Joey Diaz is a Cuban-American best-selling author and journalist. His latest book, The Corporation, tells the story of how he became one of the most successful authors of all time. In this episode, we talk about how he got his start as a writer, how he went from a small town to a big city, and what it was like growing up in a crime-ridden neighborhood in the Bronx. We also talk about what it's like to be a journalist, and how he balances his day job and his writing life, which he describes as a "full-time job" and a "sick day job." And, as always, thank you for tuning into HYPEBEAST Radio and Business of HYPE. Please don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to our other shows MIC/LINE, The Anthropology, The HYPE Report, and HYPETALKS. Please also consider subscribing to our newest podcast, CREATE YOUR OWN PODCAST! Subscribe, Like, and Share on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe to our new podcast CHAT WITH A FRIENDS! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices. Become a supporter of our new show: bit.ly/sponsorships and get 10% off your first month with the promo code CHADHDOGOOD at checkout! Subscribe on Audible Subscribe on Podchaser and get 20% off the entire month for a year of the new season of the show Chadley's new book, CHADLEY'SZNX! CHADY SZNUTTERTER Chateau is a copy of his new book The Corporation is out now on Amazon Prime Day, out on the 27th April 18th, May 25th, 2019 and the paperback edition is out on May 1st, only $99, 2019, and the second edition of The Corporation will be available on Dec 9th, The Corporation? Cheers, Chave and The Corporation is available on Blu-Only Vaynerday, Chave's Bookshop is also will be out on Dec 7th, Besponded on Oct 17th, 2020, and The Company is also The Corporation is Thank you, Mr. and Thank You, Joe Diaz and TJ English Music: "The Corporation, & The Corporation Is My Name is Out! " And Much More!
00:02:51.000Like, you went deep into that whole sort of sub-scene.
00:02:56.000You know, it's a very interesting crime-infested area.
00:03:01.000Well, what I try to do with these books is to tell the macro story, the larger historical, sociopolitical story, and then get intimate and tell the interpersonal stories between the characters that actually live the story.
00:03:18.000You've got to find people who are willing to talk to you and share information with you that they've kept quiet probably most of their lives.
00:03:26.000And then you get at the interpersonal stuff, because these stories really are just human beings caught up in something that's bigger than them.
00:03:34.000And how long, when you're writing a book like The Corporation, which is your new book, or Westies, or any of your books, how much time do you spend doing the research, and how much time do you spend actually writing the book?
00:03:45.000It takes about three years to do these books on average, and two of those years is research, probably.
00:04:37.000The corporation is the story of a Cuban-American organized crime organization that began in the mid-1960s and existed all the way to the end of the century.
00:04:47.000And it was led by this mobster named Jose Miguel Battle, who was kind of a legendary figure in Cuban-American circles because he was a hero from the Bay of Pigs invasion.
00:05:00.000The attempt to reclaim Cuba, take back Cuba, the invasion, 1961, which was a disaster for everyone involved.
00:05:09.000Battle wound up in prison along with the rest of the brigade.
00:05:12.000And when he got out and came back to the U.S., he was determined to get Castro and take back Cuba.
00:05:21.000So he set up this criminal thing and it was based on one racket primarily, bolita, the number, the lottery, the illegal lottery.
00:05:30.000Before the lottery was legal, it was illegal and it was controlled by organized crime and it was a huge money maker.
00:05:37.000Big money maker for the mob going back to the 1920s.
00:05:42.000Little old ladies bet the number, priests, Cops, you know, you can bet a nickel, you can bet a dime, you can bet $10,000.
00:05:50.000Hugely profitable for whoever controls and organizes it.
00:05:54.000Well, the Cubans controlled and organized it on the eastern coast of the United States, from New Jersey and New York all the way down to Miami.
00:06:01.000And the guy who controlled it was battle, and he became legendary based on that.
00:06:06.000They controlled the whole number system?
00:06:09.000Because I know there was a lot of Italians that were involved in that as well, right?
00:06:49.000Money from the skim at the casinos in Havana to the presidential palace.
00:06:55.000So Battle knew how the world went round and he made those connections and when he finally gets to the US and wants to start his own thing, first thing he does is go to Santo Trafficante and says, can you make the proper introductions for me?
00:07:08.000Proficante introduces him to Fat Tony Salerno in New York City, who controls the numbers racket for all five families.
00:07:16.000And Battle says, look, things are changing in Cuba.
00:07:19.000Over the next couple of decades, you're going to have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Cubans coming to live in the United States.
00:07:42.000I mean, in New York City in the 70s and 80s, there were probably 200 to 300 bolita spots where you could go bet the number.
