EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,032 words- 0:00 – 15:00
Here we go. Five,…
- JRJoe Rogan
Here we go. Five, four, three, two, one. (hand thuds) First of all, how many people get your name wrong when they try to pronounce it?
- IGIoan Grillo
Well, so many people, I don't even care anymore.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- IGIoan Grillo
I just, I just... However it comes out an- 'Cause I live in... It's a funny name where I come from.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- IGIoan Grillo
From England, well, growing up, it was a funny name. But in Mexico, it's even stranger name. So I just normally make it Ian. And my second name, Grillo, which in Spanish is Grillo.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- IGIoan Grillo
So everyone I n-
- JRJoe Rogan
They mess that up, too, if they see it spelled?
- IGIoan Grillo
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Pull this, uh, microphone about a fist from your face, right there.
- IGIoan Grillo
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
There we go. Um, Ioan, I don't think I've ever heard that name before.
- IGIoan Grillo
There's an actor called Ioan Gruffudd.
- JRJoe Rogan
What's he in?
- IGIoan Grillo
He's in Fantastic Four.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, really?
- IGIoan Grillo
He's the stretchy guy-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, no shit.
- IGIoan Grillo
... in Fantastic Four. So yeah, he kind of... He's made that name a little bit more.
- JRJoe Rogan
A little bit more acceptable? (laughs)
- IGIoan Grillo
(laughs)
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, how did you wind up living in Mexico City?
- IGIoan Grillo
So I, I came to Mexico, or went to Mexico, uh, in the year 2000. And, uh, I kind of messed around for a few years in the UK. Wanted to get into journalism. So I found one way to get into it was to start working in a foreign country, rather than going to my local newspaper and work, and go to a foreign country and start working. And I had a romantic idea about Latin America, thinking I'd be like... I saw the movie Salvador.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ah.
- IGIoan Grillo
You know, Oliver Stone's movie from-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- IGIoan Grillo
... the '80s. I kind of had a, had a, had a romantic idea about running around with guerillas, um, fighting military dictatorships. Um, so I arrived in Mexico in 2000, and got a job at an English language newspaper.
- 15:00 – 30:00
So that's when it…
- IGIoan Grillo
And this goes back 100 years. Like, so Sinaloa, which is the cradle of Mexican drug trafficking. Sinaloa is a bit like Sicily is to the mafia, like Sinaloa is to the Mexican drug cartels, where it began. And it began right ... So you go back to 1914, you had in the US the Harrison's Narcotics Tax Act, when they made, uh, they restricted opium and cocaine in the United States. And from 1915, they began a cross-border trade from Mexico to the United States.
- JRJoe Rogan
So that's when it started?
- IGIoan Grillo
All the way back then. It's over a hundred years ago.
- JRJoe Rogan
(sighs)
- IGIoan Grillo
Some of the very first people doing it were actually Chinese Mexicans. They were Chinese immigrants who'd arrived in Mexico, and they began doing this. They bought opium, um, from, from China, planted it in, in Mexico. And some of the first people receiving it were Chinese Americans. Some of these very early cases. A case from 1916 investigated. There's documents about this case, where there was Chinese Mexicans trafficking to Chinese Americans here in California, and at that time, there was a governor of Baja California involved, um, right back then.
- JRJoe Rogan
What is the solution? Is there any solutions to this?
- IGIoan Grillo
Well, (sighs) I mean, it ... I get, you know, I think a lot of people covering this, you get very weary. You wanna see solutions.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- IGIoan Grillo
Um, you wanna find solutions, and you wanna come with that optimism of finding solutions, and, and you wanna justify why you're doing this. Um, what you're doing this for. Not just to tell the stories, but to look for solutions to this. Um, and it gets weary, but, uh, there is three areas I believe there are solutions. First, I do agree with you on the idea of drug policy reform. Again, it is tough uphill battle. I mean, uh, going back to 2012, I wrote editorials about, you know, one of the reasons you should legalize marijuana is because of the marijuana come from Mexico, which goes to cartels, which pays for killers, which pays for corruption. But at the same time, marijuana, a lot of, you know, a lot was legalized in the United States, and the violence actually just got worse in Mexico. So you've also got the issue of heroin, uh, cocaine, um, crystal meth, fentanyl, and you've got the cartels who've gone into a bunch of other rackets now. They steal crude oil. This is a big deal. They steal billions of dollars worth of crude oil, criminals down there, from pipelines. You can-
- JRJoe Rogan
Just tap into a pipeline or something?
