Ed Calderon details Mexico’s cartel roadblocks—often built on public roads—where stolen 4x4s fuel turf wars, like Los Salazar vs. La Nueva Generación near lithium-rich Sonora. He warns of narco-terrorism’s political grip, from bribes to religious iconography like Santonino scapularios, and blames U.S. operations like Fast and Furious for empowering Sinaloa. Social media censorship silences factual cartel content, while Mexico’s gun restrictions contrast America’s Second Amendment culture. Calderon predicts U.S. military intervention in five years as cartels outpace governance, reshaping border dynamics with drones, private networks, and fentanyl trafficking. [Automatically generated summary]
Well, I'm happy you're back, but I'm not happy that there was a motivation to bring you back based on the violence, you know, the violence that is going on between the cartels, and it was the Mormons, and then we were just talking about this other person that got shot because they ran.
So, I mean, this is just, you know, from what I see and from how things traditionally happen down there, Mexico has currently a leftist president down there.
He's very to the left.
So much to the left that he recently gave Evo Morales, the deposed leftist president of Bolivia, asylum in the country.
And there's been a lot of pro-left political stuff going on in Mexico, basically.
As soon as the designation threat by the U.S. came down, there was some sort of negotiation, and a lot of things happened after some U.S. officials went down there and talked to the government.
Among them, Evo Morales is out.
He went to Cuba, apparently, and then went to Argentina.
So he's not going to stay in Mexico.
Former head of public security under the Calderon administration, which is two administrations passed.
President Calderon is the one that started the drug war.
He was arrested for cartel involvement and basically for seeing money from the cartels.
I saw that.
He was going through his immigration process and he was actually asking for full citizenship and they got him on lying through the authority, the immigration authorities.
He said that he never received money from the cartels and apparently he did a lot of it.
So all these things happened after they walked back the threat of designating cartels as a terrorist organization.
I mean, a main thing is one of the things that this current president, Andres Manuel Lopez, overran on, was creating a national police force, right?
A National Guard, is what he calls it, which had already kind of been done before, but change the name, change the uniform, change the packaging, and it's a new thing, right?
He wanted the army out of the drug war because the casualties were mounting on both sides, and he said it wasn't a military, it shouldn't be a military operation.
And he ran on a platform that was called Avrazos Nobalasos, which means hugs, not bullets, right?
So basically, amnesty for the cartels was basically kind of the main theme of that.
So he got into power.
The first thing he did, militarized police forces and created a National Guard and tried to dissolve the federal police.
And most of that National Guard force was designated to border patrol duties on the Mexican side.
So some of them went to the south of the border, southern Mexican border, and some of them went to the northern Mexican border basically to stem the whole illegal immigration crisis with the caravans.
That's what kind of happened.
And it was kind of a collaboration between the U.S. and the Mexican government.
So that was one of the key points of collaboration that they had.
And when this whole designation thing went up, that was kind of like a bargaining chip that the Mexican government had with the U.S. And the rest of the things that kind of transpired afterwards, you know, it's pretty interesting how a lot of things happened after that meeting down there and how they walked back the terrorist designation.
I'm not going to say names, but there's been a few cases of pretty large banks that have been involved in money laundering for the cartels recently, and people can look that up easily.
But you would think you would have cartels designated as terrorists.
So now their banks involved in funding terrorism.
So that would change things.
There's a lot of things that would happen.
Some of these consequences, people talk about, yeah, designate them as a terrorist and send drones down there.
Things that they kind of don't talk about is that if a terrorist designation does happen, most people seeking asylum in the U.S. from Mexico now have the claim of running from terrorists in Mexico.
So now they can claim that as far as asylum-seeking people can claim that now.
It's a different thing.
The main argument that a lot of people say is that cartels can't be considered a terrorist group because they don't have political aspirations.
The problem with that theory is that we have a lot of political killings by cartels in Mexico where they shoot the candidate of one side of the political spectrum because it's not good for them.
So they influence politics.
They also pay off a lot of politicians down there.
