The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - Meet The Cartel Hunters At War With New ZETA Drug Cartel- Mexico's Most Violent Organization

Episode Date: May 18, 2025

When people think of Mexican cartels, names like Sinaloa dominate the headlines. But hidden away in the vast deserts of Coahuila, a much darker, more violent history unfolded — the rise and brutal reign of the Zetas. In this special report, we travel to the front lines with Mexico's elite security forces who purged the Zetas from the region and continue to battle their successors, the Northeast Cartel. From mass disappearances and brutal massacres to military-style cartel warfare, discover how Coahuila became one of the only states to rid itself of organized crime — and the lessons it holds for the rest of Mexico. - Inside stories from cartel hunters - The true origins of the Zetas - Northeast Cartel's brutal rise - How Coahuila beat back cartel control - The future of cartel wars in Mexico Thank you to Sombra and Saltillo Safari! Check them out if you're in Mexico- https://www.instagram.com/saltillosafari/?hl=en Follow Sombra: https://www.instagram.com/sombra_cuachic/ Do us a huge favor and like this video, leave a comment, and subscribe to the channel. Gracias! This Episode Is #Sponsored By The Following: AVA! Download the Ava app today, and when you join use promo code CONNECT to get your first month FREE! True Classic! Upgrade your wardrobe and save on @trueclassic at https://trueclassic.com/CONNECT #trueclassicpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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A cartel de Sinaloa, the Sinaloa Cartel. That's the brand name dominating the headlines these days, who Americans now associate with fentanyl and kingpins and cartel violence at the southern border, and who fake news channels like ours have been using as clickbait for years. But what if I told you that the most powerful and violent Mexican criminal organizations

are located more than 1,000 miles from Sinaloa, on the eastern edge of Mexico? home to the new frontier of the country's never-ending war on cartels. We decided to take a trip to the state of Kuala, to embed ourselves with Mexican security forces on the front lines of this new battle, to find out who the players are and how the cops are fighting back. Before we get started, as usual, please take a minute to like this video, leave a comment, and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already.

We really appreciate it. All right, ora la cabrones, bamanos. The days of the overt cartels, at least in this region, I think they're gone. People just think about cartels and they think about drugs. It's human trafficking, it's extortion,

it's money laundering. When it came to De Zetas, there was nothing but violence. The more violent that you were, the more ruthless that you were, the more cruel that you were with your opponents, the higher that you rose, because that was their business model.

That's the way the Zetas operated. How many innocent people did they kill? I couldn't even tell you. I couldn't give you a number. The state of Kualaula is a vast, sparsely populated desert region in northeastern Mexico. It's not quite on the east coast, but it's also not in the middle of the country either. Think of it as the Pennsylvania of Mexico. It shares a border with Chihuahua to the west, Nuevo Leone and Nuevo Laredo to the east, Tamolipas to the south, and along its northern border, the United States.

Most of the land in Kuala is uninhabitable and impassable. It's only border city, Piedras Negas, sits across the river. Rio Grande River from Eagle Pass, Texas, the site of 1,000 illegal migrant crossings per day under the Biden administration. Quauela's largest city is called Saltyo, tucked into the southeastern corner of the state. While nobody in the American press covering the cartels knows or cares about this place, Quaulila and Saltyo were ground zero in the war against the Zeta cartel, without a doubt the most brutally violent, insane criminal organization in the history of Mexico and maybe the world.

The more violent that you were, the more ruthless that you were, the more cruel that you were with your opponents, the higher that you rose. The most violent hitmen were the most valued, and that was how you ascended within the organization. All of the limits of violence that we speak about, the Zeta organization, broke through. They broke through every level of violence because that was their business model. That's the way the Zethe's operated. The Zeta's operating model was violence. Salteo was their stronghold, their base of operations for the entire region. From 2009 to 2014, the Zetas fought a war against the government that left thousands of people dead and disappeared

and committed untold atrocities like the 2011 Iyende massacre, in which they kidnapped and murdered over 300 innocent people outside the city of Iende, and then had the victims' bodies incinerated in diesel fuel. Zeta violence was so out of control that it was so out of control that it was. eventually galvanized law enforcement from the entire region against them, and by 2015, most of its members had been arrested or killed. The Zetas became overly powerful and bold, and they made too much noise. But just like every criminal element in Mexico, the cartel never really dies. It just morphs into something new.

