"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 you know the uh everything that was life and death everythin..."

"Calderon what does your experience in counternarcotics investigating the Mexican drug cartel teach you about human nature wow I mean first off anybody can be got uh anybody can be corrupted uh you kno..."

"that anybody at any level they could be a very strong hard to get person right now but uh people get corrupted through their families uh through need uh Mexico is a place where a lot of uh instability..."

"know as far as getting around rules and this happens because you know the people are in charge in Mexico the government is you know there their tandem amount is trust between criminals and the cartels..."

"long enough to kind of continue on and and I've also met people that are in law enforcement that I wouldn't trust with my car keys you know um because uh you know whatever Persona they adopt adopted o..."

"control of other humans yeah I mean put an example of my my own background uh my mom didn't have a father you know she she he left really early on in their in their childhood you know my mom raised he..."

"than others you know for me I mean I grew up skateboarding in Tijuana and I remember breaking into my first uh backyard pool it was a house that a cartel guy owned and we used to skate the pool in the..."

"I grew up in the Soviet Union and this there's the same kind of understanding that there's some great area of corruption yeah there's it's always there like the on the outskirts or even in the center ..."

"yeah and I wonder what that is that cuz like um yeah I want because it feels different than the legal systems with which operate there's some kind of basic human Integrity human decency I I wonder if ..."

"there you know the devil is under the bed you know uh so I I don't consider myself Cath like consider myself culturally Catholic I think is what what I kind of kind of say with that I had a pretty goo..."

"dead long ago you know because people that are on the takeown there are usually owned by one side or the other and when that gets found out you know if you have somebody that you're paying off that uh..."

"kind of you know look at me with the same reverence I did at my brother so dying isn't the problem the goal of life is to die for something good yeah at least that was my that was my mindset going thr..."

"were going to be doing what was the hardest process of that training for you cuz this is like a a fragile innocent boy becomes a man kind of process it's it's uh they're turning us into something that..."

"better or stronger than me were walking out or quitting uh because of something that happened in there uh there was some sexual assault stuff happening in there uh as well are you afraid of that alway..."

"were did you believe did did it get into your blood yeah it it got into I mean it's an indoctrination you know it's a it's a paramilitary group so everything there is basically model after after the m..."

"what we were about to go out and do you know uh an example of this we were trained with a 92fs uh Beretta which is a 9mm pistol uh Italian made we got to shoot 20 rounds out of that gun and then we wh..."

"Mexico that uh that is still to this day you know amassing bodies so the Mexican drug war the Mexican drug war which is you know it's hard to pinpoint exactly when it started because when I was going ..."

"in Mexico that uh are fought over you know just local drug markets that are huge in scope so no exporting to other locations just a start yeah yeah so um a big a big problem in Mexico is basically tho..."

"drug markets that are being fought over you also have these drug routes that go through Mexico up into Mexico around Mexico through the ocean uh under the wall you know drug tunnels over the wall and ..."

"checked it was somewhere in the vicinity of 50 to 70 the different groups some small that just dedicate themselves to a single little town somewhere there are armed groups that are basically in contro..."

"in Mexico means you have no protection and under constant threat of assassination we just seen the arrest and prosecution of the head of all Conor cartel operations when I was active uh in the form of..."

"Maria Carmela Vasquez a mother who searched for a missing son was shot to death outside her home on Sunday her son Oar Vasquez disappeared on June 14th the 46-year-old woman is the fifth mother to be ..."

"discussions about mass murder and getting rid of people i' I've been reading a lot about World War II recently and there's was aggressive Innovation on the Nazi side of how to get rid of large number ..."

"craft it it's tra it's it's tradecraft then it's uh it there's there's a link to the us as far as that that trade graft you have to remember that uh the United States had a thing called School of the ..."

"the outskirts of of of the towns that they're that they live in um probing the ground with uh these metal probes and seeing if the uh the whatever they encounter in the bottom of these uh these clande..."

"the military and the police force it's a thing that happens over time there's always been a big effort even when I was in uh to buy or own certain members of the police force even when we going throug..."

"to hire cheaply and leverage in terms of uh forcing those bodies to do what whatever is needed because the alternative for those people is is nothing there's no options yeah so you have a kid somewher..."

"fight against it you know so I think uh I have a sense that that the skills transfer pretty well that's also the dark side of this whole thing a lot of the people that I used to work with you know I I..."

"to join another police organization that that discounts you so for somebody like me who was a professional operations group member or police officer in Mexico of that region there's no options for me ..."

"the main things that they start with just the youth we had a phenomenon in Tijuana early early n late 90s early 2000s called the Narco Juniors Narco juniors are basically board middle middle middle F ..."

