Ed Calderon is a security specialist who worked on counter-narcotics and organized crime investigation in Mexico. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
0:59 - Corruption
34:41 - Cartels
50:02 - El Chapo
1:07:13 - Weapons
1:19:19 - Assassinations
1:28:05 - Counter-ambush teams
1:51:32 - PTSD and alcohol
2:14:11 - Improvised weapons
2:17:43 - Street fights
2:46:40 - Kidnapping
2:50:56 - Escaping restraints
3:00:24 - Imitation
3:08:52 - Narco cults
3:21:47 - Adolfo Constanzo
3:26:15 - Fentanyl
3:42:59 - Immigration
3:54:19 - Advice for young people
4:02:52 - Mortality

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When it's quiet, that's when it hits you.

That's what I think that's what a lot of people experience when they come back from a conflict zone.

Everything that was life and death, everything that mattered, all the noise, all the chaos, all the people that are around you that would die for you, kill for you, you would kill for them.

All these millions of dollars worth of equipment and stuff like that you were responsible for now are all gone and it's just you.

The following is a conversation with Ed Calderon, a security specialist who has worked for many years on counter narcotics and organized crime investigation in the Northern border region of Mexico.

I highly recommend you follow the writing and courses on his Patreon and website, edsmanifesto.com.

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

And now, dear friends, here's Ed Calderon.

What does your experience in counter-narcotics investigating the Mexican drug cartel teach you about human nature?

Wow I mean first off anybody can be got, anybody can be corrupted.

You know you you work in that field and you you realistically the training we got and profiling and investigation and stuff like that was basically you learn from the older guys there.

And some of those guys were already corrupted from the, from the start.

I remember seeing that X-Files episode where that was stated.

You quickly learn that even if you are somebody that to your own mind appears incorruptible, you know, small changes happen around you, wheels get greased, money gets put in front of you, and or things get threatened like your life.

And sometimes a payment for some of this corruption is just to continue on living.

You encounter people that seem incorruptible, that go through FBI background checks, that go through all of the the security measures that all of us were put through, you know, polygraph tests.

And then later on, you know, it turns out they were on the take or they became somebody that was corrupted.

I think what I found out is that anybody at any level, they could be a very strong, hard to get person right now, but people get corrupted through their families, through need.

Mexico is a place where a lot of instability occurs.

So a crack could form through the wall of integrity and then over time it seeps in somehow.

Like, you know, you have your kid that goes to school at public school and you want him to be in the morning, not in the afternoon school time period.

So you go off and grease the wheels with the director of the school.

People hearing this in Mexico will nod their heads because this is something that happens from early on.

So there's a systemic thing, there's a systemic and cultural thing to it, you know, as far as getting around rules.

And this happens because, you know, the people that are in charge in Mexico, the government, is, you know, their tandem amount is trust between criminals and the cartels down there for a lot of the culture.

So people don't trust the government and much less criminality.

When you meet a person sticking on human nature, do you think it's possible to figure out if they can be trusted?

You know, how long would you need to talk to a person?

And even in your own personal private life, just a friend, or is trust a thing that's never really guaranteed?

I think that trust is never really guaranteed.

I know a lot of people are gonna say that's a sad way and hard way of living your life, but you know, life experience at my end, you know, people change, you know, the dynamics of a relationship might change.

I look at people's character, specifically their past and past experiences, if I can.

Somebody that presents himself in front of you as a somebody, but you quickly learn that that somebody is just a mask or a persona that they kind of created for themselves.

And they might not even be aware of the persona.

Like, is there some deep psychological stuff?

I've experienced a lot of failure in my life.

You can see it in my nose, you know, you can see it in my lack of a digit, you know.

The amount of, you know, the amount of failures you can see in somebody and how they wear them sometimes is a pretty telling thing as far as them being able to be trusted or that you can trust their story or their experience.

And when I say experience, I mean, I've met some criminals, like former criminals or some people of that background that I trust with my life, because they're not reformed, but they figured out that that's not a life that can live long enough to continue on.

And I've also met people that are in law enforcement that I wouldn't trust with my car keys, you know, because, you know, whatever persona they adopted over the years is a pretty good 1, pretty good mask.

Sometimes such a good mask, they don't even know they're wearing it.

And on top of that, it's not just the psychology, there's also a neurobiology to it.

I've been very fortunate and deliberate to surround myself with good people throughout my life.

But I've recently gotten to sort of observe, not close to me, but nearby, somebody that could be classified as a sociopath.

Like I don't wanna use those psychological terms, but just, it's like, oh, people come with different biology too.