00:07:51.000The Cubans called it bolita, a little ball.
00:07:54.000And so they controlled it and they took care of the mafia and everybody got fat and happy for a while until it turned bad and they started killing each other.
00:08:05.000Now, Joey, when you heard about this book, this is something that you were very intimately involved in when you were a kid.
00:08:10.000Very, you know, I come on your show and I tell you, there's a hundred stories I can tell you, and there's a thousand I can't.
00:08:17.000And when he told, when I read the thesis for this book, I just knew.
00:08:26.000When I went to Catholic school on Saturdays, when I came home on Fridays, On Saturdays at the age of 8, I was sent to different locations in the city, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and I would make $50 going to run errands, running numbers, go tell this guy the first number of the day is two.
00:09:03.000So if I'm at your house and your daughter walks in with a hockey shirt and her number's 13, I'll look at you and go, Joe, give me a number from zero to nine, five.
00:09:13.000And I pick up the phone and I bet 513. If I look out my window and the cop car is 506, I put $5 on 506. If I have a dream about an eagle, When I go down to the Bolita spot, there's books that they sell,
00:10:55.000So you work TJ's Jose Battle and you're an independent bookie.
00:11:01.000Your job is to sit at At Brindy Lounge in West New York from 10 to 3, drinking, and all day long people come in and go, Joe, give me $517, $3.
00:13:31.000The hardest thing they had was what to do with the money.
00:13:33.000I mean, they would literally strap money to people as money couriers to try to get it out of the country to get it into offshore bank accounts and launder them.
00:15:02.000Even when it turned ugly and he became a ruthless boss who was killing people left and right, he had his defenders because of his legend as a hero in the community.
00:15:29.000This guy, you know, the Bay of Pigs invasion was an attempt at revenge, to get revenge against Castro, and they were humiliated by that process.
00:15:38.000And a lot of the guys from that generation had an unfinished agenda for revenge.
00:15:45.000So if you wronged this guy battle in any way, he was going to get you, even if it took years and years of calculation.
00:15:51.000I mean, there are stories in the book about this one guy who killed his brother named Polulu.
00:15:57.000It took 9 years and 12 attempts before they finally killed this guy, Palula.
00:19:00.000And they had a lot of resentment towards Kennedy.
00:19:03.000I mean, I go into the book a little bit about the Kennedy assassination and the belief that a handful of those Cubans may have been involved in the Kennedy assassination along with the Italians, with the mob, because they were working hand-in-hand with the CIA. Yeah,
00:19:21.000that was one of the leading conspiracies outside of the CIA killing him.
00:19:25.000And even the CIA killing him was a part of the Bay of Pigs conspiracy.
00:19:30.000And also the idea that he wanted to disband the CIA. There was a really interesting article recently that was dismissing almost every single conspiracy theory about the Kennedy assassination.
00:20:18.000And then the CIA Used her to try to assassinate Castro.
00:20:24.000She was supposed to slip him a pill and she put it in her face cream and the pill dissolved in her face cream and that was the pill she was going to try to slip to Castro.
00:20:38.000Her case agent was a guy named Frank Sturgis who wound up being one of the Watergate burglars.
00:20:44.000See, the thing about Bay of Pigs and the Cubans The Bay of Pigs invasion is the key to understanding the whole latter part of the 20th century politics in the United States, the Cold War, because the alliance between the CIA and the Cubans Rears its head constantly throughout the latter part of the 20th century,
00:21:25.000So the CIA would come to these Cuban exiles, the militant exiles, and they'd say, go do this operation, go do this burglary at the Watergate, and then we go get Fidel.
00:21:35.000Go do this assassination, and then we go get Fidel.
00:21:38.000And the Cubans were always ready and willing.
00:21:41.000Because it was all leading back to getting Fidel.
00:21:43.000It was all leading back to getting Fidel.
00:21:44.000Did you ever see the images of what they said was E. Howard Hunt?
00:21:48.000He was one of the people that was arrested.
00:21:50.000There was a bunch of guys that were arrested that were on trains.
00:21:55.000They were calling them hobos, but they were all very well dressed.
00:21:58.000That were near where the grassy knoll was.
00:22:02.000Oh, there's lots of rumors about that, that E. Howard Hunt was one of those men.
00:22:07.000There was even a reference that Jose Miguel Battle was one of those men, but that couldn't have been the case because he was in the Army at the time, the U.S. Army.
