#23 Luis Chaparro - Inside the World's Deadliest Cartel 02:01:54

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When people ask me like, "Why do you do what you do? Why do you embed with those guys? Why do you go and talk to them? Why do you risk your life going to them?" I'm not stupid. I mean, I get scared as well. I mean, it's not like I don't get scared and I want to go with them and help them. I get fucking scared. It's scary to be around them because you never know what's going to happen. Yeah, I mean, I think most people think that a heroin addict is a bum on the street

Heroin addicts are doctors, lawyers, dentists, cops, everybody. That was a setup. That was a... I mean... China is trying to achieve global domination and they're going to achieve it. As sophisticated and as smart as these cartels seem to be, they're inserting these chemists. A source told me that there is a new thing a thousand times more powerful than fentanyl.

And it's hard to even find it in the news. I had to call a doctor, call a proper chemist to learn about those stuff. And it's called...

Luis! Ryan, how are you doing, man? Good, man. It's great to see you again. It's good to have you back. I mean, it seems like it was a long ago, but it wasn't even that. I think it was only like six months-ish. Yeah, six, nine months, something like that. Six to nine months. It felt like a lot. Well, you're going to be the first person to officially be on the show two times. I really appreciate that, man. That's interesting, especially...

Especially because of these few months I've been doing a lot of stuff

Yeah, you've done so you've done so in your recent trip to Mexico you went and You went to a fentanyl lab where they turn is it paste? It's a it's appeals these blue m30 pills, but they turn the paste into the pills that are right rest the press the paste and basically get it ready for export yes, and you went to the Sonola cartels

Training camp, tactical training camp. You were there. How long were you there? Just for a night. Just for a night? And then you partied with one of the head honchos. Yes. My birthday is January 19th. So I happened to be on my birthday, my 35th birthday in Culiacán, Sinaloa.

And I ended up partying with some of the Mayo Zambada people. That was pretty interesting. Yeah. I mean, not as interesting as I thought it was going to be because they're still...

regular people but it was interesting to to hang out with these guys you know on my especially on my birthday yeah that was crazy well something you did do to prove that you were down there which i wasn't sure how i kind of i was like oh man yeah you put my vigilance elite swag on cartel and i was like man that's cool he's like really down there doing it but i was like yeah

The cartel is repping my brand right now, but I appreciate it. You know what I mean? I appreciate it for what it is. Man, it was just only, you know, I was trying to do like a joke between us, you know. I never published that because I don't know if you want it to be, you know. You will feel that way, like, okay, my brand is now associated with those guys. And it was something just because I had the hat on that day, that night when we went out.

I took it to Culiacan and one of the guys was asking me like, "Man, they're gonna know me because of my hair." One of the cool guys in the Fenton Lab. He asked me for sunglasses, which I didn't have, but another man there had dark sunglasses. And then he asked me for the cap. And I was like, "You know what? This might be interesting." So yeah, by all means, go ahead. And I never, didn't even tell him what the brand was about or anything.

I was just like, "Have at it. You like it?" And he was like, "Man, this is pretty good." And he saw like, I don't know if the tag and he was like, "This is a pretty good one."

And I'm like, you can keep it. So now there's a vigilance elite cap around that. Yeah. No, no worries. At first I was like, oh, this party isn't going to go good. But you know what? Like, I appreciate it. And if people take it the wrong way, that's on them. Yeah, man. I mean, and it was only, you know, meant to make like a... It was completely...

unplanned. He wanted to have a cap because of his hair, because he had color hair. And I just like thought it was gonna be funny. So that's why I didn't post it anywhere. I just like send it out to you, you know, like, hey man. Well, I'm gonna put it up right now. Okay, that would be cool. Yeah, I'm gonna put it up right now. And since you gave all my swag away to cartel members...

I got you a little restock. Oh man, thank you. Thanks a lot man. I was just telling you I had a bunch of stickers all over my laptop and some of the people now is getting to... Well, I was always very praised at the airport in El Paso. I was like, oh, are you going to the show? Is that your friend? I'm like, I'm actually going on the show. He's like, no way, I follow that guy. I think he was a CBP officer.

at the airport and he was like super stoked about your show that's awesome that's pretty cool man these gummy bears well if he's still there when you get back tell him i said hello yeah definitely i'm gonna hide this from my kid man keep them for my for myself all the bags and thanks for

I promise this won't end up... Hey, whatever you need to do with it. If it gets you out of a pinch, use it. This will not end up in cartel hands, man. No worries. Thanks. Thanks a lot, man. I really appreciate it. Yeah. But before we kind of dive deep into what you've been doing, I'd like to...

So Patreon are my top supporters and they basically support us and that's what enables us to do the show and everything that we're doing. So I promised them that I will ask a question and then after this, if you're okay with it, I'd like to do a full Q&A. They got a ton of questions for you. Sure, man. But I thought this one was pretty good. This is from Jonathan Bush.

And basically what he's asking is how many regular folks in Sinaloa are dependent on the cartel for jobs, especially the nonviolent jobs. And then he wants to know if the cartels...

In any way or helping the locals down there by building schools or anything of that nature. So it sounds like are they doing kind of like what Pablo Escobar used to do back in the 80s? Yeah, I mean, it's hard to tell how many of them are, but I can tell you there are a lot of people relying on cartel jobs. As you might know, Mexico is not doing great economically. There's a lot of...

like bad paid jobs, you know, underpaid and, and there's, there's no, a lot of jobs. That's, that's why many, many people was trying to get into the U S as well. Uh,

We saw an economic migration back in the 2000s and now it's coming all over again because of the lack of jobs in Mexico. But guess what? Cartels are stepping in to fill that gap of jobs and they're paying not too bad. I mean, they're paying way better than a factory or whatever regular job you can get in Mexico. Of course, it has a lot of risks embedded with it.

But there's a lot of people, especially Sinaloa and now Michoacán.

Those places, man, are filled with nonviolent jobs, which might mean they have these guys called operators. And what they do is they listen to radio frequencies from the police or from Mexican military. And they reply on that. They record the whole frequencies, the whole messages. And they keep repeating that on to cartel frequencies.

Oh, and that's in an office, you know, with weather and everything good. And they get paid well. They get like a thousand pesos a month, which is amazing.

I mean, it's shitty, but not too bad for an uneducated Mexican. A thousand pesos a month would be about $250. It's about $500. So, I mean, a month, it's not too bad for an uneducated Mexican in rural areas. It's actually pretty good. Alcones, these guys who are basically lookouts, just stepping in heels and waiting there for months, repetitively.

reporting everything they see around money launders, the people who takes out money from extortions or kidnappings, you know, they get paid like 20% of the amount of the ransom.

Usually women, you know, usually old women that can go into a store, you know, like a money express or that kind of stuff where they can get out money and then break it to the cartel. There's a lot of that stuff going on. Even people who have like small restaurants and they have to take out food for a big army out in the woods in Michoacán or in Sinaloa, they get paid well because, I mean, they get compensated on top of their payment for the service of food, you know.

Wow. There's a lot of people, man, that relies on that. So the cartels are actually boosting the economy. Yes, they are a lot. What would a... If a baseline low-level cartel job, nonviolent, pays $500 a month, what would a baseline civilian...

Somebody making an honest living, you know without being associated with the cartels. What would what would that be a month? Well, the baseline I think a month it would be like 200 150 bucks, you know, so I mean in Mexico on their income Yes, Mexico you can consider wealthy if you're earning 30 30 thousand pesos which is

$1,500 a month. That's like though, you know, you rank as wealthy. So imagine that. I mean, you can't make a living out of $1,500 in the US. You know, it's too low. It's too low of an income. But that means that you're kind of wealthy in Mexico if you earn that. So...

So, yeah, I mean, imagine that I'm talking about like someone who studied and has a university and works at a proper place, maybe in government or some stuff like that. They'll be the top 1%. Exactly. Wow. There's a lot of people obviously earning much more than that, like business owners and, you know, but that's like the average, you know, like the average people who has a family and everything. It's around $1,500, $2,000 a month.

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I think the top 1% in the US is considered $100,000 or more, I believe. That may have changed. That's a huge gap. Well, it sounds like they don't have very many options when it comes to the job market. Exactly. And the other thing that he asked is if they're helping out people. And I mean, I wouldn't really call that help because it's coming from

file in place from Apollo I mean the same harm that they're doing that's it's unbalanced with the help there there yeah I would call it like what aid maybe

And it's a strategy. I mean, it's not even that they're building schools because every Christmas, for example, they will take out food on these nice baskets of food with a message from El Mencho, from Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, or from Mayo Zambada, or even still, even behind bars from Permeable Chapel. And also these baskets...

filled with, I don't know, meat and cans of food and some money, you know, tres mil pesos, three thousand bucks, which is around 150 bucks. They will say, like, they will go to the rural areas and deliver a bunch of those baskets. And so, like, this is from the viejon, you know, this is from the boss. It depends on who the boss is around that area, so...

He's won in hearts and minds. Yes. Very old tactic. Very old tactic. They're trying to earn social basis, you know, and to take it away from government. That's basically what they do. What do the locals think of that? Do they fall into it? Yes. Yeah, yeah, you have to know that.

Most Mexicans around rural areas like that They're not as educated to know that that's a tactic that that it's it's a plan They just think that these people they're doing harm, but they're not harming us You know, they feel like okay We know they are at war with the government But they are earning social basis because most of these people think like you know what the military what is the military doing for us? Nothing. They just come here kill us

Beat us rob us, but these guys are actually bringing in help. They build a school. They're giving a basket since Christmas Baskets in I don't know In every holiday. Yeah Protecting us taking care of us. That's that's the feeling that happened. That's obviously dangerous for for any country in the world, you know, because that's that's how Insurgencies are born basically. Yeah. Well, let's dive in. Where do you want to start? You want to start? What did you do first? I

In Culiacán. In Culiacán. Well, what I did was I was trying to put up a story about these blue pills, these M30 blue pills popping up in the U.S., that they used to be heroin pills, and now they are switching to fentanyl. Many of the people, many of the users, they don't even know that there's fentanyl now, which is like a thousand times more powerful than heroin.