And they also examples of the new generation cartel from Gualajara giving out Christmas gifts or groceries to the poor, basically doing hearts and minds type tactics in the area are clear political movements, right?
The classical definition of that is of a terrorist group.
That's what they're basing it on.
I think the cartels and narco-terrorism is a thing in and of itself.
It's a new phenomenon.
It should be terrorism should be reclassified to include it, I think.
Most people that live through that type of situation in that type of area in the country facing some of these cartel threats that have fled it, we'll call it what it is.
And they're also in the middle of one of the most important regions in Mexico right now for a lot of reasons.
Main thing, there's two things that are really, really kind of happening in that region.
One, the trafficking of fentanyl and heroin and all these drugs through one of the main drug routes up into the U.S. And there's a few factions fighting over that region.
Los Salazar, which are a small cartel faction that has allegiances to Sina Loa cartel and the Lenia cartel, which has historically been in control of Ciudad Juarez.
So they're both kind of buying for control of the area.
A few hours before the massacre actually took place, there were a bunch of firefights between these two factions in the area.
So one of the main theories is that this group of Mormons basically were case of mistaken identity, kind of driving into some of the areas where they're being protected by some of these people.
That's one theory, right?
The other thing that people kind of need to think about is that the largest minable deposits of lithium on the planet right now are a few hours away from where that massacre took place.
And there was some sort of deal in the past where a Canadian mining agency was going to have rights to it, and the mining agency was bought by a Chinese company.
So, again, after that massacre, a lot of things happened.
A lot of negotiations happened.
That deal was one of the things that got killed after that situation.
But you talk about legalization and how that would help.
That definitely is part of the solution.
And it is.
It is definitely part of the solution, legalizing some drugs.
You know, not all drugs are made the same.
Maybe not fentanyl, you know, but that would help out some things.
There's multiple things that could be done to guide us towards a place where things could stabilize down there.
And a lot of it is not going to be able to be done in Mexico.
It's going to have to be done up here, right?
Basically, you know, one, you have to take care of the U.S. has to take care of the drug market up here, the illegal drug market.
And certain things that have happened, like legalization of marijuana and marijuana and some places up here, have changed the dynamics of what happens down there.
Some for the better, some bad, some bad things have happened.
Talking to my friend John Norris, who was on here as well, and comparing notes, seeing how a lot of the drug crows that are up here, the illegal pot grows that are up here, are exactly like the ones that I found in Baja six, seven years ago, and how some of that drug money made from those fields is staying in the U.S. It's not being sent back.
So that means you have an active, growing cartel presence in the U.S. that is U.S.-based.
So I think one of the problems that people have is perception is that that's a Mexican problem.
It's a U.S.-Mexico problem.
You have a border there, but the problem has two root causes: social economic inequality and destabilization and corrupt government down there, and a thriving illegal drug market up here.
And those two have to be solved in a combined way.
I posted a video on my feed of the capture of El Chapo's son.
You can see it, and you can see the surprise and really how the agents are kind of uncomfortable or are fearful of what they just stumbled in on.
Imagine U.S. agents stumble in on one of America's most wanted individuals up here.
They're going to put him on the ground.
They're going to handcuff him.
In the video, you can see that they point their rifles at him, and he calmly takes out his gun and hands it to somebody inside of the house he was in and walks out and kind of tries to negotiate with the people outside, the federal agents that are trying to arrest him.
And you can see that the agents are like, oh, what did we stumble in on?
Right?
So that happened.
They grabbed him.
They reported back to Mexico.
They captured him.
They started to announce the capture.
And his brother, his half-brother Archibaldo, basically called in all of the reinforcements from all surrounding towns and regions in Sinaloa.
And it was flooded with a bunch of armed cartel guys.
And also, there's talk about there's a specific community out there in Sinaloa where all the Army families members live, and they were apparently being held hostage by cartel guys as a bargaining chip.
It seems so crazy to watch because it seems like it's not discussed nearly enough.
And it seems like if it keeps getting stronger, like what we saw with El Chapo's son being released, what's to stop it from taking over Mexico entirely?