- IGIoan Grillo
Yeah, you go to a pipeline. You have ... You normally put in two taps. You drill two holes in the pipeline. You drill a hole to, uh, put ... to take the oil out, and you drill a hole to put water in, to try and keep it equa- uh, the, the pressure the same.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- IGIoan Grillo
Don't know if you saw this. A crazy video recently of, uh ... (clicking sound) in a, in a small town in Mexico where a bunch of ... There was a tap open, a really, a really bad tap which the, the oil was just spraying out, and a bunch of people were lining up just to pick up the oil from the pipeline, and it exploded, and just... It was just, like, crazy death toll from-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I did see that.
- IGIoan Grillo
... from, from, from that, uh... But, uh, but anyway, the ... I do believe in, in, uh, in drug policy reform. We have to talk about this. Has to be on the table. I mean, Americans, there's ... You know, no one knows really what Americans spend on drugs, but there's this survey, uh, which you can find online if you just, you know, tap in, "What do Americans spend on illegal drugs?" And it ... There's an estimate of $100 billion a year.So, you know, that amount of money, I mean, that's an estimate. I mean, it could be right. You know, it's hard to know. It's a very round number-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- IGIoan Grillo
... but like $100 billion a year. Now if you think about that pumping into these cartels year after year, I mean, decades, you know how much of that... You know, if it's 30 billion of that going down to Mexico, then over 10 years, 300 billion, over 30 years close to a trillion dollars-
- JRJoe Rogan
(sighs)
- IGIoan Grillo
... that really creates this, this monster. But in a secondary... So I, and I believe in drug policy reform. I mean, I don't know how... I mean, rehab for everyone who needs it because heroin addicts buy a lot of heroin. So everyone you save from that, you can, uh, you know, you can stop a lot of heroin and a lot of that money which does... Money goes to these people who are doing this stuff. But a second area I believe is, is social work, uh, in the neighborhoods. Uh, like I've talked... I've done a lot of interviews with... particularly with the assassins, with the killers, um, in cartels in Mexico and, and also around Latin America. I've been traveling around Jamaica, um, Brazil, Central America, Colombia talking to a lot of the killers especially. And when I sit down with them, I, I try and get their life story. Like how did they first get into this? 'Cause you're not born doing this stuff. And often... I mean, in some cases th- there's different profiles. There's some of them, uh, you know, there's one, one guy... This is down in Honduras which is also a crazy situation. There's a guy there. I, I'd actually met him before. I'd met him when I was doing some reporting down there back in 2015, and he was driving for us, and he was also carrying a, a gun to help protect us. He was with a journalist who had a, who'd had... who'd been hit before, who'd been actually shot before. And, uh, then I met him again afterwards and got him to tell his story, which is kind of typical of a lot of these guys. And he described how he'd been abandoned as a kid by his parents and had this real hate that he had with the world, like, you know, just fuck the world. Um, and he described the first time that he carried out murders. Um, and it... This was actually the... I mean, he carried out... Later on, he, he doc-... he documented a- all these hits he'd done and decapitations he'd done and this kind of crazy stuff. But the first time he carried out a murder was probably the, the, the freakiest when he was, I think, 14. And they got a, a family. They went into a house 'cause they got, they got a family and they butchered a family. And he described... When he described that and then described later on, you know, how he became a, a hired killer. And the thing about him... Like some of these people you think they're psychopaths. They just... They really, um, don't care. But some of them really do have these conflicts inside their heart. I think he was someone I, I listed back to that interview. And he had... And it's hard to, to balance that, someone who does evil but also has been a victim as well, a victim and a victimizer, and you feel that pain. Since, since then he's himself been, been murdered. Um, but, uh, yeah, he's, uh... He was, you know, one... So how, how do you get social work to reach people from a very young age? Because often they're recruited into organized crime when they're 12, 13 years old.
