The Underworld Podcast - El Mencho Dead! And Mexico Explodes

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

We told you his life story in our 2022 episode, and now we're back with the sequel. El Mencho rose from poverty to build the CJNG into Mexico’s most violent and influential cartel, trafficking fent, meth and coke across the hemisphere. After years on the run with a huge U.S. bounty on his head, Mexican forces killed him in a daring military operation last week in Jalisco. The cartel responded with unprecedented retaliation: burning vehicles, massive roadblocks and bloody clashes with security forces that left dozens dead and airports and flights disrupted. His death has left a power vacuum in CJNG, sparking fear of a new wave of turf wars and uncertainty about what comes next in Mexico’s cartel wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And Mexican authorities have just caught a massive break. For years, they've been hunting Nemesio Oceo Gere-Servantes, aka El Mentiono. head of the C.J.NG and Mexico's most wanted man. And for just as long, he's given them the slit, surrounded by henchmen and swapping homes more often than a meth head on the Mongolian step. Until now, the investigator's trail has led them to a mensho insider, a man who claims to be the confident of one of the FNACO's female concubines.

In fact, the contact says, I'm taking her to meet him right now at his cabin complex in Topalpa. some 80 miles south of the Halisco State Capitol, Guadalajara. The Mexicans have never had a tip like this before. They contact colleagues in US law enforcement who confirmed the lover's trist with a piece of, quote, very important additional information. Mexican special forces and members of the National Guard blueprint plans for a raid on Topalpa, but they need to be ultra-cautious.

Mensho is no street thug, and is men, more soldiers than hoodlums, have repelled attempts to capture their boss before. In 2015, for example, CJNG members downed a Mexican army helicopter with Russian-made RPGs, killing 13. This time, the Mexicans decide. They'll go in quietly, on the ground, with minimal air support.

Units establish a cordon around the complex. Helicopters carrying special forces stand by in the state surrounding Halisco. Mexican President Claudia Scheimbaum on a tour in the country's north is kept updated at every step. The contact's intel is good. He drops the woman off at Tapalpa later that day. She spends the night, then leaves.

Now it's just Mencho and his lieutenants, surrounded by a ring of armed men. Saturday comes and goes. Then, in the early hours of Sunday, the authorities strike. The men advanced on the cabin complex, closing the cordon, firing at the gangsters inside. The response is furious and deadly. Bodies drop all round, illuminated by strobes of gunfire, 10 die in the chaos, eight narcos and two soldiers.

The state forces close in. They stalk up a hill towards the cabins, which by now are belching thick black smoke. Men show and his bodyguard split, and they sprint into the surrounding undergrowth. A special forces detachment gives chase. They catch up with Mentiono moments later, cowering in a bush. Another burst of fire. Then, the soldiers grabbed Mencho and two of his men, all three of whom have been shot, before dragging them into a helicopter to be airlifted to a Guadalajara hospital.

None of them will survive the journey. Did all three men succumb to their wounds on that chopper? Or was the order sent out to dispatch them there and then? We may never know. What's true, though, is that Mencho, arguably the most feared man in the Mexican underworld, is dead. And with it, the streets of cities across Halisko are about to run red with blood. This is the underworld podcast. Hello, and welcome to a special episode of the Underworld podcast, weekly show that covers the world of organized crime. And what a week it's been.

I'm Sean Williams coming to you from the 1999 studio in my new home. of Buenos Aires, San Antonio, Maitina. It's protest outsiders, traffic. It's Latin America. And I was late, so I'm getting on board. I'm joined, of course, by Danny Gold in New York City. We are seasoned reporters. We spent decades chasing crime and corruption around the globe. We are now perfectly located to close the loop on the narcotics trade. Me on supply, Danny on demand. Nicely. Nicely play, my friend. Nice to play. Yeah. If you're new here, guys, thanks for listening. We've been doing this since like 20, 20, hundreds of shows, including several the cartels you're about to hear it all about. We actually did an episode about Men Show and the

CJNG back in January 2020. Plus for anybody who wants more, we have a Patreon stuffed full of bonus episodes, interviews, staff sheriff's roundups, ad free shows, notes and reading lists. Yeah, we've got a lot of messages about doing a MENTO episode. We did that one back in 2022. I think it was republished two in 2025. It's a great primer on who he is and what CJ&G has done. And for Patreon stuff, that's patreon.com. or sign up on Spotify or iTunes directly. And the Underworld Podcast at gmail.com for tips and advertising inquiries. Yeah, we get a lot of cool stuff these days.

However, let's move Swiss on to today's show. That is the death of Nemesio or Sigera Savantes, a mancho, chief of the cartel, Halisco Nueva Henna Aenacian, or CJNG, which is what I'm going to say from now on because my Spanish ain't that good. Massive news about as big as it gets in the cartel, world, and, as you just heard, Mencho met his grizzly end on February 22nd, a Tapalpa cabin complex called Las Cabanas La Loma, which, weirdly, was itself sanctioned by the US Treasury

as far back as 2015. Yes, you can actually sanction shagpads, apparently. So, Menchow was hardly hiding out in some hillside bunker or secret underground lair. It was pretty much hiding in plain sight, actually, although, as you're about to learn, getting to him has always been a near impossibility for several reasons. I wonder what the rates are for that sort of combatant complex right now. Do you think they crash or do you think the notoriety of it causes the price to skyrocket? I'm going to go on like booking.com afterwards and check it out and see. Maybe we'll do a team building retreat there, you know?

Yeah, I don't think you can filter to take out landmines. But yeah, if you can, maybe it would stay there. In the wake of Mencho's death, his acolytes have unleashed all kinds of mayhem on the streets of Mexican cities. It's what we've pretty much come to expect when the big fish goes down. We saw it in 2016 when Sinaloa cartel leader El Chapo was arrested and extradited to the US. And it was even worse in 2023 when authorities captured Chapo's son, Obidi or Muzman. Also, I think in 2015, right, when there was like an attempt to go after Mencho,

I believe that's when they shot down the military helicopter with an RPG. Do I have that right? Yes, yeah, yeah. I mentioned it really briefly in the cold open and then we're going to get to that a bit further down. as well. But those outbreaks of violence, they seem to have paled in comparison to this week's wave in which narcos have targeted cities and airports, especially in the tourist haven of Puerto Bayata. I could try and say it without some weird Argentine accent. Bayshata. Cram full of American and Canadian-owned timeshares.

