The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - Inside The Sinaloa Cartel's Fight For Survival: How Mexico's Oldest Cartel Is Making It's Last Stand
Episode Date: September 21, 2025The Sinaloa Cartel is unraveling—its leaders captured, its factions at war, and U.S. pressure at an all-time high. Yet in Nogales, Sonora, one of Mexico’s most strategic border plazas, business co...ntinues as usual. In this episode, we travel to Nogales to uncover: -How the Chapitos betrayed El Mayo Zambada with the DEA’s help -Why Nogales is vital for drug and human smuggling routes into the U.S. -First-hand accounts from locals and former smugglers inside cartel operations -The rise of retail drug markets (“tiendas”) across Mexico -How cartels enforce their own version of “law and order” in border towns From bloody betrayals in Culiacán to quiet cartel control in Nogales, this story reveals the new face of Mexico’s underworld. Today's Episode Is #Sponsored By The Following: PrizePicks! Visit https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/CONNECT and use code CONNECT and get $50 in lineups when you play your first $5 lineup! Ava! Take control of your credit right now. Download the Ava app today, and when you join using promo code CONNECT20, you’ll save 20% for your first year—monthly or annual, your choice. FRE! Get 20% off you first order at https://frepouch.com using code CONNECT at checkout! Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow 00:00 Sinaloa Cartel in Crisis 02:03 Chaos and Violence in Culiacán 04:08 How Drug Trafficking Has Changed 05:24 Nogales: A Key Border Plaza 06:15 The Mechanics of Smuggling 08:17 This Episode Is Sponsored By PrizePicks and Ava! 11:31 Why Nogales Matters 13:01 Inside the World of a Cartel Operator 16:04 This Episode Is Sponsored By FRE 18:27 Cartel Evolution and Internal Rivalries 22:31 US Pressure and Crackdowns on Corruption 26:10 Retail Drug Markets in Mexico 30:05 Different Cartel Rules for Drugs 31:48 Cartel Justice and Crime in Nogales 33:24 Low-Key Tension on the Border 35:35 Why Locals Don't Break Away 36:19 Impunity and the Limits of Law Enforcement 37:12 What Really Matters in the Drug War 38:53 The Future of the Sinaloa Cartel 39:05 Closing Thoughts & Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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before the marijuana was what
triumphed.
And as a raid of all what
what was it,
legalized and all that
it was a decontrol.
Here is more is more
to be here to
get to get the frontere
and that there are
who are who are
without permissue,
those,
also,
there were many
all the nights
from at
two, put,
until at the three,
four, the ma'amana,
ballads, car,
The Sinaloa cartel is in a fight for its very survival.
Not only is Oviedo El Raton-Guzman in U.S. witness protection right now snitching his
ass off, alleging amongst many other things, that his organization's cocaine plug was none
other than Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, but as of this recording, old man
Maio Zambada has pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges in Manhattan federal court and is being
ordered to hand over $15 billion in illicit assets. He's cooked. Saccabal. And the political
pressure from the U.S. isn't letting up.
Mexican senators are openly calling out the blatant corruption of the Marana party inside
the halls of Congress in Mexico City. And President Claudia Shane Brom just extradited another round of
kingpins and most wanted cartel players to the United States, ostensibly as a way of appeasing the
American government and preventing them from looking even deeper into her party's ties to the
Sinaloa cartel.
All this is the government, man.
The government is the, what is the, that's the, because if the government
could, we don't have not grown enough, but the cartel grew, because the government
because the people received part of what a cartel had, the government had.
And that's the detail.
And then the corruption no
this will be a worse.
And finally, the carnage in Kulia Khan continues
between the Maisa and the Chapisa.
It's estimated that over a thousand people
have been killed or disappeared in that city
since the fighting began last September.
The other day I read that a van filled with
20 decapitated bodies
showed up on the side of the highway in Kulia Khan one morning.
This kind of violence, unfortunately,
has become par for the course in Kulia Khan these days.