So it's not just like the trauma you might experience in your early life and all the deep complexity that leads to the psychology that you have as an adult, but it's also the biology you come with, the nature, that you might not just have the machine that can empathize deeply with the experience of others, or maybe a machine that gets off, gets a dopamine rush from the manipulation of other humans, or the control of other humans.

Yeah, I mean, put an example of my own background.

He left really early on in their childhood.

You know, my mom raised her 2 sisters and basically kept a household.

She was a badass, you know, she was very independent.

She showed me how to kind of watch out for others and kind of build me up in that way.

And I had a great childhood as far as, you know, as far as her and kind of like how she molded me.

Later on, I figured out that when I had my own kid, you know, I figured out that she was basically trying to make me into what she didn't have in a way.

And if I can get to see somebody's parents, you know, that's usually a sign of something, at least for me, as far as figuring out where people are.

I think there's something to be said about nature and nurture and how some people come up.

Some people are just born with that predatory instinct, you know?

I mean, they spend their whole life practicing how to hide it.

But if you can figure out somebody's background, childhood, where they're from, you can kind of tell something about them.

That's my background as far as where I'm from.

Culturally, genetically, psychologically, the full shebang.

Yeah, I guess some people are born with certain predispositions and if they're in the right environment, some of the negative aspects might flourish more than others, you know.

For me, I mean, I grew up skateboarding in Tijuana, and I remember breaking into my first backyard pool.

It was a house that a cartel guy owned, and we used to skate the pool in the back in the back of it.

So I learned how to pop open padlocks with a with a small vehicle, hydraulic lift.

And, later on in life, I got to train with people from other parts of Mexico and, and work with them.

And I remember pulling that trick off and they were like, looking at me like, where'd you learn that?

It's like some burglars at Tijuana, you know?

And they're like, wow, that's interesting.

Like are all people from Tijuana like that?

And I said, no, we're not all like that, but I guess in some way we are because, you know, Tijuana produces some, produces kids like that, you know, she produces like the environment itself produces, produces a pretty specific person, I guess.

You know, our normal or baseline normal is way different than most.

The trajectories that you can take in life are defined in a way that aren't available elsewhere in the world.

And so you develop, I mean, part of that is psychological, part of that is cultural and so on.

But then also the ethical lines based on the corruption.

Because I grew up in the Soviet Union, there's the same kind of understanding that there's some gray area of corruption.

Yeah, it's always there, like on the outskirts or even in the center, how you can grease things to make things easier, and how it's like a personal thing.

I'll just, you know, pay off the, in Tijuana, we have a mordida is what we call it.

You know, when you, when you pay a cop off, una mordida means a bite.

So you get stopped for a traffic violation of some sort and the cop walks up to you obviously, you don't say the word bite, but it's like it's like a slang term for it and he asked for your paperwork and you know, And if you get fined or get a ticket, you say, can I pay the ticket here, is what they say?

And put your money inside the paperwork and hand it over to the cop.

Morrida, you think it's, I'm just gonna do it and nobody knows, but it's a systemic thing.

And then they don't trust the police because they are fed with this.

Yeah, I mean, same thing was in the Soviet Union.

But then there's something inside you where that kind of, those opportunities come, like with a police officer, where you realize you could just pay a little bit of money and get out of a thing.

And then you realize you can pay a little bit of money or do a favor to get your kids in a better school or something like

But there comes opportunities where you, where if I do this little thing, I can get a huge promotion, or I can get a huge increase in my power, or I can get a lot of money, and something inside you says no, that's not right.

Because it feels different than the legal systems within which you operate.

There's some kind of basic human integrity, human decency.

I wonder if that's like constructed or it's always there.

If it's like, again, nature versus nurture.

Yeah, I think, you know, for me, it was looking at, at seeing that in somebody else that I kind of learned about it.

There's a man that I consider a mentor figure.

He was a lieutenant colonel from the army that basically came over and took over the group that I used to work with.

That was the essence or the aura that he projected.

The first time he went off on patrol, when he was placed in charge of us, I actually drove him around Tijuana.

He was 1 of those lead from the front type of people.

The amount of assassination attempts he got was basically a proof of how uncorruptible he was because they kept trying to pay him off.

And when that didn't work, they tried to kill him several times.

I think the last assassination attempt took the use of his legs.

And that man is still a dangerous person in my mind.

But for me, and people can gather a little bit about my background and where I'm from and some of the access I currently have to train the federal institutions here in the U.S.

As far as my background and if I was corrupted or not, because there's a lot of that out there.

