The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1408 - Ed Calderon

00:00:04.000 Welcome back, Ed.

00:00:06.000 Good to see you again, man.

00:00:07.000 Thank you for having me back.

00:00:09.000 Well, I'm happy you're back, but I'm not happy that there was a motivation to bring you back based on the violence.

00:00:14.000 You know, the violence that is going on between the cartels, and it was the Mormons, and then we were just talking about this other person that got shot because they ran, would you explain that again?

00:00:26.000 They ran a cartel roadblock?

00:00:28.000 Yeah, basically in Tamaulipas, a lot of the cartel groups actually build their roadblocks on the state and local roads.

00:00:37.000 And according to what I've heard from some of the people that I know there, this family ran one of those roadblocks.

00:00:44.000 They didn't know if it was cops or not, and they apparently decided to run the roadblock, and the cartel guys shot them.

00:00:50.000 What should someone do if they encounter a cartel roadblock?

00:00:54.000 Slow down.

00:00:56.000 I mean, if anything, I would probably avoid traveling through those areas.

00:01:02.000 That's the number one avoidance.

00:01:05.000 Usually, you know, and I've actually gone through some of those myself.

00:01:09.000 Really?

00:01:09.000 Yeah.

00:01:09.000 And they're looking out for rivals moving through their territory.

00:01:15.000 Yeah.

00:01:16.000 We're good to go.

00:01:39.000 Oh, right.

00:01:39.000 Especially someone else's.

00:01:41.000 They don't mind getting shot up.

00:01:42.000 Yeah.

00:01:43.000 I mean, most of the trucks that you see that are up armored or they have the rifles on top are usually stolen vehicles.

00:01:51.000 All of them are stolen vehicles.

00:01:53.000 And a lot of them are Americans crossing into Mexico.

00:01:56.000 Some of them are Americans crossing into Mexico and just getting the truck stolen.

00:02:00.000 Jesus Christ, that's a real common thing?

00:02:03.000 It's starting to be pretty common.

00:02:06.000 I recently saw a case of an apparent abduction in Tamaulipas.

00:02:12.000 You see the video and the cartel guys come out of the car, they grab the owner of a pickup truck, they get him out of the car, they take his cell phone, leave it on the sidewalk because they're aware of all the SOS technology, and they take him inside of another car and they take the truck.

00:02:30.000 And you thought, you would think, you know, it's because he did something or he's involved in something.

00:02:36.000 They let him go a few blocks later and just took the truck.

00:02:38.000 It was all about the truck.

00:02:40.000 Wow.

00:02:40.000 Yeah, it's resources.

00:02:42.000 You know, they're just acquiring resources for the war.

00:02:46.000 Nice of them to let him go.

00:02:48.000 Nice of them to let him go.

00:02:50.000 It's not always the case, but it's pretty, yeah.

00:02:53.000 I think most people in America are just now waking up to the chaos that's going on down there.

00:02:59.000 I think that the Mormon assassination was a real wake-up call, but I think people are paying much more attention now.

00:03:07.000 I mean, we talked about this.

00:03:08.000 When was the last time you were on?

00:03:10.000 It was like five months?

00:03:11.000 Yeah.

00:03:11.000 Something like that?

00:03:12.000 A lot of the stuff we talked about those five months ago, that's how things progressed.

00:03:18.000 We actually did mention the Mormon communities down there, which was kind of eerie. 1.00

00:03:23.000 And we talked about the possible designation of cartels as terror groups.

00:03:31.000 Yeah, you had an interesting take on that.

00:03:33.000 So Trump was saying that they were going to designate them as terrorist groups and that they were going to have military action against them.

00:03:40.000 Yeah.

00:03:41.000 And then there was some sort of negotiation with the president of Mexico.

00:03:44.000 What do you think went down there?

00:03:45.000 So, I mean, this is just, you know...

00:03:48.000 From what I see and from how things traditionally happen down there, Mexico has currently a leftist president down there.

00:03:57.000 He's very to the left.

00:03:58.000 So much to the left that he recently gave Evo Morales, the deposed leftist president of Bolivia, asylum in the country.

00:04:10.000 And there's been a lot of pro-left political stuff going on in Mexico, basically.

00:04:19.000 I think?

00:04:27.000 After some U.S. officials went down there and talked to the government.

00:04:30.000 Among them, Evo Morales is out.

00:04:32.000 He went to Cuba, apparently, and then went to Argentina.

00:04:36.000 So he's not going to stay in Mexico.

00:04:39.000 Former head of public security under the Calderon administration, which is two administrations past.

00:04:47.000 President Calderon is the one that started the drug war.

00:04:50.000 We're good to go.

00:05:14.000 After they walked back the threat of designating cartels as a terrorist organization.

00:05:20.000 So there has been some action.

00:05:22.000 So they must have made some negotiation where Trump had said, listen, we're going to do this.

00:05:27.000 And he said, hold up, let's talk.

00:05:29.000 Yeah.

00:05:30.000 I mean, the main thing is, one of the things that this current president, Andres Manuel Lopez, ran on was...

00:05:39.000 Creating a national police force, a national guard is what he calls it, which had already kind of been done before, but change the name, change the uniform, change the packaging, and it's a new thing.

00:05:53.000 He wanted the army out of the drug war because the casualties were mounting on both sides, and he said it shouldn't be a military operation.

00:06:03.000 And he ran on a platform that was called Abrazos No Balazos, which means hugs, not bullets, right?

00:06:10.000 Oh, Jesus Christ.

00:06:11.000 Amnesty for the cartels was basically kind of the main theme of that.

00:06:16.000 So he got into power.

00:06:18.000 The first thing he did, militarized police forces and created a National Guard and tried to dissolve the federal police.

00:06:27.000 And most of that National Guard force was designated to border patrol duties on the Mexican side.

00:06:33.000 So some of them went to the south of the border, the southern Mexican border, and some of them went to the northern Mexican border basically to stem the whole illegal immigration crisis with the caravans.

00:06:46.000 That's what kind of happened.

00:06:47.000 And it was kind of a collaboration between the U.S. and the Mexican government.

00:06:52.000 So that was one of the key points of collaboration that they had.

00:06:56.000 And when this whole designation thing went up, that was kind of like a bargaining chip that the Mexican government had with the U.S. And the rest of the things that kind of transpired afterwards, you know, it's pretty interesting how a lot of things happened after that meeting down there and how they walked back the terrorist designation.

00:07:13.000 So the terrorist designation would mean that Trump would have some sort of incentive to invade Mexico.

00:07:21.000 It would open up the possibility for direct military action against— Strikes.

00:07:27.000 Drone strikes.

00:07:28.000 Drone strikes.

00:07:29.000 Without permission of the nation that these strikes were going to take place.

00:07:33.000 Also targeting finances or anything related to cartel activities would be targeted.

00:07:39.000 Yeah, where do the cartels keep their cash?

00:07:42.000 Well, right now it's a myriad of things.

00:07:47.000 They diversified long ago, so it's not like they're keeping buried cash in a container somewhere in the jungle like Escobar used to do, right?

00:07:56.000 They're still finding some rotted cash from the 80s.

00:08:02.000 They're putting their money in cryptocurrency.

00:08:05.000 Really?

00:08:05.000 Yeah.

00:08:05.000 They're diversifying their investments in actual companies, like legit companies, so they're cleaning their money that way.

00:08:14.000 Real estate, hotels, property on the U.S. side, so they're also investing on the U.S. side of the border as well.

00:08:21.000 So money is...

00:08:23.000 It's not under the mattress or giant stacks of cash in a room somewhere.

00:08:28.000 What kind of banks do business with the cartels?

00:08:30.000 How do they negotiate that?

00:08:32.000 I'm not going to say names, but there's been a few cases of pretty large banks that have been involved in money laundering for the cartels recently.

00:08:39.000 People can look that up easily.

00:08:40.000 But you would think you would have cartels designated as terrorists.

00:08:46.000 So now there are banks involved in funding terrorism.

00:08:50.000 So that would change things.

00:08:51.000 That's, you know, there's a lot of things that would happen.

00:08:53.000 You know, some of these consequences, people talk about, yeah, designating him as a terrorist and send drones down there.

00:09:00.000 Things that they kind of don't talk about is that if a terrorist designation does happen, Most people seeking asylum in the U.S. from Mexico now have the claim of running from terrorists in Mexico.

00:09:13.000 So now they can claim that as far as asylum seeking people can claim that now.

00:09:19.000 It's a different thing.

00:09:21.000 The main argument that a lot of people say is that cartels can't be considered a terrorist group because they don't have political aspirations.

00:09:32.000 The problem with that theory is that we have a lot of political killings by cartels in Mexico where they shoot the candidate of one side of the political spectrum because it's not good for them.

00:09:42.000 So they influence politics.

00:09:44.000 They also pay off a lot of politicians down there.

00:09:47.000 And they also, examples of the new generation cartel from Guadalajara giving out Christmas gifts or groceries to the poor, basically doing hearts and minds type tactics in the area are clear political movements,

00:10:03.000 right?

00:10:03.000 Yeah.

00:10:04.000 So, you know.

00:10:05.000 How does it – why is terrorism have to be connected to politics?

00:10:10.000 Well, that's the classical definition of that is – of a terrorist group.

00:10:14.000 That's what they're basing it on.

00:10:16.000 I think the cartels and narco-terrorism is a thing in and of itself.

00:10:20.000 It's a new phenomenon.

00:10:21.000 It should be – terrorism should be reclassified to include it, I think.

00:10:25.000 Most people that live through that type of – In that type of area in the country, facing some of these cartel threats that have fled it, we'll call it what it is.

00:10:36.000 It's terrorism.

00:10:37.000 Terrorism.

00:10:37.000 They're terrified.

00:10:38.000 Yeah.

00:10:38.000 I mean, who's more terrifying than the cartels?

00:10:45.000 So, what's going on with the Mormons now?

00:10:48.000 Are they moving out of there now?

00:10:51.000 Are they going to go back to Utah and just take one wife? 0.97

00:10:54.000 That's what it all started out with, right?

00:10:56.000 Yeah, well, the fundamentalist group, and they went down there and kind of proceeded with their customs.

00:11:02.000 I'm in contact with a few of the members of that family, and, you know, I was in contact before, but when I went on here, they kind of like, one of them reached out, like, hey, what's going on?

00:11:12.000 Help us out.

00:11:14.000 What do we need to do?

00:11:15.000 Yeah, and then, you know, it was like a friendly hello from them, from past interactions, and then this happened.

00:11:22.000 And, you know, I kind of advise a little bit, but that's, you know, it's a mess.

00:11:27.000 A lot of them are leaving the communities down there.

00:11:30.000 There's a lot of them down there, a lot of communities in Sonora, Cowila, and, you know, they're leaving the area.

00:11:40.000 It's just too dangerous.

00:11:42.000 Yeah.

00:11:43.000 It only makes sense.

00:11:45.000 I mean, they just don't have the arms.

00:11:47.000 They don't have the tactics, manpower.

00:11:50.000 And they're also in the middle of one of the most important regions in Mexico right now for a lot of reasons.

00:11:57.000 Main thing, there's two things that are really, really kind of happening in that region.

00:12:02.000 One, the trafficking of fentanyl and heroin and all these drugs through one of the main drug routes up into the U.S., And there's a few factions fighting over that region.

00:12:16.000 Los Salazar, which are a small cartel faction that has allegiances to Sinaloa Cartel.

00:12:23.000 And the Linea Cartel, which has historically been in control of Ciudad Juarez.

00:12:28.000 So they're both kind of buying for control of the area.

00:12:31.000 A few hours before the massacre actually took place, there were a bunch of firefights between these two factions in the area.

00:12:38.000 So one of the main theories is that this group of Mormons basically were a case of mistaken identity.

00:13:08.000 I'm not conspiracy theorizing here, but it's a pretty important thing in that region.

00:13:13.000 And there's a lot of interest in that space and control for that space.

00:13:16.000 And they're not mining it currently?

00:13:18.000 There's a bunch of projects in play right now.

00:13:21.000 Oh, so they've identified the deposits.

00:13:23.000 Yeah.

00:13:24.000 People can look up the numbers, but it's the largest mineable deposit of lithium on the planet.

00:13:30.000 Whoa.

00:13:31.000 And there was some sort of deal in the past where a Canadian mining agency was going to have rights to it and the mining agency was bought by a Chinese company.

00:13:41.000 So again, after that massacre, a lot of things happened.

00:13:45.000 A lot of the negotiations happened.

00:13:46.000 That deal was one of the things that got killed after that situation.

00:13:50.000 Trevor Burrus Oh, no.

00:13:51.000 Right, so it's an interesting area.

00:13:54.000 There's a lot of things happening there.

00:13:55.000 That's got to put a tremendous amount of pressure on the cartels in some way, right?

00:13:58.000 Well, historically, any sort of mining operation usually has industry around it, which is perfect for the cartels.

00:14:08.000 Extortion, protection, rackets, feeding the drug use in the area from the workers.

00:14:15.000 Is there any way...

00:14:17.000 That you could see in the future the cartels being extracted from the positions of power that they're in now.

00:14:25.000 I mean, is this something that people in Mexico are going to have to live with forever? 1.00

00:14:28.000 And I guess people in the United States as well.

00:14:30.000 Or is this something that could be fixed?

00:14:33.000 You've talked about before in some of your podcasts, and I listen to them a lot.

00:14:37.000 It's a great podcast.

00:14:38.000 Thank you.

00:14:39.000 Great one.

00:14:40.000 You're on, too.

00:14:40.000 Thank you.

00:14:42.000 But you talk about legalization and how that would help.

00:14:44.000 That definitely is part of the solution.

00:14:46.000 And it is.

00:14:47.000 It is definitely part of the solution, legalizing some drugs.

00:14:50.000 Not all drugs are made the same.

00:14:52.000 Maybe not fentanyl, but that would help out some things.

00:14:57.000 There's multiple things that could be done to guide us towards a place where things could stabilize down there.

00:15:04.000 And a lot of it is not going to be able to be done in Mexico.

00:15:08.000 It's going to have to be done up here.

00:15:10.000 Basically, you have to take care – the US has to take care of the drug market up here, the illegal drug market.

00:15:18.000 And certain things that have happened, like legalization of marijuana in some places up here, have changed the dynamics of what happens down there.

00:15:26.000 Some for the better, some bad things have happened.

00:15:31.000 Talking to my friend John Norris, who was on here as well, comparing notes, seeing how a lot of the drug growths that are up here, the illegal pot growths that are up here, exactly like the ones that I found in Baja six, seven years ago.

00:15:46.000 And how some of that drug money made from those fields is staying in the U.S. is not being sent back.

00:15:52.000 So that means you have an active, growing cartel presence in the U.S. that is U.S.-based.

00:15:58.000 So I think one of the problems that people have is perception is that that's a Mexican problem.

00:16:05.000 It's a US-Mexico problem.

00:16:07.000 You have a border there, but the problem has two root causes, right?

00:16:13.000 Social, economic inequality, and destabilization and corrupt government down there, and a thriving illegal drug market up here, and Those two have to be solved in a combined way.

00:16:28.000 How many members, when you combine all the cartels, how many members are we talking about?

00:16:35.000 That's, I mean, it's pretty hard to put a number on how, I will say this.

00:16:40.000 More than a million?

00:16:41.000 I will say this, they defeated the Mexican army in Sinaloa.

00:16:44.000 Yeah, that was bananas.

00:16:46.000 Yeah.

00:16:47.000 When they captured El Chapo's son, and then the army gave it back.

00:16:53.000 Yeah.

00:16:54.000 They're like, yeah, you can have him back.

