Joe Rogan Experience #1253 — Ioan Grillo Transcript

Transcript

0:00 here we go five four three two one first of all how many people get your name wrong when they Yeah. He's in Fantastic Four. So, I came to Mexico or went to Mexico in the year 2000. How old were you? Yeah. Yeah. I spent a year in the Middle East as well. And right away, I realized all that idea of guerrillas and military dictatorships that sister who went who became uh schizophrenic smoking a lot a lot of well no she became

3:59 it does happen i heard that debate that's one of the reasons why it came to mind uh i mean i don't know So I don't really know the science of it. I went down to the beach, like backpacking down to the beach, so 2001 was the same year that Chapo Guzman escaped from prison. Then I mean, corruption must be unbelievably rampant. you get to know the policemen in a certain town,

6:45 His nickname was Tyson because he was a well-built bloke, well-built guy. training the young kids how to decapitate people how to cut people up and he was explaining in So like going back to 2000, this hadn't happened. which has torn Mexico apart, then and innocent looking at what mexico was like then they would simply say go to the place i drive I mean, there's a whole people a lot more careful about where you –

9:59 killed and he was shot dead six hours after he gave that statement. is big and it's complicated it must be immensely complicated for the the people that live there was like wow i'm covering i'm going to these places where chapel guzman is from you know i And about 15 guys in bulletproof jackets all came in, long arms, got the money she wanted to get the money right away she turned up with the

13:12 and I arrived at the morgue And she was trying to see if her son might be among those people, among those bodies. But when you make drugs illegal, only criminals are going to sell those drugs. So you've got the, there was four main drugs. here but as well as that you've got the other four main drugs historically uh marijuana uh heroin And from 1915, they began a cross-border trade from Mexico to the United States.

15:55 Mexicans trafficking to Chinese Americans here in California. And at that time, there was a And you want to justify why you're doing this, what you're doing this for. I wrote editorials about, you know, Yeah, you go into a pipeline. and it exploded. no one knows really what Americans spend on drugs. But like $100 billion a year. goes to these people who are doing this stuff but a secondary i believe is social work uh in the

19:46 back in 2015 and he was driving for us and he was also carrying a gun to help protect us with into a house okay they got a family and they butchered a family and he described when he And you feel that pain. So they went in there and killed this family. and think i mean the action itself but how like teenage kids can think about that stuff there's a bit like nerves,

23:19 Oof. This took me years to get to a lot of these people. In the prison in Ciudad Ju Juarez in a Christian evangelical wing there. who grew up in his shown and they have been themselves murdered you know butchered after these they've given these and i haven't just interviewed and i've also got drunk with some of these people and hung around But it's a complicated world.

26:38 you talk to other people who are just on the edge of this 150 per 100,000. than medieval europe yeah i mean i guess you have to have to some professors So it's not. Whereas in the U.S., it tends to be neighborhoods which are violent. the president felipe calderon declared a military crackdown on drug cartels and after that there a story in a book called Drug Lord by Terence Popper,

30:23 put electric shocks on his nuts, investigated his bank accounts so when I arrived in Mexico, So you had a bunch of different political parties. Sakawi, you know, video, which was shown in full on Mexican TV. that's been discovered so far um was in vera cruz now i've been to grave in one place and it was right next to a housing estate This happens, but there's also just a normality that could just be like you're outside here in L.A.

34:23 writer whose son was murdered. And then he went to the streets and people were coming out publicly crying. to know what that really means and his second thing is we need to have more of a unified state police so like what i so the equivalent of the United States, Safety, like if they don't join the cartel, they probably get murdered. people were saying you know something had been done for taking drugs over the border, they'd been in gangs and stuff.

37:20 the first book with is this guy the time you came to mexico so when you came to mexico it's almost like you got in i mean if it was a story It's horrible stuff to see and and and it's So Mexico City is the same City is it is a great city Mexico City is a great city to live in in many ways apart from the traffic you know, a great Mexican journalist correspondents who's

41:03 still doing this stuff with journalism is in a bad way I mean, first, I have to give some respect and condolences to so many colleagues, the cartels they were known as outer defense as or like self-defense squads and they rose up to the self-defense squads the outer defenses were pretty easy going to work with but i drove down in a parking lot, ammunition belts around them.

