other. Yeah.

Or if we are going to get there, it's going to cost us a few things that are probably going to be culture-changing. For sure. I can foresee a time and a place where Mexicans are not going to be treated as these third-class citizens as they are here in the U.S. It's funny that a Canadian can travel down here but not a Mexican because we're somehow shadier. We're going to stay here, not going to leave or something. So there is definitely a discrimination being done to the people of Mexico at a weird scale here in the United States. Some of it has been warranted by the history of illegal immigration in this country and narcotics and organized crime that's undoubted but the

responsibility that the united states has directly had on the original on some of these things originating themselves is clear as well so what do we do with both of these truths in our hands imagine that a situation that has multiple things true at the same time um i think number one is just fucking just keep i don't know like i i think we just saw we just saw the united states punish the powers that be by with their vote in this past election. We saw Canada that was almost assassinated with a bunch of charges on them and a mugshot and all that. All that made me feel right at home, like, oh, this is Mexico.

Yeah, it's funny. This is banana republic-level shit. Yeah. But now he's there. Now there's this whole effort being done and talk about invading Mexico and terrorist designations and all this type of stuff but like i'm just waiting to see the actual effects of this shortages of drugs on american

streets people going into withdrawals um high-level corporates corporate officials and different companies being arrested on their um financial aid to some of these fucking drug cartels. You know, there's a few banking institutions that were cut up in fucking money laundering situations in the past. Are they going to be brought up on fucking terrorist supporting charges? Well, it's also complicated because, like I said, Matthew Hedger was sitting in your seat and he described how he was the one who pushed some of them to do that so we can't on one hand you know blame it all on mexico on another hand have somebody like that saying like hey we can't go after these because we were directly responsible to facilitate these

people that then fostered this criminal organization that has made stew out of thousands of mexicans and all that's left of them are their sneakers and love letters in a field somewhere in Jalisco we speak about I spoke about the moment that I realized I was a villain in their stories somewhere out there the US has to realize the same thing hey fuck we're villains too and I think the only way it's kind of fix things and recognize that is to just accept it, realize that that went on for years, and move forward, I guess. Yeah. There's a thing that happens where, and it's quite obvious, it happens in every facet of our lives. I'm sure everyone out there can think of situations right now they're dealing with that's similar.

But we get into something and we then don't want to admit we're wrong it's like the most common thing ever but like you know you don't just have to admit you're wrong with some things you can actually use that as a jumping off point to try to get better or improve a situation it doesn't have to just be this negative thing and when it gets caught up in our bureaucracy or at the highest levels of corporations and stuff like that it's like man we've created a wrong incentive structure where you can't admit that like the political climate has created something where now you're going to keep doubling down on things that are going to cause harm yeah which

we've seen over and over and over again because you can't just say all right that's one thing maybe we could do that better yeah maybe maybe we this whole war on terrorism thing was like yeah maybe it was a mistake you know yeah maybe we should look into why we attacked all these other countries that didn't have anything to do maybe wmds did they find any nope we've litigated that on this podcast. Were they actually found and maybe French in origin? So you couldn't say anything about it? Which, who knows?

I don't know. Maybe. Who knows? I don't know. I'm from Mexico. Why would I know that? Why would you know that? I don't know.

So do you have all these things that happened in the past or are just going to be buried in the past? Right. Do we admit that the United States was paying off all these presidents presidents in mexico while they were doing horrible corrupt acts to destroy society uh presidents that then fostered this whole disarmament uh situation it was on our second amendment was in our constitution right and then it went away and who who does that benefit you know yeah that's true um do we turn a blind eye to the fact that there was some sort of fucking government involvement in the disappearance and death of Kiki Camarena? Yeah. Do we just fucking say, no, this guy is it.