- JRJoe Rogan
So he butchered this family when he was 14. What... Was he stealing money from them? Was he-
- IGIoan Grillo
So the story with that was he, he said that he was hanging around with these basically street kids and one of the other kids said, "I know where there's some money in a house. We can get some money in a house." So they went in there and killed this family, and it turned out there was no money there. And the reason the other kid had said go there was 'cause he'd actually been living with this family and he said they'd been abusive to him, so he wanted to, like, rev- have revenge on this family. But what was so really sick about this de-... when he was describing it was they had this family and they would... To stop them defending themselves, they would, like, take them one by one, like pin them in a, in a room and take them one by one, like take them out and butcher them, how the other ones didn't really know what was going on. And think... I mean, the action itself, but how, like, teenage kids can think about that stuff. And then later on when he was talking about the, uh, decapitations, he was talking about they get contracts with decapitation inside the co-... Like they say that, "We want this killing. We want you to decapitate a guy. We want this. Doc-... We want to see video of the guy being decapitated. We want that. We want the guy to suffer." And when he hacks the heads off, there'll sometimes still be a moment when... like when the life goes out of them and when the body is still, like, twitching. Like, he says they can still see, like... There's a bit like nerves, almost like a chicken, like a headless chicken. There's a bit... There's a part when they're still, like, twitching a bit even after they, uh, you know, they've lost the kind of se- their connections there.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oof. Now when you're interviewing these people, how nervous are you? I mean, this seems like if you're putting all this stuff down, you could implicate them in some crimes and it seems like it would be very convenient for them to try to get rid of you.
- IGIoan Grillo
So it is... There's a whole bunch of different situations around interviews. Uh, sometimes I've interviewed people in prisons, a lot of time in prisons. Um, you know, this took me years to, to get to a lot of these people. First of all, you know, and I wa-... It wasn't like a... Uh, when I first started doing this I was like, "Well, now how do I get... How do I reach them?" And start going 'round to drug rehab places and talking to people in drug rehab. Um, going into prisons in, in Ciudad Juarez I did a lot of, uh, interviews in a... and in one prison I got to know a lot of prisoners. In the prison in Ciudad Juarez in a Christian evangelical wing there and they were going through this weird Christian, you know, like Christian, uh, um, you know, discovery of God there. And then through the str-... on the street often, like, through contact... I mean, well, all the time through contacts on the street.Um, in, in Honduras, a lot of great contacts with a, a friend who's a, who's a journalist who grew up in these neighborhoods with all these guys. He just knows loads of these guys from growing up. Now, there's different, different things. You know, there have been bad situations. I think anybody covering this has had some bad situations sometime. People get angry, people threaten them, and so forth. But a lot of the time when I, when you talk to people... And one thing is you have to be very... A lot of the time you have to be very stringent about protecting their identity, and really serious about that. Because there's been cases where, various cases, where other people have interviewed killers and shown their identity, either through them showing their face or through like some dumb thing being shown. And they have been themselves murdered, you know, butchered after these... They've given these interviews or, like, other things have happened. They've been threatened or something of their family, or arrested or so forth. So you've really got to protect peoples' identities. S- in a way, in terms of when they talk and stuff, and I don't really feel nervous when I interview a lot of these people. I probably (laughs) feel more nervous here talking to you.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Why is that?
- IGIoan Grillo
Yeah. (laughs) That's just probably 'cause it's like on a, on a, on a big show. It's a diff- a different thing when, when you're like talking to... First, you know, you start with easy questions. Like anything, you start talking about how, you know, how you, you know... People are human, they're human beings and people have got... and people are complicated. And I haven't just interviewed them, I've also got drunk with some of these people and hung around with some of these people, um, for times trying to get closer like, uh, you know, I spent time to try and understand their world a bit more.
- JRJoe Rogan
What's the most time you've ever spent with these people?
- IGIoan Grillo
I mean, several days, uh, several days, yeah. Like, uh, you know, like I mean I'll see them, see them again, hang out, you know, hang out with them, uh, in different places. Not all the time. Sometimes just, you know, sit down and do interviews and, and just leave. Uh, but it's, it's this complicated world. For them it's, it's their normality and as, for them it's normal. Uh, it's, it's what they've, what they've lived, what they've been through, what's happening around them. I mean, this level of murder that's happened in a lot of parts of Latin America now, it's crazy, but in these areas is... And as well you talk to other people who are just on the edge of this or they have family members involved in this and it's just... They're living this. I mean, these are levels of violence, and it's interesting to compare historically these levels of violence, um, because you look at some of the worst cities like San Pedro Sula, Honduras, Caracas, um, Ciudad Juarez, and these are places which have levels of violence which are like way worse than Medieval Europe. A lot of places in Medieval Europe.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oof.
