The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - The Terrifying Rise Of The Nuevo Jalisco Cartel-- Mexico's Most Powerful Criminal Organization

Episode Date: October 17, 2024

Reporter Chris Dalby dives into the inner workings of the CJNG; Mexico's most violent cartel. As the Sinaloa cartel spirals into civil war, the CJNG is prime to become the dominant organization in the country and Chris explains how they might go about it. He gives unbelievable facts about the group's way of doing business, their history, and dives into the rumors about El Mencho's existence. His work on Jalisco's criminal organization is unrivaled. You don't want to miss this one! Go Support Chris! Book: https://www.amazon.com/CJNG-Quick-Mexicos-Deadliest-Cartel/dp/9083423913 World Of Crime: https://worldofcrime.net/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why is it important to know the origin story of a cartel? Because if you don't know where they come from, you don't know how to fight them today. CJNG uses violence as a constant. The CJNG either committed or suffered 81% of all cartel homicides in the last 10 years. One group. Chris Dolby, author of CJNG, a guide, a quick guide to Mexico's most dangerous cartel in light of everything that's going on in Sino-Loah, the Civil War. for that city of Kulia Khan and the arrest of Mayo.

All the eyes of the world are on the Sinaloa cartel or possibly the disintegration of the federation itself. And quietly, CJNG has the potential now, I would assume, to become the biggest cartel in Mexico. What is there standing currently in terms of power, economic capability, military capability, compared to the Sinaloa cartel. If you're the Cigng right now, this Sinaloa cartel civil war is a dream come true a decade in the making. Because no matter how much money, how much they got, how much drugs they trafficked, how much people they killed, no matter their PR coups that they did, the Cajng have always been seen

a second best, right? Sinolao cartel of the big boys, El Chappu is more famous. The Cynolo Cartel have got more much. money, their arrests are more spectacular. And so the CJNG has been chomping at the bit. The CJNG is a group that loves being in the limelight. It's part of their foundational ego-driven creed. So now, at a sort of macro level, they are absolutely waiting to be top dogs. And they're just praying for the Sinloa-Curtel Civil War to weaken all factions so nobody can touch them. At a micro level, we need to see how that's going to play out.

there are several battlefronts right now that have been going for years between the CG and the CNA Loa cartel particularly Tijuana right biggest drug corridor into the U.S. for fentanyl for meth for migrant smuggling Chappas right now has been going

for two, three years completely on the other side of the country at the Guatemala border where they're fighting over control of migrants coming across the border and then the state of Zagatikas right in the center of Mexico hugely important state for trafficking routes to the U.S.

and for fentanyl and meth production. So there's different parts of Mexico where you would expect to see a reaction from the CJNG. It hasn't happened yet. They're probably lying back and seeing how badly are the similar cartel factions going to hurt each other. But when the time strikes,

probably Tijuana is where you'll see that first reaction. So you expect a flare-up of violence in T.J. More than there has already been going on. I mean, yeah, TJ for the last several years has been either the deadliest or among the deadliest cities in Mexico. That is because while the Sinaloa Contel is the dominant force there, controlling that crossing into San Diego, it's a big enough city and it's a busy enough crossing that different groups can play in the same sandbox. So the CGM has absolutely been there. There are remnants of the Tijuana Cartel, the Ariano Felix Alliance, that are still there.

The C of GNG has never managed to have a permanent foothold in Baja California. They've always been dancing on the edges and nibbling away at the Sinaloa cartel there. That's why if the Sinaloa cartel is weakened and no single faction, neither the Maithos or the Chapitos can take control of the whole thing, the CJG are going to push into Tijuana. Could you describe the structural differences between the organizations? Right. Like we've known now basically since the fall of Chapo in 2015, 2016, the Cinaloa Federation has pretty much decentralized. I mean, that's what we learned when we were down in Cullia Khan. You know, yes, you have the Maitos and the Chapitos. But there is a really stark separation between the cartel wing, the paramilitary wing that, you know, commits the murders that goes to different regions to make war to open up drug routes. And then you have this. ariad white collar cadre of businessmen from Kulia Khan, from Tijuana, that actually fund the drug trafficking, that they're usually legitimate businessmen, well, legitimate businessmen that, you know, they own and operate a lot of legitimate businesses, and they put their money

behind drug shipments, fentanyl shipments, Coke shipments, meth shipments to the U.S., but they have you know, it's kind of flattened. Has a similar thing happened with the CJNG or what's up with that? So there's two different things. And we need to start with how are they similar from the Cynloa to the Cynloa cartel to then understand how they're very, very different. Like the Cinelloa cartel, the Hadesca Hotel is very horizontal. You have Lenture at the top and you have trusted left channels.

You have his stepson who is called Juan Carlos Gonzalez Valencia, who is his number two. and then you've got three or four big lieutenants who run different parts of Mexico. Those lieutenants, much like Sinolaqatel, lieutenants are given broad independence to run their own traffics, to extort people locally, to make money in the way they want, even to make their own drug deals in the US, so those lieutenants are going to go across the border at different points,

as long as they're paying up the chain. That's how they're similar. But then, then you come into the origin stories, and I go into this a lot in the book, Why is it important to know the origin story of a cartel? Because if you don't know where they come from, you don't know how to fight them today. I mean that. It's not about just killing or arresting people.

You have to understand what makes these groups tick, what makes these leaders get up in the morning. The Simoloa cartel is intimately tied to over a century of agriculture and drug production and criminality and ties the community in that part of Sinola. under El Chapo, extortion was simply not allow in those communities. You didn't take from the people who were supporting you. They were a base of recruitment. They were places to hide. They were a support structure.

The CGNG doesn't have that at all anywhere. Why? Why don't they have it in Halisco, even though that's in their name? Because the CJNG doesn't come from Halisco. They start going back 50, 60, 70 years. Again, similarly to the Sinloakata. the Valencia family are rich avocado farmers in the hills of Mituwakan. Their respected landlords, they own a lot of property, they employ a lot of people in their

avocado fields. They begin producing marijuana. They begin producing opium poppy. They sell those drugs to the Sinlova Hotel, to the forbearers of the Sinlova Hotel. They become brokers. Then they become a bit more ambitious. After the fall of the Guadalajara cartel, who comes knocking at the door in Mituo Pablo Escobar, or his envoy Fabio Ochoa, who now needs a new contact to run cocaine into the US

and picks the Valencia's. There are arrests at that time of people who are like, no, no, the Valencia is the most powerful traffickers in Mexico, but they're under the radar. That continues until about 2003 when there's a war with the Zetas, and the Zetas kick the Valensias out of Mituuacan. It's almost like a biblical myth, right, the exile of the war. the Valencias from the lands that bred them 70 years ago. Where do they go? They run to Halisco and they start working for the Sinloa Khartal. They start working for... That's why they're in Khalisco, because that's the state to the north of Mitraqan. They base themselves in Guadalajara. What can they offer the Sinloa cartel

expertise in synthetic drugs? How did they gain this synthetic drug expertise? Because in the 80s, the younger generation of Valencias, including their best friend El Mancho, get sent to California during the crystal meth boom. So they're slinging Mexican heroin, Mexican marijuana, while learning in these super labs how you make crystal meth. And they bring that knowledge back to Mexico. They're not the only ones, other families as well. But again, this heartland of Halisco-Kolima becomes synthetic drugs 101. This is where the meth labs and then the fentanyl labs have been based. And that's where we begin to see this big divergence between the Sinaloa Conchel and the CGNGG Cotel. In 2011, the CG breaks free, declares independence from Cinaloa, and become two things. One, the most

savvy and knowledgeable synthetic drug experts in Mexico. And two, they begin systematic extortion, where it's not good enough to just have the synthetic drugs. They put their boots on the heels of cattle ranchers, avocado farmers, tequila makers, hotel and restaurant owners in the most touristy areas of Mexico. They extract every peso they can from everybody. And if you don't pay up, you don't cooperate, you're dead. Now, did they kick Sinaloa out of Guadalajara eventually? Yes. So not only from from their doing, Chalisco, or Guadalajara specifically, was run by Ignacio or Nacho-Coronel. He was the uncle of El Chapo's wife. He was known as the King of Crystal, and Reil Cristan.

