The Underworld Podcast - The Warring Prison Cartels Carving up Ecuador

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

Jon Lee Anderson is an author and staff writer at The New Yorker. Anderson recently profiled Ecuador’s young president Daniel Noboa for a piece entitled “Ecuador’s Risky War on Narcos”. Jon Lee spoke about his weeks long visit to the embattled nation, its place in the wider drug world, and how political movements across Latin America have metastasized into the biggest and most violent underworld on the planet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This small nation of 18 million people around the size of Texas, wedged, between the coca-producing heartlands of Colombia and Peru, has for years managed to hold off the narco violence that has plagued those and other Latin American nations. But King Canute could only hold back the ways when the tide was out. Since the year 2000, when Ecuador dollarized its economy, the country has become a hotbed of money laundering and corruption, fed by dirty politics and the slow rise of prison gangs that have, by 2018, erupted into full-blown conflict. From 2009 to 2019, Ecuador's prison population near quadruples, and among the Hefe's calling shots from behind bars, two groups in particular rise above the rest, Los Lobos, the wolves,

and Los Choneros, named for the small coastal town in which they've allegedly sprung. In December 2020, the Choneros leader dies, leaving their throne to be taken by Jose Adolfo Massias Biamar, aka Fito. And when COVID hits and joblessness soars, Fito has the perfect talent base from which to build a narco empire stretching all the way from the Amazonian hinterlands, once the preserve of Colombian FARC rebels, and ports at Gai Akele, Ecuador's largest city,

and even the tourist-friendly Galapagos Islands. But nobody is prepared for what comes next. murder rates skip 500% above Mexico, above Honduras. Bombs go off in cities. And on August 9, 2023, amid a hotly contested presidential race, a gunman shoots candidate Fernando Villavicentio dead in the capital city. That November, Ecuador elects a wealthy 35-year-old businessman named Daniel Noboa to become its leader. Clean cut and unashamedly elite, Nobua might not seem like the ideal candidate to bring

down Fito and Ecuador's raging street gangs, 22 of them in total. Not least, when gunman's stormer TV station live on air and threatened to kill its staff, a scene that could have been ripped right from the screenplay of a Marvel movie. Noboa has an eye for the Hollywood moment himself though, and he realizes the path his nation is on. At a keto radio station on this particular day, January 10th, he makes a striking announcement. We are at war, he says, and we cannot see it in the face of these terrorist groups. Weeks later, a dozen assassins are dispatched by drug traffickers to kill him. Nobua's response?

Surviving, he says, laughing ruefully. This is the underworld podcast. Hello and welcome to the show that tells you what's what in the dark and violent world of global organized crime. I'm your host, Sean Williams in Wellington, New Zealand. And I'm joined today not by Danny Gold, but John Lee Anderson, who I should just say as a disclaimer before we crack on is one of my journalistic heroes. So apologies if I sound of them that it was starstruck. John Lee is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He's reported from conflicts literally everywhere on earth.

And he is the author of half a dozen books, including is a claim 1997 profile of Shea Givara. And we'll get to some of that other work further down the show. But first off, thanks so much for joining me, John Lee. I think you're in Britain, as the cold open suggests. This show is not about Shee Givara, but your recent-ish piece for the New Yorker entitled Ecuador's Risky War on Narcos, which is a subject we covered here a while back,

but you actually travelled to the country and spent quite a long time there, particularly with its young and dashing new leader, Danielle Noboa. You spent weeks with Daniel Noboa. Horribly, he's 36, which makes even me feel old, which is nuts. But he's kind of interesting, right? Because I get the sense reading your piece that he's almost like a sort of clean-cut, neoliberal, kind of elite guy in the vein of Latin American leaders maybe 10, 15 years ago in other countries. I mean, I'm thinking of Pena Nieto in Mexico maybe.

And I guess that kind of says a lot about where Ecuador is with the narco world, right? Because it is sort of 10, 15 years behind. It just seems like the narcos have squeezed the balloon. You know, they've come out in Ecuador where they've been sort of quarterized elsewhere. But what was your sense of him? You spent a lot of time with him, right? I did. Yeah, I didn't really expect to, but I did within 24 hours of a writing.

you know, arriving in the country, I was I was with him in his office and he invited me to attend a raid the very next morning on a drug gang and I found myself in a jet with him going

to Guayaquil and and you know, and it sort of set a pattern up for the next month or so where I was flying around the country with him. He's very paraphatetic. Sometimes there'd be two flights to different parts of the country in the single day and sometimes by the presidential jet

other times by chopper and he was yeah hyperkinetic is the word and it was a bit like I was he you know he he just talked to me without a filter there was not the sense that I was this reporter dogging his heels it was someone he

like to have around to talk to. So I began to gauge how he would react if, you know, as in when I talked to him. He's a guy kind of in his own head. Doesn't really socialize too much with people around him. You know, some of his advisors suggested that he was on the spectrum, which I think is probably true. When he would answer, you'd get a kind of forensic detail.

detail that would go on very comprehensively about whatever it was you asked about, whether it was shipping or bananas or money laundering. It could go on for 20 minutes. And he was very knowledgeable about very specific things, but otherwise, and then he would just lapse into this kind of middle distance stare or, you know, be off on his own. in not the usual politician in other words and as you know you could see from the piece I ended up writing pretty unguarded when it came to his opinions about other leaders or other people

and not very politic at all but in some ways you know while he was talking quite likable quite agreeable to talk to he was more like you know someone in society than someone in politics if that makes sense. He, you know, he was a one percenter. You know, he's the son of the country's richest man. When I asked him which part of the states he liked the best, he said, oh, New York.