The Catholic guilt that's kind of built into some of us is always kind of there, you know, el cucuy vive bajo la cama, the devil was under the bed, you know.

So I don't consider myself Catholic, consider myself culturally Catholic, I think is what I kind of say with that.

I had a pretty good structure with my dad and my mom at the house and, you know, they never let me get away with things.

And I think my mom was pretty, a pretty big moral compass for me.

But Lieutenant Colonel, kind of leading from example and seeing his work and how how much profound change he caused in the people that work with him as far as you know we felt supported and we felt like we had a guiding figure during this.

Tijuana was the most dangerous city on the planet when I was working there and he took charge.

What does it take to be a man, the Lieutenant Colonel, who maintains integrity after assassination attempts?

Is it possible for a normal human to do that?

I'll say this, seeing him, I mean, the last assassination attempt he had, that took the use of his legs, he was with his kid.

There was a recklessness to it, you know?

I can see that now, like now that I have enough distance from it, I could see that there's a recklessness to being that way.

And also you're putting jeopardy people around you if you take that route.

So I think there's a sacrifice to it, a very powerful and hard 1 to make for a lot of people.

For me it was I wouldn't get picked to get on on board with some of the operations groups that I wanted to work with because I was known for not you know taking money or Not being trusted by certain older segments of the of the organization that I was with with stuff because they knew that I wouldn't you Know I wasn't on the you know, they wouldn't get money So there's that there's there's always a weird sacrifice to it.

You're almost kind of like masochistic in that way when you When you when you when you get approach with it, they're like, why are you being an idiot?

You know, why are you why are you driving around that beat-up car?

Look at the Hummer h2 that just drove in with the other guy that is doing exactly your same job Society society as a whole down there doesn't reward it, or at least doesn't see it in the people that don't take that route in Mexico.

You know, for them, all cops are corrupt, you know, all of them.

And you know, seeing it, you know, again, from the outside, I'm not there anymore.

There is, you know, there's almost like a, why didn't you Ed?

You know, that could have been easier maybe, or you could have been dead long ago, you know, because people that are on the takedown there are usually owned by 1 side or the other and when that gets found out you know if you have somebody that you're paying off that hints you off of drug operations in the area your rivals are pretty keen on killing you.

Money aside so like like a Hummer aside how much of a motivators fear?

I'll say, you know, for me, I didn't think I was gonna live to see 30.

Did that concept scare you, or was that just a principle of life that you operated under?

I lost my brother when I was 13, on a 2, like, you know, he was 19.

He was like the VIP of the family, you know?

He was, you know, he was, you know, skateboarded, BMX, motorcycle hunter, 1 of the best marksmen that I've ever seen shoot.

He was the best of us is what we would say.

And, when he died, there was a, there was, it's almost like a concert at his funeral, you know, I met 3 of his girlfriends that all introduced themselves like the 1, you know, I, to this day, every now and then I get pulled aside down when I go back home and they say, hey, you're Eric's brother, you know?

Despite all the stuff that I've done, I'm still, you know, every now and then I get recognized.

That made my mom and my dad go into a horrible depression and basically, you know, left me to my devices when I was a kid.

From 13 onwards, I had this self-destructive, you know, aspect to me after that, I think, you know, so again, something that's come up in therapy, you know, after I've been gone through all that.

And I had this notion that if I can only die good in some way, shape or form, or for something, that it would, it would matter.

And they would kind of, you know, look at me with the same reverence I did with my brother.

The goal of life is to die for something good.

Yeah, at least that was my, That was my mindset going through that job.

I remember I was in medical school before that, you know, second year medical school.

And then 9-11 happened and, you know, that wasn't an option anymore for me.

So I sat in the newspaper and my brother's, my big brother, who's still alive, Neto, he's like, no tenemos, you know, you're not gonna do that shit.

And all of a sudden I was in a field having my hair shaved off and a bunch of the gafes, the guys that later turned into the Zeta cartel, military men were in charge of our training, you know, and I went through that process.

In what field were you and why is your head being shaved?

And what the hell was going through your mind?

I was sold the idea of this being a new Americanized police force that they were constructing.

Prestigious elite, The people in charge of our training were a lot basically ex-Mexican, gafe people.

Gafes are what the special forces kind of originated.

A lot of their members turned into the Zeta cartel.

We were sold this idea of it being, you know, scientific, educated, educated to base and like a career path.

And all of a sudden we're in this refurbished prison that wasn't good enough to be a prison and they turned it into a training ground and I quickly kind of realized that they were training us to be a paramilitary group not a not a community policing organization which in my mind that's I thought that's what we're gonna be doing.