- IGIoan Grillo
I mean, look at the figures per 100,000, because some of them have, you know, over 100 per 100,000, 150 per 100,000. And Medieval Europe a lot of these cities were like 20 per 100,000. So they're way worse now, way worse than the Wild West and like... Now there are some places in the United States that they... like, I mean, I did, I've done some research recently in Baltimore, Maryland, and I was kind of... It's interesting to compare that to Latin America, and that's a high level. That's 40 per 100,000, so that's, that's not as the same level but it's significant.
- JRJoe Rogan
Still more than Medieval Europe?
- 30:00 – 45:00
Oof. …
- IGIoan Grillo
by Terrence Popper who interviewed a, a drug trafficker in the '80s. When he got the, his job as the he- Jefe de Plaza, which is the head of a certain territory, when he got the job, he went with the state police at the time and said, "I want to become the, uh, the head of the plaza." And they took him in and tortured him for two days and like, you know, beat the crap out of him.... put electric shocks on his nuts. (smoke puffs) Kind of one of the- the big torture they do in Mexico. Put water laced with chili in his nose, so kind of like one of these big, so your whole face burns. These are, like, torture techniques they have. And after two days of torturing, he said, "Yeah. Well done." You know, "You survived well. You've got the job." So (smoke puffs) we- you know, what it shows is that the police had the upper hand, the police controlled this. They were like, "Okay. We control this racket and, you know, we can fuck around and torture and kill drug traffickers when we like." Uh, you know, and all up to the presidency. I mean, there was, uh, an- in that time, Carlos Salinas became president in '94. His brother, Raul Salinas, they- they're the Swiss investigated his bank accounts and said he had $500 million in bank accounts, which they, you know, they- they believed it was drug money. So right up to the presidency, this was- was being run.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oof.
- IGIoan Grillo
When Mexico changed to democracy... So when I arrived in Mexico, it was changing to democracy and it was like, "Wow, great. Democracy's gonna happen. Free market's gonna happen," you know, we're in the good days of the 21st century now. But what happened was you lo- political control shifted, so you had a bunch of different political parties, and they were fighting over the drug trade. And, you know, I was one time in Nuevo Laredo when the federal police had a shootout with the municipal police. They were fighting each other probably because they worked for different drug cartels.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- IGIoan Grillo
So that's what started, but then you had the techniques, like the technique of beheading wasn't really a big deal. It was very, very rarely used up until around 2006, and one of the first incidents was in Acapulco in 2006, in about June 2006. Now, it might've been after, inspired by the Al-Qaeda, Zarqawi, you know, video which was shown in full on Mexican TV. Remember when that came out? When they decapitated the guy in Iraq. And they decapitated... At first, it was two policemen they decapitated. Later that year, in September 2006, there was five heads they rolled onto a disco dance floor. And then this thing just became just escalating, just became this kind of, like, using this terror, public terror. So 2006 wi- 2008 was a big escalation, and then 2011, '12 were, like, crazy, and then it subsided a bit and the pub- the violence got a bit less public, and it was more, like, hidden, like, mass grave stuff. Now, the worst mass grave that's been discovered so far, um, was in Veracruz. Now, I've been to the site of it, and it was 250 bodies were found in this mass grave in one place. And it was right next to a housing estate, and there's families... It was so- one of the saddest things was you see- you'll see there kids' bicycles, and basketball hoops, and stuff right next to this. And the field next to that, they'd dug up 250 bodies, and the smell was, like, emanating to this housing estate. (Joe sighs) And it's, like, you know, middle class, the dream of becoming middle class that was the- the kind of something, this housing estate, and right next to it, this violence. But when I say a lot of these stories and (laughs) , I mean, these are crazy stories, but a lot of Me- the weird thing is a lot of Mexico lives a normality around this. It's not what you s- this is not what you see every day. This is, this happens, but there's also just a normality that could just be like you're outside here in- in LA and normal people living normal lives around this as well.
- JRJoe Rogan
What is the response in Mexico? Like, what i- what i- w- w- I mean, after they wanted to have this military action against the cartels, obviously that hasn't really put a dent in it. What i- what i- what's the- the current thought process behind dealing with this?