And I said, oh, we're in New York. He said, oh, well, the Hamptons. I grew up there. You know, he's someone who grew up in private schools. When we talked about climate change, it immediately moved on to skiing, and he, you know, he would say, the powder's great in Aspen, you know, that kind of thing. He didn't have any of the usual guardrails in terms of watching his back politically. He simply comes from a very exclusive tranche of society and isn't apologetic about it.

And now he has political power. And that made him even more interesting. And he was clearly studying power to figure out how to wield it. And in that sense, he was different, I think, to. any other leader I've met in the sense that he didn't have these guardrails. I have met other leaders who were

very unexpurgated, but none to the extent of, say, Daniel Noboa. And whether or not this was his mission before, now that he finds himself with this kind of overweening

political power in his country of birth, he feels that power. And he has an adversary he can he can combat, and that is narco-trafficking. And so he was going about it while I was with a kind of zeal that bordered on messianism is a bit strong. But, you know, this was his race on debt now. And it was him against the forces of darkness and evil, as well as trying to get reelected again. Because he was, he only acquired the president.

with an 18-month stint ahead of him to finish out the last president's term. So he's coming up at the end of this year, he's going to have to run again for a full four years in office. But, yeah, I never met Benignetto. But yes, I mean, his economic understanding, or his understanding of the economy is very much that of someone who understands what works in a capital. capitalist economy and what doesn't make sense, that kind of thing.

I was interested to kind of compare this piece with the one that you did, what, nearly a couple of years ago now, in Ethiopia, which is somewhere I actually was out reporting on the war there, what, three years ago now, I think it was. And you spent quite a bit of time with Abiy Ahmed when you were there. Did you see kind of similarity? I kind of see a similarity in those two leaders in the way that they have. framed the the kind of travails of the country

at the point at which they came to leadership. And it seems like they have a similar as kind of minutian view of what's going on there, right? I agree. Yeah, I think they are similar. They're very modern leaders in that sense. These are, you know, Abi is a bit older than Noboa and he doesn't come from an elite particularly. if anything, he is a very clever guy who, with a great instinct, I think, for political opportunity to have gotten into power in the first place,

and then kind of make it what he make of it what he would, clearly very enraptured with the exercise of power. And I think, you know, boys as well. Both of them really thrived in that position. And there's a certain amoral quality to, you know, running a country in a place where rule of law is still being built. That's an understatement when it comes to Ethiopia, but to a degree in Ecuador as well. So, yes, both smart enough to figure out the geostrategic, which way the geostrategic winds were blowing and to seek opportunity in affinities or not, with China, Russia, the United States, the UAE, you know, and so on, an understanding in the case of Nobaud, of the markets as well.

Whereas with Abi, more I think of a geostrategic ambition, you know, he wants to rebuild to make Ethiopia the great power on the Horn of Africa. He's very aware of its history. There's not the same pretension, particularly with Noboa, where, you know, Ecuador is a small country on the hump of northern, in northwestern and South America, he doesn't plan to, I don't think, retake the land that was stolen from it in a war

with Peru half a century ago. But who knows? But I don't think so. But yes, both of them, interesting in the sense that they present themselves as very modern. They speak without a filter. In other words, they're equidistant

between the ideologies of, in Western terms, let's say, Trumpism and Biden. Bidenism or, you know, Kamala, this sort of a kind of almost sociopathic approach to politics and an argument that it's about efficiency and execution on which they should be judged, you know, and taking their countries into a kind of more modern, more enlightened, functional era. And in that sense, yes, they are rather similar. interesting you point that out

it's he's kind of missing a trick I guess if he's going to be go down the populace route because make Ecuador great again actually mega is quite a cool acronym but um yeah he's he's interesting in the sense that

to me reading your piece like you just said as well he's kind of unabashedly a one percent so whereas I think in in Europe I mean especially in the UK there there are a growing number of sort of populist right wingers who claim to be men because they're all men of the people but they're actually extremely wealthy i guess trump would fall into this category as

well um but he doesn't seem to care at all he he's quite he's quite sort of unabashedly out there as a as a as a sort of rich nepo baby it's his milieu you know he um if you know i name dropped a few people or rather he wasn't intentionally name dropping you know and When I asked him about Trump, he said, oh, I met him at a party once. You know, it was that kind of thing. But he didn't say it, he didn't say it boastingly. It was literally, this is the milieu. He grew up when I asked him who he admired most amongst the Latin American leaders.

