Transcript for:
Luis Chaparro's Insights on Cartel Activities

Ladies and gentlemen, my next guest is no stranger to the show. He is possibly the most knowledgeable investigative reporter when it comes to all things cartel. What they're up to, how they're doing it, and everything in between.

In fact, this will be his third appearance on the show. This guy is two years ahead of mainstream media. In fact, his first visit on the show, which was over two years ago, He broke the story that China was aiding cartels in the fentanyl crisis that we're seeing here in the U.S. today. He talked about how the cartel is sending in chemists to train the cartels and how the Chinese are sending all the supplies and chemicals that they need to make the world's most potent fentanyl.

Now, two years later, you see this in mainstream media, you see it in presidential campaigns, everybody's talking about it. Hate to break it to you, that's old news. Now he comes back and he tells us that the cartels are starting to move out of the drug trade and into completely legitimate businesses. That's right, they're growing and they're getting stronger and they're turning legitimate.

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All we ask. Is that you tagged the Sean Ryan show ladies and gentlemen without further ado, please welcome Luis Chaparro to the Sean Ryan show Luis Chaparro. Welcome back.

Thanks man for the third time in In the show, I really appreciate it. Repeat offender. Third time.

I don't think anybody's been on here three times. I don't know, man. You're the first one. Go ahead.

Man, you always have cutting-edge information on the cartels and what they're up to. Watching the news cycle, we've known each other for, what, about two years, maybe a little bit over two years. And it's interesting because— The stuff that you were talking about on this show two years ago is just now hitting mainstream media. You know, you were the one, to my knowledge, I've never heard this stuff anywhere else.

You were the one that broke the story about how China is sending in the chemists to train cartels how to make the world's deadliest, most potent fentanyl. You were the one that broke the story that China is sending in all the supplies. to make the world's most potent fentanyl. And just now I'm starting to see, I mean, I'm interviewing a lot of politicians because that election season's coming up and I'm seeing, I am just now seeing politicians start to talk about this stuff. I'm just now starting to see mainstream media talk about how China is involved with this whole fentanyl crisis.

And I'm sitting here watching this and I'm like, man, we... We broke this over two years ago at this point. I mean, it's always a good thing that they're actually talking about it. But I think they have a delay, right?

Two years delay. It's totally outdated at this point. Yeah.

I mean, and we're going to dive into that because I've been hearing that cartels are starting to, I don't know if moving away from the drug business is the correct term or sentence, but it sounds like they're trying to legitimize. their businesses and kind of move away from the drug business. So I want to dive into that.

But that's a compliment. I just want to say, I mean, what do you think? When you look at the drug business, at the news and you're like, I've been talking about this stuff for two years now.

You guys are just picking this up. I mean, it makes me almost seem hopeless because it's so far behind the problem. I'm very used to it right now at this point, you know, because I remember that time I told you that a lot of people believed that was a conspiracy theory and they were holding me up for that. Like, that sounds like conspiracy. A lot of these media outlets wouldn't take those stories.

People were calling you a conspiracy theorist. Yeah, well, they were like— You had—hold on. Let me make a correction. Last time you came down here, just to prove that you were in the fentanyl labs, you brought in— Video footage of cartel chemists wearing Vigilance Elite hats. So I don't know how anybody, I mean, and AI wasn't even a thing back then.

No, I mean, I guess when I try to pitch some of these stories to mainstream media back then, there was like a bit of like reluctancy, you know, like I was faced with these sort of like anti-China general feeling. sort of like racism, conspiracy theory. And I was like, dude, I'm not going against Chinese people. I'm just telling you what I've learned from on the ground in Sinaloa.

I wasn't really publishing most of those stories back then because of that, because they thought that there was not enough evidence, you know, like a cartel source or me embedding with them and stuff. That was probably not enough. Eventually, it's getting into the mainstream media.

Now everybody wants that story, right? Right now, everyone is like, dude. And I'm like, dude, there is a lot of new things happening.

But yeah, I mean, I feel kind of that I'm getting used to it. Used to feel that the mainstream media, politicians are always behind of what is happening in the streets. My job is to report this stuff timely and correctly and in an ethical way. And if they don't want to take it, if they want to pick it up.

I mean, it's on them. It's already proven that this is happening. And this is why I'm trusting shows like yours, specifically your show, right?

Saying like, this guy opened up his cameras and microphones to listen to proofs, you know? Not to listen to a conspiracy, not to listen to me thinking or, you know, overthinking things. Send you videos, send you photos, my reporting, and now it's coming up.

And I'm glad it's coming up. you know, to the news and to the politicians. But now there's a lot of new things happening. Yeah, we're going to get into if that, I mean, we're going to get into if that story is even relevant at this point.

I mean, it sounds like things have developed so, so much that maybe this stuff isn't even relevant. There's another thing at dinner last night, I learned something interesting about you. So I don't want to make light of it.

We're laughing about it. But. You have a $60,000 bounty on your head. Yeah.

Why do you have a $60,000 bounty on your head? Who's put it on there? I honestly don't know. I'm not sure who put it out. A source reached out to me, a source within a federal agency here in the U.S.

U.S. federal agency. U.S. federal agency. He's been my source for several years, and he sent me a photo of a post they got a hand of.

They didn't share any more details, like where did they find that or how or whatever. Probably on the phone or something, on any device of one of these guys they arrested recently or something. But on that image, there was my photo, like from socials, one of the oldest photos I have on Instagram or something. And he was asking for help from his guys, from his people, right? Like, hey guys, here is 60,000 for the head of this.

that are alive. And I was like, wow, 60 grand, it's good money. I was a bit blushed by it.

I'm not going to lie, Luis, I could use an extra 60 Gs right now. Me too, dude. I told my wife and she's like, what if we, you know? It's not bad money. This is the thing, I don't know how real that is.

I don't know. If it's really the Sinaloa Cartel or a faction at least of the Sinaloa Cartel that put that out. I don't know if it's an online troll or whatever. That was apparently not a share online to make like fun or make a joke.

That was retrieved from a device on one of these guys. As per my source. That's what I said.

Oh, wow. I asked him if this was serious. I was like, how serious is this shit?

And he's like, dude, any threat, you should take it as. as being serious, you know, because I get a lot of threats all the time. Do you really?

Most of the times it's just like copycats, trolls, you know, people that they... We call them cartel fanboys, you know, it's people that they don't even know anything, but they just... are big fans of El Chapo. So they're pretending. And they're like, shut the fuck up, man.

Don't ever publish that shit again or we'll kill you. And then you do a little bit of research and, you know, it's like, come on, you're just a cartel fanboy. What is the, I mean, what's the cartel think of cartel fanboys?

Do they, I mean, if somebody's putting a bounty, because it sounds like the Sinaloa cartel is actually a big fan of you. Well, sort of. Certain factions, I guess, and at certain points, and at certain moments, you know. I do know that they got pretty pissed, you know, of the last time I was there, because I broke inside the son of El Chapo's house hours before he was extracted and arrested. You broke into the son of El Chapo's house?

Yeah, dude, and it was absolutely crazy, dude. Of course you did. How did you break into his house?

Is it somebody sitting on it? No, so this is the thing. That morning, I can't remember, it was January, I think, this January. That morning, I started getting a lot of messages on my phone.

I usually put my phone in silent mode. Only a couple of secure apps I use to communicate with sources, those are always on. So I started getting a bunch of like, this is like five in the morning.

And I read it, and I said like, hey, there's a lot of things going on in Culiacán right now. Culiacán is crazy. There's a lot of like...

narco blockade so they were like setting up trucks and vehicles to block roads around Culiacan and setting them on fire and I was getting all those reports and I was like yeah they're probably doing an operation against someone big never thought they were going against one for Chapel Sons you know until one of these messages said apparently the operation is in Jesus Maria and I knew that Jesus Maria is the town where Ovidio Guzman was hiding he has a ranch beautiful house state-of-the-art property in this very poor impoverished um ranch outside Culiacan like 40 minutes drive outside the main city in Sinaloa so when I read Jesus Maria I was like shit they're after him this is happening they're gonna get him woke up first tweeted you know put it on my Instagram I think this is happening and start recording on my on my on my cell phone like hey guys I'm hearing reports that this is happening uh pitch flies Hey guys, I think this is happening. I probably should be getting my ass there. I'm gonna pay for my whole trips, but I want to pitch this story to you.

