YouSaid · the spoken record

Ed Calderon

lines on the record: 313
first: 2022-12-12
most recent: 2022-12-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I mean, I tried. I was already starting off on the wrong foot basically because trusts had been violated by the people that I was replacing. So I had to gain that back. Then young kids in that family that wanted to have go out and stuff like that in the most violent city on the planet. So I had to do my homework and figure out places where they were safe to go to and make friends with certain club owners and figure out ways to put security in some of these places and having to create this bubble of normalcy around some of these people was pretty difficult. There's no way that is normal for anybody. Oh, God bless them. I know it didn't, I know it wasn't easy. And I know that it affected their lives and they lost on a big part of their youth. Being under that security supervision and bubble.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The fly basically, you know, as I was going, I remember having this experience being in the security office on my laptop, figuring out how to set up a counter surveillance aside to our protection detail, basically how to have people looking for people that might be looking for us, you know, type thing. And then going to San Diego to Coronado and training with some people from former Seal guys and NCIS people who did that job in war zones and seeing them Critique some of the solutions that we came up with on the fly and being like, oh, we never saw that before. Oh, yeah, this is we're doing it down there. So getting that compliment and also getting their feedback, like we probably do this or do that. And it was a learning process on the fly that was pretty, I mean, seated your pants level.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Me, it was all of a sudden I have this director calling me in, and I'm wearing vans and jeans, you know. And all of a sudden I had 80 some people that I had to move around, and I was in charge of securing planes, which do I know about that, airport hangars, armored vehicle maintenance and purchasing and figuring out how to set up a counter-assault group for a protection detail. And I was like, where am I going to learn all this?”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some of the overt militaristic type approaches to security that we had to adopt from we didn't move him in a single armored vehicle. We had two of them that looked exactly alike. So when we would move around, we would switch one car through the other. Every now and then we would arrive to an event. They would open the door and it would be one of us. And they were like, hey, where's the governor? He's in the back one. So they would move to that. So we had to do stuff like that. And again, this is a young me who didn't have any specialized training. I was I was on YouTube, learning some of these things, going online, learning about armored vehicles, learning about architectural armor.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For my experience in that time and place, he was basically spearheading the drug war in Baja when he was in power. So he had threats from all over. Not only him, but his family. First thing I realized working that job in Mexico is that we had people coming in to do specialized training of that regard, Israelis, you know, teaching us how they would do things in Israel that didn't make a lot of sense for us in Mexico. We had people that had some secret service experience kind of show us how they would do celebrity, the bodyguarding or bodyguarding somebody maybe in California of that nature didn't make sense for us. Then we got to experience some cross training with NSW Naval Special Warfare people who were coming off protection details in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was tasked for that, so I think they considered that, and I specifically worked for a governor named Jose Guadalupe el Sun A Millan, who was probably one of the best governors we have had in the state. And people want to see if I'm trustworthy or not. They can ask him directly. And I still speak to some of the members of his family. And we're still friends in that way.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I was tasked to protect the governor of Baja and his family. I was basically replacing a whole contingency of people that were already there that turned out to be corrupted. That wasn't my field. That was operational. I was working with other people doing the counter-narcotic stuff and the director of the institution that I was in basically called me and said, hey, you're going to go and replace these people. And I'm like, what happened to them?”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Here in the US, somebody might, you know, I want a mansion. That's their mindset. I want to live that wrapper. There, I mean, if you can buy a house for your mom, you kn Or pay off some debts that she might have, or a car, that's enough to kill for.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They have the experience of their parents and the people behind them and what they've done and what gotten away with. And now, yeah, more savvy about information warfare. Their main recruiting tool is TikTok. Do you go to TikTok and you'll see a bunch of these kids at an arco potty dancing around and some of these are videos by cartel members filming other cartel members and cartel controlled territory? And that's a window into that life for. Who's on TikTok now? Kids.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think that was when Trump started talking about kind of reviving this whole notion of cartels being labor-looked as a terrorist organization, probably more for a political pressure point he was using to try and get Mexico to reinforce its southern border, which it hasn't. But there's escalation. Oh, this already happened and nothing happened. So we can probably get away with it. And again, there's a newer generation moving forward now. People coming into power.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everyone's game, but also there's been many cases of Americans being killed down there. I mean, we saw the Mormon massacre happen down there, and all of them were American Mexican. They had both nationalities and blonde kids, you know, white. Massacred in the middle of a desert and the cars basically catching fire. This happened and Americans sent the FBI down there to kind of review some of what happened down there.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's not worth it. Kicking a beehive Yeah, there is a tendency to shy away or stay away from that. I mean, they don't want the heat or the attention.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An interesting place as far as people getting certain types of guns. Armor is prolific down there. I mean, everybody down there, the cartel members, you see them wearing plate armor. So that's an issue. It's not like you can shoot somebody square in the chest and they'll go down.