"economy in a big way I had this experience in CA where we were driving down this shitty Street and all of a sudden it became a cool nice you know little curvy high like Highway type thing and I looked..."

"give what's the role of violence in this operation I'm extreme uh you know it used to be that there were rules as you say like you know don't go after kids don't go after women but all those things ar..."

"clear and I'll see I'm not going to say where to find it but people out there might have seen it because some of these videos get shared through WhatsApp groups and chat groups out there uh one of the..."

"territory well this is what's going to happen to you right is there a game theoretic way to uh remove this kind of brutality to deescalate the brutality because it seems like if a cartel takes power t..."

"some of these documents that were leaked uh are very telling as far as why that is uh they have the military now has a vast amount of power when it comes to security industry I mean they're in charge ..."

"Figure Head behind it since the80s the same one you know uh I mean it's it's a Federation of smaller cartels that are all kind of linked up but the pretty much historically who's considered the head o..."

"precursors of things like fenel into the country they're operated and guarded by the marina right so these things are happening under their watch and then you get uh talks talk about the Army in certa..."

"part of the leadership or at least a faction of the leadership in in the cartel it's a Federation of different uh of small organization well i' say small organizations basically families or organizati..."

"him is that he learned his craft in Los Angeles so people thinking that scena law cartel isn't a Mexican thing it's actually he he apparently learned a lot of his craft from uh people in the United St..."

"is a year and a half ago a reporter went to the president's Daily Briefing uh press conference that he has they called him La Mayas pres the president Manuel Lopez zador and told him to his face like ..."

"and stuff like that but they don't say anything that isn't being taught or or shown in various different ways or Outlets out there for them I mean some of these guys have Instagram accounts you know s..."

"area they were the ones going restaurant to restaurant hey if you want to exit the city go through here take your families get down but you have to leave because the arm coming here they're going to f..."

"villains quote I once worked for a villain a savior to some and a biblical demon of old to others a true product of his environment he was the best and the worst of us we're all potential villains in ..."

"and they do a lot of amazing good for the community I remember there was a uh a surgeon uh reconstructing cleft pallets in one of my travels that I did out there I I I had I spent some time actually g..."

"where the military shows up they are immediately melt met with rocks and roadblocks and everybody's uh main weapon down there since most Mexicans can't buy or own firearms they the main weapon down th..."

"prison is he worth talking to I'd say yes is there things that to you are interesting about him that are still not understood is he a window into something that you don't understand about that world s..."

"you go to the uh the chapel of malde Mal is basically a Mexican Robin Hood the folk Saint down there who uh is a saint of traffickers and at his Shrine you have small little Chapo Shrine right next to..."

"legitimate businesses I mean they've been having kids and families up here since for a long time some of these people have pass American passports that work not only directly for them but have Blood T..."

"into Mexico people that don't know basically the ATF had this operation where they were looking at straw purchasers of firearms basically people buying up a specific type of firearms that were on a sh..."

"from uh two federal agents changed a lot and it was politicized there was a whole scandal up here but in Mexico how many people died with those uh Firearms you know being let down being let go down th..."

"larger cartel out and there's videos of these uh civilian drones basically dropping explosives uh they found some explosive testing ranges out there that are basically replicating stuff that you would..."

"pads which is basically remote guided missiles I've seen some of those found down there what is the application exactly a display of power there are no fly zones over parts of Mexico for this reason t..."

"also there's this uh tendency to think uh and every now and then you'll seees these cartel videos with these guys carrying around these 50 Cals and they show up they stand there like you know like boa..."

"that yeah there's there's there's always this uh this race of Technology basically down there armored vehicles you know how do you take on an unarmored vehicle well there's a few ways 50 Cals you know..."

"for your mom you know or pay off some debts that she might have or a car that's enough to kill for yeah so you also one of the many things you did is uh you did security tried to protect in this this ..."

"going to go and replace this these people and I what happened to them well so you were known as a person that could be kind of trusted I was tasked for that so I I think they considered that and uh an..."

"that didn't make a lot of sense for us in Mexico you know uh we had people that had some Secret Service experience kind of show us how showing us how they would do like celebrity bodyguarding or bodyg..."

"a young me who didn't have any specialized training I was I was on YouTube learning learning some of these things uh going online learning about armor vehicles learning about architectural armor I thi..."

"figure figure some of these things out on fly basically you know as I was going I remember having this experience uh being in the uh our security office on my laptop figuring out how to set up a count..."

"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 uh owners and figure out ways t..."