You'll remember he said, Lula, which surprised me, because Lula, of course, is, you know, from the old left, really. And, of course, two generations, or at least a generation and a half older than him. And I said, really? He said, yeah, I like Lula. I like the way he operates. And it wasn't so much a value judgment about his political affinity or ideology. It was about how he operated with power and in politics. So in that sense, that was what was interesting, again, about Naboa,

was that he was openly admiring of the exercise of power and those who had done it well before. He made a big point of bringing a book he was reading, on board the Jet One Day and reading it, which was Fauchet, Napoleon's Minister of Police, by Stefan Schweig. And another day, later on, I asked him if he finished the book, he said, almost, when I do, I'm going to go back to my default.

I said, what's your default? He said, Sun Tzu, Art of War, and Marcus Aurelius, the dialogue. So he was clearly, you know, channeling something when he said that to me. those men all of them the models the people he was describing are you know not unlike the prince machiavelli right these are people who are masters at the exercise of power it's not about morality it's about how you play the game and do it well and that's that's what he admired and he was i think trying to send a message that

this is this was where he was headed and although abi abe i be i be the didn't, you know, share the same sort of reading material. It was clear in our quite a few conversations that this was the way he operated as well, that he was living in a neighborhood where he had to outsmart, outfox, other leaders who would undermine him, who would do this, who would do that, and that he was doing it on behalf of, you know, his country, you know, his people. And whenever I would ask about people like Trump or Biden, in an attempt, or say, Putin, in an attempt to get a kind of moral judgment from them, and thus, if I could, a sense of where they swung, they always eschewed it. They avoided a moral judgment.

I remember Abi is very specifically doing that with Putin. and with Trump. And it was interesting. He wouldn't be drawn. Although I think he did say something, you know, sort of he derided Trump at one point. But not Putin, interesting, nor it she. And so that was, I found that interesting.

what about his his kind of I guess in that sense and I get this feeling from a few Latin American leaders that the narcos therefore are an an easy out

they can give that they can give that moral argument they can just make the everyone within the narco apparatus kind of the bet noir right you see it with Buckele trying to play every single world leader

to his advantage, which he obviously should do, but, you know, he is, he does also have that kind of amorality when it comes to sort of foreign affairs, and yet he will paint the, the narcos as, as, as, as, as kind of evil, essentially. And I get the sense that the boy is doing the same there. Did you get, did you get the sense being with him that it was, it was genuine, or it was just a useful kind of chess piece, like you're saying, in this, in this power game? Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion-dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com.

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Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. You know, he spoke with feeling about the degree to which the Narcos had undermined the rule of law and the institutions in his country. And so without knowing him before, it would be able to. be difficult for me to say that this was something that was put on. I mean, he could be something like a Zelig where he genuinely ends up believing what he says and that it begins the trigger is, you know, political opportunity and becomes something that he believes to his, you know, viscerally.

I do think that he genuinely despised, as he calls them, the narco-terrorists. And I found that his use of that term was was disturbing very sweeping and sometimes gratuitous and I could see how in his in his campaign to be reelected and to win a constituency in Ecuador and to have the armed forces and security forces intelligence services on his side as well as certain foreign powers namely the united states chiefly and Israel second that to help him that he would a lot of people might fall into that dragnet of being labeled as narco-terrorist. In other words, if you are soft on this or that person who I believe is involved in narco-terrorism, then you are a narco-terrorist too.

If you allowed corruption in your administration because of X, Y, Z, you're a narco-terrorist. And I heard him say that a lot, and that, I thought, was a bit disturbing. That combined with, you know, his power for dummies sort of fast, fast, you know, fast immersion course, I thought was, you know, was something that needed to be held in check, if possible. Because he is a young guy and it could go too far. However, having said that, when I asked him about Buckele,

you know, he did seem admiring, but his own ego didn't allow him to admire him too much. You know, he wants to be his own man. So he seems to be trying to stake out a middle distance between the left and the right, the authoritarian's and the Democrats, so to speak, on both sides, to be able to pull off what he sees as his successful course of action. You know, to be seen as a strong man while creating employment, being. friendly to the West, definitely not being stuck in the group of far

writers, of far right presidents, but also equidistant from the demagogic left. And, you know, it's a it's quite a, you know, it's not an easy task he's set for himself. But, I mean, how

do you be an authoritarian Democrat? You know, I think that's the dilemma he faces. But the narcos, you know, the narcos are, I think you're right, are a useful whipping boy. They genuinely have, I don't think he exaggerates when he talks about the degree to which they had undermined or have undermined Ecuador's institutions and crept into government, you know, almost like a kind of viral, you know, contaminant. But again, in trying to extirate them, I think he faces all kinds of issues, moral, legal, and otherwise.