He dies in 2010 in a shooting from the Mexican Marines. His death is a huge weakening of Sinloa cartel control over that area. El Mancho sees an opportunity and seizes it. He takes over Sinloa cartel operations in Halisco, which immediately gives him a financial base, right?

He takes over the drug trade there. He takes over the local drug sales. He gets access. to the port of Manzanillo, which is where a lot of synthetic precursors, a lot of cocaine was coming in for the Sinloa cartel. So he immediately takes over that infrastructure. That gives him a financial base on which to build his group. Wow.

And to this day, the port of Manzanio, the areas in southern Halisco, that is the stronghold of the CJNG. Tell us what, give us the status on Mensho, because, you know, for the last couple of years, there's rumors all over the internet in, you know, even amongst, you know, high-level American law enforcement that MENCHO might be dead. Is there any veracity to that claim? For sure. So MENCHO has not been seen in public for over seven years.

His voice is heard in a recording where he threatens a, it's actually uncertain whether he's threatening a police commander or one of his own detentenance. But what we see is that in that time, the cult of personality that he built, and I have a chapter about that in the book, dedicated how this country bumpkin, avocado farmer from Mijokane, built this cult of personality, the way he encouraged loyalty, the way he encouraged PR, the way he always wanted to be in the press. Every video they make to this day, every banner the CJNG puts up to this day. pledges, loyalty and fealty to El Munchingly. It's every banner. It's every video where you see the masked guys, whether they're in Jalisco, whether they're in Puebla,

whether they're in Veracruz or in Chaffas, we are the people of Mr. Mensho. We are the people of Mr. Mentiono every time. Now, that is really consistent branding if the guy's dead, right? On top of that, you would think that, given the poorest nature of a cartel, given the ambitious nature of cartel lieutenants, if they saw that he died and there was a chance to move up, it would be very difficult to keep a lid on that. Now, some people have believed that he died and acted upon it. In 2020, a CGNG left tenant called La Vaca in Colima.

He was running a group called the Cartel of Independent de Colima, even though they were subservient to CG. He puts up a banner and he goes, I'll mentor's dead. I work for him. I don't work for the C. GNG if he's dead, fuck you all. I'm out. This creates a huge war in Colima, makes it the most violent state in the country that year. And Lavaca is arrested, goes to prison, and nobody ever again says that Almencho is dead. These rumors are often unfounded. Even Amla, Lopez Obrador himself, a couple of years ago, goes at his morning press conference and goes, nope, there's no sign that Almenta's there. Wow. It's almost like the smartest disinformation. you know

it's elvencho has always been discreet he's not el chappo you know who's doing interviews with with sean pen he's never been that he's never been eskabar flaunting his wealth left right and center buying uh soccer clubs

it's not who he is he's while brutal while a vicious individual has always kept to himself um you know he lived in california he was in prison in texas for a few years but apart from that has always lived in western

Mexico and in fact made it a point of pride to try and retake his hometown of Aguilia after the CG got kicked out, something he's never been able to do for very long. He's tied to land and community in that part of Southern Khalisco and that's where he stays. It's rumored he stays between Khalisco, Colima and Nayari. And is he moving around the way Mayo was moving around before his arrest, you know, from farm to farm to farm. There's, you know, I'm sure he's surrounded by private armies of cicadios. Is that, to your, the best of your knowledge, kind of how he moves? 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

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I investigated this group for months. And, well, for years, going back to my time with Insight Crime and for months for this book, and no one talks about it, no one gives you. No one gives up information. However, it is known that in those parts of Chalisco, many of the CJNG lords have big ranches. It's safe to assume he does too. It is known to Mexican intelligence services that there are specific municipalities where he's believed to be. And that again, there's like 10 to 12 municipalities that are mentioned in intelligence reports,

including the one where he built the hospital. Well, it was rumored to be a hospital. It was a community health center. It wasn't a gleaming hospital. A few years ago, he was being treated for his kidney problems. He has severe kidney failure and was being treated at a hospital that he built in southern Halisco. Wow. So, and what relationship do they have?

The way that in Sinaloa, they're completely tied to the culture, to the people. the history of it. They still, even though now they're like, hey guys, please stop fighting. The people, there is a social contract with the civilians that basically grant them the ability to keep operating. What is the CJNG and MENCHO, what is their relationship with their base in these areas of Halisco and, you know, more southern western

Mexico. It's one of the major ways in which they are different to the Sinloa cartel. And it's one of the things I really have a home in the book is that you have to understand how this group is different

to any other group in Mexican history, including the Zetas. The Sinloa cartel has that community. Why? Because it's protection, it's recruitment, it's support,

it's people who are not going to collaborate with authorities. It's a place where you can go, you know, let us work here. We'll keep them. murder is down, we'll keep the violence down as long as you does do business, right? It's a status quo. And that ultimately is what the Cynoloch Hotel always looked for, a status quo under which

they could do business, at least under Chapo and Maya. Now, the next generation hasn't been able to maintain that same status quo, and we're seeing the results now. CGM never had that. CGM had that when it was the Valencia's in the Hills of Mitraka and 40-50 years ago. Then, yes, absolutely. And if they had stayed there, there would probably be a closer group to the Sinaloa today. than they are. The millennial cartel, which is the name of the CGNG before it was a CGNG, lands in Halisco only because it's running away from home, only because that's where they can get protection from El Chapo and his wife's uncle, Coronel. So they're only there, you know, 20 years and now 12 to 13 years with that name, CGNG, but they don't have a base

there. People don't know them, right? And in fact, if you look at patterns of violence in Halisco, you see that even at home, even in parts of the country where they don't have any major rivals, the CGNG uses violence as a constant. And I'm not exaggerating. It's the Zetas did that a little bit. The CGNG have done it way more than the Zetas ever dreamed of doing. There's a statistic, which is astonishing from the Uppsala conflict data program, that the CJNG either committed or suffered 81% of all cartel homicides in the last 10 years. One group, 81% of homicides either it committed or received. For a country as criminally diverse as Mexico, that's astonishing.

And now are these rivals or are these also civilians? In that statistic, it's only cartel operative, so it would be cartel wars against a similar cartel. But, Halisco, Colima, Guantaguato, the big CJNG controlled states are always among the most violent in Mexico, always. And is that because they're the poorest? But not only. Guadajara is, of course, has very poor areas, but it's not among the poorest part of the Mexico.