00:22:17.000No, so it's like a subterranean narrative that runs through the latter part of the 20th century, the CIA and right-wing elements in American politics, using the Cuban-Americans to do all kinds of dirty,
00:22:35.000And we're talking about terrorist activity, assassination of an ambassador from Chile right in Washington, D.C., blew up his car because he was sympathetic to Castro.
00:22:46.000A bomb planted on a Cuban jetliner flying from Panama City to Atlanta.
00:23:01.000By the anti-Castro underground in combination, in partnership with the CIA. We know about it now because a lot of it has been declassified and it's come out.
00:23:12.000We didn't know about it at the time it was taking place.
00:24:26.000So, what makes this gangster story of the corporation so interesting and different is this political context, the framework that all this shit was taking place against the backdrop of this desire to kill Castro and take back the homeland.
00:24:45.000And anyone who was involved in that was seen as a hero within the community.
00:24:51.000Union City, New Jersey, and Miami were the hotbeds of the anti-Castro movement.
00:24:56.000There was an organization in Union City called Omega 7. There was one in Miami called Alpha 66. These were terror organizations, secret organizations that existed to plant bombs.
00:25:10.000They would plant bombs at embassies in New York City.
00:25:14.000They would put bombs at Lincoln Center when an orchestra from Cuba was making an appearance.
00:25:22.000They were trying to shut down any relationship Between the U.S. and Cuba and governments that were sympathetic to Cuba.
00:27:37.000I'm sure it was a political discussion.
00:27:41.000So then the revolution happened and, you know, Cuba becomes a repressive, communist, Stalinist dictatorship.
00:27:53.000But a lot of Cubans, the way they saw it is, that was a choice they made to go with Fidel.
00:27:59.000He did have, I think, the popularity of the people, following of the people.
00:28:06.000Some people are quite proud of Castro standing up to the United States.
00:28:12.000Cubans are very proud people, and they take a lot of pride in the fact that even though there's so much hardship there, That it's a choice they made to go in this direction.
00:28:23.000At least they have their self-pride, which can be said in some ways about Puerto Rico and Jamaica and Dominican Republic, all these other countries in that region that are just as poor as...
00:28:44.000Obviously, he also had his detractors, even within Cuba.
00:28:48.000Most of those people are the ones who got on rafts and tried to leave the island at great risk to themselves to do anything to get out of there.
00:28:58.000Because they realized Fidel was so popular, from within the country you were never going to be able to take him down.
00:29:04.000So they made the decision to go out in the ocean and try to brave the risks of either swimming or sailing across the Florida Straits.
00:29:15.000What the fuck happened with Che Guevara?
00:29:19.000How did Che Guevara all of a sudden emerge as this, like, leftist political icon, but in this really weird, sort of clueless way?
00:29:28.000Like, they really didn't understand his background, really didn't understand who he was and what he had done, and the atrocities that he had committed.
00:29:34.000But these fucking t-shirts that all these dopey liberal kids...
00:29:39.000I wouldn't put those fucking things on.
00:29:48.000And these people were wearing this shirt as if he symbolizes, like, liberty or freedom from an oppressive government or something like that.
00:29:58.000But it was a long period of time where you didn't have any Che Guevara.
00:34:04.000Like, I remember going to a Cuban person's house once in Union City when I was about 12. And they told their son, don't bring this kid over here no more.
00:35:57.000So I remember one time Mr. Softy came and he looked at my gold thing and my mother yelled from the window, don't let him touch your fucking chain.
00:36:05.000Yesterday I went to Glendale, and my daughter was throwing hoops, a red hoop.
00:36:11.000And she was chasing them, all four of them, by herself.
00:38:13.000Hey, in the narco world, there's cases of what they would do is they would do a videotape.
00:38:19.000If there was somebody they wanted to intimidate, they'd videotape their kid being taken to school every morning, being dropped off for school, picked up after school.
00:38:28.000They'd videotape the daily routine of the child, and then they'd send the videotape to that person.
00:38:34.000And I'd say, I know where your kid is every minute of the day.
00:39:18.000That had good things for me, but a lot of bad things for me.
00:39:22.000You know, one of the things that he touched upon in this book was not only about Jose Battle, but the political corruption that came with it.
00:39:31.000In my 20 years, have I ever talked to you about politics?
00:39:35.000I wouldn't listen to politics if you paid me because it's all bullshit.
00:41:32.000They give you a year for bookmaking in Jersey, you do six, five months, and they put you on house arrest and you're done.
00:41:39.000She would knit sweaters and shit for the fucking guards in jail.
00:41:44.000Well, a lot of times battle would own the judges, so you wouldn't do any time at all.
00:41:48.000You might get a summons, you go before a magistrate judge and they let you go.