The Zetas are gone, but not gone, gone. I mean, some of their tradecraft, some of the ways that used to operate are still surviving in cartels like the Northwestern. cartel de nor'este, which is around. The northeastern cartel. The surviving members of the Zetas and their descendants make up what is today known as El Cartel de Noroeste, or the northeast cartel, who now rival the Gulf Cartel as the most powerful criminal group in eastern Mexico. Their stronghold is in the border city of Nuevo-Daredo, but they also control territory

in Monterey, to the east and Matamoros, and as far south as the lucrative port city of Tampico. At times, their brutality mirrors the tactics inherited from the days of the Zeta. And early this year, they had the honor of making Trump's specially designated foreign terrorist organizations list. But let me tell you something. They don't give a fuck. They're going for it. While the U.S. Justice Department and talking heads in mainstream media stay fixated on fentanyl sensationalism

and the drama in Kulia Khan between the remnants of the Sinaloa cartel, the east coast of Mexico is getting money. Led by the Northeast cartel and the Gulf Cartel, these organizations have doubled down on their criminal rackets. Enormous meth trafficking. I'm talking multi-hundred-ton loads getting shipped into the U.S. every day. Cocaine use is also surging upward in America, and the corridor through eastern Mexico from South America into the United States has become the primary cocaine route, moving through ports of entry in Matamoros and Nuevo Laredo. Migrant smuggling is the only victory the Trump administration can claim, as these crossings have fallen off by 95% since he took office. But the cartels don't seem to mind. They just made a smooth billion under Biden. and they've moved on to other things,

including a favorite cartel pastime, oil and gasoline theft, which was also a huge moneymaker for the original Zeta organization. The other day, huge headline, the government seized, like, don't even know how many tons of stolen fuel. Yeah.

Stolen fuel's a big one now. Wachikol. That's the practice of whatchicol. It's like another diversification of some of the business that they run. Like a lot of people just think about cartels and they think about drugs. It's human trafficking, it's extortion, it's money laundering, it's Wachicoleo. It's like there's a lot of heads there are now kind of forming around the fact

that probably fentanyl and fentanyl trafficking is going out of the way. Yeah. So what do we dedicate our resources to now? So there's a some million things that they can put their money. There's a million ways to get it. Now the northeast cartel is pushing deep into southern Tamolipas, battling against the Halisco New Generation Cartel for the strategically vital port of Tampico, which is a launching pad for meth and cocaine destined for Europe and Asia. Well, it's true that many cartel hot zones in Mexico have been pacified in recent years. In the regions controlled by the Northeast Cartel, it looks like the old days. Cartel tank fighting, armed convoys with 50 caliber machine guns parading through the desert, drone warfare on military targets, and the assassination of police chiefs, military personnel,

and politicians. This is all still business as usual. for the offspring of the Zetas, the most shockingly violent criminal group in modern history. Yet, amazingly, despite being surrounded by cartel territory, the one state in the entire region that is currently free of all cartel presence is Kuala. The place where just a decade ago, it was normal to see beheaded bodies hanging from freeway overpasses and where citizens were too afraid to go out after dark. It is now the only state in eastern Mexico that has been completely purged of organized crime. How is that possible?

And why can't it be done in the rest of Mexico? I had to go down there and see for myself. The first stop on my journey was to the city of Monterey, where I was met by my compadre, the Mexican Jason Bourne, Ed Calderon. Monterey is one of the wealthiest places in Mexico, home to some of the country's biggest industries. It looks like a place in Spain or in Europe. Yeah, it's like an out-of-place area that doesn't look like, it shouldn't be here, is what I get a lot of people saying.

And specifically with the difference from this place to where we're about to kind of like travel to there's going to be a stark difference it's been compared to dallas in terms of its size affluence and education there's country clubs and michelin star restaurants and american shopping centers there was even a massive rock and roll music festival happening while we were there it's unfathomable that a city this cosmopolitan and this close to the united states could be brought to its knees by organized crime but just 10 years ago that's exactly what happened the zetas originated in the late 1990s as an armed security wing of the Gulf Cartel. They were comprised of a band of defectors from an elite branch of the Mexican military, basically like if the Navy SEALs broke off and went to

work for a drug cartel. Over the years, they recruited more and more defectors from the military. And then in 2009, after the arrest and extradition of a key leader of the Gulf Cartel, the Zetas violently broke off from them to form their own cartel. And for the next eight years, they unleashed a blitzkrieg of brutality that was unprecedented, even by Mexico's standards. When it came to DeZetas, there was nothing but violence. How many innocent people did they kill? I couldn't even tell you. I couldn't give you a number.

