Joe Rogan Experience #1302 - Ed Calderon

Joe Rogan 0:00 Boom, boom, boom, boom. Boom. What's up, Ed? How are you, man?

Ed Calderon 0:04 Great.

Joe Rogan 0:05 Thanks for coming here, man. I appreciate it.

Ed Calderon 0:07 Thank you for extending the invitation.

Joe Rogan 0:08 Well, I love your Instagram. It's very in- it's very informational and, uh, well, tell everybody what you do so people get a, a handle on this first.

Ed Calderon 0:16 Yes. Um, uh, I'm a non-permissive environments specialist. Basically, I teach people how to live, move, and travel in places where they probably shouldn't be traveling.

Joe Rogan 0:26 Mm.

Ed Calderon 0:27 Um, you know, how to get out of handcuffs, how to get out of zip ties. Um, and, uh, you know, I show people how to survive in s- such environments. Uh, my background is in law enforcement in Mexico, so, you know, I spent a lot of time down there.

Joe Rogan 0:40 (laughs)

Ed Calderon 0:40 And, um, over the years, that's kind of led me into teaching myself how to survive in that environment. And, uh, apparently, after a while, that, uh, made me kind of, uh, sought after as far as teaching other people how to survive in such environments. So I've been doing that, uh, uh, for a while here in the US to military, law enforcement, civilians also.

Joe Rogan 1:02 Yeah, and you started working in law enforcement what year?

Ed Calderon 1:07 Uh, it's 2004, 2004, uh, north-

Joe Rogan 1:10 So you started before everything got really crazy in Mexico.

Ed Calderon 1:13 Yes, yes. Um, so you can, you can kind of trace back where it officially kicked off, uh, by the, uh, the start of the, uh, Felipe Calderon's presidency, which is the, uh, uh, the second to last president we had. Uh, he basically said, you know, full on war against the cartels. Um, and by that time, I was kind of just, uh, getting done with my training, um, in northern Mexico as a, uh, police officer. And what I thought was gonna be, you know, community policing and stuff like that turned into a full on, you know, "Here's an assault rifle and just go climb up on that Humvee with those military guys and let's go arrest cartel members."

Joe Rogan 1:52 Oh, Jesus Christ. So you thought you were just getting a regular law enforcement gig?

Ed Calderon 1:58 Uh, yeah. I mean, (laughs) realistically there was no such sort of kind of job description. This was post 9/11. I was actually in med school and that, uh, the economy and all over the border with the, uh, tightened security and stuff like that kind of went down, you know, down the drain. And most of, uh, most of the money that I was using for med school, you know, went away. And, uh, you know, ad in the newspaper, young unmarried individuals that don't have any kids, y- you're welcome to join type thing.

Joe Rogan 2:25 Wow. Young unmarried individuals with no kids. They want that specifically.

Ed Calderon 2:29 Yeah, that was, uh, probably a big alarm bells sort of sound in my head, but the, uh, but the, but the, um, the, the, you know, there were, there weren't a lot of opportunities for somebody my age there that didn't have a career. And I thought it would be... You know, everybody said, "Don't go." You know? But-

Joe Rogan 2:46 Yeah. I would've said that. (laughs) If I was your friend I'd, I'd be like, "Ed."

Ed Calderon 2:50 But it was, it wa- it, to me it was a challenge. Uh, and a lot of people said I couldn't do it and I did it, and then it turned into something that wasn't what it, most, most people expected when they went into it. And it was a full on urban warfare type situation.

Joe Rogan 3:03 Wow. So post 9/11 the borders get tightened up and the economy gets very bad in the border towns? Is that what happens because people can't get through as easily?

Ed Calderon 3:14 Uh, it's, uh, yeah. There's heightened security so commerce isn't, uh, as freely done on both sides. Uh, border waits that used to take an hour now would take three hours or four hours depending on the time of day. So, you know, things got affected. Um, also, you know, a worldwide recession, uh, situation kind of happened. So everything kind of went down the toilet, you know. I, I have a lot of family in the border region and all, like, most of our family businesses that, uh, that we had, you know, basically kind of tanked in that, during that time.