- IGIoan Grillo
So there- there's been a- there was a bunch of, like, citizen, um, protest movements various times, um, during these recent years, and one of them was a- was a very interesting guy called Xavier Cecilia who's a poet and a writer whose son was murdered. And he, when it first happened, his son was murdered and he just came out and says... The press were there. He's like, "Well, I can't... This is just, like, this is just, you know, Mexico's gone. I can't, I can't deal with this. My son's been killed." And then he began talking in very, you know, and then he, he went to the streets and people were coming out publicly, um, crying. And it was one of the first times there was a realization a lot of innocent people are dying with this. And people come out and, you know, I went to some of these things. People come out crying, family members and sh- actually a sense, "We- we're victims here." Because there was a- for a long time, the sense was simply bad guys killing bad guys, and that wasn't the case. Now, the current president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who just won the election last year and he just took power on December the 1st, so he's got two mixed things. So one of them is this idea of, "The war's over. I'm gonna create peace. We can have forgiveness, reconciliation." And, but it's hard to know what that really means. And his second thing is, "We need to have, um, more of a unified state police." So, like, what I described before about you had local police fighting the federal police. So we gotta have... So he's got this idea now of a National Guard, which is a kind of hybrid between military and police thing around, and that's basically his- his- these kind of two thrusts he's in now. He's only been in power a couple of months. January was still a bad month in terms of murders, uh, in terms of bodies. Last year was thir- more than 33,000 dead last year (Joe scoffs) which is the size of Mexico, so the equivalent of the United States having close to 100,000. You know, imagine what that would mean in, you know, in the United States if you had that many people dying in a year. Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
A month.
- IGIoan Grillo
N- uh, e- e-
- JRJoe Rogan
Or the whole year.
- IGIoan Grillo
Yeah. In the year, 100,000 a year.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. 2013.
- IGIoan Grillo
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Now, when these people are... Wha- when they're being recruited by the cartels, when the police officers are being recruited, the- the big issue must be... Well, there must be two issues, right? Safety, like, if they don't join the cartel they- they'll probably get murdered. And two, the amount of money the cartel would give them would be far more than the government would give them to be a legitimate police officer.
- IGIoan Grillo
Yeah, sure. And that- that's like, uh, known famously plata o plomo, like silver or lead. Do you wanna have the silver of the- of the bribe-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- IGIoan Grillo
... or the lead of the bullet?But, but even beyond that, for a long time a lot of these people who join the police, u- uh, like from the beginning they're, you know (laughs) I've talked... I've got, I've got on video, uh... Made a video back in 2010 in Ciudad Juárez of a bunch of, uh, of rappers just hanging around in the middle of all this and one of their friends was saying... and they were talking and these people were saying, you know, some had been done for taking drugs over the border, they had been in gangs and stuff. And one of them was like, "I wanna be a policeman." And, and he was like, "I wanna be a policeman and make some money," you know, basically through corruption, so... (laughs) So there is like... that is the mentality of some of these people joining the police from early on. Another guy, a guy I open- opened the first book with is, is this guy, uh, who, who became a policeman, um, when he was 18. He was basically a hard... a tough guy, played American football, from Durango, became a policeman when he was 18, and in the police, learned to torture and learned to murder. He said, "That's what I," you know, "I learned in the police."
- JRJoe Rogan
(exhales) .
- IGIoan Grillo
And, uh, just at 20, after two years, just left the police and went full-time into crime. It was like... So, you know, you've got a situation where, you know, it's not... (laughs) you know, it's, it's even... it, it was worse even, it's beyond bad, the, the bad that a lot of people might imagine of corruption.
- JRJoe Rogan
God. So all this essentially has escalated from the time you came to Mexico. So when you came to Mexico, it's almost like you got in... I mean, if it was a story, you got in at almost the perfect time.
- IGIoan Grillo
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
In a horrible way.
- IGIoan Grillo
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's... I mean, like... (sighs) You know, you d- you don't do these things on purpose. Uh, you know, you don't think... Um, if I'd looked back 20 years ago. I mean, it's 18 years I've been in Mexico now. I had whole... you know (laughs) I, I'd grown up in Mexico in th- in that sense. Uh, you know, you'd never look back and, and think that. And now, in terms of myself seeing this, I mean, it's... I mean, I think for anybody it's, it's p- it's painful, uh, I mean, how you process that level of death, that level of murder, that level of suffering. Uh, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's horrible stuff to see and, and, and it's... You can still have a lot of people, um, separated from that, you know, families, people who are bringing up children and, you know, you wanna separate, you know, kids from that, and so of- often, like, middle class kids in Mexico are quite sheltered 'cause families wanna shelter them as much as they can from, from, from that violence and just, you know, not let them see that side of things.