They weren't like drug cartels. They didn't operate like drug traffickers. They weren't like typical drug traffickers who build schools and help people and who buy them things, invest in hospitals, buy them water pumps, whatever. These people were about violence and more. violence. All of the money that they made, they generated through violence and through the threat of violence. In what? In extortion? Yes, through extortion. For example, they would approach a businessman and say, tomorrow you're going to pay me 100,000 pesos per month. And if the businessman or the business owner

told them that they didn't want to pay, instead of asking them again, they would just burn the business down. They descended on de Monterey and Saltyo before anyone knew what was happening. From the beginning, it was obvious this was no ordinary cartel. Check out what the leader of the Kuala police had to say about their training and weaponry. At the beginning of the war, they had the upper hand because they had automatic weapons. Memorial Day weekend is almost here, and it's time to kick off summer right. When I'm getting ready for the first big weekend of summer, total wine and more is my go-to, especially when I'm firing up the grill with family.

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Drink responsibly must be 21. Back then, the AR-15 and the 223, were not used much by them. What they used most was the automatic, the AK-47. How they were trained and how they operated was very professional. They were very good at it. It was very similar to us, almost exactly the way that we were trained in the police academy. What was up with that?

Anytime that we wanted to act or to make a move or a counter-ambush on them, they would already know about it. And what was even worse, they didn't follow the rules, the way that we have to. And what were they doing? They were using a ton of ammunition, a ton of automatic, weapons, and there were many more of them than there were of us. As we find out years after the war, many of these original Zeta leaders reportedly received training in commando and urban warfare from Israeli and U.S. Special Forces, some of them at the

School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, infamous for having trained Latin American militias and militaries throughout the decades in advanced torture techniques. Everything the Bezetas learned, they learned from foreigners. all of the things Bezetta's learned like the guerrilla warfare stuff. I don't know exactly in what other countries they learned things from, but much of what they learned, they learned in the United States. Everything that was professional, they learned in the United States. Because at that time, the Gaffes, the commanders, were sent to learn at the school of the Americas.

They sent them to train with the Rangers and train with the Navy SEALs. In what? I can't say exactly. The fact that a group is bloody and murderous as the Zetas was born out of the school of the Americas is just one of the many examples throughout history. The Zetas were the first criminal organization in Mexico to operate more like a terrorist group than a drug cartel. In fact, most of their criminal enterprises did not involve trafficking drugs into the United States. They simply taxed other drug traffickers and then killed them and their families if they refused to pay. That's one of the ways that they operated.

They would come wanting to make alliances, but if other groups refused, they would take it by force and violence. You know what they would do? They would arrive at a place and tell the vendors and dealers who had been there for a while and who had customers that they worked for them now. And if they refused, the Zetas would kill them. They were also heavily involved in stealing oil from the Pemex oil pipelines, which is today still a multi-hundred billion dollar a year business for the cartels. But probably their most lucrative racket was the complete domination of the domestic

drug trade throughout cities up and down eastern Mexico, including Saltio and Monterey. These are enormous places with a huge internal demand for drugs, especially Crystal Meth. Using their advanced surveillance techniques and military training, the Zetas would move into a slum neighborhood, identify al-Punto da Venta the point of sale or the dope spot, and then torture the dealers into taxation and compliance. They went scorched earth. They didn't make alliances with other groups. They took them over with brute force, and then committed atrocities that are, comparatively,

to the Taliban or ISIS. So in those times there were many kidnappings of comrades, and not just of police officers. There were kidnappings of soldiers, there were kidnappings of Marines, there were kidnappings of police chiefs, and they used those kidnappings to generate terror among us, a very visually intense terror.