Apparently, timeshare fraud is like a big income earner for the cartels. Did you know about that? Yeah, I've come across it research in this episode. And actually, we're going to mention it again further down the show because it's kind of funny that a bunch of times what can't those guys do you know i know man should we get one should we get one for the podcast we could do a lot with that um i recorded the cold open in the aftermath of the raid so like i think three or four days before this record and since then mexico has admitted that actually 25 soldiers died at tapalpa alongside 45 gangsters and another 60 troops have been killed in what some are calling the menchaso

post-raid violence, yeah, that is a lot of casualties. And it's only accurate up to Friday, Feb, 27th, when we're recording this. So you can expect the number to go up in the coming days and weeks. Now, this shouldn't be too much of a surprise from a group known for its acts of ultra-violence, whose violence is the tactic, and to whom the Mexican state attributes 75,000 deaths. I mean, that is more than the majority of terror outfits and more than the Sinaloa cartel, if, of course, you consider Senilever a single organisation.

So it's no surprise to see such a public outpouring of joy at the death of a man you might more accurately call a terrorist or a warlord than the criminal kingpin. But today, we want to dive into who Mencho is, or was, and how he went from a dirt-poor avocado farmer to controlling one of the world's most powerful narco-trafficking groups, one with operatives in over 60 nations, connections everywhere from Beijing to Bangladesh and worth several if not tens of billions of dollars. How did Mentiono become the last of the surviving mega narcos?

And what happens now that he's dead? And given the CJNG was particularly known for shipping synthetic drugs like methamphetamine and, more recently fentanyl, will this raid have any effect on the flow of synthetics into the US? Oh, and there's the little matter of this June's FIFA World Cup. Four of whose games are scheduled to be played in Guadalajal. Could fighting in the wake of Mencho's death plunge Mexico into an all-out cartel war? And could FIFA pull the plug on its hosting duties? Okay, all right.

That is a lot of questions. So it's time for some answers. To help us along today's show, I'll be sprinkling in some expert opinions from Owen Grillo, longtime friend of the show, Mexico City-based reporter for decades. I mean, author and creator of the Crash Out Media Substack, essential reading on Mexican crime. Pretty much nobody knows this. stuff better than knowing. We'll put the full interview up on Patreon in a couple of days. And actually,

let's bring him in now because that cold open, it comes primarily from information from the Mexican state. And where the Mexican state is concerned, not all is often what it seems. So what actually do you think happened on that military helicopter? Do you think the soldiers were under orders to kill mention his men or did three guys just, you know, expire slowly on one flight? It's extremely suspicious. Apart from what any sources have told me, just what is officially announced is extremely suspicious because they're saying they happen to follow Mancho and his two bodyguards into these woods during this firefight and they shot all three, but all three were wounded and all three died on the plane. I'm surprised, you know, I've been questioning this quite hard

and cause and flack for that. I'm surprised more of the media aren't questioning this and it's just kind of putting his fact he died of his wounds on a flight and not saying what the military has said this because there's so many questions. I mean, like, what is, while the military gave us even more information, were the three conscious or unconscious when they were injured?

How badly were they? Was one of them conscious and the two not? Were they in exactly the same condition after being shot. Did they all die at the same time? Or did they die, you know, in some kind of staggered? Like, you know, it's amazing. And then on top of that, where is the photograph of the body?

You think on something of this scale, which was the top story in the world, and a big victory for the Mexican government, like when the US kill Osma bin Laden, or when the Colombians killed Pablo Escobar, you know, you have photographs of proof. When the Bolivians killed Che Guevara, you know, you have those kind of classic photographs of proof photographs, you know, it's not just, you know, it's sick to see a dead body, it's just kind of a proof of this. We've seen nothing, which makes, I don't doubt that the guy is dead because I just think. think, although, you know, Mexico's a lot of weird things I've been here in Mexico for a long time and some very weird things happened. Like I thought it was no chance that Chappo would escape from

prison a second time or the like, like, or the other cases that have been drug traffickers they've said they're dead and they're really alive. So sometimes, but in this case, it would just seem a very hard push for the Mexican government to claim they'd killed El Mention if they hadn't because he's such a big player. This is such a big player. This is such a big news story. But I do wonder what condition his body is, what condition is if his face is in a condition where they can't show a photograph his face because it's been battered by blows, you know, bludgeoned or something. And so that photograph, you know, would look, would not look great. But like, you know, the circumstances around that are very suspicious and I'm saying as I'm

surprised it's not being questioned more heavily by the media. It's almost like the end of a Michael Mann movie, isn't it? You've got the whole sweep, the wave of soldiers going into the cabanias, and then a small detachment breaks off and the bad guy runs away with a couple of his mates, and they corner him in a bush, and they valiantly take him in. But, oh, he dies, you know, we couldn't do anything to help it. I mean, it wouldn't be a suspicious to just say he died, but he died and the two bodyguards.

They were all injured, and they were all died. So I just don't have some ballistics expert, you know, Army surgeon, can verify what the odds are of several people all having bullets injuries and all dying in the transport plane. If that's normal or it doesn't sound very normal. I mean, Mencho had killed a shit ton of soldiers. And then in the raid to capture him, his men shoot dead over two dozen more. And then, if we're taking the official line, several soldiers corner him, shoot him and haul him out onto a helicopter. I doubt many of those guys would pass up the chance to lay a few sucker punches on him at least in his two bodyguards.

If not, just beat them to death altogether. But there is more to this. Let's go back to June 2020, because that is when Cj. NG. Cicarios surround the armed convoy of Mexico City Police Chief Omar Harfuk. Harfich? How did you say his name? Harfich? Yeah, sure. Goffich. Yeah, that's close enough. All right.