Because I like publishing that story there for them. They said, yes, let's put together a legal team, a security thing going. But by the time they did that, I was already booking my...

I booked three different flights, because I know they have people in the airport. So they will know if I'm coming. They will see the list of names of people declining.

So I booked three different flights, in and out, round flights, three different hotels on three different nights. The security team from Vice asked me not to be more than, not to spend more than 10 hours on the ground and be out the same day. So I was thinking of that, right?

I was like, I'm just going to get there. I didn't reach out to any source beforehand because I was like, no, do it. If they know that I'm there while they're still, you know, that was very recent.

That was happening that morning. By 10 in the morning, I was already having the confirmed information that Ovidio was arrested and he was taken into a hangar in Mexico City. But people were still fighting by 10 in the morning in Sinaloa.

I left home. My flight left at like noon. So when I landed, it was still going on, you know. the infighting was still going on, when I landed in Mexico City.

And then I flew the next day, early morning, to Culiacán. I arrived in the first flight, like, 5, 6 in the morning. And as I arrived there, I reached out to my sources. I was like, hey, dude, I have a strong source in the Sinaloa cartel in Culiacán. And I told him, hey, dude, I'm in Culiacán, I'm in your town, and I probably need a couple of, you know, hands, extra hands, to help me out getting there to Jesus Maria.

And he said, what the are you doing here, man? You're going to get you and me killed because shit, it's just hitting the fan. I had previously had a ban by the Sinaloa cartel from going to Sinaloa because of a story I did inside weed, let's call them laboratories, where they're manufacturing weed products and stuff and setting up dispensaries in Sinaloa.

So they already asked me, don't ever come back to Sinaloa. And there I was. again a couple of weeks later.

This just happened like three weeks later after I was banned from Sinaloa. So I called this guy and he's like, dude, you shouldn't even be here, man. And I was like, I know, but I don't have anything anyone else to call.

And he's like, just stay there where you are. I'm going to pick you up in a different car. The unthinkable is happening.

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picked me up, took me to the hotel. I called a photographer, a local photographer, said like, hey, dude, you want to join with me? I need photos, I need video, and I'm doing this shit.

I understand if you feel sketched out, but I'm doing it. And he's like, let's do it, man. Go with you. Brave dude.

And we went up to Jesus Maria. Of course, all the way up to Jesus Maria, there were still like burnt trucks, burnt buses. like hand grenades all over.

It was a f***ing war zone up there. And as we got to Jesus Maria, there was a checkpoint from the Sinaloa Cartel henchmen, a lot of sicarios and motorcycles, driving around the arcs that said, welcome to Jesus Maria. Do you have footage of this? Yes, all of this stuff, it's in my channel view.

I did like a short documentary. Like I recorded everything as I arrived into the city. As they drop off all the way there. So we went in and we started approaching Ovidio Guzman's house.

And as we approached, I watched this woman and a bunch of suited guys. And my photographer said like, oh, it's the Fiscalia, the general attorney's office. So we're good. There's government. And I'm like, OK, so we're safe.

Jumped out of the car with my camera in hand. And then this woman starts saying, no, no, no, no, no. And then these dudes. chomp at me.

And then he's like, oh shit, this is not government. And it turns out it was Ovidio Guzman's mom, a former wife of El Chapo. She also has a $5 million bounty by the US government for being involved in the Sinaloa cartel.

So she immediately starts telling me like, no, no, no, just get the fuck away. And I'm not recording. I don't have my camera on. I just want to talk to you and probably go inside Ovidio's house.

And she's like, no, just get... away from here and these dudes tell me told me like just get away if you want to interview neighbors that's fine by us don't come over to these property my good so i went did a bunch of interviews around with the neighbors they absolutely loved the video love the guzmans old people you know old sick people saying that'll be you and the guzman family has always helped them out with with medicines with money with whatever they with whatever they they needed right but again If you look at their homes, very, very poor people, you know. Really?

Poor people, man, without anything, without a car, without, you know, like old washing machines, not food under fridges. Absolutely poor. I wouldn't expect this guy to live in a neighborhood like that.

It was one of his properties outside the city, you know, where he was hiding. The thing was, he was hiding there because he couldn't celebrate Christmas. Or New Year's Eve with his family because he knew he was being sought after. So he waited until all that went through a couple of days into January.

And then he brought over his daughters, his wife, and a couple of friends to have a family party on that property. And so when they got him, he was asleep. He got a bit drunk last night, stayed up until late. So these guys just, boom, let's do it right now while he's asleep. So I interviewed the neighbors and I noticed that his family and the attorneys left the property.

And I was like, this is probably a good time. It's now or never, you know, I need to go in. I need to see what happened inside his house, how he was living. I need to just go inside his house.

I told the photographer I'm going in. And he's like, dude, if you spend more than five minutes in there, we're leaving. We're taking off.

We're leaving you there. There's people around circling, sicarios, henchmen. And we're just making it look as if we're taking photos from outside.

But even from outside, dude, bullets everywhere, unexploded grenades. It was blood everywhere. Wow.

So I found a hole on the wall, on the wire I had on the wall. And I literally jumped over the hole inside his house and started recording. I had my phone and a GoPro.

And I started recording everything inside. And inside was... War zone, war zone, like heavy, like 50 calls all over. Blood all over, man. I was like stepping in sticky blood all over.

No kidding. Yeah, dude. And you have footage of this? I have footage of that shit, man.

Can we put it in? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'll send you the footage. It's crazy stuff. And then I went into his daughter's room, completely like soaked in blood.

I don't know. I don't think it was from them. It was from his henchmen that tried to hide inside the house where they were still fighting the government. But yeah, man, it was very contrasting because you will have a setting of a family party, right? Wine bottles, expensive wine bottles, dinner, plates, a, what we call a nacimiento in Spanish, which is baby Jesus and the whole.

You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, like a nativity scene? Yeah, exactly.

Yes, exactly. They had that in the party of the backyard. But at the same time, everything was like riddled with bullet holes and blood and unexploded grenades, 50 calls. And his closet, he had a bunch of Rolex boxes open. The Mexican military stole everything he owned, man.

Everything. Expensive shoes, expensive shirts. tennis shoes, Rolex, Hovel watches he had there, jewelry. It was all empty. And I asked the neighbors and they're like, we watched how the Mexican government was putting everything on pillow sleeves and taking it all out.

They took everything. So I recorded the whole thing. And I was as I was coming out, I remember finding a hole.

It was a tunnel disguised as a water system, you know. But it was a tunnel. And then I asked my guy, like, hey, can I go out now?

And he's like, no, no, no, no, just, like, stay there. You can hear in the video I shot, my heart was racing, man, because these guys were right outside when I was trying to get out. And I could hear the motorcycles circling.

Government or cartel? The cartel guys. And I was like, if they find me inside, This place.

They're not gonna shoot me. They're not gonna... Kill me. They're going to call the authorities. They're going to put me in jail.

And they're going to torture me for several years in a Sinaloa jail. Oh, man. So I was like, stay hidden for a couple of minutes until this guy told me, it's now, man.

You need to get out. Now we're leaving. So I went again through the hole. I was so nervous that I fell back on my back.

I was like. Then I handed over the camera, so like dude just leave, I'll get out. I managed to go out. I immediately switched the footage, the sim cards and everything. And as we were getting out, we got stopped by the checkpoint of these guys.

And they just literally asked me like, everything good? And I'm like, all good. And he's like, you're done? And I'm like, all done.

They're like, okay, be safe. And I'm like, thanks. And off we went.

They put a guy to follow us until probably they were expecting us to go outside the town and then he'll just get back. On our way out, I was still like kind of shaking with adrenaline and, you know, I was still like, shit, man, I can't believe I have this footage. I can't believe I have this story. And these guys are still following us. And I need to catch my flight.

Two of my flights were already left. So I had one left by 5 p.m. And it was already like 3 or some shit like that.

And we're driving out and then the fing car breaks. Like in the middle of a nowhere highway with this enjman following us. And I was like, f my life dude.

I was like, what happened? And this dude was like, I don't know man, you're overheated. So I went to a corner store, got some water and Gatorades and poured the f***ing Gatorades on him. On the radiator, it's like, oh, we just need to get out of here, man. I'm sorry for your car.

We managed to leave, lost my flight. So I had to go into one of the hotels I had booked. Went to that hotel. Turns out the attorneys and Ovidio's mom were staying in that hotel that night. So I was like, I still had like somewhat long hair.