Joe Rogan 3:44 So from 9/11 to here we are 18 years later, it's been a pretty radical change.

Ed Calderon 3:50 Yes.

Joe Rogan 3:50 Is that safe to say?

Ed Calderon 3:52 Yes, uh-

Joe Rogan 3:53 Like 100% change? Like what, what if you had to, like, try to describe it?

Ed Calderon 3:58 So I mean, uh, basically the, uh, the, the part of the country that I had most of my experience is the Baja Sonora Juarez type region, uh, northern Mexico basically. What happened is that all the cartels started fighting for the most rich drug routes on the planet. Uh, one of them, of course, being the city of Tijuana. So the city of Tijuana is, that's the corner of Latin America. It's the most, uh, it's the most cross border, uh, on the planet. And with that, you know, there's a lot of commerce that goes on in that region. A lot of things get shipped to Tijuana and then dr- driven up into, into San Diego and a lot of people have businesses on both sides. And amongst a- among all of this, uh, movement, you know, there's a g- giant organized crime war going on and it used to be overt, like, on the streets. Uh, mid, middle of the day you would see these cartel convoys, uh, arriving at a restaurant and all the cartel guys outside with their AKs and stuff like that.

Joe Rogan 4:59 Whoa.

Ed Calderon 4:59 This was 2004, 2005 era. Um-

Joe Rogan 5:03 And what, how, what is the military or law enforcement attitude towards that? Like, how do they handle that?

Ed Calderon 5:07 Yeah, so we go back to 2004 when I first got it started and it was look the other way.

Joe Rogan 5:13 Really?

Ed Calderon 5:13 Yes.

Joe Rogan 5:14 Look the other way?

Ed Calderon 5:15 Look the other way. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:16 That was specific in- instruction that you got?

Ed Calderon 5:18 Uh, it was, uh, one of those things where I went there and I got, uh, I got a firearm. Here you go. Here's your Glock 17. Uh, here are your two magazines. Uh, here's your Mossberg, uh, 500. And, uh, you see all those, uh, cars over there? We don't, uh, ask them for anything. Let them pass. That's, you know, we don't do anything-

Joe Rogan 5:37 Wow.

Ed Calderon 5:37 ...of that nature. And then we'd see members of the military as well kind of, uh, go the other way type situation.

Joe Rogan 5:43 Mm.

Ed Calderon 5:43 You know, 2000, this is 2004.

Joe Rogan 5:45 Do you think that this was just to avoid conflict or w- was it because of corruption?

Ed Calderon 5:51 It's, it's always corruption. I mean-

Joe Rogan 5:53 Always?

Ed Calderon 5:53 It always levels, at a- a- at all those types of levels down there during this time, there was a lot of corruption. Um, things changed, but, you know, things in, in a way in some levels are always the same.

Joe Rogan 6:03 Mm.

Ed Calderon 6:04 Uh, there was definitely some sort of pact going on, some sort of fear-based pact during that time. And...... when, uh, Felipe Calderón finally said, you know, "Enough is enough, we're gonna declare war," uh, he basically militarized a lot of the counter-narcotic efforts in Mexico. So the military went from being, you know, in their, in their, uh, bases or, uh, manning, um, stations out there to actually actively going out and looking for cartel cells and trying to eliminate them, right? Uh, so basically army on the streets type situation. And another thing he did was basically all of the police chief, a lot of the police chiefs around the country were being traded out for former military, uh, officials or f- or military guys, uh, officers. One of them was Lieutenant Colonel Eizaola. Um, I don't know if your... maybe your audiences, audience could look him up. Uh, he's a very famous lieutenant colonel from Mexico. Actually has a documentary on him called, uh, Mexico's Most, uh, uh, Bravest Man. Very pretty interesting guy. Um, he was the one that, uh, headed us up. He directed us at the start of this, these operations against the cartels. And he basically said, you know, this is, uh, this isn't a policing problem, this is a counter-insurgency problem. So we're gonna-

Joe Rogan 7:24 Whoa.