In finding a way forward for his society, you have a country that has huge social and economic inequality that most Ecuadorans have adapted to, you know. and also and it fails in a number of ways like other Latin American countries in the sense that

that inequality doesn't allow a significant number of the underclass to actually live and survive there so they are part of the great exodus to the north

as they have been for years whether it was to Spain in the 1990s or to the United States through the Darien Gap today and that's problematic you know he's someone who understands

and talks a lot about numbers. And I would say, yeah, at times I would think he sounds a bit like Musk, you know, that kind of abstraction when, you know, thinking of groups of people as numbers or money as numbers. And he would often express frustration about the unwillingness of the United States to truly back him and subsidize him, recognizing that Ecuador was represented 20 or 30 percent of ultimately. of their drug problem because that much of the world's cocaine, and for that matter of Western Europe too,

comes through his country. So that for $10 billion, we can help you solve 30% of your problem. But instead of getting $30 billion, you're giving $200 billion to Ukraine and only $30 million to me. So, you know, there was that kind of frustration. I think actually that was genuine frustration there

because he is very all about numbers which does seem a little autistic frankly It's interesting that I mean I'm based in New Zealand these days And I've been writing about the Pacific drug trade And in the last couple years Whomever I've spoken to about that Has said that the vast vast majority of cocaine That's coming across the Pacific is

coming directly out of Gai'a Kiu and even the Galapagos in some sense, at some cases, it's pretty incredible how consummate, how kind of enveloping the gangs became in such a short space of time

in Ecuador. And like you say, they seem to have got their teeth directly into government. I mean, obviously that would happen. But I guess, I mean, you were out there pretty soon relatively after the death of Fernando Bia Bia Bicencio, right?

So that must have, did that, how much of a sort of turning point was that in the, in the public psyche in Ecuador as to how sort of, yeah, like you say, viral, this thing had taken hold? I think it really was the big turning point. That was so shocking, you know, here was a leading presidential candidate. He may not have won, but he was second or third. I think Noboa was something like fifth or sixth, and he was effectively third. he was well known, he was a journalist, he was outspoken, he was leaving a rally that he had just given that was televised, and in full view of hundreds of people, he was assassinated on the streets of Quito and the capital. This was big. This reminded immediately, I think, was that the trigger effectively took people back to the bad days of Pablo Escobar's war against the state in Colombia, for those who were, you know, old enough to remember it.

And, of course, Ecuador has always been the country next door. Colombia is the best. big violent narco state that has exported drugs, guns, people, narcos, guerrillas for many years. And of course, if you were in the know, whether in politics or, say, in the countryside, you would have known that there was a creeping takeover of parts of Ecuador's, you know, backwards in the Amazonian upper Amazonian along the Colombian border, in certain towns down near the ports, amongst gangs. But it was fairly quiescent. There was a kind of adaptation to that reality.

And by and large, the violence was low level and didn't spill over into the public space. There weren't, you know, the big spectacular hits on attorneys general. or presidential candidates. And that suddenly changed and brought everything that was bubbling under the surface front and center. And I think it shocked Ecuador's citizens as well as the people that thought of Ecuador as this quiet, pretty country that, you know,

American pensioners go and retire to or people with a bit of money and lovers of nature would go on cruises to the Galapagos Inn, that kind of thing. Suddenly it was a place where my God, if they can kill a presidential candidate like that. And then days later, the very top drug kingpins in the country can be let out of their cells and disappear in the country's most maximum security prisons.

This is a state that has been infiltrated to a very great degree. And suddenly, we're looking at Ecuador like we have looked for some years at Mexico, you know, with the massacres of the students that was clearly, you know, in which we've become aware that every level of the Mexican state has been corrupted by the drug trade. There's the drug gangs, there's the police, the army,

the governors, even the prosecutor general in Mexico. If that can happen in a country like Mexico, which borders the United States, it can happen in a country like Ecuador and has. And so, yes, for many people, that was the turning point and the escape of Fito

and the other, you know, leader of one of the big drug gangs as well. Effectively Ecuador's Chapo characters, you know. Yeah. I think really galvanized and electrified everyone in and out of the country and created this feeling of crisis. And Noboa comes to power just at that, you know, just at that moment. And everything wells up. So, and it was on the heels of that.

And on an apparently an assassination attempt against him. him by Colombian narcos, evidently thwarted by the United States, was supposed to be a secret, which, in which I found him and in which, you know, he took me along in his efforts to fight drugs or prison escapes and clean up corrupt officials around the country, even allowing me to sit in on one intelligence session in the city of Manta. Wow. Yeah. I was pretty shocked that they allowed me to sit in on that,

in which he openly questioned the affinities of an admiral who was debriefing him. Wow, that's a pretty incredible bit of access there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, unusual, to say the least. I think he really wanted to, you know, he wanted to, he wanted to, he wanted me to believe what he he was saying, I think. Which you could read either way, right, if you think that he's slightly on the spectrum, or if you think that he's sort of Machiavellian, I guess it could be a, yeah, I guess it could

be a sort of power display or it could be genuine. Exactly. I think it's a bit of all of that. I don't think it's particularly, you know, I don't think that was particularly made up. I think, you know, running Ecuador is different than running Lichten's. right? Yes. Although Liechtenstein has its own corruption issues.

