The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1302 - Ed Calderon

00:00:02.000 Boom.

00:00:03.000 What's up, Ed?

00:00:04.000 How are you, man?

00:00:04.000 Great.

00:00:05.000 Thanks for coming here, man.

00:00:06.000 I appreciate it.

00:00:07.000 Thank you for extending the invitation.

00:00:08.000 Well, I love your Instagram.

00:00:10.000 It's very informational.

00:00:12.000 Tell everybody what you do so people get a handle on this first.

00:00:17.000 I'm a non-permissive environment specialist.

00:00:21.000 Basically, I teach people how to live, move, and travel in places where they probably shouldn't be traveling.

00:00:26.000 You know, how to get out of handcuffs, how to get out of zip ties.

00:00:31.000 And, you know, I show people how to survive in such environments.

00:00:34.000 My background is in law enforcement in Mexico.

00:00:37.000 So, you know, I spend a lot of time down there.

00:00:40.000 And over the years, that's kind of led me into teaching myself how to survive in that environment.

00:00:46.000 And apparently, after a while, that...

00:00:50.000 Made me kind of sought after as far as teaching other people how to survive in such environments.

00:00:55.000 So I've been doing that for a while here in the US, military, law enforcement, civilians.

00:01:02.000 Yeah, and you started working in law enforcement what year?

00:01:06.000 It's 2004. So you started before everything got really crazy.

00:01:12.000 Yes.

00:01:13.000 So you can kind of trace back where it officially kicked off.

00:01:18.000 By the start of Felipe Calderon's presidency, which is the second-to-last president we had, he basically said, you know, full-on war against the cartels.

00:01:33.000 And by that time, I was kind of just getting done with my training in northern Mexico as a police officer.

00:01:41.000 And what I thought was going to be, you know, community policing and stuff like that turned into a full-on, you know, here's a basalt rifle and just go climb up on that humby with those military guys and let's go arrest cartel members.

00:01:52.000 Oh, Jesus Christ.

00:01:54.000 So you thought you were just getting a regular law enforcement gig?

00:01:58.000 Yeah.

00:01:59.000 I mean, realistically, there was no sort of job description.

00:02:02.000 This was post-9-11.

00:02:04.000 I was actually in med school, and the economy all over the border with the tightened security and stuff like that kind of went down the drain, and most of the money that I was using for med school went away.

00:02:19.000 That in the newspaper, young, unmarried individuals that don't have any kids, you're welcome to join, type thing.

00:02:25.000 Wow.

00:02:25.000 Young, unmarried individuals with no kids.

00:02:28.000 They want that specifically. 0.98

00:02:29.000 Yeah, that was probably a big alarm mill shit just under my head, but the, you know...

00:02:36.000 There weren't a lot of opportunities for somebody my age there that didn't have a career.

00:02:41.000 And I thought it would be, you know, everybody said, don't go, you know?

00:02:46.000 Yeah, I would have said that.

00:02:47.000 I was like, Ed.

00:02:50.000 But to me, it was a challenge.

00:02:52.000 And a lot of people said I couldn't do it, and I did it.

00:02:54.000 And then it turned into something that wasn't what most people expected when they went into it.

00:03:00.000 You know, it was a full-on Irving Warfare type situation.

00:03:03.000 Wow.

00:03:04.000 So...

00:03:05.000 Post 9-11, the borders get tightened up, and the economy gets very bad in the border towns.

00:03:12.000 Is that what happens?

00:03:12.000 Because people can't get through as easily?

00:03:15.000 Yeah, it's heightened security, so commerce is freely done on both sides.

00:03:21.000 Border wait said you should take an hour now.

00:03:23.000 It would take three hours or four hours, depending on the time of day.

00:03:26.000 So things got affected.

00:03:28.000 Also, a worldwide recession situation kind of happened, so everything kind of went down the toilet.

00:03:34.000 I have a lot of family.

00:03:35.000 In the border region and most of our family businesses that we had basically kind of tanked during that time.

00:03:44.000 So from 9-11 to here we are 18 years later, it's been a pretty radical change.

00:03:50.000 Yes.

00:03:51.000 Is that safe to say?

00:03:52.000 Yes.

00:03:53.000 100% change?

00:03:54.000 If you had to try to describe it...

00:03:57.000 So, I mean, basically, the part of the country that I had most of my experience is the Baja, Sonora, Juarez-type region, northern Mexico, basically.

00:04:09.000 What happened is that...

00:04:22.000 It's the most cross-border on the planet.

00:04:28.000 And with that, there's a lot of commerce that goes on in that region.

00:04:32.000 A lot of things get shipped to Tijuana and then drove up into San Diego.

00:04:36.000 And a lot of people have business on both sides.

00:04:40.000 And among all of this movement...

00:04:44.000 There's a giant organized crime war going on.

00:04:49.000 It used to be overt, like on the streets.

00:04:52.000 Middle of the day, you would see these cartel convoys arriving at a restaurant and all the cartel guys outside with their AKs and stuff like that.

00:04:59.000 This was 2004, 2005 era.

00:05:03.000 And what is the military or law enforcement attitude towards that?

00:05:07.000 So we go back to 2004 when I first got it started and it was look the other way.

00:05:13.000 Really?

00:05:13.000 Yes.

00:05:14.000 Look the other way?

00:05:15.000 Look the other way.

00:05:16.000 That was specific instruction that you got?

00:05:18.000 It was one of those things where I went there and I got a firearm.

00:05:23.000 Here you go.

00:05:24.000 Here's your Glock 17. Here are your two magazines.

00:05:27.000 Here's your Mossberg 500. And you see all those cars over there?

00:05:32.000 We don't ask them for anything, let them pass.

00:05:35.000 We don't do anything of that nature.

00:05:38.000 And then we would see members of the military as well kind of go the other way type situation.

00:05:43.000 This is 2004. Do you think that this was just to avoid conflict or was it because of corruption?

00:05:51.000 It's always corruption.

00:05:52.000 At all those types of levels down there during this time, there was a lot of corruption.

00:05:58.000 Things changed, but things in a way in some levels are always the same.

00:06:04.000 There was definitely some sort of pact going on, some sort of fear-based pact during that time.

00:06:10.000 And when Felipe Calderon finally said, you know, enough is enough, we're going to declare war, he basically militarized a lot of the counter-narcotic efforts in Mexico.

00:06:21.000 So the military went from being in their bases or manning stations out there to actually actively going out and looking for cartel cells and trying to eliminate them.

00:06:35.000 So basically army on the street type situation.

00:06:39.000 And another thing he did was basically a lot of the police chiefs around the country were being traded out for former military officials or military guys, officers.

00:06:52.000 One of them was Lieutenant Colonel Lezaola.

00:06:55.000 I don't know if maybe your audience could look him up.

00:06:58.000 He's a very famous lieutenant colonel from Mexico.

00:07:01.000 He actually has a documentary on him called Mexico's Most Bravest Man.

00:07:07.000 Pretty interesting guy.

00:07:10.000 He was the one that headed us up.

00:07:13.000 He directed us at the start of these operations against the cartels.

00:07:17.000 And he basically said, you know, this isn't a policing problem.

00:07:21.000 This is a counterinsurgency problem.

00:07:23.000 So we're going to militarize it, basically.

00:07:27.000 And after he kind of took control, everything changed.

00:07:32.000 The cartels weren't as overt as they were, so they started going underground.

00:07:37.000 So when you joined...

00:07:40.000 You expected it to be regular law enforcement.

00:07:44.000 When it became this counterinsurgency, militarized effort against the cartels, was there every time where you were like, I gotta get the fuck out of this job? 0.92

00:07:53.000 This is too dangerous.

00:07:55.000 Yeah, I mean, my generation, I was part of the seventh generation of officers going through this program, policing.

00:08:03.000 And out of my generation, the first year we had...

00:08:08.000 Two of them in jail for corruption charges and three dead.

00:08:13.000 Out of how many?

00:08:15.000 Out of 23 guys.

00:08:17.000 So out of 23 guys, five gone.

00:08:21.000 Two of them very dramatic.

00:08:23.000 Two of them were kind of the origins of how I got into...

00:08:27.000 The whole counter-abduction type thing.

00:08:30.000 Two of my guys got picked up outside of a hotel in the downtown Tijuana and by cartel members dressed as federal police officers.

00:08:41.000 The whole nine jars, the uniforms, the car, everything cloned.

00:08:44.000 They got asked for their papers outside and Got put into a van.

00:08:50.000 They found them a day later.

00:08:54.000 Horribly mutilated and all this type of stuff.

00:08:57.000 Tortured.

00:08:58.000 Tortured.

00:08:59.000 And that was the...

00:09:02.000 This is real.

00:09:04.000 This is real and I should probably have an escape plan.

00:09:09.000 Yeah.

00:09:11.000 And, but it wasn't, I didn't know anything else, basically.

00:09:15.000 So it wasn't like I had something to fall back on.

00:09:18.000 Right.

00:09:18.000 And it was good pay for what it was.

00:09:21.000 And, yeah, but fear, that's when fear got, you know.

00:09:25.000 This dress must be insane. 1.00

00:09:27.000 Yeah, you're always on.

00:09:31.000 We always had this thing on the meeting wall that said, there's no vacation even when there's vacation.

00:09:37.000 You would go on vacation and you would get your gun to go on vacation.

00:09:40.000 Of course.

00:09:41.000 It was pretty insane.

00:09:44.000 Now, have you ever been confronted?

00:09:47.000 Yeah.

00:09:48.000 Yes.

00:09:48.000 Yeah, of course.

00:09:49.000 I mean, there's no...

00:09:50.000 There's no...

00:09:53.000 It's not...

00:09:53.000 You know, I have a lot of friends that are in military up here in the U.S. And it's not like...

00:10:00.000 It's not like them.

00:10:01.000 They go overseas and they do something in a different country with different people that don't speak the same language.

00:10:07.000 I was doing all of this in the place I grew up.

00:10:11.000 So I knew some of these people at times.

00:10:16.000 Every now and then I would say, hey, I know that guy from when I was a kid.

00:10:19.000 Or we were in school together.

00:10:22.000 And now he has a plate carrier with an AK-47 and a gold gun on his pants, right?

00:10:26.000 And it's like...

00:10:27.000 Whoa.

00:10:28.000 The gold gun's a big giveaway.

00:10:30.000 Oh, gold guns are...

00:10:31.000 You know, that's how you know.

00:10:32.000 Yeah, there's some amazing websites that document all the different stuff that the cartel has, but they love gold guns.

00:10:40.000 Yeah, that's...

00:10:41.000 El Chapo got a very special gold gun when he was...

00:10:46.000 When he was named one of the top earners on the Forbes list, I think he got his number on the gun and everything.

00:10:54.000 The second to last time he got caught, because he got caught a lot of times and escaped.

00:10:59.000 Somebody in the military that got him took it.

00:11:02.000 And it ended up in the museum.

00:11:04.000 I think it's in a museum somewhere in Mexico City.

00:11:07.000 Where a lot of these gold guns, that's a war trophy for those guys, right?

00:11:11.000 So there's like a gold gun section of the museum?

00:11:13.000 Yes.

00:11:14.000 Yes, there is.

00:11:15.000 Mexico City.

00:11:16.000 Wow.

00:11:17.000 Yeah, that's pretty wild.

00:11:19.000 Gold gun, gold AK-47s, you know.

00:11:22.000 Now, if everything is so corrupt down there, how does a guy like El Chapo keep getting popped?

00:11:27.000 Because when I saw his escape, I was like, this is hilarious.

00:11:31.000 The fact that this guy goes to the toilet, and then he opens a door, and whoop, he's in a tunnel, and on an electric scooter, and goes a mile, pops up on the other side, and they had everything set up for him with electricity.

00:11:44.000 I mean, I think the thing that people kind of don't understand about the corruption is it's not just corruption because people are greedy.

00:11:54.000 It's also fear-based corruption. 0.97

00:11:57.000 So if you don't do what I say, we're going to kill everybody in your family, even your dog, that type of thing. 0.88

00:12:05.000 So after Little Chapo got escaped that last time, all of the staff at the jail got put in prison. 0.97

00:12:15.000 So they were all part of it.

00:12:18.000 There's rumors that they were.

00:12:20.000 Seems like somebody had to hear all that digging.

00:12:22.000 Of course.

00:12:23.000 I mean, it's only a mile away.

00:12:25.000 It was pretty deep.

00:12:29.000 Some things that should have been patrolled weren't patrolled.

00:12:33.000 It was a pretty good, well-made tunnel for what it was.

00:12:37.000 Really well-made.

00:12:38.000 So a lot of the people that El Chapo actually used for these tunnel operations, because the same people that he used for the tunnels in the border region...

00:12:46.000 All the active tunnels that are somewhere along the border, all of those guys were pulled in from silver mining companies that used to operate all over Mexico.

00:12:57.000 That kind of went into the toilet, so they were looking for jobs.

00:13:00.000 Wow.

00:13:01.000 Get El Chapo out.

00:13:02.000 It's a good job.

