The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - Inside A Mexican Sicario Training Camp: How The Jalisco New Generation Cartel Trains It's KILLERS

Episode Date: June 22, 2025

While the Sinaloa Cartel has been in headlines for the capture of infamous leader El Mayo Zambada and the infighting that is causing it's own fracture, another cartel has begun to rise to the top and take control of the country- The New Generation Jalisco Cartel aka CJNG. We went to Guadalajara- the home base for CJNG- to see what's REALLY happening with the world's most militarized drug cartel by talking to sicarios, special forces and the population that has been affected by all of it. What we found was way more shocking than we could have ever anticipated. Be sure to check out GAFE's podcast! @GAFE423 Need security or want to learn Krav Maga in the Guadalajara area? Check out the Krav Maga Academy of Guadalajara and tell them we sent you! https://www.kravmagaacademymx.com/ This Episode Is #Sponsored By The Following! BetterHelp! Give online therapy a try at https://betterhelp.com/connect and get on your way to being your best self. Brooklyn Bedding! Go to https://www.brooklynbedding.com and use promo code CONNECT at checkout to get 30% off sitewide! Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You want the whole world to know about that thing. So you use a thing called Canva to make it an even bigger and better thing. Whether you want to create flyers for that thing, make presentations for that thing, or design merch for that thing, you can do anything. So people can see your thing, feel your thing, love your thing. The next thing you know, it's a thing. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing. The largest and most powerful drug cartel operating in Mexico today is the C.J. N.G. The Halisco New Generation Cartel. To call them a drug cartel is to actually understate the power of this immense criminal empire,

who control thousands of miles of territory throughout western and southern Mexico, and whose leader, Nemesio Oseguero, aka El Mencho, is the most influential and elusive drug lord in modern history. As the war in Sinaloa continues to tear apart what is left of the once mighty Sinaloa cartel, the CJNG has seized on the opportunity and become the undisputed kings of Mexican organized crime. So, what is it about this cartel that makes them different from their predecessors? And how, in the midst of intense U.S. pressure, drone surveillance, and unrelenting assaults and extraditions by the Mexican military, are they still able to operate with virtual impunity throughout at least one-third of the entire country? To find out, I travel down to the city of Guadalajara, the base of operations for the C.JNG.

Now, before we get started, as usual, please take a moment to leave a like and a comment on this video and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. It really, really helps us out. Listo, Mies, pommonos. There's a lot of space here, a lot of abandoned people, a lot of desperate people, just like that kid we talked to. People like him are pretty easy to basically just disappear. It's going to look for him. This territory is already controlled and owned. The war is over here.

It has been for years. This is a cartel city. There's no doubt about it. We're in the land where one of the only confirmed down federal helicopters was put down by the local controlling interests. So Guadalajara is one of the oldest cities in Mexico. This is like a 500-year-old city, literally. It is a microcosm of the country because on the one hand, it is one hand, it's a one hand. It's extremely modernized.

It's wealthy. I'm sitting in a cafe that some hipsters started. You know, there's backpackers and there's multinational corporations. And yet people are taken out to the desert and killed and never seen from again every day. And it happens to this city. It's interesting what passes for peaceful in a place like Guadalajara, because that's all you hear people say, oh, this city is very tranquil. It's very chill.

But last night, we just found out that people from the American embassy got shot to death at a taco stand. It seems only right that the city that birthed drug cartels in Mexico is once again ground zero for the country's most powerful criminal syndicate. You know, this is the birthplace of it all of what we know as drug cartels. It began here in Guadalajara. In this pretty little kind of sleepy town that's now become this giant metropolis, it all began with pot farmers.