They open fire, and they kill two of his security guards and a female bystander. They hit Harfich 2, who is the son of an actress and politician. They hit him three times that he survives. And soon afterwards, he declares war on the cartels, earning him the nickname Mexican Batman, which sounds like a really funny Simpsons character, but Harfich rises in Mexico's political scene off the back of this attempted hit, and in 2024, he assumes his current role under Claudia Scheimbaum,

biding his time plotting Mencho's downfall. In January this year, Harfich plays a key role. the capture of Olympic snowboarder and star of a recent underworld episode, Ryan Wedding. And then he gets his chance at Mencho. You know, I really appreciate like a good grudge and vengeance story. And this one seems pretty, pretty up there. You know, it's very like made for Netflix movie plot. I'm sure there will be a bunch of Spanish language, like, you know, three season,

48 episode shows about this entire thing. Yeah, I think I saw a meme on Twitter about people with the, uh, the old thing from Scarface with him counting the money as, like Netflix producers now that they know they've got a perfect narrative arc in Mencho's death. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty much tied up with a bow. Imagine a scenario where the soldiers get Mancho, for example,

and they get these two boys on that chopper, and then they radio into Halfwich in Mexico City. I mean, what do you think he's going to tell them to do? Create a martyr behind bars, run the risk of an El Chapo-style escape? Right, so in a crash-out post, quote, This was personal. The Hellisco cartel has also murdered vast numbers of soldiers and police, including the General of the National Guard in 2022. The military brass wanted revenge, and to draw the line on cartel bosses hitting generals. Harfichers says publicly that Mencho's

next of kin, his wife, Rosalinda, two daughters or three brothers, they could come collect a body, but that may be unlikely. Most of the family are on Mexico's wanted list and all would surely be interrogated about Mencho if they showed up at a Mexico City morgue. A body is usually kept for 15 days in Mexico post-morton before being buried in a common grave, and my bet would be that is what happens to Mencho. According to a source speaking to the early times, Mexican officials have pondered this raid weighing up the fallout. As much as revenge and security were factors in pressing on, relations with the US appear to have been key too. Even before his November 2024 election victory. Donald Trump had been warning Mexico to wipe out the cartels, singling out the elimination of fentanyl,

which I think he labeled as a weapon of mass destruction, as a cornerstone of his campaign. And in December 24, U.S. officials slap a $15 million reward for the arrest of Mencho. Do we find out who, if anyone gets that reward? I mean, you get to collect $15 million, right, but you're pretty much marked for death if you stay in Mexico and probably anywhere in Latin America. So I don't know, you know, it's a tough call. Yeah, I'm not sure if the guy who shopped in Mensho through his girlfriend is going to get the 15 mil, but at least, I don't know, he might make it as far as put a Vatavata with that. I wouldn't.

I don't know. Can you lay like a polymarket bet on how long that guy's going to survive with the 15 mil, or how many of it's going to spend? Because I don't think he's going to spend a lot. Anyway, according to the LA Times piece, quote, officials believed that if President Claudia Shimbham's administration didn't act, President Trump might launch a unilateral raid on Mexican soil. And this source adds that over the past six months,

US Special Forces training their Mexican counterparts, have even war gained this exact capture of MENCHO. And then, in early February, Mexican forces arrest the public official believed to have been corrupted by the Helisco cartel. This guy turns and troopers carry out a series of raids on siege, JNG locations throughout the month. More of S-D's turn. More information, more locations.

Until, on Feb 20, the officials learn about Mencho's girlfriend and his getaway into Pallupas. Here's Owen again. There's certainly a massive pressure from the United States, from Trump. Even before he took office, when he won the election, he began sending out posts on truth social, which were then blown up. pressuring Mexico saying if you don't start hitting fentanyl, I'm going to put tariffs in before he was even president. And Mexico started responding, start getting the fentanyl numbers down before even he took power. I mean, the guy can be, you know, whatever you think about Trump,

love more hate him, he can be effective at certain things with his tactics. So we think we know roughly how Mexico and the US got MENCHO, and we think we know how he died. But before we get to the here and now, the reaction from the CJNG and what might happen in future, we need to go way back. Because who was El Mentioncho? And how did he become, by some accounts, the most feared narco in Latin America? It's a pretty extraordinary tale and one which begins way back in 1966, when he is born in the tiny village of Naranjo de Chile, Michoacan. Misho, which is a nickname apparently from Nemesio, doesn't really sound like, is it, starts out life, dirt, poor, scratching and living in the avocado fields. But as the young teen, he comes into contact,

with a local family called the Valencia, who take the boy under their wing and get him to work guarding marijuana fields in the region. Now, these guys will end up founding the millennial cartel and become closely wound into Michoacan politics and law enforcement, earning the nickname the avocado cartel because, well, I mean, yeah, they smuggle weed and heroin inside avocados, didn't they? Meno drops out of school, and in the mid-1980s, immigrates illegally into the United States, where he scrapes by committing crimes in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1986, age 19, he's arrested for stealing and carrying a loaded gun. It'll be the first of many arrest north the border, Mencho returning each time to a different central California city. In September

1992, however, he tags along with his older brother Abraham on a heroin deal in San Fran. Only, Mencho realizes the guy as a carrying crisp, stacked $100 bills, not used ones, and he tells his brothers, the buyers are undercover cops, which they are. And when investigators catch him saying this on a tap wire, they arrest Mancho and they sentence him to five years prison in Big Spring, West Texas. Trust me, I've spent a bit of time in West Texas, Shamrock, Wheeler, Amarillo. There are not many good excuses to be there and be entertained for smuggling heroin is one of the worst of them. Dude, terrible opinion. I love West Texas, man. El Paso, Morfa, Big Bend, Dylan, you know, West Texas forever, come on.

I was, even as I was right now, it's like, actually, I kind of didn't mind the times that I've spent out in these strange little towns. It's like near the Oklahoma Panhandle, so maybe this stuff down south is a bit cooler. It's like Northwest, Northwest Texas. Yeah, Northwest Texas. Yeah, I want to go to Martha. I really want to spend time there. Anyway, Mencho spends three years in Big Spring before he's released on parole and deported to Mexico.

He's 30 now. Time to settle down. That's actually, that's great practical advice for our listeners. Remember our show's motto, right? It's cautionary tales by cautionary tales. Yeah, yeah. All right, guys, a quick break from smugglers, kingpins, and highly organized crime to tell you about a different type of underground operation. The culinary contraband of righteous felon craft jerky.

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responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. Well, what's he going to do next? He joins the police force of a part of Haliscoe that borders the Pacific ocean. Is he going straight? Well, no, of course he's not. Soon after he drops the badge and he joins his old powers to Balencias, whose millennial cartel is now one of the country's most powerful. Mencho marries into the clan, tying a knot with Rosalinda, who is one of the leader's sisters, and then he becomes a cartel Sicario, protecting millennial boss Armando Valencia Cornelio, aka El Maradona. Then he becomes a cartel Sicario, protecting millennial boss Armando

Belencio Cornelio, aka El Madadona, I guess because he's called Armando. Incidentally, you can check out our two-parter on Diego Maradona and the Italian mob from last year, which is, well, one of my favorites to do, in my opinion. Yeah, that's a great episode. And just to reiterate, because we said it quickly,

he becomes a state cop, right? Isn't that a, or is he local cop? He is a local cop in a couple of munitions. municipalities like near the coast. It's pretty small time, but I'm sure it helps him out going forward. Yeah, it's not a unique origin story, right? I'm on Cartel of higher-ups. Believe Amato Carrillo Fuentes was as well at one point or another.

