Joe Rogan Experience #1095 - TJ English & Joey Diaz

Joe Rogan 0:00 Oh, okay. (laughs) Boom, and we're live with Joey Diaz and TJ English. Uh, Joey turned me on to you a long time ago, Mr. English. Uh, he gave me a copy of The Westies, right?

Joey Diaz 0:16 Yeah. It was... '98, '99.

Joe Rogan 0:19 A long time ago-

T.J. English 0:20 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 0:20 ... he gave me that book.

T.J. English 0:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:21 It's fantastic, really.

T.J. English 0:24 Thank you.

Joe Rogan 0:24 Fascinating stuff.

T.J. English 0:25 Yeah. First book I published.

Joe Rogan 0:27 Was it really?

T.J. English 0:27 Uh, The Westies, yeah, in 1990.

Joe Rogan 0:29 How'd you guys find out about each other?

Joey Diaz 0:31 He wrote a book... A friend of mine turned me onto a book named Havana Nocturne, that was a small book, a fascinating read, and I was just blown away by him. And I went to a party one night and there was a literary agent there, and I go, "Do you fucking guys read Havana Nocturne?" They go, "We optioned it." And I was like, "That's fucking in-... That's gonna be a great book." It just, uh... It broke down the, the, uh... how Fidel took over it from three different cities, how it was going down in three different categories. And then I heard that he was writing a book about West New York and Union City Cubans, where I grew up. And I emailed him and I told him who I was, that my mother had a bar, and, uh, I grew up in that shit. And he hit me back and we became friends. He came to a show and...

T.J. English 1:19 Yeah, Joey reached out to me, you know, unfortunately, when I was just about finishing this book. So I had done most of the work and it was down on paper, but it was a trip. It was like he w-... He was like a character who walked out of the book.

Joe Rogan 1:34 (laughs)

T.J. English 1:34 And, uh, I wished I'd met him earlier, 'cause I hadn't met too many characters like him. Union City's amazing place. Uh, I don't think people realize it. It's one of those little enclaves, happens to be Cuban. It's like a mafia neighborhood, but it was Cubans, not Italians. Or it was like Hell's Kitchen, which I wrote about in The Westies, which was-

Joe Rogan 1:54 Yeah.

T.J. English 1:54 ... an Irish neighborhood. Very intense neighborhood. Uh, high premium on loyalty. Um, young males running loyalty games on each other all the time, from the age of six. Am I right?

Joe Rogan 2:07 How so? What do you mean?

T.J. English 2:09 How far you'll go-

Joe Rogan 2:10 T- Can I turn the sucker up towards you? Yeah.

T.J. English 2:11 How far, how far will you go for me, uh, you know?

Joe Rogan 2:13 Yeah.

T.J. English 2:14 Uh, what are you willing to do for me? In the case of Hell's Kitchen and The Westies, it was cut up bodies. It was not only would you kill somebody for me, but will you make the body disappear? And they tested each other with, with the cutting up of the bodies. In Union City, a lot of it was, was political. Some of it was polit-... How anti-Fidel are you? How badly do you want to kill, you know, Fidel and help us reclaim our lost homeland? That was kind of behind a lot of things. It wasn't spoken about a lot, but it was sort of the hidden motivation.

Joe Rogan 2:49 Westies was a really fantastic book. Like, you, you went deep into that whole sort of sub-scene. You know, it's a, it's a very interesting crime-infested area.

T.J. English 3:01 Well, what, what I try to do with these books is to tell the macro story, the, the larger historical, sociopolitical story, and then get intimate and tell the interpersonal stories between the characters that actually live the story. That's a challenge. You gotta find people who are willing to talk to you and share information with you that they've kept quiet probably most of their lives. And then you get at the interpersonal stuff, 'cause these stories really are just human beings caught up in something that's bigger than them.

Joe Rogan 3:34 And how long... When you, when you're writing a book like The Corporation, which is your new book, or Westies, or any of your books, how much time do you spend doing the research and how much time do you spend actually writing the book?

T.J. English 3:44 Uh, it takes about three years to do these books, on average. And, and two of those years is research, probably.

Joe Rogan 3:52 Wow.

T.J. English 3:52 Yeah, a lot of research.

Joe Rogan 3:53 Interesting. So you... Do you bring this to the book company, the, the b- the publisher, and you say, "Hey, this is what I want to write a book about?"

T.J. English 3:58 You do a proposal.

Joe Rogan 4:00 Mm-hmm.

T.J. English 4:00 And I do very, very detailed proposals. For The Corporation, I did a proposal that was 125 pages long. And it's a chapter by chapter breakdown. It's almost like a condensed version of the book. And, uh, you, you get more money from a publisher that way, as an advance, because you're showing them the whole thing, practically. They can see the, the finished product, almost. And also, you know, the movie interests. There was movie interest in this when The Corporation... based on that, on that proposal.

Joe Rogan 4:30 Interesting.

T.J. English 4:31 Yeah, it was optioned based on that proposal before I even started writing the book.

Joe Rogan 4:35 Really?

T.J. English 4:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:35 So what is The Corporation about?

T.J. English 4:37 The Corporation is a story of a Cuban American organized crime organization that began in the mid-1960s and existed all the way to the end of the century. And it was led by this mobster named Jose Miguel Battle, who was kind of a legendary figure in Cuban American circles, because he was a hero from the Bay of Pigs invasion, the, uh, the attempt, uh, to reclaim Cuba, take back Cuba, the ev- invasion, 1961, which was a disaster for everyone involved. Battle wound up in prison, along with the rest of the brigade. And when he got out and came back to the US, he was determined to get Castro, uh, and take back Cuba. So he set up this criminal thing, and it was based on, uh, one racket, primarily, bolita, the number, the lottery, the illegal lottery. Before the lottery was legal, it was illegal, and it was controlled by organized crime, and it was a huge moneymaker. Big moneymaker for the mob going back to the 1920s. Everyone bets the number. Little old ladies bet the number, priests, cops. You know, you can bet a nickel, you can bet a dime, you can bet $10,000. Hugely profitable for whoever controls and organizes it. Well, the Cubans controlled and organized it on the eastern coast of the United States, from New Jersey and New York all the way down to Miami. And the guy who controlled it was Battle, and he became legendary based on that.

Joe Rogan 6:07 They controlled the, the whole number system? 'Cause I know there was a lot of Italians that were involved in it as well, right?

T.J. English 6:11 Well, they went, they went to the mafia... Uh, one of the first things Battle did...Battle had been a cop, a vice cop, in Havana in the 1950s, during, uh, the era-

Joe Rogan 6:20 Before the turnover.

T.J. English 6:21 Yeah, during the era when the mob, when Joey was talking about Havana Nocturne, that's what that book was about, the era of the mob in Havana in the '50s, Meyer Lansky, Santo Trafficante, and how they controlled that until Castro came along and spoiled the party. And the revolution happened and they got chased out of there. Battle had been a vice cop in Havana during those years, and he knew all those, uh, high-ranking mobsters. And in fact, he was a bag man who delivered money from the skim at the casinos in Havana to the presidential palace. So Battle knew how the world went round, and he made those connections. And when he finally gets to the US and wants to start his own thing, first thing he does is go to Santo Trafficante and says, "Can you make the proper introductions for me?" Trafficante introduces him to Fat Tony Salerno in New York City, who controls the numbers racket for all five families, and Battle says, "Look, things are changing in Cuba. Over the next couple of decades you're gonna have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Cubans coming to live in the United States. They all bet the number. (laughs) That's a huge market. If you let me take over this thing and organize it, you will get a piece of, you will get your piece of everything." And the mafia said yes. And so the Cubans took over, and they controlled everything. I mean, in New York City in the '70s and '80s, there were probably 200 to 300 bolita spots where you could go bet the number. That's what the Cubans called it, bolita, little ball. And, uh, so they controlled it, and they took care of the, the mafia, and everybody was, got fat and happy, uh, for a while, until it turned bad and they (laughs) started killing each other.

Joe Rogan 8:05 Now, when, Joey, when you heard about this book, this is something that you were very intimately involved in when you were a kid.

Joey Diaz 8:10 Very. You know, I come on your show and I tell you, there's 100 stories I could tell you and there's 1,000 I can't. And when he told ... When I read the thesis for this book, I just knew. I just fucking knew. You know, I grew up in numbers. Uh, when I went to Catholic school on Saturdays, when I, I came home on Fridays, on Saturdays at the age of eight, I was sent to different locations in the city, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and I would make $50 going to run errands, running numbers, go tell this guy the first number of the day is two, you know. So I grew up in it. I grew up in a house where the bookie would call my mother by three o'clock and go, "What's the numbers for the day?" And my mother would give him a fucking laundry list. You know? And, uh, it's very interesting, in this book he also covers the mysticism of the number. So if I'm at your house and your daughter walks in with a hockey shirt and her number's 13, I'll look at you and go, "Joe, give me a number from zero to nine." "Five." And I'd pick up the phone and I'd bet five 13. (gasps) If I look out my window and the cop car is 506, I put $5 on 506. If I have a dream about an eagle, when I go down to the bolita spot there's books that they sell, books of dreams, and I take that book and I look up eagle. And if eagle's number eight, (laughs) I pay eight 13. It's, you know, you, you were mentioning, um, a couple of months ago that your grandmother took numbers.

T.J. English 9:41 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 9:42 Grandmother was Sicilian. Sicilian people have the same, uh, every day they live, "Today's the day."

Joe Rogan 9:50 Yep.

Joey Diaz 9:50 "Today's the day, Joe Rogan."

Joe Rogan 9:51 Yep.

Joey Diaz 9:52 "Today's the day I'm hitting the number."

Joe Rogan 9:53 Yep.

Joey Diaz 9:53 "I'm not getting..." You know, that-

Joe Rogan 9:55 It's all she talked about. (laughs)

Joey Diaz 9:56 That dream, that dream of-

Joe Rogan 9:58 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 9:58 ... again, we're going back to an immigrant mentality.

Joe Rogan 10:00 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 10:00 That those three numbers today, if God wants, if God is real, what he says is true, my number's gonna come out today.

Joe Rogan 10:08 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 10:09 When is my ship gonna come in? That-

T.J. English 10:11 Right, right, right. That's it. You know, you work a-

Joe Rogan 10:12 That, that, that hope.

Joey Diaz 10:12 You work a plain Jane dream, you're a, you're a blue-collar person, and on the way home every day by 3:30 you put the number in. That's it.

T.J. English 10:21 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 10:21 That's what you do.

T.J. English 10:22 Something to believe in. It's like, it's like a religion.

Joey Diaz 10:24 That's something to believe in.

Joe Rogan 10:25 Yeah.

T.J. English 10:25 Yeah. Numerology. And with Cubans, uh, it was very mystical. It was tied into, uh, dreams and belief. The idea was, you bet the number and you try to make your dreams come true. That's literally what you're doing. You're trying to make your dreams come true. And the bolita guys, the boliteros, the ones who control it, they're the dream makers. They're the guys who are making it possible for your dreams to come true. So they had tremendous stature in the community.

Joey Diaz 10:53 In the community.

T.J. English 10:54 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 10:54 They were dream solvers. So you work D- TJ's Jose Battle and you're an independent bookie. Your job is to sit at a ............................ lounge in West New York from ni- 10:00 to 3:00 drinking, and all day long people come in and go, "Joe, give me five 17, $3. Give me three 03, $1." At three o'clock, 3:30, a number comes up. If that number wins, if I give you 500, you get 3,000 from Battle. You give me 2,500. So you make 500 off the top and then I tip you. The thing that Battle did was he didn't take 10 points. He let you run your independent action unless you called it into him. You know, it's very... You watch the movie, uh, uh... What's the movie with Mickey Rourke and the Chinese people? Year of the Dragon.