Dirty guys from Ariawato and Latuna, these tiny little little. towns in the mountains in Sinaloa and they came down to this city and Miguel Gallardo, he had a vision that drug trafficking was going to become this international industry and I think it grew into something he could have never imagined. And then now, 50 years later practically, there's another group that controls this city, also not from Guadalajara. Their Mencho is from Michoacan. It took a few decades, but Guadalajara is back on top. Strategically, it's a very important city, Guadalajara. It's not far from Colima in the port of Manzanillo,

and you can imagine a lot of the dopes getting shipped out of there. You're not too far from the oil pipeline. These guys do a lot of Wachikol, which if you know, if you remember the last episode, that's oil and gas theft. Huge rural areas where you can cook meth, fent, fent, fent. They're still growing weed. They still have giant acres and acres and acres of weed fields. And plus you have a ton of financials,

financial services here too. So people are just washing money and buying companies and buying businesses. You're not far from Maine interstates where a lot of the drugs get trafficked through the country and up north. You've all seen Narcos Mexico and Netflix by now, so you know the basic history lesson on the formation of the Guadalajara cartel. It began in 1980 when exiled pot farmers from Sinaloa, who were on the run from the federal government, took refuge to the south in the state of Halisco, in the burgeoning city of Guadalajara. It was there that Miguel Felix Gallardo, Rafa Quintero, and Ernesto Fonseca

formed the Guadalore cartel, the country's first union of organized drug trafficking groups. This is Hotel de Las Americas. This is the hotel that Felix Gallardo bought and ran his empire from inside. And this was like the hot thing back in 1980, and now it's like a piece of shit. And it doesn't look like anybody's...

Now we all saw how that ended with the torture and murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena at 881 Lopa de Vega Street in downtown Guadalajara. Behind me is the Lopa de Vega house. This is where they took Kiki Camarena, the DEA agent, back in 1985, and they tortured him for a couple of days and then they murdered him. And as you can see, it's huge. It takes up almost an entire city block. So since then, the building has been converted into a school, some kind of secondary school

or Montessori school, but apparently up until about 10 years ago, all of the original furniture from the time of Kiki's murder was inside. The mainstream narrative, the one sold to us on the show Narcos, is that Camarena was kidnapped and murdered by the DFS, the Mexican Special Security Agency, who were partnered with the Guadalajara cartel as revenge for Camarena uncovering one of Rafa Kintero's gigantic marijuana fields in the state of Zacatecas. But this is a lie. Or at least it only tells a small part of the story.

That was back in 1985. They just extradited Raffa Caro Quintero for the murder. And he probably didn't even do it. He was definitely in the house, but he's just the fall guy. The guys who really did the crime are the DFS, who were the Mexican police, the Gestapo, who worked for the Guadalajara cartel. But what you probably didn't know is they were also being funded by the CIA.

The true reason for the torture and killing of Kiki Kamerenaena, was that he was about to disclosurial. close U.S. government connections to Mexican drug cartels. It is by now an acknowledged fact that the American government in the 1980s was collaborating with Mexican drug lords like Miguel Gallardo, who was illegally transporting American-made weapons and ammunition to the Nicaraguan Contras fighting the clandestine war against the newly formed leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. So one of the key guys inside of the house at the time of the murder was a Cuban exile

living in Florida who was on the CIA payroll. According to the last NARC, the Amazon documentary about the Camarena murder, a Cuban-born CIA operative named Felix Ismael Rodriguez Mendegutia was at the Lopa de Vega house and assisted the Mexican DFS in the torture and murder of Kiki Kamerena. He, of course, got off Scott Free, as well as the other high-ranking members of the DFS, leaving only poor Rafa Kintaro to take the fall. There's a very good reason why nobody has ever been a lot. arrested or tried for Kiki's murder, except for right now with Rafa. What did Rafa caro

Quintero know about high-level Mexican politics and the U.S. funding the Mexican government? He was just a weed farmer from Sinaloa. The real bad guys, of course, got away with it because the U.S. was behind it. How many times in history has that happened? Too many to count. After the arrest of Miguel Gallardo in 1989, the Guadalajara cartel imploded, splintering into various regional cartels throughout northern Mexico. And it would be over 20 years before another cartel powerhouse returned to the city. In 2009, as the newly minted Zeta cartel began ripping through Mexico, gobbling up territory with a speed and brutality never before seen in the history of Mexican cartels,