The Civil War broke out last year after one of Chapo's sons, Joaquin Guzma Lopez,
lured old man Mayo Zambada to a property in Sonora under the guise of discussing a real estate opportunity.
It was there that Zambada was ambushed, kidnapped, and extradited to the United States,
where he will likely die in prison.
This mission was almost certainly conducted by the DEA without any knowledge from the Mexican government.
So think about that.
The Guzman kids, Chapposso's sons, orchestrated this.
this with the American federal government, unbeknownst to anyone in Mexico.
If I were Mayo's kids, the ones left running his side of the cartel, I'd be furious too.
But remember, both families have been telling on each other for decades, most notably Vicente
Zimbada, one of Mayo's oldest sons, who testified against Chapo in open court at his trial
in 2019.
And amidst all of this chaos and infighting, the remnants of the Beltron-Levo organization,
the former third wheel of the Sinaloa cartel
are attempting to regain territory in Sinaloa
and the surrounding states.
Wow.
It would seem by all accounts
that the once mighty Sinaloa cartel
as we knew it
is disintegrating before our eyes.
The government
is not even corrompid.
You're not,
not are friends with the government
or military or
or guardia civil
that you're,
they're?
But how is this actually
to have to
do a
visa and
all,
being a
government
and all.
Because
there's
communication,
it's a
calient,
it's a
disarrue.
But how
is this
actually
affected
drug
trafficking
and drug
routes
into the
United States?
Specifically
in the
border
regions of
northwest
Mexico that
the
Sinaloa
cartel
controls.
Because after
all,
that's what
this whole
war on
drugs
is supposed to
be about,
stopping
drugs
from flowing
onto
American streets. I took a trip down to the city of Nogales in Sonora, Mexico, to find out.
And before we get started, if you could please do me a huge favor and leave a like and a comment
on this video and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. It helps push it out to a lot more
people and we really, really appreciate it. Andalé, wade, v.
Well, we always have used Cartel of Isina-Sin-Loy, the Mimos and Shappos, and now
to the pears.
number of the
train, nobody can't
parer. And here the plaza
are you, they're going to
not going to paris what is drug.
No, I don't think they're, because
they say, no, because
they also, we also want, we're
because if the people
if one is much more than
the whole of the army.
So, more than the
people is the who has
the response.
Nogales, the small
border city in the northernmost
state of Sonora, is one of the most
important plasasas in Mexico.
Plaza is a term that was coined years ago at the dawn of the Guadalajara cartel,
which marked the beginning of Mexican organized crime.
The simplest way to describe a plaza is that it's a hub,
a geographically vital city or territory where drugs or migrants are warehoused
before being smuggled across the border into the United States.
Historically, plasas like Tijuana, Nogales, and Ciudad Juarez
have been controlled or contested by larger cartels located,
deeper inside Mexico, especially by Sinaloa during Chapo's time.
He coveted these plasas for one obvious reason, their close proximity to the United States.
Deches, every day, every minute, it's crossing a lot.
In that moment.
In that moment, it's crossing a lot.
Securo, sure.
Controlling a plaza means having access to the best smuggling points in the city.
It means being connected to people who can organize drug shipments by hiring mechanics to
to build trap cars to high drugs, recruit drug mules to drive the cars across the border,
pay off border guards, if possible, organize Punteros or lookouts to assist the mules with the smuggling,
and finally, to contract with people on the U.S. side of the border to stash the drugs
after they've successfully made it across. It's a logistical nightmare, and impossible for an outside
organization to operate on their own. They need an alliance with the locals. That's why, in the 20 years
since the war on drugs began in Mexico, cities like Tijuana, Juarez, Matamoros, and Nuevo-Larredo
have had some of the highest homicide rates, not just in the country, but the entire world.
Competing cartels fight for control of these cities in order to gain access to all of the
resources that I just mentioned. And that brings us to Nogales. This city of only a few
hundred thousand has been held for decades as a stronghold of the Sinaloa cartel.