00:13:03.000 Or drug tunnels, you know? 0.99

00:13:05.000 When you saw all that shit go down with Sean Penn and Sean Penn visiting El Chapo and Sean Penn writing an article for Rolling Stone, were you like, what in the fuck is going on here? 0.99

00:13:19.000 Yes. 0.99

00:13:20.000 For some reason that might not be...

00:13:24.000 Mainly was, why are they giving him this celebrity status?

00:13:32.000 There's a lot of glorification and a lot of...

00:13:37.000 People venerating some of these people down there, and they do a lot of harm.

00:13:41.000 So he's basically giving a voice to somebody.

00:13:43.000 It would be the equivalent of somebody up here giving a voice to somebody that was responsible for a lot of damage done to the U.S. Why do you think they did that?

00:13:53.000 It was romantic, right?

00:13:56.000 There was something about it.

00:13:57.000 It's like, here's Sean Penn, one of our biggest movie stars, with one of the biggest drug dealers ever.

00:14:02.000 I mean, he is El Chapo down, because I've been to Sinaloa, and I've actually done classes there, which was pretty surreal.

00:14:12.000 He's a folk hero.

00:14:14.000 He's Robin Hood, basically, to these people.

00:14:19.000 And when the surreal moment that I had down there, I was driving along this...

00:14:25.000 Bad, bumpy ride highway and all of a sudden turn into a nice kind of highway.

00:14:30.000 And the guys that I was with told me, oh yeah, the cartel made this highway.

00:14:36.000 And the back part of it, that's the government part of the highway.

00:14:39.000 This is the good one.

00:14:40.000 You know?

00:14:42.000 Schools, careers, lawyers, doctors, all their careers paid for.

00:14:48.000 By the cartel.

00:14:49.000 Immigration processes of people that want to come over here, sponsorships, all that type of stuff on both sides, right?

00:14:55.000 So...

00:14:56.000 The span of influence, that's how he kind of got to where he was.

00:15:01.000 He was always helping people, and he was investing in people.

00:15:05.000 And these people, these investments would pay later on.

00:15:09.000 In a lot of ways, it sounds like he benefited them.

00:15:13.000 He benefited some aspects of the community.

00:15:15.000 Yeah.

00:15:16.000 I mean, the reason why the military couldn't get him...

00:15:19.000 People could say corruption, but because he had a human shield around him.

00:15:25.000 All these towns owed schools, hospitals.

00:15:31.000 Instead of Christmas down there, they celebrate the Day of the Kings.

00:15:35.000 So he would get presents.

00:15:37.000 Mother's Day, they would all get presents, that type of thing.

00:15:40.000 Why would we want to help the military come in here and get El Chapo if he's doing this type of stuff?

00:15:46.000 And that is the same all over Mexico with some of the cartels.

00:15:51.000 The hearts and minds type approach is what makes some of these groups long-lived.

00:15:58.000 So how much of an effort is there to eradicate the cartels?

00:16:02.000 Because if you can get a guy like El Chapo, who at least in terms of popularity is at the top of the list?

00:16:09.000 As far as popularity?

00:16:11.000 He's at the top of the list as far as popularity, but as far as the actual drug dealers, is he at the top of the list or are there more clever folks that hide underground?

00:16:20.000 Yeah, there's rumors of people above him that are still out there somewhere.

00:16:26.000 That's the great conspiracy.

00:16:28.000 El Chapo is basically the bank manager.

00:16:31.000 Well, he has a compadre.

00:16:33.000 A compadre is somebody that, if you're the godfather of my kid, you're my compadre, right?

00:16:39.000 So he has a compadre out there, El Mayo Zambada, and he is still out there, right?

00:16:46.000 And the extent of how he works and where he works is unknown.

00:16:51.000 So he's more slick.

00:16:53.000 Exactly.

00:16:53.000 He tries to stay more low-key.

00:16:55.000 Well, some people get sick with the fame, probably, and they want to go outside.

00:17:00.000 Well, once that TV show Narcos came on, I think there's a lot of people who did not realize how crazy the life of Pablo Escobar was and what really went down in Colombia.

00:17:12.000 Yeah.

00:17:13.000 I mean, it's crazy.

00:17:15.000 Pablo Escobar was a phenomenon in his time and age, but he was one man.

00:17:21.000 I'll imagine replicating that type of insanity over the span of Mexico and it's about eight or nine guys, you know? 0.79

00:17:30.000 That was the 90s, early 2000s because these guys were...

00:17:36.000 Legion of Doom type thing where they would be enemies, but they would have reunions and they would meet up and kind of agree on certain things.

00:17:44.000 Just like in the Pablo Escobar show.

00:17:48.000 So they really do that?

00:17:50.000 They get together and have meetings and sometimes they kill each other?

00:17:53.000 That's a reality.

00:17:56.000 They do at times, or did at times, because things are currently, after La Chapo, You know, things kind of shifted and changed.

00:18:04.000 What happened?

00:18:05.000 Well, the main thing is a power vacuum.

00:18:08.000 And with the power vacuum and legalization on this side of certain substances like marijuana, the pot fields are now poppy fields.

00:18:25.000 And new things like...

00:18:30.000 Like them now dedicating themselves to heroin instead of the weed.

00:18:36.000 Mysteriously, there's still weed fields down there for some reason.

00:18:39.000 You guys are way better at making it than anybody down there, but for some reason there's still some weed fields.

00:18:44.000 Well, I think it's a lot of access, especially in the states where it's prohibited.

00:18:48.000 They're probably more willing to get it to the people.

00:18:51.000 That's probably it.

00:18:52.000 Meth precursors being brought in from China to Mexico are now being made in Mexico, like industrial-level stuff.

00:19:02.000 Right.

00:19:02.000 And a new upsurging cartel down there that is trying to overtake the Sinaloa cartel, the new generation cartel, is coming out of Guadalajara.

00:19:15.000 And they're kind of really militarized, kind of wing of cartel activities that are trying to, you know, take control over the whole thing.

00:19:23.000 What is the plan in terms of the government?

00:19:25.000 I mean, if they can take out a guy like El Chapo, what is the plan to eradicate all this, and is there really a plan to eradicate it, or is it one of those things where it's sort of a plan on paper, but realistically they sort of accept the fact they're never going to get rid of these people?

00:19:39.000 So, I have a thing, like basically, Quetzalcoatl was a feathered serpent.

00:19:47.000 I have an image of a feathered serpent biting its tail.

00:19:50.000 Mexico has a problem with amnesia, a six-year cycle of amnesia.

00:19:56.000 Every president comes in and has all these plans to eradicate the cartels.

00:19:59.000 The president goes out, nobody likes them anymore.

00:20:01.000 The new guy comes in and says, well, I have a better plan.

00:20:03.000 And that's the cycle we always go through.

00:20:06.000 So it's a big issue in Mexico.

00:20:08.000 Yeah.

00:20:08.000 And currently we have a leftist president that doesn't want to have anything to do with the past administrations that are more on the right of the spectrum.

00:20:19.000 His name is Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, AMLO, vocally supporting Venezuela, that type of guy.

00:20:28.000 Apparently he has a good relationship with Trump.

00:20:31.000 That's what people say.

00:20:34.000 But his whole thing was amnesty for the cartels.

00:20:37.000 That's a campaign promise.

00:20:39.000 Amnesty?

00:20:40.000 Yes.

00:20:41.000 What does that mean?

00:20:42.000 Exactly.

00:20:43.000 Nobody knows what that means.

00:20:44.000 But that's what he was saying?

00:20:45.000 Did he have a plan for this amnesty or is it just like a statement?

00:20:49.000 It was a statement.

00:20:50.000 And now if you see counter-narcotics operations throughout the country, the military is not as active as it used to be.

00:20:58.000 Whoa.

00:20:59.000 Some of the cartels are growing in influence.

00:21:03.000 Because of amnesty?

00:21:05.000 Could be.

00:21:06.000 Basically, I don't see the efforts that were there when I was active down there.

00:21:12.000 Things change.

00:21:13.000 So I don't know.

00:21:15.000 I truly think that the absurd...

00:21:18.000 Because we're on route to having the most violent...

00:21:25.000 Yeah.

00:21:45.000 Tijuana was gone off the list of most dangerous cities in the world, and now it's again at number one, right?

00:21:52.000 Yeah, you sent me that.

00:21:53.000 I was pretty shocked, because you don't hear about that here.

00:21:56.000 It's six murders at night.

00:21:59.000 I was down there two days ago, and it was...

00:22:04.000 It's basically cartel on cartel.

00:22:06.000 So they're cleaning each other out and just bodies appear in the morning, you know, on bridges, hung from bridges, torture, shot, you know.

00:22:17.000 But again, nobody's doing anything about it.

00:22:20.000 They should, you know, but kind of turning a blind eye in a lot of ways.

00:22:27.000 And so with this leftist president, this guy who has this idea of amnesty...

00:22:32.000 The people that are in charge of handling the cartel, the military and the police officers, they've got to feel like a little abandoned.

00:22:42.000 Yeah, or maybe some of them will have a business plan and they're working on one side.

00:22:47.000 Oh, so that's a problem too.

00:22:48.000 Yeah, so people that aren't aware, you know, we have a separation of powers down there as well.

00:22:55.000 The army...

00:22:56.000 People constitutionally shouldn't be engaged in combating the cartels.

00:23:01.000 They shouldn't be engaged in police roles.

00:23:03.000 But there were some amendments done to the constitution and laws passed.

00:23:07.000 But you have to realize that some of these people that are fighting the cartels in a policing type role from the military...

00:23:14.000 Some of them can't read.

00:23:16.000 Or some of them come from rural parts of Mexico that shouldn't be doing that type of activity.

00:23:21.000 So you get a lot of failures on that side of the fence.

00:23:27.000 We do have some high-level SF community members in Mexico that are doing the work, but they're few and far between.

00:23:35.000 And then you have the federal police.

00:23:38.000 Which has gone through about four or five name changes in the past, you know, ten years. 0.83

00:23:43.000 Because every time, well, not going to call them that, change the uniform because they're all corrupt. 0.91

00:23:48.000 Jesus. 0.92

00:23:49.000 But now they're this police, right?

00:23:52.000 So they just change appearances.

00:23:54.000 They change the name, you know, but...

00:23:56.000 Try to refresh the public opinion of it.

00:23:59.000 There's a famous, you know, investigation, federal investigation police called the AFI. And they were like modern investigative federal police that's going to go after, and they were corrupt as hell. 0.95

00:24:12.000 And all they did was get a name change and all these guys got shuffled around.

00:24:16.000 And literally I was like, hey, I know you.

00:24:19.000 No, I'm this now.

00:24:21.000 But they're still the same person who compromised.

00:24:24.000 Yes.

00:24:24.000 Yeah.

00:24:25.000 So those are the federal guys, right?

00:24:26.000 Currently, they want to do like a national police force.

00:24:30.000 And you're like, wow, they're going to get new people?

00:24:32.000 They're going to be a national police force?

00:24:33.000 No.

00:24:34.000 It's the same guy.

00:24:34.000 She changed her uniform, changed her hat.

00:24:37.000 So that's on the federal side.

00:24:39.000 So we're pretty wanting there.

00:24:42.000 State side, each state has their own police force, investigation police force, and a preventative type force.

00:24:49.000 And these are politicized because each state government may be opposed to the federal government.

00:24:54.000 So there's some static there now.

00:24:58.000 And each municipality has its own police force, and they might be completely different politically than the state and federal.

00:25:07.000 It must, for you to have your life on the line over there and see all this chaos and obvious either lack of organization or outright corruption, it must be insanely frustrating.

00:25:19.000 Yeah, I mean, putting people in that were clearly guilty of things, you know, and then seeing them come out.

00:25:29.000 Or the legal system down there that I had to endure, you know, you would have to go and do a face-to-face with all these people.

00:25:37.000 Go into a federal courthouse, leave your firearms behind, do a face-to-face with these people inside that you just got for however many tons of cocaine or pot or whatever, and then go outside and they're outside.

00:25:51.000 Now I know who you are.

00:25:54.000 There's no anonymity in that regard, so you would have to sign things.

00:25:59.000 And then seeing some of the people that were with you working on your side and seeing how some of them would fall into corruption charges and then sue the government and then get your jobs back.

00:26:09.000 But now you have somebody who's compromised within your own unit.

00:26:12.000 Wow.

00:26:13.000 So they did try a few things to try and clean out police forces.

00:26:18.000 One of them was a plan they called the C3 plan.

00:26:22.000 It was like a...

00:26:24.000 We're good to go.

00:26:49.000 The problem is that the polygraphs turned out to be unconstitutional to fire somebody over them.

00:26:55.000 So a lot of these people got hired back after they would fail basic polygraph exam.

00:27:00.000 So again, it's a lot of attempts to clean it up, you know, and You would be on the level, and all these people wouldn't be on the level, but they were still there.

00:27:11.000 What percentage of people are not on the level, if you had to guess, roughly?

00:27:16.000 I'd say it would depend.

00:27:18.000 I'd say 30%, probably.

00:27:19.000 That's a lot.

00:27:21.000 In my experience of the people that I work, that 30% weren't on the level.

00:27:25.000 Well, you must cherish the 70. Oh, like family.

00:27:28.000 Yeah.