Well, I mean, you would have people arguing that it already has in different ways.
So another thing that people kind of have to kind of figure out and realize is that there's factions in the Mexican government.
So you will see a federal government that apparently is being paid off by a very specific large cartel group.
And then you'll see state governments that are of a different political party influenced, paying off by other cartel groups.
So you'll see military units moving on the town and the state police blocking their way to get in there because they play for different teams, right?
Whoa.
You know, there's a lot of talk right now about Felipe Calderon's tenure and how his head of security, head of public safety, was on the payroll of the Sina Law Cartel, which actually came out during El Chapo's trial.
So now you're talking about basically a federal police force that was on El Chapo's side.
So he had free reins to grow and do whatever he had to do in that region with the support of the federal government in a way.
So technically, you know, who's in control of some regions.
And realistically, some regions of Mexico are completely in cartel control.
So I went to work for state government down in Mexico, in Baja specifically.
This was 2004, right?
Right before the start of the official start of the kickoff of the drug war as the kickoff.
But there was, you know, the official start was when Felipe Calderon came into office and said, you know what, gloves off.
We're going to go after the organized crime, right?
We're going to send the military onto the streets and they're going to head up spearhead operations against the cartels.
But before that, things were happening still.
Sinaloa cartel was growing.
There was a rift between the Senal Law Cartel and Tijuana cartel, fragmentation.
Cartel heads were being killed and one cartel turned into three, all this fragmentation.
And then they basically militarized the war on drugs with Calderon, came in, militarized the war on drugs.
Immediately you start seeing that drug enforcement efforts were being put towards a single or a group of cartel groups, but not a major one like the Sina Law Cartel.
So you start seeing how they were basically taking sides.
And also, El Chapo has been built up into this mythical figure.
Like he was the head of the Senegal cartel.
He's the main guy.
That's not true at all.
He was an operator for the Senal Law Cartel, but not the main operator.
There's different theories about who was actually in charge or the brain behind the whole operation.
When you say Senator Law Cartel, it's not one group.
It's several, it's a federation of several criminal groups, enterprises uniting and working in conjunction to put drugs into the United States.
Well, one of the things they do is put drugs into the United States.
They do a lot of things.
But that's one of the things they do.
So, you know, certain people, there's a lot of people out there that theorize that El Mayo Sambada, which is El Chapo's compadro, who's still out there, is the actual head of the Senegal Law Cartel and has been since the start.
But you see how some of these people become celebrities.
And as soon as somebody becomes a celebrity like El Chapo, who escaped from custody a few times, under pretty interesting situations, I mean, he's pretty interesting situations.
Now the government has a celebrity that can go after us, and point at that guy.
That guy's a bad guy, right?
So you saw a lot of that, a lot of theatrics around him as far as him being the head of whatever group or operation was.
But at the same time, you start seeing the DEA and the U.S. government condecorating and putting all these awards on a guy like Luna, who was the guy that got arrested recently, who was head of security down in Mexico.
And now all of a sudden, he's, no, no, he's not.
He was recognized by the U.S. government as being a player for the good guys, and now he's arrested.
So you start seeing all these different interests, different political kind of movements around the drug war and what that turned into.
And you don't know what to think, right?
Each U.S. administration has changed the way they do things when it comes to the drug war.
And you go back and you see some things like you see things like the whole how some armed groups started popping up in Mexico in the Micho Can area fighting back against the cartels.
The whole, there was like a series, like a documentary on them, the Alto Defenseas, as they would call it, basically like vigilante groups.
And then later on, you realize that they were all fighting for basically protecting or working around security for illegal Chinese ore mining in the area.
Yeah, there is a certain chaotic freedom in Mexico, which I'll, you know, being a child of Mexico and then moving up here and seeing you guys talk about freedom, not that freaky.
But there's, I get the, I get the draw, you know, and some of these communities down there are pretty safe, but some aren't, you know.
And safe until all of a sudden you're in the middle of some place that's going to be disputed, which I think is something along the lines of what happened to some of these Mormon communities down there.
You know, you're on, you're in the middle, your community and your movements are in the middle of our route.