Chapo Guzman from the Sinaloa Federation contracted with a group of killers from the Halisco state to hunt down and kill Zetas wherever they held territory. This group became known naturally as Los Matazetas, or the Zeta killers. By 2011, Los Mata Zetas and the Mexican military had substantially weakened the power of the Zetas and taken back much of their territory. I feel that was part of a point of the Lansa, working with the cartel of the government, and we were entrances with the mark of legal,

under the legality, but we're used. Today, in your country, there's that... super-policya that command was a war against the narcotrafficer and today is in a carcels of the States of the United. So, not we're, we're very discavelliedos

when we say, it's, it seems that we're trying to say, I think we're we're trying to work, but no we're trying. Now, around this same time, a rising drug trafficker from Michoakan, a man by the name of Nemesio Ruben Osseguero Servantes, aka El Mencho,

had relocated to Guadalalajal, to work for the Cartel Melenio, which is based in his home state of Michoakan. When two of the bosses from El Cartel Melenio got arrested, Mencho saw his opportunity. By partnering with the former soldiers from Los Matazetas, he formed El Cartel Halisco Nueva Generation, or the CJNG, what is today possibly the strongest criminal organization in the history of Mexico. That's a secreto, this is territory of the four letters.

Mencho himself, known as El Seigneur de los Gallos because he loves roosters and cockfighting, has never been arrested. Well, the government says that's alive. If he had been dead, he's not to do you do it, obviously. Obio. There's an rupture, maybe internal or what other organizations could enter. It's like, it's a person that's a person who manda-yuda to the people of the people and the places that the government has nobody has even known his whereabouts for years. Unlike the Sinaloa cartel, which is really just a loose federation of drug trafficking families tied by blood in marriage, the Nuevo Halisco

cartel is run like a military, like its own government. It has a top-down structure where general managers oversee the regional bosses who supervise the plaza bosses who are in charge of criminal rackets in their given territories. And that's just the business side. The military side, The military side is composed of thousands of commanders and sub-commanders and many more thousands of young cicadios, who were in a constant state of war in contested regions throughout the country. The people that are the majority are of military. And they have their randos.

They're sergeant, colonel, commandant. The organization and sophistication are mind blowing. and everything. So when they're going to do an attack or something, then they're even like a maquetta,

let's see. Also, unlike their former rivals, the Sinaloa cartel, the CJNG had the good sense to stay away from fentanyl trafficking and got in early on the crystal meth boom,

which they now export not just to the United States but to markets all over the world. They also have cells in Colombia and Ecuador and control much of the cocaine export directly out of those countries,

And they still, even in 2025, have large-scale outdoor marijuana growing operations in the state of Halisco. It's incredible. But they are far from just drug dealers. In the city of Guadalajara, for example, they control almost every aspect of daily life. It's one of the oldest cities in Mexico. There's a lot of old money here and a lot of infrastructure that some of those old money set up years in the past, from assyendas to businesses to industry. and it is basically an economic hub. Trucks, cargo, things get shipped here, things come here from the ocean.

It's a center. Outside of Mexico City, this is another major center for commerce and stuff like that. So it has many opportunities. Every cash business in the city all must pay El Piso de Propelad or a tax to the organization. So we just walked through this gigantic flea market, open-air market sort of place. They're selling fish, they're selling live birds, trinkets of all kinds. And everybody is paying a little piso to the bosses. It's a very cosmopolitan city.

It's a very educated city. It's probably the second most important city in Mexico besides Mexico City. And yet it's controlled by one or two groups who take money from restaurants. They take money from bars, strip clubs. They take money from fruit vendors. They take money from people that come up and try to wash your windshield. The money is now so tied up. The system, they call it.

It's so wound up in everyday life, in businesses, in institutions. I don't know how you put that cap back in the bag. Even the Catholic Church kicks up a percentage of their weekly donations to the real lords of the city. Were you surprised, like, just by how? How firmly the organization has this city under its boot? It's amazing. It's a very passive control that sometimes becomes very active. There are many things that sometimes becomes very active.

There are many things that here in Guadalajara not so permit, and the cartel no it's the robes, the robes of people, the robes, the robes, the carter no it doesn't it, because not enter in a, into a business that they're in,

robes, to robes, to the poor, not you know, you know, you're not robes, because if you do you're

to robes, but to the people, but the people have their, they're in the , you're not sure,

they're not a lot to me. If you you're going, if you're doing this, if you do you, they're reclutton

to the force for that you want to they're they're they're they're

The cartels, it's like before the people could sell reliably, whenever you'd when they'd buy them the material. The cartels' intelligence is vast and low-key. In the metropolitan proper area, you're not going to see a fully armed convoy of people openly displaying their affiliation. We learned that many of these fruit vendors

who sell fruit on the main avenues throughout the city also work as Alcones, or lookouts for the organization. But what I found most amazing about the presence of the Halisco cartel in Guadalajara was the consensus that they enjoy from the citizenry. I haven't seen a city this firmly in the grip of one criminal organization since my time in Kulia Khan back in 2022, when the Sinaloa Federation was still very much in control of that city. I mean, that's what the CJNG, the Halisco New Generation Cartel, I mean, they have this entire town of 7 million people under their boot. And it's creepy and it's fascinating.