00:41:53.000What's fascinating to me about this is also fascinating about the mob itself, is that a lot of it is basically dissolved.
00:42:01.000That all this came from immigration and that this melting pot of the United States and they all came from all these other places and all this organized crime sort of like was running the cities in the East Coast, but most of it is kind of gone the wayside.
00:42:44.000And I'd further make the argument that the corruption that was created during Prohibition in the 1920s, that's where this system was created, during Prohibition in the 1920s.
00:42:55.000The alliance between the underworld and the upper world.
00:42:58.000The connection between the political apparatus, law enforcement, and the criminal rackets.
00:43:04.000That template was laid down during Prohibition and it was in effect for the next 100 years.
00:43:13.000You pick up a newspaper in any US city, large or mid-sized city, and what are you going to see on the first couple pages?
00:43:20.000Some local representative who just got indicted for taking money from some criminal element to see that they got a law passed or that they got some municipal contract.
00:43:35.000What happens is there's an ebb and flow, certain rackets come and go, it was legal booze, then it was labor racketeering, now it's narcotics.
00:43:59.000The big argument about marijuana laws in the United States is if they made it legal, it would severely limit the power that the cartel in Mexico has and cut all that violence out.
00:44:09.000Basically the same shit that was going on with Al Capone and everything during the liquor crisis.
00:44:26.000Is it more difficult now for them to pull something like this off?
00:44:29.000It's less systemic, you know what I mean?
00:44:31.000I mean, back in the day, you know, you'd have corruption that was all the way through the chain of command, you know, and everyone was sort of in on it.
00:45:57.000You get here as a group, you're cut out of access, immediate access anyway, to power, and so you create your own path.
00:46:09.000And initially, in these organizations, it's usually those ethnic groups preying on their own, preying on each other.
00:46:16.000That's usually the first stage of this.
00:46:18.000And then it becomes creating a system to try to deal with a larger system of corruption.
00:46:25.000I mean, Jose Miguel Battle, what he did was so brilliant by creating the corporation, is he created a path for himself within American organized crime, which was controlled primarily by the mafia.
00:46:38.000And he created an alliance with the mafia that made it possible for the Cubans to have their thing and fly below the radar.
00:46:46.000I mean, while the Italians were getting busted left and right, the Cubans, this corporation existed for 40 years because they didn't really get messed with much.
00:48:27.000Paulie had his messages delivered to him.
00:48:30.000In 1970, I'm looking at both of you gentlemen, and I'm telling you that Juan would not even have a conversation if there was a phone in the room and it was hung up.
00:48:40.000Because in his mind, that phone was fucking tapped.
00:48:45.000If he had to meet Joe Rogan for a meeting at 9, at 5.30 in the morning, he'd come and put a gun under a car, just in case there was a problem with Joe Rogan.
00:48:54.000He would hug you and you'd search him.
00:48:56.000He would hug you and tap your back for a wire and tell you you were losing weight and rub your belt.
00:51:21.000Now, Joe, in answer to your question about the Cubans and why they existed for so long and didn't get busted, you know, the rumor was that they had a certain mystique because of this CIA pedigree and that they were untouchable.
00:51:39.000And in fact, I mention it in the book, there's a case where the FBI is thinking about making a case against battle.
00:51:47.000They contact the U.S. Treasury Department because they figure he's not paying taxes and they can make some kind of case against him on a tax violation.
00:51:56.000They get a letter from the Treasury Department saying, we're not going to go after this guy because he's anti-Castro and he's a veteran of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
00:52:06.000It's right there in a letter from the Treasury Department to the FBI. Wow.
00:52:11.000So there were elements within the government that were protecting these guys, particularly Bay of Pigs veterans.
00:55:37.000Certain organizations, like the corporation, part of the reason people wanted to bet with them and like to bet with them is they would have somebody at the racetrack so the minute that number was posted, they'd know the number.
00:55:50.000So you didn't have to wait around for the newspaper.
00:55:53.000You didn't have to wait for the newspaper.
00:56:25.000And now you just lost another 35 cents.
00:56:27.000But the whole numbers system, like my mother was a degenerate numbers.
00:56:33.000And then she killed her with the Yankees and the Red Sox later on.
00:56:36.000But her game was the numbers, the three numbers, the New York track, and now let's get greedy.
00:56:43.000Why don't we go to OTB? Yeah, now see, this is where...
00:56:46.000Why don't we just go to OTB to really complete your fucking day, you degenerate fuck?
00:56:51.000Part of the brilliance of Battle and his organization was he didn't do sports betting.