00:27:29.000 Like family.

00:27:30.000 And you would know when some of these people weren't on the level, because...

00:27:35.000 I have this running joke that I went in with the same car that I drove out of the office with.

00:27:44.000 Shitty truck that I bought off my own dime.

00:27:51.000 First truck, first car.

00:27:52.000 And I drove out of the office when I quit the job that same day.

00:27:56.000 I drove out of the office in that truck.

00:28:00.000 But a lot of these guys would come in with their, you know, Hummers and H2s and just weird cars.

00:28:05.000 So they go, wait a minute.

00:28:06.000 This doesn't make sense.

00:28:07.000 Like, we are working the same office.

00:28:09.000 Why do you have a three-story house?

00:28:11.000 That's so obvious, though.

00:28:14.000 Prove it, you know?

00:28:15.000 Yeah, but the obviousness of it.

00:28:18.000 Oh, yeah.

00:28:18.000 The blatant...

00:28:20.000 You're driving a nice car, living in a big house, and everybody else is like, what?

00:28:23.000 Yeah.

00:28:25.000 There's obviously these unwritten rules of you wouldn't tell on this guy.

00:28:30.000 Of course.

00:28:31.000 But, you know, it's obvious.

00:28:34.000 Yeah.

00:28:34.000 And when it came time to share information of a certain kind or...

00:28:39.000 We're going to go over here and you would have to turn around and look around and see who was listening.

00:28:45.000 You wouldn't trust a lot of these people.

00:28:47.000 So how are we going to do our job if we can't trust the people that are working with us?

00:28:53.000 Who was it that recently called for decriminalization?

00:28:57.000 Was it your president that called for a decriminalization of all drugs in America to go along with Mexico?

00:29:02.000 Is that what it was?

00:29:03.000 Yeah.

00:29:04.000 To try to do something about the cartels.

00:29:05.000 Yeah.

00:29:06.000 We're on the brink of legalizing marijuana in Mexico right now.

00:29:10.000 There's been a few landmark cases and it's a gold rush type situation right now.

00:29:16.000 There's a lot of companies down there that have had experience up here that want to go down there.

00:29:21.000 Right.

00:29:21.000 So the culture is ready for it, I think.

00:29:24.000 Do you think that would help?

00:29:26.000 I don't know.

00:29:27.000 When it comes to legalizing pot up here, it hasn't helped down there as far as lowering things actually made things kind of worse.

00:29:34.000 How has it made things worse?

00:29:35.000 They changed what they were producing.

00:29:41.000 The reason why there's a heroin epidemic up here and fentanyl epidemic up here I think it has some relationship with how things got legalized up here and how they switched product down there.

00:29:56.000 So lighter colored heroin is coming down from Mexico.

00:30:00.000 And I've worked with law enforcement up here in the U.S. doing classes and kind of, you know, they send me things like, what do you think about this, Ed?

00:30:09.000 And I've seen that lighter colored heroin pop up in places as far off as Chicago.

00:30:15.000 So you know because of the color?

00:30:16.000 Yeah, the color, the smell, the consistency, you can kind of tell if it's Asian or Mexican.

00:30:22.000 Is it a different strain?

00:30:23.000 It's probably a different strain, and it's also the amount of sun it gets in the region where it's being grown.

00:30:28.000 It's higher altitude, so it's lighter color, not as stinky.

00:30:32.000 I don't know.

00:30:33.000 But I think...

00:30:35.000 That kind of relates to the legalization issue down there.

00:30:38.000 It didn't affect them in the pockets.

00:30:41.000 They just switched product.

00:30:43.000 It's such a strange relationship because the reason why these drug cartels have so much power is because they're selling drugs to the United States.

00:30:51.000 So it's like you have this connection to this country.

00:30:56.000 That has this great big wall that it wants to build, and on one side, everybody's buying up all the illegal drugs, and on the other side, everyone's killing everybody to try to make and sell these illegal drugs.

00:31:05.000 Yeah, I mean, and there's a lot of holes underneath that wall, and drones, drone technology. 0.85

00:31:12.000 Is that wall going to help anything?

00:31:14.000 Well, the wall's already been up for a few years.

00:31:17.000 Part of it.

00:31:18.000 In a place like Tijuana, which is one of the richest drug routes on the planet, and the drugs are cost the same.

00:31:25.000 It's the same?

00:31:26.000 Yeah.

00:31:27.000 And what about the ocean?

00:31:29.000 Can't they just take a boat? 0.68

00:31:32.000 I've seen one large submarine in my time working.

00:31:36.000 Really?

00:31:37.000 Large?

00:31:37.000 Like military size?

00:31:39.000 Like scientific size. 0.99

00:31:42.000 Where the fuck does somebody buy a submarine? 0.99

00:31:44.000 Online, apparently. 0.99

00:31:45.000 Really?

00:31:46.000 Yeah.

00:31:46.000 You can buy a submarine?

00:31:47.000 You can buy a small submarine for a small amount of money.

00:31:50.000 I think the main part of the submarine ownership is maintenance.

00:31:55.000 The reason we found it is that it wasn't properly maintained, so it...

00:31:58.000 Sunk?

00:32:01.000 No, it actually floated, couldn't sink.

00:32:04.000 Oh.

00:32:04.000 And it had a bunch of things hanging off behind it.

00:32:08.000 Submarines scare the shit out of me. 1.00

00:32:10.000 You can't see where you're going. 0.85

00:32:12.000 Well...

00:32:12.000 So, yeah, I've seen submarines, drones, like a squadron of drones with a bunch of loads on it, flying.

00:32:19.000 How heavy can a drone get and still fly?

00:32:22.000 I've seen full like two kilos on it.

00:32:25.000 Really?

00:32:25.000 Yeah.

00:32:27.000 So just flying the coke over the top.

00:32:30.000 Yeah.

00:32:30.000 And the only reason I found out about those is one of those crashed in a roadside next to the border fence.

00:32:38.000 Were you around when that CIA drug plane crashed in Mexico with tons of cocaine on it?

00:32:45.000 I wasn't there, but I was aware of that situation. 0.98

00:32:49.000 What the fuck is that about? 0.98

00:32:52.000 I mean, realistically, there's a lot of Americans running around in Mexico. 0.99

00:32:56.000 Yeah.

00:32:58.000 And there's a lot of cowboys, right?

00:33:00.000 Yeah.

00:33:01.000 A lot of people say, listen, we just make this one run. 0.89

00:33:04.000 They're like, the government doesn't give a fuck about us. 0.99

00:33:06.000 My pension sucks. 1.00

00:33:07.000 It could be. 1.00

00:33:08.000 Could be.

00:33:10.000 Every now and then, and this isn't a secret.

00:33:13.000 Every now and then you would see a dude out there that's blonde, tall, and has a bunch of tattoos that don't belong down there working on the military side of things in Mexico.

00:33:24.000 Or some dudes doing something in some place that you would get a call, you know, oh, they're fine, just leave them alone.

00:33:32.000 So who knows?

00:33:33.000 Who knows?

00:33:33.000 So, if it's 3 out of 10 were corrupt where you were, it might be like 1 out of 10 CIA guys?

00:33:41.000 I mean, you know, usually we would get to, since I have a pretty good spoken English, I would get sent places for training or for liaison work with some people that would go down there, and I would never know where the hell some of these people were from.

00:33:59.000 So, who knows?

00:34:01.000 It seems like it's very loose. 0.99

00:34:03.000 Like there's a lot of room for fuckery. 1.00

00:34:07.000 Calderon era, Bush administration era, there was a lot of stuff going on. 0.95

00:34:18.000 Yeah.

00:34:19.000 Yeah.

00:34:36.000 I learned about it from CNN. And a few of my friends were killed with some of those guns down there, which is, you know, everybody talks about the U.S. agent that was in Mexico was killed by some of these guns.

00:34:50.000 But there was a lot of You know, Mexican agents and people, civilians killed by these guns as well.

00:34:55.000 So there were very specific types of guns, you know?

00:34:57.000 So imagine somebody giving you a shopping list about the types of guns you want, right?

00:35:02.000 Including in these lists were.50 cal Barrett rifles and FN57s, which are a very, it's a pistol with a very high velocity round that goes through soft armor, like the type of stuff that was issued to us.

00:35:19.000 So all of a sudden we're seeing these space pistols in the hands of the cartels in very specific parts of the country.

00:35:26.000 But what a preposterous idea that they were going to sell it to the cartels so they could track them. 0.98

00:35:31.000 That sounds like horseshit to me. 0.93

00:35:33.000 That sounds like someone was trying to make money and they said, oh, we'll just say we're selling it to them to track it. 0.98

00:35:39.000 Well, the suspicious part is that all of them went to one specific cartel, the Sinaloa cartel.

00:35:45.000 So... 0.99

00:35:46.000 It sounds like such horseshit. 0.98

00:35:48.000 The fact that, I mean, who went to jail for that? 0.99

00:35:50.000 Eric Holder didn't go to jail.

00:35:51.000 Oh, he should have.

00:35:52.000 He should have.

00:35:53.000 He should have.

00:35:54.000 I mean, there's blood.

00:35:56.000 People died.

00:35:58.000 I can't say the name, but somewhere in Baja, a little girl lost her arm.

00:36:06.000 An agent that was a friend of mine got killed and the wife got killed with FM57 that directly related to that whole thing, right? 0.98

00:36:14.000 You can go to jail for fucking tax evasion, but this guy can get away with that. 0.92

00:36:19.000 Just the idea that you would run that by people and they would go, yeah, good idea. 1.00

00:36:24.000 Give them guns.

00:36:26.000 And to be clear, I don't know the realities of that operation on this side.

00:36:29.000 People say it was happening way before.

00:36:32.000 All I know is that when that happened, nobody told us.

00:36:36.000 And there was definitely some weird resentment on part of the government down there and some people down there.

00:36:42.000 That's sick.

00:36:44.000 And there was some weird conspiracy theories going on as well down there.

00:36:48.000 How could there not be?

00:36:49.000 I mean, that seems like a conspiracy theory right in front of your face.

00:36:53.000 Just the fact, oh yeah, we just sold them the drugs or the guns so that we could track them.

00:36:59.000 No one's going to die.

00:37:00.000 It's not like a bad idea.

00:37:02.000 The main thing you would hear is people were- Settlement. 0.62

00:37:04.000 Fast and furious executive privilege lawsuit between DOJ and House.

00:37:09.000 It's just how it wrapped up within the last two weeks, I guess.

00:37:13.000 Really?

00:37:13.000 This is just wrapping up?

00:37:15.000 Yeah, just some settlement on March or May 8th.

00:37:17.000 Wow, because this is from, what, nine years ago?

00:37:19.000 Ten years ago?

00:37:19.000 Yeah, at least.

00:37:20.000 And the guns are still showing up, so I don't know how many of them.

00:37:24.000 I've never known what numbers, but last time we found some, and I actually have images of the ones we found.

00:37:33.000 They were buried in somebody's backyard inside of a water barrel.

00:37:38.000 And all of them were obviously US origin guns.

00:37:42.000 And they're like, what do you mean?

00:37:44.000 All of them had very specific accessories on them that nobody else in the world puts these accessories on their guns at the US because they're pretty ridiculous accessories.

00:37:56.000 Like what kind of accessories?

00:37:58.000 Things that had letters on them, like see you in hell type things on them.

00:38:04.000 Punisher skulls.

00:38:06.000 Punisher skulls are the big one, right?

00:38:09.000 That is hilarious that a cartoon skull from a Marvel comic book has become a gigantic part of Spec Ops. 0.92

00:38:17.000 Yeah, it is pretty ridiculous.

00:38:19.000 Well, the main rumor down there, like, conspiracy theory-wise, and you would hear all sorts of things, you know, because down there, there's no such thing as top secret clearance in Mexico, you know?

00:38:29.000 There's like, hey, don't say anything, you know?

00:38:31.000 That's about it, you know?

00:38:34.000 So you'd hear crazy, crazy things.

00:38:37.000 Main thing was that the U.S. was planning an invasion.

00:38:40.000 They're destabilizing the region so they can put boots on the ground.

00:38:43.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:38:44.000 That was the going conspiracy theory going on.

00:38:48.000 The U.S. invading Mexico.

00:38:50.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:38:50.000 How fucking crazy would that be? 0.99

00:38:52.000 Well, you know, as far as a reaction on the side of Mexico... 0.99

00:38:59.000 This is purely speculation and weird rumors that I would hear.

00:39:05.000 People were planning to poison drug loads on that side to create a health crisis in the U.S. as a reaction. 1.00

00:39:13.000 When I heard it, it's like, who's talking about this shit? 0.99

00:39:17.000 And so full-out war almost could be you know and then you would try to see well who's doing that in the cartels? 0.99

00:39:23.000 So the cartels of the government are the same thing like what's going on?

00:39:26.000 Right, right, right.

00:39:27.000 And again, this is just weird stuff you want to create this is a crazy perspective right the Cartels would poison the drugs to punish the Americans for the military invading the country and Yeah.

00:39:41.000 To create a health crisis in the U.S. So they would have to go back.

00:39:47.000 Wow.

00:39:48.000 I mean, the rumors.