Like, if they can continue to grow, I mean, it's really, is it possible that we're looking at a country that might be completely run and overrun by criminal organizations and drug sellers?
So what I think is going to happen is you'll see escalations.
A clear sign or a clear group that is like a sign of things to come is the new generation cartel.
The new generation cartel is a cartel that was, it used to be called Los Mata Setas.
It was basically an armed enforcing group that Sina Law Cartel made to go after their main rivals, the Setas, which were originally members of Mexican special forces that said, you know what, we're going to be cartel guys now, cartel enforcers now.
So they whole sorted history.
It was a militarized group that was formed to go after them, right?
And their whole kind of play was that we're going to be against extortion, against abducting people, against affecting the community.
We're going to enforce the law in our communities, but we're also going to move drugs through here, right?
But that, you know, that's kind of their thing.
So you see this group started kind of growing in the region.
And right now it's pretty big.
It's rivaling the Sina Law cartel as far as power and reach.
But the way they do their things is militarized.
It's very militaristic and kind of paramilitary.
And it kind of reminds me a little bit about the FARC groups in Colombia.
Hearts and minds.
They go into the communities, community policing in the area.
They originally said, you know, we're aware the government wants to fight drugs here in the region.
We agree with their fight, but we are also going to fight against these guys that are affecting the community as well.
And they have like groups of people, they have training camps, militaristic training camps where they recruit people, they take them there, and they're being trained in guerrilla warfare and shooting.
And apparently there's some SF guys from the U.S. that advise them.
So that's the next thing.
The escalation of a simple ragtag group of cartel guys enforcing a region to an actual cohesive paramilitary group now trying to vie for control, not just of the drug routes, but also of the populace and the confidence that the populace has in them.
Another component is systemic corruption as a society from who knows when.
It's always been a thing in Mexico.
People that grew up down there, you get stopped at a red light and you're like, can I pay the fine here?
People that are from down there will be aware of this.
Yeah, show the paperwork.
You slide that thing in there.
That's part of the culture.
That's affecting a lot of things as well.
People don't pay attention to the small rules, so the big rules don't matter.
And just being next to the largest drug market on the planet, and having money, firearms, rounds going down, and fentanyl that is being fabricated in Mexico now, and some of the Chinese fentanyl making its way through into the U.S., kind of filling the voids that some of the drug market has right now.
So they're making fake fentanyl-laced pills that are going to be being put into the U.S. and fentanyl-laced heroin, right?
So that's where they're going towards now.
That's why you see this epidemic up here.
And a lot of the things traditionally kind of focused on pot before it was legalized in a lot of regions up here now is heroin and fentanyl.
See, and the problem with the idea of legalization is that if you try to be the person who says, hey, folks, we need to legalize drugs here in America because we've got this problem with the cartels.
I mean, again, we just saw the murder, the massacre of Mexican, dual citizenship, nine people, kids, women.
It's not uncommon for that to happen to Mexican nationals.
It's pretty uncommon for that to happen to American nationals down there.
And that woke up a bunch of people, you know?
And now another recent murder of another American national kid with his parents down there.
People will say, just don't go down to Mexico.
But some of these people live down there, have family down there, have communities down there.
And it's just ultraviolet.
People have to wake up on this side to realize this problem is not going to get any better.
This problem is not just a Mexican problem.
It's a U.S.-Mexican problem.
And, you know, it'll get to a point where it's going to be, you know, I think in my lifetime, there's going to be some sort of armed intervention in Mexico at some point.
I think something's going to happen in Mexico that's going to destabilize it so much that the U.S. won't have another option but to put Putin on the ground, probably.
I think that's where we're headed.
The problem, and again, another of the problems is that the government is part of the problem.
So you can go down there and negotiate with this government, but six years later, it's going to be another government.
I mean, I'm up here now, and I could see the effects of it up here.
Walking through L.A., seeing all the needles on the ground.
Going to Seattle, seeing the same light brown fentanyl-laced heroin that I saw in shanty towns down in Baja.
It's like, wow.
