Town's people in kiaan are having to adjust to a new reality one where bodies turn up on the street daily the US Mexico border has become a war zone as the cartels ramp up their ruthless violence to levels never seen before mass shootings abductions and bodies dumped in the streets it's like something out of a horror movie and now these Grizzly sites aren't confined to Mexico anymore either they're spilling out into the US Southern States the cartels are packing serious heat and have even put out the order to to start taking out US border agents
Mexican cartels are giving members permission to quote shoot at US border patrol agents as the situation spirals out of control both governments are scrambling to fight back will cracking down harder just lead to more Bloodshed and can cartel's culture of extreme violence ever be stopped [Music] this is the brutal reality of Mexican cartels they also prepare guisos these are stews where you take a member of the family and you put them in a pig boiler and you pour gasoline on them and then you set a match to them it's hard to imagine living in an
area where decapitations and kidnappings are normalized and where kids can encounter dead bodies on their way to school but but because of a few criminal organizations millions of people live like this and it's not just them who are affected for example the cj& is largely responsible for the destructive fentel epidemic in the United States and the negative effects go all the way up to the geopolitics Mexican cels are brutal and destructive in just about a thousand ways let's explore the most violent and Powerful cartels in power today but before we go on I must warn
you today's video shares some really graphic details of torture and death before we delve into the thick of it we must understand the wider context of Mexican cartels and why they are so destructive Mexico and the United States share a giant border of almost 2,000 miles their cultures and businesses are closely intertwined in 2018 alone tra between Mexico and the US generated $671 billion but lately tensions have been growing between the two countries for one single reason cartels these cartels should be defined as a commercial Insurgency and major threat to the US National Security interest
reportedly cartels make between 19 to$ 29 billion a year just from the US Mexico is the world's 13th largest economy and the US is only second to China today Mexico is on the rise as one of the most cost effective places to locate manufacturing operations lots of these operations are now leaving China and moving to Mexico for better skilled and lower paid labor for geopolitical reasons balancing economic power like that is good but all of this is in Peril because the cartels seem to be in control of the government and this is affecting the American
government's outlook on Mexico as a whole if Americans start to think of Mexicans as drug Runners again regardless of why that damages our most productive trading relationship and our most brilliant opportunity for our future right out of the gate why are we saying cartels are in control well just look at oo Guzman's 2019 arrest attempt also known as Black Tuesday when Mexican forces approached Lopez's home cartel Guzman opened fire from within however after an intensive shootout they were able to gain entry to the house and apprehend Lopez who surrendered unarmed on October 17th 2019 the
Mexican military raided oo's home and arrested him for a long list of crimes they now say this drug lord nicknamed the mouse has ordered the murders of informants a rival drug trafficker and a popular Mexican singer who refused to perform at his wedding but as his brothers El Chapo's Sons got word of this hell rained on the officers 10 officers and 19 cartel members died and a Dozen others were seriously injured as a whole war was unleashed the message was simple you don't mess with the scen aloa cartel you don't mess with El Chapo's Sons
oo himself seemed to try to stop the massacre before it all happened [Laughter] but this organization is larger than life and its ego is fragile they're playing hard ball knowing they can intimidate the government and seize control of money and power sadly it worked that year oo was released from custody and was free to do the caoa cartel's bidding for four more years until his 2023 arrest Mexico's president explained his decision Falco Ernst a senior analyst for the international crisis group in Mexico who explained that oido lupz gan's release set a terrible precedent and communicated
a message that the state including the Army could be blackmailed and was not in control exactly now the cartels know violence works so in the infamous War on Drugs each cartel upst their brutal game knowing this is the only currency that keeps them at the top of the game Mexican cartels are deemed a regional security threat in Mexico and the US and of course they're a threat to all those who stand in their way in the eyes of the cartels even looking at them the wrong way can earn you a death sentence let's look at
Mexico's most brutal cartels in power today the losetas cartel is not as powerful as the cj& or the caloa but it's sheer brutality inspired the other two and laid the grounds for all the horror that's been happening since the 2000s they are killing machines killing machines with no soul the core of lettas is belief stands in their name lettas means disease and in Mexico this is the Tactical radio code for Military Officers lettas was the first militarized cartel because they literally started out as an Army in 1997 lettas was formed as the gulf cartel's Army