This Caro Quintero old guy who's pissing in a bag probably pretty soon who's on his way out. He's the only one. He's solely responsible for this we're not going to talk about our uh the contra situation we're not going to talk about these organizations training in mexico or gun running and paying for them with drug money we're not going to talk about any of that oh that we just we got our man let's take a picture with him i get it i get it uh and and i get the the giant denial aspect that the united states has is something that is very apparent to mexico

and the mexican citizen people want to know why anti-americanism is growing in places like mexico it's one of those like the non-admittance of wrongdoings globally. It is interesting culturally from somebody from the outside like myself, seeing discussions of reparations on Native Americans and African Americans here, while I come from a country that has actual current issues with the United States and its involvement that have produced massacres, student massacres in Mexico. There's some sort of responsibility there. Um, and a giant fucking hunger for drugs. Yeah. Um, so it's interesting that we hear these talks

about reparations and victimhood in the States. Meanwhile, there's a giant responsibility on all involved, from Native Americans to black Americans to Asian Americans to all the Americans because in our point of view, it's todos son gringos. Yeah, there's dirty hands everywhere. Yeah. From our point of view as Mexicans, todos son gringos.

You're all Americans. And there's a villainy aspect of it there that, again, we need to— You see where they would see it from this end, though, too, right? Yeah, yeah. Like, from this end, I'd look back at Mexico like, oh— Because I do. They're voiding in these corrupt officials over and over again. They're getting involved in fucking corruption by paying off the cop at the stop sign instead of, like, actually paying their ticket.

So that's a small infraction. That's a small level of corruption but cartels funneling dirty drugs into here using china to do it yeah so there's yeah but you know what there's a great line i quote this all the time on the podcast my friend eric zolliger said this in episode 164 people are not their governments yep and that applies to everyone like i would not want to be associated with bush cheney you know i'm very sorry to the people of iraq and what happened there like that listen i i didn't want that yeah but i understand where people over there are like yo all them yeah for this you know it's human nature yeah or obama you know hey obama Obama, yes, we can, all that shit. Cool.

But then, you know, there's a kid without an arm in Mexico that was involved in something that his Eric Holder fucking signed off on. Also a bunch of drone strikes. And he got a Nobel Peace Prize. A few of those, yeah. Nobel Peace Prize. Yeah. And that's hope. And then, again, the whole – I'm trying to paint a picture of how the outside looks at it. I've been in Mexico for a while traveling and talking to people about this.

It's difficult for me because I represent the U.S. and sometimes in their eyes, like, ah, you're a gringo now. You traitor. Like that type of shit um but the the the the infirm mentally infirm side of the culture in the u.s is what you hear from some people out the outside like yeah mexico has people getting disappeared and acid in some parts with cartels and stuff like that and that's scary but that's not all mexico there's parts of mexico they're fine but then mexicans see somebody walking into a school with an assault rifle and shooting a bunch of kids and that to to mexicans like holy or we witnessed the president of the united states getting lost in a public event and walking around and in the minds of Mexicans, like, that guy has the nuclear bomb button.

Right. And is he in charge? Who's in charge? Like, what's... So you can understand why there's a lack of trust. Yes. I can see it from every angle. From the outside.

Oh, yeah. And there are clear, and again, I've mentioned some interests that are higher and bigger than cartels and politics. And they're definitely a factor. And I think just follow the money. 100%. Follow the money. And you'll usually see the hand that steals hides itself. The hand that spends

gives the other one away it's something i learned from a fucking army colonel yeah and it is true as hell to this day the last thing i wanted to ask you about before i got you out of here ed was how you how you were able to have the self-awareness to suddenly realize after all these years you know serving in all different capacities and seeing crazy shit that, you know, you weren't okay. And that some of the things you were doing at self-medicate were not normal. And that, you know, you needed to help yourself out.