00:56:55.000In fact, his arrangement with the Italians, with the mafia, was you get bolita, you get numbers, but you don't get sports betting and you don't get these other things.
00:57:04.000And so there's an example in this book of a member of the corporation who starts against Battle's Wishes, starts...
00:57:14.000Playing, doing sports betting, that guy wound up dead.
00:58:48.000This is a guy, big fat guy, 300 pounds, sitting on his ass in Iowa or somewhere, who was on his device, who figured out a way to intrude on some algorithm, and he started scamming different states.
00:59:02.000He scammed the state of Colorado out of $4.8 million.
01:00:09.000What is fascinating to me is that this, what you were talking about earlier, what we were talking about, about, like, that this was, it gave them an opportunity for hope, and that it was a part of the community.
01:00:33.000There's nothing, like, Seeing that, like I saw that and I saw what goes with it and it may sound ooky spooky to most people but it's not ooky spooky to people who are really really Sicilian And people who are very Cuban.
01:00:49.000When you're Sicilian in that culture, there's women that you go to and they tell you things.
01:03:15.000And then you come in, and you give me 604-517.
01:03:18.000It comes on three sheets of paper with copy paper.
01:03:23.000So right away, I rip the top one, I give it to you, I keep the other one, and the other one goes upstairs to the department where now there's a big wall with zero to nine on the wall, and I park it there.
01:03:36.000So Joe just came up and played 219. There's two, and all of a sudden there's a list that goes down.
01:05:12.000But to see those offices in action when you're a kid and I'm going to get cigarettes and they give me a 10 to go get a $3 pack of cigarettes so I keep seven.
01:05:32.000Now, there's also, they move locations every week.
01:05:35.000You also have to stay ahead of the cops.
01:05:37.000So every week, you got a guy like Joe Rogan that just rents apartments for me.
01:05:42.000So every week we move locations, so nobody ever gets comfortable with three months at one place, then with three months at another place, then with three months at another place, because not only do you have to worry about cops, you gotta worry about Jamie getting a little fucking cocky.
01:05:54.000Jamie found out from Joe Diaz that they make $40,000 a day.
01:05:59.000Go get the two guns and try to go up there and see what happens, because they got two guys on the third floor that just got two guns, waiting for idiots like you to come upstairs to the fourth floor.
01:06:24.000At the end of the day, every day that this is going on, because betting is going on every day, seven days a week, this system that Joey's talking about.
01:06:37.000So at the end of the day, you got a lot of money at like two, three hundred different locations all around the New York area.
01:06:44.000What they would do is they have people whose responsibility it was to come around, collect the money, that money would go into a van, And that van would have a police escort as it left New York City, went through the tunnel, and in New Jersey it was met by New Jersey police who picked it up and escorted it from there into the apartments or the houses in Union City where the money was kept.
01:09:26.000Yeah, that's the thing you were talking about, the communal part of it.
01:09:30.000And I think that was even more pronounced with the Cubans because of the history of Bolita and the cultural significance of Bolita going back to Cuba.
01:09:38.000That's something they brought with them to the United States.
01:10:28.000So the first thing he does is he surrounds his estate down in Miami with this fruit from his childhood.
01:10:36.000And he lives down there, now far removed from New York.
01:10:39.000Meanwhile, back in New York, A war breaks out between the Italians and the Cubans over this thing called the two-block rule.
01:10:45.000When the Cubans and the Italians formed their alliance, they established a rule that nobody could open up a bolita spot closer than two blocks to a pre-existing bolita spot.
01:12:24.000The Italians and the Cubans had a major sit-down about it to discuss it, to try to resolve it, to keep it from exploding into a war.
01:12:33.000At that sit-down, they didn't resolve anything, and after they came out of the restaurant where the sit-down took place, a drive-by shooting occurred, and one of the Cubans got shot at the restaurant coming out of the sit-down.
01:12:58.000He seemed to cherish the idea that they were going to go to war with the Italians.
01:13:03.000And so they were ordering all these horrific, and you know how they did the arsons?
01:13:06.000They'd get these mamalukes to fill up a pail with gasoline.
01:13:12.000Not even a can, not even a closed can, an open pail.
01:13:16.000And, you know, they could spill, and they took that pail of gas, and they'd walk into a bodega, a bolita spot, and they'd dump it on the floor and light it on fire.
01:13:25.000And whoever happened to be in there, too bad for them.
01:13:29.000And people would die a horrible death.
01:14:37.000Now, did anything surprise you when you were...
01:14:40.000I mean, obviously you're well-versed in organized crime and well-versed in these kind of communities.