So this is where it kind of ends up.
So you see the effects of it throughout.
So, you know, you realize quickly as somebody from both sides that I am, you realize that realistically, there's kind of no border when it comes to this problem.
This problem doesn't respect a border wall.
Right.
Submarines will go around it, tunnels will go under it.
Drones will fly over it.
And it's a problem that just keeps producing an effect.
It's also, I think most people, seeing the Iran thing right now, most people know more about that going on halfway across the world than what's going on.
Now, if you had to make a bet, like if there's a betting line in Vegas, like how many days or how many years from now will there be American soldiers deployed to Mexico?
But then I go down there, and I have a lot of my friends that are still down there, people that have trained, still down there, and I hear from them directly.
Like I have some young kids that are in the Hyndar Media, which is like a federal police force that patrols all of Mexico.
And some of the federal police guys, they tell me like, Ed, they said, or you sign the new contract to be Guardian Asano and lower your pay and all of the stuff that all of your benefits will be gone.
Or you just stay on here in limbo and just stay at the base.
Well, I imagine that if it seems overwhelming and it seems helpless and it seems like the cartels are just taking over and they're making a shitload of money and you're not making any money.
I mean, that is the real crazy thing about it, right?
If the government is asking people in this sort of already compromised situation and environment, asking them to work for a small amount of money to go after people that are making a tremendous amount of money.
And you're going to be at war with these people and these people, they're basically your neighbors.
Well, not only that, I was just watching some video where there was this guy who is a U.S. veteran, been deployed overseas, fought for this country, and his mom was getting deported.
And he said he felt betrayed.
Like, here he is in America.
His mother brought him over here, had him over here.
He's a U.S. citizen, and they're deporting his mom.
Again, I travel across the country, just get to experience different parts of the U.S. You know, I spent New Year's in Kentucky, and that's pretty interesting.
I'm reading this book about Kit Carson and the Old West and when the United States conquered parts of California and took over parts of California and the West from Mexico.
I mean, so people kind of figured, realize if you want to be an officer in the Mexican Army, you have to go through war college, and there's different ways to go about it, but there's a lot of hereditary stuff going on.
So the Mexican Constitution allows for guns for self-defense, but a lot of amendments and a lot of corrupt governments down there said maybe not a good idea to have this here.
So progressively throughout recent Mexican history, it's become more and more strict.
Certain rounds aren't allowed.
Certain calibers aren't allowed.
And just plainly, the sale of firearms in all of Mexico is just relegated to a single gun store in Mexico City.
So you can't carry them without a permit.
And to get a permit, you have to know somebody that knows the presidente or a general or something.
Well, there's a lot of weird old-ass stuff down there.
I mean, as far as the stuff that gets handed over or just the weird exotic firearms down there, a lot of people call Mexico the U.S.'s garage.
And garages, you just find weird stuff down there from old World War II-era pistols and explosives to new stuff.
There's a friend of mine that works for the government down there told me that they found a bunch of Parts for a mini-gun in a house somewhere down there.
I mean, that was coming off the Patriot Act era, Bush era thing.
I remember vividly people putting Geiger counters in some of the drug tunnels that we would find.
So they were worried about nukes getting put into drug tunnels at some point during that whole post-9-11 era.
So it would make sense that if you were worried about national security, you would want to not worry about a lot of cartels, maybe focus on one, support one, and just keep us in the know.
Do you think this was a covert operation in a sense that the Sinaloa cartel was not aware that they were doing this to empower them, to eliminate the competition, to strengthen one group because they just knew it was inevitable that someone lost control?
There's a lot of people that are now coming out after the whole, there's a lot of things that were said at the Chapo trial that would lead somebody to believe that there was some sort of official support from the U.S. government to the Sinaloa cartel as far as them having deals with this cartel specifically to keep things,
to keep them in the know about things happening down there, supporting them to be in a position so they can keep control over their region and basically as an information group so they can have a clear eye and ear in a chaotic area like Mexico on the bad guy side.