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the radiator, you know, some of these radiators are not even the more sophisticated vehicles out there don't have a sufficient armoring around the radiator or the battery housing or some of these vehicles. There was a case of a guy, I think his nickname was Erpella Lacas or something like that out in Sinaloa-level cartel guy. He had an armored vehicle. He was riding around and he got ambushed, shot at his car. He was like, ah, I have armor. You can't shoot me. And somebody went up to his car and just put the barrel right in the locking mechanism. That got him, you know.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Race of technology basically down there armored vehicles, how to take on an armored vehicle? Well, there's a few ways, 50 cals, you know, if you can mount them in a right way and shoot at a car like that or a bunch of kids with balloons and acrylic paint on the front windshield and blind the vehicle so it doesn't so they can't drive it anymore is another way. A tow line across a road painted like the painted black so you can't see it. And cut the thing in half. Again, I'm not saying any secrets. These are things that people have seen out there.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then before my time, probably two, three years before I was actually active, they tried to kill the head of public security in the state of Baja. And with him, it was a grenade launcher, 40mm grenade launcher. It skipped off the armored vehicle and landed in the car behind it, made the back explode. One of the guys that I used to work with was actually in that car. He survived it. But you started to see, oh, they're using armored vehicles now. Let's get 50 caliber now to try and defeat that armor. So yeah, there's always this...”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was an attempted assassination of a state prosecutor somewhere in, I think central Mexico, I forget exactly where, but she was riding around an up armored jeep. I think it was. And their main means of firepower was 50 cals. And that car was left in pieces. She survived in it. So I think the armored vehicle company that sold her that vehicle has it in the display room.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Started getting them specifically with the proliferation of armored vehicles in Mexico. Mexico has a giant industry in armored vehicles as far as”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's no flight zones over certain parts of Mexico. Another thing you're seeing now is night vision, night vision equipment. That is clearly military grade from the US that was probably abandoned in some warfield out there, maybe Afghanistan or somewhere like that. And it's being found in safe houses and in the hands of cartel forces. You want to talk about a scary opponent, somebody wearing night vision with a suppressed firearm. Those types of capabilities are now out there. Also, there's this tendency to think and every now and then you'll see these cartel videos where these guys carrying around these 50 cals and they stand there like, you know, boasting about their rifles. And everybody laughed at them because the 50 cal or anything like that without an optic on it is like you're going to shoot. You're prey and shoot basically see if you can hit anything with it. But now there's a few of my sources I've seen sophisticated.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are no fly zones over parts of Mexico. The new generation cartel took down a helicopter. Been incidents of military helicopters falling from the sky, and they said that it was mechanical issues. But again, I'm not going to do conspiracy theories out there, but there's a lot of videos on TikTok of Sina Laura Cartel forces at parties carrying around rocket launchers on their backs.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some of the sophisticated stuff I see in our man pads, which is basically remote guided missiles. I've seen some of those found out”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Explosives of all kinds are pretty easy to get. So you start seeing that. And also, I mean, there's some exotic weaponry coming in from the south now and from the ocean. Some of it is probably US military equipment sold to various South American governments that are now not as stable as they were and they're kind of making their way into the black market. So a lot of those 50 calcle mounted technical type machine guns and some of the RPGs and man pads or remote control guided missiles that have been found in cartel hands are probably making their way up from down south.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's been going on for a while. There's a place in Mitro Khan that has some pretty interesting videos. And the interesting part of it is because the federal police down there are actually working hand in hand with a united Cartelos Unillo's group, which is basically the local cartels to try and fight off the new generation cartel moving into Michokan. So even the federal forces are fighting with the cartels to try and keep this larger cartel out. And there's videos of these civilian drones basically dropping explosives. They found some explosive testing ranges out there that are basically replicating stuff that you would see the IRA use during the troubles out there from homemade mortars. IEDs have been used in Mexico, not that much, but they're making like a presence again. We don't have a lot of ordinance around Iraq, but we do have big mining industry down there. So mining.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Federal agents changed a lot and was politicized. There was a whole scandal up here. But in Mexico, how many people died with those firearms being let go down there? And also what type of sentiment do you think the local populace has of the United States after all those guns were basically handed over to some of these groups? Gun trafficking is another giant part of the equation and part of the problem. Weapons, and now we were also getting tradecraft material from conflict zones outside of Mexico. So weaponized drones. The first time we saw some of those weaponized drones was in Syria and like a few weeks later, you know, grenades were being dropped on the roofs of some public officials build cars.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which doesn't make a lot of sense for most people to kind of look at that operation. The only people, the only reason people found out about it was because of the murder of a few federal agents of the U.S. federal agents that were killed with those guns. One of my friends was shot with one of those pistols outside of his house. And they shot him and they shot his wife. Both of them were killed. Daughter was in the back seat, lost part of her arm. When that happened, the guns were unique. Mata policillas is what they call down there, the cop killers. Seen those before, so they were unique and interesting, and later on in life I was watching CNN and seeing the hearings going on. I was like, oh, that's where they came from.