- JRJoe Rogan
How much of that do you have to deal with in Mexico City?
- IGIoan Grillo
So Mexico City, uh, you know, is about the same murder rate as Houston. So Mexico City's not super violent. Now it's still not super safe, but it's not super violent. So Mexico City is kind of... A- a- and there are parts of Mexico which are f- which are fairly safe. Now, um, Y- the state of Yucatán, you know, where Mérida is, is the same murder level as Belgium. So you've got-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- IGIoan Grillo
... oasis within Mexico where you don't have this level of violence. So Mexico City is... I- it is a great city, Mexico City's a great city to, to live in, in many ways apart from the traffic and the pollution and various things. I mean, there's a bunch of things that are... And I lo- and I love all of Mexico and I love all of, you know, Latin America. I love... Even, even the bad places I still love. I enjoy going to these places, I enjoy meeting people there, you know, hanging out in those areas. There's a lot of good things about them still.
- JRJoe Rogan
But d- dealing with all the horrific tragedies that you, uh, report about and r- experience, do you look for an escape route? I mean, are you, are you looking to get the fuck out of Dodge?
- IGIoan Grillo
Yeah. I mean, um, there's been different times where, uh, I, I've thought, you know, "I wanna, I wanna stop this now and cover other things"
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
What does jefe stand…
- IGIoan Grillo
Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
What does jefe stand for?
- IGIoan Grillo
Uh, the boss.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- IGIoan Grillo
Um, and, uh, and I was getting on o- okay with them. I was, I was kind of like, um, you know, joking with these guys and taking some photographs of them. So, they were posing for photographs. So, they were sitting there with, uh, like posing with their guns and stuff. And they were... And they said, they, they said... They have a, the word güero is, is like, um... It's not really white boy, it's like blondie. You know, it could mean like, you know, y- y- y- if, if you're, you're white in Mexico, you'll often get called a güero. So, they were like, "Güero, um, how much do prostitutes cost in your country?" (laughs) And I was like-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- IGIoan Grillo
... (laughs) That was like a question. I was like, (laughs) "Oh, I don't know. You'd have to go there and see." And they were like, uh, "Güero, do you like take, do you like taking meth? Do you li- you know, do you li- you like taking meth?" "Uh, you know, I'm, I'm okay." Uh, and they were, they were still like, you know, kind of joking. And then, this guy turn- came up among them and he said, uh, yeah, to the other guys... Now, first there, there was a big guy and he said, uh... He was carrying a big gun. He's got a really massive head. And he said to me a bit aggressively, "Just don't take my photo." I was like, "Yeah, no problem. I won't take your photo." And then, a guy came up and said to the other guys, he's like, "What are you doing? It's a DEA guy here. It's a DEA agent among you taking your photographs. Um, you know, what are you doing?" And I was like, "You know, I'm not, I'm not even American. I'm British." And he said, "No, no, you know, this is a DEA guy. My, my, my brother was arrested in Texas and the DEA guy pretended to be a journalist." You know, some bullshit story. And I said, "Look, I can, you know, I can show you my website." So, they got the, the cellphone out and, and looked through the cellphone and, and found, uh, my website. And the guy calmed down a bit and he said, "You know, if y- if I see you, I'm gonna put a bullet in your head. I'm gonna throw a grenade at you" (laughs) he, he added. So, I left, you know. I kind of tried to talk a bit and left. And, uh, yeah. And t- and they went and then, I didn't publish the photographs. Still got, you know, a bunch of photographs and they... One of the guys sent me an email saying, "What happened to the photographs?" My email's on my website. So, I just ignored it. And I think a lot of them got killed in a big fight they had with the federal police afterwards.
- JRJoe Rogan
Phew.
- IGIoan Grillo
So, that was one. Um, and there's been, yeah, there's been a few more.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, it's a lot of touch and go-
- IGIoan Grillo
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... when you're in these situations.
- IGIoan Grillo
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Th- the f- the federal police, do they have a plan to try to eradicate these mobs or is it a lot of lip service? Like, is it really possible to eradicate these gangs or is it just one of those things where they say they're gonna do something, but they have to kind of protect themselves?