Puerto Vallarta is not a particularly poor part of Mexico. Guadahuato is part of the Bahia region, which has a lot of foreign investment in car companies, companies build cars there, there's a refinery there. Of course, there are very poor parts of these areas. but it's not just about poverty. It's about the way the CJNG thinks, conceptually, about territorial dominance. You see it this year in the elections. In the elections, and this was before Almayo was arrested, so it's before the Sinloa cartel implodes.

Simloa cartel states are relatively peaceful. They have a few politicians killed, a few politicians harassed or threatened. In Halisco and Colima, and Nayarit and Guantua, it's murder central. they view every opportunity to remind people that violence is a constant threat. So they don't rule through respect and community. They rule through fear. Yeah, so it's almost, it's closer to terrorism in a way. The word terrorism when it comes to cartels is difficult to, it's a word I try and avoid

because it opens all sorts of political perspectives that I'm not necessarily comfort with. But it is a means to an end. It's not political. they're not looking for political power, they're looking for control, and they're looking for economics. The problem with that is that you run out of support. You run out of people who are going to work for you,

and the CJNG is experiencing that now. The CGNG doesn't have that Cinaloa base or even that Mitu-A-Qan base to recruit from. They can find people there who will work for them. But now when you see the casualty reports of engagements between CGNGG and other cartels and law enforcement or the military, you'll see a lot of Colombians,

Venezuelans, Central Americans, Guadamalans. Why? Because they can't recruit locally that well, they have to force people to work for them. So migrants, obviously, the tens of thousands of migrants in Mexico are a very convenient source of labor. And also what they do is they have all these social media ads asking young people to come and work for them in Zapopan, to come and work for them in Guilajara. Those people will travel there, Mexicans, looking for a job in a call center,

or a restaurant and then be forced to work in the in the violent side of the of the cartel. Astonishing. Astonishing. How long can a level of brutality like that last? Because, you know, the Zetas were particularly brutal and they came in hot, right? When the Gulf Cartel leader fell, they moved in quickly and just town to town to town, region, region, you know, barbarity, like, you know, ISIS level barbarity from Mexican cartels towards their rivals, but also, you know, just local drug dealers and civilians.

Why is the CJNG able to persist, you know, over a decade now at this level of violence? With this level of violence. Three reasons. Three reasons. One, the level. level of violence that we're used to now in Mexico wasn't normalized when the Zetas were around. The Zetas pioneered these snuff videos, these decapitated bodies and bodies hanging from bridges and body parts left gruesomely by the side of the road. That was not a Zeta's invention necessarily, but they certainly were the first to use it on that scale. But at the time, we're still early after Calderon's deployment, right? It's before Calderon and then we move into 2006 when Calderon

launches the army. Mexico is not as inured to violence as it is now. in Mexico you've had 30,000 people more give or take a few thousand dying for years every year it's become part of life in much of Mexico it's horrible to say it there are parts of Mexico where it's not like that of course many parts but in Khalisco controlled areas the threat of death if you cross that group is so constant that it's become accepted right the CJNG normalized, made normal today, what was seen as the worst excesses under the Zetas. You see the difference, right? You don't react in the same way to bodies hanging from bridges in Mexico now because they've

been doing that for 15 years, right? When the Zetas were doing it, it was still new. So it provoked a different sort of reaction. Second, who the CJNG are compared to the Zetas. The Zetas were commandos. There were soldiers well trained that the Gulf cartel leader, Osiel Cardenas, Guilla, thought, oh my God, those would be brilliant as my personal assassins, right? And he was right. But the command structure of the Zetas was never based on knowledge of drug trafficking and knowledge of opportunities.

It was just this orgy of violence which flared out in a couple of years. The CJNGG are much more methodical. The CJNG know who to extort, how much to extort you for, where to move their drugs. they bribe the right people. They have access to state productive databases. It's very calculated. And third, El Mancho. The Zetas did not have El Mentiono. El Mentiono is underrated as a kingpin.

He's not El Chappo. He's not El Mio. He's not Eskabar. He's not that flashing. But in terms of one man with no rivals, El Chappo had El Mayo, right? It was always uncertain. Who was the boss there?

They came from the Guadalachara cartel, where again you had a power play. Almencho, there's no powerplay. El Mento killed his rivals in 2010-2011, has deliberately, and this is quite funny, he's a snitch. El Mento has conveniently placed rivals to be arrested by Mexican governments or to be killed by armed forces at different times. He's very savvy. Also, the way that the CGNG uses brutality, that's a MENCH invention. You see it the second he takes over in 2011.

They go coast to coast, butchering. all the live long day. What about economics now? I assume, you know, if you're going to keep a structure that cohesive, like there's really, there seems to be, you know, besides the fact that they can't recruit very well, but all always soldiers and cartels are dispensable, right? These young, poor, brown kids are always getting killed. They don't matter to, you know, the actual structure of the organizations.

The fact that they could stay so cohesive, that's got to mean they're making a lot of Do you think, you know, especially now that marijuana, the marijuana export trade to the U.S. has basically become extinct, which is a huge loss for groups like Sinaloa who are, you know, they come from pot trafficking, right? Do you think the CJNG, given their variety, their real diversification in extortion of all of those legitimate businesses, avocado, tequila, oil theft, you know, we know now that they're scams, call centers that scam gringo, timeshare people like in Puerto Vallata, plus their drug trafficking. Do you think they actually are the richest cartel? Do you think they have more money? It's difficult to put an exact figure on it.

The similar cartel and the CG make billions of dollars a year. from a wide range of criminal economies. The CGNG are more diversified, I think, than any other cartel in Mexico right now. Why? Marijuana is gone, heroin's gone, cocaine's gone. The trade of those three drugs to the US is minimal now. Cocaine is almost entirely going to Europe from South America. You don't even see that many cocaine studios in Mexico anymore.

Some still, but not much. Heroin is a trickle of what it was, and marijuana is. gone. The CJNG was synthetic drug experts before synthetic drugs were known to be the deadly thing they are today. They were making meth. The millennial cartel before it was CG was making meth. Mensho was in California learning to make meth when I was two years old. I'm 41 now. There's a deep, seated knowledge about synthetic drugs and crystal meth. Fentanyl was a boon, right? They could take the same labs. They could take already the supply chains they had for pre-examptial. curses and adapt that to fentanyl. Extortion is where the CGNG has excelled. I hammer this home.

The empire of extortion of the CGNG is something that Mexico has never seen before. All criminal groups extort to a certain extent, or most. Sillowa Cotel under Chapo didn't do it so much. But one of the conditions, if you're a politician in a CJNG area and you want to keep your life, is you give them access to state productive databases. What does that mean? That means that they have access to the knowledge of every avocado farmer, caffar rancher, tequila, cactus growers for tequila production. And they know how much land you have, how much, how many fruit you produce, how many cattle you have, how much you sell them for,

what period of the year you make your profits. And they base their extortion on that. It's not sustainable. That doesn't mean they want you to keep going and they just take enough for you to survive. No, no, no. If you go out of business, that's no problem. They'll give your business to one of their friends and they'll control 100% of your profits, right? They might even charge you to be trafficked to the U.S. border because you're running away from home

because you literally have nothing left to live. So it's oppressive. It's constant oppression in a way that the Cinelloa O'Oercatel has certainly never done business that way. Wow. So, yeah, putting somebody out of business is not a problem because they'll just take it over and probably take profits and keep bleeding that business dry. Has that had an effect? Has that had an effect on the consumer prices in America for these goods, avocados in particular?