00:39:50.000 Do they know how many guns they brought over?

00:39:52.000 I've heard all sorts of numbers.

00:39:54.000 We never got told the same number.

00:39:56.000 Nearly 2,000 firearms were illegally purchased for $1.5 million, according to the DOJ Inspector General report. 0.99

00:40:04.000 Fuck. 0.99

00:40:05.000 Hundreds of guns were later recovered in the United States and Mexico. 1.00

00:40:08.000 Yeah.

00:40:10.000 50 cals were – and it's always an escalation with the cartels, right?

00:40:15.000 So they would get AK-47s and we would get German main G3s that were – We're good to go. 0.98

00:40:43.000 Yeah, so the cartels were getting them first, and then we had to get them because they were rolling around in armored vehicles.

00:40:49.000 So Mad Max-type armored vehicles.

00:40:53.000 First they would make them, like homemade Mad Max armored vehicles.

00:40:59.000 They found a few online somewhere.

00:41:02.000 One of them was called La Bestia, which is like a giant...

00:41:05.000 All that was missing was the guy with the guitar on the back of it, you know, like Mad Max.

00:41:09.000 Yeah.

00:41:10.000 And they would use these to roll into town, and like, how would you fight that?

00:41:14.000 Right.

00:41:15.000 So you had to get a.50 cal.

00:41:18.000 Or get the military to shoot them from the sky.

00:41:20.000 Oh, my God.

00:41:21.000 There's a famous video from somewhere down in Mexico where they shoot a Vulcan rifle down at a cartel member in a car, an armored vehicle.

00:41:29.000 But then you'd see, well, checkmate government against a cartel.

00:41:34.000 But then you realize that the cartels, like the New Generation Cartels in Guadalajara, have actually downed helicopters in Guadalajara, military helicopters, because they have anti-aircraft capabilities.

00:41:45.000 Jesus Christ.

00:41:47.000 So now you're like checkmate cartels.

00:41:51.000 Where does this go?

00:41:53.000 I mean, how far does it escalate?

00:41:56.000 That's the thing that you have to think about.

00:42:00.000 So, killing and death is not...

00:42:04.000 At the industrial level that is being done in Mexico, not just killing, but disappearing bodies, making bodies disappear.

00:42:13.000 I was around when they got the stew maker.

00:42:19.000 The stew maker was a guy that worked for the Sinaloa Cartel in Tijuana, and he would get rid of bodies using caustic soda.

00:42:29.000 So he would get bodies every night and he had basically these industrial level barrels of it just going.

00:42:35.000 What is caustic soda?

00:42:36.000 It's a chemical mixture.

00:42:38.000 You can get most of the components at a hardware store.

00:42:41.000 Basically it dissolves bodies.

00:42:43.000 He would get some of this mixture.

00:42:46.000 He said in interviews that he got trained by Israelis how to do that.

00:42:52.000 So who knows if that's true or not.

00:42:54.000 But in the night he said he would get rid of dozens of bodies.

00:42:58.000 And this gets rid of everything.

00:43:00.000 DNA, bone, everything.

00:43:03.000 So there's a lot of families in Mexico that are looking for their kids for years and there's just no way of giving them a body.

00:43:11.000 And the amount of youth that goes into cartel work and just gets killed there.

00:43:17.000 It's whole generations and whole towns of women and old men.

00:43:24.000 They're out there.

00:43:26.000 The whole generation's just gone. 0.91

00:43:28.000 All the men are gone.

00:43:30.000 I've gone to a few small towns where they looked at me like, Youth, a young man.

00:43:37.000 So it's rare.

00:43:38.000 At some places it is.

00:43:40.000 Because the men are all getting killed.

00:43:41.000 All getting got in the cartel operations and killed or recruited, forcefully recruited or voluntarily recruited, but whole generations just wiped out.

00:43:53.000 Now, the people in your line of work, the people that are boots on the ground who really understand the problem, what is the thought in terms of what could be done to fix this?

00:44:04.000 I think the main thing is any sort of plan to fight the cartels that involves just a six-year plan won't work.

00:44:14.000 Because that's what the main problem has been with Mexico. 0.63

00:44:18.000 Your presidential term is six years?

00:44:22.000 Each president comes in with a six-year plan.

00:44:25.000 We're good to go.

00:44:56.000 So they don't want to resolve the problem as much as they want to?

00:44:58.000 In some ways, you know.

00:45:02.000 They refuse to professionalize the police forces down there.

00:45:06.000 They don't put enough effort in that regard.

00:45:09.000 You know, good people that are there that I know there's some amazing guys down there doing amazing work.

00:45:16.000 And they get passed up for promotion because they don't know anybody high level.

00:45:20.000 They don't work by their side of the game.

00:45:24.000 So a lot of these people just get cast aside.

00:45:28.000 And it's kind of hopeless in that regard.

00:45:32.000 A lot of the good guys, when they come out of the job, there's only a few options to them.

00:45:40.000 I had options, but a lot of the guys that go out of the job don't.

00:45:44.000 So...

00:45:45.000 They get recruited by the cartels.

00:45:47.000 Did anybody ever attempt to recruit you?

00:46:05.000 And it's a pretty interesting song.

00:46:07.000 It's about a cartel guy that used to work as a cop and somebody from his past approaches him and says, you want to do a job?

00:46:15.000 That's what you would get.

00:46:16.000 People within the police forces asking you, you want to work on the side?

00:46:21.000 That was the entry.

00:46:24.000 Or, we'll pay you this much.

00:46:27.000 What is it like when you say no?

00:46:30.000 It's pretty hard.

00:46:32.000 It's not specifically saying no, but just saying, I'm not the one to ask for this.

00:46:39.000 And you say, I'm not the one to ask for this.

00:46:42.000 You know what?

00:46:42.000 I'm only in this for the money, for my paycheck, and I don't want to risk anything.

00:46:49.000 And how do they leave that?

00:46:51.000 They're not happy usually, you know?

00:46:53.000 So you get on a list sometimes, and it's something that follows you.

00:46:57.000 But it's a much better thing than actually getting into one of these guys' pockets.

00:47:02.000 Once you take something, you're theirs.

00:47:05.000 Right, like the mob.

00:47:06.000 Like the mob, you know, a lot of these guys actually took, you know, a lot of these cartels down there, they kind of venerate the whole gangster era in the U.S. It's like a thing.

00:47:18.000 So it's like a thing they look up to, you know?

00:47:21.000 Right.

00:47:22.000 So you see a lot of gold-plated Thompson machine guns down there who take pictures with them.

00:47:27.000 So, there's a lack of professionalizing the police force.

00:47:33.000 Yes.

00:47:33.000 And that you think is a conscious effort?

00:47:35.000 I think it's...

00:47:36.000 You keep them fairly incompetent?

00:47:39.000 I think so.

00:47:40.000 A lot of ways, we were, as a group, the group that I used to work with, there was a lot of efforts to professionalize us, to getting that career path to actually making it a career.

00:47:57.000 Right now, where I used to work, there's no pension.

00:48:00.000 There's no retiring.

00:48:03.000 If you want to get any sort of credit for anything, the credit companies won't even touch you because you're too high risk.

00:48:11.000 Too high risk because you might get shot?

00:48:13.000 Yeah.

00:48:14.000 Wow.

00:48:15.000 Well, it is the most dangerous city on the planet, so they wouldn't touch us.

00:48:21.000 And realistically, culturally, being a cop in Mexico is...

00:48:30.000 Male porn actor and cop are probably along the same range as far as shame, you know? 0.90

00:48:36.000 Wow. 0.97

00:48:37.000 Yeah.

00:48:38.000 We wouldn't eat at any restaurant that we didn't know the people, you know, because it would spit in there.

00:48:43.000 Really?

00:48:44.000 Yeah, there's hate.

00:48:45.000 Why do they hate cops so much?

00:48:49.000 As a culture in Mexico, police culture in Mexico has earned it. 0.98

00:48:54.000 A lot of guys working both sides.

00:48:57.000 A lot of guys being, you know, again, the whole...

00:49:02.000 You're going to be a cop because you know somebody in there.

00:49:05.000 And there's people that shouldn't be in any sort of public service.

00:49:10.000 So there's a lot of corruption.

00:49:11.000 Again, a lot of corruption.

00:49:12.000 A lot of...

00:49:13.000 A lot of things done wrongly by the cops, a lot of abuses, a lot of human rights violation type situations.

00:49:20.000 It's earned.

00:49:21.000 So the big shift over there in terms of crime, in terms of cartel crime, occurs first with September 11th, the tightening of the borders.

00:49:31.000 Then it starts to ramp up after that.

00:49:35.000 Because of what?

00:49:36.000 The government first started targeting certain cartel heads. 0.95

00:49:42.000 You cut one head off, Hydra.

00:49:45.000 Two heads, three heads pop up. 0.95

00:49:47.000 Power vacuum.

00:49:48.000 Power vacuum.

00:49:49.000 People fight to try to gain power.

00:49:51.000 And the cartels realize, you know what?

00:49:55.000 We are standing on the richest drug routes on the planet, so we should probably, you know, start fighting over them.

00:50:04.000 And also what happened is that, you know, a lot of these people, it's something that Americans kind of don't get yet.

00:50:13.000 This isn't a Mexican problem anymore, specifically, as far as the cartel of violence going on.

00:50:18.000 A lot of these people had their kids up here in the U.S. in the 90s.

00:50:22.000 A lot of these cartel guys, you know, El Chapo had kids in the U.S. And a lot of these people are now coming of age, you know?

00:50:32.000 So cartel influence in the U.S. is a thing you're going to start seeing if you're already seeing it, but you're going to see more of it because a lot of these people are actually American-born U.S. citizens.

00:50:44.000 Now working in tandem with any sort of interest down there.

00:50:48.000 So that's going to be the new shift.

00:50:51.000 And people are sometimes kind of horrified by some of the stuff that I post up, some of the cases down there.

00:50:57.000 People can look up the Los Palillos gang in Southern California.

00:51:04.000 There were an actual cartel group.

00:51:07.000 That would kidnap people in the U.S. dressed as federal agents in the U.S. and drag them back down to Mexico. 0.82

00:51:14.000 Now, this happened a few...

00:51:15.000 almost, I think, nine years back.

00:51:17.000 But this is happening in the U.S. It's not something foreign anymore.

00:51:22.000 A lot of people want to think that you can build a wall and keep all that down.

00:51:28.000 Don't get me wrong.

00:51:29.000 Build that wall.

00:51:30.000 I have nothing against it.

00:51:31.000 But selling it as a security thing, I don't think it makes that much sense.

00:51:37.000 In a lot of the parts where it is up, violence is rampant on both sides.

00:51:42.000 But the argument would be that if the wall didn't exist, then it would be too easy to come back and forth at all spots.

00:51:52.000 Yeah, it could.

00:51:53.000 But again, drug novels, catapults, drones.

00:51:57.000 For drugs.

00:51:58.000 But in terms of kidnapping people and a lot of other things, you cut off at least some of the vehicle routes.

00:52:05.000 Yeah, I get it.

00:52:05.000 I get it.

00:52:06.000 And I think, again, I'm not against the wall.

00:52:08.000 Build the wall.

00:52:10.000 I interviewed a guy.

00:52:12.000 I do articles for a few magazines, and I interviewed a guy who's a coyote, a coyote.

00:52:18.000 He moves people from the border.

00:52:21.000 And he said this about the border wall.

00:52:25.000 He said, it's good for business.

00:52:28.000 You make something seem like it's harder when it isn't, and it's good for business.

00:52:33.000 So you say, listen, I can't get you over to 3,000.

00:52:36.000 It's got to be five now.

00:52:36.000 It's tighter.

00:52:38.000 Or fly them to Canada and they walk down. 0.97

00:52:41.000 That was one of his new favorite methods.

00:52:46.000 Northern United States probably got a lot of Mexicans now. 0.88

00:52:51.000 Yeah.

00:52:51.000 The Canada border is hilarious.

00:52:53.000 It's a path.

00:52:54.000 Yeah.

00:52:55.000 It's a carved out 100 yard path.

00:52:57.000 We put pictures of it up the other day.

00:53:00.000 We're like, look how hilarious this is.

00:53:01.000 The difference between Mexico and Canada.

00:53:03.000 Canada, they make it easy to know where the border is.

00:53:06.000 Like, just get across here, eh?

00:53:08.000 Yeah.

00:53:08.000 You'll be fine.

00:53:09.000 Snow Mexicans. 1.00

00:53:10.000 Yeah.

00:53:11.000 It's really strange.

00:53:12.000 Well, I mean, it's the amount of creativity and problem solving that goes on the criminal side.

00:53:21.000 If your best plan is a wall, a secure wall, these guys have been working against that best plan for the past 20 years.

00:53:30.000 So they're already way ahead of the curve, you know, in that regard.

00:53:35.000 There was an interesting time, and people can look this up, drone technology had an upsurge in innovation in Tijuana out of all places in the world for a time, you know?

00:53:47.000 Like, why?

00:53:48.000 That's funny.

00:53:49.000 I wonder.

00:53:52.000 What they were doing with those.

00:53:54.000 What could be done to radically curb this?