44:44 These were narco. The boss. you often get called a güero. he said uh the other guys now first there's a big guy and he said uh he was carrying a big gun That's some bullshit story. you know a bunch of photographs and one of the guys sent me an email saying what happened to the photographs. So it's a lot of touch and go in these situations. the federal police have done well going after a particular guy or sometimes with the americans

48:37 and then their lieutenants taking over, and also you end up these they fragment the territory so you have people controlling guys blocked the road and the leader of this group was a guy i believe called el huero palaya away i mean it's happened a lot of a lot of cases recently colleagues just being robbed um i mean I remember a few years ago, a TV group interviewed

51:56 And murderers, yeah. So it means there must be a 20% somewhere who don't. But no, Mexico is very, very anti-Trump. which is right on the border with the United States. when he was at school he was at high school and they give him a tip he said the first time he got the equivalent of about 50 cents But like in terms of the wall, I mean, And that was kind of scary moment then.

55:13 remember that yeah it was like it was like you know how you're going to do that you're going to they normally go through the ports of entry. that's a very valuable territory there's something like 8 000 trucks go over that border every day Yeah, yeah. actually open and find the drugs oh there's like some trick sort of door that has to be active And another classic trick they have is they allow some to get busted.

58:27 Are the United States Border Patrol guys, Certain vehicles through, so yeah. We're going to let you dictate how this takes place. The biggest one is entirely that most people don't enjoy what they do I mean, it's a very small number of people, about childhood abuse and how many people from childhood abuse wind up using and abusing drugs forever not that many people smoke marijuana in holland it's a lot of uh marijuana tourism

1:01:52 So that's one of the sides to that thing. knew a lot of kids growing up who sold drugs. that butcher that family he was abandoned and angry and hurt and just so much pain that he's suffering that's often they stay fucked up you know um i had michael I mean, there's so much of that in this country that the people that are in control, everybody just wants to get elected.

1:05:26 If they were you and you were them, wouldn't you hope that you would help? and the idea is that it's going to be better for all of us. She was one of the first people to introduce me to young gang members in this area. I was talking to some guys in in also in Sierra Juarez from the barrio Azteca I need someone who's got hate, who's got anger in them,

1:07:56 and you need people who can offer something and try and… neighborhood and go there and try and change the reality because if you see around you a horrible I mean, Medellin, Colombia, was the worst, the most violent city in the world back in the 1990s, It was crazy. and other different groups. not like police and you know hate that you know be anti-police or whatever growing up um and now

1:11:31 But how do you create a police force no, no, no, the police officers here are corrupt, they are bad, America too, no you're not i know you're not i just have to sort of clarify because i know so many people your fault you bitch to the mom this is your fault look how your kid's getting beaten And you've got no protection from that kind of thing? um and it can give a distorted picture sometimes because you know when i tell a story of 49

1:15:39 because they don't have the same sort of uh ruthless ambition that people in the united maybe feel like a personal failure how come you're living in america and you're broke right um whereas 12 hours a day to try to achieve that dream and they're never happy and they're always stressed So, yeah, so that's part of it. They have Mexican soap operas playing on the television.

1:18:17 And we talked about all the drugs coming up. many guns are going down but there was one one study that came to the conclusion that over 200,000 guns every year go from the United States into Mexico. it's in fridges he said to himself So did he buy them from gun shows? I don't live here. well somebody who who who said to the person i can't i can't buy he's looking for a different

1:21:25 Yeah, those gun shows are pretty bizarre He carries a knife as well the gun the criminals in in baltimore right um i also interviewed in baltimore a gun trafficker object of a gun that's the problem. It's the human beings that are willing to use these guns to with illegally acquired guns after a while you know there's there's it's going to come to some

1:24:11 Yeah. Now, 50 cals in Mexicoels the cartels use 50 cows they use them to set up ambushes they'll use them to hit uh military vehicles police vehicles so they'll sit on the are corrupt as well going into your vehicle that discussion that much unless you're going to war with Russia or fighting against some gang, Yeah, okay, okay. In California, you can't even have a silencer.