Well, absolutely. The vast majority of Mexican avocados, sorry, the vast majority of avocados in the U.S. are from Mexico. And the vast majority of Mexican avocados are grown in Mishuoka. The single event, non-criminal event that allowed the Valencia family to level up is NAFTA. They were already moving drugs. in avocado shipments across Mexico, but they couldn't use that in the US because before NAFTA, there was no avocado Mexican sale in the US. NAFTA opens the door to Valencia avocados in the US, and they moved cocaine for Escobar

through avocados into New York especially. In fact, there's records with, this was one of my favorite things of researching this book, there are records that US FDA inspectors came to. Mituotihuacan and trained the producers of Mitochakan, including the Valensis, on how to produce healthier avocados to sell to the US without knowing that those avocados would be used to conceal cocaine. So, Pesto to Dollar, how that extortion has affected consumer prices, I don't have that exact data, but I can't imagine that it hasn't had an impact.

When it comes to oil theft, explain that. So you have, so the, the, the, the. Halisco dominated regions are obviously Halisco, Nayarit, Colima, although it's contested, maybe northern Michoacan. And then Veracruz on the Atlantic coast of the eastern coast. And then there's Guanawato, Guanawato, which is in the middle of the country. My parents have been there, which is wild. It's like there's super touristy areas. But that's where they're stealing the oil.

How does oil theft work? Tell us, because I'm fascinated by this, how profitable is it? And who are the buyers? Like, I know they're stealing Pemex, Mexican state-run oil. Who's buying this shit? Please walk us through this. So if you'll allow me to go back a little bit, oil theft in Mexico is decades old. You have dedicated thieves, gangs, local gangs, they live in their town.

They live not far from a pipeline. They attack the pipeline and they sell it locally. they sell it to local villagers and they sell it to petrol stations to gas stations Dubai. In Guadahuato, you have a big refinery right there, Salamanca refinery, one of the biggest in Mexico. And it sends pipelines crisscrossing across Guantanato. It's another reason why Guadahuato is such a hotbed for foreign direct investment. You have a bunch of plans there, right? It's convenient for access to Mexico City.

It's on highways going to the U.S. You have plenty of oil. Guadahoto was one of the first targets for El Mentiono when he takes over and he creates CG so they start off in Halisco taking over Sinloa cartel drug trafficking infrastructure but he immediately sees okay if we stay here we're not going to survive a push from the Cilinole Cote they can take this back so we need to expect Guadahoto is conveniently not far away well it's half a country away but relatively speaking Mexico is not far away and Guadahua at the time is mostly local gangs doing this oil theft. Actually, non-violently, there's some

clashes between them, but non-violently. Halisco comes in 2015, 2016, takes over. Several of these local oil thieves banded together to defend their racket, and they create what's called the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel. Santa Rosa de Lima is one of the cities or one of the towns where oil theft is happening on. And they take the war. to the CGNGG pretty aggressively. Now, you would think, with more money, more men, more weapons, the CG should wipe out these local trumped-up oil thieves. Well, the problem is that conflict has now lasted longer than World War II

in one Mexican state. It has made Guantanato the most violent state in the country. Because, as always happens with these little groups, the Santa Rosa de Lima cartel went in five years from being a group of oil thieves trying to defend their racket to being a cartel. and smuggling drugs and extorting people and giving people and smuggling weapons because that's how you make money and that's how they made the money to keep up with the cjngi the the customers are still

local the customers are still local people who want to buy oil or gas at a cheap price and and petrol stations it's also used you know if you look at columbia you look at venezuela stolen oil goes into cocaine production obviously that's not a factor in in mexico but it's a very locally driven criminal economy. Wow. So the Mexican oil thieves and cartels don't actually sell it to corrupt American companies. They keep it in Mexico. It stays in Mexico. Wow. And it benefits. And no Mexican business is going to say no to, you know, 10 cents on the dollar or 10 cents on the peso stolen oil. Absolutely. There's a reason, Lopez Obrador, in the first year of his presidency, he said oil theft was the biggest security threat to Mexico.

Wow. Basically. Wow. He did a campaign for a year against oil thieves. It failed miserably. For a year, he was patrolling, you know, he sent the National Guard patrolling the pipelines. And yet, that dropped oil theft for a while. The minute they were taken off, they went back.

And what are they doing? What is the CJNG? What are their interests in Veracruz on the eastern coast? So Veracruz is a fantastic state for criminal real estate, right? It's a long state. It goes from really from central Mexico all the way up north towards Tamolipas, and it's got a big port. So several reasons. One, if you want to move drugs, if you want to move people through Mexico, Velacruz is a very convenient state.

It's a fantastically corrupt state. Even by Mexican standards, the governors of Veracruz are eyewaternically corrupt. And when the CJNG arrived, it was the Veracruz was a Zetas state, especially northern Veracruz. So there was like the death spiral of the Zetas, different splinter groups of the Zetas vying for power,

no one big group that could block the the entry of the CgenG. Veracruz was never seen lower territory. It was Gulf cartel territory in the north and then Zetas territory. So there was space for it to expand. But the CGG doesn't control all of Veracruz. The more north you go, the tougher it gets,

because you get to Tamolipas, Tamolipas is banditry. It's wild the number of gangs that exist in Tamolipas. And they also run northern Veracruz. So it's a constant hotspot of violence. How does, I'm fascinated by how, you know, these basically, these cartels embedded on the other side of the country in the mountains, how do they deploy to all of these different regions? regions. Like, how do you keep that organized? And how do you keep it staffed? I know you mentioned

basically forced recruitment of migrants and, you know, people from Central America, South America. How do you keep all of this organized? I mean, it really is that. It really is a lot of forced recruitment. It's not like they have, you know, a base in Khalisco and then they're deploying people to different parts of the country. They have people who live in Velakruz. They have people who live in Guadahuato. Remember we talked to the beginning about this horizontal structure where you have plaza bosses who can control their local territory. That's what you're seeing, right? You're seeing an embedded infrastructure. And yes, you can deploy people.

There are two groups, two armed groups within the CG, one called Grupo Delta and one called Grupo Elite. they're let's say the hardcore guardsmen or soldiers of the CGLOG, sorry, and they are of the CGM, sorry, and they are absolutely deployed to new hotspots. So they've been in Guana Hato, they've been in Veracruz, they've been in

Zakatakas. In Chiapas, which is this state on the south of Mexico on the Guatemala border, it's been a lot of false recruitment. And this is something I haven't seen before. They've recruited indigenous communities. They've been to these indigenous communities that are often the ones who are suffering the most from cartel violence and saying to disenfranchised youth there, he can work for us.

And so you have this indigenous membership now in Chappas of CJG while their communities and their villages are suffering and being displaced in the tens of thousands. What activity, yeah, I read about Chiapas and it's like one of the hottest new battlegrounds in Mexico for obvious reasons, right? the migrant crisis and drugs moving in through across the Guatemala border. Could you go into that a little further and the conflict there between them and Sinaloa and how that affects local communities and, yeah, the money that's being taken out of there? It's impossible to overestimate. Sorry, it's important to emphasize how much migrant trafficking or migrant smuggling has changed the game for criminals in Mexico. it's such a criminal bonanza.