00:16:56.000 Sorry.

00:16:57.000 That whole situation, and it was like, I remember that was happening, and I was getting asked questions about it, and it was live.

00:17:05.000 It was all of a sudden just popped off, you know.

00:17:09.000 Yeah.

00:17:12.000 Basically, supposedly, official story from the Mexican government is that they send a special police unit to capture him, right?

00:17:21.000 Which is completely false, I think, because you don't send 35 agents to capture one of the heads of one of the biggest Sinaloa cartel cells, right?

00:17:32.000 So it's pretty much, by chance, they spotted this party.

00:17:36.000 People were armed there.

00:17:37.000 They went there.

00:17:38.000 All of a sudden...

00:17:40.000 So you think they just stumbled into him?

00:17:42.000 I posted a video on my feed of the capture of El Chapo's son.

00:17:48.000 You can see it and you can see the surprise and really how the agents are kind of uncomfortable or are fearful of what they just stumbled in on.

00:17:58.000 Imagine US agents stumbling on one of the America's most wanted individuals up here.

00:18:05.000 They're going to put him on the ground.

00:18:06.000 They're going to handcuff him.

00:18:07.000 In the video, you can see that they point their rifles at him, and he calmly takes out his gun and hands it to somebody inside of the house he was in, and walks out and kind of tries to negotiate with the people outside, the federal agents that are trying to arrest him.

00:18:21.000 And you can see that the agents are like, oh, what did we stumble in on?

00:18:26.000 Wow.

00:18:27.000 Right?

00:18:28.000 So, that happened.

00:18:30.000 They grabbed him.

00:18:31.000 They reported back to Mexico.

00:18:32.000 They captured him.

00:18:33.000 They started to announce the capture.

00:18:36.000 And his brother, his half-brother Archibaldo, basically called in all of the reinforcements from all surrounding towns and regions in Sinaloa.

00:18:47.000 And...

00:18:49.000 It was flooded with a bunch of armed cartel guys.

00:18:52.000 Wasn't there a video of the government people and the cartel people talking?

00:18:56.000 Yeah, it's on my feed.

00:18:58.000 You can see it if you want.

00:19:01.000 It's basically an army unit that was being sent to reinforce security in Kulekan, being surrounded by cartel members.

00:19:10.000 Yeah, is this it right here?

00:19:11.000 Yeah, that's it.

00:19:14.000 Obviously, the guys running around with a vest and wearing skinny jeans are some of the senior law cartel members.

00:19:22.000 And they just talk it through.

00:19:24.000 I mean, they're outnumbered.

00:19:26.000 And also, there's talk about...

00:19:28.000 There's a specific community out there in Siena Loa where all the army families' members live, and they were apparently being held hostage by cartel guys as a bargaining chip.

00:19:40.000 So all these guys that we're seeing here, they're dressed in civilian clothes with the vest, those are all cartel guys?

00:19:45.000 Those are all cartel guys.

00:19:46.000 Jesus Christ.

00:19:47.000 And they're shaking hands with everybody.

00:19:49.000 Well, you know...

00:19:50.000 Hey, what's up, homie? 1.00

00:19:52.000 I mean, again, we go back into the whole, what is the fight they have in them, right?

00:19:59.000 Mm-hmm.

00:20:00.000 The senior law cartel was basically surrounding some of their communities and holding their family members hostage.

00:20:05.000 So that went out over the radio.

00:20:07.000 So as an army member going in to fight the cartel, saying, you know what?

00:20:12.000 I'm out of this fight.

00:20:13.000 Yeah.

00:20:13.000 So they raise their hands.

00:20:14.000 And so then they release the hostages.

00:20:16.000 Everybody backs out.

00:20:18.000 Yeah.

00:20:18.000 I mean, they defeated the Mexican government, basically.

00:20:24.000 Anything they went up against, you know.

00:20:26.000 They surrounded the city.

00:20:28.000 Usually you'll see classic Mexican cartel activity.

00:20:33.000 They close off the streets going into the city by burning fire.

00:20:39.000 We're good to go.

00:20:53.000 They broke out a bunch of people from the prison, just taking advantage of the whole chaos.

00:20:58.000 You can see there's a few other videos.

00:21:00.000 There's armored trucks with 50 cows and Marusas on the back of them, just moving around the city. 0.85

00:21:06.000 There's no way.

00:21:07.000 There's no way you can...

00:21:09.000 This is a breakout state prison.

00:21:12.000 Took advantage of the whole chaos and just, you know, let's break some of our friends out.

00:21:18.000 It's just pure chaos.

00:21:21.000 Eventually, the government decided to let him go.

00:21:25.000 That's the official story.

00:21:26.000 But according to the people there, there was no government saying, let him go.

00:21:30.000 There was like the guys holding him and said, you know what?

00:21:33.000 It's not worth it.

00:21:33.000 Yeah, that's one of the technicals, as they call them up here.

00:21:39.000 Yeah, dump trucks, the armor plate, the sides, and put somebody there.

00:21:43.000 Imagine being a person living there.

00:21:46.000 That's what I'm trying to picture, what life is like for the civilians.

00:21:51.000 And most of these videos are all done by civilians, so there's a certain normalcy in some of these cases, especially in Sinaloa.

00:21:59.000 It's part of the culture.

00:22:02.000 And as far as sides go, you know, hey, the army's coming to save us.

00:22:06.000 That's not usually what some people in some of these communities think, you know, because the cartels are, those are the guys in charge.

00:22:13.000 So has Sinaloa always been like that?

00:22:15.000 Like, how long has it been?

00:22:16.000 Sinaloa has traditionally been a cradle for, like, the origins of some of the more successful cartel heads, right?

00:22:24.000 Right.

00:22:24.000 Isn't that where Julio Cesar Chavez is from?

00:22:26.000 Yeah.

00:22:27.000 Yeah, he is.

00:22:27.000 Yeah.

00:22:28.000 And, you know, lots of – anybody that's anybody in Sinaloa has some sort of relationship to the cartels because they're part of culture there.

00:22:37.000 There's just no way of getting around it.

00:22:39.000 I had a surreal experience once when I went there.

00:22:41.000 I did a class out there and was running around this bumpy road.

00:22:47.000 And then all of a sudden, just flat, beautiful road.

00:22:50.000 Oh, yeah, this is the cartel part of the road that they built.

00:22:52.000 Yeah.

00:22:53.000 It's like, okay.

00:22:55.000 Wow.

00:22:56.000 So it's sort of like the mob in Vegas in the 50s and 60s.

00:22:59.000 Exactly.

00:23:00.000 But it's now in there.

00:23:01.000 Way more hardcore.

00:23:02.000 Way more hardcore.

00:23:03.000 Some of their graves, they have a, Jardines de Lumaya is the narco cemetery they have. 0.99

00:23:11.000 And it's basically luxury condos.

00:23:14.000 They look like, I mean, I went there, I thought it was a church and it turned out to be a tomb.

00:23:18.000 Wow.

00:23:19.000 Wow.

00:23:19.000 So the opulence and the money is just overt.

00:23:23.000 And how they move around, they roll around in vehicles with guns and nobody does anything because they own the city.

00:23:32.000 What are they planning on doing?

00:23:35.000 Does anybody have any plans or is it just they're just accepting this?

00:23:39.000 Well, you know, you get a lot of rhetoric about collaboration.

00:23:44.000 Yeah, that's Jardinas, El Amaya.

00:23:46.000 All of those are graves.

00:23:47.000 Some of them have CCTV video inside, air conditioning, you know, alarms.

00:23:53.000 Those are graves?

00:23:54.000 Those are grave sites.

00:23:55.000 And the cartel guys' heads go there on the Day of the Dead, have music, live bands, shoot their ray case into the air.

00:24:03.000 Nobody does anything.

00:24:04.000 Wow.

00:24:08.000 Jesus Christ.

00:24:09.000 This is crazy.

00:24:10.000 Yeah.

00:24:11.000 I mean the opulence is amazing.

00:24:12.000 Just seeing it, it's like having several Escobars in one place.

00:24:20.000 It's like a lot of cartel heads are from that region and a lot of their kids grew up in that.

00:24:27.000 The opulence is amazing. 1.00

00:24:29.000 Fuck. 1.00

00:24:31.000 Is this going to grow? 1.00

00:24:32.000 I think it is.

00:24:33.000 I mean, I don't think it is.

00:24:35.000 It is growing.

00:24:36.000 Again, going back to my friend John Norris and seeing his experiences up here, finding these illegal drug roads in public lands, it's growing.

00:24:46.000 It's growing over here too.

00:24:48.000 Yeah.

00:24:49.000 Roots.

00:24:50.000 Yeah.

00:24:50.000 So the thing that a lot of people have to think about, a lot of these cartel guys had their kids up here.

00:24:57.000 So they made their money down there, and they sent their wives up here, and a lot of these kids that were born in the late 80s, early 90s, are coming of age up here with that cartel pedigree, and they're U.S. citizens, U.S. passport.

00:25:12.000 So you're going to see some sort of shift.

00:25:16.000 They're coming of age.

00:25:17.000 You get experience, you get a handoff of reins from the older generation to the newer generation, and you're going to see it's definitely growing.

00:25:26.000 It seems so crazy to watch because it seems like it's not discussed nearly enough and it seems like if it keeps getting stronger, like what we saw with El Chapo's Son being released, What's to stop it from taking over Mexico entirely?

00:25:43.000 Well, I mean, you would have people arguing that it already has in different ways.

00:25:48.000 So I think another thing that people kind of have to kind of figure out and realize is that there's factions in the Mexican government.

00:25:56.000 So you will see a federal government that apparently is being paid off by a very specific large cartel group.

00:26:03.000 And then you'll see state governments that are a different political party influenced, paying off by other cartel groups.

00:26:11.000 So you'll see, you know, military units moving on the town and the state police blocking their way to get in there because they play for different teams, right?

00:26:22.000 There's a lot of talk right now about Felipe Calderon's tenure and how his head of public safety was on the payroll of the Sinaloa cartel, which actually came out during El Chapo's trial.

00:26:35.000 So now you're talking about basically a federal police force that was on El Chapo's side.

00:26:42.000 So he had free reigns to grow and do whatever he had to do in that region with the support of the federal government, in a way.

00:26:51.000 So technically, you know, who's in control of some regions?

00:26:55.000 And realistically, some regions of Mexico are completely in cartel control.

00:27:00.000 Now, we discussed this on the last podcast, but let's give people a little, just a recap of this, just so people can understand your position.

00:27:09.000 When you first started working With the Mexican government with this, it wasn't like it is now.

00:27:20.000 Give everybody just a rundown of how it went down.

00:27:24.000 So I went to work for state government down in Mexico, in Baja specifically.

00:27:30.000 And this was in?

00:27:31.000 This was 2004, right before the official start of the kickoff of the drug war.

00:27:38.000 The kickoff?

00:27:39.000 The kickoff.

00:27:41.000 But there was, you know, the official start was when Felipe Calderon came into office and said, you know what?

00:27:45.000 Gloves off.

00:27:46.000 We're going to go after the organized crime, right?

00:27:49.000 We're going to send the military onto the streets and they're going to head up spearhead operations against the cartels. 0.93

00:27:57.000 But before that, things were happening still.

00:28:00.000 Sinaloa cartel was growing.

00:28:02.000 There was a rift between the Sinaloa cartel and Tijuana cartel.

00:28:06.000 Fragmentation.

00:28:07.000 Cartel heads were being killed and one cartel turned into three.

00:28:11.000 All this fragmentation.

00:28:14.000 And then they basically militarized the war on drugs with Calderon, came in, militarized the war on drugs.

00:28:22.000 Immediately, you start seeing that drug enforcement efforts were being put towards a single or a group of cartel groups but not a major one like Sinaloa cartel.

00:28:33.000 So you start seeing how they were basically taking sides.

00:28:36.000 Trevor Burrus They were breaking up the competition.

00:28:38.000 That's what you would gather from...

00:28:40.000 Making it look like progress.

00:28:42.000 Yeah.

00:28:42.000 And also, Ochapo has been built up into this mythical figure.

00:28:47.000 He was the head of the Sinaloa cartel.

00:28:49.000 He's the main guy.

00:28:50.000 That's not true at all.

00:28:51.000 He was an operator for the Sinaloa cartel, but not the main operator.

00:28:55.000 There's different theories about who is actually in charge or the brains behind the whole operation.

00:29:03.000 When you say seeing the law cartel, it's not one group.

00:29:06.000 It's a federation of several criminal groups, enterprises uniting and working in conjunction to put drugs into the United States.

00:29:15.000 Well, one of the things they do is put drugs into the United States. 0.97

00:29:17.000 They do a lot of things, but that's one of the things they do.

00:29:22.000 So there's a lot of people out there that theorize that El Mayo Sambada, which is El Chapo's compadre who's still out there, is the actual head of the Sinaloa cartel and has been since the start.

00:29:33.000 But you see how some of these people become celebrities and as soon as somebody becomes a celebrity like El Chapo who escaped from custody a few times under pretty interesting situations.

00:29:48.000 Now the government has a celebrity they can go after so they can point at that guy.

00:29:51.000 That guy's a bad guy, right?

00:29:53.000 So you saw a lot of that, a lot of theatrics around him as far as him being the head of whatever group or operation was.

00:30:02.000 But at the same time, you start seeing the DEA and the U.S. government We're good to go.

00:30:11.000 We're good to go.

00:30:37.000 You don't know what to think, right?

00:30:39.000 Each U.S. administration has changed the way they do things when it comes to the drug war.

00:30:44.000 And it also benefits certain groups down there.

00:30:47.000 So, you know, who knows?

00:30:49.000 Realistically. 1.00

00:30:49.000 Fuck. 1.00

00:30:50.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:30:51.000 It's just, you know, I went to Chichen Itza, I think, in 2000-ish, 2002, maybe?

00:31:01.000 2003, somewhere around that time.

00:31:04.000 And there was no concern.

00:31:05.000 Yeah, it's a different time.

00:31:08.000 But that's 16, 17 years ago.

00:31:11.000 That's so recent in terms of human history that a region changes so radically, so quickly.

00:31:17.000 Well, there's a lot of things happening.

00:31:22.000 China has a lot of interest in Mexico.

00:31:27.000 You go back and you see things like the whole – how some armed groups started popping up in Mexico in the Michoacan area fighting back against the cartels.

00:31:43.000 The whole – there was like a series, like a documentary on them, the autodefensas they were called, basically like vigilante groups.

00:31:52.000 And then later on you realize that they were all fighting for basically protecting or working around security for illegal Chinese ore mining in the area.

00:32:04.000 Whoa! 0.71

00:32:05.000 Yeah.

00:32:06.000 It was all about Chinese ore mining, iron ore mining, illegal Chinese ore mining.

00:32:12.000 So the Chinese ore miners, they just made a deal.

00:32:15.000 Yeah.

00:32:16.000 And then, you know, we can get in on it.

00:32:18.000 So let's arm all these guys and we're protecting our communities.

00:32:21.000 But there was a lot of that going on.

00:32:23.000 Not all of them.

00:32:24.000 But there was a lot of shady stuff going on in the region when it comes to that.

00:32:28.000 Now you see things like the stuff that's going on in Sonora.

00:32:32.000 And there's a lot of lithium there.

00:32:34.000 That's a pretty valuable thing.

00:32:37.000 Sonora is a place that a lot of hunters go.

00:32:40.000 Yeah.

00:32:41.000 Sonora has these big hunting ranches and it's famous for giant mule deer.

00:32:45.000 Yeah.

00:32:47.000 I've been out there hunting myself and it's a beautiful part of Mexico.