I put a hoodie over, went into my room. Bus caught my fucking head off and left everything ready to go. You know, I was just literally just waiting for my next flight the next morning.

How did you know that the, his attorney and who? His mother and his mom, yeah, because I watched them on the restaurant. As you enter the hotel, there's a lobby and there's a restaurant, and they were sitting at that restaurant, you know, so I watched them.

I was like, oh. They're here. So I just literally went for the elevator, put a hoodie on.

I remember recording on my phone like, oh, shit, these guys are here. It's, I mean, I'm just getting ready to leave tomorrow. I can't wait, you know.

Then this morning I left like 5 in the morning. I stayed a couple of hours in the airport. The two longest hours of my life at the Kulekan airport. I was like, I need to leave. And I left.

So those two things. Made these guys, or at least one faction of these guys, not happy about my work, right? When I posted this shit, went viral, went everywhere. And they were like, this motherfucker broke in Obedio's house, he recorded everything. Which, if I'm being honest, I'll think like, dude, you probably can prove a case.

You got stolen by the Mexican government. They shot your whole place, not giving any fuck. about your daughters being here and your wife, you know?

Mm-hmm. They'll probably use that. Yeah. But I know they got mad at me because of that shit. I mean, does that bother you?

When you have an insider of the federal government on the U.S. side saying, hey, I just want you to know you got a $60,000 bounty on your head. We just recovered this off a device. I mean...

It worries me, man. Absolutely. It worries me because of my family, for their safety and for my own as well. I want to leave until, you know, I die from age and to see my kid grow old and shit. It worries me.

But at the same time, it's like, what am I going to do, man? What am I going to do? Like, if they ask me to stop doing what I do forever and they tell me, you know what, you need to stop forever.

and I have enough reasons to believe that is true, I'll probably think about it. But up until today, I've never been asked to stop. I've just been asked to nothing.

Just get empty threats, you know. Probably because they're furious, because they're, you know, coked up. They're drunk and they're impulsive people. Most of these guys, this is another thing that kind of like gets me into thinking that, the understanding that these threats are real. But at the same time.

There's a lot of things playing out, right? When you ask me about how these cartel guys feel about cartel fanboys, they absolutely hate them because they bring a lot of heat to them. What would you think would happen if I reach out to both governments and say, and make a presser and bring in NGOs, protecting journalists and shit, and say, like, the Sinaloa cartel put a 60,000 grand bounty on my head and I need protection and I need help from you guys and I need... When they start making a whole mess and a big thing out of it, pitching stories about that to every other media outlet, this is just going to bring more heat to them.

And I know for a fact they don't want that. So they will go after the guy who probably, without permission, put up a hit on my head. They will probably go after that guy and say, dude, just leave him alone.

Just stop that shit now. Yeah. We don't need the... Hit right now, especially when we already have both of our governments after us, right? Because of the fentanyl and other shit and what happened to Ovidio So so they just want to be clear from all that shit and I don't I don't mean to cause any more trouble For the what I have right?

So so yeah, I know that This this another another time real quick before we move on. I just you broke into Ovidio's house. Ovidio's house.

I just want everybody to know who exactly that is. Yeah, absolutely. Ovidio Guzman is the youngest son of El Chapo.

He's one of the three leaders of what we call Los Chapitos, which is the main faction of the Sinaloa cartel. These dudes, I think Ovidio is about 32, 33 years old now. And he was arrested in 2019 in Culiacan, and whole hell broke loose in Culiacan, in what we call Culiacanazo. Hundreds and hundreds of henchmen went out the city, started fighting the government.

They grabbed the families of the military members involved. There is a military base in Culiacan. They grabbed the families, locked them up on their houses, on the military base, and set a lot of explosives around with gasoline and shit. And they threatened the government to say, if you don't release a video, we're going to kill all these families.

They opened a hole on the prison, on the main state prison in Culiacán, to let a lot of, a lot of Sinaloa cartel members in jail out, arm all the f***ers, and ask them just shoot around the city everywhere and everyone. So imagine a city of less than, probably less than 300,000 people, absolutely taken by probably 100,000. You know, armed people around. It was a mess. So the Mexican government had to release Ovidio from their custody.

And that was embarrassing for the government, of course. And that was empowering for the Sinaloa cartel, the Chapitos faction at least. Yeah.

So Ovidio Guzman was in the center of that stuff, of that detention. And then he was freed. He lived free for two more years, probably four more years.

That happened in 2019. And he was arrested early in January this year. He was just extradited last month to the U.S. And he's currently in Chicago MCC, probably facing life. Wow.

Yeah. And you broke into his house. And I broke into his house.

Man, that's crazy. I got to be honest, you know, hearing some of the stuff he did for your tradecraft, I'm impressed. You weren't doing that stuff the first time I talked to you.

I mean, you booked three different flights. Booked three different hotels, took the SIM card out of the camera. I mean, most people aren't that heads up. Yeah, no, dude.

I've been trying to step up in terms of taking care of myself and not being so reckless. I mean, it is reckless enough to literally go and do that shit. But I was like, no, I can't be that. You know, KLS, I need to, I need, and, and, and there's, that's the other thing.

I want to keep covering this kind of like beat cartels and criminalizations, probably just going to do like big stories and stop doing a bunch of little small stories that are going to get me in trouble, you know? So, so, so yeah, that was, that's probably related to that. That was probably, that, that threat was probably related to that. Probably, I think, probably, I don't want to say it is related to that.

Or And again, a fanboy who, you know, got angry because I broke into his fan dude, whatever, video. Yeah, you know, I mean, talking to you last night, it seemed, I mean, I asked you this question last night at dinner, you know, and you told me about that. And I was like, man, last time we spoke, it sounded like everybody within the Sinaloa cartel is, I mean, it sounds like they love you, you know.

And I'm not going to lie, I get a little nervous. I've been trying to get you back on here for a while, and I'm like, Luis, what's going on? Why aren't you coming back?

I see you going on these other podcasts. Come on. And then I got where I was like, maybe we went a little too in-depth the last time, and he got in trouble. Now you know for a fact that they actually love your show too, man.

They're watching. They're watching your show. They like your show.

They enjoy your guests. and your show in general. I think these guys, I don't know if they love me or they hate me, I guess. Maybe it's a little of both. What I've been told by one of the higher-ups in the Sinaloa cartel is something very straightforward, which makes sense.

He's like, dude, you talk a lot of bullshit, but you seldom tell a lie. What we respect is a journalist who probably... comes after us and tries to expose what we're doing in our operation like that shit.

That's fine. That's your game. This is our game. You're not the first one.

You know, the authorities, the governments are after us. So we know how to take care of us. But if you tell lies and you're getting paid by telling lies, that's going to get you killed. That is going to get you hated by us. They know that I don't tell lies, not purposely, at least, you know, I know that he called me out on a couple of things, you know.

He was like, when you said this and when you said that, that's absolutely not true. But he could tell that that was not true, not because I wanted to put out a lie. I had just wrong information, as every other journalist, right? Probably bad sourcing, and that was it.

But it's never my intention to intentionally put out lies for the sake of whatever, money, cloud, whatever. I'm trying to be responsible of my information, confirmed, different sources. If I can go there, be there, see it for myself. Yeah.

I mean, you're essentially, we'd spoken about this. I mean, you're a part of their publicity. Specifically, the Sinaloa Cartel, they're really big on that.

They're really big on putting their name out and saying, like, we're huge. As long as you don't get us in trouble by publishing specifics, right? Yeah.

Locations, faces, specific names, last names. That kind of stuff, which I don't care. That's not my job. I mean, I've been asked a lot of times that if it is my responsibility to share this information with authorities, right, to end up with them and to end them and stuff. It's like, dude, I'm not a cop.

I'm not in the business of justice. I'm not in the business of arresting people, of sentencing people. I'm not a police.

That's not my job. My end of things is telling stories, shedding light. The responsibility of the authorities is, okay, we have this information, we're going to act against, right?

My part of this business is I'll turn on the light on a dark room. I'm not going to take anything. I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm just going to turn on the light on this dark room so everybody knows what's in that room.

And everybody knows what to do with that information, right? It's not up for me to tell you or anyone what to do with that info. It's up to me to find info that is made to be hidden, right? Yeah. We do a damn good job of it.