01:14:46.000I think the dominant feeling people will have when they're reading this book is the dominant feeling I had when I was researching it, which was, why don't I know this shit?
01:14:57.000This is not only a great story, really interesting, but it's a really important history.
01:15:02.000All this political connection to anti-Castro movement and the role the U.S. government might have played in it, and the idea that this criminal conspiracy organization was allowed to go on for 40 years because...
01:15:16.000Certain elements in the U.S. government didn't want to go after them because they were afraid it would open the lid on the Cuban relations with the anti-Castro relations with the CIA, the politics of it.
01:15:28.000That's not only interesting history, it's important history to understand a certain social-political relationship between the U.S. and Cuba.
01:15:39.000The Bay of Pigs, the residue of the Revolution, the way that shaped the Cold War, shaped U.S. politics over a period of about 50 years.
01:15:53.000I mean, I knew what got reported in the newspapers.
01:15:57.000But, you know, you lift up the rug and you look underneath the rug and you start to get into the details of it.
01:16:03.000It just makes me so aware that What we're receiving as information on a daily basis from the mainstream media and everything is a version of what's happening.
01:16:15.000There's a whole other version of what's happening that we don't see.
01:16:18.000And you usually only find out about it 30 years later, 30 years after the fact.
01:17:03.000And then what made it worse for me was moving to North Bergen.
01:17:08.000Once I moved to North Bergen, I saw...
01:17:12.000What they were doing in Union City in a bigger way, which is all political.
01:17:18.000I saw things that'll make your tongue drop.
01:17:20.000That's why I don't give a fuck about politics.
01:17:23.000When I see people talking about politics, I want to go up to them and go, if you knew what you were talking about, you wouldn't say a word because you have no idea what real politics means, how it works.
01:17:36.000If it works like that in a micro system, I can't imagine in a real.
01:17:43.000So I don't want to pay attention to it.
01:17:47.000Because Joey and I connected when I had more or less written this book already.
01:17:52.000If I had come to you way back at the beginning of this, out of the blue, all of a sudden this guy T.J. English, I don't know, I guess you knew the West.
01:19:47.000There's a particular family that I will not mention because I won't even make it to the 405. And they were buying that property up in the 60s.
01:22:10.000I met these two girls who were daughters of one of the guys who became a snitch, testified against the corporation, the family went into the witness protection program.
01:22:21.000These girls had never talked to anybody.
01:22:22.000When I went to meet with them in a bar, they weren't even sure they were going to talk to me.
01:22:27.000We were just meeting to talk about whether they were going to talk to me.
01:23:42.000Why I enjoyed this book so much is because no matter how much history this motherfucker dropped on you, He let you know who Jose Battle was.
01:23:53.000He kept you reminded who Jose Battle was.
01:24:01.000And when you read the book, no matter what type of person you are, you kind of get mad at Jose Battle But there's something about Jose Battle you like, because you want that guy in your corner.
01:24:12.000If you knew Jose Battle, and you knew that he got in the truck and said, I'm going out there for my men, that's the guy I want with me all the time.
01:24:20.000Why am I going to hang out with this fucking idiot?
01:24:22.000He gets scared if an ambulance goes by.
01:24:24.000This guy actually went out and saved eight guys.
01:25:14.000And there's a lot of people probably who have their version of it like Joey does that they could tell.
01:25:21.000So, yeah, but let me say about battle, because Joey's saying a very interesting thing, how charismatic he was and how you partly liked him and admired him, which is the case of any good leader, right?
01:25:50.000And he discovered this 19-year-old kid named Ernesto Torres, who was sort of an orphan.
01:25:57.000And one day he tells the kid, he's going to mentor the kid, one day he tells the kid, I've got a guy coming over this afternoon to the apartment.
01:28:44.000They engage in a wild shootout with Ernestico, and they shoot him in the closet of his bedroom, and Battle goes in, grabs him by the hair, and shoots him right, puts a bullet right between his eyes.
01:30:19.000When Michael Vick got convicted, there was a lot of jails he couldn't be sent to because they had an Amacqua population, and they don't play when it comes to dog because their devotion is to St. Lazaro.
01:30:31.000St. Lazarus, he's the one with the crutches that got his...
01:33:22.000He survives so many of these assassination attempts, they think he's not human.
01:33:26.000They come to believe that he's got some Santeria spirit who's protecting him.
01:33:31.000So when you think someone has, I wish Joey was here for this, when you have someone you think has a Santeria spirit protecting them, you have to counter that with a Santeria spirit of your own.
01:33:42.000You have to have what's called a Bembe, where you create a kind of voodoo energy to kill this guy.