00:32:52.000 But that seems like a sketchy spot to be venturing into.

00:32:57.000 It's perfect because it's perfect for them because it's rural so there's nobody around.

00:33:02.000 But if you were like a guy from Texas wanting to drive your truck down there, do a little hunting. 0.50

00:33:07.000 I mean, my recommendation is this.

00:33:09.000 If you have a 4x4, don't take it down there. 0.99

00:33:11.000 Take a fucking Yugo. 0.99

00:33:13.000 We do have the largest population of American citizens living outside of the country in Mexico for some reason. 1.00

00:33:18.000 Really?

00:33:19.000 Yeah.

00:33:20.000 All throughout Mexico? 0.65

00:33:21.000 Yeah, I mean, all throughout Mexico.

00:33:23.000 Well, it's fun down there.

00:33:24.000 A lot of people like Cabo.

00:33:26.000 People love Mexican food.

00:33:27.000 Yeah.

00:33:28.000 There is a certain chaotic freedom in Mexico, which being a child of Mexico and then moving up here and seeing you guys talk about freedom, not that free.

00:33:43.000 But I get the draw.

00:33:46.000 And some of these communities down there are pretty safe.

00:33:49.000 But some aren't, you know?

00:33:51.000 They're safe until they're not safe.

00:33:53.000 And safe until all of a sudden you're in the middle of some place that's going to be disputed, which I think is something along the lines of what happened to some of these Mormon communities down there.

00:34:04.000 You know, you're in the middle of your community and your movements are in the middle of our route.

00:34:10.000 Could you please get out of the way?

00:34:11.000 What's the ceiling on this?

00:34:13.000 Like, if they can continue to grow, I mean, it's...

00:34:19.000 Is it possible that we're looking at a country that might be completely run and overrun by criminal organizations and drug sellers?

00:34:29.000 Some parts of it are already.

00:34:31.000 So what I think is going to happen is you'll see escalations.

00:34:35.000 A clear sign or a clear group that is like a sign of things to come is the new generation cartel.

00:34:43.000 The New Generation Cartel is a cartel that used to be called Los Matasetas.

00:34:48.000 It was basically an armed enforcing group that Sinaloa Cartel made to go after their main rivals, the Zetas, which were originally members of Mexican special forces that said, you know what?

00:35:00.000 We're going to be cartel guys and cartel enforcers now.

00:35:03.000 So they hold sordid history.

00:35:08.000 It was a militarized group that was formed to go after them, right?

00:35:13.000 And their whole kind of play was that we're going to be against extortion, against abducting people, against affecting the community.

00:35:21.000 We're going to enforce the law in our communities, but we're also going to move drugs through here, right?

00:35:25.000 But that's kind of their thing.

00:35:27.000 So you see this group start kind of growing in the region, and right now it's pretty big.

00:35:32.000 It's rivaling the Sinaloa cartel as far as power and reach.

00:35:36.000 But the way they do their things is militarized.

00:35:39.000 It's very militaristic and kind of paramilitary.

00:35:42.000 It kind of reminds me a little bit of the FARC groups in Colombia.

00:35:50.000 Hearts and minds, they go into the communities, community policing in the area.

00:35:55.000 They originally said, you know, we're aware the government wants to fight drugs here in the region.

00:35:59.000 We agree with their fight, but we are also going to fight against these guys that are affecting the community as well.

00:36:06.000 And they have, like, groups of people.

00:36:07.000 They have training camps, militaristic training camps where they recruit people, they take them there, and they're being trained in guerrilla warfare and shooting.

00:36:16.000 And apparently there's some SF guys from the U.S. that advise them.

00:36:22.000 That's the next thing, the escalation of a simple ragtag group of cartel guys enforcing a region to an actual cohesive paramilitary group now trying to vie for control, not just of the drug routes but also of the populace and the confidence that the populace has in them.

00:36:41.000 So it could turn political at some point, right?

00:36:47.000 It just seems like the genie's out of the bottle.

00:36:51.000 It is.

00:36:51.000 I mean, it is.

00:36:52.000 I mean, it is in a lot of ways.

00:36:54.000 And going after it just as a drug enforcement issue is not, you know...

00:36:59.000 It's so much bigger than that.

00:37:01.000 Yeah.

00:37:01.000 It's cultural.

00:37:03.000 It's economic.

00:37:04.000 Some of these kids...

00:37:06.000 Posted up some of these cartel soldier kids at 12 years old.

00:37:10.000 Gold-plated guns.

00:37:12.000 Gold-plated guns.

00:37:13.000 They don't have options in their lives.

00:37:15.000 It's that or nothing.

00:37:17.000 It's either awesome life or extreme poverty.

00:37:22.000 Short awesome life.

00:37:23.000 Short awesome life or extreme poverty.

00:37:25.000 So that's one component to it.

00:37:27.000 Another component is systemic corruption as a society from who knows when.

00:37:32.000 It's always been a thing in Mexico.

00:37:33.000 People that grew up down there Yeah.

00:37:39.000 Yeah.

00:37:55.000 And just being next to the largest drug market on the planet, you know, and having money, firearms, rounds going down, and fentanyl that is being fabricated in Mexico now and some of the Chinese fentanyl making its way through into the U.S.,

00:38:13.000 kind of filling the voids that some of the drug market has right now.

00:38:16.000 So they're making fentanyl-laced, fake fentanyl-laced pills that are being put into the U.S., and fentanyl-laced heroin.

00:38:24.000 Right?

00:38:25.000 So that's where they're going towards now.

00:38:27.000 That's why you see this epidemic up here.

00:38:29.000 And a lot of things traditionally kind of focused on pot before it was legalized and a lot of regions up here now is heroin and fentanyl.

00:38:38.000 So it's actually kind of accelerated the production of the more harmful and dangerous drugs.

00:38:43.000 In some ways, yes.

00:38:45.000 I mean, they had to find another, you know, it went pot, Meth, and now fentanyl-laced heroin or fentanyl-laced pills.

00:38:57.000 See, and the problem with the idea of legalization is that if you try to be the person who says, hey folks, we need to legalize drugs here in America because we've got this problem with the cartels.

00:39:09.000 Politically, that's suicide.

00:39:11.000 Even though it's probably right.

00:39:14.000 I think it is very right. 0.98

00:39:17.000 It's one of those things that's so counterintuitive that most people are going to go, you're crazy.

00:39:21.000 You're going to make my kids hooked on drugs? 0.93

00:39:23.000 Well, I'll say this.

00:39:25.000 I fought in the drug war.

00:39:26.000 I'm literally a drug war veteran.

00:39:28.000 And if I had a white flag, I would hand it over to you. 0.93

00:39:32.000 It's a useless fight. 0.96

00:39:34.000 I got to destroy pot fields.

00:39:36.000 Realistically thinking about all the effort and all the blood, I'm like, it's just blood.

00:39:40.000 Yeah, and it's so quick to grow back.

00:39:44.000 It is a fruitless fight.

00:39:48.000 Fentanyl, heroin, maybe different drugs.

00:39:52.000 Fentanyl in particular.

00:39:54.000 But a lot of that fentanyl is coming from China.

00:39:57.000 It's not a Mexican thing.

00:39:58.000 A lot of people that are making...

00:40:01.000 Or producing fentanyl in places like Mexico are from China, setting up laboratories in Mexico. 0.90

00:40:09.000 So it's a Chinese-Mexican-US problem as well. 1.00

00:40:14.000 Goddamn. 0.99

00:40:16.000 What can be done? 0.99

00:40:17.000 Other than the legalization, what can be done?

00:40:19.000 I mean, how does...

00:40:20.000 Unless the United States literally goes to war with the Mexican cartels, and you made a face talking about that.

00:40:27.000 I mean, I'd say designation is one of...

00:40:29.000 I think designation should...

00:40:31.000 It's going to happen.

00:40:32.000 A terrorist designation.

00:40:34.000 It's going to happen.

00:40:35.000 I mean, again, we just saw the murder, the massacre of Mexican...

00:40:39.000 They were dual citizenship.

00:40:41.000 Nine people, kids, women...

00:40:44.000 It's not uncommon for that to happen to Mexican nationals.

00:40:47.000 It's pretty uncommon for that to happen to American nationals down there.

00:40:51.000 And that woke up a bunch of people.

00:40:54.000 And now another recent murder of another American national kid with his parents down there.

00:41:02.000 People will say, just don't go down to Mexico.

00:41:04.000 But some of these people live down there, have family down there, have communities down there.

00:41:11.000 It's just ultra-violent.

00:41:14.000 You know, people have to wake up on this side to realize this problem is not going to get any better.

00:41:18.000 This problem is not just a Mexican problem.

00:41:21.000 It's a U.S.-Mexican problem. 0.98

00:41:23.000 And, you know, it'll get to a point where it's going to be, you know, I think in my lifetime, it's going to be some sort of intervention in Mexico at some point.

00:41:33.000 Really?

00:41:34.000 So you anticipate almost like a civil war?

00:41:39.000 I think something's going to happen in Mexico that's going to destabilize it so much that the U.S. won't have another option but to put it on the ground, probably.

00:41:48.000 I think that's where we're headed.

00:41:51.000 The problem, and again, another of the problems is that the government is part of the problem.

00:41:56.000 So you can go down there and negotiate with this government, but six years later, it's going to be another government.

00:42:01.000 And you've got to renegotiate with them.

00:42:03.000 Yeah.

00:42:04.000 With New Palm Greece.

00:42:05.000 Yeah.

00:42:05.000 And then you put all your faith in the military, and the military gets compromised.

00:42:09.000 You put all the faith in the Mexican Marines, and then they get compromised. 0.97

00:42:15.000 And now who do you have?

00:42:17.000 Right?

00:42:18.000 So it's systemic.

00:42:21.000 Don't tell that to Trump.

00:42:23.000 He'll use that as an excuse.

00:42:25.000 We can't count on them.

00:42:27.000 We're going in.

00:42:28.000 I wonder where it all goes.

00:42:33.000 Because it is obviously growing very fast.

00:42:36.000 It's obviously huge and incredibly powerful.

00:42:39.000 And it affects.

00:42:41.000 I mean, I'm up here now, and I can see the effects of it up here.

00:42:45.000 Walking through L.A., seeing all the needles on the ground.

00:42:49.000 Going to Seattle, seeing the same light brown fentanyl lace heroin that I saw in shantytowns down in Baja. 0.98

00:42:59.000 It's like, wow, so this is where it kind of ends up.

00:43:02.000 And you see the effects of it throughout.

00:43:06.000 You realize quickly, as somebody from both sides, that I am.

00:43:11.000 You realize that realistically there's kind of no border when it comes to this problem.

00:43:15.000 This problem doesn't respect a border wall.

00:43:21.000 Submarines will go around it.

00:43:23.000 Tunnels will go under it.

00:43:24.000 Drones will fly over it.

00:43:27.000 And it's a problem that just keeps producing an effect.

00:43:31.000 And I think the majority of the United States citizens are completely unaware of the complexity and the depth of the problem.

00:43:39.000 Yeah.

00:43:40.000 I mean, it is...

00:43:41.000 It's also...

00:43:43.000 I think most people, seeing the Iran thing right now, most people know more about that.

00:43:48.000 Oh, yeah.

00:43:49.000 It's going on halfway across the world than what's going on.

00:43:54.000 That's what's crazy to me.

00:43:55.000 It's like...

00:43:56.000 We're into invading countries that are really barely affecting us.

00:44:00.000 They're like a 17-hour plane flight.

00:44:02.000 Yeah.

00:44:03.000 I think the...

00:44:05.000 I don't know.

00:44:06.000 Again, I don't want to be Ed Adamus and predict stuff.

00:44:10.000 Ed Adamus.

00:44:11.000 But the fact that we have a lot of lithium in Sonora is going to be...

00:44:19.000 A factor.

00:44:20.000 A reason to clean it up.

00:44:22.000 It should be.

00:44:23.000 It should be.

00:44:24.000 It's pretty important.

00:44:25.000 It's a pretty important resource.

00:44:26.000 Yeah, but if they can't hold on to El Chapo's son...

00:44:30.000 That's why I think the US is going to have to put boots on the ground down there.

00:44:36.000 Wow.

00:44:36.000 Now, if you had to make a bet, like if there's a betting line in Vegas, how many days or how many years from now will there be American soldiers deployed to Mexico?

00:44:46.000 I don't know.

00:44:47.000 I'd say five years, maybe.

00:44:48.000 Whoa! 0.71

00:44:49.000 In five years.

00:44:50.000 Really?

00:44:50.000 I mean, we are on...

00:44:53.000 This past year has been the most violent year in Mexico in recorded history. 0.97

00:44:59.000 Really?

00:45:00.000 And it's the first year of administration of this new president, right, who's been trying to...

00:45:06.000 Hugs.

00:45:07.000 Hugs, not bullets.

00:45:09.000 Abrazos novelazos, you know, this instead of that.

00:45:12.000 It's been his first year.

00:45:14.000 And, you know, hey, give him a chance.

00:45:17.000 He's doing whatever he needs to do.

00:45:18.000 It's only the most violent year in history.

00:45:20.000 Yeah.

00:45:20.000 Cut the guy a break.

00:45:21.000 Exactly.

00:45:22.000 That's what they say.

00:45:23.000 But then I go down there.

00:45:25.000 And I have a lot of my friends that are still down there, people that have trained still down there, and I hear from them directly.

00:45:31.000 Like, I have some young kids that are in the Jendarmeria, which is like a federal police force that patrols all of Mexico.

00:45:38.000 And some of the federal police guys, they tell me, like, Ed, we're...

00:45:42.000 They said, or you sign the new contract to be Guardia Nacional and lower your pay, and all of the stuff that...

00:45:52.000 All of your benefits will be gone.

00:45:54.000 Or you just stay on here in limbo and just stay at the base.

00:45:58.000 And a lot of them are staying at the base, so nothing's being done.

00:46:03.000 Well, I imagine that if it seems overwhelming and it seems helpless and it seems like the cartels are just taking over and they're making a shitload of money...

00:46:12.000 And you're not making any money.

00:46:14.000 I mean, that is the real crazy thing about it, right?

00:46:18.000 If the government is asking people in this sort of already compromised situation and environment, asking them to work for a small amount of money to go after people that are making a tremendous amount of money.

00:46:32.000 Yeah.

00:46:32.000 And you're going to be at war with these people, and these people, they're basically your neighbors.

00:46:37.000 Yeah.

00:46:37.000 And also, you go there with a federal uniform as part of the federal government.

00:46:42.000 You go into a community where the federal government doesn't do anything for them.

00:46:46.000 Right.

00:46:47.000 The church is made by the cartels. 0.73

00:46:48.000 Cartel made the road.

00:46:50.000 Christmas was brought to you by the cartels.

00:46:54.000 They are the good guys, so these guys come in here like, who are these guys?

00:46:57.000 What are they doing here?

00:46:59.000 We're not gonna...

00:47:00.000 So that's, you know, it's a mess.

00:47:04.000 It's a mess.

00:47:05.000 Wow.

00:47:06.000 But could boots on the ground actually fix anything?

00:47:10.000 I mean, I'm not a military expert, but...

00:47:18.000 There has to be some sort of outside force that is completely uncompromised by cartel money and influence.

00:47:25.000 How long before they compromise those people?

00:47:27.000 Well, when you put the Marines on the border, a few of them got picked up on smuggling people from the border.

00:47:35.000 Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

00:47:37.000 Who knows?

00:47:39.000 It's a different war field because a lot of our war fighters and law enforcement have some sort of blood ties to Mexico.

00:47:49.000 Of course.