So there's a lot of overdoses all over the US because of these blue pills. Canada too. In Canada too, yes. And now Mexico as well. It's getting real big in Canada as well. So I wanted to learn like what, who's making these pills, what's in it, why, how do they learn to switch from heroin to fentanyl?

So I called my source in Culiacan and asked him like if I can embed with him and he told me one thing that now things are different in Culiacan with El Chapo out and with the US raising the amount of the money they want for the Chapitos. It's like five million for each of the sons of El Chapo.

and also for the brother of El Chapo and for Mayo Zambada. So the US is stepping up, at least in sending out a message that they're going after them.

So he told me like, this time is different. This time you won't see, you know, the Lambos out in the street, all the flashy people. You won't see like the armed people just like driving in pickup trucks and the labs. Because the last time I was there, they had like a huge lab in outdoors. And remember we shared that the last time. Now everything is inside and small apartments, residential areas, you know, they have a facade, you know, like the coop.

The cook has to make it seem like he has a family. So his wife gets home every night. They invite over neighbors so they know that nothing's going on in that residential area. But behind doors, they're cooking food.

So are you are you saying that they've moved everything from out in the woods or out in the bush it to? Indoors or this is the next step in the process. No, they moved everything there. So it's complete They've already restructured their entire fentanyl operation Yeah, the entire like criminal operation everything now the order is like you cannot go out with a Lambo You know with flashy cars. Everybody's gonna move in Nissan Versa's and like family cars like that and

If you want to carry weapons, you're no longer allowed unless you're doing an operation You're no longer allowed to go out with a case in the streets You're gonna have a handgun, you know, like a 9 millimeter or some stuff like that Laboratories are gonna be indoors and smaller quantities but more laboratories. They've moved it under completely underground. Yes. Well looking at

Looking at this new operation, it looks a hell of a lot more sophisticated than what you showed us last time. Definitely, man. I mean, it feels less sophisticated because, of course, when you have footage from a lab outdoors, which is like a huge lab cooking out of a huge pot,

And now you go to a house and they have like this small pot and they're just like one cook there and you will see it seems like nothing's really happening here. This is not even attractive for news, you know? Because it looks like very small. But when they tell you like we have a lab here and then another there and then another one there and then another one there and you see like they have up over 200 fucking labs around the city.

They were like, wow, this is even a bigger operation, but just very fragmented. And that works as well for them because if they get a lab, they won't lose that much money. They'll just move to another location and they will only lose one lab out of a fucking 200. So that works for them. Man, these guys are good at... Yeah, they move quick. They move fast. They get orders. Yes. And they show me...

a voice message they got from what they say was El Viejon, which is Mayo Zambada. I can't corroborate it was El Mayo, but his people were telling that this was a message recently from El Mayo calling everyone because they said like, I don't want to see you with cameras. I don't want to see you posting stuff in social media. I'm paying you to be warriors, to cook and not to be YouTube stars.

So he prohibited all cameras around the place, all like, you know, like videos and clips. So that was targeting me directly. That was affecting me directly when I, this last time I was there. So they were like pretty nervous, pretty skeptical about taking me out there with a camera. So what they wanted to do is like, we're going to record everything on my cell phone and then share it to you. And I'm like, no, that's not going to work for me. I need to, I need to be able to record at least on my own phone, you know?

And yeah, they said okay after negotiating a bit, but yeah apparently If they don't want anybody if they don't want any of this getting out Why would they allow you how does it work when you call your contact? Is that run up the chain to?

Is that basically run through an approval process? Yes. Different levels have to approve that you're coming in? Exactly, but not all the way up. Otherwise, I will never be able to go inside on these operations. These guys trust me because I've been talking with them for eight years now. They know I'm not putting them at risk. I'm never sharing their information. I'm never sharing their names, their whereabouts. I just go for what I go. And when they say something like,

you know what leave these out or can you change my voice or can you hide my face because i noticed you moved the cell phone and then you caught a little bit of my face i will just do it you know because i don't want to be in bad terms with them especially with something that it's not going to be useful you know what i mean i wouldn't be any of any use to me to share who these guys are you know everybody knows the military knows um

The other traffickers knows who these guys are and they're still operating and that's for a reason. They have their own arrangements and

I'm not going to get in the middle of that shit, you know? I just want to tell a story and say, like, this is the reality. When you're talking about fentanyl, this is what you're getting. When you're using M30 pills, this is how they're made. Because I posted the video on my channel, a small video, and I had a guy say, like, man, I think I'm stopping using that stuff now that I know exactly where this shit is coming from.

Because it looks like all super unhealthy, of course. I'm just curious, before we dive into production, are they aware that this footage is going to be on this show?

Not not specifically on this show, but they know that I was gonna share that for for news Did they see your last show here? They see they saw that yes. I mean many of them don't speak English They just asked me what was that about and I told him that this was a YouTube channel I of course told them that you had an extensive background in military and that that was pretty cool and they were like and my guy was like

"Do you think it's tracking you when you come here?" And I'm like, "No man, I don't think so." And they're like, "Okay, all good." And obviously they ask questions. They ask me like, "What are you doing? What is this for?" Like a German that I met recently and we went to Culiacán

they had her investigated, you know, because I told them, like, they're Germans. Then they came back at me and said, like, well, they're Germans, but they live in the U.S., man. They're not Germans. They're from the U.S. And I'm like, oh, shit, how do you know that? And they're like, we investigated them. Who were they? And, yeah, they're out of Washington, D.C.,

And I'm like, wow, it seems like you have a good team. So, yes, I mean, they know that I obviously, if I go there and I have my phone out, that's for sharing. Okay. Yeah. Because a lot of stuff they ask me to leave out, a lot of stuff. And sometimes I push the line, you know. Sometimes I do push the line and say like, hey, man, I need to record this. And they're like, no, no, no. And I'm like, man...

Trust me on this one. I'm not gonna share location or anything like on my way there They're like no way you can film your way there and I'll yeah, but I need some road shots You know to edit on my story and they're like you can do that somewhere else, but not here interesting Okay, so sometimes I have to you know do road shots not there, but on any other highway. Yeah Interesting well, let's let's get into production. Yeah, so I

First, the first place I went into was a residential house. We went in by night, like 10 p.m.,

And they had everything set up in that first laboratory. It was not a laboratory properly. That was first like a packaging station. They have everything sealed back to you vacuum. They had some detergent to wash the bags so they won't smell. They have a bunch of different stuff.

And the cooks explained to me that everything that he was packing there was going to go to the border of Mexicali or Tijuana to get smuggled into San Diego, Calexico and then way up into the US. So I asked many questions down there like, "Why did you start doing this job?" And he was like, "Well, I'm an engineer and I don't get that much of money from being an engineer." And then a friend of mine who was into this

He told me that if I wanted to get involved in cooking pills, that was not dangerous, that I'm not going to be on the front lines or involved in any violent environment. Did you say cocaine pills? No, fentanyl pills. Oh, okay. I might have said cocaine pills, right? Do they have cocaine pills? No, I don't think so. I didn't think so either. No, fentanyl, the M30s.

So he was like, and how much are they going to pay? And they paid him around 500 grand a month, which is not bad. $500,000 a month. No, no, no, I'm sorry. No, 5,000. 5,000. 5,000 bucks a month. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, it's not bad. You know, in Mexico, that's like the...

10,000, 100,000 pesos a month. He's doing well, man. I mean, that's a lot of money for a Mexican on his level. And so they brought in a Chinese chemist. Same story as the other lab I went the last time. They told me again about this Chinese chemist coming over. But apparently the other chemist who came over was teaching them to

Lays fentanyl with with heroin the quantities and how to take care of fentanyl And all that stuff, but right now they teach him how to do pills how to press pills how to test them for quality All that stuff so and I was like how that happened. It's like well. We had a translator between us this chemist was here for about three months and

Just showing me the process. He was like you don't get to ask questions. You just get to see and stay put. So I learned and took notes for three months and after three months he was like okay now it's your turn to cook. I'm not gonna say anything. I'm not gonna answer questions. You're gonna do a batch and we're gonna send it over to the US and if it works and if the people get we get good feedback then you're set and the Chinese chemist is out.

And he started cooking and apparently they sent off his package to the US. He made it well. They got feedback that pills were good. And he was like, okay, now you're our cook now. Man, it's...

Is this a whole other team of Chinese chemists? No, it's a whole other team, yes. A whole different group. Yes. Then the ones I told you last time, right? The outdoors thing. Yeah, that was a completely different team. Are the... Sorry, what is the pill? M35? M30. M30. Are those straight fentanyl? Straight fentanyl, yes. So they went from lacing heroin to fentanyl to now it's straight fentanyl. Straight fentanyl, yes. And this is all basically...