Listen as a local smuggler explains why this city and the surrounding
rounding areas of Sonora are so important to the cartel.
Not only is it about proximity to the U.S. and the large drug market in Phoenix just three hours to the north, but also access to Interstate 10, which runs east to Texas and west to California, both huge markets for drugs and people.
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Mexican cartels are bound by the same laws of physics as any company trafficking legal goods.
They need to get their merchandise from point A to point B in the fastest way possible.
The desert regions of Sonora and Southern Arizona have always been outlaw country,
long before cartels took them over.
Human smuggling is the foundation of illegal business in Sonora
and goes back many decades to the beginning of the 20th century.
The smugglers, known as Poilleros, are local people who are intimately familiar with the terrain
and utilize the vast stretches of barren Sonoran Desert to sneak migrants across the border into the U.S.
Even today, while it is taxed and controlled by the Sinaloa cartel,
human smuggling remains a mom-and-pop enterprise in Nogales.
The biggest difference now is the huge amount of money that's at stake.
As years went by, and law enforcement on the border became more difficult to evade,
the price of smuggling skyrocketed.
And how cost to a Mexican?
10,000 to 15,000, dollars.
The price has subbed, from all these politicians, the change.
The trade, yeah.
There's, there's different prices, but it's, it has been a lot of it.
It's the trachevo of the undocumented.
It's for that now we have more danger.
Because it's more difficult to cross them?
To you, what's it difficult?
Cruiser a drug or a person?
Human.
And look where we're we're talking.
Now, under Trump, forget about it.
This is a man we'll call Frank.
Frank was born in Nogales, but grew up as an American in Tucson, Arizona.
Like, we're like in the gaboche.
Yeah, I'm very, very impuished to that system.
Yeah, from the other side.
I'm like, like, you know, yeah.
Like, like, all the time when I got to get, because three
me deported, and the three times I'd go, and I don't want to
here, no second, I'd want to go to the border.
Like many Mexican-Americans who grew up close to the border,
Frank has had intimate ties with organized crime in Nogales since he was a kid.
He got his start selling cocaine for the organization while he was still in high school.
I was a time at the time of the 17 years.
I started to vend cocaine in the school.
And you were part of the organization or just...
I was going to be doing, as I was doing, as I was doing, as it was going to go
and going to go sub-y-and-you-i-and-what-you-certain.
And who was the organization, the cartel, the mafia that had control of the city in this
time, has like 25 years?
Eventually, he moved up and became a logistics operator for the cartels.
for the cartel, overseeing huge shipments of coke and crystal meth spilling over the border.
I was saying that it was a part like Phoenix.
Ah.
Just got to be it,
if all were good,
that was all the cells,
and then they'd have a vehicle,
and then he went to release the car,
that all is still,
wow.
Just check-
Just going to the mercantia,
of three to four tonnellas of cocaine.
He also guarded stash houses and hired American drug mules to transport the drugs to different
parts of the country. During our interview, Frank revealed something very interesting, the answer to
a question I've been asking since I started this podcast three years ago. Does the Sinaloa cartels
send people from their plasas in Mexico into the United States with the specific intent to sell
the drugs they smuggle over? And you think they're going to, they send people to the people there to
cities specifically for
vending drugs or is that
no more result,
that the immigrants of Mexico
of Sinaloa, of Nogales
resultar, to
have to move in there and
they have connections
with the cartel here.
Well, many of them
people to go.
In serious?
They're going to
get in their placidata
for,
to have their territory.
According to him, yes, they still do.
But you, the capos here,
manden pistoleros to take or to
or to make people at other side?
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Sometimes, like in the case of Frank, cartel members in the U.S. will be organically produced.
Families who grow up in cartel strongholds like Nogales immigrate to the U.S. to raise their kids.
But they maintain close contacts in Mexico. Then, when that kid comes of age, he taps those contacts and begins working with the car.
cartel, but now as an invaluable American insider.