00:47:50.000 Well, not only that, I was just watching some video where there was this guy who is a U.S. veteran, been deployed overseas, fought for this country, and his mom was getting deported.

00:48:00.000 And he said he felt betrayed.

00:48:03.000 Like, here he is.

00:48:04.000 In America, his mother brought him over here, had him over here.

00:48:08.000 He's a U.S. citizen.

00:48:09.000 And they're deporting his mom.

00:48:10.000 As if his mom is a danger or a problem.

00:48:13.000 There's a community of Army, Marine, and several veterans that are deported veterans that live in places like Tijuana. 1.00

00:48:20.000 That's fucking crazy. 1.00

00:48:22.000 That is fucking crazy. 1.00

00:48:23.000 DUI. You fight for the country, man. 1.00

00:48:25.000 You get a DUI in here.

00:48:26.000 But how nuts is that?

00:48:27.000 It is pretty nuts. 1.00

00:48:28.000 It's fucking ridiculous. 1.00

00:48:29.000 You fight for this country. 1.00

00:48:31.000 You literally risk your life. 1.00

00:48:32.000 And there's assholes out there that haven't done a goddamn thing, been mooching off the system forever, and they're citizens? 1.00

00:48:38.000 And you're not? 1.00

00:48:39.000 Yeah.

00:48:40.000 I mean, my perspective in my life...

00:48:55.000 Welcome to my show!

00:49:07.000 When I went to the hospital to pay for the insurance part of it, they laughed at me and said, you shouldn't pay any of this.

00:49:15.000 You're Mexican. 0.77

00:49:16.000 You just can claim benefits.

00:49:19.000 That was in California.

00:49:21.000 So I was like, oh, but I can afford it.

00:49:25.000 There's ways around this.

00:49:28.000 And that's when I knew there's America and there's California America.

00:49:32.000 California America is different?

00:49:33.000 Yeah, California America is very different.

00:49:36.000 It's a subtle blend?

00:49:37.000 Oh, I mean, there's ways around stuff.

00:49:39.000 There's free stuff.

00:49:40.000 Get it.

00:49:41.000 Get it.

00:49:41.000 Get at it.

00:49:43.000 It's a weird...

00:49:44.000 Again, I travel across the country, just get to experience different parts of the U.S. I spent New Year's in Kentucky, and that's pretty interesting.

00:49:53.000 Yeehaw! 0.92

00:49:54.000 Oh, I mean, I like it.

00:49:56.000 It's like a white Mexico. 0.95

00:49:59.000 Is it?

00:49:59.000 Yeah.

00:50:00.000 How so?

00:50:01.000 People were shooting guns into the air on New Year's Eve.

00:50:04.000 That's pretty Mexican.

00:50:06.000 They do that in Texas, too. 0.67

00:50:08.000 Oh, well, you know, again, you know, I don't know.

00:50:11.000 It's not good.

00:50:12.000 Some lady got shot. 1.00

00:50:13.000 Oh, it's completely irresponsible.

00:50:14.000 She was standing in her driveway, a grandma with her family, and the bullet fell out of the sky and hit her in the chest.

00:50:19.000 Yeah, when New Year's would come, we would park underneath the bridges in Baja to not get, you know, firearms are illegal in Mexico.

00:50:28.000 And then, you know...

00:50:32.000 You see tracer rounds just going off in the sky and you're like, tracer rounds.

00:50:37.000 Okay.

00:50:39.000 Again, Mexico is a weird place.

00:50:42.000 That's why I call it the upside down.

00:50:47.000 There's a chaotic freedom to Mexico, which I get. 0.94

00:50:50.000 I mean, I love Mexico as a country, as a culture.

00:50:53.000 I don't like the government, though.

00:50:56.000 The government is just, you know, at all levels.

00:50:58.000 It's just, you know, it's not a good...

00:51:00.000 Well, it seems like it's always been that way.

00:51:01.000 I'm reading this book about Kit Carson and the Old West and when the United States, you know, conquered parts of California and took over parts of California and the West from Mexico.

00:51:14.000 And it was crazy back then.

00:51:16.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:51:17.000 And they were talking about the chaos in the Mexican government and the Mexican military back then in the 1800s.

00:51:22.000 Yeah.

00:51:23.000 Yeah.

00:51:23.000 I mean, so people kind of figure it, realize if you want to be an officer in the Mexican army, you have to go through war college and there's different ways to go about it.

00:51:36.000 But there's a lot of hereditary stuff going on.

00:51:40.000 Hereditary.

00:51:41.000 Like, hey, my dad was your general.

00:51:43.000 Okay.

00:51:44.000 Yeah.

00:51:45.000 There's a lot of that going on.

00:51:46.000 Also, the army down there has a monopoly over selling guns.

00:51:50.000 There's only one gun store in all of Mexico and it's run by the army.

00:51:54.000 What?

00:51:54.000 Yep.

00:51:55.000 One gun store in all of Mexico and it's run by the army and you have to fly to Mexico City to get a license and to procure a firearm legally.

00:52:04.000 So, if you live in the Yucatan...

00:52:05.000 You have to fly to Mexico City to get a gun.

00:52:09.000 Which basically makes the only options, buying a gun on the black market, Or flying over there and expending all this money.

00:52:19.000 So now it's a class.

00:52:21.000 So only people that can afford the plane ticket to do this process are the ones that can have guns.

00:52:26.000 So that's class.

00:52:28.000 Class is involved in there as well.

00:52:30.000 What kind of rights do you have with guns versus the United States Second Amendment?

00:52:34.000 Is it somewhere?

00:52:35.000 So the Mexican Constitution allows for guns for self-defense.

00:52:39.000 But a lot of amendments and a lot of corrupt governments down there say, maybe it's not a good idea to have this here.

00:52:45.000 So progressively throughout recent Mexican history, it's become more and more strict.

00:52:51.000 Certain rounds aren't allowed.

00:52:53.000 Certain calibers aren't allowed.

00:52:54.000 And just plainly, the sale of firearms in all of Mexico is just relegated to a single gun store in Mexico City.

00:53:03.000 So you can't carry them without a permit.

00:53:07.000 And to get a permit, you have to know somebody that knows the Presidente or a general or something.

00:53:12.000 Well, what about all those gentlemen we saw in that video just walking in front of those government agents with guns?

00:53:17.000 Why didn't they arrest them?

00:53:18.000 They should have.

00:53:19.000 Seems like there's lawbreakers.

00:53:22.000 The only people that respect those laws are, you know...

00:53:25.000 Yeah.

00:53:40.000 And he shot dead one of the guys that was chasing him.

00:53:43.000 He was trying to abduct him.

00:53:45.000 He was arrested for the firearm possession.

00:53:50.000 Mauser is what Lee Harvey Oswald supposedly used on JFK. Yeah.

00:53:54.000 That's an old-ass gun.

00:53:56.000 Well, there's a lot of weird old-ass stuff down there.

00:53:58.000 I mean, as far as the stuff that gets handed over or just the weird exotic firearms down there.

00:54:04.000 A lot of people call Mexico the US's garage.

00:54:08.000 And like garages, you just find weird stuff down there from old World War II era pistols and explosives to new stuff.

00:54:17.000 Like there's a friend of mine that works for the government down there told me that they found a bunch of parts for a minigun.

00:54:27.000 In a house somewhere down there.

00:54:29.000 What's a minigun?

00:54:30.000 It's basically a...

00:54:31.000 Remember that Terminator 2 movie?

00:54:35.000 Yeah.

00:54:37.000 That thing.

00:54:37.000 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:54:38.000 It's pretty hard to get.

00:54:39.000 One of those?

00:54:39.000 Yeah, one of those.

00:54:41.000 Apparently there's one out there somewhere on a vehicle of some sort.

00:54:46.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:54:47.000 It's basically a...

00:54:48.000 Well, we talked about the Ed Holder Fast and Furious deal last time that you were here, and that to me still is one of the most bizarre cases in the history of an undercover operation That doesn't make any sense at all.

00:55:05.000 Yeah.

00:55:06.000 They sold guns, like literally sold working guns.

00:55:10.000 To a specific cartel down there. 0.99

00:55:12.000 To try to, so they could track them, or I don't remember what kind of bullshit argument that was.

00:55:18.000 But the interesting part, or if you want to go into the questions, that they benefited a single cartel, a Sinaloa cartel. 0.81

00:55:26.000 That's the thing.

00:55:28.000 Most of the guns went to that.

00:55:29.000 If you had a guess, if you were a conspiracy theorist, like put on your tinfoil hat, what do you think that was all about?

00:55:37.000 They were probably – as a nation, you were probably wanting to only worry about a single threat as far as cartels and not a lot of cartels.

00:55:46.000 So they empowered one cartel?

00:55:48.000 Yeah.

00:55:49.000 Really?

00:55:49.000 I mean, that was coming off the Patriot Act era, Bush era thing.

00:55:56.000 I remember vividly people putting Geiger counters in some of the drug tunnels that we would find.

00:56:02.000 So they were worried about nukes getting put into drug tunnels at some point during that whole post-9-11 era.

00:56:10.000 So...

00:56:12.000 It would make sense that if you are worried about national security, you would want to not worry about a lot of cartels.

00:56:20.000 Maybe focus on one, support one, and just keep us in the know.

00:56:24.000 Do you think this was a covert operation in the sense that the Sinaloa cartel was not aware that they were doing this to empower them to eliminate the competition, to strengthen one group because they just knew it was inevitable that someone takes control?

00:56:44.000 That would lead somebody to believe that there was some sort of official support from the U.S. government to the Sinaloa cartel as far as them having deals with this cartel specifically to keep them in the know about things happening down there,

00:56:59.000 supporting them to be in a position so they can keep control over their region and basically as an information group so they can have...

00:57:10.000 Have a clear eye and ear in a chaotic area like Mexico on the bad guy side. 0.97

00:57:16.000 That's why I gather from it.

00:57:18.000 Jesus Christ.

00:57:19.000 But that kind of...

00:57:20.000 It's almost like they feel like it's helpless.

00:57:26.000 They have to do something like that.

00:57:28.000 They have to do that because there's no way to fix it.

00:57:32.000 So what you've got to do is kind of try to manage it or move it in certain directions.

00:57:36.000 Every now and then I post stuff about that type of situation and everybody goes to, well, the CIA... We're good to go.

00:57:47.000 We're good to go.

00:58:04.000 I think we're coming to a point in our history where a lot of these people are dead.

00:58:08.000 A lot of these people are in jail.

00:58:10.000 A lot of these people got book deals.

00:58:12.000 And a lot of these people are talking.

00:58:14.000 And I mean it's interesting seeing some of the stuff that is coming out now that in my time when I was active would have gotten you in a hole probably somewhere if you talked about it.

00:58:25.000 So there is definitely – I mean my mind was blown when I was seeing El Chapo on Netflix.

00:58:31.000 Because a lot of stuff that was going on in that show is fictionalized stuff that I went through myself.

00:58:37.000 So I was like, this is on Netflix now.

00:58:40.000 How accurate was it?

00:58:42.000 Some pretty good accurate parts.

00:58:44.000 So there's a character in that show called...

00:58:47.000 We're talking about Narcos and we're talking about the Mexican version of Narcos, right? 0.95

00:58:50.000 Because it was a Colombian first. 1.00

00:58:52.000 Yeah, Narcos is pretty good.

00:58:55.000 There's an El Chapo series on Netflix as well.

00:58:58.000 Oh, there is?

00:58:58.000 Yeah.

00:58:59.000 It's in Spanish.

00:59:00.000 It's pretty popular, but it's pretty accurate.

00:59:02.000 Does it have subtitles?

00:59:04.000 It does.

00:59:06.000 There's a guy in the show, Conrado Sol is his name, which people were trying to figure out who that was.

00:59:13.000 It's basically a government guy that had to deal with El Chapo and they both kind of escalated in power.

00:59:19.000 It turns out it was Luna, right?

00:59:21.000 So this show was showing him the character El Sol, which depicts Luna as a corrupt politician that was working security, working both sides.

00:59:32.000 And all of a sudden, recently, a few weeks back, they arrested the guy.

00:59:38.000 So the show was kind of predicted.

00:59:41.000 Do you think that the show had anything to do with him being arrested?

00:59:44.000 I mean, it probably put the idea in the zeitgeist of people to ask questions.

00:59:50.000 Yeah.

00:59:50.000 That's weird that shows actually do do that, like surviving R. Kelly.

00:59:55.000 That's what got him arrested.

00:59:56.000 I mean, everybody knew he was peeing on people. 0.99

00:59:59.000 And like fucking 20 years ago, he was peeing on little kids. 0.99

01:00:02.000 And now it gives people like... 0.99

01:00:04.000 It's interesting.

01:00:05.000 You see fictionalized forms of stuff that happened down there.

01:00:09.000 The Narcos show as well is another thing.

01:00:11.000 You see fictionalized things of how some of these powerful cartel groups kind of originated themselves in fiction.

01:00:18.000 And now that is in the public kind of domain as far as collective knowledge.

01:00:22.000 So people start asking questions.

01:00:24.000 And some of these things, apparently people in power also ask questions as well.

01:00:29.000 Jesus Christ.

01:00:31.000 It's just, it's so strange how popular it's become.

01:00:35.000 You know, and it's such a popular focal point of fiction as well.

01:00:40.000 And fashion.

01:00:42.000 Yeah.

01:00:42.000 El Chapo's picture with...

01:00:45.000 Champagne?

01:00:46.000 Yeah.

01:00:46.000 The shirt was like fire.

01:00:48.000 Everybody wanted that shirt.

01:00:50.000 You know that Conor McGregor wore something to mimic it on purpose when he was in the press conference for Rafael dos Anjos?

01:00:57.000 Did you know that?

01:00:58.000 Yeah, I heard something about it.

01:01:00.000 He stood in the same stance.

01:01:01.000 Like, look at him.

01:01:02.000 Look at him.

01:01:04.000 I mean, he's doing it on purpose.

01:01:06.000 It's like a subtle nod to El Chapo.

01:01:08.000 Yeah.

01:01:09.000 I mean, El Chapo has achieved legendary status.

01:01:12.000 For sure.

01:01:13.000 Now, his kid that was freed by the cartel down there, he was wearing a scapulario, which is like, I don't know if you can see it in there.

01:01:26.000 That's an interesting piece of a cultural thing from Mexico.

01:01:30.000 What is going on in this video that we're watching?

01:01:32.000 So he just handed the gun over, his personal gun over to one of his bodyguards that was not even, these guys don't even care about him.

01:01:38.000 This is a head camera thing and they're putting everybody out there.

01:01:44.000 Personally, I would put everybody in zip ties and on the ground, personally.

01:01:47.000 So these guys all have guns drawn and there's people inside with guns drawn at them.

01:01:52.000 And they realize who they have now.

01:01:55.000 So they're like, should we forcefully put them in cuffs?

01:01:58.000 Should we not?

01:01:59.000 So how do you know that they're realizing this?

01:02:01.000 Is it because of the language?

01:02:02.000 What they're saying?

01:02:04.000 I've went through a lot of the same training that they went through and I did a lot of this type of stuff and all of them would have been in zip ties on the ground.

01:02:11.000 This girl reached out and grabbed their guns and put their guns down. 1.00

01:02:15.000 There's fear in these people.

01:02:17.000 They realize that they messed up.

01:02:20.000 Oh, Jesus.

01:02:21.000 Right?

01:02:21.000 So that's what people question.

01:02:23.000 And are they streaming this video live on their headcams?

01:02:27.000 They have a headcam and they're streaming it.

01:02:31.000 They have it recording it and it gets sent back to their command post.