T.J. English 11:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:48 Yeah, great fucking movie.

Joey Diaz 11:48 Remember, great movie when he says, you know, for years the Chinese were bringing in the heroin and they were selling it to the Italians. You know, a $50,000 investment could make you $500,000. Chinese weren't seeing that. Like, they weren't seeing that. Why? Because they didn't have, they couldn't bring it out. They couldn't sell it. Black people and Spanish people would bitch slap them to death. So the same thing happened with bolita. Fat Tony Salerno knew that he had a big thing coming with the Cubans, but Cubans wanna put a bet in with Cubans.Mm.

Joe Rogan 12:21 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 12:21 Do you understand me?

Joe Rogan 12:22 Yeah.

T.J. English 12:22 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 12:22 Italians, they wanna put a bet in with Italians.

Joe Rogan 12:25 Right.

Joey Diaz 12:25 Puerto Ricans, they wanna put a bet in with a Puerto Rican.

Joe Rogan 12:28 Isn't that a big thing that was with the numbers? It was that it was a community thing as well.

T.J. English 12:31 It's a community.

Joe Rogan 12:32 'Cause everybody would talk- Yeah.

T.J. English 12:33 Yes.

Joe Rogan 12:33 ... about the numbers.

Joey Diaz 12:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:33 It wouldn't be like the lottery is some sort of a government-funded thing.

T.J. English 12:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:38 And it seems like it's got a lot of red tape and official, and there's no wiggle room. The, the, the numbers seem to be closer-

Joey Diaz 12:46 Wow.

Joe Rogan 12:46 ... to, like, the community.

T.J. English 12:47 Especially with Latinos-

Joey Diaz 12:48 Especially with Latinos.

T.J. English 12:49 Yeah. It, it, it was the, in some ways, the core of the community. The number of spots where everybody would hang out, you'd go to hear the neighborhood la bola en la calle, the, the-

Joe Rogan 13:00 What was that?

T.J. English 13:00 ... the gossip in the streets. You'd go there and hear the neighborhood gossip. Uh, yeah. It was... And, and it was never meant to be violent. Back in Cuba, bolita was not violent. (microphone static) It was illegal, but it wasn't violent. Uh, and it turned very violent in, in the United States. The corporation became so profitable. I mean, we're talking about millions of dollars on a monthly basis, billions of dollars over the course of the life of this organization. Billions of dollars, more than they could... The hardest thing they had was what to do with the money. I mean, they, they, they would literally strap money to people to, as money couriers to try to get it out of the country, to get it into, uh, get it into offshore bank accounts-

Joey Diaz 13:44 Wow.

T.J. English 13:44 ... and, and launder the money. They had more money than they knew what... It was a license to print money. It was hugely profitable. That's what made it violent. Then you started having gangsters vying for territory, territorial disputes, greed. Greed took over, and it got very ugly.

Joe Rogan 14:01 Now, is, is this between Cubans?

T.J. English 14:03 Between Cubans, between the Cubans and the Italians. See, this guy, Battle, was very charismatic leader, uh, with some great leadership qualities. He'd been a hero in the Bay of Pigs invasion. He saved some guys' lives. Um, when I first heard that story, I didn't... I said, "I gotta verify that. Maybe this is just a story a guy told about himself to burnish his legend." So I found the guys that he saved, and I found the guy's two brothers who went with him to save that the guys that he saved, and I went to Cuba, to the Bay of Pigs, to the exact location where he saved these guys, to verify this story, and it was absolutely true. He, in an act of incredible heroism, he, he saved the life of a number of his platoon members. And so that was his reputation from then on. He was revered in the community. He was a hero, and people defended him. Even, even when it, it turned ugly and he became a ruthless boss who was killing people left and right, he had his defenders because of his legend as a hero in the community. And so, um, the power that he had. But he also had this, uh... (laughs) Joey and I were talking about this. Um, Cubans have this, Latinos have this, everybody has it, but Cubans have it, uh, a desire for revenge. This guy... You know, the Bay of Pigs invasion was an attempt at revenge, to get revenge against Castro, and they were humiliated by that process. And a lot of the guys from that generation had an unfinished agenda for revenge. So if you wronged this guy, Battle, in any way, he was gonna get you, even if it took years and years of calculation. I mean, there's stories in the book about this one guy who killed his brother named Pululu. He took, it took nine years and 12 attempts before they finally killed this guy, Pululu. They shot him in his hospital. He was in the hospital. They shot him. Had a assassin dress up as a male nurse and go into the hospital and shoot him between the eyes. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 16:11 Wow.

T.J. English 16:11 'Cause there had been so many failed attempts, they weren't gonna fail this time. And that's... And Battle took 12 years. I mean, took nine years.

Joe Rogan 16:18 Did they catch the assassin?

T.J. English 16:20 No, never caught him. Really. No way.

Joey Diaz 16:21 Just bang and slipped out of the window.

T.J. English 16:22 Just disappeared into nothingness. I believe the assassin got killed later 'cause he was talking about it, having done it, and so Battle had him killed.

Joe Rogan 16:30 Wow.

T.J. English 16:30 Yeah. So the, the revenge, uh, motive, the revenge motive, um, kind of drove Battle off the deep end. And, uh, somewhere along the line, he broke bad, so to speak. I mean, I don't know if he was ever good and had to break bad, but he started doing internal killings that really had nothing to do about business. They were all about revenge.

Joe Rogan 16:52 Well, thi- this is a, a theme that happens a lot with organized crime people, right? It's like they just get a taste of killing people and it becomes easier and easier, and then they, uh... Like, that was the thing about Murder Machine, right? About Roy DeMeo?

Joey Diaz 17:04 Right.

T.J. English 17:04 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 17:04 He just was fucking nuts.

T.J. English 17:05 He just kept, just was killing people

Joe Rogan 17:06 He just became addicted to it, yeah.

Joey Diaz 17:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:07 ... with anything after a while. That's another book you gave me. (laughs)

Joey Diaz 17:09 Yeah, Murder Machine. I was reading all those books on the road-

Joe Rogan 17:13 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 17:13 ... because I was auditioning for so many Italian roles-

Joe Rogan 17:15 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 17:15 ... and I never really knew the history of it.

Joe Rogan 17:18 Ah.

Joey Diaz 17:18 So I was just trying to read all those books just so when I went in, I had an idea of what these characters and who they were. I saw them growing up. I saw these guys, you know, growing up. I just didn't... The interesting thing about this book was, uh, talking to the Bay of Pigs, is that they knew that they were coming. Like Fidel knew-

Joe Rogan 17:39 Right.

Joey Diaz 17:39 ... he was coming.

Joe Rogan 17:40 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 17:40 He put barbed wire or something in his corral. They, the, the soldiers all slashed their feet as they were landing. There was four battalions, uh, I think, and 250 men.

T.J. English 17:51 Well, you know what happened when they landed?

Joey Diaz 17:52 What happened?

T.J. English 17:53 There were klieg lights set up on the beach-

Joey Diaz 17:55 Yeah, they knew there was a

Joe Rogan 17:56 (laughs)

T.J. English 17:56 ... when they landed-

Joey Diaz 17:57 It was a scam.

T.J. English 17:57 ... they flip, they flipped the lights on and it lit it up like a movie set right when these guys landed.

Joe Rogan 18:03 Jesus.

T.J. English 18:03 Uh, they got slaughtered. They got slaughtered. And, and they, they felt they'd been betrayed by Kennedy-

Joe Rogan 18:09 Yeah.

T.J. English 18:10 ... you know, that there was supposed to be air cover, and the air cover never came.

Joe Rogan 18:14 Why was that?

T.J. English 18:15 Because Kennedy, Kennedy always had... Uh, this operation was started by the Eisenhower administration and, and the CIA. It was a CIA operation. Kennedy inherited it, and he never really... He always had mixed feelings about it. I mean, it was illegal. Uh, it was a, uh-... an illegal, secret covert operation, an attempt to overthrow a, a, a government. Um, it would have been seen as an illegal act in the eyes of the world to do it. So Kennedy was trying to do it so it could be done in such a way that it could never blow back on his administration. And so he, he withheld air cover at a crucial point in that, in that war. It lasted three days. And they got slaughtered, and they got, and they got imprisoned, and they had a lot of resentment towards Kennedy. I mean, I go into the book-

Joey Diaz 19:04 Still.

T.J. English 19:05 ... a little bit about the Kennedy assassination and the belief that a lot of... That a handful of those Cubans may have been involved in the Kennedy assassination along with the Italians, with the mob, because they were working hand-in-hand with the CIA.

Joe Rogan 19:20 Yeah, that was one of the leading conspiracies-

T.J. English 19:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:23 ... outside of the CIA killing him. And even the CIA killing him was a part of the Bay of Con- the Bay of Pigs conspiracy.

T.J. English 19:30 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:30 And also the, the idea that he wanted to disband the CIA. There was a really interesting article recently that was dismissing almost every single conspiracy theory about the Kennedy assassination, they said, "Except the CIA one." There's legitimate possibilities that the CIA-

T.J. English 19:47 Well, well you can bet your ass that if the CIA was involved, then Cubans were involved.

Joey Diaz 19:51 Yeah. Now let me ask you something.

Joe Rogan 19:52 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 19:52 In the book, you speak about Fidel's mistress.

T.J. English 19:55 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 19:56 That he got disenchant-

Joe Rogan 19:57 He only had one?

Joey Diaz 19:57 ... with her at this particular one.

Joe Rogan 19:59 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 20:00 She-

T.J. English 20:00 Marita.

Joey Diaz 20:00 She had gone to New Orleans or-

T.J. English 20:02 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 20:03 ... or to Dallas.

T.J. English 20:04 Marita Lorenz.

Joe Rogan 20:05 Oh.

Joey Diaz 20:05 This is very interesting.

T.J. English 20:06 Notorious figure. She had a child with him, uh, and had an abortion, didn't have the child. She got pregnant with Fidel. In fact, Castro admitted as much. She got pregnant with Castro. She had a... She had an abortion. And then the CIA used her to try to assassinate Castro. Um, she had... Was supposed to slip him a pill and she put it in her, um, face cream, and the pill dissolved in her face cream, and that was the pill she was gonna try to slip to Castro. Her, her case agent was a guy named Frank Sturgis who wound up being one of the Watergate burglars. See, the thing about Bay of Pigs and the Cubans, uh, the Bay of Pigs invasion is the key to understanding the whole latter part of the 20th century politics in the United States, the Cold War, because the alliance between the CIA and the Cubans rears its head constantly throughout the latter part of the 20th century. The Watergate burglary, five out of seven of the burglars were Cubans, Bay of Pigs veterans.

Joe Rogan 21:12 Really?

T.J. English 21:12 They'd been recruited by a guy named E. Howard Hunt, CIA agent who was one of the orchestrators of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Joe Rogan 21:19 Who was also one of the people that on his death bed said that he was involved in the assassination of Kennedy.

T.J. English 21:24 Yes. Yes. This... So the CIA would come to these Cuban exiles, the militant exiles, and they'd say, "Go do this operation. Go do this burglary at the, at the Watergate and then we go get Fidel."

Joe Rogan 21:35 Have you s-

T.J. English 21:35 "Go do this assassination and then we go get Fidel." And the Cubans were always ready and willing.

Joe Rogan 21:41 Because it was all leading back to getting Fidel.

T.J. English 21:43 It was all leading back to getting Fidel.