their kingin at the time oel Cardin gayen hired a retired army lieutenant aruro Guzman Vina to recruit the most violent deserters from the military Special Force forces the Cena's former radio code Z1 named the Army if this sounds cool guess again it only upped the violence tfold the first set that he recruited was uro gozman Desa so what you saw was a change in the way drug cartels fought with violence it was no longer those gang members with shaved heads and tattoos figh with pistols and knives it was militarized Style fighting like military units and
once they did it this was spread across to every cartel in Mexico this way the zias became Unstoppable what cartel could face an army with special training and military weapons not even the police were equipped with weapons as tough as theirs there was another problem too as the Zetas realized their power their bosses started glorifying brutality the more violent you were the higher up in the Army you could go the Zetas even gave honor medals to the most violent soldiers so the set has really upped the anti of violence within their conflict and their use
of Terror I think a lot of this comes from the fact they were from the military and they had this instruction of how you defeat insurgencies this anti-insurgency training that had originated in the United States and this idea that you control territories through the use of Terror and because they were becoming Unstoppable loas also encouraged other cartels to take arms and become more violent then in the early 2000s came the War on Drugs the government's promise to put an end to the cartel violence ironically this made cartel violence much much worse in 2002 uro Dina
was killed by the Mexican military this was the Kingpin strategy eliminate cartel leaders and bring their cartel down this had worked a decade before in Colombia with Pablo Escobar but now it would lead to Pure chaos after oel cardinas was arrested and extradited to the usest lettas decided to split from the Gulf cartel and form their own separate entity in 2010 and this worked better than they could have ever imagined you had this small unit which it grew and grew that as the set as inside the gulf cartel until eventually it was like a whole
Army within the golf cartel that would rise up saying we don't need you anymore we're going to take this for ourselves as a super efficient and highly organized military group loetta thrived but of course this started a war with a gulf cartel in August 2010 authorities discovered an unmarked grave holding the bodies of 72 undocumented immigrants lettas killed them all on a hunch they were afraid they'd be recruited by the gulf cartel this time 193 bodies were recovered people had been tortured and mutilated women had been raped and reports came back that men had been
forced to fight each other to the death with hammers and machetes in August 2011 they did the same to 100 93 people but this time it was even worse dozens of women were violated and the men who were killed were tortured for hours prior to this other men were forced to fight each other to the death while losetas members stood by watched and laughed whoever survived this ordeal was recruited into the zetus cartel because if you're ruthless and desensitized enough to kill your own friends you're good enough for the cartel except these people had no
choice it was kill or be killed in August of the same year the thus set fire to an entire casino in montere killing 50 people their only problem was the casino refused to pay protection money and in 2014 retas committed an unimaginable atrocity they suspected two men from the town aende had stolen money from the cartel they decided to punish the whole town letta's militarized Army raided aende and destroyed everything in their sight 80 homes were reduced to ashes and somewhere between 300 and 500 people died that day you know it's a real life horror
movie when you can't even estimate the kill count within a 100 this is the life of people living in the areas controlled by lettas and that's not all lettas are also known for their horrific torture methods in 2020 the Irish Times reported that discovery of 12 kitchens loas used to cook well humans the side would scar even the most seasoned detectives bloody handprints on walls stained clothes plastic cable ties machetes and as one person observes the crunch of Bones beneath a thick blanket of Ash these kitchens have become so well known in the regions of
Mexico where the losetas operate that people now use the term zaka to describe cooking humans that's a traditional Mexican corn dish but you're probably not going to try it now and it gets even worse lettas don't burn their victims quickly they also prepare guos these are stews where you take a member of the family and you put them in a pig boiler and you pour gasoline on them and then you s a match to them and if they don't cook their victims they'll burn them with diesel so that the process is as slow as possible
they burn these these individuals in a 55 G real using diesel cuz diesel Burns slower in 2012 Lo Kingpin atto loano was gunned down by the Mexican military and his right-hand man Miguel anelo Morales took charge he took violence to a whole new level heartbreakingly he would kidnap his victim's children and boil them alive he personally did this to babies too losetas are making sure that no one not even authorities dares stand in their way to say losetas are brutal would be an understatement they've put them in acid and watch their bodies disintegrate they have