I could be confusing with someone out. No, Felix Gallardo. Oh, really? Right? He was a cop, wasn't he? I'm just trying to think through the sort of 25 different shows that you said. Yeah, it's not unique. It's not unique.

We'll just say that. No, and I guess it's why they get that storyline from Sicario as well, which is amazing show. Anyway, the millennio, they are on the up and up. And El-Madadona has close connections to cocaine producers in Colombia, but even more crucially, he is forging ties with the makers of synthetic drugs like meth, particularly alongside Chinese-Mexican-Gin-Gin-Lie-Gon. Don't come out me for the pronunciation there.

He also broke as peace with the Sinala cartel, and all the while, Mencho is proving himself to be loyal, smart, hardworking, Melania would be very proud. But not everyone is pleased with this so-called Pax Sinaloa. Enter Los Zetas, a cartel formed where Mexican army commandos deserted in the late 1990s. These guys take narco violence to incredible new levels, brutalizing the Mexican state and public by carrying out public beheadings, bodies hung from bridges, torture, and they brag about it too. Their aim is to terrify and they go after the

millennial cartel. I think Danny, you did an episode on Los Zetas like years back, right? They're the inspiration for the Bampidos in Zero Zero, Zero, Zero. Zero. That crazy good show. Yeah, we have like a full 50 minute one on their origins, the rise and the downfall, like everything from starting with the Gulf Cartel to when they fracture

and the leaders get killed, I think, what, in 2010, 2011? But yeah, they were not nice guys. No, no, they're very not nice. In the early 2000s, the Zetas move against the millennio, and by 2003, the Balencias and Mencho have been pushed from Michoacan into neighbouring Halisco. They respond by setting up in Guadalajara, which is the state capital, and they move closer

to their Chapo-led friends in Sinaloa. The millennia already have their connections to Chinese producers of meth and fentanyl precursor drugs, right? These are the chemical ingredients used to make the narcotics. themselves. And in Helisco, they have a place that is fertile, warm, desolate in places, good to hide, and home to major Pacific ports in Puerto Vallata and Manzanijo. Add to that, a thriving pharmaceutical industry centered on Guadalajara, and it's no wonder that Mencho will end up becoming Mexico's king of meth. In 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calderon announces a war on drugs,

pouring thousands of federal troops into Michoacan to clear out the Zetas and other criminals there who are terrorizing the people. But the drugs, they go nowhere. The demand is always sky high. And while operations begin to chip away at the Zetas, the Sinaloa and Millennio remained strong. And look, I can't get too into the weeds on the various splinters and infighting and betrayals that mark the Mexican underworld here. But put simply, in October 2009, Mexican troops snatched Millennium one the boss Oscar Orlando Naba Valencia, aka El Lobo, which means the Lobo in English. Never stop making that joke. I think it works in every episode. Every single time. And in the power vacuum that follows every cartel worth of

a peso tries to muscle in on Halisco State. Amid this ultraviolence, enter Mencho, stage right. The millennial cartel fractures at this point splits in two. One side calls itself la Resistencia, cobbled together from gunmen of several of the region's cartels. Mensho, however, christens a new group called the Matazetas, the Zeta killers. And soon after, they dumped the mutilated bodies of three alleged rival narcos in the holiday hotspot of Cancun. Beside them, a message. We are the new group Matazetas, it reads. We are against kidnapping and extortion, and we will fight them in all states for a cleaner Mexico.

Hmm. Okay. go wrong. In September 2011, Matazeta's guys dumped 35 bodies, 23 men, 12 women, on a highway in the Atlantic's port city of Berra Cruz. Most are tortured and strangled to death. There's a new owner of this turf reads another message. Recently, local cops then proclaim that every one of the 35 has a record in organized crime, kind of dog whistling apart for the Matazetas to continue their brutal campaign. Quote, there is nothing in this event that affects the civilian population, said Beracuz's police chief, about the two trucks' worth of tortured bodies laid across a major

intersection at rush hour. Nothing to see here, guys. A war then breaks out between the Matazetas and La Resistencia. The Matazetas win, and Mensho consolidates his power base in Halisco, renaming his boys, the Cartel, Halisco, Nueva Generation. They're known for using military grade hardware and for using drones and social media to get their terrifying message across the authorities. It issues threats to random groups of civilians and carries out massacres to attempt to bring the Mexican state to heal. It promises death on rival narcos in public. At one point, it goes after the leader of a cartel called Los Biagras in Michoacan. We're already here, you dogs, the pure full letters, he means the CJNG, sons of your whore mother, we're going to kill

you all. Yeah, the pure four letters thing, right? That's like a big motto, I think they always say. I don't know if it has to do with like purification or whatever it is, but it's a saying that you frequently see with them in their announcements. Yeah, it's not moral purity. I think it's probably something besides because these are not nice guys either. I think there's a thing in the show, actually. Anyway, these guys could have won territory the old way by chopping off the heads of rival cartels, muslin in on plasas and territory, Renegin on peace deals, but instead they do it like a Mongol army, conquering, subjugating, massacring and pummeling dissenters into dust. They flaunt their equipment and ride around Mexico more like a terror group than drug traffickers.

In 2018, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Amlo, becomes Mexican president, and he inaugurates his policy of Abbasos nor Balazos, or hugs not bullets, which by pretty much any account has been disastrous, and it hands free reign of Mexico directly to the cartels. In 2020, Mentiono orchestrates the attack on Omar Harfuch in Mexico City, who responds by blaming the C.J.N.G. directly, tweeting that, quote, our nation must continue to stand up to this cowardly organized crime. But I think around this time, Harfich is like pretty much hobbled by being under Amlo, right?

so he's going to try and break out in a few years' time. During this time, though, 2020, the CJNG is waging a bitter internecine war with its own splinter group, the Nueva Plaza, and the cartelis Unidos, and literally thousands of people dying. It's horrific, says one priest in the Michoacan region of Aguilija, which is where Mencho's home village is, quote, what we need is for one cartel to take control. stop the fighting and impose some semblance of calm.