You might have heard of this the first video that started at all, the propaganda video that was circulating on social media. This person who was sat down and then had his throat cut. Then they stuck a knife, stuck a knife through his trachea and waited for him to drown in his own blood. That was the first video to break social media, and every day since you've seen other videos similar. They cut their wind pipes and then wait for them to die. They cut off their heads. Others get beaten to death. There's an infinite variety of ways to commit this

torture. Beheadings, flangs, and castrations, and decomposing bodies in diesel fuel. The people in these organized crime groups referred to them as kitchens. And what these people would do is they would put the bodies into diesel and then heat the diesel up. And once the diesel reached a certain temperature, the dead bodies would become no more than a gelatinous substance. That's what they would say. And then they would take whatever was left of the body and throw it in the river or throw it someplace else. And there wouldn't be much left. Not to mention the mass murder of innocent people on their conquest to take territories from rivals.

In the city of San Fernando in Tamolipa state, in back-to-back years 2010 and 2011, the Zetas hijacked passenger buses on the freeway, kidnapped and murdered hundreds of civilians, and then scattered them throughout 47 different mass graves. One of the most brazen Zeta atrocities was the 2012 fire they set to the Casino Royal in Monterey. In broad daylight, members of the Zetas barricaded the doors to this casino, then doused the building and gasoline and set it on fire, preventing the casino goers and from escaping. 52 people were burned alive. And of course, in the state of Kuala, the most horrendous attack occurred in the town of Ayende, where it's believed that up to 500 innocent people were murdered, then dissolved in diesel or buried in mass graves. Here's what happened. In 2011, their organization

discovered that a few of their most trusted men in northern Kuala were cooperating with the DEA against the Trevino brothers, two of the most powerful leaders of the Zetas. The Trevino's found out, And in response, members of the Zetas seized the towns of Ayende and Nava, destroyed 80 houses with heavy machinery, and kidnapped approximately 80 families. These people were never seen again until authorities began uncovering some of their bodies, many of which allegedly had been dissolved with a mixture of diesel fuel and caustic soda in large barrels of improvised kitchens. There's a great series out right now on Netflix about the Iyende massacre called Somos. I definitely recommend you check it out. It's hard to imagine how the Zetas thought they could get away with it. Even in Mexico, where violence is a currency and law enforcement's number one priority

is about keeping up appearances rather than actually fighting crime, the Zetas were doing way too much. They were the narcos version of ISIS, and there wasn't enough bribe money in the world they could pay politicians that would allow them to keep operating the way they were, at least not in the state of Kuala. The man who calls himself Somra remembers the Zeta wars vividly. Check it out.

They had different people operating in terms. different functions within the organization. First, you had people who operated as hawks or lookouts, then others operated as hitmen. And then there were others who operated as the drug dealers, people who were put in charge of selling narcotics. Other people were in charge of mobilizing economic resources. It really was like a mini company or a mini corporation. And when you say hawks, what do you mean by hawks?

The Harks were the people in charge of feeding information to the operational groups and to the plaza bosses about everything that was happening in the city. I mean information about everything, not just the movement of the governments, but intel about other organized crime groups and politicians. They extracted information about businessmen. They extracted information about companies. Information about everything. The people of Kuala refer to those years as El Tiampo Oskuro, the Dark Times. Sombra is the commander of Policya de Action and Reaction de Quaulah, a group of tactical state police forces in Quaulah, who were formed specifically to hunt down and kill Zetas. Today, they've got armored vehicles and high-tech Israeli machine guns, but back at the beginning of the Zeta war, they were outgunned and outmaned.

We've heard rumors about drones carrying bombs, that about mines that explode on impact. Tell us about the capabilities that they have, that you've seen. Well, in this region specifically, the most powerful weapon the enemy has, is the 50-caliber machine gun, as well as grenades. And yes, back then they did have drones. Today they don't. Yes, and also mines. Dozens of Sombra's men were kidnapped and killed in the early years of the war. It was common for him to get text messages on his phone

showing his fellow police being tortured and murdered by the Zetas. Enfrontimiantos or shootouts with convoys of armed cartel tanks with 50 caliber machine guns were a daily occurrence. In that era, it was all of the time, every day, and at any moment. Much of the time, we didn't sleep at all. I would think to myself, I don't know how this is going to end. Would they be able to kill me? Or could I finally get some rest? Or would they come pick me up and make me disappear like the others? Or, even worse, could they locate my family? All of the time, I was in a defensive, combative mindset. Every day. All of the time. Every day. And that's why I tell you

it was like a war, because every day you enter a mental state of survival. Hmm. So somebody was getting killed every day. But little by little, year after year, Sombra's men wore the Zetas down. Didn't sound like they arrested many of them either. Just like Ed Calderon's battalion of special forces officers fighting the cartels in Tijuana, the rule was kill, kill, or arrest, torture for information, and then kill. You won't get many of them to admit it on camera, of course, but this is standard practice

in Mexican law enforcement when it comes. to dealing with cartels. When we meet the enemy face-to-face, there is no truce. It's probably one of the reasons that cartel cicadios fire on military and police as soon as they see them. They know that they won't be taken alive. Here's what one member of Sombr's team who was involved in heavy fighting back then had to say about the rules of engagement.