"allowed me to focus get a lot of reading done uh focus on the important things in life I mean uh I I joke of course but there's some there's some complexity to this in terms of normal state of the fam..."

"biggest things you could do yeah route analysis you know you you have to get to the airport and you send off two cars to analyze two routes and then on the Fly you just change trajectory to to create ..."

"around this type of stuff and and operational training basically showing us how to ambush people you know when I started making a group for myself as far as counter Ambush you know this cat teams that..."

"uh we start learning about some of these things and also seeing you know cartel forces apply some of these Ambush tactics to the military or federal forces what is an ambush what are we talking about ..."

"place for you to be in and I walk off a few moments later the Army showed up and you could feel the amount of rounds going off from two blocks away we came back with our guys and it was it was over so..."

"that I I looked through the bodies and the cars that were left you know there was bodies all over the place people left there it was a mess I spent like an hour looking for him the only way I could re..."

"one after I got done on the protection detail with the governor uh like everything down there again the whole cycle you know he got his turn so when he went away uh you know politics change and down t..."

"Heroes become villains um a lot of people started calling him a villain because of his uh unorthodox approach and human rights violations and all of this type of stuff kind of come to the Forefront an..."

"sudden you had people that were known cartel compromised people that were fired five six years ago showing back up to back up to work with their back paid and everything so this is wow so this started..."

"kind of expected something but not you know that that was like hard for me she was my Center she was going to be the one that I would ask for advice as far as work you know if I should leave it or not..."

"and I was denied for no reason so I'm invested in this job you know uh there's I have a I have a I have a good salary a salary and I have a category in there so you the by the level of uh time you spe..."

"threats made when I left by people inside the office and I probably you know it's Anonymous yet so there's significant pressure not to leave it's hard to leave this kind of job yeah the system makes i..."

"it's just quiet and it's during the time when uh Trump got elected so the immigration process that usually would take I I had most things going for me an immigration process that would take at the mos..."

"for you you would kill for them uh 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 uh walking into a Circle K and buyin..."

"so I had a pause button on me since I were 13 basically uh then I got to bury many of my friends inform their wives or girlfriends of what happened and that all again was paused because I wasn't uh al..."

"that went away so it was just hard ALC that was was available down there I uh one night alone at the uh at the house my dad's house I uh I drank a bottle of Jin a whole bottle of Jin I almost died and..."

"night I remember waking up at 3:00 in the morning uh and taking a cooler that I had and just dumping all the beers in it and chucking them in the garbage and with a knife poking each of them to not yo..."

"people mhm the first thing I they did when I got there is they stood me up in front of everybody to thank me for the donation and then told everybody that I was an alcoholic and if anybody saw me drin..."

"going through the process like hey you're you're a internet celebrity person you know you're you're known uh aren't you worried about people finding out that you're that you're recovering drunk and I ..."

"lot of hate on one side you know having a few people and companies that I work with kind of step back and seeing this guy has some issues to having other people kind of make fun of or make light of th..."

"it you know Joe told me never read the comment section right which is a beautiful it's a beautiful piece of advice but uh it they get you you sometimes when you talk about some of these things openly ..."

"there it's inspirational I see some of these people and I'm like holy shit I need to figure out how to get to some semblance of that but I'm not that you know I've been through the ring I fucked up a ..."

"your studio with a duffel bag straight from the airport and I'm going to leave uh early tomorrow morning to somewhere else I've been on the road for almost I think 5 years non-stop I go back to a spec..."

"weaponize the environment how to arm themselves how to not get abducted I meet people that have gone through those experience and then they're basically trying to work through some of the their own is..."

"known for the psychology and kind of the the ways that people do that and I remember him seeing some of the stuff that I was doing and just being like where you from Mexico me makes sense you know som..."

"also have a gun owner and shooter which is interesting you know having a beinging somebody like him who is you know well- versed with the his hands also be a man that has gone into the realm of being ..."

"mean he was he was in the middle of this class that we were doing where people were basically focusing on both Ernest Emerson who's uh famous for his knives he's has a Knife Company he done knives for..."

"get out of that bubble my whole kind of speciality or what I focus on is mindset and figuring out the software that some of these people gain and gather from if I need to arm myself you know the easie..."

"to recognize that behavior so a lot of law enforcement comes to some of these classes oh that's horrible that's how somebody will kill somebody yeah this is how people that know their thing their shit..."

"there's a lot of people showing uh valuable kind of material and coursework on this out there um my whole approach and my specific kind of Realm is in the aspect of how people go from the process of l..."

"of Flesh uh most people you know I do this example every now and then where I have people bring in a a tactical knife and they'll bring in a butter knife and I ask them which will go through a torso w..."