Everything indicates that group is the Helisco cartel. The only road into Aguasia is blocked and controlled by a cartel that is only 500 yards away from you. And the army are not doing anything to protect our right to travel freely. You don't know how hard it is to be paying a war tax that is being used to kill us. Yeah, I mean, that's always the fear, right, when a boss gets taken out right now. the fracturing, the factions fighting each other, no one in control, it just, it can go haywire, it can be a lot worse than if there's one person in control,

which is basically, I think, the plot line to Sicario and kingpin theory in general, but yeah, yeah, I guess we'll see what happens. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of the reason why stuff in Asia tends to be less bloody than stuff in Latin America as well, because frequently one group is massive, and there's not really the kind of fighting that you get in Mexico and other parts of Latin America.

But yeah, I mean, I won't get into these wars too much. You can listen to tons of previous Mexico episodes for more and all of them. But by 2020, the CJNG has come out on top of almost every conflict it's ever been in. It controls Halisco, but has a presence everywhere else in Mexico besides. Its members are said to be president in over 60 nations, all 50 U.S. states, and all 32 states in Mexico. They're making billions, perhaps tens of billions. And Mention alone is worth a billion according to the DEA, although with these figures, like we often say, they are often plucked out of thin air to please headline writers and podcasters.

Yeah, but to echo like how powerful these guys actually were during that time and how much they were expanding, I think I went down to Cancun in 2017, maybe 2018, to do a story for PBS Newsout hour. Like Cancun in the surrounding area, right? And it was about how cartel violence was coming to that Cancun in the tourist areas for the first time. which was usually, usually these places were off limits, right? Because someone had them under control. You know, they bring in a lot of money, whether it's retail sales or their hotels are owned, usually by cartel members, or at least they're washing their money, restaurants, even taxi drivers, right? So the big story then was that violence was encroaching on these areas and a large part of that

with CJNG sort of making their presence known and being like, we want a piece of this. And that was previously something that like really didn't happen, violence in that area. time of rule. Yeah, and that's kind of one of the big questions that we'll get to towards the end of the show, like what could happen next? I guess most of the time, like you say, like these tourists are worth way too much money for the

cartels to be kicking off there, but in the CJNG's case, they're basically maniacs. So, yeah, we don't know. I've thoughts. I've thoughts. Yeah, yeah, we'll get to them. Expert opinions. Well, that's what people are here for. Not expert opinions.

Ramping speculation. Yes, that's going to make us way more money. To reach his level of influence, Mencho has innovated in three main ways. Firstly, why rivals like the Sinaloans focus on the US border, Menchow looks to the seas, cementing Chinese partnerships across the Pacific as the flow of fentanyl is breaking into a flood. These synthetic drugs require little space to transport, no harvest, no reliance on shifting climates,

and infinitely fewer day laborers. So they're way easier to traffic, and you can listen to our episode on the Pacific Drug Highway from last year for more on that. Mensho has also forged alliances with narcos in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Australia, and he's expanded into Europe

with the health of Italian mafiosos, Dutch smugglers, and other key players. Writes Millennial, the newspaper, not the cartel, quote, he even took advantage of highly developed countries like New Zealand. Shout out of New Zealand there, with its young and wealthy population, selling the methamphetamins for up to $100 a pill.

He accomplished all of this without speaking Mandarin or English, or even having completed primary school. Not saying I could say about myself. Second, Mencho carries on the Zeta's baton, ditching the old motto of platter or plomo for platter e plomo, money and lead, corrupting cops and state officials at the top level, but also terrorizing officers, jurists and civilians on the street. It's about power, control, and the CJNG for years had turned it into a brutal, bloodthirsty art form. No episode personifies this more than the 2015 helicopter attack we mentioned in the cold open and a bit afterwards, when CJNG members downed an army chopper with RPGs killing 13. I mean, never before it cartels stood toe to toe with the military using battlefield hardware like that.

Thirdly, and on a similar note, is how the CJNG had used military equipment like drones for espionage, security, and even to drop bombs on rivals, endmines to fortify safe houses, and the hiring of Colombian ex-FARC mercenaries to train placer bosses. In particular, the use of mines has been an effective way of scaring civilians and kind of like redrawing the map in Mencho's image. I mean, imagine that. It's crazy using landmines to actually. actually keep like civilians in and out of certain territories.

Yeah, and the CJNG are insane. The thing is, while Mensho has a huge global property portfolio, tequila brands, hotels, restaurants, crypto, mountains of gold bars and Bengal tigers, just like us, he actually lives pretty rustically in the Holisco Hills, more like a pauper than a prince. And the biggest reason for all of this is that since 2020, he's been suffering for an alleged kidney failure. and in need of daily bed rest and dialysis, which brings us crashing right up to the present, or perhaps pulsing or whatever a kidney does,

because it's precisely this treatment that means Mensho doesn't move from place to place on the daily anymore, like his fellow kingpins, which makes him vulnerable, especially when he's staying at his Cabania and Tapalpa, which unlike other CGA and G strongholds isn't ringed by landmines. Landlines isn't ring, maybe he's got a landline, I don't know, isn't ringed by landmines and layers of personnel. So, when a US officials pinpoint Mencho's position

and US drones hover overhead, Harfich and the Mexican government realized this is the best chance we've ever had to clear this guy out. Wrote's Argentine newspaper Clarin, quote, a month before the federal operation in Tapalpa that would end his life, Nemesio Osegiera Cervantes, the most important criminal in the world, lived on the run, sick and nervous, certain that every move was monitored by the United States security agencies

in constant communication with the Mexican government. The DEA had tapped the phones of his main operatives and knew of Elmancho's nervousness. This anxious state aggravated his kidney and liver problems. At 59, his health was in shambles, partly due to surgeries performed in makeshift hospitals. He ate poorly and slept even worse. His sleep was fragmented by trips made in the early hours of the morning from one hideout to another. Anyone who saw him in January would never have imagined they were standing before a man with a fortune estimated at over a billion dollars. You're not going to come up with a joke about me, Berlin, nothing like that. Okay, cool. We'll move on. The rest, of course, is history. I mean, not for me, but for Mencho, who is dead.

But that is only part of the story. When news of Mencho's death goes public, the C.J.N.G, as we mentioned a while back, they go berserk. In Tamil Lippas, they hijacked buses and set them on fire across highways. Vehicles block roads in Mithracan, and cops who try to clear them are fired upon. In Guanahato, CJ&G's hot operatives torch 74 cars, trucks and storefronts. Some 20 states are affected by this so-called Menchassal, as Owen Grillo calls it, but the worst of the violence is reserved for Halisco, and particularly Guadalajara, where running street battles have led to the deaths of several dozen state forces. This is a war, right? It's a full-blown war. Most of you would have seen footage of fighting in Puerto Rata, a major tourist hub, shutting down the airport, which is pretty

new, deliberately target tourist infrastructure when such places, like we said, are usually considered off-limits, not just because it attract too much state attention, but because visiting tourists are a big pot of gold for the cartels. And school, Even schools are shuttered in the wake of all this. Here's Owen again. 250,000 bonus points. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at bestwestern.com. No additional purchase necessary for sweeps.