- IGIoan Grillo
You know, there's c- there's, there's been different, different times. I mean, sometimes there's been... The federal police have done well going after a particular guy, or sometimes with the Americans. You know, there's been, uh, um, you know, arrests of very many significant kingpins. The problem is, as well, is the d- or one of the deeper questions is that like, uh, when you take down some of these kingpins, you've always got other people who will fight over their same territory.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- IGIoan Grillo
So, for example, you know, you take out Chapo Guzmán and then you get a fight among his sons and some oth- one of his lieutenants over the, over the empire. Now, what's happened and one of the reasons the violence has increased in Mexico is because they've had this onslaught attacking cartels over the years. Then, you end up with like the lieutenants then taking over, and then their lieutenants taking over, and then their lieutenants taking over.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's what happened in Chicago as well.
- IGIoan Grillo
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
I, I spoke to a police officer in Chicago and he said the violence escalated after some big gang arrests.
- IGIoan Grillo
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And once they had gotten some leaders of some gangs and other people tried to fill the void.
- IGIoan Grillo
Yeah, exactly, exactly the same. So, so then you get some of the people who are in, in power now are, like, very young, very violent people, and people who are not as smart-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- IGIoan Grillo
... or not as, not as mature.
- JRJoe Rogan
Not calculated.
- IGIoan Grillo
Yeah. So, so you... so, and also, you end up these... they, they're fragmented territory, so you have people controlling... rather than having big cartels, some leader who controls, you know, half the country, you end up with these cartelito, like these gangs controlling a part of a state. Now, there's one state called Guerrero which you've seen this really, like, cartel fragmentation. And you've got maybe 12 different groups in this one state, and you get, like, a place where they... you know, one controls it up along a road, and then another group controls it passing a certain point. So, there were some f-... some friends went up there. Um, seven journalists went up there and got held up on this road up there, 2017 as well. And they got... they were in a car going up there, two vehicles, and about 200 guys blocked the road. And the leader of this group was a guy they believed called El Guero Pelayo. Um, like, again, this name Blondie Pelayo, and he's, like, maybe 23 years old. Like, 200 guys there. They said some of the kids... I talked to a f-... one of the friends who was there, and they said some of the... they saw kids who were as young as, like, 10 years old among this mob of people, and they, they, they held them up. They took away their ve-... one of the vehicles. They took away all their laptops, cameras, all of their equipment, stuck them in the car, said, "Go."
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you have to be careful when you're traveling that you don't have, like, a- an obviously expensive laptop or camera or something along those lines?
- IGIoan Grillo
I think from the point of view of is, you know, they can- they can take it away.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- 1:00:00 – 1:12:48
Mm-hmm. …
- JRJoe Rogan
just wa- sleepwalking through their life. There's a another significant percent that hate what they do, and then there's a c- a few leftover that love what they do. I mean, it's a very small number of people maybe like myself or maybe like yourself that actually enjoy what they do for a living and feel like they're following their passion. Most people are just working a job and they fucking hate it, and then when they get off work, they wanna get fucked up. And a lot of these people, you know, they're, they have psychological issues. They're suffering from abuse, childhood abuse. They're trying to... I mean, there's b- been some significant statistics about childhood abuse and how many people from childhood abuse wind up using and abusing drugs and becoming addicted and even overdosing on drugs, and it's ridiculously high. It's about pain, pain and suffering, and trying to remove that pain and suffering from your life.... and, um, you know, people that d- don't know how to make healthy choices and don't have friends that are making healthy choices and- and don't know what to do with their life. That's a big, big part of it. There's another part of it that's, uh, 'cause it's illegal.
- IGIoan Grillo
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's something about things that are illegal that are intoxicating and enticing. You know, when you, um, look at the statistics in Holland, in particular, where marijuana has been... you know, you could buy it in coffee shops-
- IGIoan Grillo
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... forever, not that many people smoke marijuana in Holland.