Drive from China. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They've got a great long game. Yeah, man. I mean, it's, it's interesting because they don't, they don't see, they, they don't really see the long run. They don't see the whole situation there. Cause I was like, why China? Why Chinese? And I'm like, I don't know. I'm just following orders. My, my boss got a hook of a man in China and I'm like, how, how does he get a hold of a chemist in China all the way from Sinaloa? You know,

And he's like, apparently a Mexican military member told him that this military member was posted in Manzanillo, which is the main port of imports from China, where the big containers come from China. It's Manzanillo, Colima, which is at a fucking war right now. And no wonder why. So this military was set up in that port.

and he somehow met this Chinese organization

bringing in precursors. That was a setup. That was a setup. China is trying to achieve global domination and they're going to achieve it. Yeah, they're succeeding. I mean, because you got to think, there's chemists all over the world, all over the world. It can't be that hard to find somebody that knows how to make fentanyl. I don't imagine it would be easy,

But you don't have to go all the way across the world to find a chemist. They're inserting these chemists into Mexico knowing that it's killing the population of the United States and Canada. Yeah, because those are the guys in charge of telling kooks

the quantities. And if the quantities are killing people in the US, that means the fucking quantities of the drug are being controlled by China. They come here and they say like, okay, you put this much amount of fentanyl and then you put this much amount of acetone and this much amount of alcohol and this much amount of something to make the paste. I can't remember what was that. And then you add...

The color the blue vegetable color to make the pill because different markets asks for Different colors, you know like in Chicago apparently they don't like that blue They are used to like sort of like a greenish peel. So they add like more yellow ish and then blue and if they're cooking for Los Angeles market that will say like okay. They wanted like dark blue. So we're gonna have like more blue and

So they have the whole... So it's the exact same substance, just different colors. Different colors. Because if people in the streets see like they're used to a greenish peel, then they see like a pink one. They'll say like, no, I don't know what this is. And they start getting suspicious of the peel and not selling enough. So they have to know exactly which market is used to which color. Well, that makes sense. So...

You've mentioned there's what 200 labs ish estimated 200 labs and where were you? One city, Culiacan, which is not even that big of a city, you know. So is each lab in charge of like a different city? No, I think each lab it's for a whole organization, which is the Mayo Zambada organization. Okay. Well, there's another one, which is in Aloha Cartel as well, which is the faction of those chapitos, the Chapo's sons.

and they're kind of like fighting to who's gonna get on top of the chain of the Sinaloa cartel um but now the US raising the uh the um it's not called ransom how do you call it it's a reward for los chapitos and and for el mayo zambada that kind of like make them stick together again they were like starting a fight and now that action was like okay we'll fight later let's stick together to survive this

And you cook your own thing, I'm going to cook my own thing. So they started cooking. But we're talking about each day, every day, his work is to produce 50,000 pills. 50,000 each day. 50,000 pills a day. One lab. Times 200. I have no idea what that is. I have no idea either, but that's...

That's why the US is getting these huge busts and that might be only 10% of the whole, you know, pills coming over the border. At least that's what a CBP officer told me. Do you have a calculator on your phone? 50,000 pills a day times 200. 50,000 times 200. That's 10 million. Times 365.

That's a number that I can't even calculate. That's like 3 billion and... I don't know. 3 billion 650 million fentanyl pills a year from one small city. Yeah. They're cooking all over Michoacán, Colima, Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. They're cooking all over, man. And I mean...

I could think that Culiacán might be one of the biggest producing cities. That's only me thinking because that's where the organization is based. There's only 352 million in the U.S. people. But addicts, they don't use just one pill a day. They use two or three pills a day. And I'm guessing there's a lot of more pills stashed for years in stash houses to keep flowing, you know?

Wow. That's a major problem. That's huge, man. That's huge. That's huge fucking contamination to our whole country. Yeah. I mean, I think most people think that a heroin addict is a bum on the street. Heroin addicts are doctors, lawyers, dentists, cops, everybody. Everybody's hooked on this shit. You know, you probably bump into...

50 of them a day, you know, they're working. My point is they're working professionals. This is killing everybody. Killing everybody, man. And it's a start. Yesterday before, no, on Monday, I talked to an organization that helps addicts in Tijuana. And what they do is basically they deliver needles, clean needles to addicts. So I said like, we're not going to stop this. So we're just going to share some clean needles.

So people stopped getting infected by a lot of stuff. And by doing that, they also did a research and they gather old needles from addicts during seven months. And from all the needles they gather in Tijuana, 70 to 80% had traces of fentanyl. We're talking about, and they don't even know. They think they're shooting heroin. And we're talking about the drug that stays in Mexico that don't even make it across the border and they had to sell it.

Because most of the drugs that the Mexican government sees and sell back in the street, they sell it back to cartels. So imagine how many heroin, let alone fentanyl pills, is getting into the U.S. laced with fentanyl.

I've been reading a lot about cocaine laced with fentanyl, weed laced with fentanyl. I have found, I haven't found no real evidence that that is happening. Um, when I talked to, uh,

So labs, cartels, organizations helping addicts, addicts themselves, law enforcement. I only get response, positive response from law enforcement in the U.S. that they found cocaine laced with fentanyl, which doesn't really make sense to me, to be honest, and doesn't make sense to anyone but to law enforcement in the U.S. So I guess it's a way that they're trying to scare people out of several drugs, see if they can de-escalate the consumption of fentanyl.

of drugs, that's my thought, that's my take. But what I have seen personally and learned from a lot of contacts is heroin laced with fentanyl. And in only one city in Mexico, 7 to 80% of the heroin was laced with fentanyl. So that's a huge problem. And just today, a source told me that there is a new thing a thousand times more powerful than heroin.

And it's hard to even find it in the news. I had to call a doctor and I had to call a proper chemist to learn about those stuff. And it's called, I can't even remember the name, but it's called like Nitesona or Nitesona or something like that. I'll share that with you so we can keep an eye on that because apparently that's a new wave. So it went from heroin to fentanyl to this and it's a step up every time. And now it's just starting. You know, I mean...

It's horrible that this is happening, but, I mean, you have two different organizations both getting a win here. You have China, who wants to weaken the United States population, which is happening at a record pace. And then you have them utilizing the cartels, and the cartels get the money. Yeah, exactly. So it's two goals being achieved at one time. Definitely, man. Cartels are making tons of money, I'm telling you. One of these appeals is...

The production cost is 50 US cents. That's it? That's it. And they're selling it for around $4 to $5 each peel. Wow. So the margin of each peel, it's huge. Imagine 3 billion peels a year costing each peel $5. That's a lot of money. So are needles becoming obsolete?

Needles, not necessarily because there's a lot of people still using heroin and shooting up heroin with fentanyl even if they don't know or they do know. Because there are some addicts that they know it's laced with fentanyl and they like it better because it's stronger. So they have to use less and have like a longer trip or high.

But there's a lot of people that they don't know. And they keep shooting it as if it was regular heroin. And they pass out and they fucking die. I mean, this year alone, I think the U.S. had, what, over 100,000 deadly overdoses? I'll bet it's a lot more than that. I'm unfamiliar with the numbers, but... There's something around those fucking numbers. And imagine that. I mean, it's killing the whole fucking population. But at the same time, it's getting a whole country addicted to it.

To a substance they control. So imagine what's gonna happen if they caught supply. A fucking revolution is gonna pop up in the US, man. There's a lot of people already hooked up on this stuff. So yeah, it's crazy and it's dangerous and it's very profitable for Mexican criminal organizations.

which I'm not calling them drug cartels anymore. I decided not to call them drug cartels because they are doing everything else but drugs. Drugs is just one part of their funding, to keep funding themselves. Would you say that's the top funding, their main source of revenue? No, I think their top funding will be getting around politics, setting up politicians and getting money from them.

basically that's their main funding right now. How are they making money from that? Because there was a time like maybe 10 years ago when there were still drug organizations

That they will get money from a politician to let them alone and let them work and, you know, like transit drugs through their city or stuff like that. So they pay the politicians. They used to pay politicians. They used to, you know, like bribe politicians, basically. So like, okay, I'm going to. So that was not an income. That was an outcome. You know, that was like, okay, I'm losing money to pay politicians. Still allow me to keep making money.

Now it's the other way around. Now they have control the whole fucking country. And now they're saying like, we had elections, I think last year or two years ago, and we had over 150 candidates killed during elections.

150 politicians killed in a single election period. Wow. That was only because cartels wanted to set up their own people. And that was a show of force. Like, if you're not stepping out, I'm going to leave you out of the equation by killing you and setting up my own people. So now they're setting up their own people, their own majors, their own governors, their own chief of police. So they don't have to pay them anymore.

So they're like, okay, you don't like it, I'm going to fucking kill you. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to set you up as a governor of this state and we're going to do business, both of us. You're going to give me all contracts for construction, for road work, for building government buildings, all the contracts, imports, exports, all of the government contracts, you're going to give them to me. I'm going to handle that. And that's making them shit tons of money because they're getting all government contracts.

Wow. Who's going to fight that? I wonder if the United States is going to follow suit with that. I just did an interview about all these politicians that are being paid off by China. I wonder if that's what comes next.

I don't know, man. I don't know, but it's getting out of hand. I mean, we're on their hands right now. Do you think it's reversible? I don't think it's reversible, to be honest. I would love to say yes, but there's no fucking... How will you make this backwards? How do you de-escalate the power of these people? And not only violent power, the corruption power, the power they have in politics, the power they have into economies.

You know, Mexican economy has a lot to do with cartels. The Mexican president keeps praising the money coming from remittances from the U.S. It's like, okay, we have hardworking men in the U.S. sending out remittances to Mexico. Guess what? Where does that remittance end up? In the hands of human smugglers. Because that's not remittances. That's money to pay smugglers.

So people can get their family out of the country and into the U.S. They have to pay smugglers, which is again cartel. So it is a coincidence that the higher number of remittances this year has to do with the higher number of immigration flux, you know, trying to get into the U.S.,

They moved exactly the same. Okay, we have more people coming trying to come to the US and we have more remittances. And when you cross those two numbers, they only make sense.