Things really began to unravel in Nogales and for the Sinaloa cartel in general around 2008,
when Arturo Beltran Lava, Chappo's former partner and the third-ranked
Kapo among the bosses of the Sinaloa Federation, deployed his forces from his stronghold in
southern Sinaloa to Nogales in an attempt to rest the city from Chappo.
Frank remembers vividly the Beltran Chapo war.
He describes those times simply,
as the terror.
And when it
was
the
Beltran
to the
city
is when
it's
in
the
terror
how it
describe
what
describe
what
what
of
what
the
because
the
all of
all
of
two
to
four
of the
man
about
those
caros
couring
running
much
much
violence
all
of
all
of
the
imagery
that
we
with the worst of Mexican cartel violence from brutal killings, shootouts, and massacres
took place multiple times a day in this small little city.
They're when they got a corner, they'd get them and they'd get them
and then we'd go back.
And then it was like that, that's just that,
it was like, there was like,
flash.
It was, so, of a sudden, you know, and then,
so, so, so, so, so, there's,
there, there, ballazzo, for here,
for here, that amazeered three
and other three for here.
When I went to say, I said,
I like,
in what I'm in the
I'm getting, I,
I've got,
seven in less of two months.
For here,
or by here,
or or
comarra,
because two
women,
women,
that just goes to show you
what a strategically vital place it is.
The Beltrons eventually
fled Nogales around 20,
and a modicum of peace returned to the city.
But much of the damage was already done,
especially to the tourist industry and the once thriving downtown.
All right-tundo, because it's,
before it was tourism in the frontier,
yeah no.
The same, there's no, there no,
because the people had to get to the street to that.
Because, too, there were in the balaceres that there,
in the city,
there were people innocent
that were in the street
and they were not adequate
and they'd have a ballast.
For that, it was just too.
As the years went by, however,
the Sinaloa cartel would be faced
with a far greater existential threat
than just incursions from a rival cartel.
First, the price and demand in the United States
for Mexican brickweed,
a backbone of the Sinaloa cartel
and a crucial element of the underground economy
in Sonora continued to fall.
Now in 2025,
there is zero demand for Mexican-grown weed north of the border.
That element of the cartel business is finished.
But we're as intelligent here in Mexico,
before the marijuana was what triumphed.
And as a raise of all what happened,
that legalized and all of that,
it's a discontrol.
But worse than that,
year after year,
the relationship between the Mayo and Chapo factions of the organization
continued to strain.
It didn't help that both sides were ratting on each other.
But who knows, because Chappo was
the case of the chiefs,
not know, with who you're going to,
because we always have seen in Colorado
and they're the same Mayos and Chappos,
and now to the pears.
In 2016, Chappo was arrested for the final time
and extradited to the U.S.
His son Ovidio went down in 2023
after the second Kuliacanaso, and then the dagger.
The final blow came last year in July of 24,
when El Padrino himself, Ismail Mayo Zambada,
got kidnapped and extradited to the United States,
where he finally waved the white flag and pled guilty,
the last of the great Mexican narcos gone.
And now, in cities and regions throughout Mexico,
the political pressure from the United States
and the Trump administration has caused an unprecedented wave of crackdowns
by the Mexican government against organized crime.
Check out with this Sicario, who works for the Chapito side of the cartel,
had to say about the current relationship between the cops and the criminals in Nogales.
For this, right, we don't bring us nothing,
because the police is the, like, we have as allies,
yeah not are.
The agreement has been broken.
That's all we heard while we were down there.
The agreement is off.
What about?
What's arreclos?
With the police?
No, no, no, they want to do.
Yeah, they're
agrounding, as they say,
Juan and Pedro.
Yeah,
said, they're going to
say,
but they're in the
also.
I mean, I'm going to,
personally,
that's probably
that's probably
that's going to,
this agreement
refers, of course,
to the long-standing
system of payoffs
by the cartel
to officials in the
Federales,
all the way up
to the military,
and even the Mexican
Navy.