Joe Rogan 21:44 Did you ever see the images of, uh, what they said was E. Howard Hunt? He was one of the people that was arrested. There was a series of, um, uh... There was a bunch of guys that were arrested, uh, that were on trains. They were calling them hobos-

T.J. English 21:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:56 ... but they were all very well-dressed-

T.J. English 21:58 Right.

Joe Rogan 21:59 ... that were near where the grassy knoll was.

T.J. English 22:01 The men on the grassy knoll. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:03 Yeah, yeah. And they-

T.J. English 22:03 Oh, there's lots of rumors about that, that E. Howard Hunt was one of those men.

Joe Rogan 22:06 Yeah.

T.J. English 22:07 There was even a reference there that Jose Miguel Batlle was one of those men, but that couldn't have been the case 'cause he was in the army at the time, uh, the US Army. Um, no. So, so it's like a... It's like a subterranean narrative that runs through the latter part of the 20th century. The S- the CIA and right-wing elements in American politics using Cuban Americans to do all kinds of dirty covert deeds. And we're talking about terrorist activity, uh, assassination of a ambassador from Chile right in Washington DC. Blew up his car sy-... Because he was sympathetic to Castro. A bomb planted on a Cuban, uh, jetliner flying from Panama City to Havana. 73 people killed, innocent people, including the fencing team from Cuba, young people. A dirty war, a dirty war was waged by the anti-Castro underground, uh, uh, i- in combination, in partnership with the CIA. And this... We know about it now because a lot of it has been declassified and it's come out. We didn't know about it at the time it was taking place.

Joey Diaz 23:16 Why'd they blow up the plane?

T.J. English 23:18 Just an act of terrorism against Cuba to, uh, to, uh, show them that it could be done, to instill fear and paranoia in the Cu-... The, uh, the concept was to destabilize the Cuban gov- government so they'd be vulnerable and then you could take them over.

Joey Diaz 23:33 Wow.

T.J. English 23:33 So any, any act against Cuba... I mean, asking why blowing up the plane would, was... Is asking like why fly planes into the World Trade Center?

Joey Diaz 23:42 Right. Yeah.

T.J. English 23:42 You know? It was just a de- a destructive act.

Joe Rogan 23:45 It's pretty amazing how resilient Castro was.

T.J. English 23:48 (whistles)

Joe Rogan 23:48 I mean, unbelievable. The guy's 90 miles away from Miami and just ran shit through the '60s, the '70s, the '80s, the '90s, into the 2000s.

T.J. English 23:57 They say there was something like 632, uh, known plots to-

Joey Diaz 24:02 (laughs)

T.J. English 24:03 ... over, over the course of four or five decades to kill Castro.

Joey Diaz 24:05 That's incredible.

T.J. English 24:06 632.

Joey Diaz 24:08 That's incredible. Well, they have a movie, 101 Ways to Kill Fidel.

T.J. English 24:10 It... Yeah.

Joey Diaz 24:11 And he went to-

T.J. English 24:12 It was in-

Joey Diaz 24:12 He got on a train in New York and they're like, "Are you fucking crazy?" And they checked to see that he had a bulletproof vest on and he's like, "No." He took the train to the UN. Wow. Like, he's fucking nuts.

T.J. English 24:24 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 24:25 He was fucking nuts.

T.J. English 24:26 So, so, um, what makes this, this gangster story of the corporation so interesting and different is this political context, the framework that all this shit was taking place against the backdrop of this desire to kill Castro and take back, take back the homeland. And anyone who was involved in that was seen as a hero within the community. Joey could tell you about that. Union City, New Jersey and Miami were the hotbeds of the anti-Castro movement. There were, there was an organization in Union City called Omega 7, and there was one in Miami called Alpha 66. These were terror organizations, secret organizations that existed to plant bombs. They would plant bombs at embassies in United, you know, in New York City. They would put, they would put bombs at Lincoln Center when a, when a, when an orchestra from Cuba was making an appearance. They were trying to shut down any relationship between the US and Cuba, and governments that were sympathetic to Cuba, they would, they would do actions against them. And this went on for, like, 40 years, man.

Joe Rogan 25:36 That's unbelievable.

Joey Diaz 25:36 You couldn't mention Fidel in the '70s in Union City. Like a joke. Like, it's not a joke. Don't even, don't even-

T.J. English 25:43 No.

Joey Diaz 25:43 Don't even bring him up, dog, 'cause you will get smacked.

Joe Rogan 25:46 Now, was there any pro-Fidel support amongst Cubans?

T.J. English 25:51 (sighs) There was, (laughs) and bad things would happen to them, um...

Joe Rogan 25:55 In the United States.

T.J. English 25:56 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 25:56 Yeah.

T.J. English 25:56 In Cuba, though.

Joe Rogan 25:57 In Cuba, though? What about in Cuba?

T.J. English 25:59 Pro-Castro in Cuba?

Joey Diaz 26:00 Yeah.

T.J. English 26:00 Oh, yeah, sure. I mean, um...

Joe Rogan 26:02 Was it real or was it out of fear?

T.J. English 26:04 No, that's real. It's real. I mean, I've been there numerous times. You know, the Cuban people made a choice, uh, and the revolution, I believe, would have happened w- with or without Fidel Castro. Um, the guy who was in power, Batista, had taken over the government in a coup d'état. He wasn't elected, so he was kind of a fraudulent president. And there was... And ever since he got in, people knew he was a fraudulent president, and there was attempts to try to oust him, and that's why he was such a dictator. He knew they wanted to oust him, so he used the military to repress any kind of movement against him. And it was ugly, and the people rose up against it. That's what happened. It wasn't... So, in, in my belief, the revolution in Cuba happened for a very legitimate reason. After it happened, in power, it was revealed that Castro and Che Guevara were communists. He... Castro was very cagey about that during the revolution. They never talked about Marxism and being communist or any of that. And in fact, Fidel came to Union City, came to the United States to raise money for the revolution while it was going on.

Joey Diaz 27:15 Got arrested in Union City.

T.J. English 27:16 Yeah. Yes, he did.

Joey Diaz 27:16 My friends, uh, my friend's mom, DiAscaleses, she says she still remembers taking the bus in the morning in Union City and Fidel talking to her the way I'm talking to you, "How you doing, Susan? What's going on?"

Joe Rogan 27:29 Wow. Like, Fidel was walking around-

T.J. English 27:30 He got in a bar room, he got in a bar room argument in, uh, Union City, and he got arrested.

Joe Rogan 27:35 Over what?

T.J. English 27:36 Uh, probably politics. I'm sure it was a political discussion. Um, so, so then the, the revolution happened and, and, and, you know, uh, Cuba becomes a repressive communist, Stalinist dictatorship. But a lot of Cubans, the way they saw it is, that was a choice they made to go with Fidel. He did have, uh, I think, the, the, uh, popularity of the people, following of the people. Some people are quite proud of Castro standing up to the United States. Uh, Cubans are very proud people, and they take a lot of pride in the fact that even though there's so much hardship there, that, um, it's a choice they made to go in this direction. At least they have their, their self-pride, uh, which is, um, more in, that can be said in some ways about Puerto Rico and Jamaica and Dominican Republic, all these other countries in that region that are just as poor as Cuba. Um, so he has his supporters. He always had his support. Obviously, he also had his detractors, even within Cuba. Um, most of those people are the ones who got on rafts and tried to leave the island at great risk to themselves to do anything to get out of there, because they realized Fidel was so popular, from within the country, you were never gonna be able to take him down. So they made the decision to go out in the ocean and try to, uh, brave the, uh, the risks of, of either swimming or sailing a- across the, the Florida Straits.

Joe Rogan 29:15 What the fuck happened with Che Guevara? How did Che Guevara all of a sudden emerge as this, like, leftist political icon, but in this really weird sort of clueless way?

T.J. English 29:28 Right.

Joe Rogan 29:28 Like, they really didn't understand his background, really didn't understand who he was and what he had done and the atrocities that he had committed. But these fucking T-shirts that all these dopey liberal kids-

Joey Diaz 29:39 I didn't put those fucking things on.

Joe Rogan 29:40 It's fucking crazy.

T.J. English 29:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:41 If you find out who that guy is, you're, you're wearing a mass murderer's T-shirt. Like, he was a fucking ruthless cunt, and these people were wearing this shirt as if he's sym- he symbolizes, like, liberty or freedom from a oppressive government or something like that. It's... But it was a long period of time where you didn't have any Che Guevara. There was no, no discussion of it.

T.J. English 30:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:04 And then it seemed like similar in the 2000s it picked up. Am I right about that?

Joey Diaz 30:09 Something like that, yeah. Hey, let me tell you something. It was so personal for a while. Like, I have Argentinean friends, but in the '70s there was a rift between Argentineans and Cubans. Like, that's how personal the Cubans took-

T.J. English 30:23 Che is Argentinean to them.

Joe Rogan 30:24 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 30:24 Che is Argentinean.

Joe Rogan 30:26 Right.

Joey Diaz 30:26 Like, there was a rift.... like, it was-

T.J. English 30:28 Because of him?

Joey Diaz 30:29 Because of him.

T.J. English 30:29 Wow.

Joey Diaz 30:29 Like, Cubans, the fuck outta here.

T.J. English 30:31 Really?

Joey Diaz 30:32 Talking (Spanish) . Get the fuck outta here.

T.J. English 30:34 What is a- what is that? Is it the way they-

Joey Diaz 30:35 You know, Castellano, they talk-

Joe Rogan 30:37 (laughs)

T.J. English 30:37 How do they talk?

Joey Diaz 30:37 They talk (Spanish) .

T.J. English 30:39 They do it with the lisp. (Spanish) .

Joe Rogan 30:40 Ah.

T.J. English 30:40 Come with the tats. Oh, yeah-

Joey Diaz 30:42 They talk (Spanish) .

T.J. English 30:42 ... like some Spanish.

Joe Rogan 30:43 Like Spain. Yeah, what-

Joey Diaz 30:44 And Cubans would go-

T.J. English 30:46 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 30:46 ... off in Union City if you were Argentinean.

Joe Rogan 30:48 Really?

Joey Diaz 30:49 That's how deep the hatred ran.

T.J. English 30:51 Cuban Spanish.

Joe Rogan 30:52 How did the lisp thing, where'd that come from?

Joey Diaz 30:54 (Spanish) .

T.J. English 30:54 From Spain?

Joey Diaz 30:56 (Spanish) .

T.J. English 30:56 It's from Spain?

Joe Rogan 30:56 So why do they say it in Spain-

Joey Diaz 30:58 (Spanish) .

Joe Rogan 30:58 ... then? Why?

Joey Diaz 30:59 I don't know.

Joe Rogan 31:00 Why?

T.J. English 31:00 It's just a regional, a regional thing.

Joey Diaz 31:02 And they, they're the number ones on the sh- on the top. Like, w- if a Cu- if a Cuban walk... Look, look at... Cubans, the, is considered the... That we're the Jews of the Caribbean. But Spain has one over on us. Like, people like my father's family was from Spain and I went there one time and never went back.

T.J. English 31:22 Really?

Joey Diaz 31:23 Yeah, one time to meet my grandmother and never went back.

T.J. English 31:25 Why?

Joey Diaz 31:26 Because she was talking shit.

T.J. English 31:28 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 31:28 At number one. At five, you ain't gonna talk to me that shit about my mother.

T.J. English 31:32 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 31:33 My (Spanish) .

T.J. English 31:36 See-

Joey Diaz 31:36 My (Spanish) .

T.J. English 31:36 See, Spain is the colonial power-

Joey Diaz 31:38 Is the colonial power.

T.J. English 31:39 ... and, and often, often Spaniards looked down on the, on the Cubans and, and-

Joe Rogan 31:43 And Mexicans, I'm sure-

Joey Diaz 31:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:44 ... as well, right?