I'll be honest with you. Let me speak sincerely now. They always fire first. They always fire on you first? Always. So they see you and then the shooting starts? Yes, always. So, for example, in our region, because I can't really start.

speak for other places, the enemy dedicates themselves to ambushes. I have never seen a direct engagement, a direct firefight. It's always ambushes. They use treachery. Yes, and they must use these as well, these caltrops, huh? Yes, yes.

Yeah, they put them on sidewalks and on roads and wait for us to drive over them. Yes, and they use the vegetation of the landscape to disguise themselves. Looking back, I feel a little silly that I was pressing these guys on human rights abuses. The Zetas don't deserve sympathy. They killed so many police and innocent people alike, and in the most horrendous ways.

If anyone deserves to have their rights violated, it was probably them. There's a brutality to Mexican culture that goes back centuries, and much of the blame does belong to the government and to the police force. But these young men are just poor guys from the rural areas who found themselves face to face with the most evil criminal organization to ever exist in Mexico. They were just trying to survive, and the scars they bear to this day are deep. How does it make you feel when you experience losses on your side? It hurts, it hurts badly, especially when they're companions. We spend more time with our companions, our brothers in arms, than we spend with our families,

and we take care of each other. They're my colleagues, the people you see here now. They're like my own brothers. Far from being just co-workers, these are brothers, brothers in arms, brothers in a mission. My life depends on them, and their lives depend on me. And their deaths, far from making me want to quit, actually get to be give me an anger, an anger to go out and want to do more work. Well, speaking of anger, I experienced many losses of friends during my part of the war. These losses made me feel angry. It made me feel

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So, what we started doing is that at any siting of any operation, of any cartel, we started attacking them directly. And we wouldn't let up or sit back until the job was completely finished. And how would we know when the job was finished? Well, for example, if we got a report that there was a group of armed men and say they were going around picking people up, we would get a description of that vehicle. And then what we would do is we would go after them. We would go after their operations. We would go after their people. And that was when we would rest. And that was the only time that we rested. What would happen is that the tips and complaints from the people would go to 911.

And then 911 would pass that information onto us. So, on a given day, if they reported sightings of a blue vehicle with armed people in it in a certain neighborhood, and on the next day we got the same call about the same vehicle with armed people in it, and then on the third day they reported the same thing, and now that blue vehicle was involved in a shooting, we would not rest until we found that blue car. Furthermore, not only did the police in Kuala receive real funding and support from the government,

every branch of law enforcement, from the local cops all the way up to the military, worked together and shared information. There was coordination between the state police, the municipal police, and the reaction groups, and all of us coordinated with federal forces. And that really was the most important thing

that all of us coordinated under one single command model. Here, everybody has a security chip, or a security clearance, as you might think of it. And our priorities are twofold. One is the prevention of crime. And two, it is to combat high impact or violent crime. I think it's this coordination. This seems like common sense, but it's almost unheard of in Mexico.

There is so much corruption, distrust, and disorganization within the ranks of law enforcement that it makes even good, honest police departments want to operate independently of one another. But extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. By the end of 2014, the Zetas had been cleansed from Kuala. The ones who hadn't been killed or arrested fled west in the Zacatecas or the desert of Chihuahua, and the rest hit out in the border cities of Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros. It seems obvious looking back at it that the Zetas were doomed to failure.