They're accepted as an unpleasant but unmovable fact, a secret that lies just below the lips of everyday people. Nobody wants to say anything. It's hush whispers when they see dead bodies on the street. They get reported as car accidents when there's shell casings all over the corpses, things like that. And this is not a poor region. This is not Michoakan. This is not Guerrero. This is not Chiapas.

This is Halisco. Guadalajara is an international city of over six. 7 million people. Mainstream brands like Coca-Cola and Corona beer are based here. Puerto Vallarta is a half an hour plane ride away. I just found out that the World Cup is coming to Guadalajara next year, so they really can't let any bad press leak. The goddamn 2026 World Cup is being held here. And yet, over the last 15 years, tens of thousands of people in Halisco have disappeared. Some to femmeicide, Mexico's sick practice of killing women, and the rest to the violence, of the Nuevo-Halisco cartel.

So that monument we just passed is essentially a shrine to all of the missing people in Halisco. And if you could see, it was hundreds of hundreds of hundreds of people, women, old people. I don't mean to sound like I wrote this in a Cormac McCarthy novel, but untold tens of thousands of people in these hillsides and in the hinterlands that will never be

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Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim Book direct at storeshiltails.com On our last day in Guadalajara, we were taken to a small town about 45 minutes outside of the city to tour the site of a former CJNG training camp. This gigantic piece of property, they said there's about 300 hectares,

and it's privately owned by a few different owners, but the public just comes on and uses it. They have motorcross racing, people go on hikes. It's just kind of like a public park, but privately owned. But a couple years ago, of course, the Nuevo Halisco cartel used it as a cicadio training site. This training camp, whose location we had to keep anonymous for safety reasons, was conducted on a 700-acre piece of private land. It's a Sunday, so there's activity all over the place. I can hear a kinsignera going on. The town is about half a mile to my left. We're about 45 minutes.

from Guadalajara. So we're not that far away. We're not that deep into the countryside. But still, they felt emboldened to use this as a training site. They had military helicopters flying overhead while they were training. There goes a gunshot. It didn't matter. All of the police, all the municipal police, all of the local cops, all of the feds are all paid off. Didn't matter. We met with the man in charge of looking after the property for the owner, whom he would not identify. This man, like the recruiters, to get a person that I one

one single day, 150 people in a only way. This man, who will call Freddie, was there,

the day a representative of the cartel showed up to the property to ask him if they could rent it for a few

weeks to train some new recruits. You see, this, get no camprenetas, with a

army. You see, the cartel is constantly losing people to death, especially at

the lowest levels amongst the cicarios. And therefore, they're in constant need of private land like this ranch in order to train new recruits into the organization. They were around, daily.

The maximum that I get in a only way, were around 300 people, in a single year. But, diary, daily, they'd get minimum of five to 10 people,

daily. Listen as he gives a glimpse into how Mexico's largest drug cartel trains and disciplines its members. They're they're identifications, they can't telephone, they can't roba,

yes? All they all it's all they can't but yeah that we're in the training

stuff very very very better than than they're

in the military they're they're these the claves they had to learn

to learn to arm disarm an arm a complete yeah

so so I think I get to be that more was

more than was R15 and the and the the one

cheo and you you had to disarm If you were in a

If you're in a supap, because they're in a pussing a puss in the head. And, every is a specialist in a certain arm. In fact, the people that pass in the training, the capacity, and that they're not

for that, not for that's not for that they're in all of them have, they're, detainees there for when it's car and a canion. The people that

could get to escape, those had, and they'd put them a madrasera to others. To others, if you'd escape, there even,

those were they'd him admitted to us that he witnessed the CJNG killing people on the ranch

and then dissolving their bodies in acid and diesel fuel. To use, they use sopladores. Soplodas

for that the fire be more intense. A fragua. And more, The fact, the topos, when they get into the water, they're in those air, and it's air,

it's consumed more rapidly, and it'll up the temperature. If you're up to the temperature, that is, this, and the body is completely cancelled. Uh-huh. And what that gets, what you get to get, it, it's, when you're doing to work. The same way that they're sworn enemies the Zetas used to do, But, as the saying goes, we become what we hate.