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of all kinds that could quickly be modified into full auto down in Mexico with drilling a few holes and making a few things to them. So these people were buying all these. The ATF was watching them and allowing them to walk those firearms into Mexico under the guise of trying to track them somehow.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Immigration is part of it. Illegal immigration is part of it. And the influence that that has as a bargaining chip and a political chip. We saw this with the first caravan kind of coming up and how it was politicized. The money fast and furious, and guns being basically walk down into Mexico. People that don't know, basically the ATF had this operation where they were looking at straw purchasers or firearms. Basically people buying up a specific type of firearms that were on a shopping list at the cartels wanted to buy, including 50 cals, FN57 pistols, which are small pistols with a high velocity round that'll go through a bulletproof vest.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, they've been having kids and families up here since for a long time. Some of these people have past American passports that work not only directly for them, but have blood ties down there. There's been dragnets and arrests of some of these criminal organizations, states, new generation cartel had one, two, three years ago where the GIS operation on Aconda, I think it was called, they were there over 80 of their operatives. And this is a new cartel that is very militaristic and growing in Mexico. And they had over 80 arrests in the United States of members of them operating here.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Number one, their power and influence is bigger, you know. There are Sinala cartel operations in Colombia straight to the source of it. And then there are clear, they have a clear presence in places like Chicago and Los Angeles. They're in the United States. The whole thought process that a lot of Americans have like, we don't want that trouble over here. We don't want them to get here or build the wall and all this.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Speaking to somebody like him, who you can consider him somebody that lost, but his family's okay, his legacy is out there. He's going to be named. He's probably going to be the next folk saint when he passes away”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Marrying other families, getting named Padrino, basically godfathers to other people's kids, forming family and blood ties and influenced ties to people not only in Mexico, but in the United States, seeing how that dynamic and family dynamic is still there. So he's gone. He's in prison, but he is. Probably on his way to be our next clandestine saint. You go to the chapel of the Alberta is basically a Mexican Robin Hood folk saint down there who is a saint of traffickers and at his shrine. You have small little chapel shrine right next to it. So he's on his way to sainthood in Mexico, not recognized by the Catholic Church, but that doesn't matter in Mexico anymore.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think he's a window into the family dynamics of that world. When I say family dynamics, Mexico has a big thing about Compadres, you know, Enos. We have people that we call family that are not necessarily our family. He is somebody that witnessed the construction of what is now the Sena Ore cartel. Like he was in it way back when he started off as a... As a farmer, and then went into trafficking, he's from a town called Mandirawata, which is basically, you know, that's the Wakanda of cartels, basically. That's where a lot of that originates. The things that he saw as far as how some of these things got built, I think, would be an interesting topic of conversation with somebody like him.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think both. I think there's again, that's hard to just make them saints or devils. Some of the good they do in some of their communities and don't ask anything for in return. And even if they don't ask it for anything in return where the military shows up, they are immediately met with rocks and roadblocks and everybody's main weapon down there since most Mexicans can't buy or own firearms. Their main weapon down there is silence and their eyes to report to the people that they consider the good guys in their environment, right? That's a hard question. I think there's a bit of both and both the government and the criminal groups that are operating down there.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cartel, a group of cartel members. They paid for my career path because they wanted somebody on hand that could fix their teeth.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's no one without the other. I think there's a cost to their goodness that they do, the roads they build, the hospitals, the career path that they pay for. There are doctors in Mexico that their careers were paid for by some of these groups. And they do a lot of amazing good for the community. I remember there was a Reconstructing cleft palettes. In one of my travels that I did out there, I spent some time actually going out there after I got out of the job to train people and this type of stuff that I show people. And they told me, I told them, like, you're doing God's work. This stuff, this stuff is legit. This is God's work, building smiles for people. It's like, yeah. And then can I talk to you? Yeah. He said, you know, my career path was paid for by.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mean is their home. It is their home. And they were fighting for their home and they were fighting for leadership from their home. There is immorality. There is a humanity there. And again, if people want to paint them all with the villainy aspect, you know, that's, I mean, everybody's a villain in somebody else's story, you know, if we kind of look at it that way.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Turn into a siege to try and get him free. They call in the cavalry, basically the whole of the Sinai cartel showed up to try and rescue him. Interesting thing about that is in reading some of the documents and also just seeing some of the videos and stuff like that came out of that incident. The cartels were the ones evacuating the citizenship from the area. Were the ones going restaurant to restauranting, hey, if you want to exit the city, go through here, take your families, get down, but you have to leave because the army's coming here. They're going to fight us.