01:02:36.000 So when he was moving around, he had one of these on.

01:02:39.000 This is a escapulario, it's called.

01:02:42.000 It's like a religious Catholic iconography thing.

01:02:45.000 What is yours?

01:02:46.000 What is it?

01:02:47.000 This is a Santa Muerte one, right?

01:02:49.000 It's like a holy death effigy.

01:02:51.000 So he had that on?

01:02:52.000 He had his was a Santo Niño de Tocha, which is like a Catholic, Christ baby saint they have.

01:03:00.000 As soon as that picture of him went online...

01:03:04.000 They were sold out all throughout Sinaloa.

01:03:06.000 Everybody was wearing that.

01:03:07.000 They have to work.

01:03:08.000 You know, they work.

01:03:09.000 Those work.

01:03:10.000 Because he got them free.

01:03:11.000 Got them free.

01:03:12.000 There he is.

01:03:13.000 That's the scapulario.

01:03:14.000 Santonino de Torcha.

01:03:15.000 Handsome guy.

01:03:16.000 Yeah.

01:03:17.000 That's also an interesting cultural thing.

01:03:22.000 The occult part of it where that Santonino de Torcha shrine is, right now, it's probably the most popular shrines in Mexico or that one because they work.

01:03:32.000 And then you go to the holy death shrines down there as well.

01:03:35.000 And you see how both sides, both Mexican government forces and the cartel, they both been married kind of the same saints.

01:03:44.000 So again, that's a weird kind of thing.

01:03:47.000 They share that faith.

01:03:49.000 What is that picture of his truck down there, Jamie?

01:03:52.000 You have some wacky truck?

01:03:53.000 No, it's just a regular truck.

01:03:55.000 That's his?

01:03:55.000 Yeah, that's one of his...

01:03:57.000 Oh, it's riddled with bullets.

01:03:58.000 He gave out cars on Christmas.

01:04:03.000 He did this party to any townspeople.

01:04:07.000 How many cars did he give out?

01:04:08.000 I have no idea.

01:04:09.000 A lot of them.

01:04:09.000 There's pictures of El Chapo's son gives out cars on Christmas and there's a bunch of cars there.

01:04:17.000 Again, who are you going to go towards him or the government?

01:04:23.000 You give him a car, you don't give me anything.

01:04:25.000 Yeah, they, like you said, hearts and minds.

01:04:28.000 They're really...

01:04:28.000 Hearts and minds.

01:04:29.000 And, you know, they pay for college education.

01:04:35.000 So there's a whole generation of lawyers, a whole generation of doctors.

01:04:38.000 They pay for immigration procedures.

01:04:42.000 So, hey, you want to, you know, yeah, I'll pay for your immigration, but, you know, I'm going to call in some favors later on.

01:04:48.000 Okay?

01:04:49.000 Wow.

01:04:50.000 So that's, you know, that's how you grow. 1.00

01:04:52.000 It's full-on mafia shit. 1.00

01:04:54.000 Yeah, I mean, they learned... 1.00

01:04:56.000 One day I'll come to you.

01:04:58.000 Al Capone, Scarface, all these things are kind of venerated by them.

01:05:05.000 That's kind of their cultural backing.

01:05:08.000 They have pop cultural backing.

01:05:09.000 They kind of look to the mob era guys as influence or as inspiration.

01:05:14.000 You see...

01:05:15.000 You know, insane paintings of the Godfather or Scarface in some of these safe houses where these people are, right?

01:05:23.000 And you're like, okay.

01:05:24.000 Or you see cartel-influenced series for Netflix.

01:05:29.000 Like, there's one called La Reina del Sur, which is about a female cartel head. 0.98

01:05:37.000 And the lady that stars in that show was the one that took Sean Penn down there to El Chapo because El Chapo was a fan of that show.

01:05:46.000 Really?

01:05:47.000 That's how it got going?

01:05:49.000 Yeah.

01:05:49.000 When they finally caught up to him, he had the whole series on DVDs at his safe house, which is pretty – he humanized him a little bit.

01:05:57.000 Oh my god.

01:05:58.000 That whole scene with Sean Penn going down there and writing a story for Rolling Stone was uber bizarre.

01:06:04.000 Yeah.

01:06:04.000 Well, if they get the terrorist designation, he basically went down there to meet with the terrorists.

01:06:09.000 What happens to him then?

01:06:10.000 Is it retroactive?

01:06:12.000 I don't know.

01:06:13.000 I don't know.

01:06:13.000 But he helped get him arrested in a sense, right?

01:06:17.000 That whole commotion put eyes on the movements of El Chapo by the Mexican government.

01:06:24.000 Why would El Chapo agree to do something like that?

01:06:28.000 He was a fan of the show.

01:06:33.000 That seems so crazy though.

01:06:35.000 Doesn't it seem crazy that he was willing to take that kind of a risk?

01:06:38.000 Take a photo with Sean Penn and that actress?

01:06:42.000 What's her name again?

01:06:45.000 Cate del Castillo?

01:06:46.000 Yeah, right there.

01:06:48.000 Chapo's probably banging that, right? 0.99

01:06:50.000 If I had to guess.

01:06:51.000 There's rumors.

01:06:52.000 There's rumors of a meeting that's about it.

01:06:55.000 I don't know anything else.

01:06:56.000 If I had to guess, I would say yes.

01:07:00.000 But it's just the whole thing.

01:07:02.000 Look at Sean Penn smiling.

01:07:03.000 Hey, here's my friend the murderer.

01:07:06.000 I mean, I get the – I've heard some of the stuff Sean Penn said about Chavez in Venezuela and stuff like that, how he's pro-Chavez and stuff like that.

01:07:18.000 I have people, friends of mine that live in Venezuela under that regime.

01:07:21.000 So he's a pretty kooky guy.

01:07:23.000 He has some pretty interesting ideas about – He can't possibly be that informed.

01:07:29.000 I don't know. 0.99

01:07:29.000 I mean, you really have to have boots on the ground to understand what the fuck you're talking about. 0.99

01:07:34.000 You have to be there for, you know, if you want to know what's going on in Venezuela, there's so many different stories. 0.97

01:07:39.000 My friend Abby Martin's been down there multiple times, and she gives me a story that's so different than anything that you're getting in mainstream news, and she goes there.

01:07:48.000 She goes there and talks to people.

01:07:50.000 Spends time.

01:07:52.000 I have a – there's a resistance group that is based in the US that works down there and they put up videos all the time of people picking up garbage and trying to recycle garbage to feed themselves in some places.

01:08:07.000 Instagram immediately takes all those downs.

01:08:09.000 Really?

01:08:10.000 Yeah.

01:08:11.000 Why does Instagram take those down?

01:08:13.000 I have a lot of that going on as well when I post something completely news related about something and then get shadow banned or things just go down depending on what I post up like weird things posted up a Venezuelan people throwing rocks at this armored vehicle and one of them I think one of them got run over and that got taken down I didn't show the part where he got run over but just the people protesting Why

01:08:43.000 would that get taken down?

01:08:44.000 It got flagged as support for a hate group or something like that.

01:08:48.000 Support for a hate group by showing the news?

01:08:51.000 Yeah, or showing a picture of cartels.

01:08:53.000 And again, I don't post anything...

01:08:55.000 Graphic on my feed because I don't want to get banned, but I'm still shadow banned.

01:08:59.000 Well, you showed that one, by the way, Ed Manifesto.

01:09:03.000 That's how you find it.

01:09:04.000 Ed Manifesto.

01:09:06.000 That's Ed's page.

01:09:08.000 You posted that one where you saw a guy getting abducted by fake cops.

01:09:13.000 Yeah.

01:09:14.000 Did that one get pulled?

01:09:16.000 Yeah.

01:09:17.000 It did.

01:09:17.000 All of the recent Sinaloa video ones were all pulled off the Instagram account.

01:09:23.000 That's how I had to re-upload them all.

01:09:25.000 I just don't understand their logic.

01:09:28.000 I mean, look, I can understand them saying, caution, some of these images and videos are sensitive, you know, like with some bloody things and things along those lines.

01:09:39.000 Something changed in the algorithms a year back?

01:09:41.000 Like when I was on your, the first time I was on your show, I got, obviously, I saw a spike.

01:09:45.000 Thank you, by the way.

01:09:46.000 But all of the pro-Second Amendment pages and people like there's a guy, Crispy, who was a veteran.

01:09:56.000 Also, all of a sudden, all of us started seeing a lot of stuff lagged.

01:10:01.000 Yeah, his stuff got taken down.

01:10:02.000 I think there was a photo of him with Donald Trump that got taken down.

01:10:07.000 Yeah, makes sense.

01:10:09.000 Or I think it was Donald Trump Jr. I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with you people? 0.99

01:10:13.000 Just because you don't align with someone politically, you can't take down photos and you can't pretend that he's posing with Hitler or something. 1.00

01:10:20.000 What the fuck is wrong with you? 0.97

01:10:23.000 People can report things anonymously, I think. 1.00

01:10:27.000 Yes.

01:10:28.000 And if you hurt my feelings, there you go.

01:10:31.000 So if there's enough people that flag your video and say this is hurtful or this is – they don't even look into it.

01:10:37.000 They just pull it down.

01:10:37.000 Yeah.

01:10:38.000 So who do you think is doing it?

01:10:39.000 Do you think it's the Mexican government that's doing that?

01:10:41.000 Do you think it's the cartels that are doing that to your page?

01:10:43.000 I think it's mostly Americans that have sensibilities that are completely beyond my comprehension. 1.00

01:10:55.000 Well, I can understand how some of what you're reporting on, truthful as it may be, would be disturbing to people to find out that truth.

01:11:06.000 But you've got to let people do that.

01:11:08.000 I mean, what does Instagram want to do?

01:11:10.000 I mean, do they want to put parameters on what kind of truth you're allowed to distribute?

01:11:16.000 So just for people to get some context, I do work for two magazine companies and I do do articles.

01:11:23.000 So in that regard, I do provide news in certain ways.

01:11:29.000 But when I post something on my page, it's a personal view of something.

01:11:34.000 I purposefully don't go into graphic material because I don't want to get flagged.

01:11:38.000 But sometimes there's always people with a certain affinity to when they see a gun in a post or when they see...

01:11:46.000 An animal being butchered for something like in a picture or when they see hunting related stuff or when they see some sort of...

01:11:54.000 I remember posting up a picture of the Make Tijuana Great Again hats that they were making down there.

01:11:59.000 Red hats that said Make Tijuana Great Again when the caravans went into TJ and people started protesting the caravans in TJ. That got flagged.

01:12:07.000 What?

01:12:09.000 That is so crazy.

01:12:12.000 Oh.

01:12:14.000 If you want to make people angry and confused, just wear one of those hats through the airport.

01:12:19.000 Yeah, well, a lady got maced in the face for wearing one that said, Make Bitcoin Great Again. 0.99

01:12:25.000 Some guy maced her in the face. 1.00

01:12:27.000 Knocked her hat off.

01:12:28.000 I saw somebody walk in an airport with a Make Hentai Great Again hat.

01:12:33.000 Make anything great again.

01:12:34.000 You can't do it.

01:12:35.000 It's too close.

01:12:36.000 Yeah, it's too close.

01:12:37.000 I mean, the hat, the red hat.

01:12:39.000 I've never seen anything more divisive in this country.

01:12:43.000 I mean, other than like a swastika or something like overtly disgusting.

01:12:47.000 I started my immigration process when he got elected.

01:12:52.000 Oh, no!

01:12:57.000 It's been a trip.

01:12:59.000 How does that work?

01:13:00.000 Like if you are a Mexican-born citizen and you want to become a United States citizen, obviously it's very difficult.

01:13:07.000 So married to an American, have an American kid, that's how I went through the process myself.

01:13:13.000 And I got a green card.

01:13:16.000 The thing is that when he got elected, everybody said, you know what?

01:13:20.000 Maybe our time to get a green card is going to be less and less, so let's all try and get one.

01:13:25.000 So what would take normally six months took two years.

01:13:29.000 Oh, wow.

01:13:30.000 So in those two years, you can't leave the country.

01:13:33.000 What happens to people that are illegal? 0.87

01:13:36.000 That's what's fucked up about it, right?

01:13:38.000 There's people that came over here illegally 20, 30 years ago, and they've done no crimes, they've been an integral part of society, they've had great lives, but they can't pay taxes, they can't vote, they have to live undercover. 1.00

01:13:54.000 Fuck. 1.00

01:13:55.000 It's stupid. 1.00

01:13:56.000 And they do provide. 1.00

01:13:59.000 They pay taxes through other...

01:14:02.000 Well, through sales tax, buying things.

01:14:04.000 But they're not paying taxes.

01:14:06.000 But if you made them citizens, you would make money.

01:14:10.000 Yeah.

01:14:10.000 Well, it's not a popular view.

01:14:12.000 It's a stupid view. 1.00

01:14:14.000 It's stupid that we have these people and they're permanent illegals. 1.00

01:14:18.000 And they will be here until they die illegally. 1.00

01:14:21.000 And we know they're here.

01:14:22.000 How about work with what you've got?

01:14:24.000 You're doing your best to stop the border traffic.

01:14:28.000 Great.

01:14:28.000 Fantastic.

01:14:29.000 But listen, just forget about the past.

01:14:32.000 These people are here.

01:14:33.000 They're here and they're a part of our community.

01:14:35.000 How are you going to deny them citizenship until the day they die and they're still here? 1.00

01:14:40.000 Well, legal immigration, just like I went through, is hard enough.

01:14:45.000 You've got to find some American lady. 1.00

01:14:46.000 That shit's difficult. 1.00

01:14:48.000 I did. 1.00

01:14:51.000 But it was a hard process.

01:14:55.000 It's a difficult process.

01:14:58.000 And you speak fluent English.

01:15:01.000 Yes, that's another thing.

01:15:03.000 I saw people in the line with me that did not speak a lick of English, but they were from a country that had a quota. 0.99

01:15:14.000 Like Holland or some shit. 0.98

01:15:17.000 They're from a country that has a quota, so they're great, but you're not... 1.00

01:15:21.000 It's hard for Canadians, man.

01:15:23.000 I have friends from Canada that come over here and try to become citizens. 1.00

01:15:26.000 It's a fucking grind. 0.99

01:15:29.000 And don't get me wrong. 0.99

01:15:30.000 I love this country.

01:15:31.000 I'm new here and I like what I see.

01:15:34.000 I don't like where it's going in some places.

01:15:36.000 What don't you like?

01:15:37.000 I don't like – I mean I left my country because I couldn't defend myself from the bad people out there.

01:15:43.000 The Second Amendment things.

01:15:44.000 The Second Amendment, it's a beautiful thing.

01:15:46.000 You have no idea how beautiful that thing is until you don't have an option to have it.

01:15:50.000 That's one thing.

01:15:52.000 I like the opportunities this country provides.

01:15:55.000 I've had a lot of opportunities I would never get anywhere else.

01:15:57.000 I like that you can actually work and the work you put in matters here.

01:16:03.000 I like how it's segmented and different.

01:16:06.000 You go to Tennessee and you meet people out there and they're great people.

01:16:10.000 There's some people who have preconceived notions of what some part of the countries are but I've loved it.

01:16:16.000 And then you go to California and you meet people that are on the same boat as I was and they forgot completely what Mexico is and they're completely Americanized and they're completely against you as a new person here.

01:16:28.000 Really?

01:16:29.000 Yeah.

01:16:29.000 So you find that like Americanized Mexicans or like second, third generation Mexicans?

01:16:35.000 The worst enemy of a Mexican is another Mexican. 1.00

01:16:38.000 That's a classic. 0.98

01:16:39.000 What?