00:54:00.000 Like if you were the king of the world, I said, Ed, what are we going to do?

00:54:05.000 First off, legalizing some of the substances would probably help.

00:54:10.000 That would help a lot.

00:54:15.000 That's a pretty good question.

00:54:17.000 But even some substances that are legal, like fentanyl is essentially legal because you can get a prescription for it.

00:54:23.000 But you're never going to have fentanyl just...

00:54:28.000 Over the counter.

00:54:29.000 It's just too deadly.

00:54:30.000 You know, another thing that I think about, and that's a very good question.

00:54:33.000 I wish I could answer it.

00:54:35.000 I think everybody wishes they could answer it.

00:54:37.000 Everyone just sort of shrugs.

00:54:39.000 So the cartels aren't just a drug-fueled business.

00:54:44.000 They also have money that is in property and legitimized businesses.

00:54:51.000 They work in human trafficking.

00:54:53.000 It used to be you can cross that border and go to the desert and cross it yourself, but now you have to pay a toll.

00:55:00.000 Protection rackets on both sides of the border.

00:55:05.000 Sex trafficking.

00:55:08.000 Piracy.

00:55:09.000 You name it.

00:55:11.000 They have hands in it.

00:55:12.000 So they just essentially took that drug money and just created a crime business.

00:55:18.000 They diversified.

00:55:19.000 They've been diversified for a long time.

00:55:21.000 There was recently three cartel members from Sinaloa in Malaysia released out of all places.

00:55:30.000 So just think about that.

00:55:33.000 Two Sinaloa cartel guys somewhere in Malaysia...

00:55:36.000 Got caught somewhere.

00:55:37.000 And now they've been released.

00:55:38.000 And they got like a hero's welcome in Mexico.

00:55:41.000 They got a hero's welcome?

00:55:42.000 Oh, yeah.

00:55:43.000 Really?

00:55:43.000 Well, Sinaloa, that, you know, again, Sinaloa is a pretty, that's, I have this nickname for Mexico.

00:55:48.000 I call it the upside down, you know, because everything's basically upside down now.

00:55:53.000 And yeah, these guys got, funny thing is that the Mexican government was involved in their release.

00:56:00.000 And then they, you know, send them back and, you know, hero's welcome.

00:56:02.000 What were they doing all the way over there in that part of the world?

00:56:05.000 I don't know, you know, diversifying.

00:56:09.000 Diversifying.

00:56:10.000 So no one has a real plan.

00:56:12.000 Here it goes.

00:56:13.000 Malaysia pardons three Mexicans on death row.

00:56:15.000 Oh, they were on death row. 1.00

00:56:17.000 Damn. 1.00

00:56:19.000 You want to talk about a kick-ass corrido and like a folk song song about you? 0.99

00:56:22.000 Those guys are probably going to get an amazing folk song, you know?

00:56:27.000 So there's a lot of romanticism connected to the cartel.

00:56:30.000 I mean, it's romanticism, it's religion.

00:56:33.000 There's definitely some occultism involved in a lot of the higher-ups in these cartels.

00:56:39.000 I can remember when I found out about the narco music. 0.93

00:56:43.000 What are those songs called?

00:56:44.000 Corridos.

00:56:45.000 The folk songs.

00:56:47.000 There's a lot of them, you know.

00:56:49.000 And all of them have a secret language in them sometimes, or they're all a history of something that happened.

00:56:56.000 And you pay somebody to make one for you, or somebody makes it for you.

00:57:03.000 And then... 0.98

00:57:05.000 If you do a good corrido song for somebody, the rivals will send somebody to kill you. 0.98

00:57:11.000 Really?

00:57:11.000 So even the musicians are on either side of the cartel kind of groupings as well, which is pretty weird.

00:57:19.000 Wow.

00:57:20.000 So...

00:57:21.000 If you're for the wrong cartel, if you make a song, you kind of have to go into hiding.

00:57:28.000 Or not play in any places where the rival cartel's territories are.

00:57:33.000 Oh, Jesus Christ.

00:57:35.000 Will they come to your territory to come get you, if you like?

00:57:38.000 Yeah, there's been a few high-level singers, Mexican folk singers, that got killed for messing with girlfriends with cartel members or for singing the wrong song in the wrong place.

00:57:52.000 So that's in the culture.

00:57:53.000 And the religious occultism the cartels have as well.

00:57:57.000 It's a pretty interesting thing.

00:57:59.000 Things like Santa Muerte, the death cult that is kind of...

00:58:03.000 In different parts of Mexico, it's like, think of a very dark Freemasonry type thing, right? 0.95

00:58:11.000 Certain levels you have people that are part of that cult, from the cops, to the military, to the cartels, to prostitutes, to drug dealers.

00:58:23.000 It's interesting how that kind of also has an influence on the way some people go into very risky businesses like being cops or cartel guys and how they wear or empower themselves by some of these occult iconographies.

00:58:40.000 Wow.

00:58:44.000 The Trinity is Jesus Malverde, which was a folk hero from the turn of the century, Sinaloa.

00:58:53.000 Basically a bandit that got caught and killed and he turned into a saint.

00:58:56.000 Now there's a giant church to him in Sinaloa with a bunch of...

00:59:03.000 We're good to go.

00:59:20.000 And then you look behind her and there's a reaper behind it because it's a hidden Santa Marta shrine.

00:59:26.000 And they do that so the military doesn't destroy them because they have standing orders to destroy these things, which shouldn't be, but, you know, kind of religious persecution, but they actually do that.

00:59:37.000 It's so different than the United States.

00:59:41.000 In a lot of ways it is.

00:59:43.000 I don't think we understand.

00:59:46.000 I think the average person has no idea about the songs, no idea about the culture of it all.

00:59:53.000 They have no idea the depth and how deeply it's connected.

00:59:58.000 To society down there.

00:59:59.000 I mean, the death cult worship is, I think you could probably trace it back to the Aztec days.

01:00:06.000 So there's definitely, when you see all these highly violent, bloody cartel executions and things like that, I don't know.

01:00:15.000 I think there's some sort of genetic memory from those times.

01:00:18.000 It's not abnormal.

01:00:21.000 Physically for some of these people to do that type of thing, you know, ripping somebody's heart next to a tree is like there's videos of that stuff out there.

01:00:27.000 I remember getting contacted by people that I knew on this side of the border in the US that were very curious why all these people from the Middle East were looking at all these cartel execution videos and then a few years later you had ISIS doing some high production execution videos that were inspired by the cartels,

01:00:45.000 you know?

01:00:45.000 Wow.

01:00:46.000 Isn't it interesting that we don't think about that?

01:00:49.000 We think about, oh my god, look at ISIS. They're cutting people's heads off. 1.00

01:00:51.000 They learned from Mexico, which is connected to us by land. 1.00

01:00:54.000 You can fucking walk there. 0.98

01:00:56.000 You don't have to fly to Afghanistan. 1.00

01:00:58.000 You could walk there.

01:00:59.000 It's not in Libya.

01:01:00.000 It's near La Jolla.

01:01:02.000 Yeah. 0.97

01:01:04.000 You go to La Jolla, you see these fucking multi-million dollar estates with this gorgeous view and everyone's driving Ferraris and Porsches. 0.96

01:01:13.000 20 minutes drive, you're in Tijuana. 0.99

01:01:16.000 Yeah, the most violent city on the planet right now.

01:01:19.000 That's so crazy!

01:01:21.000 When I go to San Diego, that's one of the first things I think, is what a juxtaposition.

01:01:26.000 How crazy it is that this is the border to Mexico, and it's all military. 0.98

01:01:31.000 San Diego is filled with fucking SEALs and Rangers and Marines and bases, and it's just... 0.99

01:01:38.000 All military down there. 1.00

01:01:39.000 It's so military influenced, and it's right next to the most violent, dangerous city on planet Earth.

01:01:46.000 More than Karachi.

01:01:47.000 More than Pakistan. 0.99

01:01:49.000 We were insured by MetLife, and the MetLife agent said something along those lines, like, you're better off going to Afghanistan or Iraq than...

01:02:00.000 You know, working here, basically, numbers-wise.

01:02:03.000 And I was like, thank you for that, you know?

01:02:06.000 That felt like a good pat on the back.

01:02:09.000 But it seems like they're getting cartel on cartel crime confused with regular person crime.

01:02:15.000 But that's how it always starts, you know?

01:02:18.000 It usually starts off, and again, this goes back to everything cyclical down there.

01:02:23.000 That snake eating its tail.

01:02:26.000 So you get cartel on cartel crime, and then they finish each other off, and then they realize, well, now what do we do?

01:02:31.000 So they start abducting people.

01:02:33.000 Extortion.

01:02:34.000 For money.

01:02:36.000 Extortion comes into play, you know, protection rackets.

01:02:42.000 Cross-us guy. 0.74

01:02:43.000 Now they're very bold.

01:02:44.000 Now they're at the party somewhere and somebody looks at them funny, so they come back and they shoot up the whole party.

01:02:50.000 I like your daughter.

01:02:51.000 She's pretty hot. 1.00

01:02:52.000 I'm going to steal her. 1.00

01:02:53.000 And if you do something, it'll kill you. 1.00

01:02:54.000 And you're never going to see your daughter again.

01:02:56.000 That's how it starts.

01:02:57.000 That's how it starts kind of growing.

01:02:59.000 Just bold, brazen, and cruel.

01:03:03.000 That's how you get it. 0.97

01:03:04.000 Sociopathic.

01:03:05.000 That's how you get to that point.

01:03:07.000 And again, I experienced it back in the 2006 era.

01:03:11.000 And I saw it get into all the way to when the whole of the municipal police were, basically the army surrounded the municipal police office of the police of Tijuana.

01:03:23.000 And they took all their guns.

01:03:25.000 And a few of them were taking on a plane ride to Mexico City.

01:03:29.000 And for a few weeks, there was no armed police in Tijuana, no municipal armed police.

01:03:35.000 Imagine somebody disarming all of the LAPD and just having the army in there instead.

01:03:42.000 Wow.

01:03:42.000 So you would see these events and then things calming down.

01:03:47.000 The only success story as far as a city coming back from the brink...

01:03:53.000 Was Tijuana when all that, like the raging drug war went down.

01:03:58.000 Lieutenant Colonel Lisa Ola, the guy that I used to work with, he took numbers down.

01:04:04.000 Like everybody down in Mexico, he got hired then on to go to Juarez to try and replicate his success.

01:04:11.000 The only successes were there because he basically treated the problem as a counterinsurgency problem, not a policing problem.

01:04:18.000 And he got nine attempts on his life.

01:04:20.000 The last one took the use of his legs.

01:04:23.000 And he's currently running for mayor of Tijuana.

01:04:29.000 Believe it or not.

01:04:30.000 And he's in a wheelchair, but I would not want to mess with that guy. 1.00

01:04:35.000 Wow.

01:04:38.000 Myself and some members of my family are actually helping out with his campaign.

01:04:42.000 One of his campaign offices got shot up recently.

01:04:48.000 So is there any plans or is there any push to try to treat the entire Problem as a counterinsurgency problem to replicate the success that they had in Tijuana.

01:05:00.000 No.

01:05:02.000 That was a solution brought in by the right side of the political spectrum in Mexico.

01:05:09.000 So it's a no-go right now because everything's to the left.

01:05:14.000 This guy just got in office?

01:05:16.000 He has a few months in.

01:05:18.000 So yeah, he just got into office.

01:05:20.000 So you got five and a half more years of this dude.

01:05:23.000 We're in for a ride.

01:05:25.000 That's all I can say.

01:05:27.000 Yeah, kindness doesn't seem to work when you're dealing with cartels, it seems like.

01:05:32.000 No, you give them a hand and they'll take your feet.

01:05:34.000 That's a Mexican saying.

01:05:39.000 Man, for you to have been in that business and to sort of be connected to it but outside of it now, does it seem...

01:05:49.000 I mean, it must be incredibly frustrating, but it also must feel futile, like you've wasted time almost, because there's no progress that's ever going to be made.

01:05:59.000 I have a weird experience that I had.

01:06:02.000 I burned about two acres of pot somewhere in Baja towards the end of my career.

01:06:11.000 And then things happened politically.

01:06:14.000 A bunch of shakes-ups up in the office.

01:06:16.000 I got called in and the director of the institution that I was in at that time was a shady character.

01:06:23.000 And I decided to say, you know what?

01:06:26.000 My mom had just passed away and that kind of affected me a little bit.

01:06:30.000 A lot a bit.

01:06:33.000 And starting a family and stuff like that and said, you know what?

01:06:36.000 This is not worth it.

01:06:37.000 So I left.

01:06:39.000 Quit my job, handed everything in.

01:06:42.000 People were suspicious about why I did it. 0.98

01:06:45.000 You probably found a million dollars somewhere and you're running or shit like that. 0.92

01:06:49.000 So I had to leave in a hurry. 0.98

01:06:51.000 Got a few threats.

01:06:54.000 Luckily I had some great people on this side of the border.

01:07:01.000 Friendships that I developed for a long while.

01:07:05.000 And they helped me out.

01:07:07.000 I went to Denver about two weeks after I got done with the job, and an old lady handed me a special cookie at one of the dispensaries.