So basically what we learned is that the cartel, the Nuevo-Halisco cartel, the way they operate is they'll find a plot of land to use to train new recruits, and then they'll go to a different plot, but they'll never return to the same area. So that's what they do. They just jump around. There's a huge need for this kind of land to be able to train up people. And I don't know. I don't think they have to twist people. arms. I think people either accept the money that they give them or just let them use it out of fear.

What's also so striking to me is the intense discipline that the CJNG demands of everyone in its organization, especially when it comes to drug use. You, if you're, if you can't consume it. You can't consume it. You can't consume? What do you doping? When you say that you're an antideopin, when you say that's an antideopin, come with prevas of urine, to try to try and try to be able to be utiling?

It's strictly forbidden and punishable by death. This comes in stark contrast to what we saw while we filmed a few years ago in Kulia Khan with members of the Maitos in the Sinaloa organization. All those guys do is sit around, sniff coke, smoke weed, and get drunk while they wait for something to happen. So perhaps this rigid, military-style discipline and zero-tolerance policy towards drug use within its ranks is one of the ways that the Halisco cartel has managed to persevere over its biggest rival after all these years. Notice also how Freddie was blown away

by the weaponry of the cartel. When you're saying the capacity of the moment, you're talking to, that ametragglers, we've heard about lanceacuettes, things that can't tumble things in the air. This type of armament. We're talking?

I what I did, and this is, rarita, That's not even though. Well, no, no more don't know it's. But, but if they're much armamento.

I don't know how I've got much in the but I, I see the mentado of those 50. What I see, actually, did with that, the capacity of armament

that has, it's incredible. It's my theory. Maybe this is not the case. but I think what he didn't want to speak about was remote guided missiles that they have in their possession, basically ways of taking things out of the sky with remote guided missiles. It's pretty obvious by now that the CJNG is teeming with high-ranking military

and ex-military on its payroll, and therefore it makes sense that this organization would have military-grade weapons. Just as an example of how powerful some of these people are, the manager of this land, who allowed this cartel unit to train here, one of the heads, one of the managers of those cicadios, he comes up to him and they kind of get friendly. And he goes, hey, if you ever need to go to the United States for anything, just let me know. And our guy goes, well, I can't, I don't have a visa.

He goes, you want a visa? I'll be right back. 24 hours later, he had gotten this guy, no family in the United States, not a lot of money, no real reason to be there. He had gotten this guy a diplomatic visa. If you're ever in the Guadalajara area and you need private security or just a place to train Krav Maga, the Kravmaga Academy of Guadalajara is the number one place

to learn Israeli self-defense and fighting skills. Yeah, those are the dudes that protected me while I was down in Guadalajara filming this episode. These are some of the best people that I've ever met. Check them out. The link to their website and their social media will be in the description of this episode. Thank you so much Kravmaga Academy. Famously, back in 2015, during a military raid to capture El Mentiono, Sicarios from the Halisco cartel shot down a Mexican military helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade. We're in the land where one of the only confirmed down federal helicopters was put down by the local controlling interests. so they have air superiority doesn't mean what it means in other parts of Mexico here.

This is in the culture, in the industry. This is like, how are you going to fight something that is just like part of the landscape in a lot of ways? We have good reason to believe this has happened more than just once, from what Freddie told us off camera and from what a young Sicario, who we interviewed, told us about his time working with the cartel. We're in our... In our... ...centro of operations.

And report, a bulldo. An helicopter of marina. A helicopter of marina. I mean, I... I mean, I... I reported, in the air, and all, with the 50s...

Paa, pass, pass, pass. They're they're to turn. The helicopter... ...cai. ...cae helicopter. But... ...no, no, it's... ...cac...