T.J. English 31:44 Yes, yes.

Joey Diaz 31:45 So I went over there one time, my mom took me to meet my grandmother, and like 10 minutes in, I go, "Call my mother, you fucking cunt."

Joe Rogan 31:51 (laughs)

T.J. English 31:51 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 31:51 And my mother came over and goes, "What happened?" I go, "This fucking bitch-

T.J. English 31:55 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 31:55 ... is talking about you and shit."

Joe Rogan 31:56 You were five?

Joey Diaz 31:57 I was about five.

T.J. English 31:58 Ah.

Joey Diaz 31:58 My mother cursed her out.

T.J. English 32:00 Oh, that's hilarious.

Joey Diaz 32:00 And that was the end of my relationship. She was like, "My father's... Your father's gonna be a da..." Because she was from Camagüey, so that shit didn't stink.

T.J. English 32:08 Oh, okay.

Joey Diaz 32:08 And my mom was a peasant from Havana, so she was like, "My son had big dreams until he met your, your, your... that animal."

T.J. English 32:16 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 32:16 You know, and I'm like, "Fuck you, you fucking hag," like...

Joe Rogan 32:19 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 32:20 She made my mother move in with her in Cuba-

T.J. English 32:22 Ugh.

Joey Diaz 32:22 ... and learn how to cook the dishes-

T.J. English 32:24 See, see, Spaniards would be-

Joey Diaz 32:25 ... for my father.

T.J. English 32:26 ... would be offended just by the way Cubans speak Spanish.

Joey Diaz 32:29 Yes.

Joe Rogan 32:29 Really?

Joey Diaz 32:30 Like, like a lot of people tortured me when I did the Yoal thing. I don't speak Cuban Spanish. I speak (Spanish) . I speak the Spanish of the streets.

T.J. English 32:40 Right.

Joey Diaz 32:40 That Spanish I picked up in Union City, that's street Spanish.

T.J. English 32:43 Well, let, lemme stop right there-

Joey Diaz 32:45 (Spanish) .

Joe Rogan 32:45 Anybody that gave you a hard time about translating, this is what I always tell people. I'll talk in English, repeat what I said. Good luck. In English.

T.J. English 32:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:53 I- it's fucking hard.

T.J. English 32:54 Right.

Joe Rogan 32:54 It's hard to remember what someone said, especially, Yoel was speaking these long sentences and you were translating. You did a great job, so fuck all those people.

Joey Diaz 33:01 No, no, no. I don't, uh... But my Spanish is, instead of giving me $5.00, (Spanish) . A monja means a nun. We don't say numbers in my world.

Joe Rogan 33:09 Right.

Joey Diaz 33:10 A 10 spot is, uh, I forget what it is.

Joe Rogan 33:14 There's a name for it?

Joey Diaz 33:15 A fif- Yeah, for everything.

Joe Rogan 33:16 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 33:16 I learned how to speak Spanish in code.

Joe Rogan 33:18 Ah.

Joey Diaz 33:19 (Spanish) . That means keep your eyes open and put your batteries in.

Joe Rogan 33:23 Your batteries? (laughs)

Joey Diaz 33:24 When I say to you... Yeah, when I say to you (Spanish) , that means you gotta put your batteries in.

Joe Rogan 33:28 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 33:28 So I learned that street Spanish.

T.J. English 33:32 Is this a Bergen County street thing?

Joey Diaz 33:33 No, no, no. This is Hudson Count- It's Cubans.

T.J. English 33:37 Hudson County.

Joey Diaz 33:37 (Spanish) -

T.J. English 33:37 Yeah, but-

Joey Diaz 33:38 ... is a word for (Spanish) .

T.J. English 33:39 Yeah, but-

Joey Diaz 33:40 (Monina) is a Sp-

T.J. English 33:40 ... are we talking Cubans in the US or Cuban Cubans?

Joey Diaz 33:43 Like, when I talk to a Cuban per- Like, when I talk to my sister on the phone, I, I have no idea what she's saying.

Joe Rogan 33:49 Really?

Joey Diaz 33:49 Like, when she gives me an address and shit, (Spanish) and all that.

Joe Rogan 33:54 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 33:54 I took Italian in high school. I didn't take basic Spanish. I learned how to read Spanish in the house by reading little different things. But I learned how to speak Spanish... Like, I remember going to a Cuban person's house once in Union City when I was about 12, and they told their son, "Don't bring this kid over here no more. He's a street fucking spic. He's..."

Joe Rogan 34:16 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 34:16 You know, I was a street spic. I, I learned (Spanish) . I didn't learn that traditional Spanish. My Spanish is a lot of hand signals, (Spanish) . (Spanish)

Joe Rogan 34:31 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 34:31 That means, "Watch him. Watch him-

Joe Rogan 34:33 Mm.

Joey Diaz 34:33 ... and don't fucking not watch him." A lot, it's a lot of street shit.

Joe Rogan 34:38 Mm.

Joey Diaz 34:38 You know? Like I was never allowed to walk home the same way.

Joe Rogan 34:42 You had to walk home different directions?

Joey Diaz 34:44 Different directions, keep my eyes open-

Joe Rogan 34:45 Really?

Joey Diaz 34:45 ... around the car.

Joe Rogan 34:46 Don't, don't pattern it.

Joey Diaz 34:47 Because of my mother's operation, I could never just walk home on Berger line.

Joe Rogan 34:51 Ah.

Joey Diaz 34:51 I had to walk to New York Avenue and walk down just to see if I saw a suspicious car.

T.J. English 34:55 Now, that's smart. Do you-

Joey Diaz 34:56 Do you remember in Uma- Remember we were in San Francisco about 15 years ago and we had the crew, Tate, Eddie, uh, you, me, Ari, Duncan, and Redman. We're walking down the street in San Francisco. As we approached, I saw a drug dealer go down. I hit Ari, I go, "Ari, look at that drug dealer." You guys were looking at the whole thing. Not one of you saw it.

Joe Rogan 35:16 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 35:17 Ari goes, "How the fuck did you see that?"

Joe Rogan 35:20 Right.

Joey Diaz 35:21 Because I was raised like that. I was raised to go out and look for cars. I was never allowed to walk home the same way twice-

Joe Rogan 35:29 Mm.

T.J. English 35:29 Yeah. Now-

Joey Diaz 35:29 ... because of the bolita business.

T.J. English 35:31 Now let me ask you about that, because w- is this an instinct you learned on your own or were you actually trained?

Joey Diaz 35:37 I was... When I became a numbers runner as a child, I was always... My mom would put a... When I was a kid and I came from Cuba, my mother put a, uh, a big gold chain on me. You know why?

T.J. English 35:48 Mm-hmm.

Joey Diaz 35:49 Because she dared you to take it off my... She... My mother wanted you to take that chain 'cause I would have to fight.

Joe Rogan 35:56 Really?

Joey Diaz 35:56 Yeah. So I remember one time, uh, Mr. Softy came and he looked at my gold thing and my mother yelled from the window, "Don't let him touch your fucking chain." Yesterday, I went to Glendale and my daughter was throwing hoops, a red hoop, and she was chasing 'em, all four of 'em, by herself. She's an only child. So there was other kids there. And the red hoop fell through the thing and some six-year-old took it from her. And my daughter went to put her head down. I go, "Oye, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh. Go take it back. Go take it back." And she just looked at me.And the parent was like, "That's an effective way of parenting. She got it back from your daughter. Don't ever stay hit in my fucking house."

Joe Rogan 36:37 Wait a minute. The w- the mom f- or the kid that took it was giving you shit?

Joey Diaz 36:41 Oh, yeah, because this is today's America.

Joe Rogan 36:43 Mm-hmm.

Joey Diaz 36:43 My America, we don't come home hit.

Joe Rogan 36:46 What did, what did the mom want you to do?

Joey Diaz 36:48 The mom and the dad, two Glendale fucking gentiles. The dad said, "That's an effective way of, of whatever, but you ain't saying nothing, bitch. Your daughter... A couple weeks ago, a little girl took the swing from my daughter." (snaps fingers) "Take the swing back."

Joe Rogan 37:01 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 37:01 "Take it back." My wife's like, "What are you doing?" That's how Cubans raise their kids. Um, I was raised to always have my eyes open because I knew what they did. I was... At a young age, if I hung out with Joe Rogan and Joe Rogan's dad sold coke... I knew Joe Rogan's dad sold coke. Joe didn't, but I would never tell you.

Joe Rogan 37:22 Hmm.

Joey Diaz 37:23 I came from a house where it was...

T.J. English 37:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:25 Right.

T.J. English 37:26 But, you know, here's the thing. If, uh, if they wanted to get at your mother, they'd, they'd come after the kid.

Joey Diaz 37:32 Yeah, they'd come after the kid.

T.J. English 37:33 I mean, it was very common-

Joe Rogan 37:34 Yeah.

T.J. English 37:34 ... to kid- kidnap the kid. That's how you, that's how you got to somebody.

Joe Rogan 37:38 Well, that's how you get to everybody.

T.J. English 37:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:40 I mean, this is, uh... This Trump thing with Stormy Daniels, do you see one of the things that she said that one of the reasons why she came out about this?

Joey Diaz 37:46 Why?

Joe Rogan 37:46 Somebody came up to her in a parking lot when she was holding her infant daughter. I don't know if this is true. This is what she says. Someone came up to her and said, uh, "You have a beautiful daughter. It'd be a shame if anything happened to her mother." You know? "Stop talking about President Trump." Well, it wasn't President Trump at the time. "Stop talking about, uh, Mr. Trump." And she was like, "Oh, fuck you," or "Fuck this." And then, you know, then she really... It really geared up her animosity towards him.

T.J. English 38:11 Imagine that shit.

Joey Diaz 38:13 Hey, in the... In the narco world, there's cases of what they would do is they would do a videotape. If there was somebody they wanted to intimidate, they'd videotape their kid being taken to school every morning, being dropped off for school-

Joe Rogan 38:27 Mm-hmm.

Joey Diaz 38:27 ... picked up after school. They'd videotape the daily routine of the child, and then they'd send the videotape to that person. And I say, "I know-"

Joe Rogan 38:35 That's all you needed to do.

Joey Diaz 38:35 "... I know where your kid is every, every minute of the day. Do what we tell you to do." (mimics gunshot)

Joe Rogan 38:42 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 38:42 They didn't fuck with me though. I was never fucked with.

Joe Rogan 38:45 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 38:45 I was never really, uh... And, uh... No, no, I was never fucked with. I was just raised to understand what they were doing.

Joe Rogan 38:53 That there's consequences.

Joey Diaz 38:54 And I didn't... wasn't allowed to repeat it.

Joe Rogan 38:57 Hmm.

Joey Diaz 38:58 So when I would come to you and you would be talking about whatever, even if I knew you were wrong, I would never correct you.

Joe Rogan 39:04 Mm-hmm.

Joey Diaz 39:04 So that's how I was raised. I would never correct you even if I knew you were talking shit because how do you know? How do I know?

Joe Rogan 39:10 Right, right.

Joey Diaz 39:10 I was just at the fucking bar and they were talking about it. That's how the fuck I know.

Joe Rogan 39:13 Right.

T.J. English 39:14 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 39:14 My mom didn't hide nothing from me growing up. That's good and bad. That had good things for me, but a lot of bad things for me. You know, one of the things that he touched upon in his book was not only about Jose Battle, but the political corruption that came with it. In my 20 years, have I ever talked to you about politics? Don't know I ever... I wouldn't listen to politics if you paid me because it's all bullshit. I saw it in a, in a, in a micro level. You know, when you're, when you're a president, who do you get donations from? Big pharm, guns, whatever. When you're a small mayor, who do you get your donations from? The pharmacy, the pizza place, the numbers. So I came from a society where those numbers were controlling everything in, in North Bergen, Union City, and West New York. Remember, that shit's a felony in Jersey-

Joe Rogan 40:09 Hmm.