I gather. That maybe wasn't the best choice of, yeah. Well, I mean, that's, yeah, that's part of the state function there. But I was interested, actually, and kind of this segues into something that I really, really wanted to ask you about the narco trade in general, is that it seems that in Ecuador's case is precisely. the existence of separatist or leftist rebels who have fought for, well, freedom in a wide sense for decades that have pivoted to the narco trade in recent years that has contributed to this rash of violence across the border in Ecuador, right? I mean, it's quite astounding how on the nose that is as a kind of, you know, as a portrait of how Latin American politics

and really the world politics has become in the last sort of 20, 30 years. Is that, I don't know, is that something that you found quite striking at all? It's sort of a sort of devolvement of into nihilism almost or capitalist nihilism. I very much agree. I mean, it's something I've been watching and I think taking stock of more and more consciously over the past, I guess, 10 years, which is that, and I've watched this in the course of my adult life, my career, is the devolution or the degradation

of what once upon a time were, you know, Marxist, Leninist-inspired guerrilla movements with some quite strong basis in social reality that began back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and then in the course of the last 30 years, through the end of the Cold War,

and to those that survived today, by and large, have devolved into narco-garilla movements. With the end of the Cold War and the precipitous lost to the sort of aid that, say, Cuba was able to give them or any of the countries of the East, they turn to natural resources in order to survive. And just as guerrillas do everywhere, I watch this in Burroughs. Burma, I've watched it around the world, Afghanistan. And, you know, if you're in a situation where you're in the bush and you have to survive, and what defines your existence is the act of war that you were engaged in, therefore killing and dying, you have little choice but to survive however you can. And therefore, you turn to whatever will keep you alive, whether it's chopping down trees or trafficking in opium or cocaine.

or whatever it is, you will do. And that is typically what movements do once they become rooted in the land. And that's what happened in Colombia with the various guerrilla groups. They began to trade in the commodity that was most lucrative in the territories that they came to control. By the way, the state, such as it exists in Colombia or existed, couldn't really throw the first stone either because it was immensely corrupt. as have been the armies that have been fighting those guerrillas, the commanders of those armies, the police, the intelligence services, in all of those countries have also experienced their share of dramatic corruption and degradation.

And as a result of the narco economy. And so to this day, we're at the point where today, you'd be hard pressed to get some young, poor, daughter or son of a cane cutter to go up into the mountains with an AK-47 and tell them that they can fight for a better tomorrow through their sacrifice. They're more likely to join a drug gang

in one of the slums where most of the poor now in Latin America have moved to. Urban slums, the peripheral favelas, barrios, pueblos, hovenous, whatever you want to call them. And we have seen how with thanks to capitalist globalization, the narco economy has now provided a new

out for millions of people that before simply didn't have an out. I'm speaking about an economic out. And so the idea and the narco culture, its own myths and heroisms and villainies and songs and poetry and myths of creation have. taken purchase where in years past, in decades past, it would have corresponded to one of the ideologies of the 20th century, you know, the idea of a

socialist ideal now. It's more likely to be, it's more likely a live fast and die young shoot-em-up, you know, narco, cowboy thing. And we've seen, we see variations of that from Mexico all the way down to pretty much Patagonia.

with a few exceptions. I mean, I've had the benefit, it's been interesting to me to talk with some of the leaders and even originators, founders of some of these movements. And privately, many of them, I'm speaking about a handful of people, really, in the FARC and then also in Brazil, where the huge drug, really crime syndicates control

holds trenches of the economy there and also territory. and are deeply involved along with, and they overlap with the Ecuadorian gangs or cartels and Colombias and Mexicans and so on. And they talk about how they, the moments at which they became corrupted. I'll never forget, and this is 15 years ago, talking with the security chief of one of Brazil's crime syndicates,

the Red Command, which I knew had begun. Gun had becomeando Vermelio, which had begun as a urban left-wing guerrilla movement in the 1970s, when Brazil was under dictatorship. And it had formed on a prison island, a bit like a, you know, Devil's Island place in Brazil. And I said to this guy who was now the security chief, the number two of the Red Command, I met him in one of these giant slums that they. ran with assault weapons and very violent organization. And I asked him, I said, do you guys still have any social pretensions? He looked at me and he laughed.

He said, no, now we're just criminals. Christ. Yeah, the cynicism was unbelievable. He had the honesty to talk to me like that. and the leaders of the FARC as they got ready to engage in peace talks nearly 10 years ago now we're still in the jungle, still had their weapons

we had a couple of very very revealing talks with some of them in which they said two of them in particular come to mind they admitted privately that their greatest mistake they had made as a revolutionary movement was to engage with the drug trade Because from then on, they had undergone a metamorphosis that publicly, of course, they denied. But in practice, had turned them into something else.