...c... No, call it Tadda, tauta Hum, and it was in the earth So,

then they're, they're they're playing, they're their equipment, their arms, all, and no

the news, nothing, nothing, nothing, no, no, no, no,

those were, those found, but, no, they're not they're, they're not,

this young man, who Will called David, was 19 years old when he joined the Halisco new General generation cartel.

Every day they get new recruits and dozens and dozens of people every day join up. I don't believe, I've heard of the rumors of that, how did you asked, because I asked, how you got to do you know what I've heard that for Facebook, but I don't think, until two young-sittles of, between 14, 16, a year, maximum, and you said, how did you, you know, how do you, say, how do you say, Listen to how he was recruited, trained, and then forced to fight in combat more intense

than most real soldiers see in war. I was in TikTok. One day, normal, and me saw an offer. And what they use in the photo? Camionettes, cars, arms. And you put, You want to work, you in the four letters? So I

I go So, I think, well, I want to work Why? Because

I mean me me they're very different in the video. I'm a message

to this person and I go, I want to work. And the first

question what I do? From your house to a central

Caminera new of the Halisco how you and you

some 30 minutes okay in 30 minutes you'll be there. Oh, okay.

And what I said I'm going to be a rapid I said I'm going to do my chalet and my quix and gorele

yeah but no I that day me I was of my my wife of my

wife and my car and I I brought to other reclutado another

man I'm up to the part of the back and he was

that the manchch was very nervous I I was a

I was just why, no, I'd have been able to be quite, but I

was quite we were on the carterterer and we said, and we said, and I

gotcha in the and I gotcha for the, for a pocto I was I was I went

to the rancho I'm met and boom backate okay

desvited all All, all. Desvist. Rapid, rapid. You devishter. You're sitting.

Ponded the rope. Rapid. Putte the rope. While they're revisance your carousal. Revised your pantalones.

Revised your carterer. Revised all that. Why? Because they're because they're to get to

get to the police, the government or something, this person is from here, this person is from here,

So they're sado. They're all They're going to To get a rastrow of Nothing. We're going to We can't another

Go back again. Let's go there. The routine It was simple. 8 of the morning You'd You'd get

where you You'd have the car Formabas to start to make to do exercise We're

We're very A type military Very style of military. Why? Because the commandant of that school was an ex-militar. And between

the commandant and those that they were to support him, there were militaries, there were marinos. The training is almost equal to what what they're in the military. No, it's more intensive. Oh, I see? Yes. Because the military that I said, that I how she

there, that was a recluta? He said, oh, and this you,

do you do you? I said, no. I never did to do the in the

program, it was when I gasiated. You know, you're so you got,

you're people, we've meted in a quarter little and

us and we have been two grandas of those. But anteriorement

us did a explanation. You what have what you have to do is tapers with what they can,

and a little and they're just going to let's get a minute. We're getting like three minutes there, three minutes we metier, and

I, I was desperate. In a desperation that I was doing and, and of a sudden, I said, I had I, I

knew, I was I felt that I, I knew, I, I Because it's what it's The gas And more If there's If there's

If there's If there's And two And two granades Of those Of those? No, without ventilation

It's horrible I'm Me I'm To desivir a person, to kill And more

apart to destasal her In the Entranement But you You have to Someone Matting

during the Entranement I'm We're gonna us We're gonna ourselves To do Who?

Who? Okay, okay Okay, okay Okay, wait me, okay, Who are the people in

this rancho that were to die for, for you that's that trainen? Rateros

Ladrones Holy Fucking shit They're They're a arm that

I don't know but it was a arm that only had government

they're they're and the commandant he got her and he he wula the and then he'll

he said you come panther come and I'm me going to get to

you're my too tio was too well to the head manzano was his

apodo was his apodo whellele the He was only with the cartel for three months, and by my count, killed over 20 people, including shooting down a military helicopter and executing the soldiers on the ground. The frightening part about all of this is that there's no end in sight. This territory is already controlled and owned.

So the flare-ups you see in places like Tijuana or Kulia Khan, those are all multiple groups fighting over control. The war is over here. It has been for years. Unlike most cartels who fracture or dissolve after just a few years, the Halisco New Generation Cartel has been going 14 years strong, an eternity in the modern world, especially for such a violent and infamous organization.