01:07:16.000 And I saw the people walking in, you know, and it's like, is this what I've been, you know?

01:07:22.000 Burning and chasing people in the middle of the night and looking at drug planes and violence and all this.

01:07:30.000 This is a lady with a cookie. 1.00

01:07:32.000 Now it's a store.

01:07:33.000 It's a beautiful store in Denver.

01:07:35.000 There's a store in front of LA, in front of the improv, that I have to put a video up because me and Andrew Santino were there last night making fun of it.

01:07:45.000 I'll send it to you, Jamie, right now.

01:07:46.000 Because it's so ridiculous. 0.99

01:07:48.000 They have shit under glass, like you're looking at art pieces. 1.00

01:07:52.000 I mean, again, I don't know why they're still producing pot in Mexico when you guys have it in the stratosphere as far as an art form. 0.99

01:08:02.000 I'm going to send you this right now, Jamie.

01:08:05.000 Yeah, well, they definitely have it down now.

01:08:08.000 But it's just, it shouldn't be illegal in the first place.

01:08:11.000 That's not hurting anybody.

01:08:12.000 I just sent it to you.

01:08:15.000 There's a bunch of, there's large shamanism and occultism all over Mexico and mushrooms have been used down there for, like, forever.

01:08:24.000 Yeah.

01:08:25.000 And, you know, growing up, stuff like that, you would see it, and it wasn't.

01:08:29.000 The demonization comes from the conflict around it, not that.

01:08:34.000 Well, there should be real demonization when it comes to things like fentanyl.

01:08:38.000 Look at this.

01:08:39.000 Turn the volume up so we can hear this.

01:08:45.000 I'm inspecting the crystals, Joe.

01:08:47.000 They leave behind a magnifying glass. 0.98

01:08:49.000 This is no bullshit. 0.99

01:08:50.000 These are all in glass. 0.97

01:08:52.000 So you can look at the crystals.

01:08:54.000 Because a lot of these marijuana dorks are like wine dorks or any other thing where people really get into it. 0.82

01:09:01.000 You take it too far. 0.96

01:09:02.000 When he's looking at weed under glass, if Joey Diaz would be here right now, he'd spit him out. 0.74

01:09:07.000 He'd spit him out. 0.98

01:09:08.000 Right in your mouth. 0.96

01:09:09.000 If you try to have weed under glass like it's a fine Chardonnay or something nonsense.

01:09:15.000 It's just weed, man.

01:09:16.000 That's all it is. 1.00

01:09:17.000 It's just fucking weed. 1.00

01:09:18.000 Andrew Santino speaks the truth. 1.00

01:09:19.000 It's just weed, man.

01:09:21.000 That's some Angie Groucho type level stuff, right? 0.98

01:09:23.000 How ridiculous is that? 0.61

01:09:24.000 They give you a magnifying glass and they have all these displays. 0.96

01:09:28.000 This is a hybrid.

01:09:29.000 This is an Indica Strong hybrid.

01:09:32.000 This is a Sativa Strong.

01:09:33.000 Sativa Dominant.

01:09:35.000 How are you supposed to smell it under that glass?

01:09:36.000 Good question.

01:09:38.000 The rice stores have a little jar that you can smell through.

01:09:40.000 It's a very good question.

01:09:41.000 We would just grab all of it, machetes, and just put it in a big pile.

01:09:45.000 And just chop it up?

01:09:46.000 And look, where's the wind coming?

01:09:48.000 From over there?

01:09:49.000 I'm going to sit over here.

01:09:51.000 Wow.

01:09:51.000 Yeah, you know, you would get a pass after that, so it was fine.

01:09:54.000 You've got to get a little fucked up, burning all that stuff. 0.99

01:09:57.000 Of course. 1.00

01:09:57.000 Secondhand smoke? 1.00

01:09:58.000 Peanut butter M&M's, that was my thing.

01:10:02.000 Was there a sense of frustration when it was legalized in so many states in the United States?

01:10:08.000 In some regard, yes.

01:10:10.000 What are we dying for?

01:10:11.000 What are we fighting for?

01:10:12.000 Why have I lost brothers?

01:10:13.000 Exactly.

01:10:14.000 A lot of people were killed over finding tons of pot somewhere, and now it's fine.

01:10:21.000 Yeah, now you can just buy it.

01:10:24.000 But the frustration isn't with the pot itself.

01:10:27.000 Again, it's what happens around, the politics around it, the amount of money invested into fighting it, and violence and interests around it.

01:10:37.000 But the plant itself, again, my mom used to grow it and put it in a jar with alcohol and rub it on her muscles. 0.60

01:10:46.000 And it's a thing.

01:10:48.000 It's always been there.

01:10:50.000 And all of a sudden, you have full-auto machine guns protecting it in a grow somewhere, and full-auto machine guns in another place, people coming in there to burn it because you shouldn't be selling it.

01:11:03.000 It's just...

01:11:05.000 While I was doing it, my mindset was, these are bad people when I started.

01:11:11.000 These are bad people that are drugs. 0.94

01:11:13.000 And later on, I was like, just a plant, a stinky plant. 0.80

01:11:19.000 Some people are smoking it.

01:11:21.000 And never in my life did I encounter a hyped-up pothead that wanted to fight.

01:11:26.000 So I was like, they should make this exclusive.

01:11:29.000 Everybody calm down.

01:11:31.000 Coke is different.

01:11:32.000 Method's different.

01:11:32.000 Of course.

01:11:33.000 But pot.

01:11:35.000 When you were talking about how everyone with a six-year plan, it's not going to work.

01:11:39.000 It's never going to work.

01:11:40.000 It seems to me that with the romanticism of the cults and the way that it's ingrained in the culture and that they look at these people like folk heroes, that this is a generational problem.

01:11:53.000 It seems like many generations before it changes and calms down.

01:11:57.000 And I would struggle to think of what would be the thing that could cause it to calm down.

01:12:02.000 Like, what could...

01:12:03.000 What could be the catalyst for change?

01:12:05.000 Yeah, and more so than things are getting even more complicated now with migrant caravans going through Mexico now. 0.93

01:12:16.000 And now you have all these displaced people from South America now adding on to the problem of an already existing...

01:12:23.000 How big is the caravan?

01:12:25.000 We hear about it on the news, like from Fox News talks about it, like scare tactics.

01:12:29.000 So I was, I don't know, and people can fact check me on this, but I was probably one of the first ones to publicly say that they were going to go, the first caravan is going to go straight to Tijuana.

01:12:40.000 Everybody goes, no, they're not going to go straight to Tijuana.

01:12:43.000 They're just too far off.

01:12:44.000 They should just go to Texas.

01:12:46.000 And they went straight to Tijuana.

01:12:47.000 And, you know, there were about 3,000 strong when they got there, maybe a bit more.

01:12:55.000 And, you know, a bunch of memes came up because of it.

01:12:59.000 As they were going through all of Mexico, most of the people were pretty welcoming because they weren't going to stay.

01:13:06.000 They were like, when somebody's doing a jog or running a marathon, they would hand a water bottle and good riddance.

01:13:13.000 They finally got to TJ, and TJ is very conservative.

01:13:17.000 Politically, it's a very conservative place.

01:13:19.000 And they met with a wall of protesters wearing Make Tijuana Great Again hats.

01:13:25.000 No!

01:13:26.000 Yes!

01:13:27.000 Yes.

01:13:27.000 No!

01:13:28.000 Yes.

01:13:29.000 Yes.

01:13:29.000 And I may or may not have produced a few of those myself.

01:13:35.000 Yeah.

01:14:00.000 They were complaining about the food they were getting at the shelters.

01:14:03.000 This is a third world country feeding third world migrants. 1.00

01:14:06.000 And we were feeding them tortillas and beans.

01:14:10.000 And there's a famous lady that was like, I'm not going to eat this. 0.95

01:14:12.000 This is pig. 0.99

01:14:13.000 You know, it's pig meat. 0.94

01:14:14.000 I knew this.

01:14:15.000 Make Tijuana great again.

01:14:17.000 So it's trolling on another level.

01:14:20.000 Wow.

01:14:20.000 So these guys came in, but people started calling the people from Tijuana racist.

01:14:26.000 The brown people from Tijuana are racist against other brown people. 0.95

01:14:29.000 Wow. 1.00

01:14:29.000 And you would see some of the news agencies from the U.S. come down and volunteer groups, hippies, with sending all their donations to these people in some of these Mario Caravan camps. 1.00

01:14:44.000 They would grab the donations, turn around, and sell it on the backside.

01:14:48.000 All of these things they would sell on the backside.

01:14:50.000 So they were...

01:14:52.000 We had just absorbed about 2,000 or 3,000 Haitian immigrants after the earthquake in Tijuana.

01:14:58.000 No problems at all.

01:15:00.000 They're integrated into the culture.

01:15:02.000 All of a sudden, now we have Haitians in the culture.

01:15:04.000 No problem at all.

01:15:05.000 But these guys came in, and they were really kind of disruptive in that way.

01:15:10.000 Do you think it was because of all the attention they were getting?

01:15:13.000 Yeah.

01:15:14.000 That's what they wanted.

01:15:15.000 They wanted to create some sort of situation on the border, so they rushed the border a few times.

01:15:19.000 I was around there when the famous picture of the lady with the kids running towards the border happened.

01:15:28.000 They were throwing rocks at the Border Patrol guys, and they got the gas in response.

01:15:35.000 And that's when she was running away. 0.80

01:15:37.000 Yeah, and they had a lot of people there.

01:15:39.000 So they had been throwing rocks.

01:15:40.000 Yeah, they threw rocks constantly.

01:15:41.000 That was their thing.

01:15:42.000 It's funny how a photo can give you a totally different perspective.

01:15:45.000 Again, anybody that's doubting any of this, go down to Tijuana and ask the people from Tijuana.

01:15:50.000 The Tijuana people did not want those people there.

01:15:52.000 They saw them as disruptive.

01:15:54.000 Crime went up.

01:15:55.000 One of the encampments that they have was next to a school.

01:15:57.000 The school had to be shut down because of all the needles and stuff that was getting found outside of the playground in the school.

01:16:03.000 It was a massive nightmare.

01:16:05.000 And then we would see it on the news and it was like flowers and, you know, the narrative was like, I don't know what these guys are talking about.

01:16:14.000 Well, Trump is such a polarizing figure that anything...

01:16:18.000 That would be anti-immigration like that.

01:16:23.000 They just don't even want to hear it.

01:16:25.000 But the weird thing is how a lot of people, Mexicans, like Trump.

01:16:31.000 Really?

01:16:33.000 Yeah.

01:16:33.000 Why is that?

01:16:34.000 I think the whole, I'm going to defend our people type thing.

01:16:39.000 They like that.

01:16:40.000 Yeah, and people have to remember, most Mexicans are very conservative, you know, Catholic, conservative guys, so it kind of resonates with them a little.

01:16:47.000 But, you know, again, we're divided as well as you guys are politically, so there's a lot of to-the-left type of leading people down there, so they, you know, again, narrative, you know, divide and conquer.

01:16:58.000 But the people on the left, what is their perspective on the migrant caravans?

01:17:01.000 Oh, support it, you know, open the borders, you know, let them through. 0.99

01:17:06.000 But they're not boots on the ground.

01:17:09.000 No.

01:17:09.000 Well, not that they're not Buddhists on the ground.

01:17:12.000 Their cities are not the ones that are hosting all these people.

01:17:15.000 Right, right, right.

01:17:15.000 They're not right there while it's going down.

01:17:17.000 They don't have a realistic perspective of it.

01:17:19.000 It's a narrative.

01:17:21.000 So imagine this caravan came into TJ and affected the businesses, the cross-border and tourism business of all the people that live there.

01:17:28.000 So a lot of businesses actually closed down because of these people coming in.

01:17:32.000 Really?

01:17:32.000 Yeah.

01:17:33.000 And the only reason they came in was to disrupt and create an international scene, which is exactly what they did.

01:17:40.000 So did they plan on actually trying to get across?

01:17:43.000 They were planning on jumping the fence and claiming asylum on the other side.

01:17:48.000 And the famous Lady Frijoles that I kind of made famous on my Instagram account...

01:17:54.000 She jumped the fence, claimed asylum, went to Texas, and then her and her sister assaulted somebody somewhere, and then she got arrested, got deported probably.

01:18:02.000 So, you know, that's kind of the story of these people.

01:18:06.000 And then you would attract some of these people on social media, so they would be all poor in the Maverick Caravan videos they would have on the news, and then you would see them on their social media accounts from back home, Louis Vuitton bags and stuff like that, you know.

01:18:19.000 Maybe a fake one, but still, you know, they were fronting.

01:18:21.000 They were flossing.

01:18:23.000 You know, it's a weird dynamic on the border.

01:18:26.000 And as far as I think it's being utilized in a lot of ways as a political type thing is currently because of the president you guys have up here.

01:18:36.000 And correct me if I'm wrong, but they do make an effort to not go into tourist areas and to resort areas and the cartel.

01:18:47.000 Well, this is the thing because they own it.

01:18:49.000 Or they have investments in it.