What was the hardest process of that training for you?

Cause this is like a fragile, innocent boy becomes a man kind of process.

It's, it's, they're, they're turning us into something that they could use.

They break down the individual, you know, it's a- Physically and mentally?

Yeah, I think it's a half done initiation process, I think in a way, you know, looking at it from now to the past the the shaving of the hair the stripping off your identity you know everybody gets a gets a number the uniforms the running around and and you know being treated like human garbage.

The first thing they said to us when we were lined up in that field was hay pan y verga para comer aqui, se acabo el pan.

Which means there's bread and dick to eat here.

So it was, I mean, I can't equate it to anything in the military, every year in the United States, because people down there could actually get physical with us.

I mean, they could actually hit us and punch us and shit like that, which is not allowed here anymore, at least in most of the militaries and is horrible is down there.

AK-47s being shot around us to simulate reality, basically causing hearing loss, that type of stuff.

So if you don't wanna be here, you can just walk out.

And the more you go into it, time-wise, you're more invested you are.

So in a way, you're kind of building your own chains while you're going through that process.

Specifically seeing some of the ways that people that I thought were better or stronger than me were walking out or quitting because of something that happened in there.

There was some sexual assault stuff happening in there as well.

Always, you know, you're in a place like that and there's females in the in the environment and some of the instructors are doing what they do.

I mean these people are in charge of our safety and education and look at what's happening here.

So you could see some of the smarter ones leaving, you know, not not looking at this as a viable choice for life.

How did that change you, that those few months?

I had this motivation, this idealistic motivation in my head, you know, of making a difference.

And they drill a lot of nationalistic kind of, you know, the flag marching, being part of a group and the group being, you know, behind you and all of this.

So what's the vision of this great nation of Mexico that you were, did you believe, did it get into your blood?

It got into my, I mean, It's an indoctrination, you know, it's a paramilitary group.

So everything there is basically modeled after the military.

So that's what they were trying to kind of instill in us.

After 3 months, basically, I was, we went through a bunch of trials, physical trials, mental trials and stuff like that.

And some of us were named team leaders and I, you know, bought into it, you know, I'm the, I'm supposed to be here.

I'm, I'm, I'm sticking out a bit, you know.

And I was pretty proud of what I was going through there, 6 months.

Then you get the reality check when you signed the dotted line and how that none of it really meant anything as far as what we were about to go out and do you know.

An example of this we were trained with a 92 FS Beretta which is a 9 millimeter pistol Italian made.

We got to shoot 20 rounds out of that gun.

And then when we got out, we were handed a Glock 17, which I've never seen 1 in my life.

I was trying to figure out where the safety was and a few other people there were handling those guns in a horrible manner.

So we were very under-trained, under-equipped, and there was a lot of assumptions about what we knew.

And all of a sudden we're being cast into this, the start of 1 of the bloodiest and longest lived modern conflicts in our history.

That doesn't get called that, but it's basically been an ongoing war in Mexico that is still to this day, you know, amassing bodies.

The Mexican drug war, which is, you know, it's hard to pinpoint exactly when it started because when I was going through training there was already stuff going on.

I went into training in 2004 and there were already, you know, major cartel related events all over Mexico by then, but not at the at the size or scope as I was about to go into, you know, when President Felipe Calderon kind of took office down there and actually officially kind of kicked it off by putting the military in play as part of, as part of it basically militarized the drug war, you know, including us.

Who are the major players in this drug war?

So the politicians, the military, the police force, the cartels, all Mexican, then the United States, China, just to lay out all the pieces on the board.

First off, there are giant local drug markets in Mexico that are fought over, you know, just local drug markets that are huge in scope.

So a big problem in Mexico is basically those local drug markets.

And an example of that, and 1 I have a lot of experience with is the 1 in Tijuana, which not only feeds the local populace, but also feeds the populace from San Diego that crosses down into Tijuana and buys their product there.

And now, you know, a phenomenon that's occurring now is marijuana trafficking is going from California down into Mexico because they produce better weed, you know, which is fascinating to see now.

So there's already a channel and you kind of like reusing that channel.

There's a lot of people and vehicles getting checked when they drive down.

And Tijuana is being called San Diego South now because, you know, all the economic migrants, you know, are living down there.

90% of all houses in Tijuana, new houses, are being bought up by Americans so that'll tell you something about the impact and change that's going on down there.

So you have these local drug markets that are being fought over.

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Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels | Lex Fridman Podcast #346