And, you know, while they still recruited youngsters, you know, using the old sort of Gavaris language of, you know, a better tomorrow, in many cases, you know, what they actually did in the jungle was to guard cocaine. routes or tax drug traffickers and, you know, kidnap people and that kind of thing. They'd become a criminal organization and they knew it. Looking to see what's happening around your home? Rings battery doorbell helps you track packages and see who's at your door in real time. The outdoor cam plus protects your yard at night with a wide field of view and clearer retinal 2K video or upgrade to 4K cameras and doorbells with retinal vision for ultra clear zoom in detail.

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But it happened. And that's just one of thousands of stories waiting for you on Morning Cup of Murder. Hi, I'm Karina B. Ministurfer. And every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I bring you a real, chilling, true crime story connected to that exact day in history. From Killer Cannibal Brothers to the Boy Scout who was obsessed with the accrues. cult and the strange story of the bloody hammer in the frozen cabin. These aren't the cases you've heard a hundred times. They're the ones that make you stop and think, how have I never

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Well, I guess you kind of fold that over into a new generation who are even less attached to that idealism of at all. You know, to the point where today we've got narco-corridos, you know, are now commodified. And then so you get kind of a second generation wave of sort of, yeah, hyper-capitalism based around the narco trade, which is, Which is bizarre, really. I mean, could you even imagine, could you even imagine, I don't know, Chico Mendez or Che Guevara even existing in today's stage age? You know, it's interesting, Sean, because that's a good question,

because I, you know, I never say never. I think the world and history and our reality is kind of, there is a cyclical nature, you know, while sometimes the bottom line social reality is quite unchanging for a lot of people. So, you know, watch this space, I think. But where I believe I see the more authentic or leaders, grassroots leaders mostly, emerging are, say, amongst the wildlife defenders or forest defenders. We see this a lot in the backwoods of places in Brazil,

or Mexico and other places where very often indigenous groups, they've formed guardians, sometimes armed, sometimes unarmed, to try to stop the illegal gold miners from coming in, who, by the way, also, as you probably know, are increasingly linked to the drug traffickers as well. Energy always fills a vacuum. And so because so many of the countries in Latin America have, the states are weak and have not filled the spaces geographical or civic or or or with rule of law these other groups

which they've coexisted with and have been sort of mutually benefited have filled these vacuums and in many cases control the turf and in the end the state has to cut deals with them to govern or profit. And so you have, it's an unholy alliance right through the hemisphere. And as a result, there are these new generations

of youngsters who've grown up with a bit of education that, of course, they have access to the internet and the wisdom or the knowledge that's there as well. And so you do have philosophically aware, socially aware, leaders emerging in different places. They're also being killed

like rabbits. across the region and very rarely become internationally renowned because they are killed their battles their their horizons are relatively remote you know they're fighting on say an indigenous reservation in the western amazon to stop the gold miners or narcos there from or loggers from despoiling their reserves so you wouldn't necessarily know about them in sao Paulo or for that in, you know, Auckland or New York. But when one gets killed,

you might read about it in the paper. If someone from our world has written about them, or, you know, they've been interviewed once or won one of those environmental awards. So I think that's, I think that's more the area where I see a new Chico Mendez coming up. The question is,

can they lead a move that really has an effect? Does it have to be ideological? What do you do when the state... Look at Brazil. It's based... Here you have Lula. He's a socialist with past revolutionary ambitions.

He's in power. He's very charismatic. But he runs a state that's based on... I mean, since colonial times, extractivism. And it's hugely unequal. He's a pragmatist for a lot of reasons, and therefore, you know, he's a stakeholder in the capitalist system as much as he is maybe, and there's contradictions there. Philosophically still believes in a kind of social compact, you know, common good. And I think, and by golly, you know, you go to other countries and the presidents that are there, you know, have no.

social pretensions at all. Yeah. You know, they're just there for the four years or eight years in which they can either exercise power and sometimes and very often also get rich. I was thinking about the way that you described that, that pragmatism because in the way that a lot of Latin American leaders have tried to go after the cartels and the gangs and what have you, they've, I mean, a lot of countries in the region now seem to have settled on a lock them up and throw away the key approach. Buckele being the biggest proponent

of this is astounding what he's doing in El Salvador. But I just wondered if you thought that carried over to Ecuador. Actually, well, Noboa made the point that he's the only one, and he didn't say alongside Buckele, but in fact, that is the case, who's quote unquote gone to war with the cartels. And actually when he said it, it made me stop and think and realize that it's true. Because actually, if you go to Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, they're not at war. They haven't, the leaders have not declared, or even Honduras, they're not at war with the drug gangs.

They very carefully eschewed that language. And in the case of Amlo in Mexico, of course, he actually adopted a policy of, you know, hugs, not bullets, which effectively has had the effect of, to some degree, accommodating the cartels. While parts of his security state do battle with some of the gangs, we all know that, in fact, there is a strange accommodation or cohabitation there. And while there is, you know, there's sort of selective wars. but we still see this very corrupted state, especially when it comes to the law enforcement area, with the cartels.