Joey Diaz 40:09 ... but it's a misdemeanor in New York.

Joe Rogan 40:11 Really?

Joey Diaz 40:12 Numbers? It used to be a misdemeanor. As a matter of fact, they would call you, and they would go, "Joe, lieutenant." Well, he wouldn't say that because the phones were taped. He would just call you and go, "Oh, you're getting a visit today. That means if you got 5,000 in your pocket, give it to Jamie, clean out the house, leave some paperwork."

Joe Rogan 40:31 Mm-hmm.

Joey Diaz 40:32 "At 2:00, I come, I handcuff you, I take your money, I write you a summons, I bring you down to the station, we giggle. And then after I let you out, I meet you around the corner. And if you had 2,500, I give you 1,250."

Joe Rogan 40:45 Mm-hmm.

Joey Diaz 40:46 "And that's the cost of doing business."

Joe Rogan 40:47 Right.

T.J. English 40:48 Hmm.

Joey Diaz 40:48 You know, there's a funny line in Goodfellas when he goes, "How can I go to school with all that goody-goody bullshit and saluting the flag when I went..." I was the same way.

Joe Rogan 40:56 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 40:57 Like, I saw what happened. I saw the political system. I saw two cops coming in, one detective once a week and one beat guy. My mom would give him a drink and an envelope.

Joe Rogan 41:09 Yeah, I don't know what my grandmother did, what... how she was involved, but I told you she went to jail.

Joey Diaz 41:14 Right.

Joe Rogan 41:14 She went to jail for running the numbers. She, she went to jail because she wouldn't give anybody up. They wanted her to give up whoever the fuck was at the other end of the organization. And so for like six months, we were always trying to like, "Where the fuck is grandma?" And she'd say, "Oh, she's visiting her sister."

Joey Diaz 41:29 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:29 It was always, "She's visiting Aunt Josie."

T.J. English 41:31 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 41:31 And just no one had ever found her.

Joey Diaz 41:32 They give you a year-

Joe Rogan 41:33 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 41:33 ... for bookmaking in Jersey.

Joe Rogan 41:35 Yeah

Joey Diaz 41:35 Even six, five months.

Joe Rogan 41:36 Right.

Joey Diaz 41:37 And they put you on house arrest, and you're done.

Joe Rogan 41:39 She would knit sweaters and shit for the fucking guards in jail. (laughs)

T.J. English 41:44 Well, a lot of times Battle would own the judges, so you wouldn't do any time at all.

Joey Diaz 41:48 You wouldn't do any time at all.

T.J. English 41:48 You might get a, you might get a summons, you go before a magistrate ad- judge, and they, and they let you go.

Joe Rogan 41:54 What's fascinating to me is... about this, is also fascinating about the mob itself, was that a lot of it is basically dissolved. That all this came from immigration and that this, uh, this melting pot of the United States, and they all came from all these other places and all this organized crime sort of like was running the c- the cities in the East Coast, but most of it has kind of gone the wayside, most.

T.J. English 42:19 Uh, I would, I would dispute that a little bit. I, I think traditional organized crime as we knew it in the 20th century has gone by the wayside, Italian, Irish, Jewish. That sort of assimilated into the system and has dissipated. But there's new generations-

Joe Rogan 42:36 Russians.

T.J. English 42:36 ... of immigrants that are playing this out. Jamaicans-

Joe Rogan 42:39 Jamaicans.

T.J. English 42:39 ... Dominicans, Chinese-

Joe Rogan 42:41 So it's new people.

T.J. English 42:41 ... Russians, Mexicans. It's happening. And I'd further make the argument that the corruption that was created...... during Prohibition in the 1920s, that's where this system was created, during Prohibition in the 1920s. The, uh, alliance between the underworld and the upper world, the connection between the political apparatus, law enforcement, and the cor- criminal rackets, that template was laid down during Prohibition, and it was in effect for the next 100 years. I think that template still exists. You pick up a newspaper in any US city, large or midsize city, and what are you gonna see on the first couple pages? Some local representative who just got indicted for taking money from some criminal element to, uh, see that they got a law passed, or that they got some municipal contract. Uh, that hasn't gone away.

Joe Rogan 43:33 Mm-hmm.

T.J. English 43:34 That still exists everywhere. What happens is there's a ebb and flow. Certain rackets come and go. It was illegal booze, then it was labor racketeering. Now, it's narcotics. It was bolita at one time. There's always something, you know? As long as there's commerce being done on a large scale, there's always room for corruption.

Joe Rogan 43:53 As long as there's things that are, are illegal-

T.J. English 43:55 Yes. Yes, now-

Joe Rogan 43:55 ... where there's a market for it.

T.J. English 43:56 ... like narcotics, yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:56 Like marijuana, I mean, that was the big argument, right? The big argument about the marijuana laws in the United States is if they made it legal, it would, it would severely limit-

T.J. English 44:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:05 ... the power that the cartel in Mexico has-

T.J. English 44:07 Right.

Joe Rogan 44:07 ... and cut all that violence out.

T.J. English 44:08 Right.

Joe Rogan 44:09 Basically, the same shit that was going on with Al Capone and, and, and everything during the, uh, liquor, um, dur- the time when liquor was i- illegal.

T.J. English 44:16 Yeah, because the criminal rackets feed the system.

Joe Rogan 44:19 Yeah.

T.J. English 44:19 And human beings are, you know ... It's flawed human beings at every level of the system, dirty cops, cops on the take. I mean-

Joe Rogan 44:27 Is it more difficult now for them to pull something like this off?

T.J. English 44:29 It's less systemic. You know what I mean? I mean, back in the day, you know, uh, you'd have corruption that was all the way through the chain of command, you know, and everyone was sort of in on it. That-

Joe Rogan 44:41 Did you see The Seven Five?

T.J. English 44:42 Yes, I did.

Joe Rogan 44:43 Yeah.

T.J. English 44:43 I, I also saw your, your interview with Mike O'Dowd.

Joe Rogan 44:46 Mike O'Dowd?

T.J. English 44:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:47 Yeah, fascinating.

T.J. English 44:47 Yeah, that was fascinating. Um, yeah, I mean, he, he ... And that was 20 years after the Knapp, Knapp Commission-

Joe Rogan 44:55 Mm-hmm.

T.J. English 44:55 ... which revealed that level of corruption. Um, yeah, no, c- th- there's ... You have social systems, and you will have corruption.

Joe Rogan 45:04 Mm-hmm.

T.J. English 45:05 You have a money-making system like capitalism, you will have corruption. That doesn't go away. Organized crime has ... The face of organized crime has changed quite a bit, but the core of, of that corrupt relationship between the underworld and the upper world still exists.

Joe Rogan 45:22 So, is it the most disenfranchised sort of members of the community, the, the, the most recent immigrants? Like, what, what is it that-

T.J. English 45:30 Yeah. I've written about this a lot, you know, through different books and through journalism. I've come to believe that it, it, it's the American story, uh, this process of going through organized crime and gangsterism before you become accepted as a full-blown American. Um, every, almost every ethnic group has gone through some version of it in the US, and is still, and is still going through it. It's part of the American process. You get here as a group. You're, you're cut out of access, uh, immediate access anyway, to, to power, and so you create your own path. And initially, uh, in these organizations, it's usually those ethnic groups preying on their own, preying on each other. That's usually the first stage of this. And then it, it becomes, uh, creating a system to try to deal with the larger system of corruption. I mean, Jose Miguel Batlle, what he did, what was so brilliant by creating the corporation, is he created a path for himself within American organized crime, which was controlled primarily by the mafia. And he created an alliance with the mafia that made it possible for the Cubans to have their thing, and, and fly below the radar. I mean, while the Italians were getting busted left and right, the Cubans, the Cubans ... This corporation existed for 40 years because they didn't really get messed with much.

Joe Rogan 46:55 Why is that? Like, what, what ... Was it the, the way the Italians ... Like, they were so flashy, like particularly when you got to Gotti. He was the most ridiculous of them, right?

T.J. English 47:02 Well, the Cubans were pretty damn flashy, too.

Joe Rogan 47:05 So what was it?

Joey Diaz 47:05 Some of them, some of them.

Joe Rogan 47:07 Some of them. Pull this mic in front of me.

T.J. English 47:08 They could be.

Joey Diaz 47:08 Some of them. I, I ... Till this day, I detest nice cars. I detest show.

T.J. English 47:16 Calling attention to yourself.

Joey Diaz 47:17 Because I saw two ty- ... Like right now, like, I would love to talk to the producers of this film, because they're gonna miss a lot of authentic stuff.

T.J. English 47:26 I'm sure they will.

Joey Diaz 47:26 In fact, I have a present for you. I ordered you the same shirt Bruce Lee wore in Fist of Fury.

Joe Rogan 47:33 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 47:33 They're called camisetas chinas, Cubans, when you, when you're a success. Remember when Tony goes in to see-

T.J. English 47:41 Yeah, yeah.

Joey Diaz 47:41 ... his mother? "Momma, I'm a success. I-"

T.J. English 47:43 Right.

Joey Diaz 47:43 "... I run anti-Castro." When you become a success in Union City, the Chinese T-shirt is your first sign-

Joe Rogan 47:50 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 47:50 ... of success because it has three buttons here.

Joe Rogan 47:53 Right?

Joey Diaz 47:54 So you cut the buttons off, and then ... What's your middle name?

Joe Rogan 47:58 James.

Joey Diaz 47:58 So it's Joseph James Rogan. In diamond initials, you put J.J.R.-

Joe Rogan 48:04 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 48:05 And that's when you've reached success.

Joe Rogan 48:07 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 48:07 Okay? And they need that. They, they, they ... That's part of their ... You know, like, there's so many little things-

Joe Rogan 48:13 Mm-hmm.

Joey Diaz 48:13 ... that Cubans did.

Joe Rogan 48:14 But-

Joey Diaz 48:15 But take a guy like Juan, for example, my stepfather, brilliant, brilliant. You know, Paulie didn't talk on the phone. Paulie didn't move for anybody. Paulie had his messages delivered to him. In 1970, I'm looking at both of you gentlemen, and I'm telling you that Juan would not even have a conversation if there was a phone in the room and it was hung up, because in his mind that phone was fucking tapped.

T.J. English 48:43 Right.

Joey Diaz 48:44 He was a genius. If he had to meet Joe Rogan for a meeting at 9:00, at 5:30 in the morning, he'd come and put a gun under a car just in case there was a problem with Joe Rogan.... he would hug you and you'd search him. He would hug you and tap your back for a while, and tell you you were losing weight-

Joe Rogan 49:01 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 49:01 ... and rub your belly. "You're losing weight?" Мы ролли.

Joe Rogan 49:04 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 49:04 They hug you, but they're feeling you for a piece.

Joe Rogan 49:06 Right, right.

Joey Diaz 49:07 Juan, when my mother died, he still had the same car that he had when... And he died with $5 million cash, and he lived in a four-story walk-up. When he died, one of his friends said, "What a miserable life, to make money and have to hide it like that."

Joe Rogan 49:24 Mm-hmm.

Joey Diaz 49:25 Juan would walk around with jeans and T-shirts, the same shit every day.

Joe Rogan 49:29 Right.

Joey Diaz 49:30 And a wad of hundreds like this, the hidden one. The other one was singles, so you thought he was broke. If he talked to you, he talked to you in English. Once the cops came, me no speaky.