1:26:26 They do that here, too. think they think i mean i guess these are the gun lobby see the idea of a gun registry as being a and you know whose car it is within seconds. you have to know how to drive a car you have to in order to have a license to drive a car you have to Look, we did a check on you. instructor about safety and put goggles on and ear muffs and make sure you're protected and

1:28:57 And since I've been doing research for this new book, Do you think they actually are good in self-defense? security because the the journalist himself was carrying a gun self-defense and believe in that or simply just enjoy the sport of shooting guns well i hunt and You're going to flip your car over on the side of the road. There's also countless stories of people leaving their guns unlocked and a child gets a hold of it and kills himself accidentally there's there's stories

1:32:30 But yeah, guns absolutely can protect you. pressure situation before how do you know you can keep it together and even hit something you're they would be doomed. they don't want to be a victim. And it doesn't mean they're bad people. And I think we have a is and it's funny you can't see bullets. you know, were firing bang bang and then and during the same situation not not right in that scene there but in

1:36:25 and you're seeing this yeah called Bradley Rowland Will, And he filmed I mean, if you're there on a daily basis, to just accept the fact that you're an observer that might be a victim. It was more self-contained. there whereas in something like mexico south amer, a lot of times this fighting is kind of happening everywhere. um i saw the x-ray actually of the bullet embedded in the side of his neck and actually

1:39:36 Yeah, exactly. Yeah. and how this kind of weird new form of guerrilla warfare they have of like fighting house to house. from being like right inside close up, like running literally in the room, yeah um yeah i mean mexico right now is almost like a war i mean you can call it a drug war know what is the uh um how can you define this in terms of warfare you know how does it fit in

1:42:33 So if you look at Mexico, it's a kind of weird hybrid. get actually starts to look more like a kind of regular conflict, you know, you know, it's not quite war What was that like? I think there was... and then sometimes they'd agree on okay two thousand you know like but so it sounds like And my friend Orlean, again, the journalist down in Honduras,

1:46:06 Now, the desperation was so heavy. Now, Honduras is in a real meltdown kind of stage honduras is bad venezuela is worse but honduras And they went down and crossed the river. to make it through to the united states yeah i mean you know different people had different ideas I mean, like there's been cases of people with one cameraman I know who fed Honduras and then was killed in Mexico.

1:48:18 and very proud of its sovereignty when they got him and there's a big shootout. There have been, prisoners have been helicoptered out, John, seeing him in the court we were in a 4x4, serious off-road, up and down. And when we arrived there, and he said we could stay at his house, Cousin. Wow. england here and somebody from the us and come out in this in this church ceremony so yeah yeah

1:52:16 You know, she talks about her son with kind of pride. I didn't push too hard. Yeah, I mean, heavily, heavily protected. a lot more so you get there's a Yeah, and then they had another. I felt kind of disconnected I think they brought in more than 50 witnesses, three months of trial. is totally corrupt and working with cartels. So when Fast and Furious came up,

1:55:22 So we can't talk about that. And so this other guy, is he still free? I mean, one of these weird things you think like, with that but at the same time they're still really hyper local in some ways they're still like people who You probably have to run that thing with an iron fist. I mean, there's the issue of like a lot of police in Mexico are poor.

1:58:01 But then again, the same with, I don't understand that. With business. We're good? these other people as well it's all very complicated though that has to do with a lot they make a lot of money, you're paying people off you're owing money and you know and you know you're buying back suppliers, you're paying people off, you're owing money, and you know,

1:59:33 you know, It's a normal house. That photograph of Sean Penn shaking hands with him. I mean, you have an actor who's played gangsters. She's a famous Mexican actress. So the story started. situation in mexico um you know why don't they come you know drug traffickers come and like Now, Sean Penn, there's a bit of discussion now that Sean Penn and Kate de Castillo fell out over this.

2:03:05 So that's when some people say that the Mexican government had followed them Yeah. i've been balancing and thinking about for a lot of years so anyway the chapo escapes um and then I mean, it's possible. to have lost a lot of his protection you know he before you know going back a few years El Narco which also has on my third book now