fed them to wild animals but you see their very brutality would be their downfall in the 2010s lettas were controlling every kind of illegal activity in many Eastern regions of Mexico they' also take over the local drug selling shaking down kidnapping stealing cars selling pirated Goods they started taking over corrupt trade unions so it wasn't just a fight about out the drug trade of the United States it was a fight about controlling every inch of territory and all of the businesses in this territory but Morales kept recruiting the worst most violent Psychopathic men within a
decade the once organized military army turned into a gang of Mad Dogs looking for a kill and when you gather these people together it's not long before they start fighting each other too lettas are still active as a 2023 but their organization and business savvy have taken a serious fall now they rely on kidnapping and extortion as their main sources of income and they no longer compete with the Giant caloa and halisco New Generation cartels however Lo's horrifying Legacy lives through the next cartel if loas left a lesson for the halisco new generation cartel it's
the more violent the better well that and the military weapons the halisco new generation cartel took the fight to the next level shooting down a military helicopter with a rocket propelled grenade sheer brutality instead of bribery can be used to intimidate authorities and seize control over Mexico's many trait cj& G began with one man Nantes AKA Elman he was born in July 1966 and grew up in a poor family of avocado farmers in the 198 s he moved to the US illegally but he didn't lay low he and his brother went straight into the drug
trafficking business after two arrests he was deported back to Mexico so in the 1990s he joined the millennial cartel but the millennial kingpins were killed or arrested one by one and the cartel was losing power eventually it split into tinier factions one of which was El menos initially it was called Los torsos or the Twisted ones then it became cj& G the millenni sple over and one of those spers was the CJ today the cj& is deemed Mexico's most violent Cartel Cartel deis CJ is the single criminal organization most responsible for these debts on both
sides of the Border imagine this being your proudest achievement in an ironic twist after being deported to Mexico elmino worked for the local police for a few months but it's likely he just did that to learn the road about organized attacks and Military strategy this is what the Mexican authorities found at one of the CJ bases that the cartel possesses highly sophisticated Armament including machine guns and grenade launchers the Army is structured organized and trained in Warfare this means that they are always ready to attack or defend their headquarters and in July footage emerge of
that CG Convoy these gunmen call themselves The Elite group and pledge allegiance to almeno they're armed with assault rifles with grenade launchers attack to the barrel heavy machine guns and also this gun this is a 50 caliber sniper rifle it's a powerful weapon that the cg& loves to show off but they rarely defend CJ's philosophy is to attack everyone before they even do anything intimidation is their main tactic they dress in army style uniforms and make a great show of using heavy military grade Weaponry they have a very intelligent strategy which which is basically branding
themselves and looking like paramit power um they do have the their four letters right the CJ n g on their vs they addressed us properly military they also have these um High caliber guns they have what they call those monr which are really basically what handmade man-made tanks you know and unlike other Mexican cartels cj& doesn't just attack rival cartels for power money and territory they attack anyone from police officers to civilians they want to spread a message they're in charge now and they're ruling by fear in April 2015 the cj& ambushed dozens of police
officers and trapped them in a corner 15 officers died simply because they were on the wrong side of the war from the cartel's perspective the officers were trapped and continually shot at by members of The cj& Killing about 15 of them and when the cj& fights rival cartels they literally reduced towns to ashes one time El mencho found out the Mexican military were planning to arrest two of his most trusted men El Ed and elaa so he began an operation to distract the authorities this meant creating bigger trouble Elsewhere alino sakario set fire to 25
outlets in Guan they were shooting at random people and blowing up cars just to send the message that El mcho is in charge the end goal an incredible amount of money and they slowly infiltrated every business there is in Mexico the economical power behind gisco they literally started with avocad so they were farmers they literally started moving from avocados to um chemical precursors to make drugs like math amphetamine it's like okay so what the US market like they like their avocados from Mexico and their from Mexico one reason for El meno's success is his ability
to use market and consumer charges to his Advantage initially the cj& produced just fenine but as soon as El mencho saw that consumer demand changed he moved a production today the cjg is known as the core distributor of fitel which has surpassed heroin as America's deadliest banned drug in recent years yeah elino deals with the absolute worst substances on the black market we have had you know more overdose deaths in one year than we did of covid deaths in our city fentel made thousands of people homeless physically and emotionally destroyed and completely unable to let