Wow. That's insane, man. Every single thing is related to cartel, to criminal organizations which are no longer cartel. This is so sophisticated. Yeah, they're becoming very, very, very, very sophisticated. It's fascinating to hear about it. When people ask me, like, why do you do what you do? Why do you embed with those guys? Why do you go...

And talk to them. What do you risk your life going to them? I'm not stupid. I mean, I get scared as well. I mean, it's not like I don't get scared and I want to go with them and help, you know. I get fucking scared. It's scary to be around them because you never know what's going to happen, you know. But it's fascinating to me to talk to those guys. How they...

How they switch strategy, how they think, how they understand a world that I'm trying to understand, you know, because I come from a good family, from a good neighborhood. I come from good places.

And I'm like, okay, this is how the economy works, you know? Yeah. According to what I read, according to what I interpret the world. Those guys have a different, a completely different interpretation of everything, of the world they see, of the economics. Very basic, you know, at some level, very, very basic, but at the same time, very sophisticated. Man, I got to, like, the only... I don't know how this ends. I think how it ends, just off the top of my head, is...

I think one cartel would have to dominate the entire country. And when that happens, maybe, maybe there will be, maybe it will become more peaceful. I don't know, you know, because there won't be so many, so much fighting in between the different cartels and it's one unit running the entire operation. Yeah. I don't see it any other way. I don't see it reversing. It's not reversing. I mean, this is not,

drug cartel operations now. This is, we're talking about a hybrid insurgency criminal movement. It's a hybrid between mafia, as we know mafia in Italy or Europe, like that kind of mafia, and insurgency. The people from Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, growing, they went from cartel

As you read in the manual of an insurgency movement, they went from small organization to earning social basis, to getting funding, to trying to destabilize government, to trying to digitalitimize. That's the correct word? Digitalitimize government? Illegitimize. Illegitimize government, trying to step in and now teaching official tactics to their people, you know?

Back then was like just get a fucking AK and let's start shooting. Now they have uniforms, military uniforms with Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación here, CJNG. They're driving armored vehicles. They have training camps. They're following the fucking insurgency manual. Wow. So it's no longer truck cartels. That's insurgency. And the tactics that Mexico is doing against them, it's counterinsurgency all the way.

trying to split them, you know, trying to get inside fights so they fragment into smaller cartels and then they can go in and break them out. Trying to earn the trust of social bases as well, trying to infiltrate rumors, like recently it's happening with the Carta Jalisco Nueva Generación. They recently had rumors about

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Yeah, I mean, the names are kind of like difficult because they have like, you know, Pedro Cero, a lot of numbers. But I'll share some with you and you can have a look at it. And they are propaganda, 100% propaganda. And they were the ones pushing the version that Almenchu is dead. And I'm like, so you're telling everybody your boss is dead?

How does that work? It doesn't really make sense. You will be the one saying, no, he's not dead. He's alive. And the cartel is alive. So I felt that was a strategy. And of course, that was a strategy to destabilize government, to make them think that a target was dead. But he wasn't. That was a misinformation campaign put up by Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación online. These guys are smart. They're learning from somewhere.

Wow. They're learning from somewhere. Now they hide IEDs, you know, like fucking landmines all over Michoacan. The Mexican government had to send a troop to find landmines, and they found in a single territory, single ranch, over 200 landmines. Like a cache of them, or they were already planted? They were already planted. They killed a farmer walking with his son around his farm, and one of the bombs went off.

Man. So, I mean, this is this cannot be longer called drug cartels, right? Drug cartels were Caro Quintero, you know, what we see in Narcos Mexico, the last season of Narcos Mexico. That was drug cartel. Those guys were just trying to make money out of, you know, shipping trucks into the US. These guys are after the control of the whole country.

They're experimenting with coca plantations in southern Mexico to leave the Colombians out of the equation. So they're like, if we get to get our own coca plantations, then we own the whole fucking business.

Wow, they're huge, man, they're huge and it's getting out of hand. And I think the only way I see this sort of reversible is if Mexico actually declares that this is a fucking war, you know, that we have a violence issue, a violence hybrid problem or issue in Mexico.

This is flooding into the U.S. and Canada as well. I mean, I think when people think of these organizations, they think they have borders. There are no borders. No borders. There are no borders. Not at all, man. Like, I mean, how many pills, how many cocaine, how many heroin is going through...

No borders area, you know, like the desert none none of it none of it even even the the infrastructure of the entire cartel I mean it has no borders. I mean, it's essentially a business powerhouse I mean Google has no borders Toyota has no borders. There are no borders man. And you know cartel has no borders everybody

the world is getting addicted to these pills. And you know it's crazy because if you follow my account on Instagram I'm posting everything in English because I write in English I write for US publications and I post everything in English and I follow a bunch of accounts from people from Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion from Mayo Zambada you know from criminal organizations and you will be amazed how many of those people speaks perfect English

I was like, what? They keep writing me in English and sending me voice notes in English. And I'm like, how do you know English? I mean, aren't you like from Cartagena School down in Michoacan? And he's like, no, no, no, no, man. I'm in Dallas. I'm funding those guys. I'm part of the country, but I'm set up in Dallas. This is what I was born. I have family in Michoacan. Or other guy like, no, I'm in some other place, you know.

Wow. They speak perfect English. They're funding the fucking cartels from here. They go back and fight. Go back, have an operation, get back to the US. That's what they do. And of course, I'm not calling names for obvious reasons because these people are trusting me with that information, you know, with stuff. And some of them, of course, are pushing an agenda because I get a lot of messages of people pushing an agenda on their own groups. But I also get a lot of people not pushing any agenda and just straight up saying...

There is no way to end this, so I'm joining. I'm fucking joining. There's no fucking way. There's a lot of people... Get on the train or get run over. I mean... Yeah. And the most common thought amongst them is, like, if I can do it, someone else is going to do it, so why not make a buck out of it? That's the most common way of thinking. I mean, I don't agree with it, but I definitely understand it. Definitely, yes. That's exactly how I feel. Yeah.

It's like, I'm not gonna agree on that, because if you stop doing it, and if everybody will think like that, you get defunded. Cartels get defunded. Yeah. But I guess that's a way of brainwashing themselves into working with a fucking violent organization. Yeah.

Well, let's move into the training camp. Yeah, that was pretty interesting as well. I mean, it was only a night. How did you get invited there? The thing is, I asked my contact. I mean, usually what I do is before I travel there, I ask him for what I'm looking to achieve while there. And he's like, okay. So that was not in the plan. The training camp was not in the plan.

The training camp came only after I bumped into another journalist in Culiacán and apparently they'd been scammed. Someone told them that we're going to be able to go to a training camp and do this and that and then nothing happened.

So we met each other and was like, "Okay, I'm a Charles Tzu and I'm a producer and this and that." And then we went off. I offered them like, "Okay, yeah, I mean, yes, for sure. Let's give it a try." Of course, I charged my regular fee as a producer for them. And I was like, "Yeah, I'll charge you this if you have this amount of money and then let's go. Let's try and do it. I'm going to call my contacts. Can't promise you anything." So I had a meeting in my hotel room with my source.

He always, even if he trusts me, he always scun me with a thing to make sure that I don't have cameras, microphones, all that shit. And I had a microphone in me from the production, but it was a lavalier. It was not hidden. It was...

And so this guy was still like started scanning me and he's like baby peeps and I'm like not events It's not a hidden microphone. They gave me wrong is from the production because I'm being interviewed all this stuff So I was like, all right

And I told him that these guys wanted in to a training camp. And he was like, "Yeah, let me call the chavalones, the youngsters, and see if they're willing to take us there." "Are they taking cameras?" And I'm like, "Yeah." And he's like, "No, just cell phones." And I'm like, "Undoable, man. These guys are a full TV crew, so we need a big camera inside." And he was like, "Okay, let's give it a try." And we went there. We went to the training camp, which was basically just a ranch on the outskirts of Culiacán.

with a bunch of people wearing tactical suits, you know, like military. A guy giving instructions. The instructions were basically how to properly grab an AK, how to shoot it,

Because they switched something which I don't know you might know they switch something out of the AKs to making what they call rafagos which it's making them fully automatic. It's a sear. Exactly. They do that at an armory. So they're teaching them how to use a different sort of or a fixed AK-47. So he was just giving instructions. The count of three...

You guys have to shoot at the same target or different targets. So we'll count. Una, dos, tres. And you will hear a bunch of them. There were like seven or eight of them.

Seven or eight kids like 20, 20 something years old. Do you know what they were training for? They were going to be deployed into Zacatecas, I think. Zacatecas or Durango, I can't remember. They're having a huge fight in that territory. So they were going to be deployed there to go and fight against another group, which was actually against Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación.

um and they were like the new trainees i guess um so yeah we saw that we saw them shooting how long is the training camp did you ask no i didn't ask but they only allowed me to be there for two hours okay and they had a bunch of other older people driving armored vehicles around that area just like surveilling and doing all that stuff do you have footage of this stuff i have footage only of the of the shooting range of the shooting um

And it's not great footage because it was way in the dark and we only had the lights from the pickup trucks pointing at them so I can actually film something. So the thing didn't go really well in terms of

what the TV production was expecting to see because they were expecting to see a proper, you know, US military training camp, you know? They were asking if we could do that by sunset because sunset light is better for TV and where were the ropes that were like, you know, where were like the... I mean, yeah. Hollywood. Hollywood.