01:18:51.000 That's why.

01:18:52.000 So like, if you go to Punta Mita or something like that, you think they have investments?

01:18:57.000 It's in their best interest to have things, you know, quite.

01:18:59.000 Yeah.

01:19:00.000 A lot of people, so I do a lot of training, do a lot of classes, stuff like that, travel safety things.

01:19:05.000 And people are amazed with some of the cases that I bring forth that they think they're going to get abducted or drugged by the cartels in some discotheque somewhere down there.

01:19:14.000 Yeah.

01:19:15.000 And it's usually American... 0.92

01:19:17.000 Americans traveling down there doing their thing down there against other Americans and then coming back up. 0.90

01:19:21.000 It's a perfect crime.

01:19:23.000 Oh, really?

01:19:24.000 Yeah, there's a lot of that.

01:19:25.000 Oh, didn't that happen with a guy who killed his girlfriend down there?

01:19:28.000 Yeah, there's a case of something like that.

01:19:30.000 I think somewhere in the Caribbean.

01:19:31.000 Yeah, that makes sense.

01:19:32.000 That would be a good way to get rid of somebody.

01:19:34.000 A lot of those cases...

01:19:35.000 Oh, we made a mistake.

01:19:36.000 The cartel got her.

01:19:38.000 I miss her so much, man.

01:19:39.000 A lot of the druggings that happen down there during the spring break type time frame, it's always Americans against Americans kind of doing that stuff.

01:19:49.000 And people think the cartels are drugging people.

01:19:52.000 No.

01:19:53.000 Sometimes it's Americans taking advantage of the whole...

01:19:58.000 I was staying with my family in Punta Mita at the Four Seasons and we had these golf carts and you could take the golf carts out of the resort and they're like can we take the golf carts to the town?

01:20:11.000 They're like sure go ahead. 0.76

01:20:12.000 We leave the resort The first thing you see is a military vehicle armored with soldiers standing at the border of the fucking Four Seasons with machine guns on the roof of this thing standing there ready to rock in case anything goes down. 0.96

01:20:30.000 Probably waiting for the rival cartel guys to come through.

01:20:34.000 So again, a lot of these people legitimized their business years back, so a lot of the money in those resorts probably traced it back to cartel interests.

01:20:43.000 Wow.

01:20:45.000 So it's just deep.

01:20:46.000 It permeates the entire culture.

01:20:50.000 Yes, it's part of the business model, and a lot of the money that moves around down there, there's some sort of relationship with it.

01:20:59.000 Jesus Christ, man.

01:21:00.000 It's got to feel, for a guy like you, who gave your blood, sweat, and tears and was a part of trying to stop this...

01:21:08.000 It must feel so strange to watch this nightmare sort of play out.

01:21:14.000 You know, so being up here, and most of my friends, for some reason, I have attracted so many, like, Marines to my life.

01:21:22.000 I don't know why.

01:21:23.000 I have a few SEAL friends, and mostly just crazy Marine guys.

01:21:28.000 And I've been learning about what post-conflict is, post-conflict or being a veteran, a combat veteran, is through them, through their eyes.

01:21:38.000 Things like post-traumatic stress disorder and stuff like that, TBI, are things that I didn't even know were a thing until I came up here.

01:21:48.000 No one talks about it in Mexico.

01:21:50.000 It doesn't exist.

01:21:51.000 It's not, you know...

01:21:53.000 It's not disgust.

01:21:53.000 No, if you go into a situation and you, you know, do something somewhere, you get a few days off, you know, and that's about it, and you come back to work.

01:22:02.000 Wow.

01:22:03.000 And medical-wise, you know, like, I've been discovering all these issues I have from that experience down there, and it's...

01:22:12.000 Like, what kind of issues?

01:22:14.000 My nose has been pretty substantially destroyed.

01:22:18.000 I have a few head injuries.

01:22:21.000 I didn't know what they were.

01:22:23.000 It's stress.

01:22:24.000 Wear on the body.

01:22:25.000 It's my age.

01:22:26.000 I'm 36. I shouldn't be feeling like this.

01:22:30.000 Through them, they kind of pointed me into like, you probably have this.

01:22:34.000 This is what I had because I was in Iraq.

01:22:36.000 I wasn't in Iraq.

01:22:38.000 You might as well have been in Iraq. 0.95

01:22:40.000 Well, that's the thing.

01:22:42.000 And also, do you guys recognize your veterans?

01:22:47.000 Not enough.

01:22:49.000 Not enough.

01:22:51.000 There's no such thing as a veteran down there. 1.00

01:22:56.000 Somebody, one of my asshole friends... 0.99

01:23:01.000 Marine Frenza gave me a Mexican drug war veteran hat. 1.00

01:23:06.000 Because all those guys had their own hats.

01:23:08.000 So I think he gave me this Mexican drug war veteran hat and had an eagle being strangled by a snake.

01:23:14.000 And it was pretty funny.

01:23:15.000 But it made me realize how there's a bunch of guys down in Mexico that have done amazing things.

01:23:21.000 And they're getting a recognition because it's a war that they deny.

01:23:24.000 Right.

01:23:25.000 There's nothing happening.

01:23:26.000 There's no war happening.

01:23:27.000 This is the cartels, but there's no war.

01:23:30.000 Even the current president said, you know, this is the end of the drug war because I said so kind of thing.

01:23:35.000 Oh, so there's no war anymore.

01:23:36.000 Okay, because why?

01:23:38.000 The war is over.

01:23:40.000 Did you have any involvement?

01:23:42.000 This is barely related.

01:23:44.000 But did you have any involvement or know anybody that had any involvement with...

01:23:49.000 Those Mormon cults that are down there? 0.97

01:23:51.000 Yes.

01:23:52.000 I do know people that, in the Juarez region, that some of the Mitt Romney's family members in that region area, yeah, I know some federal police guys and military guys that...

01:24:09.000 We're curious about the amount of firearms that these guys had because they basically fought the cartels off.

01:24:15.000 How crazy is that?

01:24:16.000 Well, it's pretty interesting being there and finding a white guy that speaks amazing English and was born in Mexico.

01:24:26.000 And they're Mormons.

01:24:27.000 And they're Mormons and they have to get a visa to travel to the U.S. People don't know that Mitt Romney's dad, the reason why Mitt Romney's dad never ran for president is because he was born in Mexico.

01:24:37.000 Yeah.

01:24:38.000 Yeah.

01:24:38.000 I mean, there's a lot of white Mexicans, which is another weird thing that people don't know about.

01:24:43.000 Sure.

01:24:43.000 Canelo.

01:24:44.000 Luis C.K. Yeah, Luis C.K. Mexico.

01:24:46.000 Canelo, yeah.

01:24:48.000 Anybody that's of Irish ancestry, if you go into a bar in Mexico, some bars in Mexico, you can probably get some free drinks if you tell them you're Irish, because the Irish betrayed the Americans in the last Mexico-American War.

01:25:02.000 And a lot of them stayed down there and married some of the locals. 1.00

01:25:05.000 I got an Irish last name.

01:25:07.000 I'm one quarter Irish.

01:25:08.000 That's how you got a Canelo probably, right?

01:25:11.000 Yeah.

01:25:12.000 The Mormon community in that area, basically a few of their members got abducted.

01:25:18.000 Yeah.

01:25:19.000 And the cartels wanted to do more against them and these guys...

01:25:25.000 Apparently got some high-powered long-range rifles, and they were shooting at these people from afar, and they set up this whole security apparatus around their town.

01:25:35.000 And the Mexican government basically looked the other way and kind of said, well, it's fine, just don't get too crazy with it.

01:25:45.000 There was some sort of interaction as far as them trying to appease things with them.

01:25:51.000 Realistically, the town that they made out there is a paradise.

01:25:55.000 I mean, amongst other towns in that area, it's a beautiful place.

01:26:00.000 Really?

01:26:00.000 It's a beautiful place, very organized.

01:26:02.000 What is it called?

01:26:03.000 Is this it, Jamie?

01:26:05.000 This is their Mormon little town? 0.89

01:26:06.000 So what kind of military do they have that protects this town?

01:26:10.000 Like if they've made their own military?

01:26:13.000 So I actually got to do a few reconnaissance things there.

01:26:18.000 This is passing by.

01:26:20.000 And what I saw that they had were a bunch of basically machine gun nests on some of the hilltops.

01:26:27.000 And they limited the amount of access points to that little town.

01:26:33.000 So they had basically their...

01:26:35.000 What happened when the people got abducted?

01:26:37.000 I think one of them got killed.

01:26:39.000 And then, you know, they wanted to kill other people.

01:26:42.000 And there was this whole thing.

01:26:44.000 They went to the government for help and they didn't say anything.

01:26:46.000 So somehow they, you know, procured firearms down there.

01:26:51.000 So they started defending their own.

01:26:52.000 What a strange story that is.

01:26:54.000 Because they left the United States when polygamy was illegal.

01:26:58.000 Yes.

01:26:58.000 When they started making polygamy illegal in Utah, they went, well, we'll just go to Mexico.

01:27:02.000 Because back when they did it, there wasn't even cars.

01:27:04.000 Yeah.

01:27:05.000 So it was like no big deal to live in Mexico. 1.00

01:27:07.000 You're riding a fucking horse no matter where you are. 1.00

01:27:09.000 No difference. 1.00

01:27:11.000 So they said, we'll go over here.

01:27:13.000 But it is a nice...

01:27:13.000 I mean, again, it's a weird American-like town in the middle of Juarez.

01:27:19.000 How many people?

01:27:20.000 Coahuila.

01:27:22.000 It's probably in the thousands, tens of thousands maybe.

01:27:25.000 Wow.

01:27:26.000 Yeah.

01:27:26.000 All Mormons.

01:27:28.000 All Mormons and a lot of Mexican converts now.

01:27:31.000 Really?

01:27:32.000 Yeah.

01:27:32.000 There's a lot of Mexican converts down there as well.

01:27:35.000 And are there more than one family, more than one of these towns?

01:27:39.000 I think so.

01:27:39.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:27:40.000 There's a lot of family names in that region.

01:27:43.000 They're kind of famous.

01:27:45.000 Wow.

01:27:45.000 I think one of the barons are one of those.

01:27:47.000 Yeah.

01:27:47.000 But it's only this one town?

01:27:50.000 There's a few out there.

01:27:52.000 There's a few Mormon communities out there.

01:27:54.000 Wow.

01:27:55.000 It's all the same sort of deal. 1.00

01:27:56.000 Armed to the tits. 0.99

01:27:58.000 Discreetly armed. 0.83

01:27:59.000 I don't know if it's as open as it was, but back then when it was really rowdy, they were openly doing things to keep people from not coming to their town.

01:28:10.000 And they're full-on Mexican citizens. 0.85

01:28:13.000 Yes.

01:28:15.000 But they speak English and they're white. 0.97

01:28:17.000 They don't speak Spanish?

01:28:18.000 Some of them do, but they don't need to because they live in this community and they don't go out of it a lot.

01:28:24.000 It's a weird place. 0.86

01:28:25.000 That's fucking really weird. 0.93

01:28:27.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:28:28.000 Wow.

01:28:30.000 When you're over here, do you see it any differently from looking at the situation over there and how crazy Mexico is from America? 1.00

01:28:41.000 Like how ignorant Americans are to how bad it really is? 0.99

01:28:44.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:28:45.000 So I've been up here for four years now as a resident, right?

01:28:51.000 Yeah.

01:28:54.000 And I came up here at the weirdest time probably in U.S. history as far as, you know, when I was going through my immigration process, Trump, you know, got elected.

01:29:04.000 So it was pretty interesting, you know.

01:29:07.000 And, you know, being pulled to both sides of the political spectrum, you know.

01:29:13.000 And seeing how people would talk about Mexico in ways that were realistic or just weird things that you would hear.

01:29:20.000 It's like, that's not how it is.

01:29:21.000 That's not how it happens.

01:29:23.000 What's a big misconception?

01:29:24.000 That it's a Mexico problem only and that the influence and the cartels aren't here in the U.S. too.

01:29:30.000 They're out there everywhere.

01:29:32.000 The border thing is like, that's the border, but they're on both sides.

01:29:36.000 There's definitely cartel here in the US. So then most Americans thinking of it as a foreign problem.

01:29:44.000 It's foreign if you live far from the border, maybe. 0.97

01:29:48.000 But it's everywhere.

01:29:50.000 It's everywhere.

01:29:52.000 That's one thing that I always see...

01:29:56.000 And also that it's a problem that Mexico should fix itself.

01:30:00.000 You know, that's a lot.

01:30:01.000 I also hear that. 1.00

01:30:02.000 No, they should fix their own shit. 1.00

01:30:04.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:30:05.000 But the problems down there stem from firearms and money coming from up here and the big drug market.

01:30:13.000 And, you know, the money going into some corrupt hands down there at times.

01:30:18.000 And basically them burning the manual every six years and just starting anew on their fight.

01:30:25.000 Does anybody else say this other than you?

01:30:27.000 Like, does anybody say that politically over there?

01:30:30.000 There's a few people.

01:30:32.000 There's a few people.

01:30:33.000 I was actually in charge of the governor of Baja's security detail towards...