go of this self-destructive addiction it doesn't last long so you're sick again like heroin you can do in the morning and you can be all good till tomorrow like fenol you can withdraw like three times a day around 1% of fentel users will die this number is huge and in the context of this video it just goes to show how how many people the Mexican cartels are hurting the cj& even infiltrated Mexico's profitable avocado industry the very industry ELO's family worked in Legally 400,000 people have jobs insured by the avocado industry in Mexico avocado consumption
in the United States tripled between 2001 and 2023 of course this screamed business opportunity to elel the cj& attacked Farmers stole their Farms or threatened to kill them and their families if they didn't surrender their profit your orchard is sealed off you have cameras everywhere and you have guns it's so hard for me to wrap my head around the the protection is all because you are growing this Delicious Fruit if you're doing well they kill you or disappear you or they come and pull you and your family out of your house and they take away
your orchard and they cultivate it and take all the money against their will most avocado farmers in Mexico became a part of the cartels they either side with him or end up dead the avocado industry first they start like taxing them with like 10% of their gains and then they say like why is not easier just to take over give me like the property titles or I or I will kidnap your daughter I will uh extor you if you don't I'm going to shoot you but this only made the cartels more confident that they could
have a monopoly over the avocado industry and as avocados became more and more popular their prices went up and so did the cartel violence all this crime is a consequence of the increase of price of avocado now all of this has exploded the extortion kidnappings you have to pay for protection I'm afraid of losing my family or having them lose me the cj& is truly brutal and it doesn't stop with business owners rival cartels or police officers they're even targeting the government itselfis they are very well Consolidated as one group and so that means that
they can really put up really organized attacks Against The Mexican government and all that violence is only to have leverage in the negotiations with the um government with politicians right they create this chaos to to to go and sit with a block politicians and say like okay do you want more or shall we negotiate this the only hope in stopping the CJ's violence lies in the recent rumor of el meno's death in 2020 it was reported that El mencho suffered from kidney disease and he had built his own private hospital to treat it in February
2022 unconfirmed reports came up that mcho died in the hospital following a respiratory arrest if this is true the cartel will do its best to hide it rival cartels will swoop in for control the minute it's confirmed however if it's true cj& G will most likely crumble as like any other cartel it will split into smaller wearing factions without a unifying leader but even if the cj& will dissolve over the next few years there is still one giant that appears to be going nowhere even after its leader was arrested everyone has heard of the caloa
cartel and everyone's heard of El Chapo but here's the catch El Chapa was arrested in 2016 and extradited to the US in 2017 still the caloo cartel remains Mexico's largest and most powerful cartel even 7 years after its kingpins downfall the caloa cartel's Origins are older than the previous cartels we've covered it was created by El Chapo and El Mayo in 1989 after the guadalahara cartel crumbled into three smaller factions Tiana harez and caloa El chapu and El Mayo had spent 10 years working for the guad laar cartel in other words for Miguel anel Felix
G o AKA El padrino that's Spanish for The Godfather and it makes sense El padrino was the Godfather of all modern cartels that is to say El Chapo learned from the best and when eladrin was arrested he immediately seized the opportunity and took control of that caloa region of Mexico hence the name of his cartel elchapo knew what he had to do to grow his Empire bribe officials to protect his smuggling routes and use extreme violence against rival cartels to keep them terrified of the scen aloa his method was all too similar to that of
Pablo Escobar in Colombia Plata opo Savvy and ruthless as he was El Chapo infiltrated the government until he had several high ranking officials on his payroll so every time the scen aloa cartel makes a dollar some pennies enter the officials Pockets this way instead of fighting the scen of low cartel the government protects them why do you think they let you do what you do when El ch was arrested for the final time in 2016 some really nasty things were revealed at his trial it turns out he wasn't just a cold and calculated businessman ordering
hits and deals from an ivory Tower he was a psychopathic murderer Who Loved getting his hands dirty his former bodyguard describes several horrific accounts of El Chapo killing enemies with his bare hands and torturing them for days first he had Burns made with an iron on his back his shirt was stuck to his skin he had Burns made with a car lighter all over his body his feet were burned El Chapo kept this poor man in a wooden structure for days on end he interrogated him but the man wouldn't say what El Chapa wanted to
hear so El Chapa would shoot him but not fatally over and over again he would bury him alive a few days later and in 2010 elchapo killed rival cartel member Hugo herandez then he cut off his face and sewed it to a soccer ball the rest of his body was found cut in tiny pie pieces and two ice chests his message was for the authorities Hernandez's face sewn onto a football was left in a plastic bag near City Hall a note read happy New Year because this will be your last so it's not just the