"had to carry him I had to put him to sleep and like one of the biggest realizations is like oh this is just a this is just a biological thing yeah it's just and then to to realize that this is just me..."

"how do you counteract that well number one learn the behavior yourself so you can recognize it the whole aspect of being a good counter Ambush team is to be a best the best ambusher in the planet so a..."

"that in a in a crowd it feels like one of the significant ways to win or as Street Fighters to avoid it by sort of sending pacifist signals in every way meaning avoiding the situation whenever there's..."

"think uh I think I heard Jordan Peterson talk about the fact that everybody needs to be dangerous but keep that shit under control you know yeah I think he was referring to a different context but I k..."

"so many ways but it didn't I don't know to me like it's there's small lessons there there is a case to be made about social engineering about learning about Behavior about learning how to lie and how ..."

"simple as smile or not smile there's subtlety to it like you said eye contact is a super interesting one cuz um I found in my in my own life like not making eye contact is other people would be joking..."

"leadership at a at a geopolitics it's still somebody grabs somebody's ass and you're not backing down so to take those losses and basically just posture you know lower your head and live to fight anot..."

"where she saw that as an option she didn't see the repercussions of it and she found herself in a place where she thought that was the only viable option pulling out a weapon and that's I think that's..."

"lookout for that yeah maybe somewhere I don't know you know maybe if you put a pen in your hand that that might turn into that but that's that's the only way that's the only way right but uh a lot of ..."

"in the US you know coming from the uh the Marine Core were showing were showing me how they you know would shoot something from really far away and I was like H you don't even have to be in the same v..."

"some of these things in a context where it's like useful for law enforcement for the military stuff like that and uh so we have this exercise in a public space where there's a bunch of PAAD locks in t..."

"of that nature and again we the weaponizing part of it anything can be all knowledge can be weaponized and it's if you focus on getting in a street fight with somebody with your fist or a knife you kn..."

"for everything they owned so it turns out into a business they're not actually even interested in hurting the people no physically they're interested in hurting them uh financially financially and als..."

"that's the same thing uh and some of the restraints that are being utilized uh come from different places I mean I remember an instructor I had way back when told me that the proliferation of zip ties..."

"option is pretty cool if you can convince somebody to do that for you uh but that first option is an interesting one you have to deconstruct restraints not all restraints are made the same uh you can ..."

"but you can get it into the key we at an angle for example it's something it's something that is out there as far as a method you can't spin a key behind your back because it's small it's designed to ..."

"it capable of cutting nice right small uh you can put it behind a label I've seen some students put the leis label on there and just so it back on um it is non magnetic non FIS so in and out of uh you..."

"capable and an asset to the people around me and myself and that comes through experience um and people want to risk getting a shoulder injury rolling in Jiu-Jitsu or don't want to risk getting a bloo..."

"about coming up with a narrative for yourself with that book is talking that's a that's a quote from the book called a show ninky which is like a an actual legit ninja manual from like the 1500s or so..."

"moment I like how you focus in on the on the tools of violence but there's also the the social engineering deescalation right yeah so if you are in an environment like that and you are carrying around..."

"us I can show up here uh drinking a Monster energy drink dumping It On The Ground scratching you know what then just sit down and just be a rude motherfucker that's not who I am but I can do that and ..."

"lesson that I got there yeah so that that's interesting but like I have this belief it has to do with the way I operate in this world I suppose but if you come off as a person legitimately I guess you..."

"and so the way you said it now is using words and it's blunt usually somebody's blunt like that like I'm a no bullshit person that means they're not that means they're are full of shit actually but yo..."

"going about it uh my life experiences have been different um I was in programmed that way from an early age and uh it's hard to for me to go into that line although more and more as I get older and as..."

"how to do but I I I I give examples of it through things that I do out there and uh I say this a lot you know when I travel out there I'm never alone you know there's couches out there waiting for me ..."

"of that Journey you made enemies with the rodeo clown and made up with him afterwards oh we're still we're still we're in a very toxic relationship you know he knows who he is he's probably out there ..."

"what's the relationship between religious culture and drug culture first off Mexico is one of the most Catholic countries on the planet if not the most Catholic country on the planet not only that it ..."

"brought with him to the Americas and uh when the conquest happened you know a lot of people say yeah the Spanish came and conquested the me the the the astec Empire the enemies of the astec Allied the..."

"has stars on her which is a veil of certain stars that are related to some of the spiritual practice from before basically they hid these things in in in that in that uh setting now you skip forward y..."