Ed Calderon 7:25 ... we're gonna militarize it basically. And after he kinda took control, everything, everything... and, and then it changed, you know. There weren't as a... the cartels weren't as vert- as they were, so they started going underground.

Joe Rogan 7:37 So when you joined, you expected it to be t- regular law enforcement. When it became this counter-insurgency, militarized effort against the cartels, was there every time you... where you were like, "I gotta get the fuck out of this job."

Ed Calderon 7:53 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 7:53 Like this is too dangerous.

Ed Calderon 7:55 Uh, yeah, I mean, uh, my generation, I was part of the seventh generation of p- of, uh, officers going through this, uh, this program, uh, policing. And out of my generation, the first year we had two of them in jail for corruption charges and three dead, you know, just from-

Joe Rogan 8:14 Out of how many?

Ed Calderon 8:15 Out of, uh, 23 guys. So just-

Joe Rogan 8:17 Out of 23 guys-

Ed Calderon 8:19 Two in jail.

Joe Rogan 8:19 ... five, five gone.

Ed Calderon 8:20 Five gone. Uh, w- two of them very dramatic. That's... two of them were kind of the origins of how I got into the whole counter-abduction type thing. Uh, two of my guys got, uh, picked up outside of a hotel in the downtown Tijuana. And, uh, by, by cartel members dressed as federal poli- police officers, the, the whole nine yards, the uniforms, the car, everything cloned. They got, uh, they got asked for their papers outside and got put into a van. They found them a day later, you know. Uh, p- p- horribly, you know, mutilated and all this type of stuff.

Joe Rogan 8:57 Tortured.

Ed Calderon 8:58 Tortured. You know, and that kind of, you know, that was the... this-

Joe Rogan 9:03 This is real.

Ed Calderon 9:04 Yeah. This is real and I should probably have a, you know, escape plan. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:10 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 9:10 And, uh, but it wa- it wasn't, uh... I didn't know anything else basically, so it wasn't like I had something to fall back on, so.

Joe Rogan 9:18 Right.

Ed Calderon 9:19 And it was good pay for what it was and, yeah, but fear... that, that's when fear got, you know-

Joe Rogan 9:25 The stress must be insane.

Ed Calderon 9:27 Yeah. It's... you're always on, you know.

Joe Rogan 9:29 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 9:29 Uh, there's a... you know, we always had this thing on the, on the meeting wall, it said, "There's no vacation even when there's vacation." You know.

Joe Rogan 9:38 Right.

Ed Calderon 9:38 You would go on vacation, you would get your gun to go on vacation.

Joe Rogan 9:40 Of course.

Ed Calderon 9:41 You know, it was pretty insane.

Joe Rogan 9:44 Now have you ever been confronted or-

Ed Calderon 9:47 Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Of course. I mean, there's no, there's, uh, there's no, uh... it's not, you know... I have a lot of friends that are in, uh, military up here in the US (coughs) and it's not like, um, it's not like them. They go off, uh, overseas and they, they do something in a different country with different people with... don't speak the same language. I was doing all of this in the place I grew up.

Joe Rogan 10:10 Ooh.

Ed Calderon 10:11 Right. So-

Joe Rogan 10:13 (coughs)

Ed Calderon 10:13 ... I knew some of these people a- at times, you know. I, um... we, we... a- every now and then I would say, "Hey, I know that guy from when I was a kid," or "We were in school together and now he has a plate carrier with an AK-47 and a gold gun on his person." Right? And it's like-

Joe Rogan 10:27 Whoa.

Ed Calderon 10:28 Yeah. And-

Joe Rogan 10:28 You know, the gold gun's a big giveaway.

Ed Calderon 10:30 Oh, gold guns are... you know, that's how you know. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:33 Yeah. There's a... there's some amazing websites that document all the different stuff that the cartel has, but they love gold guns.