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Yeah, I would say it surprised me quite the breadth of it. It was unprecedented. We've seen this tactic. We can call it the narco blockades, you know, narco blockades. The narco blockades, which is really only part of it, but it began, this has been gone for 20 years. And first of all, you had copying the tactic of political protesters. So you had, you know, way back, I was in 2002, I was covering protesters who were protesting an airport being built in their town called Atenko.

And as part of the protest, they hijacked a Coca-Cola truck and put it across the road, blocking vehicles. And that was a technique of protesters. It was actually very effective as well. You know, the government ended up capitulating and abandoning the plans for the airport. And then you start seeing cartel do that same thing. They'd hijack trucks and put them horizontally across the road, a narco blockade. And it began, one of the original reasons it began as well is to immediately stop military convoys,

police convoys from being able to move around. So it's effective at trying to stop a capture of a cartel figure taking place. But also it became this idea of kind of inflicting hurt on Mexican society and the government, the government, you know, be under a lot of pressure. So it becomes you put the truck horizontally across the road and you set a light to it. And then you also burn a pharmacy and a grocery store and a bank. And then you also attack a police station and sprout with bullets and then stop police cars.

And then, you know, I was surprised by the breadth that it reached all the way down to, Kintanaru, which is where Cancun and Tulum, the tourist resorts are, all the way up to Reynosa on the Texas border, all the way close to Mexico City, the exit to Puebla, so the breadth and the number of National Guard soldiers. I still think the numbers are probably underestimating, and they haven't been, we generally, the government haven't really given a very totally clear accounting of all the information that's happened. But they said 25 National Guard soldiers killed just in Hellesco. And that is a huge loss for an army. You know, imagine, you know, if it was a day like that for the American army in Iraq, it would be devastating or Afghanistan,

but particularly the American army at home, an army on its own soil, to lose 25 in one state in one day is devastating. So, yeah, I was surprised, but then they'll make it. Menchal is a guy who was famous for violence. There's a song among many songs about him. There's one called Soi El Mensho or I Am El Mensho. And it says, people say I'm violence. Well, the truth is, why shall I lie? When I get hot, I explode.

It's like the lyrics of the song, which he was commissioned to write and approved. So it's like, he's known for. being a violent guy, and he is known for revolutionizing elements of the cartel wars with his escalation of paramilitary death squads, and he is used to these kind of tactics to stir up a kind of uprising insurgent tactics because of the government. So with that being our main show, it's not, you know, you can kind of see where he's going to go out with a bang. Guadalajara is set to host four group matches for this June's FIFA World Cup. Mexicans quite into football, as you might know.

The question is, could the CJNG attack during the tournament, or could FIFA take the games away from the city altogether? Now, it's got fulm with this, right? In 1986, FIFA stripped Colombia of its hosting duties at the height of violence carried out by Pablo Escobar's Medellin cartel, giving instead to Mexico for the second time in 16 years. I mean, could something say, similar happened this year, could the CJ and G choose to pull off something spectacular right

in the middle of the world's biggest sporting event? Here's Owen. Well, I think the immediate wave of violence on Sunday, on, I call it, it a filled bit of call it, El Menchaso. You know, you had the Kolokanaso and the Menchaso. That has subsided already. There's still some violence going on, but it's kind of to be sad to say, kind of normal Mexican violence, there's always violence, let some unrest and violence going on around Mexico every day. But the kind of big, the big wave of our violence and shutting down schools and shutting down cities and airports has subsided now, kind of back to normal already, you know, within two days. However, there's a few things on this. One is that, you know, one source said to me that,

Part of the US pressure was saying, you've got to take out Elmaintiff before the World Cup. No, I don't know if they were using that just because they wanted to take him and say, like, the World Cup's coming up, Hylisco, get that guy now, using it as a form of pressure because they wanted him. Or they really care that the fact it's a, you know, it's a joint North American World Cup and the idea of this gangster kind of being around is, you know, they're going to kind of get this guy out of here. On one side, you've removed a thorn in, you know, in your side of,

of this having this very violent warlord being at large. On the flip side, you've opened the possibility of more violence and breakups and stuff. Having the World Cup in 2026, although Mexico had two World Cups before in 70 and 86, it didn't have in those days this cartel problem in the same way. So it makes Mexico especially vulnerable to this kind of a tax where you are disrupting the public, you know, making a spectacle to hurt the government, it makes you particularly vulnerable. So if they start, you know, kicking off in like May, right before the World Cup starts in June, you know, and that can start to, and the World Cup itself. So, you know, they're going to try to have to kind of halt operations, you know, what does that

mean in terms of security. I expect generally the World Cup. My prediction is the World Cup will go ahead fine. Mexican intense Mexican violence. There's been a habit of kind of normal life surviving through so many

of these things. There's been a whole bunch of, you know, really big we've had about, you know, 20 years now since Philippa Cadoron lost a military crackdown on on drug cartels and there's kind of endless cartel wars happening since then.

And during that time, we've always had these elections, you weren't going to have elections, and then the elections go ahead. And these various things go ahead. So I think the World Cup will. I might be wrong on that. And then we'll be reposted saying like, completely wrong. Phrasing cold takes. But it's certainly damaging.

I mean, you know, Sunday was certainly damaging. I mean, people, there's going to be a lot of people who, aren't used to going to cartel. Most people are not used to go into cartel, you know, related places. And so you kind of take it with a pinch of salt, you kind of realize, okay, it kicks off one day, but I can go there, it's okay. I'll be most of the aren't used to that. So if they've got, you know, people have got tickets for these Helisco games or any games in Mexico,

some people are going to be thinking, oh, damn, you know, should I sell my ticket? And so maybe it's a good opportunity to buy some tickets or not. Yeah, I was going to say, if anyone wants to get rid of one, I'll take. I stand by that comment. If anyone is looking to offload tickets for Guadalajara, I'm going to look straight down the camera, get in touch. Like, DM me, seriously. I want them. Yeah. If there's two, why don't me and Danny do a Holisco World Cup special? I mean, it will be terrible. It won't be much fun at all, but we'll struggle for it for you guys. I expect if that comes to fruition, we'll be doing like the episode more hungover than the

US Olympic hockey team doing like Good Morning America the day after they, the day after, I don't know if you saw those clips, but they were just like, It's like 8 a.m. And they're just struggling, man. Like, they're barely, barely getting through it. But we appreciate you guys. Like, Holt and Strong, man. That was hilarious.