Like, what was that turning point where that came in? Um... my wife leaving me. Mm. where that came in? My wife leaving me. I think a big part of my journey has been saving myself. And I was abandoned when I was a kid, 13, when my brother died. So I had to become really mature really quickly. And I always had this mania of being so essential

that there's no way they could just chit-can me because I'm essential, right? So this drive to be essential, which led me into very dark places with very manipulative people, utilizing that fucking superpower that I developed through trauma when I was a kid. When I was driving back from that first Rogan interview, I didn't realize what that was. Like, I didn't realize what it did.

The amount of exposure that was. The gravity, yeah. I didn't realize what I did the uh the amount of exposure that was the gravity yeah I didn't know um and I was still drinking and still being an idiot and still fucking just trying to self-destruct all of a sudden I found all these eyes on me and I started to try to figure out all these opportunities that I got in front of me and And I realized that I'd made it. That I survived every single attempt against me. That I survived all these attempts that people were trying to fuck me over. And that I survived.

MetLife said that my job was probably one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet because those were the people that would give us our life insurance down there. So it was like I survived all that shit. But the price was turning into somebody that my wife didn't like anymore. And she and my kid were the only reasons why I survived it. That's wild. So I lost that, which was, I think, my purpose.

I had to refocus and shit like that. I went on a second time, and the opportunities were all over the place, and I was trying to kill myself with alcohol. While this was going on, your wife left you in between those two? Yeah. Whoa. At some point,

I got into another relationship that was pretty fucking horrible. It was a bad idea. And I realized that none of this shit is normal the way i'm living you know the constant uh preoccupation that friends of mine have that i'm gonna just fucking drink myself to death alone somewhere in a hotel and i would travel around i would tell people where i was you know it's fucking when i go to boston for the fuck yeah let's go to boston for a few days um i had the freedom because of the company to just move around and fucking travel and do shit.

I have some friends in Nevada who have a pretty cool ranch. After, like, people think I hit rock bottom, you know, when something happens. You know, like, I thought I hit rock bottom when I lost my job. It was like, fuck no. that's not it no um so i i uh i locked myself in this uh cattle ranch and went through sobriety like the wrong way you know you're not supposed to do it that way cold turkey yeah three later, I was feeling it. Oh, yeah. You think it's going to, like, oh, I just have to get over this substance abuse thing. As soon as alcohol went away, it was like floodwaters receding.

Now you can see all the damage to the walls how you can see the bodies on the ground now you can see all the bullshit you did for years it was like I don't know like a volume knob went up like I could hear now I could see and that led me into three years of therapy afterwards when I stopped drinking. And it led me to some wild, weird reinventions. You know, it was like I was a cop in Mexico and I became an instructor

and I would speak about some of this shit online, share pictures of like weird, horrible shit every now and then, get banned from Instagram for months. But then I realized, oh, fuck, let me. What am I now? So I stopped talking about my own bullshit and I started going out there and helping other people with their shit.

Like, hey, what's going on with you like what happened to you and then you know that turned into conversations that i would then have on the podcast that i have or it would turn into writing like i do a lot of writing on on instagram on my instagram account called the fever dreams or ed's field notes which is basically my therapy journal that's all it is it's's an outlet. It's an outlet. The scariest thing for me when I was going through all that, what if people find out? That was the scariest thing for me.

Like, what if people find out that I'm a fucking dumpster fire? And then a friend of mine told me, you know, is that the thing you fear the most yeah talk about it i went to this bathroom that had a fucking sign on top of it the urinal um nobody pickpockets a naked you can't pickpocket a naked man and i didn't think about wallets or pickpocketing. I thought about, like, I was afraid of being robbed of a truth that I had hidden. That I was a fucking walking dumpster fire.