This corruption
is what allows
organized crime to thrive on the scale that it does in Mexico. But now, at least for the time being,
that system has been put on hold. And it makes sense. Politicians and their cronies in the military are
under a microscope in every state in Mexico. In fact, recently the governor of Sonora had his
visa revoked by the U.S. State Department for his alleged ties to the cartels. This might be the first time
in the modern history of Mexico that this has happened. The fun has been suspended indefinitely, and
The privilege of paying to operate seems to have been revoked, at least here in Nogales.
In fact, when these Sicadios agreed to meet us on a remote piece of property located west
of the city, they left their guns at home.
They were worried about being pulled over by the Federales and taken to jail.
Only the local cops, they tell us, still have their back.
So, does this mean that the Sinaloa cartel has closed the books, abandoned their most coveted
plaza, and returned to Sinaloa?
No, not by a long shot.
They're evolving, as they always do.
We were told that human smuggling routes have moved far to the east of Nogales in the remote
Patagonia Mountains, which provide thousands of miles of natural cover for the Poilleros to play
their cat and mouse game. And of course, the official border crossing in the heart of Nogales
is still active 24 hours a day with commercial trucks, passenger cars, and even pedestrians,
bringing heroin, fentanyl crystal meth and cocaine into the United States.
There are so there are much.
They've done
many of the electric
and they're
one of the parts
and they're going to
get to
get, and
all that
they're
doing
coming on
the front of the
door.
Oh,
yeah,
with a
passport or
citizens.
And those
who have the
safe houses
on the other
side are
are also
are
Mexicans or
are?
Revolved.
They're
to
many of
many of
many of
various.
They're
to be
Hondurneos
and
of other countries, working for the company.
Nogales is also home to another illicit phenomena
that has swept Mexican cities over the past 25 years,
and that is retail demand for drugs.
Make no mistake, Mexico has a drug problem.
It isn't just us in the United States.
So there's a growing middle class in Mexico now.
We're standing on a hilltop next to an old barrio
with shanty homes and places that look like that, right?
But next to it will be
brand new condos built by people who work in factories, their wages are going up, they're making more
money, they're able to send their kids to school. But unfortunately also, this has opened up a market
for drugs, especially drugs like meth, speed, coke, working class drugs that bus drivers and
factory workers take to, you know, stay up and get through their shifts. And this has been
This has been a boon for cartels.
It's made up for a lot of the money that they've lost now that they can't transport weed to the United States anymore.
They can sell drugs, they can sell hard drugs in Mexico.
They don't even have to cross them.
Retail drug shops, or Tiena's, as they're known, are dotted throughout the city.
We stop by one of them with Frank to see for ourselves how easy it is to score dope.
Hint, hint, very easy.
All right, we just came from a little Tienda.
buying some coke.
The tiendas are what they call
the little Punto de Ventas, the
drug spots here in
Nogales, and they got it all over
the place. Just little
teenage kids, just like
you would see in any ghetto in America
and they're just hanging out
in front of the house and we just
pulled up, copped a bag
it took about a minute and a half
and then we were out.
Did they do sell crystal?
Yeah.
So Coke Crystal
weed. What else do they sell Chiva? They sell rock cocaine. That's what so interesting about these
border towns is they're obviously heavily influenced by American drug culture. They sell crack
at these little Tienas. It was something you would have seen in Harlem or Baltimore in the 1990s,
old school curb serving, young teenagers all trying to get their start with the cartel working
as lookouts, pitchers, and runners. They even have these Tiendas advertised,
on Google Maps. By the way, quick disclaimer, I am not promoting or encouraging the use of
illegal drugs or criminality of any kind or in any way encouraging my fan base to go into these
kinds of neighborhoods to purchase drugs. It's extremely dangerous and my team and I only did it
for documentary purposes. That being said, it is wild how cheap the blow is in Mexico. And it makes
sense. World cocaine prices have bottomed out in recent years due to massive overproduction in
Colombia. Mexican drug traffickers can't fetch very much wholesale for a brick of cocaine in the
United States right now. So naturally, a lot of what they import from South America stays in Mexico
to get stepped on and then sold out at the retail level in Tienas like these. It's an important
source of income for the cartels, especially since their marijuana export market to the U.S.
became extinct. Anyone in Nogales caught operating a Tienda without permission from the organization?