Really appreciate it, man. Well, we got a lot to talk about, but you know, everybody always gets a gift. Oh, yes. You know, so... Different gift this time.

So... What happened to the gummy bears, man? Oh, don't worry. We still have the gummy bears. I love the gummy bears.

No, I partnered with Laird Superfoods, so you know, we... You watch... A lot of my military type episodes, we are very big on mental health. And so there's a bunch of things in there that will keep your mind sharp. It's part of your mental health.

Dude. Keeping good mental health is keeping your brain sharp. So those are performance mushrooms.

Put that in with your coffee. Those are a daily green supplement. This is all the stuff you're taking to keep your mind, you know, on check, right?

There should be some coffee in there. Those are more of the greens. Oh, yes.

There should be some coffee in there that's functional mushroom coffee. That's functional mushroom creamer. This stuff tastes good.

It's the cleanest ingredients you can get. This is cool stuff. Yeah, we parted with them. My wife has been putting me in the superfoods, you know, like... trying to get me more and more into it.

It's not that I've been reluctant. It's just that I forget because she has all sorts of different things. But, dude, this is great, great stuff.

That's to mix it up and work now. I really appreciate it, man. You're welcome. I think this is definitely going to help. a lot to be on the right mindset with all these i'll send you some more wow there's plenty of stuff to go around this is cool stuff man i really really appreciate you and layered superfoods great stuff thanks a lot all right let's get into the good stuff luis so look i got a bunch of stuff to talk about here And outlined by...

I'm just going to let you kick it off, man. I mean, it's been about a year since we've met face-to-face. And so what have you been into? You always have the latest and greatest stuff. I've been all around, man.

As I was telling you, I'm trying to do more big stories instead of a bunch of little stories. And I think, well, I guess my last trip, my most recent trip, was to Michoacán. Central Mexico, great place, great state, great food. It's an amazing place all over. But that's where the self-defense groups were born in 2013, 10 years ago.

What self-defense groups? 10 years ago, people, farmers just had it with cartels, right? They were like, dude, we just had it. We have enough money because they are avocado and lime exporters.

So they're making some really good, good money. And cartels were basically extorting them, kidnapping them to get a piece of that money back in 2013. So these dude, Ippolito Mora, a dude I respect absolutely, man. I have the utmost respect for Ippolito. He was just recently killed and that broke my heart.

I had an interview set up with him. Oh, man. And he was burned outside his house, his body, while he was still alive.

He was burned alive. Yeah, dude. That was gruesome shit.

An avocado farmer. Yeah, dude. And the first who told people, let's arm ourselves and go against this. We can own this shit, too.

And he managed to do that in 2013. He bought a lot of weapons. He said, like, if cartels can't get a good dealer, you know, to traffic weapons for them, we can do that, too. So they brought a lot of weapons from the U.S. into Michoacán, armed themselves.

Are all these weapons coming from the US? Most of it, yeah. Like, probably 90% of it. And it's just from local gun stores. They just send a shopper in.

Yeah, dude. It sounds like Instacart. Yeah, literally.

They just send somebody up and they're like, yeah, give me 200 AR-15s, give me 150 AK-47s, make sure we got plenty of magazines and ammunition, grab some cool optics, and we're going to need a lot of pistols too. That's literally how it works. Like, you send out. a list to your source or contact in the US. He goes shopping around in different gun shows, gun shops everywhere, takes photos, send you the photos, hey this is the kind of like the stuff you're looking at for.

You're like yes. Dude the uh the revenue you're making out of like trafficking guns it's more than three times its original price in the US. No kidding. So a pistol that costs thousand dollars or you get it for three grand.

easily cash. So these guys are making a big buck, you know, especially when there is war between cartels and government or between rival gangs and stuff. You need a lot of weapons, a lot of ammo, and all this stuff is coming from the US. So it's big money for a lot of people.

And the border, going south, it's pretty much open, right? There's no checkpoints, there's no barriers, there's nothing. I think the border is pretty much open.

It's probably even worse. There goes Luis again. Hey, buddy. It's pretty much, yeah, you're right.

Absolutely. Both ways. Yeah, dude.

Yeah. I think it's probably holding you more coming northbound, the lines, the long lines, than the actual, you know. Yeah, dude. So, yeah, these guys order a bunch of guns, a bunch of heavy weapons, ammos and shit. Train a lot of people.

And they literally closed the whole farming sites, their cities. They kind of like started setting up barricades. And one morning they decided to go out in arms and start killing a lot of cartel members, arresting them, turning them over to the authorities, engaging in fighting. After a couple of months, they were out.

They won. They successfully pushed the cartel out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and it stayed like that for a couple of years until, again, cartels got smarter, right?

What they did is the cartels pushed or lobbied, lobbied when I'm talking like money to the Mexican federal government back then, to start going against these guys, calling them terrorists, calling them guerrillas, calling them illegal operations, right? Armed civilians, that can be, but cartels, oh yeah, no, they're fine, you know? And so they went after these guys. These guys had their own fights with the Mexican government.

So they looked probably bad on the public eye because they were now fighting the Mexican government. So the Mexican government came out with a truce. So they were like, all right, we're going to legitimize you. You need a badge. You need a proper shirt, like some sort of rural civilian force.

But we need you to be registered as a self-defense member. So they were like, let's do that then. So they started registering their arms themselves and kind of like going more on the official side of a civilian armed group, but like backed up by the Mexican government.

And a lot of these sicarios and narcos and cartel members, they were like handing money to the government saying like, hey man, can I have a badge as well so I can carry my gun and shit? The first was one, and then 10, and then 100, and then 200, and then 1,000. And then basically the government legitimized a whole cartel. Whoa. So they became self-defense groups, but they were cartel.

They were the Viagra's cartel. They were the Familia Michoacana cartel. They were all sorts of different cartels wearing shirts and registered arms as self-defense members.

So Hippolyto was like... Shit, this is not self-defense. This is all cartels. I'm going up.

So he stood up himself for several years as a solo vigilante going against cartels. You know, naming them, putting out on social media, like, these guys are cartels, that guy is operating here, this guy has a laboratory here, calling out for it and saying, hey man, I found a f***ing Adam Fenneman laboratory here. Come over. Raid this place.

They wouldn't listen. So he was all alone, all by himself. And a couple of months ago, he got killed as he was coming back from his farm back home. I went to his house and he was building a barricade on his rooftop. It wasn't finished because they...

To fight for him? Yeah, I think he felt he knew that at some point he was going to have to barricade himself on his house and start fighting these guys from his own... you know, trench. But as he was driving back home, he got ambushed and they killed him. And before he was dead, they put his body out and set him on fire in front of everyone to see.

There's footage. I also have that video on my YouTube. There's footage of his body just in flames.

Wow. When people looking around confused and shit. That was basically to send out a message, right? That you're not going to stand against us. I mean.

We still, you're not going to bring again, because the rumors were he was putting again another new group of self-defense, you know, of good people to fight. back against the cartel again. Wow. But that hope died with him.

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So nobody else is doing this? This is spread across the country in Mexico? No, I spoke with his brother.

And he was absolutely terrified. He was all alone, just at his brother, Hipólito. His brother is called Guadalupe. Brave man, honest man with big balls. And he's like, dude, if the government is not going to get rid of the Viagra's cartel, I'm going to have to go and fight them myself.

probably the same faith as my brother. He lives in a town that is surrounded, dude, surrounded. You can go out of his house and right in front, you'll have henchmen sitting on the sidewalk just waiting for him to go out. He can't leave his house.

He can't leave his room because he's going to get popped. So he's living there by himself, alone, in the middle of that chaos. So this is Brave Man. There is a small community called Tancítaro, which is the world capital of the avocado. That's where all the avocados in the U.S. and probably in the world are coming out of, or most of.

Huge avocado farms, a lot of money. They still have self-defense groups with barricades before you enter the town. Armed people, armed civilians.

I interviewed one of them, and he's like, dude, I'm a teacher, you know? I'm a teacher at an elementary school. But on my free time, I come and guard post on this barricade with my AK and shit, you know, waiting for these guys to try to take over our town.

That's the last. So the people are really starting to try to take matters under their own hands. Yeah, yeah.

Because the government is a complete failed state. The government, it's sided with the cartels. They've been trying to disarm these guys and not the cartels forever. I mean, the last time you were here, you were saying that the government was actually becoming more profitable for the cartel than the actual drug business.

Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And so now it sounds like they've completely infiltrated it. It's done.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, or de facto government.

It's criminal organizations, different cartels on different territories. So it's like we have different governors depending on which region of the country you are. And they rule. They rule.

Politicians, they're just like the representatives of the law. They're not really in charge, man. Not at all in Mexico. Not at all. That's worrying.

Man, you know, it's sad, but it's also... It's, I mean, good on the people, you know, for finally saying, hey, this is enough. We're tired of this.

And if you aren't going to handle it, then we're going to handle it. And I hope that's, you know, they say courage spreads. It's contagious.

And so hopefully that starts to spread. it a little bit. There's two directions we could go right now.

One, we go into the drone stuff, or we could go into kind of the new direction of the cartel, which we're going to hit both. Let's dive into the drones because I think it's related. That's in region. Let me lead into it then. So you were talking about this guy, the avocado farmer, right, who built this barricade in his house to fight off the cartel.

My first thought was... That's great. I love his mindset.

You've been talking about on your social media about these drones. Last night at dinner, you were talking about these drones. And ISIS started making these drones quite a while ago. And basically what they're doing is putting explosives on them, just regular everyday drones, stuff you can go buy. A hobby store, you know, attaching explosives on them and basically it's a, it's a, it becomes a...

IED. Yeah, exactly. Improvised Explosive Device.

And so, does this guy know that, I mean, before he died he's building this barricade, all they have to do is just fly a drone over there and it's done. Yeah, I mean, they got to him before he got to that, but his brother, Guadalupe, he got a share of one of those drones like probably a month ago. He was...

Oh, really? Someone started sounding the bells of a local church, apparently calling people out. Apparently it was going to start a rise up in arms again.

So Guadalupe went out and he was talking to people. And I guess people was like coming together. And then the f***ing cartel just dropped an explosive drum in the middle of that place.

Hurt a couple of them. Guadalupe was fine. But that was not happening before when Hipólito, his brother, raised up in arms, right?

The cartels didn't still have the technology to have explosive drones, but now they do. And that's how they're controlling that whole region, by exploding drones all over. They know you can operate that from a distance.

You have cameras on it. And then they use plastic explosives like Tovex. They also use a mix of chloro......plastic. I don't know, this and that. They send me the exact mix they use, and they put a lot of, like, schnarpel, you know.

Schrapnel. Schnarpel. I can't say that word.

Yeah, basically a lot of, like, nails and— Bolts. Yeah, exactly. Pieces of metal. To make more damage, you know.

So that's what they're doing right now. When I was there, my guy in Michoacán, he's a local journalist there, and he was taking me to places. And we went to look for a priest at a local church to talk to him because he's part of like, he's an activist himself. So his people told us like, he's not here.

He's in the main town, but probably come in the next two hours. He should be here. And we were leaving. They dropped an explosive drone at the same place we were. Like literally.

What, two minutes after we left? Oh, wow. We could hear the explosion at the very corner where we were parked.

This guy was like, we need to move. We stayed at another shitty hotel in the middle of nowhere. And that night, one of my sources inside one of these cartels sent me a video of how they were torturing the chief of police of that town.

He was like, you want to know who's really in charge? Have a look at this shit. Like, 12 in the night, sent me that video out and showed me how they were torturing. the chief of police of the town.

And he's like, we rule this town, man. So if you want to talk to someone, it's us. And then in the video, they pop it.

You can see he's on his knees and then... Killed him. And Michoacán is crazy, man.

That place is crazy because it's different cartels, like probably five or six different powerful criminal organizations fighting against each other, breaking truths between each other, and then... Breaking that truce and fighting again and stuff. And you have the Cartel Jalisco, the Jalisco cartel new generation. Huge there.

Are all the cartels using these drones now or is this one specific? I think all of them are probably using it more. But the guys that are really on top of that game, it's the CJNG.

Jalisco Cartel. Those are the guys owning that game. They have these, it's called, Operaciones, Droneros Operaciones Especiales.

Like special drone operators. They have their own batch, their own, you know, like symbol and thing, which is basically a drone with a school in the center and the C, J, and G letters. And then Droneros on the lower part, which is drone operators.

So they're putting together a special unit to operate drones, you know, and to keep seeing new trends, new drones, acquiring new tools, getting explosives, training more guys in the use of drones for vigilance, but also for like us IETs basically. Yeah. I mean, are they, when it comes to these drones. I mean, are they anti-personnel?

Are they anti-vehicle? Can they take out a building? Or can they do, I mean, can they, how advanced are they with their explosives?

For the most part. It's very simple to make an explosive that's anti-personnel, that's going to take humans out. It gets a little tougher, you know, when you're looking to take vehicles out. Obviously, you know, buildings, you're talking about packing a lot more explosives.

What are the capabilities of these drones? For the most part, I would say probably 70-80% is what you would call fireworks, right? It's just like anti-personal. Handmade explosives out of a different mix of things.

Whatever they can get. Yes. But a good percentage of that shit, it's actual explosive stuff. Real dangerous stuff like Tovex or C4. Oh, they're getting actual legitimate explosives.

They're not even making their own. Where is this coming from? This is coming from the U.S. The C4 is coming from the U.S.

And Tovix, which is like the Mexican version of C4, or that's kind of like what I understand, it's getting from Mexico. I know that they still don't have like, or to my knowledge, like large amounts of that because we haven't seen that in a widespread use. For the most part, it's that like makeshift, explosive things with the drones.

But in some cases, they've installed mines with Tobics or C4 that have exploded the armored vehicles, official vehicles of the Mexican military. If they're, I mean, if they're getting C4 from the US, I mean, how are they getting it? I have no clue, man. People inside the military?

I have no clue, but I have a source inside the Mexican military, and he was... I was having an argument with them because it was like, they're not getting C4. And I'm like, dude, I know for a fact I went there.

You saw it. I saw it. And they told me. I sent you a video. I don't think that C4, what I sent you, that video where they're putting up the drones and explosives.

But on the same setting, in the same place, they had Tobics and C4. Not large amounts. But all of a sudden, this guy, I've seen it myself.

And he was like, we don't have any intel as of. they're getting seaford. That's extremely hard to get.

And then like probably a month after, in a small place in Chihuahua called Palomas, Puerto Palomas, border town, the Mexican authorities, the Mexican customs seized a somewhat large amount of seaford sneaking from the U.S. towards Mexico on an American citizen that was traveling south. So, and I send the news article to these guys like, dude, you see what I'm talking about? They are getting their hands on T4.

And he's like, oh shit, yes, you're right. You're absolutely right. Wow.

What are they using these for? I mean, who are they targeting? Are they using this for like cartel wars?

Are they using it on civilians? They're usually, they're using it for both. I've only seen. They're using this heavy stuff against armored vehicles from government and from cartel. What they call the monstros, these makeshift armor rhino-type vehicles that they make.

And they're absolutely armored to the engine, doors, everything. It's all makeshift. And they're extremely hard to take out because of the...

They even armoured the tires, you know, and stuff. But that's what they're using these explosives for, because only one of these vehicles pass over. a load of C4 and they detonate that shit, that'll damage the armored vehicle.

Oh yeah. And they've used it against the official armored military vehicles. And it's working?

And it's working, yes. Do you have any video of that? I think there is, I don't think it's video, but I think there are photos published online.

I'll look for them and send it right over. Are they using this on US Border Patrol at all? No, for the most part, on their border.

What they're using drones for, it's for vigilance of the movement of the Border Patrol and U.S. authorities. They do have specific bases to watch over the U.S. movements. Also, I wrote a story, another thing I was recently into, is they have what they call, I can't remember the name of what they call it. But it's basically vigilance bases they establish in different...

border towns where they have they set up different video cameras all over the city you know they ask permission probably from an old lady in a house hey can we put just the security camera so you're safe and whatever i'm just gonna install it here so they have a lot of those a lot of like eye rings um on on different places that they can keep you know watching over they have just regular ring camera type stuff regular stuff stuff that they get from amazon And then they have these center of intelligence where they have a bunch of cameras, a bunch of, you know, screens. And they're getting information through WhatsApp and handing over information either for rivals or Mexican officials, U.S. authorities around the border. If they want to place a hit, they're like, hey, these guys driving a, I don't know, black SUV with these plates. And they'll just start watching the cameras all around town and say like, OK, these guys driving that way.