Evil and mass murder that egregious can only exist for so long. But the truth is, the Zetas completely changed narco culture in Mexico. The terroristic brutality that they practiced has been adopted by every other major criminal organization in the country. Even in Sinaloa, the cartel that was once known for its altruism and benevolence has descended into indiscriminate killing of civilians in the war that's currently raging in Kuliacat. But especially in the south, in Mijwakan and Halisco, and to the far east in Tamolipas, the shock and awe campaigns of violence in the military-type confrontations with police and rival cartels are just adaptations from the era of the Zetas. In fact, the Nuevo

Halisco cartel, now one of the most powerful organizations, in Mexico actually came into being as a response to the Zetas. They were originally known as Los Matazeta, the Zeta killers, who were Sikarios recruited from the state of Halisco and funded by Chapo Guzman and Mayo Zambada from the Sinaloa Federation. These Matazetas were deployed to every Zeta stronghold throughout Mexico with the express purpose of exterminating them. They even put out a public service announcement. We are the new group Matazetas, and we are against kidnapping and extortion, and we will fight them in all states for a cleaner Mexico. Imagine that. Also, it can't be confirmed, but it's likely that these Matazetas got a lot of help from law enforcement.

It's Mexico, so that's almost a guarantee, actually. And at this time, a rising drug lord by the name of Namacio Oseguero, aka El Mensho, was coming to power in Mishu Khan. After the Zetas went into hiding and the Sinaloa cartel started to take back their territory, the Mata Zetas were disbanded, and Mencho absorb them into his new organization called the Halisco New Generation Cartel. It could be also a part of the reason for the early success of the Nuevo Halisco cartel is that they began to traffic drugs to different markets where there were no other groups, like to the European market, for example. That's how they began to generate a lot of money.

There was no war and there were no competitors, nothing. So that's how it began to grow so quickly and how they generated a ton of money. On the other hand, the Sinaloa cartel and Los Zeta's cartel were involved in fighting and disputes at the border with the United States. That is the origin story of what is now one of Mexico's most powerful drug cartels. Wild. Something like that could only happen in a place like Mexico. What's ironic is, while they aren't quite as violent, today the CJNJ practiced the same extortion, kidnappings, and political assassinations as the Zetas once did. And that's really the essence of their legacy. The Zetas transformed Mexican drug cartels into militarized criminal organizations

and normalized the taking of profits in rackets far outside the traditional realm of drug trafficking. But in Kuala, the impact the Zetas left on law enforcement has been a positive one. A few years back, we started this offensive, and we have not let up. And since then, we continue to fight against them. That's one part of it. The other part of it is that we're professionals. We've been professionalized by our training. Another part of it is the salaries the police get paid here are very good.

And police officers receive a lot of support, especially the ones that are on the good side. Bad cops, cops who are on the side of evil, are not covered up for, and they are not helped. I'm not exactly sure what they're doing in other parts of Mexico because I'm not there. I'm here. All I can tell you is here, day and night, we continue the fighting. What exactly is the key here? Maybe it's a change in government,

maybe it's a change in politicians. But what I know is, everyone here in Kualaila has followed the same line. And that is security. Security is our number one priority here in Kuala. No, I don't think it will ever completely end. But the actions that we are taking here today are different than what we used to do. SOMBRA and his tactical units stay at the ready and respond to even the slightest cartel incursion into their territory with maximum force. Also, the state government continues to support their police

with higher salaries and better training than cops receive anywhere else in Mexico. But another possible reason for an absence of cartels in Kualaulah might have something to do with the state government. You see, the state of Kualaila is still dominated by the PRI, or El Pri, which was the longstanding nationalist police,

political party that dominated Mexico for a century. The PRI is notoriously corrupt, and many people speculate that high-level money deals have been made with top cartel leaders from different regions who are allowed to live in the city of Southio with their families in exchange for keeping Kuala free from a cartel presence. Another possible reason for the absence of cartels in this region could simply be that there's not a lot of money there. Quaweila is landlocked. It doesn't have oil pipelines to steal from, avocado fields to extort, or ports to ship drugs from. All they have is a border with the United States, most of which is a national park with no roads or ports of entry. Migrant smuggling, which was most prevalent through Piedras Negeras into Eagle Pass, Texas under the Biden

administration, has all but stopped, with crossings down 95% this year under the new Trump regime. The most active that it gets in Kuala, is on its main highway, Interstate 40, which runs through the heart of the state and is a main thoroughfare for meth, cocaine, and weed. being transported from western Mexico, across the country, and north into Monterey, and finally, Nuevo L'Oreiro and Matamoros, where it is staged, repackaged, and smuggled into the United States. SOMRA gave us a tour of one of the checkpoints on I-40 at the border with Nuevo Leone, the state where Monterey is located. He says it's routine that they sees multi-ton meth and weed loads coming from the Sinaloa and the Nuevo

Halisco cartels. According to SOMRA, the Western cartels are attempting to gain control of the city of Nuevo Laredo, the power base of the northeast cartel, which you'll remember is just an offshoot of the old Zetas. In response to this incursion into their city, El Cartel de Noreste has now banned not only selling meth, but using it. The domestic drug use in Mexico, the meth market is huge. It's the biggest market. It's what cocaine is to us in the United States. Yeah. It's also like regional. So certain groups will produce. and want that to be the sales that want that to be the product.