01:16:39.000 That's a classic Mexican saying and it's true.

01:16:42.000 That's a classic Mexican saying. 0.99

01:16:45.000 Really?

01:16:45.000 Most of the negativity I got from being on your show the first time was from Latinos, specifically Mexican Latinos.

01:16:53.000 What was the negativity?

01:16:54.000 What was their criticism?

01:16:55.000 When I talked about how Mexicans protested the caravans going through Tijuana and wrecking their city. 1.00

01:17:02.000 That was viewed as an extreme to the right or conservative viewpoint, apparently.

01:17:08.000 Yeah, but that was a fact.

01:17:10.000 But apparently facts don't matter. 0.96

01:17:12.000 Oh, that's so silly.

01:17:13.000 But that's a good example of people that are not there. 0.96

01:17:18.000 Yeah, yeah. 0.99

01:17:19.000 You didn't make a value judgment saying that those people coming through were protested by Mexicans and needed to go back to wherever fucking rice paddy they come from. 0.97

01:17:28.000 You didn't say any of that. 0.98

01:17:29.000 No, so this is what I saw when I talked about it.

01:17:33.000 Because I experienced it.

01:17:35.000 I was in TJ for a while when that was happening.

01:17:39.000 Byron Caravan goes through.

01:17:41.000 Obviously, a lot of those guys were gang members.

01:17:44.000 A lot of them were.

01:17:44.000 Not all of them.

01:17:45.000 A lot of them were covering tattoos.

01:17:47.000 It was pretty hot outside, wearing all of them wearing hoodies.

01:17:50.000 Cameras came by.

01:17:51.000 The females and the children were being put in front parade in front of the media. 0.64

01:17:54.000 To anybody who was there, you could see the circus that was going on.

01:17:58.000 And then...

01:18:00.000 A lot of the camp encampments, they would litter the encampments with needles on the outside.

01:18:07.000 One of them was next to a school that had to be closed down.

01:18:09.000 A niece of mine had a kid in there and the school had to be closed down because it was next to one of these encampments.

01:18:14.000 They would protest and close down lanes.

01:18:16.000 Most people that live in TJ... Some of them are Americans and they commute, so that's affecting their livelihood.

01:18:23.000 People that work on tourism in TGA, livelihood went down.

01:18:26.000 So the fact that these people came in and disrupted all that whole thing, and then you would see these Californian hippie American guys come down there and do puppet shows for these people and hand over donations in the form of canned food, blankets, and stuff like that.

01:18:40.000 And then you would see these guys go to the back door and sell all that stuff in the back and just get money for whatever they were going to use the money for.

01:18:47.000 We would laugh at it, but also, you know, it's pretty disheartening.

01:18:51.000 Having that point of view online, because I started posting some of this stuff online for people, this is what's happening.

01:18:57.000 And that was like, no, no, no, you're going against the narrative.

01:19:00.000 The narrative, yeah.

01:19:01.000 The narrative and the people that are talking about you going against the narrative have really no idea.

01:19:07.000 They don't care about the truth.

01:19:08.000 That's what's crazy.

01:19:09.000 The absolutist thing.

01:19:12.000 So if you're against this caravan going through Tijuana and affecting you, you're probably a Trump supporter.

01:19:19.000 So simple.

01:19:20.000 I can't even vote up here yet.

01:19:21.000 You don't have to be a full citizen to vote so that it doesn't even factor in. 0.99

01:19:25.000 God damn, it's so crazy. 0.98

01:19:27.000 What else about America bothers you? 1.00

01:19:33.000 I think...

01:19:36.000 There's definitely this tendency in America that I see the youth in America.

01:19:41.000 I have a weird mental comparison of seeing my nephews down there playing soccer.

01:19:50.000 I'm going out and getting into trouble, going to cockfights, which is probably pretty dangerous, but they go to cockfights, stuff like that.

01:19:56.000 And I see kids up here on their tablet, you know?

01:20:00.000 Playing games, video games.

01:20:02.000 Getting offended by something, you know?

01:20:05.000 Down there, you can still punch somebody in the face if they get into your face in school.

01:20:09.000 You're allowed to do that in school?

01:20:10.000 I mean, there's going to be some issues, but it's fine, you know?

01:20:14.000 There's still that, you know?

01:20:16.000 Up here, it's gone.

01:20:16.000 All that's gone.

01:20:18.000 You're going to get into some issues.

01:20:19.000 You're probably going to get out of school or something.

01:20:21.000 You see this weird... 0.99

01:20:23.000 The pussification of American children. 0.99

01:20:25.000 Safe spaces. 0.99

01:20:26.000 Don't say that.

01:20:26.000 That's politically incorrect.

01:20:28.000 Pussification?

01:20:29.000 I don't know.

01:20:29.000 What's a good word for it?

01:20:31.000 Come up with a politically correct word for that that has just as much kick and I'll use that.

01:20:36.000 I don't know.

01:20:38.000 They can't.

01:20:38.000 It doesn't exist.

01:20:40.000 It's the pussification. 0.97

01:20:41.000 Yeah.

01:20:43.000 When I came up here, the first year I was up here, I saw the California gun laws change.

01:20:52.000 I got to see the weird California compliant rifles come to the range and you have to push a button to release the magazine.

01:21:01.000 Yeah.

01:21:01.000 Make it more difficult to reload.

01:21:03.000 Yeah.

01:21:05.000 So strange.

01:21:06.000 Well, I mean, I've never seen a California compliant gun in the hands of a criminal myself, right?

01:21:14.000 So why are the good citizens following the law?

01:21:18.000 Yeah, the idea that you're just going to handicap law-abiding citizens and that's going to somehow or another save lives in mass shootings. 0.53

01:21:28.000 And here's the other thing about, and I'm waiting for this to happen, but it's just not happening.

01:21:33.000 They're never addressing people using psychotropic drugs.

01:21:37.000 They don't address that.

01:21:38.000 All those school shooters, all those mass shooters are all on drugs.

01:21:42.000 They're all on some kind of psych drugs.

01:21:44.000 And there's no mention of it whatsoever.

01:21:46.000 Like, what is the action of these things?

01:21:49.000 It's all about the guns.

01:21:50.000 And the guns are a huge issue. 0.99

01:21:52.000 I mean, the fact that these people who are fucked up Yeah, that they have access and they can get access to these guns and they can wind up shooting people. 0.98

01:22:01.000 Yes, that is one issue. 0.99

01:22:03.000 Security is another issue.

01:22:04.000 There's another issue and that's mental health and that to me is the biggest one because without the mental health issue you don't get mass shooters.

01:22:11.000 And that's an interesting thing when I get people in conversations about the violence in Mexico and perspective.

01:22:19.000 Mexico cartel guys go into a town and shoot up a bunch of people and it's pretty horrible.

01:22:24.000 But on the Mexican side, we only had one school shooting, like a notable one. 0.99

01:22:29.000 And it was a mentally ill kid when he took a gun to school. 0.57

01:22:34.000 And as Mexicans, we look at what happens in the U.S. in schools and we're horrified by it. 0.55

01:22:38.000 That's like completely horrific.

01:22:41.000 Isn't that amazing?

01:22:42.000 Again, being on both sides, I'm just trying to figure things.

01:22:46.000 What about pharmaceuticals being prescribed to children in Mexico?

01:22:50.000 Is it similar?

01:22:51.000 Not at all.

01:22:52.000 I mean, we're so behind in some instances as far as, you know, I didn't know about PTSD, so it came up here.

01:23:00.000 Or TBI, right?

01:23:02.000 Really?

01:23:02.000 Yeah.

01:23:02.000 I didn't know anything about that.

01:23:04.000 When did you learn about TBI? When I started talking about...

01:23:07.000 We should say what that is.

01:23:08.000 Post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries for people, especially kids.

01:23:13.000 I learned about it from talking to most of my marine friends that were coming back from.

01:23:18.000 They're like, what you're describing that you're feeling sounds like TBI. Really?

01:23:23.000 Yeah.

01:23:24.000 You should get yourself checked out.

01:23:25.000 And then you go down there and things would happen and people would get a few days off, take a few shots of tequila, you're fine.

01:23:37.000 Get back at it.

01:23:39.000 Well, that's the old school mentality.

01:23:41.000 I mean, that's what they had to deal with in World War II and Vietnam.

01:23:44.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:23:45.000 But you've got – I mean, when it comes to that.

01:23:47.000 But mental health down in Mexico, there's like – it's not anywhere as far as medicating it.

01:23:53.000 Kids being diagnosed with things like autism is a thing that I only recently kind of heard about 15 years ago.

01:24:01.000 In Mexico?

01:24:02.000 In Mexico.

01:24:02.000 And – What about anti-psychotic drugs and all these different drugs that you're seeing that these – a lot of these school shooters are taking?

01:24:11.000 In Mexico, it's not a thing.

01:24:13.000 People think that it's pretty permissive in Mexico.

01:24:15.000 They can get any drug if you pay somebody off.

01:24:17.000 The thing is that a lot of these psychiatric level, they're not available down there.

01:24:24.000 You can go to – they're like, what do you want?

01:24:27.000 No, this is not available here.

01:24:29.000 So it's not a part of the culture?

01:24:30.000 It's not a part, no.

01:24:32.000 Yeah, in America it's such a huge part of the culture that people are constantly wanting to take something to take the edge off or take something so they could feel better or take something just to alter their state and the doctor will prescribe it to them.

01:24:47.000 And then the pharmaceutical drug companies are just raking in the cash from it so it just becomes a part of reality.

01:24:54.000 There was a few people way back when I first started Things were pretty lax when I got in.

01:25:01.000 You would get urine tested for cocaine and whatever.

01:25:05.000 But some people would go to Oaxaca and go on mushroom trips like some of the veteran guys that were going through whatever.

01:25:13.000 There's a place in Oaxaca and Veracruz where they go up into the hills and get some of those, they call them veladas, which is like basically going to midnight and they would smoke these mushrooms and take them.

01:25:25.000 And they would come back, apparently fix some of them.

01:25:28.000 That was like the story.

01:25:30.000 It was pretty good for them to work their things out.

01:25:32.000 Well, John Hopkins, they're doing studies on psilocybin, and there's been studies done on psilocybin with troops with PTSD. And they've found out that it does help them.

01:25:43.000 MDMA is another one that MAPS is doing all these studies with MDMA and troops coming back with PTSD. Yeah.

01:25:49.000 I mean, a lot of that stuff has been around for a long time down there.

01:25:52.000 Yeah.

01:25:53.000 Like, remember the Beatles and members of the Doors went down there to Maria Savina.

01:25:58.000 Yeah.

01:25:59.000 Well, they found out about it.

01:26:00.000 It was a Life magazine article from the 1950s that was one of the first really mainstream.

01:26:06.000 Jamie, see if you can find who wrote that.

01:26:08.000 It was a Life article in the 50s.

01:26:11.000 I'm trying to remember the guy's name.

01:26:14.000 Wasserman?

01:26:15.000 Wasserman.

01:26:16.000 I feel like it's Wasserman, who was one of the very first guys to sort of mainstream psilocybin mushrooms.

01:26:23.000 And it was because of Mexican tribal cultures.

01:26:28.000 Maria Savina was like the figurehead of that movement.

01:26:31.000 She was a lady that would do these mushroom trips for people that would come up in the hillside where she would take her own. 0.99

01:26:38.000 Was it?

01:26:38.000 Gordon Wasson.

01:26:39.000 Ah, it was close.

01:26:40.000 I knew it was something like that.

01:26:41.000 Gordon Wasson.

01:26:42.000 That's right.

01:26:43.000 Yeah, so this was Seeking the Magic Mushroom, and I believe this was, what year was this, Jamie?

01:26:48.000 I think it's in the 50s.

01:26:51.000 Yeah, I typed in 1957. Maria Sabina left a whole legacy of that in Mexico, and she had a lot of people that learned from her, and a lot of these people are all over Mexico doing healing and spiritual work.

01:27:04.000 Well, that's the other thing about Mexico.

01:27:06.000 Mexico has some...

01:27:08.000 You have some freedom.

01:27:10.000 Like my friend Ed, Ed Clay, he had a Ibogaine retreat down there where people would go to get off of pills.

01:27:18.000 Yeah.

01:27:19.000 Because it's one of the...

01:27:20.000 Iboga is one of the best ways to get off of particularly opiates.

01:27:25.000 Yeah.

01:27:26.000 There's, you know, there's...

01:27:29.000 Right.

01:27:31.000 Right.

01:27:43.000 Didn't they kind of like decriminalize a lot of different things down there?

01:27:49.000 For personal use.

01:27:51.000 So the quantities now matter more than they used to.

01:27:53.000 So sometimes you would get caught with a certain quantity of something and that means you're selling it.

01:27:59.000 How many grams of mushrooms can you have?

01:28:02.000 I would have to look it up, but everybody has a different opinion on what personal use is.

01:28:07.000 I mean, I remember the first time I saw like a box of them and I'm like, what the hell are these?

01:28:12.000 And, you know, later on I figured out what they were.

01:28:15.000 And, you know, they're a thing.

01:28:17.000 They're a thing in Mexico.

01:28:18.000 They're a big thing in Mexico.

01:28:20.000 There's a lot of people grow them.

01:28:22.000 They're a big thing to anyone who finds out about them.

01:28:24.000 Once you eat them, they become a big thing.

01:28:25.000 Yeah, yeah, apparently.

01:28:27.000 They use them in rituals and all sorts of weird rituals down there as a doorway type element.

01:28:34.000 Like there's a...

01:28:35.000 There's a ritual where they bury you alive in a shallow grave.

01:28:39.000 Oh, Jesus.

01:28:40.000 Yeah, it's basically an isolation chamber, a really poor man's isolation chamber.

01:28:46.000 They bury you alive in a shallow grave with a rope with a bell on it, and they give you a bunch of mushrooms so you can think about things in there.

01:28:55.000 And if you freak out, you ring that bell and you get pulled out.

01:28:57.000 And they dig you out?

01:28:57.000 Yeah.

01:28:58.000 Oh, God.

01:28:59.000 Yeah.

01:28:59.000 How are you breathing down there?

01:29:00.000 They got a tube or something?

01:29:01.000 That's a shallow grave.

01:29:02.000 It's just basically about that much dirt.

01:29:04.000 There's a hole where the rub goes through, so you're kind of fine.

01:29:08.000 But it's like part of the death cult down there.

01:29:11.000 They do that to kind of initiate people into it.

01:29:14.000 But it's mushrooms.

01:29:15.000 They take mushrooms.

01:29:16.000 There's a bunch of weird stuff that goes down down there as far as the use of psychotropics like mushrooms and other things to put people in that mindset of accepting a very specific deity or truth down there.

01:29:33.000 Yeah. 0.97

01:29:34.000 So let's get back to what's fucked up about America. 0.92

01:29:37.000 I always like talking to people that come here from somewhere else and just sort of look at it with a fresh eye because obviously I've been here my whole life. 0.94

01:29:45.000 I'm used to it.

01:29:47.000 Yeah.

01:29:47.000 And I'm third generation.

01:29:49.000 Oh, you are?

01:29:49.000 Yeah.

01:29:50.000 Okay.

01:29:50.000 So my parents were second generation.

01:29:52.000 My grandparents came over here.

01:29:54.000 So it's all – I'm ingrained.

01:29:57.000 I'm in the system.

01:29:57.000 I don't know.

01:29:58.000 I'm blind.

01:29:59.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:30:01.000 What else is fucked up about this place? 0.99

01:30:05.000 I mean, I don't know. 0.98

01:30:08.000 I mean, when I travel around, I get to see different parts of America.