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a youth coming into power down there. And when I say a youth, I mean some of the old guard is going out and some of the new guard is coming in. An example of this is El Chapa Guzman's sons who are now in their own right kind of gaining legendary status. There was an attempt at arrest on his son that led to the famous Kulia Canaso incident, which we are now learning more about because some of the Guacamaya leaks are kind of speaking more about what happened that day. Basically, federal operation, they say, to arrest El Chapa Guzman's son.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's about, I think, a way you can find somebody like that is somebody that wants to get their story specifically clear and straight. Coming from that culture and getting to work for the government down there and then not working for the government down there and being on the outside, being critical of not only the government that is in place now, but also the government that actually work with. I can tell you that there's villains all over the place down there. Everybody's a villain, you know, at all levels in some way, shape, or form. And some of these people Think in a way, including El Chapo. I think that some of that meeting was about film rights and stories and being able to get his story out there, I think. I'm not too sure. I wasn't there, but I suspect that some of that was going on.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think in a way they already do that. So in a way, some of these singers are reporting on some of their lives. And it's a great honor to have a Corrido made about you. Somebody made a Corrido about me based on my interviews, right? I didn't pay for it. So it's a real one It feels cool, right?”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If they have something to say, which I don't think they do, you know, I don't think unless at some point in the future, which is something I suspect might be coming, that there is some sort of armed intervention or external attack on some of these criminal groups. That really puts the pressure on them”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“TikTok, no, not the leaders. I think after what happened to Ochapa Guzman, I think that opportunity, that wind that was closed for some of the leadership down there.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is what I will say after that whole Sean Pan thing. I think a lot of people would reconsider a meeting with anybody of any level that has any notoriety here in the United States. They wouldn't trust anybody to get that close. There are people out there that will talk to reporters, people that are working on a laboratory somewhere in a hillside somewhere down south, you know, the Sierra Low people that get authorization to speak to reports and stuff like that, but they don't say anything that isn't being taught or shown in various different ways or outlets out there for them. I mean, some of these guys have Instagram accounts, you know, some of these guys blog about it.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Either they say too much or they say things that favor one side or the other, which is another aspect of it that is interesting. I don't consider myself a reporter. I don't report on the news in Mexico. I have friends that do that very well. I comment on some of it only. But you see a lot of these cartel reporters go down there, talk to a specific side, and basically speak one side of the story. And that is not something that the other side wants. you know if you If you go down there and speak to one side, you're saying what they want people to know or hear. So in a way, you're kind of spreading some of their cartel propaganda in a way. And that's how some people... You know, get shot”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unless he asks to have that conversation. I think he reached out to this journalist to talk about it. There's a media wing to the work that we do, a sister page called Molaire. And it's run by some pretty good people. And the way we met is that I was basically training them how to work in hostile environments. And they were like, oh, we're going to go report on cartel activity in Mexico. And I was like, you know, that is. Year and a half ago, a reporter went to the president's daily briefing press conference that he has. They call him La Maganeras, the president Manuel Lopez Obrador, and told him to his face, I have threats on my life. They're trying to kill me. And it happened. There's been a slew of assassinations and murders of members of the press all over Mexico. It's not an easy job.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't have a clear number of this, but he was interviewed by a magazine called Proceso in Mexico, and some pictures were taken of him. This was over ten years ago, probably, and that's the last time anybody's ever seen a picture of him.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the go in rumor that he's still very much alive. The interesting thing about him is that he learned his craft in Los Angeles. So people thinking that Sene Lower Cartel isn't a Mexican thing, it's actually. He apparently learned a lot of his craft from people in the United States.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you go down there and you read what most of the brave journalists in Mexico that we have, say another aspect of this war is that a lot of journalists get killed. I think Mexico has some of the top numbers in the world. This is no secret to anybody, El Mayo Sambada is the name of the historical figurehead of this cartel, or at least somebody who people theorize or suspect to be the main guy or the main person that is in charge of sub-discriminal group as far as.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Alchapa was a part of the leadership, or at least a faction of the leadership in the cartel. It's a federation of different small organizations. Well, I say small organizations, basically families or organizations that conform this larger group, which is the Sina Law Cartel that is based out of Sina Loa. Basically, they are people that have family and power nucleuses there in Sina Loa. I mean, Who was he? I think he was a high level operator for the Senate cartel. He had his own drug routes, his own networks, his family, his family nucleus down there, still in control of some of those operations. So his arrest really didn't change anything. But he wasn't the mastermind number one leader that I think the media and the government kind of portrayed him as, you know.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Decided what they basically did was an internship with a cartel. They went out there, did bodyguarding for the golf cartel, and then realized they can do a better job than they were doing. So they started their own sparking off one of the, again, one of the bloodiest kind of like internal cartel wars in Mexico's history.”
2022-12-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #346 – Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source