All the trauma, alcoholism. I was not the best human being on the planet. And I'd gone through a horrible fucking situation where there was no finality to it like I'm still Searching for grave sites of some of the people that died in that war with me That I just didn't have the fucking mental fortitude to figure out where they were buried so I could go give him flowers Yeah, like I'm still trying to figure that out for some of them and That's the big giant pause button that alcohol gave me at the end of all that process and it's never ends you know i was here last night i was walking around jersey

um like i go to this empty hotel room at night think about those two faces i saw the lot for the last time leaving that room, every time the door closes, I can remember them just fucking leaving, having the promise of, hey, cuando le voy a decir, vamos a chumbo, vamos a chumbo. Like, when we come back, we'll fucking go drinking.

And I just have this mental plan in my head that I'm eventually gonna see them somewhere, and we're all gonna just fucking go out drinking and just fucking talk about the wildness of this ride all the way here. Because it's been a fucking wild ass ride from there to here. And again, I'm just one of millions of young people in Mexico that went through all the shit they went through and are trying to make sense of it all now. I know I'm not an uncommon story.

The only thing uncommon about me is that I've managed to fucking just get an audience around it. Again, I always warn people against violence and this life and all that. I don't glorify anything. It took a shit ton from me. I'm still recovering some of that. Some of it,

I will never get back. Um, I'm still trying to fucking learn how to be an adult at 42. Um, when I'm learning about shit, you know, uh, random stuff, like it comes up constantly because I've, I've just been living in this weird bubble. Um, you know, like, uh, credit cards were a fucking thing. I didn't know how to activate a credit card you got in the mail. Like I didn't know how that worked. You know, somebody sent me one. I'm like, hit the 1-800 number. Like I don't like using the phone.

I don't like talking to people online. You go to ATM or the bank. Like weird fucking small things that People that need to realize I'm a new gringo and I'm also a new adult in a lot of ways I'm a new American and I'm a new adult because I had people taking care of shit for me for years when I was in that job and I had a wife taking care of some of that when I was married and now I have nobody but myself And you're also like you're clear for the first time in a while.

Yeah. You were never clear. I must reinstate this. There is no other fucking country in the world that I would rather be in than this one. It's allowed me the privilege of taking on these insane responsibilities of, one, being a voice for a shit ton of people that are never going to be able to speak about this. Starting a company training people how to be capable i'm not people call me a security instructor i'm all about offense um being able to empower people with the knowledge and skill sets of like hey you know you feel like you're unarmed yeah well this is all the ways that people arm themselves in the world you can learn this in about two days or hey you feel

unsafe you have some issues with being put in handcuffs well i have a whole class two-day class and i deal in how to get out of handcuffs zip ties restraints chemical restraints figuring out your way out of a border checkpoint figuring your way through a country where you're not supposed to be in. I train people and all that. Where do you think that comes from? Mm-hmm. This country has allowed me a lot of gifts and experiences

and just wild opportunities. And right now, I'm just traveling around with some financial security. Not even, dude, money is new to me. Dude, I don't know. I don't know how money works. Like somebody was telling me, like, you can afford new clothes. I don't have to thrift it.

It's cool. It's cool thrifting. And then, you know, again, I'm 42 and I'm like a fucking dating scene. It's fucking cool. What the fuck's going on? Like all of it is absurd and weird to me. It always is. But I appreciate the fuck out of this country.

I appreciate the fuck out of the fact that a Navy SEAL took me in and guided me through my immigration process. That's very cool. Although he didn't have a responsibility to do so. His name's Dan Stanchfield, an amazing man, my brother. I love you. I have a privilege of supporting people who are doing independent journalism and are risking life and limb doing so in Mexico.

Dan Moller is one of them. I'm privileged enough to like supporting people in their endeavors, both by my training company, both by the company, just basically sorting people out who want to get into the intelligence field or the uh the analyst field and stuff like that and giving them a space and and support and uh talking about my trauma openly there's a lot of badasses out there talking about fucking skinning people alive and shooting people in the face and stuff like that but not a lot of them were talking about not being able to sleep or missing drunk-ass sleep.