You've got so many people who can be victimized at every stage of the way, who are desperate, far from home, no community support, no one's there to help them. It is appalling, right? I do say this a lot in interviews. There's absolutely a migration crisis at the US-Mexico border. These people are running away from violence in their home countries. They're being extorted, beaten, raped, killed every step of the way. way in Mexico from Chappas when they enter, which is why the CGNG is fighting with Sinolaan cartels so violently there.

They're extorted by immigration officials, by police, by transport operators. They get to the northern border. They can enter the U.S. They're forced to rely on cartels for either survival, for jobs, sell drugs, sell sexual services to survive, right? It's a real hellhole for these migrants. And obviously, cartels have turned to them as a bananza because these people, of course, will give everything they have to travel north across the U.S. border. So in Chiapas and at the U.S. border, we see the same level of violence or more violence, but not about drug trafficking, about migrant smuggling.

Are they wholesale smugglers the way that you see this in the east a lot? you know, you find tractor trailers with like a hundred, you know, suffocated dead migrants. You don't see that a lot on the West Coast. You don't see that a lot in TJ. It's really more piecemeal. It's a lot more targeted and selective and actually really a high level of service. A lot of these cartels now really give, you know, we talk to some young men from Chiapas in a hotel room in El Paso last year where they were getting ready. to, they'd already crossed the border fence and they were getting ready to be smuggled through

the second checkpoint. They had the organization that had recruited them, had given them like three different, they'd given them $10,000 for three tries, you know, that kind of thing. How involved is the CJNG, like, are they basically like at what level of sophisticated are they when it comes to smuggling migrants? Like, how does that look? So there's a significant disadvantage that the CJNG has is that it doesn't control

that much territory on the U.S. border, completely. Tijuana is Sinloa still, but Zane. Tamolipas is very much Gulf Cartel and Northeast cartel. Chihuahua is Salazar's and Chapitos. So the CGNG

is actively involved in extorting migrants as they come in. arranging for their transport north. But the government has actually cracked down on those tractors. So we haven't seen that many recently of like these three dozen people being left dead in a trailer. There has been a crackdown on that. The government actually does run a lot of the transport north. So between Chappas and the U.S. border, a lot of the time they're moving in buses

or in transportation that is organized or supervised by immigration officials. But they're being restored anyway. You'll see the migrants telling you the immigration officials or police, beat us and shake us down as much as the cartels ever did. The CJNG is very much involved in Chappas, in Veracruz, where, you know, that's where they're going to force me to recruit you. That's where they're going to make you pay to travel through their territory. But they're not controlling it wholesale from north, from south to north.

Yeah, that seems like the one thing that they'll never be able to do is control the border because they just don't, they're just too far away and it's, it's too precarious. There's too many people that can get in on the action at all times. The northern border, the U.S.-Mexico border. They've tried their best. They've tried alliances. The CGNG has made alliances. At one point, it was very played up in the media.

They did a deal with the remnants of the Tijuana cartel. And so you actually had a few narco mantas, banners, with CTNG on it, Cartel de Tijuana, Nueva Generation. Wow. That never went anywhere. It was hyped up and it sort of died on the vine. They did also in Juarez. They had a temporary alliance with the Juarez cartel.

Again, that didn't seem to go anywhere. And the northeast cartel sort of quickly took care of that. Now you see the CGNG making a push to control San Luis Potosi and Nuevo Leon, so north of Monterey. They really want a stranglehold there because that would put them much closer to the border. But again, that's very close to Gulf Cartel, Northeast Cartel, old-school Z. that there's territory, it's difficult for them to project power that far away. How many plaza bosses are there? So let's talk about just the size of the organization. So you have Menschot and then about like three of his like closest lieutenants. You said three or four.

How many plazas are there and how many like plaza bosses that are kick upstairs, if you will, to the lieutenants, et cetera. There's, so it's important to understand. never-structive as mentor at the top. His number two is his step, San Juan Carlos Gonzalez-Valensea. Then there's three lieutenants who are critical, and they control their own state. So Puerto Vallarta, for example, is the playing area of Gonzalo Gaetan Mendoza,

alias Alas, El-Sapo, the monkey. He's this guy who has a compound outside Puerto Vallarta where he breeds tigers. He even sells those tigers to narcos from rival cartels. He actually has that permission. So they send envoys. They buy tiger comes for like $5,000. You have Audias Flores Silva. Aalya's Flores Silva is the gardener, El Jardinero.

You did some jail time in North Carolina. His son lives in Charlottled. He, while he lives in Halisco, he controls a lot of that southern Veracruz to northern Chappas or Tabasco. Then plaza bosses are very much a similar cartel thing. So the concept of the plaza boss running the drug trade, you know, controlling it in one area. That's a Guadalajara cartel term, where you had your Sonora guys, where you had your Sinola,

Kuala Khan, Mazatlan, Guadalajara guys. Of course, you have regional bosses in the CGM, but it's not so much plaza bosses as we understand them. It's more sort of areas in which you're able to run the show and murder every area. I would say there's five big areas for the cartel now. One is Halisko Colima Nayarit.

that big area. One is Michoacan, which is a huge battlefield for them. You can tell how big, how important Mitroakan is to them because that's where they innovate. That's where they were the first ones to use drone warfare, dropping, you know, attaching C4 to commercial drones and dropping it on their enemies. Even though it didn't kill that many people, it's a very potent weapon of fear. Then you have Guanajuato for oil theft and you have the secondary oil theft front, which is Puebla. Puebla into Idalgo is big for oil theft,

not as big as Guano Hato, but big for oil theft. And it's also big for now fentanyl production. A lot of fentanyl productions move down there. And then the fifth one is Chappas. Some would say

Cancun, because there's a lot of activity going on there. But Cancun is so wild. There's so many groups fighting for Cancun that I don't think I could say with CJ has like a plaza boss running the Riviera Maya.

Okay. So you have about five regions of real power by the CJN. Five to six, because I would say northern Veracruz as well. Again, northern Veracruz like the Riviera Maya, the Karian coast, the Cgeny is very present there, but it's fighting against a lot of different rivals. So I wouldn't say they have a plaza boss, but they do have a lot of activity. So I'd say six big areas of activity. And who are these?

Who are these regional bosses? Do they also come from, do they originate with the Valencia family going back, you know, almost a century from Mituqan? Or, yeah, who are these people? And how do you move up? Like if somebody in the organization says, okay, it looks like Cina Loa is weak. It's so weak now that it's time to start expanding in Tijuana. Like, do you get the boss, do you get the blessing from Mencho to then break off and try to go take a territory? So the top guys are very close to Mentiono.

The top guys. There's one I mentioned too, right? I mentioned El Sapo in Puerto Vallata. I mentioned the gardener. The last one is my favorite. He's R3. Sorry, no, R2. And he runs operations like a political campaign.