Yeah, hockey. I didn't know that you would go this bonkers for the hockey games, but it seems to have struggled. Yeah, a group of Rangers fan in the 90s, man, Mike Rick, they won the World Cup. And World Cup, Jesus. They won the Stanley Cup in 94. I still remember it.

Yeah, a very small trophy, right? That's all I know about that. Anyway, maybe we should actually do an organized crime World Cup. we could like play Mafia's off against each other like Haiti versus Scotland that would be a good one or yeah

the Dutch against the Japanese that'd be pretty cool what do you reckon I mean we talked about this earlier in the week and you don't think the CJNG would actually step on something as big as the World Cup right? No you know I don't

I think that look it's one thing to be crazy and violent and insane but to do that in the World Cup is basically like signing your own death notice right Not only would the Mexican government go completely bonkers over, but the entire world would. And you're going to have a ton of various intelligence agencies there as well, you know, being, like, looking up on it. If anything happens, there's global citizenry that will be affected.

I think it's just, I think it's a bridge too far for even them to do something like this, you know. And especially now, I think it would just be, it's basically welcoming like U.S. forces into Mexico. if something like that. Who knows if other country citizens are affected as well. I also think they stand to make a lot of money during this, right? Yeah. Especially in Guadalajara. You know, where are they washing money?

Hotels, again, hotels, restaurants, retail drug sales. I mean, think about all the English soccer fans going to Mexico, dude. All the cocaine that they're going to buy? I mean, that is... Why us? Why have we gotten into money? I mean, others as well. I think the Australians now are number one in terms of consumption, right?

but like they uh i don't think australia is in australia is on the world cup are they uh i doubt it but maybe they are yeah i don't know if england's playing i don't even know if england's playing in in mexico but the point is that they stand to make a lot of money through tourism through everything through retail sales taxis restaurants hotels not even just making it but washing it too right it's a gigantic opportunity for them so i just i think all those things sort of align it would have me my prediction obviously is that they're not going to do anything stupid

again that's not like a guarantee I just wouldn't assume it's going to happen but if you think we start hyping up that like something terrible is going to happen and it reduces ticket to the point where like we can go that's also like an argument I'm willing to make yeah yeah

I don't think anything happened when England last played in a World Cup in Mexico I'm looking at the Argentine okay anyway yeah I don't know I think these guys have shown over and over again that their shtick is to sow chaos and terror against Mexico, just like Escobar did in the 80s. So maybe with Info gone, like perhaps the underbosses will try and take his throne by out crazy in each other. I mean, they're hardly diplomats, right?

But I don't know, yeah. I thought that maybe they would go for something earlier in the week. But now that, yeah, you say this and I think Owens is kind of like, you know, things are starting to die down already. maybe they won't but you never know with these guys they're completely insane wild cards yeah they are

if anything they are unpredictable which actually brings us on to the final part of today's show which is what happens now to Mexico to the flow of cocaine and synthetic drugs but also to the CJNG itself

Info Bay which is like they're like writing a story every 10 minutes on this stuff they think that Rosalinda Gonzalez herself she could take command and become the most powerful Narca in history. But way more likely, though, would be a war of succession among the four men immediately below mensho in the C.JNG ranks.

It would take me another 15 minutes to say all their names. Says Mexican security expert David Salcedo, though, quote, this is good for Washington, no doubt, because what they're looking for are weakened cartels and a reduction in drug shipments. It is bad news for Mexico because smaller cartels mean more violence. cartels and homicides and other crimes will increase. That may be the case, right? But Mencho's death shows that the Mexican state can go hard at the cartels if they want to. Many experts inside the country are doubted that Scheinbaum could attack a post-Elmio-Sinolawa cartel at the

same time as the C.J&G, but she's allegedly, according to some sources, deployed Harfuch and his security forces against Sinaloa while giving the army a free hand against Meno. and it looks to have paid off. That leaves CJNGG vulnerable. Vulnerable abroad, where regional drug traffickers might try to lowball them, muscle in on their supply chains or kill members. In particular, Brazil's PCC

have been making big strides across South America, getting way closer to the producers in the Andes and the likes of Daniel Kinnahan and the Albanian mob in Europe. But without Mincho, the CJNG is also vulnerable at home. There's constant endemic conflict happening around Mexico with different groups. One example is Tabasco, for example. You've got, in Tabasco State, you've got the C.J. and G.

And you've got a local group called La Baradora, and they get into big fights. And now the Baradora, some of these local groups around Mexico, like I was in, you know, Guerrero State, you get small local groups who can ally with, you know, La Familia. They're kind of reasonably powerful. And some of these local groups, they might. only be, you know, you might think of it, oh, some local group, you know, you haven't, you know, it could be like, say, like Labradora or some Los Granada or some group, but they still come in hundreds or thousands of government, even these local groups. And so they're, and, you know,

they can be in conflict and their family, I think, okay, that's good. That's their weekend, there. We can push a bit now. And there's a very, there's a whole bunch of territories that are in dispute in conflict as well. You know, the CJ and G muscled in. to loads of places. So absolutely, you know, groups can try and, you know, have a pop now that I think, I'm going to go, that mentions gone down. Now there's, it depends a lot what happens in the secession. So there's talk about his stepson, stepping into his shoes, er tres, which would, he's, you know, he would be the son of his wife who's from the Valencia clan. So that would, he'd already have a lot of backing from his family.

The Balencia clan are basically very powerful. They form the Queenie faction within the Helleskin New Generation Cartel, which also a kind of money laundering operation within the cartel. And massive money laundering. I mean, huge. I mean, the Queenie's might be the richest of all. I mean, this guy, federal agent, I was talking to Mexican federal agent who'd been involving the arrest of the arrest of Abigail, Gonzalez-Belencia, El Quini,

he said this guy was just like, you know, he had incredible amounts of money. And these are guys actually moved around like Dubai and have, you know, incredible resources. So, yeah, you could see a clean secession battle and the arising of a new, the transportation of a new leader in the his own generation cartel. Or you could see a kind of a media. break up and kind of civil war, or you could see that one leader takes power initially, but then other people start to test him. You know, like you might have, you know, one of these regional bosses in Mitrokan,

who starts, you know, disrespecting him and not kicking back the money he should, and then starts to test it. And then this kind of stuff happens and they can erupt into violence. And look, it's just over a week since Metro is killing anything more than this would be pure speculation, and despite the fact that that would make us a way more popular show, we are not really in the business of making huge bets on stuff we don't know the details on. That is for Danny and members of the Cambodian under 19s table tennis team. I can't believe they lost the Thailand, dude.