01:30:12.000 And all of them, you know, there's certain places I've been called, ah, you're one of the good Mexicans, Ed.

01:30:19.000 You're one of the good ones.

01:30:20.000 I won't say what those parts of the country are, but I've gotten some of that, you know?

01:30:24.000 Well, the United States is almost like Europe.

01:30:27.000 Where, like, there's all these different countries, except they all speak the same language.

01:30:31.000 Yeah. 0.95

01:30:32.000 You know, like, Europe has France, and then they have Germany, and you go over there, and there's this one, and then there's Sweden, and then it's all in this fucking big landmass. 0.97

01:30:40.000 Yeah. 0.72

01:30:40.000 But the United States' landmass is contiguous, and they all speak the same language. 0.72

01:30:45.000 But if you want to tell me that Montana is the same as Florida, you're out of your fucking mind. 0.99

01:30:51.000 Well, I take those comments in stride, you know? 1.00

01:30:55.000 That you're one of the good Mexicans?

01:30:57.000 I mean, being racist, kind of racial like that and just messing with each other, Mexicans do that all the time, right? 1.00

01:31:04.000 So I take it in stride.

01:31:06.000 It's fascinating to me that people are second generation Mexicans up here take more offense to something like that.

01:31:12.000 Then I would – somebody would say, hey, you're one of the good Mexicans.

01:31:14.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:31:15.000 Whatever.

01:31:16.000 To me, it's like a thing I take and try.

01:31:19.000 Well, the easier things get, the more people get quickly offended.

01:31:23.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:31:24.000 That's a fact.

01:31:25.000 Hard times produce – Hard men.

01:31:28.000 Hard men produce soft times.

01:31:30.000 Soft times produce weak men.

01:31:31.000 Yeah.

01:31:32.000 So when I come up here, I see some softness in a lot of the society and a lot of feelings get hurt.

01:31:39.000 Having to watch what I say as far as, you know...

01:31:43.000 Joking around?

01:31:44.000 Yeah.

01:31:45.000 I always tell this to people.

01:31:47.000 First off, I'm from Mexico.

01:31:49.000 I come from a Mexican education system.

01:31:51.000 It's a third world country.

01:31:52.000 So please take everything I say with that in mind, right?

01:31:56.000 And then I go into whatever I'm going to say.

01:31:59.000 So like when you do – like when you teach class and stuff?

01:32:02.000 When I have a class or I have a – like I recently did a conference with a bunch of bodyguards and security professionals that work internationally.

01:32:11.000 I had to start with that one just to not offend anybody, you know?

01:32:14.000 That's hilarious.

01:32:14.000 You're teaching security guards and bodyguards.

01:32:19.000 And you have to worry about being offended.

01:32:20.000 Every now and then you get somebody, you know what?

01:32:22.000 You said something. 1.00

01:32:23.000 Oh, Christ, you fucking babies. 1.00

01:32:26.000 Yeah, so never read the comment section. 1.00

01:32:29.000 Never stay behind and talk to people, especially if they look like they want to speak to the manager.

01:32:35.000 Oh, did you get that when you teach classes?

01:32:38.000 Every now and then.

01:32:39.000 What do they say to you?

01:32:41.000 I think your point of view is skewed because you work for the government down there and you weren't part of the poor class.

01:32:49.000 I'm like, I wasn't part of the poor class.

01:32:51.000 If you work for, like, where I work from, we're pretty poor.

01:32:53.000 Pretty poor, right?

01:32:55.000 It's not like, you know, I wasn't middle class.

01:32:56.000 I was pretty poor.

01:32:59.000 Or they try to tell me the realities of where I'm from.

01:33:03.000 Oh, that must be hilarious.

01:33:04.000 Oh, that's pretty good.

01:33:06.000 That's pretty good.

01:33:07.000 Ed, you're just fear-mongering about Mexico.

01:33:09.000 I go down to Rosarito all the time with my family.

01:33:12.000 It's fine.

01:33:13.000 Well, Rosarito's fine.

01:33:14.000 Go down to Tamaulipas, where the shooting happened, and tell me the same thing.

01:33:19.000 You know, it's perspective.

01:33:20.000 They really say that to you?

01:33:21.000 I can't imagine someone talking, particularly talking to someone like you.

01:33:27.000 Yeah.

01:33:27.000 Who's got like real world experience.

01:33:29.000 There's people out there that kind of...

01:33:31.000 I believe you.

01:33:33.000 Yeah.

01:33:33.000 I mean, I do believe...

01:33:34.000 People are so fucking dumb. 1.00

01:33:35.000 I do believe you. 1.00

01:33:36.000 Yeah.

01:33:36.000 Comment section.

01:33:37.000 Yeah.

01:33:37.000 Don't go in there, man.

01:33:39.000 But it is really true that it's the people that live the softest, easiest lives that are most offended and the people that have experienced real hardship and seen real violence that are a little more hesitant to comment on things like that.

01:33:52.000 That is possible.

01:33:54.000 That is real.

01:33:55.000 And that's one of the things that I really think is good about your page, and it really makes me angry that Instagram censors it, is that you're giving real-world perspective.

01:34:04.000 You're showing real video of a lot of this stuff, and you put it up with also your educated experience on what these people are actually involved in.

01:34:13.000 Yeah, and I'm not involved in any news agency.

01:34:16.000 And a lot of this, like most of those videos came in through direct messenger.

01:34:20.000 To my phone from people that are out there.

01:34:23.000 Hey, this is happening here.

01:34:24.000 Like, okay.

01:34:25.000 Can you talk about it?

01:34:27.000 Okay, I'll talk about it.

01:34:29.000 Like when the Mormon thing happened, the people that reached out to me to talk about it were part of the family.

01:34:37.000 It was pretty surreal.

01:34:39.000 And it wasn't national news when I posted it up.

01:34:43.000 Right?

01:34:43.000 So some of the first social media posts about it, I was trying to look for it, and it wasn't anywhere.

01:34:50.000 So I talked about it, and that evening it went national news.

01:34:55.000 But most of it is directly from having connections and people out there that still talk to me.

01:35:00.000 So I always keep my ear open to that type of stuff, specifically from that region, because that's my thing.

01:35:05.000 That's where I came from.

01:35:06.000 Yeah.

01:35:06.000 Well, there's not a lot of mainstream news that's dedicated to this crisis, dedicated to what's going on.

01:35:12.000 It takes a big event like that to sort of break through all the noise and become a signal that reaches us over here.

01:35:19.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:35:20.000 And, you know, again, things happen somewhere else and not all the attention.

01:35:23.000 Most people aren't focused on Iran now.

01:35:25.000 Yeah.

01:35:26.000 The whole what happened down there. 0.97

01:35:28.000 Yeah, it's just fucking crazy. 0.96

01:35:30.000 There's a giant problem right next door. 0.98

01:35:32.000 You could walk to it.

01:35:34.000 Literally.

01:35:35.000 I mean, if you live in San Diego, it's a 15-minute drive.

01:35:38.000 Yeah.

01:35:38.000 Like, it's right there.

01:35:40.000 To me, I love San Diego, and I love going down there, but every time I go down there, I'm like, you guys could walk to Mexico!

01:35:47.000 Like, this is so crazy!

01:35:48.000 Like, especially La Jolla.

01:35:50.000 Yeah. 0.54

01:35:50.000 Like, La Jolla, which is one of the most richest parts of the country, fucking unbelievably beautiful, stunning views, gorgeous mansions, everybody's driving a Mercedes. 0.54

01:35:59.000 You're 15 minutes away from Tijuana.

01:36:01.000 Yeah.

01:36:02.000 And if we have heavy rains in Tijuana, all of our sewage is going to go right through there.

01:36:07.000 Really?

01:36:07.000 Yeah.

01:36:07.000 Is that what happens?

01:36:08.000 A lot of the sewage, like recently we had a major rain in Tijuana.

01:36:12.000 All of the sewage goes across the border to a Tijuana estuary.

01:36:17.000 There's a processing facility the U.S. has on this side, but it can't manage all of that.

01:36:22.000 And they have to close all the beaches in the area.

01:36:25.000 Oh, man.

01:36:26.000 Wow.

01:36:27.000 Which is, again, it's fascinating how to see how the effect...

01:36:30.000 There's a border wall there, but there really isn't a border wall.

01:36:34.000 There's no border wall.

01:36:34.000 You get in a boat.

01:36:35.000 You row over there.

01:36:37.000 It takes three minutes.

01:36:38.000 Or you can parkour.

01:36:40.000 I recently posted up a bunch of videos of people parkouring over that wall.

01:36:43.000 I saw it.

01:36:44.000 Yeah.

01:36:44.000 Look, I admire ingenuity.

01:36:46.000 I admire people that find solutions to problems. 0.99

01:36:49.000 Watching that guy scale that goddamn wall like Batman. 0.99

01:36:52.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:36:52.000 It's amazing. 1.00

01:36:53.000 Yeah, they're coming up in weird ways.

01:36:55.000 Like I saw some people using powdered titanium to melt the bars on one of the slats.

01:37:04.000 Powdered titanium?

01:37:06.000 Again, I have to research it.

01:37:07.000 Basically, powdered titanium burns at a very high rate when you start it.

01:37:11.000 It's kind of hard to put it out.

01:37:12.000 So they make this hole in this wall with some sort of powdered titanium mix. 1.00

01:37:17.000 That's like that shit. 0.99

01:37:18.000 What was that shit that they were talking about with 9-11 where all the conspiracy theorists thought that it melted steel? 1.00

01:37:25.000 God damn it. 1.00

01:37:29.000 Pyrite? 1.00

01:37:30.000 Is that it?

01:37:31.000 Something like that.

01:37:32.000 A word just popped in my head.

01:37:33.000 I don't know if that's the one. 0.98

01:37:34.000 I feel like that's the stuff that you blow shit up with. 0.60

01:37:37.000 Right now they sell these things they call breach pens. 0.95

01:37:40.000 For tactical applications, there's these pens, these sticks that you start and you can burn chains open and stuff like that with them.

01:37:47.000 Really?

01:37:47.000 Yeah.

01:37:48.000 It's basically a ghetto version of that is what they're using. 0.72

01:37:54.000 I mean, the wall as they're making it, and speaking to some of the Border Patrol agents that I know, it does a job as far as slowing people down.

01:38:04.000 So there's not an overflow of people coming through.

01:38:06.000 Yeah, it's not like, yeah!

01:38:08.000 What would happen if it was that?

01:38:11.000 Bonsai?

01:38:11.000 Yeah, what would happen if everybody, if there was no border, everybody's like, Mexico's the United States, the United States is Mexico.

01:38:18.000 Have a good time.

01:38:19.000 Yeah, that would be chaotic, of course.

01:38:22.000 For how long, though?

01:38:23.000 Ten years?

01:38:24.000 I don't know.

01:38:25.000 How long?

01:38:26.000 I mean, once everybody got in.

01:38:27.000 Yeah.

01:38:28.000 That would be bad.

01:38:29.000 And then other people would go there.

01:38:30.000 Yeah.

01:38:30.000 I mean, what if United States and Mexico came to a deal and they said, listen, wasn't there a thing that they were going to do?

01:38:37.000 There was a North American agreement.

01:38:39.000 There was like, they were trying to do that with the United States.

01:38:42.000 Set up a single currency.

01:38:44.000 Yes.

01:38:45.000 A lot of conspiracy theories around the Amero.

01:38:47.000 Yes, there was something like that.

01:38:49.000 They were going to do it with Canada. 0.62

01:38:50.000 We're all going to become one nation.

01:38:52.000 I could see it with Canada, but maybe not Mexico.

01:38:55.000 Well, look, we could all spread all the good around.

01:38:58.000 Yeah.

01:38:59.000 And then also, look, Mexico's got some awesome spots.

01:39:01.000 Wouldn't it be great if U.S. industry moved in there?

01:39:03.000 And lithium.

01:39:04.000 Yes, and lithium.

01:39:05.000 Maybe that's going to help.

01:39:06.000 Well, Columbia did a great job in eradicating all the problems with narcotics.

01:39:13.000 Well, not all of them, because they still have a guerrilla group down there that recently, the FARC, that went...

01:39:22.000 Amnesty, and then they got active again.

01:39:24.000 But there's still a lot of cocaine being produced there.

01:39:27.000 Oh, yeah.

01:39:27.000 Yeah.

01:39:28.000 But it's nothing like Win Escobar?

01:39:30.000 No, no.

01:39:30.000 What did they do?

01:39:31.000 Well, they were facing just a few criminal groups, large ones, and Mexico is facing a lot of them.

01:39:39.000 That's interesting.

01:39:41.000 And they have the U.S. right next door that is pumping money into the issue directly.

01:39:46.000 They don't have to fly in.

01:39:47.000 No.

01:39:48.000 Yeah, it's not a long plane flight.

01:39:50.000 It's a short walk.

01:39:50.000 Also, Mexico's a pretty big country.

01:39:52.000 I think people kind of miss that also.

01:39:54.000 It's a pretty big country.

01:39:55.000 It's a pretty big country.

01:39:56.000 Do you remember when there was a CIA drug plane that had, like, several tons of cocaine on it and it crashed because the Mexican government wouldn't let them land and refuel?

01:40:05.000 Yeah.

01:40:06.000 I mean, all sorts of conspiracy theories around that.

01:40:08.000 Well, that was a real CIA drug plane that had been to Guantanamo Bay at least twice.

01:40:14.000 Yeah.

01:40:14.000 Like, it was documented.

01:40:16.000 Yeah.

01:40:18.000 We're good to go.

01:40:45.000 Yeah.

01:40:47.000 Customs and Border Protection agents and just Homeland Security as an agency has the most corruption charges as far as all law enforcement agencies.

01:40:56.000 Do they really?

01:40:57.000 Yeah.

01:40:57.000 Federal charges for corruption.

01:41:00.000 Because they are on the border and there's a lot of money on the world.

01:41:03.000 Of course, that's why, right?

01:41:05.000 It totally makes sense.

01:41:06.000 And, you know, I mean, maybe it was the CIA guy that said, you know, can make some money through here.

01:41:11.000 Well, I mean, that was the whole Barry Seals thing, that Tom Cruise movie.

01:41:14.000 Was it called Made in America, I think?

01:41:16.000 Yeah, Made in America.

01:41:17.000 That was about bringing in drugs with cowboys that work for the CIA. Yeah, I mean, when I was working down there in Mexico, and I got to see different agencies that we would work with, All of a sudden, we're like, hey, can you guys just go look over there or just look over there?

01:41:34.000 What's going on?

01:41:35.000 And you would see some sort of...

01:41:37.000 Okay, let's go.

01:41:43.000 You don't know what's going on.

01:41:45.000 Plane lands, plane takes off.

01:41:46.000 Plane lands, plane takes off.

01:41:47.000 Nobody saw nothing.

01:41:48.000 Nobody saw nothing.

01:41:49.000 Money exchanges.

01:41:51.000 And you're just an agent.

01:41:53.000 You're just in the background.

01:41:54.000 Well, that's the thing that's so scary about what's going on with the cartels is that the quantity of money is so extraordinary now.

01:42:00.000 It's almost like they can do anything.

01:42:02.000 Yeah, I mean, they have their own cell phone networks in some places.

01:42:06.000 What?

01:42:06.000 Yeah.

01:42:07.000 What's it called?

01:42:08.000 It'd be good if I knew.

01:42:10.000 What kind of coverage they have?

01:42:11.000 They got a good plan?

01:42:12.000 Pretty good coverage in their areas.

01:42:14.000 I mean, they dismantled some cell phone networks in the past.

