Joe Rogan | Mexican Resorts Are Safe Because They're Cartel Owned w/Ed Calderon

And correct me if I'm wrong, but they do make an effort to not go into tourist areas, into resort areas. The cartel. Well, this is the thing because they own it or they have investments in it. That's why. Oh, so like if you go to Puta Mita or something like that, you think they have investments? It's in their best interest to have things, you know, quiet. A lot of people, so I do a lot of training, do a lot of classes, stuff like that, travel safety things. And people are amazed with some of the cases that I bring forth that they think they're going to get abducted or drugged by the cartels in some discotheque somewhere down there. And it's usually Americans traveling down there, doing their thing down there against other Americans and coming back up. It's perfect crime. Oh, really? Yeah, there's a lot of that. Oh, didn't that happen with a guy who killed his girlfriend down there? Yeah, there's a case, something like that, I think somewhere in the Caribbean. Yeah, that makes sense. Like that would be a good way to get rid of somebody. A lot of those cases. Oh, I made a mistake. The cartel got her. I miss her so much, man. A lot of the druggings that happened down there during the spring break type era, that type of timeframe, it's always Americans against Americans kind of doing that stuff. And people think the cartels are drugging people. No. Sometimes Americans take advantage of the whole being in the foreign land type thing. I was standing with my family in Putamita at the Four Seasons. And we had these golf carts, and you could take the golf carts out of the resort. And they're like, can we take the golf carts to the town? They're like, sure, go ahead. We leave the resort. The first thing you see is a military vehicle armored with soldiers standing at the border of the fucking Four Seasons with machine guns on the roof of this thing, standing there ready to rock in case anything goes down. Yeah. Probably waiting for the rival cartel guys to come through. So again, a lot of these people legitimize their business years back. So a lot of the money in those resorts probably traced it back to cartel interests. Wow. So it's just deep. It goes, it permeates the entire culture. Yes. Yes. It's part of the business model. And a lot of the money that moves around down there, there's some sort of relationship with it. Jesus Christ, man. It's got to feel, for a guy like you who gave your blood, sweat, and tears and was a part of trying to stop this, it must feel so strange to watch this nightmare sort of play out. So being up here, and most of my friends, for some reason I have attracted so many Marines to my life. I don't know why. I have a few C-old friends and mostly just crazy Marine guys. And I've been learning about what post-conflict is, post-conflict or being a veteran, a combat veteran is through them, through their eyes. Things like post-traumatic stress disorder and stuff like that, TBI are things that I didn't even know were a thing until I came up here. No one talks about it in Mexico. It doesn't exist. It's not discussed. If you go into a situation and you do something somewhere, you get a few days off, that's about it, and you come back to work. And medical wise, I've been discovering all these issues I have from that experience down there and it's... Like what kind of issues? My nose is pretty... has been pretty substantially destroyed and I have a few head injuries. And I didn't know what they were. It's stress, wear on the body, it's my age. I'm 36, I shouldn't be feeling like this. And through them, they kind of pointed me into like, you probably have this because this is what I had because I was in Iraq. It's like, I wasn't in Iraq. You might as well have been in Iraq. That's the thing. And also, do you guys recognize your veterans? Not enough. Not enough. There's no such thing as a veteran down there. Somebody, one of my asshole friends, marine friends, gave me a Mexican drug war veteran hat because all those guys had their own hats. So I think he gave me a Mexican drug war veteran hat and had an eagle being strangled by a snake. And it was pretty funny. But it made me realize how there's a bunch of guys down in Mexico that have made some things and they're getting recognition because it's a war that they deny. There's nothing happening. There's no war happening. This is the cartels and... But there's no war. Even the current president said, this is the end of the drug war because I said so kind of thing. Oh, so there's no war anymore. Okay, because why? Because the war is over. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh. Tsssh.