You can see that he's very close to Mencho. He's very close to the stepson. And he does things like make Christmas offerings. He had a Christmas parade. a couple years ago, Neigualahara, where he was distributing, armed men, distributing, you know, goods and TVs and clothes. And then in the video, put on YouTube, you have like a text overlay saying R2 and Mensho, like associating his name to Mention, almost like a governor of a state like putting Trump or Biden, right, to try and like claim proximity to their leader. So those guys are old school, if not Valencia's right after, and they came up with as part of the family or the next generation. Gotcha.

At the other end of the spectrum, a lot of foreigners. In the middle, you have a phenomenon that is not talked about, journeymen. A lot of plaza bosses, like second, third level bosses, have worked for different organization. The one I mentioned before, La Vaca, the one in Colima, who turned on the CGM when he thought El Mancho died, he was like a veteran of like four different groups. He worked for like he, at one point he was with the Gulf cartel. And then I think he was with one of the northern groups like Tijuana, one of the guys up there. And then when that, he was with Guadalhara cartel back in the day.

But when he went to work in Colima, he was from Colima. So he knew the Colima trade, right? So he just, yeah, whoever, whoever's going to pay me now, right? Until one day he was a problem and they killed and they had him arrested. Wow. But you have a lot of, you know, that, that knowledge when a, when a, when a, when a, when a cartel boss is killed or removed, the name of the group might change,

but the names operating it are not going to change, right? You still have expert cooks, expert money launderers, expert cicarios, expert extortion guys, who are very valuable to whoever hires them. Now, the drug trade in the United States, do they actually have cells? Do they send their people north the way that cartels used to, to actually distribute the drugs in the United States

once they cross the border, or has it become a situation where they just dump it off to American groups or, you know, Chicano groups, biker gangs, and then, you know, get cash on delivery and then flee back to Mexico? It's a mixture of both. These guys that I said, so, for example, Audias Fras Silva, the Gardner,

he has connections to Charlotte. So we know that Charlotte is a city where drugs from the CGNG are stored. And then, so they're almost like the wholesale distributors, right? They'll bring the drugs across the border. And we know that they have had depots in San Diego, Los Angeles, Houston, Tampa, Charlotte, Chicago,

where the distribution hubs, they'll stockpile fentanyl, meth, and then they'll make deals with your Chicano gangs, your Dominican gangs, your biker gangs, who are going to buy in bulk, and those guys then distribute and filter it down locally to sell in corners. So that's a persistent myth that you hear about the CG and G about Mexican cartels in general. Mexican cartels are not the ones selling to your kids directly.

Not at all. They are the distributors. And then you've got middlemen and then you've got local drug traffickers who sell locally. So while the Mexican cartels are of course responsible for, much of the drug crisis in the U.S., they're not the ones slinging dope on street corners in small-town America. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. So basically they have a guy watching over a warehouse in Charlotte, and once they've stockpiled, once enough mules have made it safely through with either crystal meth or fentanyl, they stockpile it, and then they start distributing wholesale. They're always, there's always in and out, right?

It's not like until they get a business. It's a business, right? So it's just a place to store it while they think. And in fairness, the DEA has become pretty good at finding those stockpats, right? You hear in Houston, particularly Houston, Atlanta, Chicago under Sinloa cartel, the Flores' twins, the Flores brothers, sorry, there's been big coups and big seizures. Very interesting thing this year, fentanyl's seizures have driven. dropped off precipitously.

Yes. Like it went up until 20203, and then this year it's like more than 60% down on last year. I think it might be almost close to 70% down now, while mass seizures are up. So for some reason that analysts have still not quite figured out, there's less fentanyl coming across the water and more meth. Wow. Is that because usage? Could fentanyl use be down? There's different theories.

One is that this is the knock-on effect of the synonymous economy. temporarily stopping fentanyl to try and take the heat off them. One thing that has benefited the CJNG is that the heat has been on Cynloa for like the last three, four years. Yes, there's been operations against CG, there's been arrests. But since Ovidio Guzman was captured the first time, there's really been a pressure to take out the Chapito's, now El Mio, right? The Cynol has felt that.

And so they tried to get away from fentanyl in certain areas to try and keep the heat off them. The CG, to my knowledge, didn't do that, but something changed. there is less fentanyl being consumed in the U.S. it's a small percentage, but it's the first drop in years. But we don't know what the correlation is. Is it because there's less fentanyl coming, so less Americans are smoking or smoking or taking it or less Americans are taking it so there's less being made in Mexico? My theory is, you know, my theory is fentanyl's coming down from Canada now through the Chinese

because they're making it there. So that could be possible. We know during COVID, a lot of a lot of pill presses moved to Canada to finish off the product. Okay. But yeah, meth is way up. It seems like meth is making a huge comeback in terms of seizures and stuff like that. So would you say that it sounds, the CJNG is so fascinating to me because it seems like the majority of their criminal business is in Mexico. You know, obviously they have their drug transatlantic.

their drug trade to the U.S., but like all of these things from extortion to oil theft to, you know, controlling local drug markets, you know, in places like Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta, et cetera, on and on. These are all Mexican businesses, you know? I mean, the drug trade to the U.S. is their main order, right? Oh, it is. Okay. That is billions. That is billions for that. I wouldn't compare it to extortion. Extortion is so disparate.

across so many industries and so many different things and it pays for local for local hires. It's not comparable. But no, the CGNG's main earner remains U.S. bound synthetic drugs. Yeah. And then migrants.

And then migrants and extortion. You know, they've diversified. It's like a corporation with different companies within it. Now, what about internationally? you know, there's rumors that like fentanyl kitchens were springing up in Colombia run by guys from Sinaloa and, you know, Spain, they've got these massive pot grows and, you know, actually marijuana grows in the U.S. You know, Oklahoma is like a big state now where cartels are, because of lax laws, cartels are popping up these big local weed grows. What kind of international presence do you see the CJNG having, if at all?

the major country in which the CG has an impact right now is Ecuador. That is still their cocaine connection. When we haven't spoken much about that cocaine connection, the Cynloch Hotel and the CJG buy tons of cocaine from Ecuador, and they are the reason, or one of the big reasons with Albanian traffickers as well, why Ecuadorian gains leveled up so much in the last decade, where these small-time cocaine transporters in Mexico, in Ecuador, sorry, are suddenly now national threats to the government, armed to the teeth, killing thousands,

and moving dozens of tons of drugs a year, of cocaine a year. And how did the CJNJ do that? How do they do that? How did they prop those guys up? So the money that is involved for Ecuadorian level crime is a bonanza, right? The price of cocaine is higher now than it's ever been before, ever. There's more cocaine being produced now than ever before, give or take a few percent in the last couple of years. And Ecuador is completely lawless, has very little, or until this current government, very little ability to fight back against these groups. And often the CJ and Givisano Gato were paying in weapons. So they would get cocaine and give weapons instead of money.

So they were like the big boys contributing to a small criminal enterprise suddenly leveling up, right? It's where you see these bands like with Choneros, the Lobos, who 10 years ago were just known for moving drugs across the country and are now national level security threats. Guatemala is a big thing for the CGNG. Again, they didn't invent that. The Zetas, the Cinaloa cartel, now the CG have long used Guatemala as like a rear base where they would stockp drugs and weapons. Outside that, it's been exaggerated, right? The Mexican cartel influence in Europe, for example, is extremely limited.