scen of Lois cardiio who were violent their boss is as brutal as it gets today El Chapo was imprisoned inside the US's highest Security Federal Prison the Florence supermax it's a very tough place and he will never walk free again but his cartel's profits only increased after his departure and it's thanks to his four Sons Los chapitos or the little chapos Judy they are known as Los chapitos the four most trusted sons of the world's most notorious drug kingpin as the IT team has reported for several years federal drug investigators here in Chicago consider El
Chapo's sons in charge of the caloa cartel that remains this area's largest trafficker of heroin cocaine and methamphetamine Lo chapito built brand new meth labs increased production and expanded trafficking routes in Mexico and into the US it turns out they're even more business savvy than their father as of 2023 the caloa is Mexico's number one enemy cartel the most powerful is the caloa cartel almost the 70% of the world is infected by this cter now the caloa employs similar methods to the CJ andg they go straight after authorities and ambushing them beating them and killing
dozens of officers at a time in massive shootouts their soldiers are completely desensitized to violence have you all like killed people with these guns from the outside there's nothing more brutal than torture and murder but to the scoa sarios it's just a day in the office know it's like another human being does that ever like weigh on the conscience you know you think about it but no here's the thing it's not either them or us cartel shoot first assuming they're always in danger and obsessed with spreading the message that they're in charge but not everyone
thinks this way and how could they use this idea to justify killing women children and innocent bystanders some soldiers are are truly brainwashed do you consider yourselves kind of like terrorists a couple of days ago in Kia kind a police officer was kidnapped I suppose to me that seem like acts of terrorism you know if you're kidnapping police many police officers end up corrupted by the cartels and accept their bribes for fear of losing their lives or their families then the cartels consider it's okay to kill them as they were corrupted anyway do you see
the sad irony so what is there to do about this sadly the War on Drugs only propels cartels to increase their violence and fight for profits more than 250,000 people have been killed since former president Felipe Calderone launched the so-called drug war in 2006 a conflict of shif alliances and ever increasing numbers of armed groups dogged by persistent allegations that elements of the Mexican state are deeply intertwined with organized crime shockingly it doesn't seem like the government has the power to stop a cartel or make it crumble the military's Kingpin tactic kill the Kingpin and
let the cartel split to Tiny Waring factions appears to be the only successful method this is how the once Mighty Gulf cartel saw this according to the global Guardian the primary actors of the Mexican drug are the cj& G and the caloa cartels Lo zettas the gulf cartel and the harez cartel all contribute to the non-stop violence and if we glorify these cartels we also contribute you can now listen to Narco gangster rap while sporting El Chapo branded clothes yeah don't today cartels spread their violence message easier than ever social media makes it way too
easy for cartels like Cena Loa and the CJ and G reach young people across the globe on the one hand they share videos of torture and murder letting Watchers know they shouldn't mess with them on the other hand they put their King Pins on t-shirts and caps presenting them as cool Outlaw figures to be revered and respected there's an obvious conflict here should we really buy products that present these kingpins in a positive light and give money to the cartel oh and by the way please don't go looking for their terrifying torture videos absolutely nothing
prepares you for such brutality and there is no positive outcome from watching something like this the sad reality of Mexican cartels is the most powerful ones are also the most brutal ones they target anyone from rival cartels to officers to government top dogs and as their violence increases the government finds it harder to face their threat but as technology gets better and authorities discuss new tactics let's stay hopeful that cartel brutality might just one day come to an end as we've seen the cartel's Reign of Terror knows no bounds they're not just targeting Rivals anymore
innocent civilians including women and children are being caught in the crossfire of their ruthless tactics extortion kidnapping for ransoming enemy families and wiping entire towns off the map it's all fair game as they'll stop at nothing to come out on top the scale of this conflict is unlike anything we've witnessed before with the cartel's power and brutality reaching unprecedented Heights it's clear that half measures won't cut it anymore if we want to end this nightmare and protect the lives of countless people on both sides of the Border will need to hit the cartels with everything
we've got it won't be pretty and it'll require an iron fist but the alternative is surrendering our communities to Narco Terror the time to act is now before the violence consumes us all thanks for watching leave a comment and let me know how you think cartels should be stopped if they can be stopped at all and before you go don't forget to like And subscribe