01:30:39.000 For two years, almost three years.

01:30:42.000 I was put there because he was a very good friend of Felipe Calderon.

01:30:47.000 He was his compadre.

01:30:49.000 And he was very high level, and there was a lot of threats in his life.

01:30:53.000 And again, he was heading up the tip of the spear for the counter-cartel operations in the whole of Mexico.

01:30:58.000 And he implemented a plan in TJ that was then replicated throughout the country.

01:31:04.000 And he would be very vocal in his counter-cartel rhetoric and how we could do better and how we should all work together.

01:31:12.000 He developed these groups called boom groups. 0.96

01:31:16.000 Basically, army, municipal police, state police, all of them working together in these operations groups and just going out there.

01:31:22.000 It's the jurisdiction of everybody here to do whatever we need to do.

01:31:27.000 And he was pretty, you know, instrumental.

01:31:30.000 His name was Osuna Miyan.

01:31:34.000 And he's out of politics now.

01:31:37.000 And he had a lot of threats on his life.

01:31:39.000 And it was pretty interesting working with him.

01:31:41.000 He's one of those, people think that all politicians corrupt down there.

01:31:45.000 It's not true.

01:31:45.000 There's some good ones.

01:31:46.000 He was one, definitely worked directly with him.

01:31:48.000 And I could tell you that he was one of those good ones. 0.99

01:32:09.000 You must have seen some horrific shit over the course of your career. 0.99

01:32:13.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:32:14.000 Yes.

01:32:15.000 Yes.

01:32:16.000 The bodies, the brutality, the torture, all that type of stuff down there.

01:32:22.000 Again, I tell people, working down there is the closest thing to the Wild West you have currently.

01:32:27.000 It's basically, and when people say third world country, there's a lot of cosmopolitan places just across the border that aren't necessarily alien to American eyes.

01:32:39.000 Wow.

01:32:40.000 Right?

01:32:40.000 Yeah.

01:32:41.000 Now imagine all this, you know, crazy things happening down there.

01:32:45.000 Like, there was a famous firefight in Tijuana, the Cupula, which is basically, there was a big cartel stronghold inside of this castle type thing.

01:32:55.000 You know, it had a big giant dome on top of it.

01:32:58.000 The Cupola shootout.

01:33:00.000 And when that happened, basically a bunch of everybody responded to this thing.

01:33:06.000 And it was next to a school and kids were being evacuated from it.

01:33:10.000 It was pretty horrific.

01:33:11.000 A lot of the people on the inside, they had a lot of people abducted on the inside and they basically executed all of them.

01:33:17.000 And some of the people on the inside with the cartel guys would put zip ties on themselves and, you know, kneel down the ground so you would think it was them.

01:33:25.000 And you saw uniformed police officers inside of there shooting outside to uniformed police officers.

01:33:31.000 So you would see how the crazy corruption and, you know.

01:33:36.000 LA shootout happens, bank robbery, two guys with AK-47s.

01:33:40.000 North Hollywood, that one?

01:33:42.000 Militarized the whole policing in the United States.

01:33:45.000 That type of thing happens in Mexico every day and nothing happens, nothing changes. 1.00

01:33:52.000 That's the crazy part.

01:33:55.000 How that just is part of the normal now, down there.

01:33:59.000 Nothing changes.

01:34:01.000 No...

01:34:02.000 No adjustments.

01:34:04.000 No adjustments.

01:34:05.000 No evolution.

01:34:06.000 These guys used to roll around dressed as cops with cloned vehicles, and now they roll around in taxi cabs and are more discreet in how they move.

01:34:15.000 These guys used to use drug mules and drug tunnels.

01:34:18.000 Now they use unmanned drones.

01:34:21.000 Other means to cross their drugs.

01:34:23.000 So they're always kind of evolving and adjusting.

01:34:26.000 And the government is trying to smash it with a hammer for the past, you know, 10, 15, 20 years.

01:34:32.000 Just whack-a-mole. 0.99

01:34:33.000 Whack-a-mole.

01:34:35.000 What made you start your Instagram account?

01:34:37.000 Because your Instagram account is excellent.

01:34:39.000 It's Ed Manifesto, and you talk so much about the problems that are going on over there, and you also do a lot of situational awareness stuff.

01:34:48.000 You show, like, what's wrong with this picture?

01:34:50.000 What do you see here?

01:34:52.000 Yeah.

01:34:53.000 Main thing was, when I started, I was still active down there, so it was kind of like a reporting, you know?

01:35:00.000 So I was trying to share things with people to try and raise awareness.

01:35:06.000 But after that, it became more of a thing of, I just spent over a decade working in this environment down here, and I have nothing to show for it.

01:35:16.000 So, I need to take that experience and make it worth it for people, to share some of that experience with other people, and to make it, you know, just to make it, I had to justify it to myself, I need to make it worth my while to having done that.

01:35:33.000 There's not a lot of people doing what you're doing, though.

01:35:35.000 No, no.

01:35:38.000 The strange thing about me is my English and the fact that I worked on the border, so I had the opportunity to cross that border and share some of those experiences up here.

01:35:51.000 I've been to the FBI Academy.

01:35:53.000 Surreal. 0.99

01:35:54.000 This kid from TJ is now at the FBI Academy showing some weird shit to some weird people. 0.99

01:35:59.000 Secret Service Academy.

01:36:02.000 Some of your SF guys have contacted me and I've done work for them.

01:36:07.000 And I show them like, wow, Ed, like...

01:36:10.000 That trick to get our handcuffs, that's pretty cool.

01:36:12.000 Where'd you learn that?

01:36:13.000 Like, who showed you that?

01:36:14.000 15-year-old kid, you know, TJ, showed me how to flip handcuffs and weaponize them.

01:36:19.000 That's pretty gnarly.

01:36:21.000 Flip them and weaponize them?

01:36:23.000 Yeah, so there's ways of releasing your handcuffs and flipping the side of the arm of the handcuffs so it looks like it's still on, but it isn't.

01:36:31.000 And somebody approaches you and you flip it open and use that thing as a meat hook.

01:36:35.000 And a 15-year-old kid showed me that after he tried to apply that on one of our guys.

01:36:40.000 And that's the stuff I wrote in my little manifesto.

01:36:43.000 Basically, a manifesto was a notebook.

01:36:47.000 And I would write all these things down, document most of them.

01:36:50.000 And when I would come over here to the U.S. to do training, I did some training with NCIS and Coronado during my career.

01:36:58.000 And some of those guys were team guys, SEAL guys.

01:37:00.000 That's how I met a few of them.

01:37:02.000 And they were like, hey, Ed, this is how we do executive protection in the Middle East.

01:37:08.000 I was like, wow, that's how we do it right across the border right down here.

01:37:12.000 What?

01:37:12.000 Yeah?

01:37:13.000 Really?

01:37:14.000 Yeah.

01:37:15.000 Wow.

01:37:16.000 That's crazy.

01:37:17.000 Yeah.

01:37:18.000 And, you know, we'd show them a flash drive with a bunch of pictures from stuff down there, and they would, like, be blown away by it and sharing information and kind of basically making use of that experience.

01:37:30.000 A lot of people down there are mute.

01:37:31.000 They don't share that experience.

01:37:33.000 They don't think it's worth anything.

01:37:35.000 I think I realize that that experience in that gnarly place is worth something, at least as far as sharing it.

01:37:41.000 Not a lot of people think that.

01:37:44.000 We downplay ourselves.

01:37:45.000 We have this problem in Mexico.

01:37:47.000 Most Mexicans are very doubtful about themselves. 1.00

01:37:51.000 We're Mexicans.

01:37:52.000 What would we have to share with these high-level guys?

01:38:05.000 Mm-hmm.

01:38:14.000 With the United States of Mexico is our view of Mexico.

01:38:18.000 And someone like you, what you provide is a realistic perspective and real information, real photographs, real stories.

01:38:27.000 And just enough, and then this conversation, just enough where enough people hear it, it'll shift The idea of what is happening in MEXO a little bit.

01:38:39.000 I mean, again, thank you for this invitation.

01:38:42.000 Thank you.

01:38:43.000 I have this weird comparison that I have with you as far as this podcast.

01:38:51.000 I've listened to it way back when.

01:38:54.000 And I remember this whole feeling of being around a campfire and hearing people talk about their things and kind of passing the pipe.

01:39:01.000 It's pretty interesting.

01:39:02.000 It's something I've only seen as far as exchanging information around campfires or shamans or...

01:39:11.000 Sweat lodging type situations down there.

01:39:14.000 A lot of our guys were native, so I would get invited to these sweat lodges and stuff like that.

01:39:18.000 You get that exchange of information.

01:39:20.000 But yeah, definitely start talking about it.

01:39:22.000 That's the first step.

01:39:23.000 And a lot of people don't want to talk about it because of fear.

01:39:26.000 People are like, hey, aren't you afraid of talking about this?

01:39:29.000 I was afraid for 12 years.

01:39:32.000 Yes, I am.

01:39:34.000 But I know that nobody else is going to.

01:39:39.000 If not anybody else, you know.

01:39:41.000 Well, if you stop and think about how many guys have worked on the border, how many guys have worked in these counterinsurgency operations, and how few are talking about it.

01:39:48.000 And how many of them died, nobody knows who they are.

01:39:51.000 Right.

01:39:51.000 Or how many are still out there, nobody knows who they are.

01:39:54.000 Or, you know, Sicario, that movie Sicario came out.

01:39:58.000 Yeah.

01:39:58.000 Those people are looking at that movie.

01:40:00.000 So a lot of the followers are suspicious of that.

01:40:02.000 Vinicio Toro having an MP5. I was the only Mexican rocking an MP5 submachine gun down there, right? 0.97

01:40:07.000 So it's like...

01:40:09.000 What did you think of those movies?

01:40:11.000 Horrible.

01:40:12.000 It's horrible.

01:40:14.000 Unrealistic.

01:40:16.000 If somebody doesn't hire me, I'll do it for free.

01:40:20.000 I'll consult for free on that.

01:40:21.000 I'll make it look a bit more closer to what it is.

01:40:23.000 But the main thing is how everybody saw that movie and that's the reality, how fiction is kind of a basis for reality.

01:40:35.000 So Sicario 2 comes out and it's basically the United States declaring the cartels a terrorist organization.

01:40:42.000 And I saw that and I was like, hmm.

01:40:46.000 Usually fiction kind of has a way of influencing reality further on the line.

01:40:53.000 That Denzel Washington movie called Siege, where a bunch of terrorists attack New York and then militarize New York, and that's kind of like a president for 9-11.

01:41:02.000 So you'd see Sicario 2, and then Trump now says they're thinking about declaring the cartels as a terrorist organization.

01:41:12.000 Yeah.

01:41:14.000 That's pretty interesting.

01:41:16.000 Mainly because, realistically, Mexico has been calling them terrorists forever.

01:41:23.000 Yeah, what did you think about that, about Trump doing that?

01:41:25.000 Do you think that that actually is something that could happen?

01:41:27.000 If you're going to militarize efforts against it, not just consider it a law enforcement type situation, I think people should be afraid down there if you do go that route.

01:41:38.000 But just realize that's going to be open warfare, not in a foreign country across the ocean.

01:41:42.000 It's going to be right next to your border.

01:41:44.000 Yeah, where people can walk across.

01:41:46.000 Yes.

01:41:46.000 Or make things happen down there that will affect you up here in a very real way.

01:41:52.000 And it'll get ugly before it gets better.

01:41:55.000 You know, I hopefully doesn't, you know, but that's realistically...

01:41:59.000 But if that doesn't happen, if they don't treat it as a terrorist organization and try to have some sort of impact on it, what could be done?

01:42:06.000 I mean, I think culturally, they're trying to get us ready for that, you know?

01:42:12.000 I don't know.

01:42:13.000 I mean, I think that's what's happening.

01:42:15.000 You see a lot of the cross-borders, U.S. military assets training Mexican Marines down there and having an open relationship with them.

01:42:28.000 You see that.

01:42:29.000 The push is to maybe preparing for something.

01:42:33.000 I think they're preparing for something.

01:42:35.000 What could that be?

01:42:36.000 I don't know.

01:42:37.000 So what we get about it publicly is just a small sliver of the actual conversations that are being had.

01:42:44.000 Yeah, and also there's a lot of misdirection.

01:42:47.000 There's a lot of misdirection.

01:42:50.000 Subterfuge. 0.94

01:42:51.000 Yeah.

01:42:52.000 But listen, Ed, I really appreciate you coming down here and enlightening us and telling us all about this.

01:42:57.000 And I really appreciate your Instagram account.

01:43:00.000 The Instagram account is Ed Manifesto.

01:43:04.000 What else do you have on social media?

01:43:05.000 Ed's Manifesto on Facebook as well and Ed'sManifesto.com.

01:43:10.000 Alright.

01:43:11.000 Beautiful.

01:43:12.000 Thank you, brother.

01:43:12.000 Appreciate it, man.

01:43:13.000 Thanks for coming in here.

01:43:14.000 Thank you.

01:43:15.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - May 22, 2019

Joe Rogan Experience #1302 - Ed Calderon

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