So you can get that guy on the next straight up. And so it's like a proper, proper established intelligence center. Wow. Have you been in one?

I have a bunch of photos. I'll send you photos of these places from inside these places. Oh, man.

Yeah. It's crazy because they're... These guys are more sophisticated than on the government.

Yeah, man. They're getting to that level. I mean, I know that they're still at law. So that...

Limits their power, but as they keep you know going up the ladder In corruption and getting more permission and more access to government stuff They're getting more sophisticated and more established. How are they? What are the range of these drones? Do you have any idea?

I have no clue I think it really varies because these are all commercial drones they get from Amazon They are for the most part are DJI drones. What's the most weight that you've seen one hold? They had this Maverick, Maverick, I can't remember the exact model of that, but it was a somewhat big Maverick drone.

It was meant to carry a DSLR camera. Okay. So, you know, with extra batteries and probably a microphone. So that's probably the most.

Okay. So maybe... A couple pounds.

Yes. And remember, they were loading that one up with a box, with a plastic box with a bunch of stuff in. Yeah. Well, how were they detonating the explosives? By impact.

So they just impact the drone against a house or a person, vehicle. Well, there has to be more than that, especially if they're using C4, because C4 can only be detonated with a... with a with a charge so basically to detonate c4 you could set c4 on fire it's not going to do anything but burn you could throw c4 at a house it's not going to do anything oh yeah like kickball with it it's not going to do anything but if you if you prime it with a blasting cap that when that blasting cap explodes then it detonates the c4 so it has to have no clue man i mean i know that for the most part the makeshift drones with the makeshift explosive i was telling you with the That's basically by impact.

Okay. Yeah. But all the other stuff, like when they hit the Reno's and that kind of stuff, I have no clue how they're detonating that stuff. That would be interesting to find out. Yeah.

It's a relatively, I would think, it would be a relatively easy defense against the drones. I mean, you can get these commercial jammers, you know, and just. Jam the frequency that the drone runs off of I mean and you can get these for relatively cheap on Just you can google it.

I mean they're illegal but you know, you can buy them Yeah They'll ship into it from China the Mexican government has been afraid of using those jammers because they know the drones have explosive charge on them. So they don't want the drone probably, they will probably have to coordinate where it's going to fall or something. Yeah. I mean, the caveat to that would be, you know, your cell phone, everything, every signal is going to be jammed. Yeah.

I mean, so you're out there, but that would be... Because if it falls, it's going to... Yeah. I mean, if they could figure out the frequency that the drone is running off of, which... I mean, it's probably in the user manual.

You know what I mean? You probably just Google it or look it up and see. So you take over control of the drone and not necessarily just drop it? Well, it would drop.

It will drop. If you can get the bubble big enough to where it's jamming, it's not going to drop on you. Probably or not.

Because the fear, what they told me when I interviewed this state police in Michoacan, they do have these weird looking guns that are... apparently signal jammers, and asking why they're not using that stuff. And they're like, if we should have drawn down, it's going to fall probably on a house, on a civilian, and it's going to cause, you know.

Well, guess what? It's going to fall somewhere. Somewhere.

Whether the cartel makes it fall or whether the jammer makes it fall. But, yeah, I mean, they're actually developing. They have them. I've been actually.

Talking with the owner of one of these companies, they're making energy weapons that they don't take ammunition, they don't take anything, but they'll disable a drone like that. And you just, you could watch 50 of them all fall out of the sky at the same time. There's no sound, nothing. It's just.

That's pretty much interesting. And that's probably helpful in Mexico because they're getting, they're getting big on technology, all sorts of technology. You know, moving into some other stuff, let's talk about. It's interesting how their weapons continue to develop and how resourceful they are. It's fascinating to me.

But you know what else is fascinating? I've been reading that some of these cartels, I don't know if moving away is the right sentence. I kind of mentioned this earlier, I think.

But it seems like they're kind of, they're definitely expanding out of the drug market. And it sounds like that's not even. the majority of their income at this point in time now. I mean, I know there's a lot of human trafficking happening, gun smuggling, drugs, but it sounds like the cartels are becoming so sophisticated and becoming so powerful. that they're actually taking over a legitimate business in commerce.

Do you want to... Yeah, sure....spout around that? I think one...

The main reason for a criminal organization to exist is money, right? It's revenue. They want to have more money and more power. And wherever they have a sense that there is money in whichever industry that is, legal or illegal, they're going to try to bank on it.

At some point drugs were the most profitable revenue, right? Because they were illegal, hard to get, scars, and there was a huge demand in the US. Right now the price of cocaine is plummeting. It's probably at its lowest in history.

It's, you can get a break of cocaine for 16 grand, right? Like it's already in the US, which is absolutely ridiculous amount of a price. They're still moving.

What was it? 30, even a low price will be 30, 35, 40. A low price will be 30,000. Okay.

So it's like a fire sale with cocaine, right? Yeah, exactly. Like everybody's like, everybody in the U.S. is getting a hold of a couple of bricks of cocaine and then trying to split, you know, that over and get some revenue.

They're still making money out of drugs. But the thing is, that's sort of like an established revenue stream now, right? They managed to have that streamline of revenue established. No issue, no problem.

They can even sort of like calculate how much money they're going to make over a year of shipping different kinds of drugs and stuff. So that's basically settled for them, for their business. What they're seeing there is an opportunity is in natural resources and human smuggling.

And of course, the political power, capitalization of political power, you know, political positions. That's where they're now not moving away from drugs, but probably saying, you know what? We have established drug routes.

We have established revenue. We have established providers and clients. Now that that's established and it's getting to a established level of money and it's not even that high anymore. There's nowhere left to even expand in the drug market.

Exactly. We basically own it and that's it. Because they find new clients, right?

Like Europe and then Africa and stuff. But it has a cap, you know. And then they move from that to other revenue streams. One of them being mining.

First they started... embedding with mine international mining companies to bring security even if those mining companies i've reached out to they say they have no clue they don't do that kind of like deals with cartels and they disguise everything as going with private security companies well guess what private security companies they are right there they are cartel so they pay these private security companies first to lobby with Mexican security forces to assure that their operation in certain region, it's going to be secure, right? They're like, oh, we're too afraid of cartels and we want to explode this mine of, I don't know, lithium, gold, silver, whatever, but we want to know we're safe.

They're smart enough and they do have people doing research enough to know that that region is highly controlled by the cartel. So they will just sit and negotiate through different security companies, right? That means that the security company says, OK, usually we charge, let's call it $1,000 for a deal like that.

But now we're going to charge $3,000, three times more, because we're going to split that with a cartel and then you'll be safe. So the cartel basically owns the security around most of these mining companies on different natural resources, right? That was... first at the beginning.

Then cartels started like stepping a step ahead, putting a step ahead and saying like, oh you know what, it looks like we have rumors that here could be a lot of new silver unexploded yet. Why don't we establish right there and hold that place for a while so when a mining company comes and say like, hey we want to explode that place, we're already here man, yeah you're gonna have to you know give us the good money. to keep you safe, to get rid of all these people, and we're good.

And that's been going on and on in different places. So when we see cartels fighting in places like Zacatecas, Puebla, all that stuff, the government tells us, oh, they're fighting a drug route. It's like, dude, that is not even a drug route. There is no port.

There is no main highway that leads to the U.S., whatever. Not the only one. That's not a production site. But what you have is a lot of silver, like in Zacatecas. So these guys want to own that place because they know there's going to be a new project coming in town.

And that's big money for them. Big money. That's all they're fighting for. In Chiapas, Cartel Jalisco versus Sinaloa Cartel fighting hard, killing a lot of innocent people, making a mess, making parades. Like you will see parades of cartels going and the people will be like, hey, save us, please, from the other cartel, whatever.

Chiapas, the major and main human trafficking border and human smuggling border right now, there is in all of the Americas. That's where the bottleneck is. That's in the U.S. border. The U.S. basically moved its border to southern Mexico.

They negotiated that with the Mexican government. You just put up a bunch of military in your southern border so they don't reach our southern border, right? Which is, it's not working.

But still, they're paying Mexico to do that. And while Mexico is trying to do that. What's it look like down there? Dude, it's a mess, man. I mean, is there any, is there a line?

There's a river and there's a bridge. And there's this little small booth of security. There's a bunch of military. It's a total joke.