Joe Rogan 49:42 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 49:42 And when... You know who was the interpreter for all the attorney meetings with all those high-level guys? Me.

Joe Rogan 49:48 Really?

Joey Diaz 49:49 So I'd be at school, I'd be at home and my mom would go, "Tomorrow you have to go with Cheo to Deluca's office, Sam Deluca." And Sam Deluca would basically look at you and go, "How you doing, Joe? Great to see you today." You'd have to bring him a suit. He loved suits, Sam Deluca. So the more suits you brought him, the better. He was like the other guy, the guy that had the thing. But Sam would treat you just like this, "Joe Rogan, como estás hoy? Bien, okay. You're gonna interpret?" This was how fast the conversation was. "You got busted for conspiracy and bookmaking, that's two years. Listen, they're gonna... Th- this judge, he's a motherfucker. (slaps table) But thank God, I know the prosecutor, so I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. For $300,000, we lose the evidence."

Joe Rogan 50:33 Really?

Joey Diaz 50:34 "For $200,000, eh, (sighs) he gets a year. For $100,000, you get probation and you do a year in a halfway house. And for $50,000," he'd just give you a menu.

Joe Rogan 50:46 (laughs) Wow.

Joey Diaz 50:47 "When you decide what you wanna do, get back to me. Always a pleasure to see you."

Joe Rogan 50:50 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 50:51 And you had a week to decide-

T.J. English 50:52 Yeah. (laughs)

Joey Diaz 50:53 ... what you were gonna do.

Joe Rogan 50:55 Wow.

Joey Diaz 50:55 So if you gave him that amount, he knew his way through the court system. You didn't do no time. There's no time. There's no time. I know for a fact that if you get caught with a gun in New York, you get, uh, what's the law?

T.J. English 51:07 Yeah, there was a name for that. Mandatory, I don't know.

Joey Diaz 51:08 Two year, two year-

T.J. English 51:10 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 51:10 ... mandatory.

T.J. English 51:11 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 51:11 There's no stop and go, there's no trial. They take you right to... My stepfather, Juan, got caught with a gun. He was out the next day.

T.J. English 51:18 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 51:18 Deluca don't play games.

Joe Rogan 51:20 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 51:20 Deluca don't play games.

T.J. English 51:22 Now, now, in, in answer... Joe, in answer to your question about the Cubans and why they existed for so long and didn't get busted, you know, the rumor was the, that they had a certain mystique because of this CIA, uh, c- pedigree.

Joey Diaz 51:37 Mm-hmm.

T.J. English 51:37 And that they were untouchable.

Joe Rogan 51:39 Oh.

T.J. English 51:39 And in fact, there, I mentioned it in the book, there's a case where the FBI is thinking about making a case against Battle. This is way back in the '60s. They contact the US Treasury Department 'cause they figure he's not paying taxes and they can make some kind of case against him under the tax violation. They get a letter from the Treasury Department saying, "We're not gonna go after this guy because he's anti-Castro and he's a veteran of the Bay of Pigs invasion." It's right there in a, in a, in a letter from the Treasury Department to the FBI.

Joe Rogan 52:11 Wow.

T.J. English 52:11 So there were elements within the government that were protecting these guys, particularly Bay of Pigs veterans. "We will not prosecute them."

Joe Rogan 52:18 That's incredible.

T.J. English 52:19 Um, and so he had that kinda protection.

Joe Rogan 52:22 What a name too, huh? José Battle?

Joey Diaz 52:24 Batlle.

T.J. English 52:25 Yeah, his name in Spanish was Batlle, B-A-T-L-L-E, and he changed it to Battle. It's a good one, right? If you're a, if you're a writer and a novelist and you're trying to think up a good name for the character, that's, you can't do any better than that.

Joe Rogan 52:37 I grew up with a kid named Major Battle, guy I did Tae Kwon Do with. His name was Major Battle, Major Battle.

T.J. English 52:42 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 52:42 He was a bad motherfucker too. Bad motherfucker named Major Battle.

T.J. English 52:46 (Laughs) Was his middle name Bad Motherfucker?

Joe Rogan 52:48 No.

T.J. English 52:48 Major Bad Motherfucker Batlle. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 52:50 But he, but he was. He was a black belt state champion.

Joey Diaz 52:53 And the only reason why they existed, they were very careful. They had a systemized... Union City ran... Union City becomes Jersey City and Hoboken. Union City ran 7th Street to 88th Street to White Castle, but the Cubans really controlled 7th to 48th Street, Bergen line. And then when you went to New York Avenue, they controlled from 50th up to about 60th Street. And they kept to themselves, and they didn't have social clubs, and they didn't play cards outside. And if you went into the bar, they were all dressed very moderately, but four of them were bookies. And they only stayed there till 3:00 because that's when the number goes in. So you have from 9:00 in the morning to 3:00 to play that number. But there's also a thing called the singular number, which the odds are a little less. That starts at about 12:00. So I'll see you at 12:00 and go, "¿Qué fue número?" "El tres, me cago en su madre." "Motherfucker, I'll never listen to that fucking kid of mine again." Now I gotta go back to the bookie and bet the second number.

T.J. English 54:03 Pulida, they call that, right?

Joey Diaz 54:04 No, pulida. It's one number-

T.J. English 54:05 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 54:05 ... at a time. So I have an oppor-

T.J. English 54:07 Can you imagine putting down $100,000 on-

Joey Diaz 54:10 On one number.

T.J. English 54:11 ... the number five?

Joe Rogan 54:11 And is, uh, what are the number, the, uh, the pot- potential numbers? We're talking single digits only?

Joey Diaz 54:15 S- you, I could play-

T.J. English 54:16 No, it's normally a-

Joey Diaz 54:17 ... three numbers.

T.J. English 54:17 ... three-digit-

Joey Diaz 54:18 Three-digits.

T.J. English 54:18 You bet three digits.

Joe Rogan 54:19 So why would it be a single number?

T.J. English 54:21 Well, that was just a way to improve your odds.

Joey Diaz 54:23 That's a different one.

Joe Rogan 54:23 Yeah.

T.J. English 54:23 Yes.

Joey Diaz 54:23 That's a m- a different one they had.

Joe Rogan 54:24 Oh.

T.J. English 54:24 There were different systems-

Joey Diaz 54:26 Different systems.

T.J. English 54:26 ... for betting, sort of ways you could do it. But let's explain this, where the number comes from.

Joe Rogan 54:30 Okay.

T.J. English 54:31 Uh, the total mutual handle at the racetrack is published in the newspaper every evening-

Joey Diaz 54:36 The daily news.

T.J. English 54:37 ... and again, and again in the morning, how much money was bet total at the racetrack that day. The last three numbers, that's the daily number. So everyone, you know, has... It's the s- same number for everybody. You know what it is as soon as it comes out in the newspaper, and that's how it's determined.

Joe Rogan 54:53 Wow.

Joey Diaz 54:54 So you have, you have the, the individual numbers, and then you have the early number, which, which is called what come out of Brooklyn.... Casale in Brooklyn, and then you have the late number. What's the New York number? That's a-

T.J. English 55:07 The Brooklyn number and the New York number. Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:08 So how did they all decide, like, what it would be based on?

T.J. English 55:12 That was decided probably 100 years ago by some, by some, you know, uh, Guinea who ran, who ran it for the Italians. And maybe it came from Sicily, whatever the origins of it are-

Joey Diaz 55:23 You couldn't try... You couldn't fix that though.

Joe Rogan 55:25 How can you not fix it?

T.J. English 55:26 It's, it's, it's gambling. It's gambling.

Joe Rogan 55:27 How can you not fix it?

Joey Diaz 55:28 You can't fix it.

Joe Rogan 55:28 Why is that?

Joey Diaz 55:29 Because it's the... I don't know what the track is gonna make that fucking sense.

T.J. English 55:32 Yeah, how do you fix that?

Joe Rogan 55:33 Right. How would you fix that?

Joey Diaz 55:34 How the fuck do you fix the last three numbers? It's a mystery.

T.J. English 55:35 Now, check this out. Certain organizations-

Joe Rogan 55:38 (clears throat)

T.J. English 55:38 ... like the Corporation, part of the reason people wanted to bet with them and liked to bet with them, is they would have somebody at the racetrack, so the minute that number was posted, they'd know the number. So you'd get your pa... You didn't have to wait around for the newspaper.

Joey Diaz 55:53 You didn't have to wait for the newspaper or call sports.

T.J. English 55:55 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 55:55 You had to call sports, uh... Nobody remembers that. You remember that, TJ. "How you doing? Welcome. This is Joe Rogan."

Joe Rogan 56:02 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 56:02 "You just called SportsLine. You gotta sit by a payphone and put 35 cents in."

T.J. English 56:06 Yes.

Joey Diaz 56:06 "And they would run, 'All right. NHL.' And at the track-"

T.J. English 56:09 They give the scores.

Joey Diaz 56:10 "... and they give you the score. But whatever you bet was the last fucking thing!"

Joe Rogan 56:14 Always.

Joey Diaz 56:15 "So you had to sit there and take that whole ear beating!"

Joe Rogan 56:18 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 56:18 "Fucking, you motherfucker give it to me!"

Joe Rogan 56:20 (laughs)

T.J. English 56:20 And then, and then when it came to them saying-

Joe Rogan 56:22 (laughs)

T.J. English 56:22 ... the number, the subway go by and you wouldn't hear it. (laughs)

Joey Diaz 56:24 And you wouldn't hear it.

Joe Rogan 56:25 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 56:25 "And now you just lost another 35 cents!" But the whole numbers system, like my mother was into generating numbers and then she get... What killed her were the Yankees and the Red Sox weighing her up. But her game was the numbers, the three numbers, the New York track, and now let's get greedy. Why don't we go to OTB?

T.J. English 56:45 Yeah. Now, see this is where-

Joey Diaz 56:46 Why don't we just go to OTB to really-"

T.J. English 56:48 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 56:48 "... complete your fucking day, you degenerate fuck?"

T.J. English 56:50 Part of the brilliance of Battle and his organization was he didn't do sports betting. In fact, part... His arrangement with the, the Italians, with the mafia was, you get bolita, you get numbers, but you don't get sports betting and you don't get-

Joe Rogan 57:03 Mm.

T.J. English 57:03 ... these other things. And so, there was a... There's an ex... There's an example in this book of a, of a member of th- the Corporation who starts against Battle's wishes, starts playing, doing sports betting. Uh, that guy wound up dead. Uh, Battle killed him himself.

Joe Rogan 57:19 Because he was going against the agreement?

T.J. English 57:21 He was going against the rule, going against the rules-

Joe Rogan 57:23 Yeah.

T.J. English 57:23 ... that could turn the mafia against him and bring the whole thing down.

Joe Rogan 57:25 Right. Right. (exhales) Wow. That's amazing. Wh-

T.J. English 57:29 Now, in answer to your question about com... How, who, how they came up with that number. You gotta remember, it's all gambling. This is the culture of gambling. You know, you're at the racetrack, you're betting. Card games, you're betting, betting the number. So it's logical that somewhere in that universe would be how the number was determined.

Joe Rogan 57:47 Mm.

T.J. English 57:47 So it came from the racetrack.

Joe Rogan 57:48 Right. Well-

Joey Diaz 57:49 And then you also have the Puerto Rican lottery and that comes in paperwork.

Joe Rogan 57:54 Yeah. (laughs) It's different?

Joey Diaz 57:55 That's completely different.

Joe Rogan 57:56 Paperwork?

Joey Diaz 57:56 Paperwork. So you buy paperwork that comes with lottery tickets. My mother would buy the whole fucking sheet.