Extremely limited. There's always these theories that pop up that meth in Europe comes from Mexico. Some of it. But honestly, I've spoken to Dutch meth manufacturers of meth cooks who say that they make a better product than the Mexicans ever did, and I believe them. Wow. there's connections to China, connections to India,

connections to Australia for buying chemical precursors or selling meth. So the Sinloa cartel in particular had a meth route to Australia and New Zealand with the biker gangs. So yes, they have connections. But when you're from Mexico,

why would you focus on any market apart from the US when the US is right there? Okay, so the guys, the CJA and G guys that are set up in Ecuador, getting cocaine from, you know, southern Colombia, northern Ecuador. They're not moving it to Europe. They're still sending it to Mexico bound for the U.S.

Yeah, so CG doesn't have many guys in Ecuador. They're buying, they're making cocaine deals, right? And most of it now is done by instant messaging services. They might send a guy down there to, you know, to make the deal and make sure the cocaine is in order. But it's put onto a ship and then received through the Panama Canal, or up the Pacific. I see. A lot of Ecuadorian cocaine is going to Europe.

Most Ecuador in cocaine. Cocaine is not manufactured in Ecuador. Cocaine is manufactured in Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. But a lot of the cocaine going out through Ecuador is going to Europe. But that's being bought by the Albanians, the Montenegrins, the Irish, the Italians, not the CJNG. CG is looking at the Mexico and the U.S. market. Okay. Gotcha.

I wasn't sure how international. I didn't know if they had buyers in Europe now and were, you know, just controlling the ports through Ecuador from which it left. But it sounds like they don't bother with that. No, the Mexican organized crime spreads like most organized crimes through diaspora, right? And in the U.S., you have communities that can provide that support.

You don't have the same communities in Europe. Copy that. Wow. It's such a vast, it just seems so much more old school in terms of, you know, this organization walking around at broad daylight with armed Sicario's passing out, you know, Christmas gifts to children in the slums of Guadalajara. And, you know, who does that in 2024? One of my favorite stories in the book is what they do on Mother's Day. on Mother's Day they have pink colored banners

with Mencho's picture, his mug shot from like 25 years ago saying best wishes to the mothers of whatever the community is from Mr. Mencho and the C.G Engine. You're like that is such a disconnect. And they give good stuff like they're giving like big

huge bags of money and TV sometimes even like dishwashers occasionally. So they, on certain days, they go all out. So they're operating like dictators, the way that Maduro would give out, you know, free, free shit to all the peasants when it's election season. So there's one big difference. We didn't touch on this.

Maybe this is a good final point. The CJNG loves PR, loves PR. Maduro does that to get votes, right? Or to at least have the appearance of political legitimacy. from its inception. CJNG has done stunts. It loves stunts. Those stunts can be horrible,

like it was the first group to blow a Mexican Air Force helicopter out of the sky in 2015. That helicopter was part of an attack squad trying to capture Al Mancho. Mention was driving away in a car, and two helicopters went after him, went after the car, and one of them was blown out of the sky by an RPG. They do these parades, right? these videos where they show armed to the teeth, armored cars in the front,

and that makes headlines around the world. If you look at those videos and you look at the line of cars going back, they get distinctly less impressive as they go back. Like it's the big cars in the front, the big weapons. As you go back, it's just like a pickup truck painted the right color with some plating on it. They're the first group to use drone warfare. They teach other groups to use drone warfare.

They then said they were using chemical warfare. The CGNG literally put this out there, that they were using chemical warfare. They were not. They used a couple of chemicals that made villagers cry, and they were like chemical warfare. Not true, but everybody talked about it. And then there's the social media stuff. Social media stuff is terrifying. The Cynoloa cartel is better than the CG at online branding.

The Chapitos in particular had this whole hashtag called Chapisa, in which they showed, you know, guns and women. in and money and cars and drugs. The CG is more discreet. But if you go on TikTok, or you go on Instagram, if you type hashtag CG, often it's banned, or they ban that content.

So they replaced it with the purple devil emoji. You know, the little purple devil with the black horns, a little smile? That's what the CGNG uses its symbol on Mexican social media. So if you type CJNG and then the little emoji on TikTok,

you'll find a bunch of stuff. And what does it? the point of putting out content of criminal activity? Intimidation and recruitment. There's a story I investigated. This one wasn't the cartel of Khalisco, but I know they do the same thing.

There was a case a few years ago where these kids from Oaxaca, poor kids, and what happens is at 3 o'clock in the morning, 4 o'clock in the morning, when it's most likely that young teenage boys will be playing online video games, shooters, but it's the time at which parents will be less likely to be checking up on them.

You'll be playing your online video game and you'll get an invitation. You'll get invited to a server. And that server might be CJNG or CDN or CDS, something to lure you in. And that's where they begin to talk to you. Like, hey, how are you doing? Who are you? Oh, you know, dump your boring parents. Take a bus, steal their money. Come to Halisco, come to Monterey, come to Veracruz. You'll, you know, we'll give you money. You'll have a life of adventure. And of course, the kids who do make it up there have very low life expectancy. The other thing you mentioned is the call centers.

The call centers is if you're lucky and you're recruited, you'll end up there. If you speak English, you'll probably end up working for them in the call centers, where you'll be trained on like advanced scams and AI ways of doing scams. And if you don't make enough money, you'll be tortured and beaten every weekend. Wow.

When do you think, you know, they just elected a new president, the first woman president in Mexico but she's from the same political party that's been taking money from the Cina Loa cartel for decades going back at least 15 years to when Obradol first got into politics

and you know kingpins that have been captured in the U.S. all corroborate this. They're like yeah I gave that dude money I gave that dude money I gave that dude money what kind of political influence does the CJNG have in Mexico City? So their worst enemy

was the security secretary of Mexico City under Claudia Shinebound, who was mayor of Mexico City and now president, and he's now the security secretary. This is Omar Garcia Harfuch. He loaths the CJNG. Like, it's personal. He was part of the prosecutorial team

who brought down Manchita. He was part of that team that tracked down Mensha, when the helicopter got blown out of the sky. He was part of the, that operation. When he was security secretary of Mexico City, he fought really hard to stop the CG entering the city and putting a stranglehold there.

He arrested a bunch of CG guys while he was in Mexico City. And now he's federal security secretary. On top of that, they tried to assassinate him. A few years ago, in broad daylight in one of the main thoroughfares in Mexico City, they pumped his car with hundreds of bullets through grenades at him. He survived. He got shot three times. Two people died, including one of his bodyguards.

He survived. So their worst enemy, Omar Garcia-Harfut, is in government. On top of that, the CJNG doesn't have the same history as the Sinaloa cartel of courting relations with one party. The Sinaloa cartel was in bed with Pry, which was the one party that controlled Mexico for 70 years for ages and also with López Obrador. CGMG doesn't work that way. So at the highest level, I would think, actually fairly limited. but Lopez Obrador didn't give a damn about the cartels. He did nothing to fight them.

Nothing. Very little. He didn't have a security plan. And he didn't need one. His popularity didn't go down because of that. His popularity was always high because he was catering to a specific type of Mexican citizen and doing economic favors for them. Scheinbaum is going to have to choose.