They're invested in the local economy in a lot of big ways. So it's in their best interest, not to... And we are in a place that is a product of an evolution when it comes to organized crime that's been going on since a while now. and all of the lessons, harder lessons learned by people all the way back in the 70s that started this whole phenomenon, the people that are in control now took all these lessons and they've pretty much made a pretty solid move and set up here. They just seem to be getting stronger. Well, certainly in the short term, these guys here, the four letters, are going to be taken advantage of all the press,

all the implosion that's going on and seen a lot of. and the North, and they're going to keep eating. As far as this whole thing, the past few years, I think they're the winners in a lot of ways. They can notes, I mean, the amount of sophistication, lessons learned, OPSEC, operational security, information, intelligence, all the precautions they take, how discreet they are now, all of it is an indication of a,

this is the latest evolution. the latest evolution of this problem, and they are capable, capable individuals. Mencho is still very much alive, and as of this recording, the news has come out about an alliance between the CJNG and Los Chapitos, the battle-torn faction of the Sinaloa cartel run by Chappo Guzman's oldest son, Ivan Archivaldo. This means that drug routes, once controlled by Sinaloa, will now be shared with Halisco, only furthering the group's power and profits. So how does this all end? It's just going to be military action at some point in the near future. It has to be, it's building up to that.

And I think in a lot of ways, a lot of the conversations that's being had both by the government and the media and just people in general, they're preparing us for some sort of open war. I think with the recent announcement of some of like a very specific naming of a few families and family members being designated now in a federal investigation with the designation of terrorism is the first step for actually doing something of this nature. Ed Calderon thinks by an invasion from the United States. In our lifetime and pretty soon we're probably going to see the first airstrikes of some sort on Mexico by the United States. The United States has been flying drones over all of this region and over most of the Mexican region where there's these cartel forces moving around,

not armed according to their agreement with Mexico. Something's coming. Some sort of dramatic action. Muhammad Karzai being exploded in the Iraqi airport with a drone ginsu knife missile by Trump, something of that nature. I don't think America is ever actually going to bomb Mexico. Short of that, the second most far-fetched scenario

is that Mexico City says, we're cleaning our country up for good. Do they even have the capability, the weaponry? I think it's like one for one. I think these guys are armed almost like they are. We just heard the description of a unit of over 40 Mexican Army soldiers being killed by these Sicario forces and none of it showing up on the news. This is possible, of course.

But I think it'll be a more gradual retreat into the Ananesey. of white-collar society. As the cartel goes on and the years go by, it will continue to wash its billions of dollars into endless legitimate businesses. As time goes on and Mexican society continues to develop into an important international country, the cartel will be increasingly forced to hide or taper down its violence in exchange for a more civilized way of conducting its affairs. I'm still bullish on Mexico. I think it's improving, and in the long run, it will eventually become a great power in the Western Hemisphere, a free country with free speech and law and order. But not any time soon, I can tell you that. After visiting Guadalajara and Halisco,

I got to witness firsthand the iron grip that organized crime has over that country. And no grip is stronger than that of Mencho the rooster and the Halisco New Generation Cartel. I got to say, though, it fascinates me. Who's running this show? Where do they live? They live in Puerto Vallarta, that they live in Gate, communities in Guadalajara. And do they know what's going on? Do they know about all these teenagers getting burnt to death because they didn't want to be part of the cartel or do they know about how helicopters are getting shot out of the sky and innocent people getting killed? Do they know about this? And can they just give the order, hey, no more of that. We're a clean business.

We just sell drugs. It makes me have less sympathy. for these people. Truly, you know, I can't say that I really agree with anything that Donald Trump has done, but these guys are terrorists. I mean, this is terroristic behavior. I don't really know what else you call it. I mean, it's monstrously evil is what it is. Yes, they take care of the people that build roads. They don't make people be part of the cartel. That's something. But do 15, 16-year-olds really have a choice when they say, oh, yeah, all my friends are doing it, it looks cool. And then they show up here. And when they show up here to this training site, they have no choice.

So I don't really know another word to ascribe to that. It's evil. All right, you guys, that's been today's video. Thank you so much for watching. We really appreciate it. Make sure to leave a like and a comment. Subscribe to the channel, and we will see you next week. Take care.

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