Yes, they wanted to make everything look like Hollywood-like stuff. I mean, this is what you guys do for real, right? Okay, let's just make it all fake. Yeah, exactly. So, man, that was something. And so this part of the TV crew made a comment, and she said something like, you're supposed to be the most powerful organization in the world, and I'm not seeing that. So my contact kind of was like,

what are you talking about? This is what it is. And then we left. And then I was getting ready to go out to dinner in my room and my contact called me. So like, "Hey man, are you with this person?" And I'm like, "Well, that person is in the room, but it's not here with me in my room." And he was like,

"Can you both guys come downstairs and talk to me because I need to tell you something?" And I'm like, "There's no way, just let it go. I know you're angry about what this person said but just be cool, man."

And he's like, "Do you think I need that money?" Because I shared some of my money with him just because it was cool. That was part of the plan and I was like, "You know what? Fuck it. You can have a grant." Just go and have fun with your guys or pay some of your guys for the time or whatever. I was just trying to be cool with him in good terms.

And he was like, you think I need a fucking grand? And he started counting packs of hundreds. 10, 20, 30, he counted 40 grand. I have 40 grand with me right now. So let that person know that I don't need the fucking money to come and pick it up, please. And if she wants to see our power force,

just peek out the window. And I went out the window of the balcony and there was like 10 pickup trucks full of armed people in the parking lot of their hotel. And I'm talking it's a nice hotel. It's not any like sketchy motel or whatever. In the nicest area around Culiacán called Tres Rios.

And I was like, "Holy, man, you really need to deescalate this. Just fucking leave and it's all good." I mean, we weren't meant to disrespect you or anything. And he's like, "No, no, I'm cool with you, man. I'm cool with you." But your guys wanted to see power? Well, let them know that we're here.

And I'm like, no, you know what? So I called the production and said, like, this is happening. And they were, like, all scared. And we're like, well, should I call the embassy? The embassy. What's the embassy going to do? Put them on hold, maybe? Hold on. Well...

Like, should we call the embassy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like, you know what? Yeah, we'll send somebody right over to extract me from this, you know. Why are they going to send like a chopper all the way from Germany to Gulek? So I was like, I'm going to go downstairs and try to talk to my guy and...

Let's see what happens. And this guy was like, and what should we do? Should we call someone? Or she's like, just stay here and wait. Don't do anything fucking stupid anymore. You know, just stay here. I went downstairs and of course I was scared because that was the first time my contact was coming hard. You know, he's usually very fucking friendly. He's usually very service. You know, like he, it's weird because it seems, I mean, he's a, he's one of the fucking middle range bosses in Culiacán, you know,

But he's always very... How do you call it? Very... Accommodating. Very accommodating, yes. He's like, was it good? Did it work? Was the shot good? Is it useful for you? You know? He's cool like that. But now that was his dark side. It was being violent and aggressive and menacing and being a fucking bully, basically.

And I went downstairs and he's like, get in the car. And I went into his car and I was like, man, just be cool about this. I mean, they meant not disrespect. You have to understand I've never been in Mexico before, especially covering this kind of stuff. But he was hurt, you know? He was like, his ego was fucking hurt. So he was like,

Yeah, but those people are not my fucking boss. Who do they think they are? You know, I can get them fucking disappeared in a fucking second. I don't take orders from them. But I was kind enough to let them go into a training fucking camp. So what are you talking about? They don't believe we're a fucking huge organization? They think I'm bullshit? They think I'm lying? Wow. And I was like, no, man, no, no, not at all. Not at all. It went on for a while, for a good hour.

and yeah, after, afterwards it was like, you know what man, ah, fuck them. Just let them know that they're not longer welcome in Sinaloa ever. Um,

Anymore Wow, all right. Are we cool? Yeah, we're cool, man. We're good. I mean it's not with you I know you understand the shit, but that those guys you think that context gonna accommodate you again in the future or I hope so man I'm trying to go with trying to go on another stuff to make it Kylie with him with it with same organization and I reached out to him and he stopped answering for like three weeks and

Well, you just recently came back to me. Okay. And so with a different phone number and he was like, I'm sorry, I was out doing some shit. So I thought it was accurate, me too. So I was like, oh, shit, I lost a good contact there. Yeah. But no, apparently we're in good terms and I'm trying to go into Mexicali for another story. Wow. Back to the training camp. What...

So it was all... when you were there, it was all shooting? All shooting. Did you see the targets? Were they accurate? The fucking targets were like dirt little, you know, mountains. Oh, they weren't even... they didn't have targets? No, they didn't have targets. I guess they don't... I mean, there are only a few of them that know how to properly shoot targets and have tactics and stuff. Like their commanders, what they call "comandantes,"

Those are the guys that have a lot of knowledge on how to disassemble and assemble guns and all that stuff. But the rest of the guys, sadly, they're just what we call carne de cañon. They're like people who's going to basically send off to die in the front lines. So it's...

So the training seemed very basic. It was, here's a gun, this is how you manipulate it. Exactly. And that's about the extent of it. Yeah. They will give them the old AKs. The fucking oldest and, you know, more worn AKs you've ever seen in your life. Yeah. Like fucking falling apart and, you know. Yeah. And I was like, dude, I've seen you got some pretty good minis, what they call the minis.

some good different kinds of weapons. Why do you have these all day case? And he's like, these are kids that are going to die, man. I mean, and if we get captured by the other group, they're going to get our guns. We're not going to, I'm not going to send these kids out with some nice guns. Those fucking guns are for me and my people and the people who's taking care of it.

Wow. So there's definitely different levels of training. Yes. And that was the lowest? The lowest, yes. It was basically for kids that were going to be sent out to die in Zacatecas. Do you know how many kids are running through this training camp a week?

Is it a day worth of training? No, I think what they do is they train people on the go. It depends if they gather enough kids to train, they will have to go on training. But if there's like a week or several days that they don't recruit anyone...

they won't have a training. They're not as organized like us. Every Tuesday we have a training or whatever. He will get a call and say, "Hey man, I got another 10 or 15 kids."

He's telling me they're trying to get more kids, more people, because they need more firepower. Apparently it's grown huge and they need to put up a fight with them. I wonder why they're not, if they have the ability to train them to a higher standard, I wonder why they're not doing that because that would be...

I mean, when you say, well, I'm not going to give them good guns because they're just going to die. But if you gave them better guns and a higher level of training, then they would be more effective. Yeah, that would be more effective. But I don't think they grasp that. They're not there yet. Yeah, they think about numbers. They think about, like, you know, we need more people, even if they're not properly trained. And some of the psychiatrists I spoke with were kind of,

mad and disappointed that a lot of their guns get stuck or break during a fight. They're like, "They're sending us with this shit and my gun always gets stucked." - Jammed. - Jammed, exactly. And I'm like, "Wow, you should call management." "So you can get better guns."

But they're sent out to die. And the ones who are loyal to the cartel, the ones who kill more people, the ones who survive most fights, those are the ones promoted to commandants. Okay. And we're talking about... So basically, if you come back alive, you're probably getting promoted. Uh-huh. What does this war zone look like? How does the whole fight... Yeah, what is... If we were to go, I mean, is it...

Is it specific areas? Yes, they're trying to. What I know is they're trying to do some tactics like ambush. When I spoke to the people, and we'll jump into that maybe later, with the people of the Odemayo Zambada, one of their top sicarios, their 24-year-old kids. And what they do is they get intel that there's a group of the enemies of Cartel Jalisco. They usually don't go after governments.

When it's government, they just react. If the government starts coming over and shooting or trying to capture or trying to burn their harvests, they will react. But they usually don't go, even if they know where they are set up, they won't go after government. They don't provoke. They don't provoke. That's one of the rules I've seen they follow. And every single criminal organization, they usually follow those rules.

When they know where the enemy cartel is, let's say Carta Jalisco Nueva Generación, they gather some intel and they say like, you know what, they are in the outskirts of Durango, in the Sierra de Durango, in the woods.

This is sort of like their location we last saw the camp, so they can't be far from that area. Because we know they're sleeping by night, I mean by day and then moving by night. So tonight they should be around, I don't know, this range, you know.

And so they sent a bunch of soldiers to surround that mountain. So that means they stay two or three weeks walking because they walk. And when I'm telling you walk, they walk maybe from one city to another through the sierra, through the woods.

walking, sometimes using ATBs because they have like some houses of people who, and again, in an insurgency group, you have the aides, you know, that are not properly organization. They're not properly, they belong to the organization, but they are aides, meaning an old man or a family that has a couple of ATBs and they aid these guys to let them use the ATBs or their house to stay there for a couple of days.

So they have aids in several towns, you know, so sometimes they'll travel through ATVs or by horses and sometimes they'll just keep walking until they are positioned and say like, okay, this is sort of like the place we needed to be because these guys should be around this area. And on the footage I've seen from one of these soldiers' GoPros,

When they're around there, when they feel that they're around there, they will just wait and try to see if they are actually there. When they see they're there, most of the times they first watch them because they position over the top hills. But in some other times, these other cartels notice them first. So then a shootout.

breaks and when it depends on a group that makes it like if there are outnumbered that will just try to get away or they end up being all killed and then they gather some more guns, ammo, money I saw a fucking gruesome footage about a Carta Jalisco Nueva Granadacion member

Getting like an initial ritual. Like if you want to belong to these forces and stuff. And he was eating, I think it was a heart or a lung. I couldn't really tell because I didn't watch the whole fucking clip. But of a man they killed. Of a soldier they captured. And apparently that was a ritual they had. To eat the organs of a recently deceased person. Yeah. That's...

That's fucking brutal to watch. That was like, what the fuck are they doing? And yeah, he was like biting out of the fucking... I don't know if it's the heart or the lung. Most likely the heart. The heart, right? Wouldn't make sense. Have you seen these other war? Yeah. Really? Is it like a war tactic then? It's a thing that's been in...

around for a long time, you know. Yeah, that's what I thought because I think they're using that and that might point out to where they're getting trained from or intel from. It demoralizes the enemy, you know. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to do because another group when they captured... I don't know if you actually watch Vice documentaries. I mean...