She could ignore it like Lopez deodor did. But the Sinaloa cartel imploding a month before she came to power, has kind of forced her hand, right? She's going to have to deal with that. The Ceylono was the foundation of Mexican drug trafficking for 20 years. That's gone. On top of that, she named Garcia Harfuch as a security guy. That tells us that she's looking to make some changes.

Having said that, I published an article yesterday about her 100-day plan, and it's really bad. It's completely reactive. Her 100-day plan is all based on quick security wins, and it's not at all exhibiting long-term thinking or new approaches. So that's worry. Yeah, I'm sure nothing will change. But I'm, well, that's not true. Things change. But in Mexico, it's hard to see how and how quickly that'll happen. The people that really suffer from this oppression, I think that's a perfect word that you use to describe how the CJNG operates in its strongholds, Wadawato, but especially

these pockets of police and just government deserts. There's no government in these really remote places of Halisco and Mishu Khan. The CGM is the oppressive dictator. Is there any, do they demand justice? Do these people, civilians suffering under this regime? Can they demand justice from the federal government, from the state governments? No. I wouldn't call the CG dictators. There is always government. There's always local government. The CG is not interested in political power for itself. You know, you're not going to see a CG guy running for mayor or for a governor. They want to control those positions. They want to be able to tell that mayor give us all the databases. They want to be able to tell the governor, make this court case go away. They want to be able to tell the police commander, yeah, look the other way. on that day at that time, right? In the worst parts of Mexico, whether it's CGRNG,

similar or elsewhere, there is no justice. Under Old Chapo, you could potentially have asked for justice on a specific case. CG doesn't give a shit. If you step on them, if you block them in any way,

as I said, 81% of homicides connected cartels for that one group. In those places, there's no mechanism even within the CGG to ask for justice. Whereas the Chapitos did,

the Maitos do have those mechanisms. I've never heard of the CG having that. Maybe one plaza boss or one local leader could implement that on his own. Institutionally across the group, no. I'm at asking the government for help. Let's look at the hometown of Elmenschel.

It's the town of Aguililla in Mitwokai. Well, he was born a little village outside of Ullia. Aguilia is where the Valencia started. That's where they had their avocado plantations. Now it's a whack-a-mole cycle. Local self-defense group move in, take the city.

CJNG pushes back, a bunch of people dying, CJNG pushes the auto defenses, self-defense is out. It gets to such a point that the army moves in, everybody runs away, situation is stabilized for a few weeks or a few months, Army eventually pulls out, or National Guard

eventually pulls out, CJ&G moves right back in. It's a cycle. So that's the sort of, yeah, if it gets bad enough, you'll get the Army for a bit. Yeah. But it's only a stop gap solution. And on top of that, you have to imagine the number of people who've just run away from these places. I mean, you have entire villages, entire towns, empty. Because the people ran.

Yeah. In Khalisco, in Guanahua, in Michoacan, in Michoacan, the number of people in certain areas has plummeted. Yeah. And understandably, why would you stay? Wow. Wow. Yeah, it's fascinating. it's, you know, it defies the rules of, you know, universal justice and, you know, making war on two fronts. That's, it's, they should have crumbled by now, but it seems like they're just getting stronger in certain ways, doesn't it? I mean, they certainly should have crumbled by now. I think they defied expectations on their longevity. I suspect we'll see a CG fragmentation in the coming years, either by MENCH dying or being arrested. I don't think any of the lieutenants,

sorry, my light's flipping. I don't think any of the lieutenants have the staying power or the charisma or the leadership to unite the group as it is. I think it'll be like the Sinaloa Cartel. You'll see different factions implode. Okay, apologies. My desk lamp, which is just going out. Sorry.

So I think we're in the final years of the CGA. Wow. I think El Mancho is keeping it together somehow with glue and spit at this point. I think the lack of local recruits is a big problem. I think you can't recruit forever from foreigners. And I think the election of Scheinbaum and particularly Garcia Harfuch as security secretary,

who again, it's personal with him in the CJJJ. They tried to kill it. And he's gone after them again and again and again. And then if the Sinoa Kartel goes away, who's the next focus then for the US and for Mexico? So I would say in the next, let's say three to five years, we'll probably see a fragmentation of the CG which would only mean more violence.

Right, right. Yeah, once you get in the headlines, you know, the CJNG just hasn't made American headlines. Once they do, that's the beginning of the end of what it is now. Yeah, for sure. And Mensito, you know, the son of Mention, Ruben-Ozegro da Cervantes, was on trial very recently in recent weeks. And his trial was a big miss for the U.S. government. I mean, yes, they got him.

They associated him to drug trafficking crimes. But they were hoping it was going to be like a chapeau-level revelations. And they really struggled. The prosecution really struggled to actually connect him to the worst acts known to have been done by the CGNG. That shows that the government doesn't have as much on the CG as it doesn't as Sanoa got up. Wow. Right. Yeah, they're just, I think it's Mencho, whatever it is, the culture that they've,

the culture that they've made within the organization is just a lot more unified. Yeah. At the top, yes. At the top, yes. Do you think there will be another... I'm sorry, go ahead. I think there's just not that many people at the top of the CG and G. In terms of that structure, that family structure of the Valencia's,

while I think we're getting to the end of that, because there's only one Valencia left after Elmenschel, that's his stepson, who I did. own thing has the charisma to take it forward, you still have that hardcore at the top, right? But if you break them, if you can get El Mensche or you can get El Mentiono or you can get El Jadino, that could start a domino effect. Wow. Wow.

Do you think there will be another super cartel again in Mexico like Sinaloa used to be and like CJ&G is now? I think so. I mean, on the same level as the Sinaloa cartel, maybe not, because the barrier to entry for organized crime is much lower, especially with fentanyl and with meth, right? You don't need to have plantations. You don't need to have expert agricultural knowledge. You don't even need to have a border crossing. Now you can pay, you know, the northeast cartel to let you through in Wiboladero. So the model of the CJNG of focusing on synthetic drugs, that's now the new reference, right? If you're an enterprising, mid-level criminal group

when you want to level up, you know that's where you're going to make your money. Extortion, getting access to those databases, that allows you to control local economies in a way that you couldn't before. So it's about whether any group can get enough territory to rival the CG. It might be difficult because, again, that barrier to entry is way lower now. And the CG has shown a new type of criminal path. Wow. That's unbelievable.

Well, Chris, thank you so much. Incredible work you're doing. Go ahead and plug your book and tell people where to go get it. I certainly am going to order it because, you know, this kind of stuff is not talked about very much. But it affects Mexico and Mexicans in a deep, profound way. So I do two things, right? One is, I'm an author. I just wrote, CJNG, a quick guide to Mexico's deadliest cartel.

And that traces the whole history of the CGNG. but it links it very much to today. How did this happen? What is the threat that the CGE posts today for fentanyl, for meth, for migrants, for the U.S., for Canada, based on its history? So I think for anyone interested in Mexican drug history or Mexican history itself, you'll enjoy the book. The second is I run a company called World of Crime, and we work with companies and government agencies in Mexico, in the U.S. and Canada, to protect you against cartel risk. Cartails are moving in on legitimate businesses more and more and more. And I think World of Crime really helps companies protect themselves against criminal exposure.

Fascinating. Those links will be in the description. Chris Dolby, really appreciate your work and for you coming on. Johnny, it's absolute pleasure. Let's do it again sometime. Absolutely. Thank you so much, guys.