Dude, it's a joke. People are literally walking across the river with merchandise even. They go in Guatemala. Buy cheap stuff, you know, like clothes or toys for their kids, whatever. I mean, it sounds like it is so bad.

And we're going to get to this with the lobbying of the government from the cartels and the government or the cartels embedding within the government. I mean, you were talking about this the last time. So essentially, it is, it's so foolish.

I mean, so the U.S. The government has embedded so much in the Mexican government that the U.S. This is actually the exact same thing as the U.S. paying the cartel to, they're paying the cartel to police their own. Yeah.

Yeah. It's just, I mean, it's, it's absurd. Yeah.

Remember the last time I told you that I knew that a cell from Sinaloa cartel was moving down to, to Chiapas because they were moved specifically to stop the influx of migrants. Right. Who's paying for that?

Who lobbied that shit? That was the US government. That was the US government through the Mexican government towards the cartel. So it's basically this.

US government says to Mexico, hey man, loud enough so the cartel's here. I need you to secure your southern border. I'll give you something in exchange, but I need you to secure that border, right? Mexican government says yes, but it's gonna cost you this much.

And they're like, we'll fund you all the... money you need. Hand the money over.

Probably Mexican government keeps 20%, 80% goes for the cartel. So like, hey guys, go and do your thing on the southern border. Yeah. Because the Mexican government is the cartel. Exactly.

And the cartel gets to the southern border and at the beginning start doing their job. Like nobody's going to cross if we don't know. And then they start taking more money.

I mean, he's like, if the Mexican government already paid, why don't we get some extra cash from these guys also? So they're like, yeah, come on over, just pay us. They're becoming more and more and more powerful.

And the U.S. government is like, Mexico, what the f***? You're letting everybody through. Where's the money we gave you? Send the cartel hands. So that's what's happening.

These guys are trying to monopolize every other aspect of our regular lives. Like in Michoacán, the avocados. Every Super Bowl season, dude. It's bad stuff for Michoacán.

Every Super Bowl season, the amount. of avocado that it's consuming the U.S. spikes the shit out of prices in Mexico. And cartels are, let's go for those avocados. Let's put a cap on the production of avocados.

Even if they go to shit, even if they go to waste, even if they get rotten in a warehouse, we don't give a shit, man. They're controlling the supply. We're controlling the supply, so they control the price.

Same thing with lemon. They just recently, like last month, they killed a bunch of farmers, poor lemon farmers. that decided, you know what, f*** you, I have my own lemon trees. I'm going to sell that shit.

I need that for my family. They're like, I told you, no more picking up lemons because we need the prices to spike. So they're going to control the supply, make lemons and avocados very rare to inflate the... This is what the De Beers family did to the diamonds.

Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what they're doing. That's exactly what they're doing with everything, with everything. They started doing that with avocados and lemons. And you go to a corner store here in the US, they're like, what the f*** is avocado?

It's extremely expensive now. It's not because of supply and demand in the market or whatever. It's because of f***ing cartels taking over the production or the picking up of their fruits. Wow. And it's crazy.

And then I was also in Chihuahua, northern Mexico, the state where Ciudad Juarez is, right across El Paso. It's a huge state. And I was deep into the mountains in what we call La Sierra de Chihuahua, which is the little mountains of Chihuahua. A region controlled absolutely by the Sinaloa Cartel, by a faction anyways of it, to learn how they're monopolizing water. Water did.

I was there during a draft, right? One of the worst that ever hit northern Mexico. Water was absolutely scarce.

The government was telling us, you know, you need to take... control of the water usage because we're out of water. And also, the rivers that flow from the mountains down to the Rio Grande, down to the river that divide both countries, Mexico and the U.S. have an agreement of sharing waters, right?

The Rio Grande is born in the Colorado Mountains. Okay. Then it goes into Mexico and then back in the U.S. and then back into Mexico up in Coahuila and then back in the U.S. in Texas. And like that. So they have an agreement.

You let that water flow and I'll give you 20% back. And then up ahead, you give me 20% back of that water that crossed into your turf. And that's an agreement, right? We're at a point where the US and Mexico relationship is very fractured because of water. The US is saying Mexico owes us like five years of water.

They haven't paid. And Mexico is like, we are on a draft. We don't have enough water to pay you back.

And we need that water for our locals. Cartels learned about this shit. They say like, oh, so water is cars now. So water is money now. So we want to control every river, creek, lake in this region.

At least in the region we own. And they start doing that in Chihuahua, in the Sierra de Chihuahua. And how they start doing that is literally putting lookouts, sicarios and henchmen, around those creeks where the creeks were born or where the rivers were born.

So they're looking for natural springs. Natural springs, yes. There is a huge lake called Lago de Arareco, a beautiful lake in the middle of the mountains of the hills in Chihuahua.

The last time I was there, dude, I mean, it was probably only... full to the third part of it, absolutely empty. And when I asked locals, no one wants to say what exactly was happening to the Arareco River, right, to the Arareco Lake.

That lake doesn't have an exit, you know. It doesn't have a stream of, the water is going through that river, through that whatever. The water stays there.

It's a natural lake that fills every time it rains. So the locals had this joke and they were telling me, like, I think it has a hole on the right bottom of the lake and that's where that water is going because every morning we see the lake, it's more empty. You go to sleep one night and the next morning it's more empty.

And I was like, they're trying to tell me something they can't say, right? So I started working my way in with locals and with biologists and people around. And they showed me how the cartels by night goes with, every night goes to that creek, to that lake, with these water pipes and start extracting a lot of water from it. And then they sell that water to hotels, stores, Airbnbs, for tourists. You go to a hotel in the middle of a draft, and you can open the faucet and leave it open for hours, and you're not going to run out of water.

But if you're in a local house, you're immediately going to be out of water, like probably within an hour of leaving the faucet open. And all these guys are sourcing from the cartel, and the cartels are making shit tons of money. So they are now controlling, is this, they're controlling the water supplies? Water supplies, yes.

Is this spreading? I don't have, I still have no information about other states. I did my reporting specifically in Chihuahua because it was going through the worst draft.

in history in Mexico. That was where water became more and more scarce. I think it's happening also in Nuevo León.

They're also bordered with Texas in Monterrey, Laredo, Nuevo Laredo, all those places east of Mexico. It's the northern east of Mexico because also water is absolutely scarce right there. So they're banking on that.

They're banking on jellyfish in Sonora. Jellyfish. Jellyfish is just like... That's very new.

That's a very new revenue stream they just popped up. In Sonora, in the Mar de Cortes, which is the Pacific side of Mexico, there is a massive population of jellyfish. We don't use jellyfish for anything. So it's become basically a plague in Mexico.

But in China, apparently, dehydrated and covered or curated with salt. It's an exquisite plate. It's something expensive.

It's a delicacy. Yes, exactly. They pay shitons for a jellyfish dehydrated and curated with salt.

Well, that's been happening before the Sinaloa Cartel. Local fishermen have their season. They'll grab a bunch of jellyfish and sell that out to the Vietnam. And it's Vietnam and other...

Thailand. Thailand governments, yes, both of them. They're selling that to those governments and then they are selling it to the Chinese government making a buck out of it.

Great season for local fishermen, the jellyfish season. When the Cartel learned how much money they were making, it was something like 10 million dollars a season or something like that, the revenue from that, they were like, all right. So you're not gonna sell anymore directly to these companies. You're gonna sell to us and we're gonna sell to the companies. We're gonna export this shit.

Many fishermen decided like, you know what, no, I don't think that's a good idea, man. I mean, we're gonna be left out of this business and we're gonna just... be left with, you know, just a couple of bucks around. So they didn't listen. They killed two, three fishermen and then they started burning the trucks where they were transporting the jellyfish and killing some of the drivers.

To make a point. It's like, okay, you keep selling directly to these guys and I'm gonna keep killing you guys. So now they own that business. Now the fishermen had to ask for permission first to go out and sell and get jellyfish.

And then they have to report exactly how many jellyfish they gathered. And they sell that to them for, you know, super cheap price, local price. And now the cartel is handling with Vietnam and Thailand companies to export that shit out to China.

So they're literally getting in the middle of a lot of heavy revenue business, you know, businesses. Wow. You had mentioned something about Lyft.

and Uber as well. Yes, that's another thing. There is an app. If you don't mind, let me tell you which app it is. I don't know.

Do you think that's fine? We're fine if we say the brand? We're not going to get in trouble?