They can be tricky in some other parts of the world, but when it comes to Latin America, they're very fucking accurate and good. So they did, some of my colleagues in Vice World News, they did this embedding with the Cartel Jalisco in Michoacán. And they interviewed a comandante called el M2M2. And he was a high up commander for Cartel Jalisco. A few weeks after that, they killed el M2 and they burned him alive.

And so I guess that's what they were doing, like trying to demoralize the enemy by capturing first the commander, second unknown and public commander who gave an interview to international news, and third by burning him alive. Wow. They were sending out a message. So yeah, that's basically how it looks. And there is this documentary called Sicari Warfare, if you looked at it on YouTube.

It's fucking amazing, man. It's good access to how an operation of cicadas look like. Okay, I'll have to watch that. It's pretty good. Pretty good, very recent. Do you think these cartels are going to keep one-upping? Yeah. You know, they ate the heart. Where does it end? Is the next guy going to eat the brain? Has that been happening, do you think? It's happening and it's stuff that I don't know if it's

If it's too gruesome to even talk about that shit, but the most recent thing I saw was they killed a woman. I don't know if she was part of the cartel or whatever, but apparently she was. She was pregnant. She was like seven months old, pregnant. They killed her, got the baby out and killed the man. I mean, that just makes my fucking skin crawl. It's...

It's another fucking level, man. It's another fucking level. And that's happening in a country right next to this one. Yeah. You know? And a country that is my country. It's... I can't fucking understand that shit, man. That was painful to watch. That was painful. I didn't watch the whole fucking... Yeah. I didn't even watch a second out of it because I read the description.

On what they send me and ask them like can you stop sending me gruesome shit? I'm not really into that But thanks for letting me know this is happening and people all over I have a bunch of groups on telegram and signal from different organizations and stuff and people keeps asking for those videos man people is getting fucking sick and yeah, but I People are like that. You know why they want to see when I when guys come on here and they talk about people they've killed or

And more, you get these weirdos that are like, ooh. Yeah, they like it. Can you post that? Yeah, yeah, exactly. What? They're like, anyone have the video of the pregnant woman? I'm like, why in the fucking world do you want to watch that, man? That's going to get into your brain. Yeah. I don't know. But yeah, I mean, it's escalating. It's escalating the intel and the tactical cartels or criminal organizations are getting there.

And now there is a fucking ridiculous race between the Mexican military and cartels. It's like a cold war in between the same country, you know? Because the Cartel Jalisco shows up with IEDs, and then the Mexican cartel shows up with, I don't know, big, huge fucking war tankettes. And then the Cartel Jalisco shows up with these armored vehicles, level 8 vehicles.

And then now the Mexican military shows up with a rocket launcher called the... I can't remember the name, but it's an old rocket launcher from the 50s. You know, as sophisticated and as smart as these cartels seem to be, it's all ego in the end, right? But that is just pure ego. If they really wanted to become effective and scare the shit out...

out of their enemy, they would utilize torture techniques. Because if I killed you right now and took your heart out of your chest and ate it, you wouldn't know the difference. Nor would you give a shit. But if I did things to you while you're still alive and left you alive and then the enemy came and found you and they saw that you've experienced all of that pain and you're still experiencing that pain, that's...

That's a different level. Are they doing that? I don't think they're doing that. I know that they do that to people they want to get info from, but not really like a show of force. I don't think they're still using that shit. Not that I know, at least. Not that I've seen. What I have seen is they capture family members, and that's how they break sometimes enemies.

This last Sunday, there was a huge massacre in Michoacán during a funeral in broad daylight. There was a guy from Carta del Jalisco. Carta del Jalisco is breaking up from the inside, and that's a counterinsurgency tactic put up by the Mexican government.

It's trying to break Cartel Jalisco into small pieces, you know. And it's working. It's working. It's fragmenting. So now the Cartel Jalisco is a huge fucking war inside, which we haven't seen before. But that happened to Sinaloa Cartel. The most powerful became several small factions. And now the most powerful is Cartel Jalisco, and it's becoming several small factions.

So a guy from Colima, from the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación, had a beef with another Jalisco Nueva Generación member from Michoacán from way back. Because this guy killed his brother and then this guy got revenge and killed his brother. And now they both became bosses on their own turf. So the mother of the guy from Colima died recently from old, 82 years old. And she had a funeral. The family put out together a funeral in Michoacán.

so apparently this guy called the higher bobs in the cartel calisco and said like hey man i need to go to my mom's funeral i'm going in with just a few men but i need your permission to go in without this other gang to me cartel said yes okay come over he did five minutes in the funeral 20 pickup truck showed up with this other guy they did a they had a standoff

They gathered all the people, put in a line, all the people in the funeral and they had a list of names of these guys people. So they took family members, some of them, and they took his soldiers and then someone shot a fire from inside the funeral and whole fucking hell broke loose.

After killing 17 people, they still had the time to clean everything. They cleaned with sweeps, with water, they cleaned the whole fucking bloodshed. They even tried to repair bullet holes out of the wall, and they took the bodies of the deceased out. And that's only because there is an order by the Mexican government right now to lower homicide rates.

And the government said, "We need to lower the fucking homicide rates no matter what." No matter what translated into criminal organizations on, "Okay, we're not gonna kill people, we're gonna disappear them." So now the number of people disappeared in Mexico is spiking up while numbers of homicides are waving down. Wow. And that was, that was impressive because there was like videos and clips of these guys cleaning the blood, piling the bodies.

Making as if nothing happened. The whole thing lasted for five hours. No authorities to be seen. They have professional cleaners. Cleaners. Yeah, they brought like a machine. You can see like a car wash machine, you know, splitting the streets. It's a whole other level of pain to have now. Damn. Let's take a quick break. How did you choose which internet service provider to use?

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And after that discussion about torture and what they're doing, I don't know if I want to go to lunch afterwards. Yeah, maybe not. But let's move into something a little lighter. So you partied.

Yes, I happened to to spend my birthday in Culiacán and I was sitting at a restaurant and I know a couple of friends El Enfermo, hi to El Enfermo, I wanna cheer to El Enfermo because he's a rapper in Culiacán but he's the only fucking rapper doing this thing. He's mixing

regional Mexican music, you know like banda or corrido with rap and he's doing great man and he's growing and he's going up and if you guys want to listen to him it's called El Enfermo the sick one because he's fucking sick for real so he called me he knew that I was gonna be in Culiacan around that time and he hit me up while I was having dinner at a fancy restaurant in Tres Rios

And he was like, "Hey man, what are you doing?" I'm like, "Having a drink and having dinner." And he's like, "We're having a small gathering and my other friend, Eduardo, the guy who was one of the co-authors of Sicario Warfare's book that I wanted to bring down to you and I'm gonna send you. I'm with Eduardo, you wanna come over?" And I'm like, "For sure, it's actually my birthday." And he's like, "Oh man, so yeah, let's have a fucking proper party for you." And I'm like, "Alright."

They were very sketchy about where I was going. They were like, okay, just... Real quick. So, you're going to party with a cartel boss. Mm-hmm.

Who's also a rapper. No, that's not the rapper. I didn't know that I was going to meet these two fucking cartel bosses there. So one of them is a cartel boss and the other guy wrote the entire tactics program for the cartel. No, so the guy who called me is a rap singer. And he was with Eduardo, which is a producer, who wrote Cicada Warfare, which was a photo album

of a sicario embedding in a fight. Following a fight. These two guys gave this guy a GoPro to go and film everything and then put everything together into a book and into a documentary. Fucking genius, man. They were like... But I didn't know...

That there weren't going to be a party, and that the party was going to happen actually on that guy's house, on the head of Cicados for Mario Zambada, who is the one with the GoPro filming everything. And I didn't know that, so I was just going to meet these two guys and have a couple of beers. But they were very sketchy about where I was going. It was like, I'll start driving on this location. Once you're close, just give me a call and I direct you.

And I took it like, "Oh, everyone is like that, sort of like that in Culiacan, you know, you have to be careful." And I went to this really nice residential area in Culiacan. And they asked me to stop on the other side of the sidewalk, walk over, got into an elevator, beautiful apartment with fucking, you know, Mercedes vans and, you know, nice cars. And I went in and I see a table full of fucking drugs.

arms and radio communications and I was like what the fuck is happening here and then the documentary and in the photo album you can see the faces of the Sicaios for obvious reasons so I turned my head and I see these two kids 20 year old kids early 20s just sitting there you know making some lines and just listening to Narco Corridos drinking

And then this guy introduces me like, hey, this is our friend Luis Chaparro. He's a journalist. And this is El Compa. I can't say his name. It's El Compa Ta. It's El Compa Bla. And I'm like, hey, man, great to meet you. Are you El Compa Bla in the documentary? And they're like, yeah, that's me. And I'm like, holy fucking shit. And then there was another guy. I was like, oh, he's my second in command, another kid.

And I shook hands with both of them, kept drinking all through the night. I went in with a six-pack of Tecates, you know? If I knew, I was, well, maybe we'll show up with a proper bottle of something, you know, whiskey or some tequila or some shit like that, but just arrived with a fucking six of Tecates.

And it amazes me how this guy's soul is completely gone from their body. We're all talking, we're all having fun, we're all sharing experiences. I'm of course very curious about the book and about the documentary, how was that made? And I was like, well, how was it and how many times did you film? And these guys were completely out, just smoking, snorting, smoking, drinking, snorting.