"sometimes of uh almost a symbol of rebellion uh you see El Chapo's son when he was arrested had a santono ATA on his chest which is a it's a holy kid of ATA his Spanish Legend during the morish conque..."

"through one you know recently this this is uh November November the 2nd uh so we celebrate our dead and we celebrate death in a way that I don't think a lot of cultures out there do so it's a joyful o..."

"practices in Mexico and not only in Mexico but here in the US I've I've been to Santa Mora temples across the country I found one in Connecticut out of all places how I grew up with it or I saw it is ..."

"the other side the en me the cartel's groups they would venerate it as well so when they would see it on you it was almost debilitating to them they were like oh are you guys cops are you guys who are..."

"getting destroyed by Ultra Christian groups or Catholic groups and it keeps getting rebuilt personally for me as a you know it's I don't believe that there's a a Reaper skeleton in the sky protecting ..."

"so I got to ask you about the dark turn of of that spirituality or maybe you will place this elsewhere but who was adalo castano Al padrino this is a guy that comes up in a in a period I think this is..."

"practices as his spells and his work kept getting bigger and bigger and more and more complicated the ingredients he needed for these anganga or these spells these cold that he would fill with certain..."

"eventual downfalls his Ranch was raided they found the body parts inside of these cauldrons that he was preparing that's an interesting example of somebody there's a cartel head uh somewhere in centra..."

"spirituality and the desperate need for people to believe in something and how that leads for some people to go into some horrible predatory behavior around it there a fascinating Dynamic of play here..."

"United States being run by cartels in federal land uh there's the legal pot grows that are in some way shape or form influenced and or run or owned by some conal groups and that are kind of utilizing ..."

"markets but send it up into the United States which started off this process that we're kind of going through still as these like similar highs drug wise why do you infuse I mean probably you're not t..."

"their product but not the new generation cartel which operates out of uh the central part of Mexico kma area which have access to the seaside ports so even during the shutdown they were getting suppli..."

"you know who knows you and that's how you see a lot of people dying from ODS that are supposedly taking pain pills and that's not what they're doing uh so the evolution right now you're seeing is maki..."

"done by the last president as far as his rhetoric uh Donald Trump which has been weaponized and utilized by the by the left down down in Mexico so America is not seen uh positively no every now and th..."

"they're when you cross into Mexico you'll see them wearing these white camouflage uniforms those are those are National Guard people but they're they're they're the military so now you're seeing a mil..."

"center because a hot War would be fought on the ground and so you have a very difficult parallel between Mexico and Ukraine both don't have nuclear weapons both have relationships so Ukraine has a rel..."

"products is Mexico um the massive wave of immigration that is going to be basically weaponized uh you know you saw the collapse of the border security structure with the contingent of 3,000 Honduran G..."

"and anybody that says they aren't is delusional if you take every single legal worker out of the industry in the United States and send them back like there's a movie out there called like that the m ..."

"this is a regional problem and if we don't think of it as a regional problem with our brothers on the southern side of it and with family we we're related in blood there's like we are we are Mexico an..."

"for ourselves like yeah the idea of go back to your country and finding the other and having a disdain and a hate towards the other ever since I had a recent conversation with yay formerly known as Ka..."

"know on one side there's the woke side of it which every everything goes and on the other side is like let's hold on to some of these things that make us who we are on my end you know I want to get to..."

"shot outside of of of this because of the stuff we're saying yeah listen to with uh with with love and respect not not uh derision um let me ask you for advice what what would you say to Young Folks w..."

"thinking a lot about freedom is thinking too individualistically meaning thinking about me how to optimize my situation forgetting that the deepest growth you can do as an individual is by taking care..."

"grow and that's responsibility of like helping those around you there's an isol relist aspect of culture now it's like we we're separate there's a there's almost like a spiritual or cultural amputatio..."

"in a way you know you can drive home drunk in Mexico you can if you bribe a cop on your way there and if you don't die or crash into somebody else that's a dangerous aspect of Freedom uh but there's a..."

"know um people telling me how things are in Mexico because they learned it through a college course yes and seeing sons of immigrants criticizing me because of my opinion of Mexico or what I have to s..."

"to the reality of the world yeah one small example a micro example of this uh my kid there was a homeless guy uh she was out with with some with family members this hom guy homeless guy showed up he w..."

"anything so when you were young you were pretty sure you're going to die before you're 30 yeah what's your relationship with death today do you think about your immortality are you afraid of it I'm no..."

"important in all things um if we don't keep that in mind then if you think we're Immortal and nothing's going to end I think that's a there's an atrophy a spiritual atrophy in that for the sake of spi..."