Well, you can guess what happens to them.
In clandestiniment.
Yeah, but if they're going,
be sure, if you have a sort.
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B-21.
Another fascinating element to the retail drug market in Mexico are the drugs that the cartel permits and the ones that it doesn't.
It seems like every plaza has a different set of rules.
depending on which organization is running things.
For example, we learned that in Nuevo-Laredo, on the far eastern side of Mexico,
which is run by the northeast cartel, in that city, crystal meth use and selling is completely forbidden.
But here in Nogales, for example, weed, coke, and meth are permitted.
It's heroin and fentanyl use and distribution that are strictly against the rules.
It's what is
What is is the crystal
And what is is the fentanyl
The fentanyl is
The fentanyl is
The fentanyl is
It's prohibited
And the chiva
Also,
Yeah, it's prohibitive
No?
Prohibit
Why?
Because
Because
It's more
Perligrosa
But I mean
That's more
Addictive
It's more
Dignia
But you
You think
That is
A Politico
Of the
Cartels
That they
Adopted
When
us in the US and our government
and our government
and they're
and they're
to asker to
to your government
for what to give
the amount of
I think so because
as they're like
it's like to
it's like to
get to go ahead of
they don't want
opioids in the community
it is strictly for export
to the US
the same rule applies
in most places
that the Sinaloa cartel
dominates
including in their
home base of Kulia Khan. Another positive thing, if you want to call it positive, that the presence of
an uncontested cartel in a plaza like Nogales does is eliminate petty crime from the neighborhoods
that they control. Here in Sanora, in that moment, I feel, a me, me pernificed, well pacificed,
no? Because we've maintained. You respond to any, to any, to any call to be the police, the
Frank took us to a barrio called Buenos Aires, which is literally pushed up right against
the border fence. I'm in this barrio overlooking the border fence. You can see it right there.
On the other side is Arizona. So this colonia, this neighborhood right here is filled with
lookouts and obviously drug selling spots. What was really interesting that we found out from
the locals is that in years past, this neighborhood was super dangerous. You had drug addicts everywhere,
armed robberies, break-ins.
And then when the mafia, as they call it, the cartel moved in, they put a stop to all of that.
They don't like thieves.
They don't like open drug use.
So if you're caught stealing or breaking into somebody's house, if you're a normal person,
you just go tell one of these lookouts and they run it up the flagpole.
And pretty soon that fucking guy that just robbed you, you won't be seeing him no more.
In fact, the Sicario, who we interviewed, told us that that was one of his duties,
to locate and kill common criminals who are wreaking havoc on ordinary citizens.
What they were wrong, people who were disarrayneying,
those who were who were robing, extortioning,
that's, to be careful the people.
When they came to the county patrilia, the vigilance was,
as, as, as, as, as, to the company,
to the commerce, and, getting the money,
well, they had,
we had many in list, and, more or less where, and we went for them,
and we were present them.
But here is more to care that not get here,
to care the frontier,
and that they're going to sell drugs
without permission.
Those, also, also they need to be.
But it's incredible to me
that a criminal organization
in a place like Nogales can actually reduce crime
when just a thousand miles south in Kulia Khan,
they've turned that city into a war zone.
Such is the great irony of Mexico.
And it's true, despite the murderous,
irreconcilable beef between the Chapitos and the Maito,
in the state of Sinaloa.
In Nogales, things are as low-key as they've ever been.
So, Nogales is split into two territories.
There's a railroad that cuts up through the middle of the city,
and on one side is the Maisa, the Maoz,
and the other side is controlled by the Chapisa.