And you have a president who's talking about hugs, not bullets. So it makes for, you realize, okay, he has sent a message. He's not at war like his predecessors were. And, of course, he has a humanistic message. He's saying he doesn't want people to die. Well, okay. But that also means that he's basically cohabiting with the cartel. and it's the same in the places where the other leaders are not talking about a drug war.

Every so often there'll be a bust, yes, but by and large they're letting things stay the way they are. And why are they doing that? Because, you know, when you go to war with a drug cartel, it's like kicking a hornet's nest. You're going to get stung, plenty of people are going to die, everybody knows that. However morally sound it feels or morally comforting, people are. going to die and and if you don't know who is clean around you you could be at risk as well as via vicensio found out it seems that it seems that in venezuela's case that the state i mean especially since the the election whatever you want to call it um has has actually worked with the gangs

uh to cut you know to to to sort of snuff out political opposition even on foreign saw i think there was a guy who was killed in Chile last year. This is, I mean, that's pretty amazing. I guess it also speaks to this somewhat cynical politics that's taken hold in many places. To bring it back to Ecuador, I guess, because there is this ostensible gap in the life of Naboa and the kind of street-level crime that he is trying to sort of sound. this bullhorn over when you were speaking to people in the cities in the towns villages wherever did you get a sense that they were necessarily pro him or were they anti-narco or was there just

a sense of confusion what was the feeling like there i mean i was so much in the bubble i can't say i had a really you know strong sense of the vox pops if you know what i mean but i would say but i would say what I my read was in ecuador people go with the power so if if noboa represents a power that is protective and potentially lucrative they will go with him if there is no state presence and the whichever you know the wolves or which are the the tigers or whichever one of the named cartels are there a strong force there they're going to go with that because they're going to be the ones who provide the jobs and because they're an armed force, they also enforce social reality.

So if you go against them, they're going to kill you or your loved ones. And if you're with them, they're going to protect you. So it's effectively comes down to that. And I think that by and large, when I was with Noboa, if I had to take a, a real, read of the passing crowds or the people in the audience, I would say that they were, you know, it's a fairly cynical,

it's transactional. Especially poor people. People that live without rule of law, they don't have the luxury of living according to their principles. They have to survive, protect their families, or leave. And I think they were kind of on the fence

because they know what the underworld reality is, to coin a phrase that you'll be appreciate. And on the other hand, I think some of them are quite hopeful that this young guy with who represents prosperity and rule of law and education and the world beyond Ecuador might just have a way forward. So I think it was a bit of everything. And I think while I was with Noboa, I would look around and be with people around him and you know it's a grab bag of of people quite simple people who want a better life cynical people who are seeking an opportunity and that's it it's it's it's um the bread is not out of the oven yet and it could go any which way um the the i mean even the people around no boa

and including lia i mentioned that intelligence meeting i went to you know he later questioned that man, to me, the admiral in charge of the naval forces which patrol Manta and for that matter out to the Galapagos, he suggested that he was in the pocket of the cartels. And this was a man I had sat in with him along with his CIA chief,

the interior minister, the defense minister, the previous morning. That's pretty shocking that he would actually suggest that that man might be bought off by the cartels. So it shows you that whatever his ambitions are as the president of the country, he still doesn't have a monopoly on the violence

or for that matter on intelligence either. He doesn't know for sure who's on his side. So you're going to have some people that are going to be camouflaged. Whenever you have a state that has been permeated by criminals to the degree Ecuador has, you're going to have people very close to you who have an inner truth that may be the exact opposite of yours. And in some cases, they may be informing on you. They may betray you. And, you know, you have to, it's a real tall order. That's why rule of law is so important because you have to trust the people around you.

You have to know that your police are not going to, are not bribable. Otherwise, you know, it's the doorway to Hades, you know. Anything can happen. and I think Ecuador is still in that sort of position and I think he in the case of no one is very reliant upon the help

he dropped more than a few hints that he was getting help from the CIA and Mossad explicitly to sort of back him up and to kind of peer over his shoulder because I don't think he did trust the

forces in the country that he had inherited to super intend prisons, go after the drug gangs, or anything else. I think he thought that most of those people were already on the take. Which I mean is a perfectly reasonable thing to think as well, I guess. Did you get any blowback from the article or did his office reach out? Did they kind of respond to it in any way? Well, they freaked out because the reaction was so strong in Ecuador. his commentary about other leaders in particular was, you know, caused a real shock in the country.

They didn't know how to react. I was getting still quite friendly messages privately with the presidency, but they were worried about the public fallout when the, I think after two days of just complete hullabaloo and the Congress they passed a resolution, you know, condemning him for his, you know, libelous language. against the other leaders of the region and someone was suggesting that he was mentally ill.

