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, 2025

The 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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Starting point is 00:01:21 who are who are without permissue, those, also, there were many all the nights from at two, put,
Starting point is 00:01:30 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
Starting point is 00:02:05 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.
Starting point is 00:02:43 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.
Starting point is 00:03:09 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.
Starting point is 00:03:27 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.
Starting point is 00:04:03 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.
Starting point is 00:04:34 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,
Starting point is 00:04:47 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
Starting point is 00:04:59 visa and all, being a government and all. Because there's communication,
Starting point is 00:05:05 it's a calient, it's a disarrue. But how is this actually affected
Starting point is 00:05:11 drug trafficking and drug routes into the United States? Specifically in the
Starting point is 00:05:15 border regions of northwest Mexico that the Sinaloa cartel controls.
Starting point is 00:05:19 Because after all, that's what this whole war on drugs is supposed to be about,
Starting point is 00:05:22 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.
Starting point is 00:05:45 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
Starting point is 00:06:06 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.
Starting point is 00:06:25 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
Starting point is 00:06:48 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.
Starting point is 00:07:21 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
Starting point is 00:07:59 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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Starting point is 00:12:52 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.
Starting point is 00:13:27 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?
Starting point is 00:13:52 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.
Starting point is 00:14:10 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.
Starting point is 00:14:38 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?
Starting point is 00:15:15 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,
Starting point is 00:15:40 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
Starting point is 00:16:01 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
Starting point is 00:16:31 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
Starting point is 00:16:43 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? Listen up.
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Starting point is 00:19:38 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,
Starting point is 00:20:17 as the terror. And when it was the Beltran to the city is when
Starting point is 00:20:23 it's in the terror how it describe what describe
Starting point is 00:20:29 what what of what the because the all of
Starting point is 00:20:35 all of two to four of the man about
Starting point is 00:20:39 those caros couring running much much violence all
Starting point is 00:20:44 of all of the imagery that we with the worst of Mexican cartel violence from brutal killings, shootouts, and massacres
Starting point is 00:20:53 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,
Starting point is 00:21:13 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,
Starting point is 00:21:28 seven in less of two months. For here, or by here, or or comarra, because two women, women,
Starting point is 00:21:39 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,
Starting point is 00:21:59 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
Starting point is 00:22:15 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
Starting point is 00:22:31 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,
Starting point is 00:22:53 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.
Starting point is 00:23:12 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
Starting point is 00:23:35 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.
Starting point is 00:23:59 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,
Starting point is 00:24:28 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.
Starting point is 00:24:42 Yeah, they're agrounding, as they say, Juan and Pedro. Yeah, said, they're going to say, but they're in the also.
Starting point is 00:24:52 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
Starting point is 00:24:59 system of payoffs by the cartel to officials in the Federales, all the way up to the military, and even the Mexican Navy.
Starting point is 00:25:07 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.
Starting point is 00:25:43 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.
Starting point is 00:26:07 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
Starting point is 00:26:41 and they're one of the parts and they're going to get to get, and all that they're doing
Starting point is 00:26:49 coming on the front of the door. Oh, yeah, with a passport or citizens.
Starting point is 00:26:56 And those who have the safe houses on the other side are are also are Mexicans or
Starting point is 00:27:01 are? Revolved. They're to many of many of many of various.
Starting point is 00:27:05 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.
Starting point is 00:27:20 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
Starting point is 00:27:51 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.
Starting point is 00:28:32 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
Starting point is 00:28:49 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?
Starting point is 00:29:05 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
Starting point is 00:29:41 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.
Starting point is 00:30:26 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. Spring weekends are all about family, sunshine, and evenings on the patio. Before everyone arrives, I stop by my local total wine and more to grab a great bottle to share. With such a wide selection and the lowest prices, it's easy to find something amazing for everyone to enjoy.
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Starting point is 00:31:31 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
Starting point is 00:32:02 The fentanyl is The fentanyl is The fentanyl is It's prohibited And the chiva Also, Yeah, it's prohibitive No?
Starting point is 00:32:09 Prohibit Why? Because Because It's more Perligrosa But I mean That's more
Starting point is 00:32:18 Addictive It's more Dignia But you You think That is A Politico Of the
Starting point is 00:32:24 Cartels That they Adopted When us in the US and our government and our government and they're and they're
Starting point is 00:32:31 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
Starting point is 00:32:45 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
Starting point is 00:32:54 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.
Starting point is 00:33:35 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,
Starting point is 00:34:07 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,
Starting point is 00:34:37 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
Starting point is 00:34:57 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.
Starting point is 00:35:14 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.
Starting point is 00:35:35 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
Starting point is 00:35:55 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,
Starting point is 00:36:12 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
Starting point is 00:36:28 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
Starting point is 00:36:43 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...
Starting point is 00:37:02 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
Starting point is 00:37:25 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...
Starting point is 00:37:49 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
Starting point is 00:37:59 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
Starting point is 00:38:13 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.
Starting point is 00:38:33 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.
Starting point is 00:38:58 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
Starting point is 00:39:27 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.
Starting point is 00:40:04 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
Starting point is 00:40:35 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. Do me a quick favor. Hit that subscribe button. Turn on alerts so you get notified whenever we drop new content. And check out our Patreon.
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