And according to our guide,
even though they're down in Kulia Khan killing each other every day,
here in the border, there's a mandate to keep the violence to a minimum.
So things are actually very chill right now,
which is smart.
I mean, they got enough problems dealing with,
dealing with the military, dealing with our government,
that they don't need to be running around
making things any hotter than they need to be.
This is an order that comes from the top brass of the cartel.
So that's what we have to do.
That's not, that we're not,
we're not to be able to be it.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, but right now, because,
because,
how it's the government more
most we're more difficult, we're not doing the
civil, normal, we don't
have nothing, we don't have
weapons, we don't have to
go to things of serenels,
so that not get ready to be
both sides seem to go about
operating their tiendas
and their smuggling activities in silence.
For now, anyways.
I asked Frank why, why in the face
of all of this chaos within the
Cina Loa organization, do the
plaza bosses in Sonora not come
together to form their own cartel
and send both the Maitos and the
Chapitos back where they came from.
His answer was simple.
He's a lot of manpower.
And somebody that
have the sufficient to do.
Both.
To do a carter, because...
There's got to have more soldiers and the more
cicharios, more men.
Because they know how
are the routes and all what they're trying to
kill.
It is Mexico, after all.
and the ability and the willingness to commit violence is still the most powerful currency.
Just listen to what this cicario said when I asked him how he had managed to work as a killer
for almost 10 years and never get arrested.
And never get arrested?
No.
Wow.
I've been a point, but always I'm going to leave.
It's just the problem.
Well, well,
because...
Because no investigation
that's still,
no.
If not you're not
you're not there's a testigo,
no there's...
It's just easy to get away with murder.
And when you've got the backing
from an organized crime group
with armies of lookouts
all over the city and the region,
it's basically a guarantee.
And that is the fundamental problem
with law and order in Mexico.
Arresting and extraditing drug lords
won't make homicide detectives
investigate murders more thoroughly,
and as long as long as,
Because they don't, they'll allow for new criminal leaders and structures to emerge even after
they've toppled the old ones.
Well, the truth, nobody can't stop.
Passed all the time, it's all the time to go.
What they're going to do it, they're going to stop what is drugs.
For me, it's a job.
I don't have a preference of, I don't I'm not so enamored.
But if I do let's go to the command of the command of that I'm going to, I'm going to
go ahead.
I'm going to go ahead.
I think that's why I'm in this game, said, gentlemen.
So, look past the headlines.
Look past the U.S. attorney triumphantly declaring that Mayo Zambata has pled guilty
and is being forced to forfeit all of his money.
Good luck getting that, by the way.
And that they've scored a big win on the war on drugs.
That's all noise.
The only thing we as Americans should be paying attention to is the street price of drugs in our country.
Is the price going up due to a shortage of supply?
Just look under a freeway overpass in every month.
major city or any small town. The answer is, obviously, no. Mayo himself said it best in one of the only
known interviews conducted just a few years before his extradition. If me atrapan or me
matthan, nada can be. Even if they catch me or kill me, the game stays the same. The future of
Mexican organized crime and the Sinaloa cartel are as uncertain as ever. But a few things are certain.
One is that, despite the carnage happening in Kulia Khan, Sina Loa's prized plighted
in Nogales is open for business, and their drug routes into the United States are moving like clockwork, day and night.
The other certainty is that these people are not scared.
It's almost admirable.
In the face of threats by Donald Trump and the most powerful military on earth,
they continue to stand their ground, adapt, and evolve.
We're trying to say, to look at the terrain that's gone to.
I would say that in the cruises, because we're, we live with what the people who cross, those people who cross them.
or drugs, it's of them because I'm
playing for my family.
And how many years more you're going to
chamoisra?
So, whoever emerges triumphant in this
tragic civil war between the remnants of a once
great drug empire, one thing is for certain,
these dudes from Nogales are going to keep working.
All right, you guys, that's been today's video.
Thank you for watching.
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