Joe Rogan 58:02 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 58:03 It's like $10 a thing, but she would... You could just buy the sheet.

Joe Rogan 58:06 And what is it?

Joey Diaz 58:07 It's a Puerto Rican numbers thing.

T.J. English 58:08 Now, you know that the Corporation used the Puerto Rican lottery to launder their profits.

Joey Diaz 58:14 To launder them profits.

T.J. English 58:15 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 58:15 So you hit the number, you're my friend, what are you gonna win? Two... 20,000? By the time they give it to you, "Let me just give you 18."

Joe Rogan 58:24 Do you know that's how Whitey Bulger laundered money?

Joey Diaz 58:26 Right. That's how Sammy the Bull bought lottery tickets too.

Joe Rogan 58:29 Yeah. Yeah. So Whitey Bulger won the lottery twice.

Joey Diaz 58:32 Twice. That's what he did.

Joe Rogan 58:32 'Cause people in the neighborhood won the lottery.

Joey Diaz 58:34 And he bought the ticket from them.

Joe Rogan 58:35 He, he took the ticket from them, gave them money or whatever the fuck he gave them.

T.J. English 58:39 Check this one out. Today's paper, uh, front page of USA Today. Confessions of a lottery scammer. I brought this along. I thought (laughs) it'd be interesting.

Joe Rogan 58:47 A lottery scammer?

T.J. English 58:48 This is a guy, big fat guy, 300 pounds, sitting on his ass in Iowa or somewhere, who was on his device, who figured out some... A way to intrude on some algorithm, and he started scamming different states. He scammed the State of Colorado out of $4.8 million. And, uh-

Joe Rogan 59:07 There he is.

T.J. English 59:08 ... a, a, a, a total of 16.5... Boy, you guys are good. Uh, 16.5 million. Um, now I'm thinking, if this guy had scammed the Corporation led by Jose Miguel Battle, he, he, he'd be, he'd be dead. He wouldn't be on the... Uh, he'd be on the obituary section of the paper.

Joe Rogan 59:28 Look at what he says here. "It was never my intent to start a full-out ticket scam."

T.J. English 59:33 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 59:33 Yeah. Yeah.

Joey Diaz 59:34 He's sentencing him to 25 years in prison.

T.J. English 59:36 You, you could not scam organized crime in this way.

Joe Rogan 59:39 Well, how do you scam a lottery? Like...

T.J. English 59:42 You figure out, uh, you figure out how the number is determined and then you're able to play with it. You're able to, to play with it. See, in organized crime you couldn't do that.

Joe Rogan 59:50 Well, I don't understand that. How could he? Like, isn't there just a random system, a computer program or something that runs it?

T.J. English 59:56 He's, he's, uh... Yeah, he found some way to b- to, uh, to tap into that computer system.

Joe Rogan 1:00:01 To tap into it, you mean hack into it?

T.J. English 1:00:02 To tap... Hack into it and alt-

Joe Rogan 1:00:03 Ah.

T.J. English 1:00:04 ... and alter the number.

Joe Rogan 1:00:05 Oh.

T.J. English 1:00:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:06 Wow.

Joey Diaz 1:00:07 That's craziness.

Joe Rogan 1:00:08 Wow. That is crazy.

T.J. English 1:00:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:09 What it, what is fascinating to me is that this, what you were talking about earlier, what we were talking about about, like, that this was... It gave them an opportunity for hope and that it was a part of the community.

T.J. English 1:00:20 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:20 We're missing that in the West Coast. The West Coast, like, off-track betting, there's no fucking off-track betting here.

T.J. English 1:00:25 Yeah, I know.

Joe Rogan 1:00:25 There's a few weirdos that go to the Hollywood Park, but that's gone now. You know what I mean? There's nothing here.

T.J. English 1:00:30 Well, you... The West Coast never had this.

Joey Diaz 1:00:32 There's nothing-

Joe Rogan 1:00:33 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 1:00:33 There's nothing like seeing that, like I saw that, and I saw what goes with it and it may sound ooky, spooky to most people, but it's not ooky, spooky to people who are really, really Sicilian and people who are very Cuban.

Joe Rogan 1:00:49 It's normal.

Joey Diaz 1:00:49 When you're Sicilian in that culture, there's women that you go to and they tell you things. They're witches, they're Sicilian witches.

Joe Rogan 1:00:56 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 1:00:56 Whatever the fuck you wanna... In, in Sleepers, remember he goes, "Bring the eyeballs," to this lady.

Joe Rogan 1:01:02 What's Sleepers?

Joey Diaz 1:01:03 Sleepers is a movie about four Irish kids that later was bullshit, but kind of, uh, one of the-

Joe Rogan 1:01:09 Yeah. I'm trying to remember that movie, yeah.

Joey Diaz 1:01:10 It's about the four kids that-

T.J. English 1:01:11 De Niro plays a priest.

Joey Diaz 1:01:13 Priest met... Uh.... uh, Brad Pitt-

T.J. English 1:01:17 Oh, that's right.

Joey Diaz 1:01:17 ... Jackie Gleason's grandson.

Joe Rogan 1:01:18 Yeah. Okay, there it is. Yeah, oh, there you go.

T.J. English 1:01:19 Barry Levinson movie.

Joey Diaz 1:01:20 And then they- they got the guy on Letterman, and he started backtracking, like Steven Seagal, about the CIA involvement.

Joe Rogan 1:01:27 Oh, really? Yeah.

Joey Diaz 1:01:28 They said he w-... Lorenzo Carchitella.

T.J. English 1:01:31 He, uh... He later on became the- He said it was a true story, and it was not a true story.

Joey Diaz 1:01:35 It was-

Joe Rogan 1:01:35 Hmm.

Joey Diaz 1:01:36 ... base, but, uh, if you look at it, weren't two of the four of those t- two kids supposed to grow up to be Wesleys?

T.J. English 1:01:43 Yeah, but it wasn't... It's bullshit.

Joey Diaz 1:01:44 It's bullshit. It was bullshit.

T.J. English 1:01:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:45 Hmm.

Joey Diaz 1:01:46 Like, they, the two out of the four of those guys. What were we talking about?

T.J. English 1:01:49 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:50 Uh, Du-Du.

T.J. English 1:01:50 We were talking about... Well, you were talking about... Oh, no, they're witches.

Joey Diaz 1:01:53 And he, you know... And the Cuban world is the same thing. "I want my kid to go to Catholic school."

Joe Rogan 1:02:00 Right.

Joey Diaz 1:02:00 "If I play this fucking number today, this is gonna save me." We... You know, we don't... When you're a comic, you have that hope. "You know, tonight, I'm gonna go to the Improv. Jess Huston's gonna be there. Maybe, you know, just may..." It's- it's a... But it's a ethnic hope that comes back from your country. It's hard to describe. You understand it because your grandmother was a fucking bookie. But if you talk to her on a daily basis about it, and why she would play that particular number. Like, my mom played 517. Those were the last three numbers on my dad's gravestone.

T.J. English 1:02:36 Hmm.

Joey Diaz 1:02:36 You know, 604 was some other fucking hallucinogenic she had.

Joe Rogan 1:02:41 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 1:02:41 If I go like this... If I go like this and I go, "You know what? You're looking good today. Here, go take a yardstick," most Cubans look at it and go, "Give me $5 on 253."

T.J. English 1:02:53 Yeah (laughs) .

Joe Rogan 1:02:53 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 1:02:53 Because it's the last three numbers of the 20 you fucking gave me.

Joe Rogan 1:02:56 (laughs) Now, is this still going on?

T.J. English 1:02:57 Oh, yeah.

Joey Diaz 1:02:58 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:02:58 The numbers are still going on?

T.J. English 1:02:59 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 1:02:59 Not in a... Not as a B-... Not as a ten-man office. When I was a kid, it was a ten-man office.

T.J. English 1:03:06 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 1:03:06 You were downstairs. You had a bodega. Me and you ran the bodega, there's two Yohus, and yesterday's paper. Always selling The Book of Dreams. And then you come in and you give me 604, 517. It c- comes on three sheets of paper, with- with copy paper. So right away, I rip the top one, I give it to you. I keep the other one, and the other one goes upstairs to the department where now there's a big wall with zero to nine on the wall. And I park there. So Joe just came up and played 219. There's two, and all of a sudden there's a list that goes down. I'm a board guy. I just work the board. I got six guys with phones yelling numbers on me.

Joe Rogan 1:03:47 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 1:03:47 "Oye, hey, Rogan fucking just put $100 on that number. That motherfucker killed me last week. Fuck that. Send $50 of that to Miami." 'Cause I could unload it to create the utopia.

Joe Rogan 1:03:59 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 1:03:59 You know, when you- when I take a sports bet, I'm taking 500 on Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh's playing New England. I can't take 10,000 on Pittsburgh and 5,000 on New England. That's not called a utopia. I'm gonna make money on the vig, the 10 points from you losing. So if you bet 10,000 on somebody and you bet five, I unload five...

Joe Rogan 1:04:19 Uh-

Joey Diaz 1:04:19 ... to another bank somewhere across town.

Joe Rogan 1:04:22 Yeah, right.

Joey Diaz 1:04:22 So this is how... And it... I mean, when I was a kid, my mother had a bank in the Bronx. And the guy that cooked was Black Mike. He was a Vietnam vet. And I was five, and he would give me ten bucks to go get him blackberry brandy. Black Mike cooked Italian food that was so fucking good. It was 1970. Even if you hated black people-

Joe Rogan 1:04:42 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 1:04:43 ... you ate his spaghetti. Even Italians came to eat his spaghetti. On Wednesdays, he cooked corned beef. On Wednesdays, he made Cuban food. They have an office. And every phone has a little tape recorder with a wire connected to the phone so you can't call me and say you played 218.

T.J. English 1:05:00 Yeah, it's recorded.

Joey Diaz 1:05:01 I'll fucking bust your fucking head.

Joe Rogan 1:05:02 Right, right.

T.J. English 1:05:02 Yeah, yeah, it's recorded.

Joey Diaz 1:05:03 I'll play the tape for you. So every hour, the tapes come around and I pick up the tapes.

T.J. English 1:05:07 And those get destroyed.

Joey Diaz 1:05:08 And those get destroyed the week after or that night, after, uh, the, the thing.

Joe Rogan 1:05:12 Everything's settled. Yeah.

Joey Diaz 1:05:13 But to see those offices in action when you're a kid-

T.J. English 1:05:16 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 1:05:16 ... and I'm going to get cigarettes, and they give me a ten to go get a $3 pack of cigarettes, so I keep seven.

Joe Rogan 1:05:23 Now did you ever see the money?

Joey Diaz 1:05:25 What do you mean the money?

Joe Rogan 1:05:25 Well, the money that was gathered.

Joey Diaz 1:05:27 I saw how the money would be taken upstairs.

Joe Rogan 1:05:29 'Cause that would be a separate location.

Joey Diaz 1:05:30 That would be a separate location.

Joe Rogan 1:05:31 Counting room. Mm-hmm.

Joey Diaz 1:05:32 Now there's also, they move locations every week. You also have to stay ahead of the cops. So every week you got a guy like Joe Rogan that just rents apartments for me. So every week we move locations.

T.J. English 1:05:43 Yeah, it's amazing.

Joey Diaz 1:05:44 So nobody ever gets comfortable with three months at one place, then with three months in another place, then with three months in another place because not only do you have to worry about cops, you got to worry about Jamie getting a little fucking cocky.

Joe Rogan 1:05:54 Right.