You can help a lot of people doing that. That's why it's great you're doing it. Yeah. I'm helping myself. I'm selfish in that way. If I talk about it, if I share it, it's more about like I wish somebody talked to me about it and the way I'm kind of talking to other people about it. But again, we're so privileged here.

The amount of opportunities this country has, the amount of avenues for people this country has. There's a reason why people come here. There's a reason. And that reason is, but I'll say this as a final note i came here and immigrated to this country during the first trump administration getting into office and it was not an easy process um and i did that in california so I got to witness some of the first, uh... some of the first legislation related to rifles

in California passing through. And now people not being able to arrive at a gun range with a rifle that is adequate to shoot, you know, because they have to use a button to release the magazine and shit like that. Uh, then I went through a cancel the police situation all over the country with the George Floyd incident, and then

seeing basically police institutions in in the united states be neutered all the way from the ground and recruitment go to the zero levels and um just places where the cops wouldn't show up if you called them and what i mean by all that is i'm starting to see very familiar patterns in the united states that lead to places like the ones that made me so this place is starting to look a lot like mexico it's i think in a more positive light though i think some a lot of us are starting to recognize hit the pause button on some stuff like wait a minute all right yeah this is wrong not to say like we didn't get caught up in it for a while but to you know to look at it optimistically i i have i have hope that like

we'll we'll kind of get past some of that but i understand why you see those patterns for sure yeah um again i've lived through it and and I know where all of this goes. Yeah. And, again, this country's becoming really familiar, you know, as I travel around. And I'm missing Alaska, Iowa, and Hawaii. But you've been everywhere else. Yeah. Wow.

And, again, like I had my first more a few years ago. For people, it's stupid, man. But for me, it's fucking insane. I have these new American experiences. That's cool. And people are like, hey, you've never had this before? A friend of mine took me to Kane's Chicken. I never had that.

I had an Arnold Palmer. I thought that was an alcoholic drink. No, just lemonade iced tea. I always order Arnold Palmers now. It's great. It's a new thing. It's good stuff. I'm discovering shit.

There's good things in the U.S. There's beautiful people here. There's people that will give you the fucking jacket off their back. And there's horrible people here that will skin your back. We have both here. got it yeah um i guess again my whole realization right now is i'm in the middle in a lot of ways i don't feel fully american but i also don't feel fully mexican anymore so i'm in the middle um and i'm trying to fucking just do something positive out of the horrible experience that I went through. Which, in the end, that's all we can really do for ourselves.

That's the only redemption we get in this life. Trauma, you can't go back in time to fix it. All you can do is move forward and try to prevent it from happening again. That's the only thing we have. And you've taken a lot of great actions to do that. Have you made peace with your ex-wife over those times? We're great. We're a kid.

That's great. She's great. I have nothing bad to say about her. She's actually fucking great. That's awesome. But, you know, it sucks. But it would suck even more if I was just fucking laying on my back not doing anything with this. So I have to, like, keep moving. I think you're going to.

I can see it in you. Ed, this has been awesome. We've been talking for, shit, over oh shit oh yeah sorry about that no it's great you've been going and I'm not gonna stop you when you're going but you know obviously I've been a fan of your work for many many years so it's great to have it in here but you know as some things are going down as well if you want to come back to discuss any stuff as it's happening, just let me know and we will definitely do that, brother. I have a direct line with people that are on the ground working and doing the things that we're seeing on the news right now.

And I know all of them would be fired or fucking shit can if they fucking went online and fucking talked about any of it. I'm pretty proud to be a voice for some of them. And if I see anything or I hear anything that should be talked about, I'll definitely reach out. Again, thank you so much for this platform. And thank you for hearing me out. Not many give me that opportunity. So thank you. Well, we'll keep doing it.

Thanks for everything, man. Until next time. Everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. Thank you guys for watching the episode. If you haven't already, please hit that subscribe button and smash that like button on the video.

They're both a huge, huge help. And if you would like to follow me on Instagram and X, those links are in my description below.