Well, there's all, like every now and then I post some stuff up about that type of situation and everybody goes to, well, the CIA has been running drugs into the U.S. for years and using planes and stuff like that.
There are instances of CIA involvement and different stuff down in Mexico that are pretty obvious now from the 80s and the 90s as far as supporting certain groups or just trying to keep tabs on these people.
But I think we're coming to a point in our history where a lot of these people are dead.
A lot of these people are in jail.
A lot of these people got book deals.
And a lot of these people are talking.
And I mean, it's interesting seeing some of the stuff that is coming out now that in my time when I was active would have gotten you in a hole probably somewhere if you talked about it.
So there's definitely, I mean, my mind was blown when I was seeing El Chapo on Netflix because a lot of stuff that was going on in that show is fictionalized stuff that I went through myself.
I've went through a lot of the same training that they went through, and I did a lot of this type of stuff, and all of them would have been in zip ties on the ground.
The occult part of it where that Santonino, that Tocha Shrine, is right now it's probably the most popular shrines in Mexico or that one because they work.
And then you go to the holy death shrines down there as well.
And you see how both sides, both Mexican government forces and the cartel, they both benerate kind of the same saints.
Well, I mean, I get the, I mean, I've heard some of the stuff Sean Pen said about, you know, Chavez in Venezuela and stuff like that, how he's pro-Chavez and stuff like that.
And I have people, friends of mine that live in Venezuela under that regime.
So he's a pretty kooky guy.
He has some pretty interesting ideas about he can't possibly be that informed.
I mean, you really have to have boots on the ground to understand what the fuck you're talking about.
I mean, you have to be there for, you know, if you want to know what's going on in Venezuela, there's so many different stories.
My friend Abby Martin's been down there multiple times, and she gives me a story that's so different than anything that you're getting in mainstream news.
I have a lot of that going on as well when I post something completely news related about something and then get shadow banned or things just go down depending on what I post up.
Like weird things.
Posted up Venezuelan people throwing rocks at this armored vehicle and one of them, I think one of them got run over and that got taken down.
I didn't show the part where he got run over, but just the people protesting.
I mean, look, I can understand them saying, caution, some of these images and videos are sensitive, you know, like with some bloody things and things along those lines.
I think it's mostly Americans that have sensibilities that are completely beyond my comprehension that see a gun in a picture and they're afraid of the gun and it's a half terrorism.
So just for people to get some context, I do work for two magazine companies and I do do articles.
So in that regard, I do provide news in certain ways.
But when I post something on my page, it's a personal view of something.
I purposefully don't go into graphic material because I don't want to get flagged.
But sometimes there's always people with a certain affinity to when they see a gun in a post or when they see an animal being butchered for something like in a picture or when they see hunting-related stuff or when they see some sort of – I remember posting up a picture of the Make Tijuana Great Again hats that they were making down there.
Red hats that said Make Tijuana Great Again when the caravans went into DJ and people started protesting the caravans in DJ, that got flagged.
So, if you, but what happens to people that are illegal over it?
That's what's fucked up about it, right?
It's like there's people that came over here illegally 20, 30 years ago, and they've done no crimes, they've been an integral part of society, they've had great lives, but they can't pay taxes, they can't vote, they have to live undercover.
Yes, I mean they're they're uh you know, and they do provide, you know, they do provide, they pay taxes through other sales tax, buying things, but they're not paying taxes.
They're not, but if you made them citizens, you would make money, yeah.
Well, it's not a popular view, it's a stupid view, yeah, it's just it's just it's stupid that we have these people and they're permanent illegals, yeah, and they will be here until they die illegally, and we know they're here.
Like, how about work with what you've got?
Look, you've already doing your best to stop the border traffic, great, fantastic.
But listen, let's just forget about the past.
These people are here, they're here, and they're a part of our community.
Like, how are you going to deny them citizenship till the day they die, and they're still here?
You have no idea how beautiful that thing is until you don't have an option to have it.
That's one thing.
I like the opportunities this country provides.
I've had a lot of opportunities I would never get anywhere else.
I like that you actually work and work.
The work you put in matters here.