01:34:56.000He was talking when you were gone about how if you felt like a guy had a Santeria spirit protecting him, you had to have your own Santeria spirit to combat it.
01:42:07.000You know, he says that there's another side to the story.
01:42:12.000And, you know, like I told him at dinner last night, my mother hid me for years.
01:42:18.000They sent me to Sacred Heart School for Boys.
01:42:21.000Yeah, she sent me there to get a good education.
01:42:23.000But she sent me there because there was a lot of shit she didn't want me to see at that time.
01:42:27.000And when I got out of Catholic school, I was introduced to it.
01:42:31.000And one of the things I got introduced in one night was the end of Union City.
01:42:36.000The end of that political era where everything was running smooth came to an end like in 76. That's when the allegations started to come up because there was two cops that would shake my mother down.
01:42:56.000It was a price of doing business, Joe Rogan.
01:42:59.000Now here's how I knew Joey was legit, because when we first started communicating, he mentioned the name of one of these cops, and that name is in the book.
01:46:35.000In a phone conversation with his mother, like three days before they got him, He's talking with his mother and she says, I know, I'm worried.
01:47:23.000He names all the people who are trying to kill him so his mother can use those names in her ceremony.
01:47:28.000So when the cops find this Obviously, the Bembe didn't work because they got to Ernestico and killed him.
01:47:36.000But on the other hand, when the cops found this tape, it was like Ernestico speaking from the dead and fingering the people who killed him.
01:47:46.000And they were able to use that as evidence.
01:47:48.000They knew exactly who killed him because of that tape.
01:47:55.000So how the fuck do I fit into Santa Rita?
01:47:58.000A couple years ago I had a read and some guy told me that you have a couple strong about a lot of people in your life and that's definitely you.
01:49:08.000You were asking me why I would still follow it.
01:49:10.000It's because once you get to an understanding of the idea that there are certain spirits within you, and the Orishas represent different spirits, Once you understand that, that's not something you throw away.
01:49:23.000Even if you don't follow the religion anymore, you still have belief in that.
01:51:00.000You sleep, and then Sunday is when they read your future to you.
01:51:04.000And then for a week you just live in a corner, white, they paint your head, you're bald.
01:51:09.000So I had to go back to school on Monday bald with a hat.
01:51:12.000They said he's not allowed in here with a hat.
01:51:14.000My mother gave the principal a small nickel and I was allowed to wear the hat from 9 to 3. But then at 3 o'clock I had to go home and change into white clothes for a year.
01:55:08.000I never saw my godmother again after 95. I talked to Duncan about Santeria, and some company approached me from London, and I did their Santeria podcast, and I got an email on Twitter.
01:56:44.000She emcees that bottle out in the daytime.
01:56:46.000So at night, I would watch her bottles, and they had the label, like they were sealed, because my mother had a bar, so I knew if they were sealed enough.
01:56:54.000Bro, this woman would pass a spirit and then tell you what to do and what not to do.
01:57:00.000On this particular night, she went up to my mother, and she goes, I know what's bothering you.
02:05:36.000So the drumming you're hearing, and the use of what's called the shake-a-ray, that gourd there, and the chanting that's going on, you would hear all that in a santeria ceremony.
02:06:13.000In 1985, I lived in a building in Fort Lee, and there was a Panamanian woman, and she told me that she went to Cuba twice as a young girl, and she wasn't surprised what was going on in Cuba.
02:07:46.000The Shanghai Theater, and in Godfather II, they take Michael there, and all of a sudden he goes, I would have never found this place if it wasn't for Johnny Ola, and that's when Michael finds out.
02:08:12.000And it's called In Search of Superman.
02:08:14.000Joe Rogan, it was the most disgusting article.
02:08:17.000I had ever read in my life that these white dudes went on a 50-year looking for Superman and the legend of the guy with the big dick.
02:08:26.000In fact, Duval went to Cuba to the location, even though it's close, just to see where it was.
02:08:33.000And what the story is that us as Americans would go down there every week, and that was our first stop, to see this big black Cuban dude fuck the shit out of some poor white chick, you know.
02:09:55.000He says, you've got to come at 6 o'clock after the office closes so then we can watch it.
02:10:00.000And I get there and the cleaning lady's still there.
02:10:03.000So he brings me into the conference room where he's going to show me the film.
02:10:06.000And we've got to sit there and wait until the cleaning lady's done because he didn't want to put this film on while the cleaning lady's in the room.
02:10:36.000You had cocktails, and then someone would clap at a certain time, and you knew that was time for the show, and everyone would sit down, and Superman would come out, and he fucked this Cuban woman who was small.