It's up to you. I mean, I'm not going to get in trouble, but I don't know if you want to call out the brand. They probably don't even know.

But let me see. Well, there is one of these ride... applications like Uber and Lyft, specifically in Culiacán, in the main city, capital city in Sinaloa. I can't find it. But this is an international brand as well.

The next top competitor to Lyft and Uber. And they establish business in Culiacán, in Sinaloa and in several different parts of Mexico as well. But in Culiacán, there was an order by allegedly Los Chapitos, the sons of El Chapo Guzman. of the Sinaloa cartel, for everyone to stop working for Uber and Lyft and to start working with that company exclusively. So there was a time where, very recently, where you will see the local news in Sinaloa, there was a lot of Uber and Lyft drivers getting killed.

And everybody started wondering why. I asked one of my sources what's happening, and he told me, like, there is an order for every Uber driver, Lyft driver to stop working there and start working with these companies specifically. I still don't know why he couldn't really give me an answer. He's like, that was the order. And I was like, do they have money in that company?

Did they pay something? Or what's the deal? Is it their company? I don't think it's their company because this is an international company.

You know, this is, I think it's a U.S.-based company or, yeah. It's like Uber and Lyft. Interesting. Yeah.

I'll find the name of the company. When did that start happening? Probably like two months ago. So they're getting involved in legitimate transportation. Yeah.

Water. Water. The water supply. Yeah. The food supply.

Human smuggling. Human smuggling. Drugs. Fishing.

Well, yeah, food supply. Food supply. Mm-hmm. I mean.

They have their hands on everything, man. And again, their strategy is when they feel there is an opportunity to be making money out of an industry, they'll dive in. They'll dive in. It's probably the.

Who's engineering these ideas? That's the thing, dude. It's weird because when I was talking to these higher up.

In the Sinaloa cartel, one of the guys that's in the leadership of the Sinaloa cartel, they're smart people. They went to schools in Europe, in Canada, in the U.S. These are highly educated people.

These are serious business people. Yes. And they know and they have friends with money that probably give them ideas. I mean, they're probably, probably, I mean, if they're hiring these kind of people, they're doing a straight market assessment.

You know? Yeah. This is what the avocado industry brings in every year. We need to take a piece of this or the whole thing.

This is what the water treatment plants and the water supply businesses are making. I think if you think about like. of like an investment house, they have two things.

They have analysts that kind of like look at the trends and they have people on the ground, you know, pitching in new ideas, saying like, hey, man, I just learned that water is going to be scarce in this state for the rest of the year, you know, because there is a drought and there is not enough water and Mexico needs to pay water to the US, that kind of stuff. And I think Cartel has both. They have like analysts saying like how much and how is the market of different things moving.

And people on the ground saying, hey, there's no water in Chihuahua. Are they webbing out into anything else? That's as far as I'm aware now.

These past couple of years, I've been reporting on all sorts of different stuff they're doing. Traveling from Chihuahua to Michoacán to Chiapas, to Sinaloa, to different places. And it's wild, man.

Yeah, I mean... What? How does this? How do you even? How do you even begin to combat this when they are?

illegitimately legitimizing themselves into just everyday regular business. I mean, it's a crime to, I mean, it's, how do I say this? I mean, they're forcing these businesses to.

comply with them but once they're complying i mean the crime just goes into the past and i mean how it seems like it would be impossible to break him up yes i mean we're definitely past that point now because i think there was still there was still a time where where a business owner a politician could have closed the door for that, you know, and say, you know what? I don't care if I'm going to make three times more money. It's dirty money.

I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to comply with you. I'm not going to do it.

There were not still that powerful back then. There were still like cartels. I don't even call them cartels anymore. They're either criminal enterprises or pseudo paramilitary.

armies, you know? They're everything but drug cartels. I think that's a term that it's absolutely outdated.

We shouldn't be calling them drug cartels because they're not drug cartels. I mean, what does this mean for Mexico? What does it look like 10 years from now? It's looking bad.

It's looking sad. Imagine on your daily basis you're a regular man living in Mexico. Middle class. You say, you know what, I probably can put together some money, some savings to make a business. It depends on where you are.

You're going to get extorted or kidnapped immediately to rip you up of what you're building. If you pass through that. You're gonna learn that you're gonna have to make decisions and say like if I'm gonna make a business in Mexico if it's I don't know whatever you're doing.

You're setting up ladders for whatever or building houses If you're making enough money Someone's gonna come after you someone's gonna say hey man Why don't you we partner and you're sort of laundering money for us and I'll keep you protection and you say no man I'm not interested. I'm doing my money. And then they start extorting you or kidnapping your family.

And they're like, hey, what about now? And you'll be like, I'd rather close my business or comply and make a buck out of it. But now you're part of it.

I mean, it's just getting to the point where even if somebody wants to start a legitimate business, I mean, you can't get into the avocado business, you can't get into the lemon business. You can't get in the jellyfish business. You can't get in the transportation business. You cannot get into the water business.

You can't dabble in the drug business. I mean, it's just. What does that make for the economy of our country? That's kind of what I'm getting at.

I mean, you know, what's left? Power. They'll probably go after the power. They're on, yeah.

Control that. Medicine, the medical industry. They're on that.

I mean, it's. They're on everything. They're on everything.

It's a plague. I mean, the thing is, they're going to start shrinking the middle class so much. that there will be no develop economical development in Mexico for a good while. Yeah. And it's probably we're probably facing that.

I'm not I mean I'm of course very ignorant on how the financial markets go whatever but if you think of it if the If the middle class is absolutely shrinked and all you have left is probably an upper class and then a lower lower class, right? And and the cartel is kind of like monopolizing and going in between both Then a lot of the money you need for that country for that middle class to leave it's gonna come through illegal sources, right? These are study by science this new research by the science magazine said that Mexico that the cartels are the fifth largest employers in Mexico, right below the Mexican government. Wow.

Fifth largest employer in Mexico. So if the Mexican government will go after cartel activity and stop all the money moving related to any criminal organization, we will become like poor immediately, man. We'll become like one of the most poor countries in America, you know, in the continent, probably in the world, man.

Because this money is getting through everywhere. Mexico is a highly cash-based country. You use a lot of cash. There's a lot of different stores, corner stores, different places that they don't want to pay taxes because they're going to get left without anything.

So they use cash. Perfect for money laundering. But also, where is this cash getting from? You don't go to an ATM and withdraw money all the time.

There's cash moving around the city, you know. You get paid with cash. It's... Dirty money, it's cartel money.

But that's the money that is backing up Mexico right now. Man. So I guess Mexico needs to find a way to legitimize all that dirty money, all that, you know, money made with dirty hands, put it into a legal, basically, laundered money for these guys, and then stop the f***ing revenue and opening up more, I don't know, man, shops or whatever.

But do you have any ideas on how to even begin to combat something like that? I think a good start is again by the Mexican government recognizing we have an issue, we have a problem. But putting a blind eye, it's not helping. I mean, where would they even start though? I guess if you start saying, openly saying, we have a war, an undeclared war in Mexico that we're losing, you can get resources, you can get people, you can get smart people jumping in, you know?

Making education policies, health policies, financial plans on how to get out of it, how to fight these guys. Not only just going after them and shooting them, you know. Yeah.

But actually, how do we hurt these guys? How do we take the money and the power out of these guys? One strategy that has worked in the past is divide and conquer. And you make a bunch of little cartels and then you go fight them.

But that's, you're only going to fight. The armed branches of the cartels, right? What about the financial branches?

So you're talking about using propaganda against the cartels. You need to switch and change the way. You're smart. You're a smart dude. Yeah, dude.

Like, that's how they're getting into everywhere, right? By propaganda. So we would have to, so you turn it into a PSYOP. Yeah. I think that's the only way to go out at this point, you know, of.

thought that's a very interesting conversation let's take a break let's come back when maybe we'll pick up right there for sure next on the sean ryan show we embedded with a girl with a woman uh she's the mother of five kids she lost her job during the pandemic and a friend of her at a bar came out like hey dude i know a couple of guys that will give you a car a nice car and they'll give you five grand every time you cross. The cartel guys that were stashing her car, they told me the first five, six times we send her across without anything. She thought she had anything, but we're doing that to test her first and also to get the custom officers used to her crossing every other day, once a week, every weekend.

So we did that several rounds. And then after the sixth, Of all the previous SRS episodes, so they're easy to find, you can find that right here.