I like how it's segmented and different.
You go to Tennessee and you meet people out there.
They're great people.
There's some people who have preconceived notions of what some part of the countries are, but I've loved it.
And then you go to California and you meet people that are on the same boat as I was and they forgot completely what Mexico is and they're completely Americanized.
Americanized and they're completely against you as a new person here.
That's a good example of people that are not there that are talking about it.
You didn't make a value judgment saying that those people coming through were protested by Mexicans and need to go back to wherever fucking rice patty they come from.
It's pretty hot outside, wearing all of your hoodies.
Cameras came by.
The females and the children weren't being put in front parade in front of the media.
Anybody who was there, you could see the circus that was going on.
And then a lot of the camp encampments, they would litter the encampments with needles on the outside.
One of them was next to a school that had to be closed down.
A niece of mine had a kid in there, and the school had to be closed down because it was next to one of these encampments.
They would protest and close down the lanes.
Most people that live in TJ, some of them are Americans and they commute, so that's affecting their livelihood.
People that work on terrorism in TJ, livelihood went down.
So the fact that these people came in and disrupted all that whole thing, and then you would see these Californian, you know, hippie American guys come down there and do puppet shows for these people and hand over donations in the form of canned food, blankets, and stuff like that.
And then you would see these guys go the back door and sell all that stuff in the back and just get money for whatever they were going to get the money for.
We would laugh at it, but also, you know, it's pretty disheartening.
Having that point of view online, because I started posting some of this stuff online for people, this is what's happening.
And that was like, no, no, no, you're going against the narrative.
I think there's definitely this tendency in America that I see the youth in America.
Like I have a weird mental comparison of seeing my nephews down there playing soccer, going out and getting into trouble, going to cockfights, which is probably pretty dangerous, but they go to cockfights, stuff like that.
And I see kids up here on their tablet, you know, playing games, video games, getting offended by something, you know.
Down there, you can still punch somebody in the face if they get into your face in school.
I mean, and when I came up here, like the first year I was up here, I saw the California gun laws change.
Like I got to see the weird California-compliant rifles come to the range and you have to push a button to release the magazine and make it more difficult to reload.
Yeah, the idea that you're just going to handicap law-abiding citizens and that's going to somehow or another save lives in mass shootings.
And here's the other thing about you, and I'm waiting for this to happen, but it's just not happening.
They're never addressing people using psychotropic drugs.
They don't address that.
All those school shooters, all those mass shooters are all on drugs.
They're all on some kind of psych drugs.
And there's no mention of it whatsoever.
Like, what is the action of these things?
It's all about the guns.
And the guns are a huge issue.
I mean, the fact that these people who are fucked up, yeah, that they have access and they can get access to these guns and they can wind up shooting people.
Yes, that is one issue.
Security is another issue.
There's another issue, and that's mental health.
And that to me is the biggest one because without the mental health issue, you don't get mass shooters.
I learned about it from talking to most of my Marine friends that were coming back from, they're like, Ed, like, what you're describing that you're feeling sounds like TBI.
And then you go down there and it's like, oh, you know, things would happen and people would get, you know, just get a few days off, take a few shots of tequila, you're fine.
But you've got, I mean, when it comes to that, but mental health down in Mexico, there's like, it's not, it's not anywhere as far as medicating it, kids being diagnosed with things like autism and autism is a thing that I only recently kind of heard about 15 years ago.
Yeah, in America, it's such a huge part of the culture that people want, people are constantly wanting to take something to take the edge off or take something so they could feel better or take something to, you know, to just to alter their state and the doctor will prescribe it to them.
And then the pharmaceutical drug companies are just raking in the cash from it, so it just becomes a part of reality.
There was a few people, like way back when I first started, you know, things were pretty lax when I got in.
You know, you would get, you know, urine tested for cocaine and whatever.
But some people would go to Oaxaca and go on mushroom trips, like some of the veteran guys that would go through whatever.
There's a place in Oaxaca and Veracruz where they go up into the hills and get some of those, they call them beladas, which is like basically going into midnight and they would smoke these mushrooms and take them.