I like this one, that's a good song

But all through the night they were just absent, you know, they weren't there. They were like staring at nowhere. They're trying to escape their own head. Yeah, really, really quiet guys. And that was the whole night. I didn't spend a whole time there, but like let's say from 8 p.m. to maybe 12, 1 in the morning.

And I was drunk by the time I left. I was like feeling tipsy and I was like, do you think I'm gonna get in problem with the police if they caught me driving drunk?

And they were like, "If you have any issues, just call this guy. He'll fix everything for you." I'm like, "Alright, thank you, man. I hope I don't have to call you." So yeah, we shook hands. We hugged each other when this guy... Because we usually say hi like every other Mexican, even if you've never met him. You say hi with a hug, you know?

So I was like, "See you man, thank you very much for having me in your place." And then when he was like close to me, he was like, "Just be very discreet, you know that, right?" And I was like, "No, yeah, I know." And he was like, "I know you know, I just wanted to make sure. Just be discreet about this place." And I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, man. By all means." And I left, but those guys were or are the right hand of El Mayor Zambada and El Grupo Flechas, it's called the group. It's like the elite.

Sicario group for my somebody and that was fucking I mean, I wasn't expecting that It's incredible how you find yourself in these situations over and over, you know I almost feel bad for those guys like on one hand, you know, it's well you're in the cartel you're a piece of shit, you know and and but on the other hand They don't have any options. That's what that's I think that's what people in the United States don't understand I mean

you know, people in the United States think you have it tough when the government sends you a free check, a free place to live, you get free food, you get free education, everything's free, free, free, free. And because you're not wealthy or because you're getting only free stuff and you don't

They bitch and they complain, but they have options. Yeah, I mean, they have the option of keeping their fucking lives and being safe. These guys, there's no check coming from the government. There's no free place to live. There's no free food. There's no free education. There's no free medical. There's no free anything. And that's what it's unfathomable for most Americans who've never been outside of the U.S. to understand that. And with these guys, you know, they have...

They have no other option but to join the cartel and to do that. And imagine how it would be. I would like to maybe make an exercise of the people watching this channel and ask them to think about them being in a country that doesn't give you anything for free, that it's impoverished by the most part, but that also leaves next to a rich country, to a first world country. So it's like you live in a small village house

right next to this mansion where the kids have everything. You leave looking through your window to that house and want it to be that. You want to be that. You want to have the cars, you want to have the checks, you want to have the freeways, you want to have what they have in this first world house. Many of us, people like me, who have the opportunity to be dual citizens,

we can go back and forth, back and forth all the time. When I like to live in Juarez or in Mexico, I lived three years in Mexico City, but then I went back to El Paso. Then I have the benefit of both, you know, I have the benefit of both. My friends also, a friend of mine has just made this trucking company in the U.S. because it's a dual citizenship, and he writes me every often and says, dude, I owe my fucking life to my parents that...

brought me into the US because I'm a Mexican and here I can thrive and I can work hard and I can drive my own fucking truck and have a trucking company and I'm so fucking happy about this that I'm not being forced to live in Mexico because I have no other option. My other friend has a furniture company and he says exactly the same like I owe my fucking life to my parents that brought me here because otherwise I will be stuck in Mexico and there's no fucking way you can do a successful

you know, furniture company in Mexico without having to do or to be extorted or to be kept if you're being kidnapped or even to thrive. But these kids, they live in poverged. They live in the outskirts of Culiacan. These guys are not even from the city. These guys are from the ranches around the city. But still they are exposed

to the life the US portrays outside, you know? So they want that. They're fucking jealous of that. They want the Mercedes-Benz. They want the house. Because you can tell the house is almost like an American house, you know? Very fucking American house. It's like the faucets are all American. The fridge, very fucking American. The TV. It's amazing, you know, how, I mean...

We were talking last night about that I just did a trip down to Mexico at Calderon and we went into a migrant camp and you know and I'm very I've been all over the world I've seen the poorest countries in the world and and I was I was still very extremely tough on immigration or my viewpoints were and I still am somewhat you know, but I

But when you go down there and you go into that migrant camp, it shifts your perspective because you're in it. You're in there and you're seeing what's going on. And when I was telling you about, you know, we pulled two Hondurans out that made the trip up to Tijuana, to that migrant camp. And I'm talking to this guy and he is, I asked him what he's doing. And he said, I asked him how it came up as I asked him, would you rather stay here under a tarp

On a parking lot or go back home. Because he had been there for, I believe, three years, if I remember correctly. And he said, I would rather stay here no matter what. He's like, I have a business here. I said, well, what's your business? And he pulled out a little portable battery charger. And he said, I go around and I charge people's phones for a dollar. A dollar, man. A dollar.

Which is probably doing really good compared to where he came. Obviously, he would rather stay there and sleep on a parking lot under a tarp than to do that. And then when you think about Americans, we can't even get anybody to work right now. And I would trade so many Americans for that guy sitting right there because you know he's going to come into this country and he's going to contribute to...

to society and work his ass off to get what he you know you know where i'm going with this this country has the great blessing of helping thrive hard-working people all you have to do in this country is work all you have to do is get to fucking work and you thrive and have your heart at it and that's it that's not enough in my country you know that's not enough in my country

You can't work your ass off in my country. You can put all your heart into whatever you want to do in my country and that's not going to be enough. And no matter what, you're going to have nothing. You're never going to fucking thrive. Never, man. It takes more than that. It takes luck. It takes corruption. It takes doing things the wrong way because the taxes we fucking pay for everything, it's crazy. The amount of money the government takes out of you.

the vulnerability you are to your own government or to criminal organizations or to the mix of both, you know? You can be well off, working, having your pretty life and then you get kidnapped and get, I don't know, extorted or then you get a bunch of military outside your home saying that you did something and you never and you spent 20 fucking years in jail just because they thought you were something else.

Talking about journalism in Mexico. I wrote for 10 or 12 years before actually started writing in English to US outlets And my career thrived somehow to some level in Mexico. I got to the top magazines in Mexico did the top stories Being interviewed in TV all the time, but who was having my back? No one man, like no one the government won't have your back once shit started hit the fan against journalists

And I was getting paid shitty, which I was fine because I still lived with my parents in one of the best neighborhoods in Ciudad Juarez. You know, a fucking dream residential with a five-story house with a basement and a huge fucking garage. And they were paying for my two cars and I was living fine. So I didn't really need the money to keep living out of journalism.

All I had to do was to thrive, because that's what I wanted to do. But then, when I married, had my son, actually got out my parents' house, I was like, oh shit, I need to work for myself. And this is not enough. I mean, the best wage that I got, the best, like, when I was rich, it was 30 grand, 150, 1,500 grand a month.

You can't fucking leave with that even in Juarez, you know, it's it's not I was living by myself. Okay, fine It's it's enough to to rent an apartment never to own a house to pay for my gasoline and this and that But then I had to do something, you know I had to and I had to switch lanes or do or or decide to close my career forever and then go to To do something else because I was not gonna be able to support my family with that fucking wage, you know Yeah, um

And I decided to make the crossover and start writing for English-spoken or written magazines and outlets and start producing more for US companies like Netflix and Amazon and HBO and doing documentaries for Showtime and that kind of stuff. And my fucking career started thriving a lot, started thriving like crazy when I did the crossover. And I learned that all it takes in this country to thrive

was to fucking work. To get to work, to get your fucking ass to work and do it properly and you'll be fine, you know, you'll do fine. And I was like, "Wow." Just switching languages, just switching a border, which is basically a line, an imaginary line.

Everything changes, everything switches off. But a lot of the people in Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Salvador, they don't have that possibility. They do not have that opportunity, you know. They want it. That's what they are trying to get here. They're trying to get here to work, most of them. And I know I've met some of them that are not, you know, hardworking people. They're fucking thieves.

They're fucking bad thieves, basically. I've met a bunch of fucking thieves that they just been deported like three or four times and they're trying again and they're saying the U.S. is my country and I love that country. But once they step foot in the U.S., they start drinking and robbing people and doing shitty stuff. Yeah. There's definitely a tricky, I mean, it's a tricky subject to...

It's gonna it's it's tricky to solve because you can't take everybody you know you just can't but the Indian but the system is broken, you know, it is broken there is no Whenever you're setting up walls in the middle of the desert, but leaving your ports of entry vulnerable to fentanyl pills That's gotta be something wrong. Yeah, you know, what do you got coming up? Well, I'm

I'm trying to travel to Michoacán. I'm looking up for travel to Michoacán to learn about the drones operations, the weaponized drones they're using. It's a hard time right now because there's a rumor around all organizations in Michoacán that there's going to be a journalist who's going to be an infiltrate. Not by the U.S. government or the Mexican government, but by the other cartel. They think that

Both cartels fighting each other. They feel that there was going to be a journalist who is from the other cartel and just want to try and, you know, get some info or some intel and then sell it to the other cartel. Some shit like that. That was the last time I heard over from Michoacán. So I'm on standby, see if the rumor goes away or something like that. And then I'm able to go and embed with Michoacán.

with one of these organizations. I'm very fucking interested into that. Yeah. Into that part of the world. It'd be interesting to learn about their intelligence gathering. Yeah, definitely. You know, how they do it. Yeah. How they... I mean, because I'm sure they're running all kinds of intelligence and espionage, you know, on each other. Especially online. And especially online, they're using a lot of technology, man. They have their hands on technology and...

Like these drones, I mean I've seen footage not taken by regular commercial drones but actually these drones that tell you "auditude" and that can be like super way fucking up and like a huge zoom. And of course it's... They've shared that information with me because it's propaganda and I've never shared it out because I'm gonna be helping who the fuck knows who.