02:10:49.000He was big, and she was small, and he's banging her from every conceivable angle.
02:10:54.000It was the least sexy thing you've ever seen in your life.
02:10:58.000I mean, it looked like some kind of torture, really.
02:11:53.000The thing that freaked me out about Santo that I enjoyed from your first book, Evander Nocturne, and I wanted to tell Joe the story is that one time Kennedy went to Cuba as a senator.
02:12:05.000And they were having some type of meeting.
02:12:37.000They set him up in a room with a two-way mirror, and they watched it happening, and then one of them turned to the other and said, shit, we should have filmed this.
02:12:44.000This would make great blackmail material.
02:13:12.000Politicians and businessmen would go on junkets.
02:13:15.000To Havana, like, you know, paid for by the company, weekend retreat, go to Havana, and they'd go to the Shanghai Theater, and they'd have tris, sexual tris, and they'd go crazy.
02:13:46.000My mother died in 79, and whenever I did something, like if I comb my head differently, or if I wore like an orange shirt, my mom would go, what are you fucking, Rock Hudson?
02:13:58.000And I go, what the fuck are you talking about, Rock Hudson?
02:14:01.000You know, and one day I asked, I go, why do you always call me a Rock Hudson?
02:14:05.000And she goes, because Rock Hudson, I don't maricon.
02:14:07.000And I go, what the fuck are you talking about?
02:14:10.000She told me, she died in 79. My mom told me in 1978, flat out to my face, that fucking he was gay as could be.
02:15:16.000But I found out from this article, if we would have scrolled down a little bit, it says it, that they asked his neighbors, and the neighbors were like, no, he was bisexual.
02:15:26.000And his number one guy that was known every time he came to Cuba was Marlon Brando.
02:15:32.000He was Marlon Brando walking there with two showgirls, and then him and fucking Superman would leave by themselves.
02:17:11.000A couple of years ago, you were living in Colorado, and I saw a kid with a balloon, and I call you Balloons, and we go for it, me and Eddie.
02:17:19.000You come up to an abacoa and call him his nickname, you got a different situation.
02:17:24.000They'll pull you aside and go, I don't know you, and don't you ever fucking call me that outside the circle again.
02:17:30.000And when they get mad at you, okay, to prove their manhood, they beat you, throw you on the floor, pull your pants down, and slice your ass with a straight razor.
02:19:12.000Go get a wig and put lipstick on, and I'll fuck you in the ass, and you're going to suck my dick, but don't you ever fucking think you're going to fucking kiss me or touch me, and they beat you.
02:24:25.000My mother used to go, when he picks you up at school, please don't get in the car with him because he's going to get shot one day and I don't People knew battle, and they knew some things about him, but they didn't know.
02:24:35.000No one who was part of it, they thought they knew the whole story, but there's no way you could have known the whole story.
02:25:10.000This guy used to go away every six months, and his wife was tight.
02:25:14.000You know the story I told you about my mom would play cards, and then I would put tighty-whities on and dance for the women, and they would give me shots of tequila and make me dance?
02:26:57.000The text I remember getting from you as you were reading the book, I was getting every 30 minutes or so I'd get a text from him, it'd be another name.
02:27:05.000It's like, I can't believe you have this name.
02:27:07.000Finally, the last one was, the text said, Nene Carrero, with an exclamation mark and a comma, and it said, you bad motherfucker.
02:27:16.000He couldn't believe some of the names that were in there, and I know that it must have been emotional.
02:27:21.000I said, this is going to be emotional.
02:28:29.000I stayed in Edgewater, so I didn't even go up there.
02:28:31.000But when the book came out, I got a call from Battle's longtime lawyer, a guy named Jack Blumenfeld, wonderful guy, interviewed him numerous times for the book, knew Battle as well as anybody, defended him in a number of different cases over the years, knew a lot about him.
02:29:24.000That's the power of losing yourself in a book to where it engages your memory and your imagination that you're almost reliving it as you're reading it.
02:29:33.000You talk about 3901 Kennedy Boulevard, the home of Charlie Hernandez.
02:29:38.000You know how many basketball games I went into those projects?
02:29:41.000I used to go there at 7 in the morning and shoot 300 jump shots because there'd be nobody there.
02:29:47.000So imagine you're reading a book and you come across that address and it reminds you of what he's saying.
02:29:53.000It was down the block, up the block, down the block was a bar named Ernie's in North Bergen.
02:29:58.000For years, you ran out of beer at five in the morning, you went to Ernie's, and you pounded on the door and Ernie would go, what the fuck you want?