And they would come back, apparently fix some of them.
That was like the story.
It was pretty good for them to work their things out.
There's, you know, there's enforcement is hard in a country like Mexico, so you're not going to have people trying to go inspect things in some of these parts.
So that's why there's a lot of places like that.
You still, to this day, you can go to places like Hawka where technically that's taking mushrooms is illegal, but they grow on the hillsides.
It's just basically, you know, about that much dirt.
There's a hole where the rope goes through.
So you're kind of fine.
But it's part of the death cult down there.
They do that to kind of initiate people into it.
But it's mushrooms.
They take mushrooms.
There's a bunch of weird stuff that goes on down there as far as the use of psychotropics, like mushrooms and other things to put people in that mindset of accepting a very specific deity or truth down there.
So let's get back to what's fucked up about America.
I always like talking to people that are coming here from somewhere else and just sort of look at it with a fresh eye because obviously I've been here my whole life.
Well, the United States is almost like Europe, where there's all these different countries, except they all speak the same language.
You know, like Europe has France and then they have Germany and you go over there, there's this one, and there's Sweden, and then it's all in this fucking big landmass.
But the United States' landmass is contiguous, and they all speak the same language.
But if you want to tell me that Montana is the same as Florida, you're out of your fucking mind.
So it's basically a ghetto version of that is what they're using, you know, in some of these places.
And I mean, the wall as they're making it, and speaking to some of the border patrol agents that I know, it does its job as far as slowing people down.
I think it is really, well, not all of them, because they still have a guerrilla guerrilla group down there that recently, the FARC, that went amnesty and then they got active again.
But there's still a lot of cocaine being produced there.
Do you remember when there was a CIA drug plane that had like several tons of cocaine on it and it crashed because the Mexican government wouldn't let them land and refuel?
Customs and border protection agent agents and just Homeland Security as an agency has the most corruption charges as far as all law enforcement agencies.
I mean, when I was working down there in Mexico and I got to see different agencies that we would work with, all of a sudden we were like, hey, can you guys just go look over there or just move over there?
I mean, a lot of people that want to get into the U.S., you hear numbers from $8,000 to $15,000, depending on who you are, what you're trying to do, how you're trying to get up here.
As far as being smuggled up, and he's like, Mexican passport, get a Mexican passport.
If you're Mexican, we'll get you a Mexican passport.
We'll put $2,000 in an account somewhere.
So if they want to verify if you're financially solvent, they will check that.
Yeah, a lot of their business as far as smuggling people, that's how they do it, right?
Now, instead of going through the desert, you know, there is a lot of that going on now, too.
Like, there's a lot of people from African migrants coming into Mexico.
A lot of people in the Middle East as well, which is worrying for some people, coming in through Mexico, trying to make their way up.
But it's pretty hard for these people now because there's a lot of security now on both sides of the border.
Mexican Guadalacional and on this side of the border, things are kind of more stringent.
A lot of the people that claim asylum, like a lot of these Maya caravan members, come into the U.S., claim asylum, and say, okay, there's your number to wait, but you're going to wait in Mexico so they get sent back.
Even if they're not from Mexico, they have to wait in Mexico, which is very interesting.
Yeah.
There's a lot of these immigrant waiting encampments in places like Texas and even in Tijuana.
I got to see how, like in places like Fallbrook, California, where the avocado capital of the world, they're cutting down all the avocado trees because there's a drought and there's nobody to pick them.
I'm one of those people that believes in borders, but I also believe if you're a hardworking person who wants to do better, you should have an opportunity.
And I don't think a lot of people, particularly poor people that aren't very well educated, there's not an opportunity.
There's no reason for them to be over here.
So if they applied for United States citizenship, well, why do you want to come here?
I got some of the people that I've met out here that are kind of on the same boat as I am, fresh in the country, you know, doing manual labor, construction, working Kentucky.
I met a bunch of guys that were working on the Kentucky Derby or the horse stalls around them, all Mexicans.
You can smell the tortillas.
The good food is usually, you can smell, you know, you know where they are.