Joey Diaz 1:05:55 Jamie found out from Joe Diaz that they make 40,000 a day. Jamie's gonna go get two guns. "Go- go get the two guns and try to go up there and see what happens." Because they got two guys on the third floor that just got two guns waiting for idiots like you to come upstairs to the fourth floor. It was u- surreal. It was surreal. So in the mornings, my mom would go, "You want to go to school today, or you want to go with mama to the Mets and go, you know, get some points?"

Joe Rogan 1:06:18 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 1:06:18 I go, "I'm going with you." Because these bookies would always give me 20, 40 bucks.

T.J. English 1:06:22 Now-

Joey Diaz 1:06:22 It's part of that good luck.

T.J. English 1:06:23 Now, check this out. At the end of the day, every day that this is going on there, 'cause betting is going on every day, seven days a week. This system that Joey's talking about. So money's coming in, a lot of money's coming in. It goes to the counting rooms. So at the end of the day, you got a lot of money at like 200, 300 different locations all around the New York area. What they would do is they have people whose responsibility it was to come around, collect the money. That money would go into a van. And that van would have a police escort as it left New York City, went through the tunnel, and in New Jersey it was met by New Jersey Police, who picked it up and escorted it from there into the apartments or the houses in Union City where the money was created.

Joey Diaz 1:07:10 That's crazy.

Joe Rogan 1:07:10 Wow, so the cops got paid.

T.J. English 1:07:12 Absolutely.

Joey Diaz 1:07:13 So how can I tell you this at the age of 10?I knew this, but I could never tell you-

T.J. English 1:07:17 Right.

Joey Diaz 1:07:17 ... 'cause you wouldn't believe me.

T.J. English 1:07:19 Right.

Joey Diaz 1:07:19 So I had to keep it to myself.

T.J. English 1:07:20 Well, most of the kids wouldn't be able to shut the fuck up, either-

Joey Diaz 1:07:22 No, I didn't-

T.J. English 1:07:23 ... 'cause they didn't grow up in that culture.

Joey Diaz 1:07:23 I wasn't allowed to talk about nothing in my world.

T.J. English 1:07:26 Of course. Yeah.

Joey Diaz 1:07:26 In my world, I didn't... When, "Where were you Saturday? We played handball all day." "I, I, I had to go to a play with my uncle." I was in the Bronx.

T.J. English 1:07:33 But later on, you, you worked for a sports betting place too.

Joey Diaz 1:07:36 Later on, as I got older. But when I got out of high school, I was such a loser that I went to 118th Street and the guy's name was Chael, Jose Torres and his son. I went to them like a man. They were around the block to this guy named Raleigh and Miguel, and they ran a complete different operation from the corporation. Raleigh's still around. If I had any balls left, I'd go put a bullet in Raleigh's head because Raleigh was tight with my mother. My mother helped get Raleigh started on 118th Street. When my mother died, he got tight with my stepfather. When my stepfather died, he took that money and gave it to my stepfather's sister. That money belonged to me. So today, I'm still pissed off at Raleigh because when I was a kid, I saw Raleigh every fucking day, he'd give me 50 bucks. Every time I went over there, those guys lived their life on a karma-based life. So whenever they see Joe Rogan, "Come here, come here. You know how many things I did with your father? Come here. (hands clap) Here's $100. Go get your dick sucked." My mother, it would drive her crazy. Like, "How much money did you get today?" "$200." "G- Give me 400 of that."

T.J. English 1:08:39 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 1:08:39 "'Cause I used to buy knives and fucking stars to throw at people."

T.J. English 1:08:43 (laughs)

Joey Diaz 1:08:43 You know? But that's their way. They're very generous, Joe Rogan.

T.J. English 1:08:47 Mm-hmm.

Joey Diaz 1:08:48 You know, you can't do that. When you come over to my house with your daughters, I can't, first thing is they do is (hands clap) put a 50 in everybody's hand. (hands clap) So now the girls know, whenever they come over to Uncle Joey's, they get a 50.

T.J. English 1:09:00 Right.

Joey Diaz 1:09:01 So even after you're not around, they'll come over. When they're 14, and they're gonna go to Hollywood, they'll come over to my Uncle Joe. "Uncle Joey, where you girls going? You girls got money? Here's 50." So I had people giving me money because it's a karma-based business.

T.J. English 1:09:15 Hm.

Joey Diaz 1:09:16 The more I... My mother would hit the number for 10,000, she'd give away eight.

T.J. English 1:09:20 Really?

Joey Diaz 1:09:21 Yeah. Because that's the generosity part of it.

T.J. English 1:09:23 Mm-hmm. It's part of the community-

Joey Diaz 1:09:25 It's part of the community.

T.J. English 1:09:26 ... it's part of the whole thing. Yeah, that's the thing you were talking about. The communal-

Joey Diaz 1:09:29 That's part of the community.

T.J. English 1:09:29 ... communal part of it.

Joey Diaz 1:09:30 Commutal part of it.

T.J. English 1:09:30 And I think that was even more pronounced with the Cubans because of the history of bolita, the cuh- and the cultural significance of bolita going back to Cuba, that's something they brought with them to the United States. And it was just, you know? Like I said, it wasn't seen as a, as a criminal thing. It wasn't seen as a violent, criminal thing. Now what happens with Jose Miguel Battle is at a certain point, 1985, he moves from Union City to Miami. And he moves the hierarchy of the organization to Miami. But the money's still being made in New York City. The organization is as strong as ever, and the money's being made in the five boroughs of New York. And it's being shipped down to Miami where this guy now lives like a, a gentleman farmer on an estate. He surrounds himself with mamey trees. Uh, mamey is a fruit from Cuba that he associates-

Joey Diaz 1:10:21 He's, he's had the shake.

T.J. English 1:10:22 He-

Joey Diaz 1:10:22 I've given him the cholo shake.

T.J. English 1:10:23 Oh yeah, did you... It's a wonderful fruit, beautiful fruit.

Joey Diaz 1:10:26 Ah, great milkshake.

T.J. English 1:10:27 So he associates it with his childhood, so the first thing he does is he surrounds his estate down in Miami with this fruit from his childhood. And he lives down there now, far removed from New York. Meanwhile, back in New York, a war breaks out between the Italians and the Cubans over this thing called the Two Block Rule. When the Cubans and the Italians formed their alliance, they established a rule that you couldn't open, nobody could open up a bolita spot closer than two blocks to a preexisting bolita spot. Somebody violated that rule. I don't even know after investigating it who f- who violated that rule, but that rule got violated and it turned into a nasty f- uh, war, an arson war. They started firebombing each other's spots, and a lot of innocent people got killed, man, incinerated. A four-year-old girl got killed. Uh, it became horrific. It lasted for about eight or nine months. There was something like 70 murders, maybe 25 firebombings at different bolita spots. It got so ugly, it brought down the heat of the feds. Nobody could ignore this corporation thing anymore, so it brought a lot of unwanted attention to the- Do they know who initially started it off? Who, who violated it? Yeah, yeah, he became a snitch and told the whole story. So the guy who violated it... Oh, not the guy who violated it, but the guy who became the number one arsonist... Ah. ... and set up the whole campaign of arson. He became a snitch and, and told the whole thing chapter and verse. So it was basically just one cocky person just decided, "Fuck this Two Block Rule." Well, he was probably authorized by w- his bosses, uh, to do it. Mm-hmm. Right. "Yeah, go over and burn that spot. We'll show them." And then that happened, and then the response was, "Well, we'll show them. Go burn his spot." But burning the spot came out of someone violating the original deal- Yes. ... with two blocks away. Well, that's, that was the reason the first burning happened. Do they know who the guy was that started the first- They had a sit-down. ... Two Block violations? They had a sit-down (laughs) about it. Here's how failed it was. The, the Italians and the Cubans had a major sit-down about it to discuss it, to try to resolve it, to keep it from exploding into war. At that sit-down, they didn't resolve anything, and after they came out of the restaurant where the sit-down took place, a drive-by shooting occurred and one of the Cubans got shot at the restaurant coming out of the sit-down. And then the war was on, man. It was on. Like Battle said, "We're at war with the Italians." That's what he said with, with his people. And Battle was ready for it, man. He was good to go. I mean, he, he was ready for that war. He seemed to want it. He seemed to cherish the idea that they were gonna go to war with the Italians. And so they were ordering all these horrific... And you know how they did the arsons? They'd get these mamalukes to fill up a, a pail with gasoline. Not, not even a can, not even a closed can. An open pail. And, you know, that could spill. And they took that pail of gas and they'd walk into a bodega, a bolita spot, and they'd dump it on the floor and light it on fire.

Joe Rogan 1:13:25 Ara E. Roddick, Jr. (laughs)

T.J. English 1:13:25 ... A- and whoever happened to be in there, too bad for them. And people would die a horrible death. They got incinerated. I have some pictures in the book that are almost too horrific. I had others that were so bad I, I didn't wanna use them in the book.

Joe Rogan 1:13:38 Really?

Joey Diaz 1:13:38 Now, you put something in that book that really blew my mind. You said that in 1975 or '76, in Hudson County where I'm from, there was 40 car bombings.

T.J. English 1:13:48 Oh, man. Yeah.

Joey Diaz 1:13:49 40 car bombings.

T.J. English 1:13:49 Well, fi-

Joey Diaz 1:13:50 And I, I remember one.

T.J. English 1:13:51 Bombings, not all car bombings.

Joey Diaz 1:13:53 Bombings.

T.J. English 1:13:53 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 1:13:53 In Hudson County, from 7th Street to 88th Street there, where you have Bayonne, Hoboken, that stuff, there was f- uh, 41 car bombings.

Joe Rogan 1:14:02 That's incredible.

T.J. English 1:14:03 There was a time in the '70s in the US where bombings, homemade bombs were like the preferred, uh, weapon of organized crime. There were... There was a, there was a bombing war in Cleveland over this Irish gangster in the '70s. It was, it was pretty common.

Joe Rogan 1:14:18 Didn't they do a movie about that?

Joey Diaz 1:14:18 In Philly too, they made a bomb with the nails.

T.J. English 1:14:21 Uh.

Joey Diaz 1:14:21 The guy that had gotten, uh... The Sicilians were good with bombs.

T.J. English 1:14:23 Yeah. They did make a movie about Danny Greene.

Joe Rogan 1:14:26 Yeah.

T.J. English 1:14:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:26 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What was that movie called?

T.J. English 1:14:28 Kill the Irishman.

Joe Rogan 1:14:29 The Irishman. "Kill the Irishman."

T.J. English 1:14:30 "Kill the Irishman."

Joe Rogan 1:14:30 Yeah.

Joey Diaz 1:14:30 And now they're doing it again.

T.J. English 1:14:31 Well, they're doing the Irishman now.

Joey Diaz 1:14:33 The Irishman.

T.J. English 1:14:33 Different movie. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:35 It's fascinating stuff, man. Now, did anything surprise you when you were, you were put... I mean, obviously you're well-versed in organized crime and well-versed in these kind of communities.

T.J. English 1:14:46 I think, I think it, uh, the dominant feeling people will have w- when they're reading this book is the dominant feeling I had when I was researching it, which was, "Why don't I know this shit?"

Joe Rogan 1:14:54 Right.

T.J. English 1:14:55 I mean, this is like really... This is n- not only a great story, really interesting, but it's really important history. All this political connection to anti-Castro movement and the role th- the US government might have played in it, and the idea that this criminal conspiracy organization was allowed to go on for 40 years because certain elements in the US government didn't want to go after them, because they were afraid it would open the lid on the Cuban relations with the C... The anti-Castro relations with the CIA, the politics of it. That's, that's im- that's not only interesting history, it's important history to understand a certain social political relationship between the US and Cuba. The Bay of Pigs, the residue of the revolution, that... The way, the way that shaped... The Cold War shaped us politics over a period of