You know, they really went to town, of course. And all of the countries where he spoke about the leaders, they also went to town with their media. It was a bit of a frenzy that lasted quite a while. When the job gets tough, you need equipment that's built to handle it. The Cabota Construction lineup featuring the versatility to do more, durability to keep going, and increased comfort for long days on the job. Steers, track loaders, wheel loaders, utility vehicles, and the world's number one selling compact excavator for 20 years, our expanding lineup is built to deliver.

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It didn't condemn me, which I thought, okay, that's what a presidential spokesman has to say. that's fine. I didn't say anything. I did not give interviews. I refused to add the fuel to the fire, because it wasn't my purpose anyway and to create a distinct. But then when his foreign minister, after about four or five days of this, suggested that I had done this intentionally to damage relations between Ecuador and other countries, I got a hold, I mean, I sent a message that although I had not given interviews until that moment, out of an effort to be, you know, helpful, that I would start doing so if she didn't retract or stop those statements,

which were totally, you know, false. And I was assured that she would be, she would stop speaking like that. And she did. Okay. So. Pretty interesting. Yeah, it is. I mean, I think there was no bad blood privately in the inner circle.

But I think they were a bit shocked that, you know, he had spoken to me with as little a filter as he had it at no point did he or anybody else say this is off the record and so you know I went with what was most interesting and it was very interesting that I had a head of state speaking with you know honestly which is quite rare right which was refreshing and in fact I you know and I appreciate it it wasn't my intention to get him in trouble but you know I think he will bounce back we're in a time when you know quite beyond Noboa

you have populace like you know Buckele and and Millet and Bolsonaro and saying all kinds Maduro saying all kinds of intemperate things about one another and insulting one another and breaking relations

so you know Noboa suggesting that one guy seems arrogant and the other guy seems whatever is it's all you know it's it's it's um it's fairly small beer compared to some of the things

they have said about each other. It's interesting. It's like an authoritarian's quandary, isn't it really? Because they have to, to their own people, they have to kind of shit on everyone else in the region, and then they've got to go to foreign, you know, they've got to go to sort of supernatural organizations

and meetings of various leaders, and they have to get on. So it's the sort of vault fast that they have to pull. Well, for an interview with a, with a sort of an American publication especially would be it's a bit of a gymnastics yeah i mean it's it's fascinating to speak with you john lee i i i'd like to know um what are you kind of looking at next what are you eyeing up what are you what are you working on well my next piece for the new yorker will

probably be a profile of haviour milay of argentina which it was something i began late last year when he was inaugurated and then i've sort of left it because i had different projects this year including No, Boa. So I'll probably do that next. I'm always looking, and it's not, of course, exclusive to Latin America, although, you know, that's what I do mostly. I was also contemplating a story in Europe, another in Africa, another in Asia that don't seem to be coming off quite as easily. So most likely, Millet will be the next thing. I am looking at writing a book. I have an anthology coming out in Spanish of my work, my career. And I have one next year that will come out,

which is a re, that I'm doing some work on, which is a reconfiguration of a book I wrote on Afghanistan after the first year of the American intervention called the Lionsgrave. So I've reconceived that book at the behest of my publisher, and it's now about the 20-year arc of the American, let's call it what it is, misadventure in Afghanistan, with a different title and a very sort of differently conceptualized book. So I've written a new introduction.

And it's, yeah, it's interesting to have been able to do that, you know, to take a book that had a very specific limited ambition 20 years ago and to be able to write, because I returned to the country many times, to write a different one now. And then the subject we were talking about, this kind of devolution or degradation of revolution and where we seem to be at today, especially in Latin America,

is something that I've thought a lot about and probably will be the subject of a book that I will write. I had originally thought about a sequel to my Che Guevada, a biography looking at it through the prism of Fidel Castro as a sort of Part 2 revolution. But now I realize, at least at this juncture that we're talking about the end of revolution in a sense. And I think a lot of what we've just talked about plays into this idea,

which is what I want to explore and flesh out through my contacts with interviews and encounters with people all over many years. And not just the right, not just the left rather, right? it's also, I mean, you wrote that book with your brother years and years back about the anti-communist league and all the exploits that they were doing. And I mean, a lot of those groups have since pivoted to, well, and they were tied up at the time, but they're explicitly in organized crime and narco-trafficking across, I mean, here in the Asia Pacific, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. So, so that's kind of what I'm up to. yeah no i i would uh i would love to have further conversations about this this is something that occupies a lot of my mind well i hope we can we can talk some more i'd love to hear uh you know another time from you um more about the asia pacific um that would be fascinating to me oh yeah there's a there's a lot happening here i'm actually um i'm traveling to new york and la to kind of since i moved here what 18 months ago nearly two years i'm getting my new york editors to realize what, A, what New Zealand is and B, what the Asia Pacific is as well. So

I'll be doing that in October just to say, hi, I still exist kind of thing. But yeah, it's such a fascinating. Yeah, John Lee, thanks over so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. And yeah, I would love to catch up soon. Very welcome. Very welcome. Good luck, Sean. And nice talking to you. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building fit for your ambition for citizens bank. Own it all. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Buckslot machine by aristocrat gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream package. The biggest prize in

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