But what they wanted to say is like, look, here's a convoy of Mexican military selling weapons to a cartel. I don't know if they're selling or they're giving away weapons supporting this cartel. And yeah, in the footage you definitely see National Guard or military pickup trucks unloading a bunch of what it looks like boxes with arms.

and a couple of pickup trucks with armed man civilians loading all that into their trucks and taking off. And you could say it was like an armed trafficking operation. And it will be interesting to put it out, you know, to me as a journalist, like, this is happening. But because of the source that came up to me with that, I was like, I can't confirm anything, you know, coming from this source. They want to push on an agenda. So I guess that's their whole...

apparatus of information gathering stuff. I know they see my videos, I know they watch what I post, I know they're following me because they want to learn about other organizations and all that stuff. I guess it's something that I have to be careful with, you know?

What am I sharing and what am I withholding? They're killing more and more journalists down there from what I understand. In the whole 2020, they killed seven journalists during the whole year, which was a lot. And in the first two months of this year, there's been seven. The first two months? The first two months. There's been seven journalists killed, two from Tijuana, another from Oaxaca, Michoacán. I can't remember the other place.

But it's been seven already, the whole number for 2020. I mean, from 2021. So that's a lot. They're killing a lot of journalists. And I believe it's part of these tactics to illegitimize the government because people is not going after criminals. The regular people is not saying fucking Cartel Jalisco, fucking Cartel de Sinaloa. They're fucking us up.

They're saying, fucking government, they're doing nothing to protect us, to protect our journalists. Yeah. And I don't think that's by coincidence. I think that's by design, to hit journalists, to hit doctors, to hit nice people and, you know, well people. So I think that's by design. It's interesting that they want journalism because they use it as a PR platform, which helps them with their recruitment. But on the same hand, they're killing journalists. So...

Seems kind of counterproductive to me. Yeah, but look at the journalists they're killing. They're not killing journalists on national TV or international journalists.

you know they're killing journalists that are tying names to certain murders and and exactly and especially local journalists okay local journalists that they know they are not protected by any international law or whatever that means any international outlet backup or but they're not going to get heat for that because it's way too different what's going to happen if they kill me or they kill the i don't know new york times correspondent in mexico city

The fucking international community is gonna step up to find those motherfuckers and the whole attention is gonna go for that criminal group. But if they kill a local journalist, who's gonna... Yeah. No? Who's gonna go after them? Yeah. The people's gonna get mad at the government for not protecting these journalists. And that's what they want. And that's why they're hating these local journalists. And that's crazy.

But yeah, I mean, I'm working on that, trying to stay safe, trying to keep putting up stories, trying to find interesting stories, but also trying to find truth behind talking points in U.S. media. U.S. media, it's been doing an awful job, to be honest. It's a joke. I can't believe people even watch it. I mean, ever...

I guess not everybody knows, but I think it's the older generation that still believes that traditional news networks are telling the truth. And it's sad to see because it's ruining the country. It is, man. It is. And...

If you talk to, and this is important to tell, it's not us journalists. It's not producers behind the camera. It's not media workers. It's the execs. Most of the executives, they hold, they're decision makers.

But they don't come from the news. They come from business, they come from economics, they come from all over backgrounds. But journalism. So they don't care. They don't give a fuck about journalism. What they give a fuck about is about numbers or about who's gonna fund their channel. Talking politicians, talking other businessmen. They think they know what the audience want to hear, but it's not what the audience want to hear.

It's basically what's going to make the audience fight. Yeah, they want the outrage. They want the fucking outrage. And we're playing that game. People are falling right into it, though. And most of us media workers don't agree with that, man. But sometimes that's a job. Sometimes you get a win. Sometimes you pitch a story that is a well-storied and well-angled story and telling the truth. And sometimes you get the win. Sometimes you're like, this is a good fucking story. This is what I'm talking about.

Especially when it doesn't have to do with the US. Especially when it's something which is good for me because I cover the foreign desks. So when I'm talking about Colombia, I'm talking about Mexico, I'm talking about that.

They usually leave me alone. They're usually like, "Alright, yeah, let's run the story. Why not?" But if it's US-related, they will get, you know, picky and tricky. They will get like, "No, no, that's not the proper angle. Let's go on this side because the audience will feel that this is too... this and that." And they start manipulating the whole fucking thing and then the piece out is completely different from the fucking pitch.

Well, that's where I come in. Exactly. And that's where you come in. And that's what I fucking love about your show. I think there's more useful information in your channel than in any fucking TV station. And coming from a fucking journalist, I do news and I produce for TV.

This is the real thing. Thank you. This is where you find truth. And that's fucking cool, man. That's what I'm trying to do. That's amazing. Just tell it like it is. And that's great. And that's because you're not tied to anything. To anything but yourself. Yeah. That's it, man. Well, we're talking about doing some stuff together down the line maybe. Let's do that, man. Yes. I mean, I would love to because I was telling you yesterday that

I'll tell you, your experience in fighting and going to other places could be very enlightening to know what the shit is happening on the ground in Mexico. And I would love to have you going and embedding to places like Sinaloa, Chiapas with the Ejercito Zapatista and all those guerrillas. There's a new cartel in Chiapas called...

El Cartel de Chamula. The Chamulas are indigenous, basically Mayans from the Maya ancestry. And they formed their own fucking indigenous cartel to fight the Amara Salvatrucha that is coming all over Chiapas and to fight the old Orwarislav from the Zetas. So that's an interesting place to go. That's an interesting thing to watch.

maybe going to the Chiapas border with Guatemala, and you'll find the hotels, like right at the fucking hotels, a lot of Romanians, Russians, a lot of people from those other countries staying there doing I don't know what. The last time I was there, there was a huge group of, I think they were Russian or Italian,

Something like that staying at the hotel. No one could tell me what they're doing there I asked the taxi driver. I asked the front desk girl. I asked the police Nobody know everybody was like super sketched out. They were like because I thought they were they were Greek like Why is there like Greek people and everybody like no no they're not Greek. They're Russian. I'm like

Why are the Russians here? Oh, no, I don't know, man. I can't tell you. But they were, you know, all over the hotel, smoking cigarettes 24 hours outside, making phone calls, drinking, jumping into taxis, going off, getting back, making noise all through the night. Interesting. So, yeah, I mean, I would love to have you.

to have you south of the border and go to Juarez and go to different places. I think that will be something that your audience will enjoy and that I personally will enjoy too, to bring you with me in one of these recordings. What do you think? I think it's going to take a lot of research and I never drop a location before I go. It's always after I'm already out.

you know for obvious reasons yeah and uh but i am down i do like your idea i really like your idea of interviewing the hitman yes i think um i think yeah i would like to do that if i get enough support on patreon yes you know please we'll make it happen but yeah let's push for that man because that will be that will be interesting to watch to uh to watch you talking to one of these hitmen um and so you

I think what you can do is like you can judge how much knowledge these people have in the use of arms because us journalists can know a lot of other things, you know, but maybe not such a specific stuff. And I guess now Mexico is all about specifics, especially this time. You know, you need to know what kind of training they have, how they're using their guns. Like this armor that I went into Culiacán where they were switching this thing that you know the name of and I can't,

Remember the name of the piece they're switching it to make them full automatic the seer I think that's what that's only because it's I guess it's cheaper to buy not semi semi automatic guns and then just switch them. Mm-hmm I guess that's the reason we have that but um, but that would be that would be interesting to watch So so yeah, I mean it's gonna take a lot of planning a lot of negotiating as well because because of your background, of course and

I'm not going to be able to lie to these people and to hide that part of your background. And so I'm going to have to negotiate a lot with them and test their trust as well. Test how trustworthy I am with them and how...

And let's see, it might not even happen. It might end up with them saying like, "No, fuck no, man. No, no way." I wouldn't blame them. Me either. But it might end up happening and that would be interesting to see, to watch. Especially because I don't think you're gonna be able to be carrying anything while we're there. So that's gonna be fucking...

Tense to see. It's going to be fucking tense. It wouldn't be the first time. But I want to wrap this up. And I just want to thank you for coming, man. You always have like the intelligence that you're bringing back after these trips is just phenomenal. You can't get this stuff anywhere. And so I just want to thank you for coming back and giving me and the audience your time and time.

Telling us what you found down there. So one more time. Where's the best place for people to find you? I think in my Instagram especially in my Instagram I post my link in bio and I have my youtube channel have a sub stack account where I put a lot of detailed information that I All the info that don't doesn't really make it into a story into a news story because it's too detailed I posted on my on my self stack account and and that's where I share names locations

gatherings, maps, you know, that kind of intel. Perfect. For someone. And thank you, man. Thank you. It's always a fucking pleasure, man. It's really cool to be here. And my whole intention in coming over is just to tell truth and to share truth because I see what you're doing on your channel with other guests. And I see they are raw. They're raw information. They're sharing the truth. One last question. If you had...

Three people doesn't have to be three. Who would you recommend? Who would you want to see on this channel? Definitely? Victor Avila we're talking about him. He he got screwed by both US and Mexico government, okay He will it will be cool to watch here. I think a colleague of mine Ian Grillo He's a he's a UK journalist living in Mexico and covering arms trafficking specifically for maybe 20 years. I

He's very knowledgeable and he's fucking cool. He's great and I guess he's gonna love the show. And maybe one of the criminal assets living in the US. That would be interesting. You interviewing directly one of those guys who lives in the US. I mean, it's a long shot. Yeah. But that would be dope. Well...

Make the connection. We'll make it happen. We'll try to. All right, Luis. Thanks again, man. Hey, best of luck. Be safe down there. And I'm sure we'll see you again. All right, man. Thank you very much. Cheers.

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