I had so much. They were heavily favored. I'm so screwed for right money. If we please sign up for the Patreon, I'm in a lot of trouble. Did you not pay all of those 14-year-olds enough money? That's so dumb, man. What we can't. I would not.

Is it like that at this current moment in time? Ah, yeah, okay. People can clip that and sort of, anyway. How's a curious, Jim. Do not, do not bet, never bet on Cambodian ping pong players. I've learned my lesson, and hopefully you guys learn from my mistakes. No, he's only going with Vietnamese from now on. Anyway, what we probably can say for certain is that Mencho's demise will do little to stem

the flow of narcotics into the United States or anywhere else, for that matter. 10 years ago, for example, 17 million people use cocaine, well, worldwide, now it's 25 million. Fentina was just screaming into view. Now it's a full-blown pandemic. And meth is still the drug of choice for up to 40 million people across the world. These things are not going away. Fentanyl and other drug overdoses have actually been dropping in the US since around mid-2020. And that's mostly due to a greater awareness and a heightened availability of anti-OD drugs like Narcan. Mexican cartels are mostly onshoreed fentanyl production, taking the precursors from China, or in some cases, the precursors to the precursors to get around restrictions,

shipping them directly to Mexican factories. Inside Menchou, many are pointing out that killing Mensho is like picking a grain of sand off a cake in the desert. The whole thing is still dirty. Do you like that? Do you like that, that's similar? The CCHNG has thousands of businesses legal and illegal. I mean, they steal oil, they're in the avocado business, there's dark money networks all over the

planet and tons of sitting officials are still in its pockets. Writes the newspaper of Angadia. Quote, with the trophy in her hands, will Claudia Seimbaum attempt to eradicate the CJNG's financial and military structure, or will she merely display the priors to the fanatics? How will she quell Trump's demands present at the killing of El Mentiono, and undoubtedly growing to avoid arresting and extradite members of her party closely linked to organized crime? Neither is it likely that Mencho's death will stem violence that has been up since El Mayo's arrest a couple of years back. Quentin Somerville did a great report from Kulia Khan for the BBC this week,

and he compared that violence with what we've seen in the Menchassal. Kids murdered, paramedics targeted, bodies mutilated and left with messages. A lot of people will keep dying because the cartel is still fighting, and it keeps getting worse, one guy tells him. The war will continue. Nothing will calm down until a lot of. there's only one faction left. Here's Owen Grillo again, and if you want to keep informed, apart from listening to this show, of course, check out Crash Out Media because

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and so you know agents they want to get kingpins you know you want to get a big name and then you can you know write your book on gone tv and you know you know as a guy took down our chapos guys took down our mentor and that's the kind of motors operandi of what they do and then they get kingpins and they get people and meet up and they get people to flip and it's kind of this big kind of hunting big game in a way but it's tactical and it's not strategic and I don't think they actually have a US law enforcement a strategic vision about really reducing the flow of drugs I think what happened there was a certain reduction of fentanyl specifically at the last year and that was because you I had Trump, particularly pressuring Mexico, and I think it's actually

was through the corruption mechanisms where President Cloudius Schaimbaum pressures the security, the security secretary, pressure the generals, the generals, the generals pressure the cartels, and the cartels pressure the small dealers and like, move less fentanyl. We're under pressure. Move less fentanyl. So you can kind of discipline in itself, move other drugs, flip over. But without a very authoritarian approach, meaning if you look at countries with very authoritarian measures of anti-drugs, like for example, Singapore, Philippines under Duterte, the Taliban, these kind of regimes are effective at reducing the supply of drugs by doing things like saying, you know, if we find you

with open, we're going to hang you, or in Duterte's case, we're going to shoot you if you find you're moving drugs. or in Singapore as well, you know, you get hanged for 15 grams of heroin, 500 grams of marijuana. So that kind of stuff, but United States doesn't have the appetite for those kind of measures. On the flip side, a kingpin-like menscha or warload like mento is a lot more than a drug trafficker. First, the Helliskenur Generation cartel did a lot more than trafficking drugs. It was involved in a big, had a big portfolio of criminal rackets. or has, from stealing oil to people trafficking to extortion, to all of these different crimes,

even involved in like selling timeshares, no, terrible combination. You buy a timeshare in Puerto Rata and, you know, it hooks up by it off that his good your raging cartel because timeshares are a nightmare anyway. Yeah, I was going to say, if you buy a timeshare in Puerto Rata, you deserve to get wound up with the carter. I mean, there's a lot, I've made quite a few Americans and, you know, Canadians who have their timeshares and they bought them and some time ago, they kind of. are locked in and they can't get out.

I've been to some of these resorts and they'll go very hard at you and try, you know. When you're on a holiday and you're in a great mood, it's like, oh, yeah, it's lovely, yeah, by the time shit. And then before you know, you're locked in and they've got the cartel back in them as well. But anyway, but they're involved in a bunch of things, but as well as that, this is a criminal warlord, El Mancho. I mean, he is, he could, you know, be a war criminal. You know, he's behind mass graves, death camps.

You know, so many people who have suffered from his violence. So you shouldn't allow these people to be, to, you know, have to give them impunity. I mean, you shouldn't allow these kind of warlords. At the same time, you take them down and drugs still get traffics. So it's, you know, and I don't think the United States or Mexico fully figured out a strategy to try and make this situation really better. Even Mike Vigil, the former DEA chief, he said that the Kingpin strategy, quote, only tended to create internal conflict within the cartels, which then led to a bloodbath.

Is that happy ending? No. But is it at least hopeful? Again, no. Did I write this show while moving to a new country, learning a language and solo parenting while my son's admission at kindergarten is staggered by the hour, meaning I can only work in single hour bursts in the early morning or late at night? Yes. Does that make me the greatest podcast in the world? Also, yes. You know, people throw around the term hero, like a little too liberally these days. But sometimes, sometimes it really does fit. It does, yeah. And that is a very good note to end on.

I hope you enjoyed today's show, guys. Remember, you can get way more at the Patreon, including the full interview with Owen Grillo. And reach out with tips and ideas at the underworldpodcast at gmail.com. See you next week. Don't Instagram your crimes. And new listeners, if you want cartel episodes, We've done like 35. Just search back.

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