01:42:18.000 Also, like, whole cities with hidden cameras that are cartel-controlled to see who goes in and out of the towns.

01:42:26.000 Wow.

01:42:27.000 So it's sophisticated.

01:42:29.000 Oh, yeah.

01:42:30.000 So the Mexican government is working with uniformed agents patrolling in pickup trucks in the back.

01:42:38.000 And these guys are living in 2025 and using drones to surveil the patrols in the area.

01:42:47.000 And they're using their own cell phone network so they don't have to be worried about government tapping into their communications.

01:42:55.000 They're utilizing encrypted phone technology that is available now commercially throughout the world to get around some of these things.

01:43:03.000 And they're constantly evolving in how they work.

01:43:07.000 I remember the first time I was working in Baja and all the cartel guys would move around in suburbans dressed like federal agents.

01:43:16.000 And they would look exactly like the legit federal agents.

01:43:19.000 Or they were federal agents with the cartel guys.

01:43:21.000 So you would...

01:43:22.000 Oh my god.

01:43:23.000 So they'd be together.

01:43:24.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:43:25.000 And then we started working with the military and the military didn't give a shit who you were. 0.99

01:43:29.000 They would stop everybody, shoot everybody. 0.99

01:43:31.000 And the guys immediately saying, oh, now we're using taxi cabs to move around and different types of cars.

01:43:37.000 And we're going to paint the vans like taxi vans or we're going to move around in ambulances.

01:43:43.000 So they changed their tactics.

01:43:45.000 So we were always after these convoys of Suburbans and now they're doing something else. 0.57

01:43:51.000 That's how they evolved.

01:43:54.000 You're trying to go after them with a hammer and these guys are mosquitoes.

01:43:57.000 Does it make you want to move to Canada?

01:43:59.000 No, no.

01:44:00.000 No, not at all.

01:44:01.000 That's the furthest you can get away from all the chaos.

01:44:04.000 It must be going on up there as well, right?

01:44:08.000 I interviewed a smuggler, a coyote, for one of the articles I wrote.

01:44:19.000 Ask them directly, like, what do you think about the border wall and the immigration policies of this current administration?

01:44:28.000 It's good for business.

01:44:29.000 It makes it seem like it's harder to put people in the United States.

01:44:33.000 So, I mean, that wall is pretty hard.

01:44:35.000 Like, how do you do it?

01:44:36.000 I fly them to Canada and they walk down.

01:44:42.000 Well, we talked about it before that the border of the United States is a wall to Mexico.

01:44:47.000 The border from the United States to Canada is a giant clearing that's 100 yards wide.

01:44:52.000 It's real clear.

01:44:54.000 You can see it.

01:44:54.000 It's almost like they make it easy.

01:44:56.000 Hey, just go right here.

01:44:57.000 Yeah.

01:44:57.000 I mean, a lot of people that want to get into the U.S. You hear numbers from $8,000 to $15,000 depending on who you are, what you're trying to do, how you're trying to get up here as far as being smuggled up.

01:45:11.000 And he's like, Mexican passport.

01:45:15.000 Get a Mexican passport.

01:45:16.000 If you're Mexican, we'll get you a Mexican passport. 0.85

01:45:19.000 We'll put $2,000 in an account somewhere.

01:45:21.000 So if they want to verify if you're financially solvent, they will check that and just fly to Canada and just walk down.

01:45:29.000 And that's what we do.

01:45:30.000 Well, Canada is super liberal now, too, with that Justin Trudeau guy.

01:45:33.000 Super liberal.

01:45:34.000 A lot of their business, as far as smuggling people, that's how they do it right now.

01:45:40.000 Instead of going through the desert, you know?

01:45:42.000 There is a lot of that going on now, too.

01:45:45.000 There's a lot of people from African migrants coming into Mexico, a lot of people in the Middle East as well, which is worrying for some people, coming in through Mexico trying to make their way up.

01:45:58.000 But it's pretty hard for these people now because there's a lot of security now on both sides of the border.

01:46:04.000 Mexican Guardia Nacional, and on this side of the border, things are kind of more stringent.

01:46:10.000 A lot of the people that claim asylum, like a lot of these Meyer Caravan members coming to the U.S. claim asylum and say, okay, here's your number to wait, but you're going to wait in Mexico. 0.83

01:46:19.000 So they get sent back.

01:46:21.000 Even if they're not from Mexico, they have to wait in Mexico. 0.99

01:46:23.000 Really?

01:46:24.000 Yeah.

01:46:25.000 There's a lot of these immigrant waiting encampments in places like Texas and even in Tijuana.

01:46:33.000 There's places where people get cross asylum.

01:46:36.000 Okay, here's your number.

01:46:37.000 You have to wait in Mexico. 0.95

01:46:38.000 They get sent back.

01:46:40.000 Yeah.

01:46:42.000 Man.

01:46:44.000 Are you hopeful?

01:46:46.000 Do you think this is going to work out okay?

01:46:49.000 When you mean this, okay?

01:46:52.000 This is what we're all talking about.

01:46:54.000 Is this going to become better?

01:46:56.000 A better situation in the future?

01:46:58.000 Or is it going to get more and more crazy?

01:47:00.000 Is the United States going to become like Mexico? 0.96

01:47:02.000 I think on a global scale, we're going to need each other before too long.

01:47:08.000 You guys are going to need Mexico. 1.00

01:47:10.000 And Mexico's going to need you.

01:47:11.000 There's going to be some sort of situation we're going to have to come together, probably.

01:47:14.000 You mean like a global war?

01:47:16.000 I don't know.

01:47:16.000 Could be.

01:47:17.000 Oh, Jesus, Ed.

01:47:19.000 Why are you freaking me out?

01:47:20.000 There's a lot of Chinese influences in industry in Mexico.

01:47:23.000 Yes.

01:47:24.000 As soon as Trump said, when Trump was going into office, he said, we're going to bring jobs back, this whole thing.

01:47:32.000 So a lot of American factories and businesses moved out of Mexico.

01:47:36.000 And then the Chinese moved in. 0.95

01:47:39.000 Well, that's what's dumb about short-sightedness, right? 0.95

01:47:42.000 Not understanding 4D three-dimensional chess. 0.89

01:47:45.000 There's a lot of moving pieces.

01:47:47.000 Yeah, and people can say whatever they want about the United States.

01:47:53.000 American companies in Mexico are pretty good companies, and they're pretty good with their workers, and their ethics are pretty good.

01:47:58.000 A lot better than China. 0.98

01:48:00.000 A lot better than China. 0.98

01:48:02.000 It's a different game.

01:48:06.000 Again, you see these influences going into Mexico because they realize that Mexico is a valuable place for them to have influence in.

01:48:15.000 Especially with what you're talking about with lithium.

01:48:18.000 With battery technology and green technology becoming in the forefront of American culture right now.

01:48:24.000 Everybody wants electric cars.

01:48:25.000 All these manufacturers, Ford, Mercedes, they're all coming out with electric cars.

01:48:29.000 Porsche's got an electric car now.

01:48:31.000 Yeah, I mean, that's a big deal.

01:48:33.000 Yeah, they need those batteries.

01:48:34.000 Yeah, that's the next oil type situation is going to be lithium.

01:48:40.000 And that's right next door.

01:48:43.000 So I think, again, I think as a second largest consumer of American products in the world is Mexico, second largest.

01:48:53.000 So economies are intertwined.

01:48:55.000 We have a lot of Americans living down there.

01:48:57.000 There's a lot of blood ties within the country.

01:49:01.000 Of course Americans don't want America to be Mexico. 0.99

01:49:04.000 And of course a lot of Mexicans want Mexico to be more like America.

01:49:09.000 That's what would fix things.

01:49:12.000 We're increasing the opportunities and making Mexico a better place.

01:49:17.000 Yeah.

01:49:17.000 We need to make some Make Mexico Great Again shirts.

01:49:20.000 Yeah, and get in fights at the airport. 0.97

01:49:23.000 I mean, really, if we're connected to Mexico, if Mexico was like Canada, where, you know, like, Canada is fucking wonderful. 0.74

01:49:32.000 You go over there, there's amazing cities, it's great, it's safe, it's clean.

01:49:37.000 If we can make Mexico like that, then it would be better for everybody, including Mexico, including the United States, everybody.

01:49:45.000 Post-Line 11 at the border, you could see how businesses started failing in San Diego because it became harder to cross the border.

01:49:55.000 Interesting.

01:49:56.000 There's a symbiotic relationship with some of these border towns.

01:49:59.000 Specifically, California is very dependent on some border towns in Mexico.

01:50:03.000 Yeah, you ever see that documentary, A Day Without Mexicans?

01:50:06.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:50:06.000 Just shut this whole fucking place down, man! 1.00

01:50:09.000 There's nothing going on without Mexicans here. 1.00

01:50:11.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:50:11.000 That's why anti-Mexican racism is some of the dumbest racism in all of the United States, but particularly for California. 1.00

01:50:17.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:50:18.000 It's so stupid. 1.00

01:50:20.000 I got to see how in places like Fallbrook, California, where the avocado capital of the world are cutting down all the avocado trees. 1.00

01:50:32.000 Because there's a drought and there's nobody to pick them.

01:50:35.000 Really?

01:50:36.000 No one to pick them?

01:50:38.000 There's less people coming up and it's harder to maintain.

01:50:43.000 They hire illegals. 1.00

01:50:45.000 Holy shit! 1.00

01:50:46.000 These farms need to organize. 0.99

01:50:48.000 Start working on border control.

01:50:52.000 I don't know, man.

01:50:54.000 I'm one of those people that believes in borders, but I also believe if you're a hardworking person who wants to do better, you should have an opportunity.

01:51:04.000 And I don't think a lot of people, particularly poor people that aren't very well educated, there's not an opportunity.

01:51:11.000 There's no reason for them to be over here.

01:51:12.000 So if they apply for United States citizenship, well, why do you want to come here?

01:51:17.000 Well, I want to come here for opportunity.

01:51:18.000 Well, what do you have to offer?

01:51:20.000 You know, I'm a hard worker.

01:51:21.000 Well, there's a lot of hard workers.

01:51:22.000 I mean, that's really the attitude.

01:51:24.000 Yeah.

01:51:24.000 You know, and I think we all just got, I mean, me, I got lucky.

01:51:28.000 I got lucky my grandparents came here.

01:51:30.000 I got lucky.

01:51:31.000 That's all it is.

01:51:32.000 It's just luck.

01:51:33.000 And to deny that and to deny these other people this opportunity, there's just got to be a way to filter out bad people.

01:51:40.000 Yeah.

01:51:40.000 Maybe as technology gets better and we can recognize bad people better.

01:51:44.000 Yeah.

01:51:44.000 I mean, I went through a bunch of questioning.

01:51:47.000 I looked at my background.

01:51:49.000 I got a lot of questions for what I used to do.

01:51:50.000 Right?

01:51:51.000 I got a looks and it's fine.

01:51:52.000 And I was like, I didn't do anything wrong.

01:51:55.000 So, like, I'm here.

01:51:56.000 It's fine.

01:51:58.000 But, you know, there's a lot of people like, again, the Luna, Garcia Luna was here on a green card and he got nabbed when he went to process his full citizenship.

01:52:10.000 So he was here for a long time.

01:52:12.000 Wow.

01:52:13.000 He should have just stuck with a green card.

01:52:15.000 I would have kept quiet probably.

01:52:17.000 That's why he's in jail, right?

01:52:19.000 He lied to an immigration agent.

01:52:22.000 That's one of the charges he has on him.

01:52:23.000 Oh, wow.

01:52:24.000 Right?

01:52:25.000 So it's pretty interesting that people like him have spent a long time up here.

01:52:29.000 Things like open secrets and...

01:52:33.000 Yeah, I mean, again, not all Mexicans are good guys. 1.00

01:52:37.000 Not all humans are good.

01:52:39.000 Yeah, I know.

01:52:40.000 Yeah.

01:52:40.000 So, you know, hardworking people come up here.

01:52:44.000 I got some of the people that I've met out here that are kind of on the same boat as I am, fresh in the country, you know.

01:52:51.000 Doing manual labor, construction, working at Kentucky.

01:52:55.000 I met a bunch of guys that were working on the Kentucky Derby or the horse stalls around them, all Mexicans.

01:53:02.000 You can smell the tortillas.

01:53:04.000 The good food is usually, you can smell, you know where they are.

01:53:08.000 Dude, there's a place, if you're hungry, there's a place, I don't tell anybody the name because I don't want to fuck it up.

01:53:13.000 Okay. 0.87

01:53:13.000 There's a place down the street from here that every time you go in there, Mexican soap opera's playing, nobody speaks English, the food's off the charts. 0.87

01:53:21.000 That's how I know.

01:53:22.000 Lengua tacos.

01:53:23.000 Oh, yeah.

01:53:24.000 Lengua quesadillas.

01:53:25.000 Yeah, make organ meat great again.

01:53:27.000 Yes.

01:53:27.000 That's another thing.

01:53:27.000 That's what I'm talking about.

01:53:29.000 More organ meat in New York.

01:53:30.000 Don't throw away the tongue.

01:53:31.000 No.

01:53:32.000 Don't throw away the tongue.

01:53:33.000 The tripe?

01:53:34.000 Yeah, tripe.

01:53:35.000 That's pretty good.

01:53:36.000 Dude, I love liver.

01:53:37.000 I eat heart and liver.

01:53:39.000 That's another weird thing.

01:53:40.000 I see all the stuff you throw away from the animals.

01:53:42.000 I know.

01:53:42.000 They've never had menudo.

01:53:44.000 Oh, that's sad.

01:53:46.000 This place up here has menudo.

01:53:47.000 Oh, it's off the charts.

01:53:50.000 Best hangover food in menudo.

01:53:52.000 Menudo, right.

01:53:53.000 How does that work?

01:53:54.000 There's like a science behind that.

01:53:56.000 You know, organ meat.

01:53:57.000 I don't know.

01:53:58.000 There's a lot of nutrients in it, basically.

01:53:59.000 A lot of nutrients get stored in organ meat.

01:54:01.000 And it's a soup, so you get the rehydration from that.

01:54:04.000 Yeah, and it's like a common thing in Mexico about liver, specifically.

01:54:08.000 I grew up on a pig farm, and my mom would have this rule, if you killed it, you have to eat it. 1.00

01:54:15.000 So I killed a rattlesnake once, and I was peeling it, and the liver of the rattlesnake was like a treat that she would give us, right?

01:54:24.000 Really?

01:54:24.000 Raw?

01:54:25.000 Raw.

01:54:25.000 Woo!

01:54:27.000 Yeah, it's pretty good.

01:54:28.000 Well, my mom was pretty hardcore. 1.00

01:54:30.000 My God, it sounds so.

01:54:32.000 Yeah.

01:54:32.000 But listen, man, thanks for coming here and dropping knowledge.

01:54:34.000 We really appreciate you.

01:54:36.000 And again, Ed Manifesto is your Instagram page.

01:54:39.000 Yeah, Ed Manifesto.

01:54:41.000 Please, everybody, sign up.

01:54:42.000 Go follow him.

01:54:43.000 Check it out.

01:54:44.000 Get yourself educated. 1.00

01:54:45.000 Find out what's going on and tell Instagram to go fuck themselves. 1.00

01:54:48.000 What they're doing is rude. 1.00

01:54:51.000 That's it.

01:54:51.000 Yeah.

01:54:52.000 Thanks, brother.

01:54:52.000 Appreciate you, man.

01:54:53.000 Thank you.

01:54:54.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - January 08, 2020

Joe Rogan Experience #1408 - Ed Calderon

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