And other groups don't want that to be the product because it cuts in their business. And we learned today in Nuevo Laudeo, if these guys or the organization caught them smoking meth, they at least get the tabla, they might get killed. Because they don't want people smoking meth. They want people smoking the coke they bring it. And this is something I learned.

I didn't know that. That's wild. Every part of Mexico has a different kind of like, kind of like rule set to it, specifically this one, I guess, because of how secure it is. Again, these are all outsiders trying to figure out a way to market this product here. And again, meth is for you to be able to do more in work. This is a working class community. And, you know, I guess Starbucks doesn't want to have like a place here to get double shot expressos.

So meth is the next viable option. The criminal organizations use these gaps in law enforcement to traffic a lot of things. people, drugs, and weapons. And where are these drugs and people? Where are they getting sent to? To the United States. Ah, yes, to the United States. To the border, basically.

Yes, and often they're trying to break through this line of law enforcement. And that's where we come in. If you're caught in a trap house in the city of Nuevo Laredo smoking crystal meth, you're given the infamous Mexican flogging as punishment, La Tabla. That's where they take a big heavy wooden mallet and smack you on your ass until you're screaming in pain. And if you're caught selling it, that's it. you're dead. This is, of course, the cartel's way of literally killing off their rival's drug market. And remember, I told you about the city of Monterey. That's up for grabs too. While there's not

casinos getting firebombed anymore or headless bodies swinging for freeway overpasses, Monterey's huge population and massive demand for drugs has caused organizations from Sinaloa, Halisco, the Gulf, and the Northeast Cartel to kill each other for market share. From neighboring Monterey to the south in Tampico and San Luis Potosi to the West in Zacatecas and Ciudad Juarez, to the north in Nuevo Laredo and Matamorros, the state of Kuala is an island surrounded by vicious cartel fighting. These groups, they are the ones who we've had the most contact with, who we have to fight. Why?

Well, because it's a space, a territory that they want. It is a space that the Zetas, or the legacy of the Zetas, have left for them. I think there are a lot of people who are now getting out of prison, who worked for the Zetas back then, and now they're getting out of prison and returning to Noel Alarado, they know the territory, they know the roads, they know Kuala, and they want to return here.

Because right now, they know that there's no ruling cartel here. They say, the only people that we would have to fight here are the police. And in other places, that wouldn't be the case. They would have to fight the police, the military, the National Guard, as well as the other cartels that are there. We're not finished. It's not over yet.

We've entered another phase of the war, in which we have military superiority. We have more intelligence, and we have more personnel. We've entered another phase. Yet somehow, Soma and his men managed to keep the bad guys at bay. There's still crime in Kuala, of course. In the city of Salteo, there's a robust meth market,

but it's operated by independent dealers. who run local trap houses, just like in America. Cartels from meth-making regions might drop the work-off to them as they're passing through, but that's the extent of it. On our last night in Kwaweila, Sombr took us out on a raid of one of these Punta de Ventas or sales points. I'm not sure they had a warrant either, to be quite honest. I think they were just trying to impress us.

Knowing that a Mexican tactical unit organized a last-minute raid on a crystal meth trap house without a judge's authorization did make me feel special. Anything for the content. These guys get it. It was all over in 30 seconds, and it was quite unimpressive. A couple of out-of-town smoked-out junkies with a few rocks and some paraphernalia, not to mention a sick infatuation with Santa Muerte is all the cops found. Yeah, it was just your run-of-the-mill...

It was a horrible meth house. That was some very dark shit probably going on in there. Oof. I mean, the smell? I mean, you recognize that smell, right? I didn't. I don't have much crystal meth experience. That is a lot of crystal meth. That is a lot of fucking people basically living for the drug and also at the sales point. That's what that was.