- IGIoan Grillo
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's a lot of, uh, marijuana tourism, s- especially back in the day. Uh, now that America has legal marijuana almost everywhere, n- not a lot of people are going to Holland specifically to get fucked up. But that was always the thing, man. When we were younger, it was always like, "Yeah, he's gonna go to Holland and go get high." Like... (laughs)
- IGIoan Grillo
I- I- I- I went there... I used to go there when I, when I was a teenager-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- IGIoan Grillo
... I went over, I went over there for some of that when I... on- on- on a boat, uh, and arrived in Amsterdam, uh, back in those days, yeah. The, uh... uh, e- actually, it- it made me, it made smile what you were saying just there about enjoying the job. And it's true. I mean, when you said that, um, I do love what I do and enjoy what I do, so that's one-
- JRJoe Rogan
You can tell.
- IGIoan Grillo
... that's one-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- IGIoan Grillo
... one of the sides to that thing. But, uh, but yeah, so- so, I mean, in terms of, you know, the- the issue of drugs, we have to talk about this. How- how can we stop... Americans stop spending that money or allow that money, if it's gonna be spent, not to be going to a black market a- and- and destabilizing these countries? But also, a lot of issues in- in Mexico as well. Uh, like, again, that social work. How do you change the reality?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- IGIoan Grillo
And again, so, you know, people who are abused and suffer taking drugs, but people who are abused and suffer in Latin America becoming assassins.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- IGIoan Grillo
Because one of the weird things on- on a- on a moral level, on a level of morality, you know, I knew a lot of kids growing up who sold drugs. And it wasn't really an amazing and moral thing to think about. You know, "I sell drugs." It was an easy step to take. "I'm gonna sell- sell some weed, and then I'm gonna sell some speed, and sell some ecstasy, and then later on, you know, heroin or whatever." But for somebody to commit a murder, that seems like a bigger, you know, a lot bigger deal. How do you get into-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- IGIoan Grillo
... how do you cross that line to becoming a murderer? How do they cross that line so easily?
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I think it goes back to that young boy that you were talking about that butchered that family. He was abandoned and angry and hurt, and, uh, just so much pain that he's suffering. That's often the case. They want other people to suffer. When- when you see people that are doing terrible things to people, they're almost always suffering.
- IGIoan Grillo
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
They're almost- almost always wanting other people to feel what they feel. They're lashing out. That's, uh... that- that social work aspect that you're discussing is so critical, and it's something that we've discussed about this country, that how few people are putting... I mean, how f- and very few politicians, very few, uh, people that are running this country are putting efforts into trying to heal these communities that have suffered from just years and years of systemic racism, years and years of just embedded poverty that's almost impossible to escape, years and years of crime and drugs, and just growing up in this community of despair.
- IGIoan Grillo
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
This is what you were talking about with Baltimore. This is what we're talking about with South Side of Chicago and various cities all over this country. It just... they don't get better, man. They- they stay fucked up, you know? Um, I had Michael Wood, who was a, uh, police officer from Baltimore, and he was discussing what it was like being in Baltimore as a police officer, and then looking at some documents from the 1970s that detailed the crime in the very same areas that he was patrolling in, and the s- the same crime in the same areas, and this sense of just overwhelming futility. Like, there was nothing that he was going to be able to do that was gonna put a dent in this, 'cause this was... uh, a lot of it was a product of these areas in Baltimore where there was law (claps hands) that you were not allowed to sell homes to Black people in these-
- IGIoan Grillo
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... certain areas. So, they kept these people in these poorer areas. And even though they had this desire to escape into the- the more affluent or safer communities, they weren't allowed to for a long time. I mean, there's so much of that in this country that the, you know, the people that are in control, but everybody just wants to get elected. Everybody just wants to, you know... and then once they get elected, then they're looking to get reelected, so they spend a gigantic percentage of their time campaigning. No- there's no universal effort on the part of all the citizens of the country to try to look at all these areas and say, "Hey, these are u- this is us." You know, just because you don't live in the South Side of Chicago, that- those are human beings. Those are just like you and I. You could have been them. They could have been you. If- if they were you and you were them, wouldn't you hope that you would help?
- IGIoan Grillo
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wouldn't you hope that someone would come in and try to fix this area? Someone would try to pour mone- we pour so much money into foreign countries. We pour so much money into subsidizing various industries that a lot of people disagree with, you know, and there's... I mean, I'm not an economist. I don't know what economic sense that- any of that stuff makes, but I do know that money is allocated in a lot of different ways, and the idea is that it's gonna be better for all of us. Well, it's not better for all of us to keep these communities as fucked up as they are right now.
- IGIoan Grillo
Mm-hmm.
Episode duration: 2:06:28
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