Should Mexican Cartels be Labelled as Terrorist Organizations? w/Ed Calderon | Joe Rogan

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. 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... Explain that again. They ran a cartel roadblock? Yeah, basically in Tamilipas, a lot of the cartel groups actually make... they build their roadblocks on the state and local roads. And according to what I've heard from some of the people that I know there, this family ran one of those roadblocks. They didn't know if it was cops or not and they apparently decided to run the roadblock and the cartel guys shot them. What should someone do if they encounter a cartel roadblock? Slow down. I mean, if anything, I would probably avoid traveling through those areas. That's the number one avoidance. Usually and I've actually gone through some of those myself. Really? Yeah. And it's all about... they're looking out for the rivals moving through their territory. They're looking for government personnel maybe spying on them. And usually they'll just shake you down for some money and they'll let you go on your way unless you have a four by four truck that can use for their own purposes, which is... Oh, they might take your truck? Yeah. Specifically in Tamalipas, four by four trucks are a commodity for them. They use them for their ongoing turf war. Oh, right. Especially someone else's. They don't mind getting shot up. Yeah. I mean, most of the trucks that you see that are up armored or they have the rifles on top are usually stolen vehicles. All of them are stolen vehicles. And a lot of them are Americans crossing into Mexico. Some of them are Americans crossing into Mexico and just getting trucks stolen. Jesus Christ. That's a real common thing. It's starting to be pretty common. I recently saw a case of an apparent abduction in Tamalipas. You see the video and the cartel guys come out of the car. They grab the owner of a pickup truck. They get them out of the car. They take a cell phone, leave it on the sidewalk because they're aware of all the SOS technology. And they take them inside of another car and they take the truck. And you would think it's because he did something or he's involved in something. They let them go a few blocks later and just took the truck. It was all about the truck. Wow. Yeah. It's resources. They're just acquiring resources for the war, basically. Nice of them to let them go. Nice of them to let them go. It's not always the case, but it's pretty, yeah. I think most people in America are just now waking up to the chaos that's going on down there. The Mormon assassination was a real wake up call, but I think people are paying much more attention now. We talked about this. When was the last time you were on? It was like five months? Yeah. Something like that? A lot of the stuff we talked about those five months ago, that's how things progressed. We actually did mention the Mormon communities down there, which was kind of eerie. We talked about the possible designation of cartels as terrorist terror groups. Yeah. You had an interesting take on that. Trump was saying that they were going to designate them as terrorist groups and that they were going to have military action against them. And then there was some sort of negotiation with the president of Mexico. What do you think went down there? This is just from what I see and from how things traditionally happen down there. Mexico currently 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 US came down, there was some sort of negotiation and a lot of things happened after some US 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. And 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 immigration authorities. He said that he'd 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. So there has been some action. So they must have made some negotiation where Trump had said, listen, we're going to do this. And he said, hold up, let's talk. Yeah. I mean, the main thing is one of the things that this current president, Andres Manuel Lopez over there ran 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 you know, change the name, change the uniform, change the packaging and it's a new thing. 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, shouldn't be a military operation. And he ran on a platform that was called Abrasos, 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. 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 a kind of a collaboration between the US 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 US. And the rest of the things that kind of transpired afterwards, it's pretty interesting how a lot of things happened after that meeting down there and how they walked back the terrorist designation. So the terrorist designation would mean that Trump would have some sort of incentive to invade Mexico. It would open up the possibility for direct military action against- Strikes. Yeah, drone strikes. Drone strikes. And the addition of the nation that airstrikes were going to take place, also targeting finances or anything related to cartel activities would be targeted. Yeah, where do the cartels keep their cash? Well, right now it's a myriad of things. They diversified long ago. So it's not like they're keeping buried cash in a container somewhere in the jungle like Escobar used to do, right? They're still finding some rotted cash from the 80s. They're putting their money in cryptocurrency. Really? Yeah, they're diversifying their investments in actual companies, like legit companies, so they clean their money that way. Real estate, hotels, property on the US side. So they're also investing on the US side of the border as well. So money is not under the mattress or giant stacks of cash in a room somewhere. What kind of banks do business with the cartels? How do they negotiate that? 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 there are 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, I was designated as a terrorist and sent 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 US 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. That'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 cannonita 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 Galahara giving out Christmas gifts or groceries to the poor, basically doing hearts and minds type tactics in the area are clear political movements. So why is terrorism happening connected to politics? The classical definition of that is 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. 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 that are facing some of these cartel threats that have fled it will call it what it is. It's terrorism. Terrorism. They're terrified. Yeah. I mean, who's more terrifying than the cartels?