Are they selling out of there? Yep. Did they know that? They were outside and then they ran inside. So that is probably their excuse to go into that space. Oh, no shit. Okay, so basically the first unit of cops, they were driving up the street in this known kind of

Barrio-Poor ghetto drug-using neighborhood. They saw these crystallized, these drug users, the users saw the cops, they ran inside, so that is the excuse to go in without a warrant. I don't know what the rules are around getting warrants in Mexico, but... So I was a cop for a long time, and I can tell you, not many rules.

And, you know, these people probably won't have adequate representation. Do they get, obviously, do they get, do they get lawyers? Not really. Not really. The system is built in such a way where, you know, specifically in a place like this, where everything is basically behind the cops and supporting them. I think these guys are probably, these drug users and salesmen are probably going to be in the hole for a bit because of this. Just from what I read from that room, there were some people there that probably manage money that don't live there.

And some people that just guarded that sales point. I see. So that's like a crack house in the U.S. where you can come in, buy, get high. until you're out of money and then bounce. At least one or two of those people were probably there of managing it, like living there. Yeah. And some of these people that had, you know, a lot of jewelry

were probably not, don't live there. Well, one guy said he was from Monterey. So this is probably a big market. So there's just big money selling dope in Mexico. Yes. And people forget that. Like a lot of the cartels aren't even, they aren't even bothering to export.

People don't talk about the local drug markets, which are a very big part of why the violence continues in Mexico. Like, I don't want that guy selling in my corner, or I can't see the head kingpin of this group, but I can see his sales point people. Yeah. So, I'll shoot them. Yeah. And that's why some of this violence gets reported happening constantly because it's just a war between marketing agencies, basically. Right, right.

That's fascinating to think that that comes from, that originates from the money from a guy in Kulia Khan who's playing golf at a country club. Probably, yeah. You know what I mean? Yes. Or somebody in Guadalajara who's putting money behind a guy who knows guys that are making batches of it. Yeah. It's people, yeah. And also, it's still here.

Despite all of the efforts that this government here has done to combat all of the people that wanted to take over this place, substances are still here. People are still fucking hooked. People are still fucking going away for selling it. The commander of the operation assured me off camera that the suspects would be taken out of the station, but not before getting a little Mexican persuasion. Maybe it's Labosa or Al-Agua, a plastic bag over the head or a waterboarding like a prisoner of war in Baghdad. They'll get these guys to hand over their supplier before the night's over.

We even had a little laugh about it. In Mexico, sometimes that's all you can do. What is the secret to this place, Kwawila? And why is this obscure, little-talked-about region able to keep out Mexico's most powerful criminal group? On the surface, it seems like a miracle. The real question is, can this be repeated in the rest of the country? Do you think the federal government could stop cartels by implementing tactics, by supporting the different states, and by operating the way that you guys operate?

Because this is a really special example of how law enforcement is able to take back regions. But they're not doing it. the rest of Mexico. I think that they can, but it's not going to happen overnight. It's a process. And it starts with cleansing corporations, professionalizing them, and ensuring that everyone working within the organization has a common goal. It's work. And it's a hard, slow, time-consuming process. Do you think Mexico will get there, though? Like in your lifetime? I don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no. Is there going to be any kind of like softening of the war on drugs against drug users?

Drugs have been like quantities, personal use stuff has been codified into the law. But realistically, that doesn't matter to people that just want these sales points that are making their neighborhood bad to go away. So people get their doors kicked in and fucking dragged out. Are there any, like, third, fourth strike? Like, if these guys have a long rap sheet, are they going away for longer? Or is it just all depend on the quantity

and the judge and the fucking circumstances? They'll get fucked. If they don't have any way to fight it or have anybody to pay for representation, they're going to get fucked. And people will fucking go away for long periods, just waiting for their case to be heard. But until then, Soma and his men will stay ready.

All these Marines and all these big, tough-looking military guys, guys, they went and busted up like a bunch of guys drinking in public, which is so funny to me. Like that must seem like a good problem to have, right? Like you used to get videos of your compadres getting beheaded and used to have to get in giant firefights with cartel tanks. Now you just kind of get to, you know, you kind of have like easier crime to deal with. That must be, do you feel like a sense of pride? You're like, oh yeah, shit, all we have to do is arrest a bunch of drunks. Bored. Okay, that's all for this week, you guys.

Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video, please leave a like and a comment and make sure to subscribe to the channel. My name is Johnny Mitchell, and you've been watching The Connect. We'll see you next time.