Ed Calderon 10:40 Yeah. That's, uh... yeah, El Chapo got like a gold, uh, very special gold gun when he was, uh, when he was named, uh, one of, uh, uh, one of the, uh, top, uh, earners in Forbes, uh, the Forbes list. I think he got-

Joe Rogan 10:52 (laughs)

Ed Calderon 10:52 ... his number on the gun and everything. The second to last time he got caught, because he got caught a lot of times and escaped, uh, somebody, somebody w- in the military that got him took it, you know.

Joe Rogan 11:03 Oh, no.

Ed Calderon 11:03 And it... and it ended up in a museum. I think it's, I think it's in a museum somewhere in Mexico City, uh, where a lot of these gold guns that's up, that's a war trophy for those guys, right?

Joe Rogan 11:11 So there's like a gold gun section of the museum? (laughs)

Ed Calderon 11:14 Yes. Yes, there is. Mo- Mexico City.

Joe Rogan 11:16 Wow.

Ed Calderon 11:17 Yeah. That's pretty wild. Uh, gold gun, gold A- AK-47s, you know.

Joe Rogan 11:22 Now if everything is so corrupt down there, how does a guy like El Chapo keep getting popped?

Ed Calderon 11:27 Uh-

Joe Rogan 11:27 I mean, 'cause when I, when I saw his escape-

Ed Calderon 11:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:30 ... I was like, this is hilarious. The fact that this guy goes to the toilet and then he opens a door and whoop, he's in a tunnel and on an electric scooter and goes a mile, pops up on the other side-

Ed Calderon 11:41 (coughs)

Joe Rogan 11:41 ... and they had everything set up for him with electricity. Like-

Ed Calderon 11:44 Uh, I mean, uh, you know, the, uh, I think the, the, the thing that people kinda don't understand about the corruption is it's not just corruption because people are greedy, it's al- uh, it's also fear-based corruption. So if you don't do what I say, we're gonna kill everybody in your family, even your dog. That type of thing, right?

Joe Rogan 12:05 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 12:05 So, uh, after El Chapo got... escaped that last time, um, you know, all of the staff at the jail got, you know, put in prison. And, you know-

Joe Rogan 12:15 Really?So, they were all a part of it?

Ed Calderon 12:18 There's rumors that they were, you know.

Joe Rogan 12:19 Hm.

Ed Calderon 12:20 Um, uh-

Joe Rogan 12:20 Seems like somebody had to hear all that digging.

Ed Calderon 12:22 Of course, you know.

Joe Rogan 12:23 I mean, it's, um, only a mile away they d-

Ed Calderon 12:26 Well, it was pretty-

Joe Rogan 12:27 ... dug the tunnel.

Ed Calderon 12:27 It was pretty deep.

Joe Rogan 12:28 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 12:29 Uh, some, some, some things that should've been patrolled weren't patrolled. Uh, it was a pretty good, well-made tunnel for what it was.

Joe Rogan 12:37 Really well-made.

Ed Calderon 12:38 So, a lot of the people that El Chapo actually used for these, um, tunnel operations, because, uh, he, the same people that he used for the tunnels in the border region, all the active tunnels that are somewhere, you know, along the border, uh, all of those guys were pulled in from, uh, from, uh, silver mining, uh, companies that used to operate all over Mexico. That kind of went into the toilet, so they were looking for jobs and-

Joe Rogan 13:00 Wow. Get El Chapo out is a good job. (laughs)

Ed Calderon 13:02 That's the ore (laughs) man, or, or drug tunnels, you know?

Joe Rogan 13:05 When you saw all that shit go down with Sean Penn, and Sean Penn visiting El Chapo, and Sean Penn writing an article for Rolling Stone, like-

Ed Calderon 13:14 Thoughts.

Joe Rogan 13:15 Were you like, "What in the fuck is going on here?"

Ed Calderon 13:19 Uh, yes. Uh, for a lot of, b- for some reason that might not be, you know ... M- mainly was why are they giving him, uh, uh, why are they giving him this celebrity status?

Joe Rogan 13:31 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 13:32 You know. Uh, there's a lot of glorification and a lot of, uh, you know, people venerating some of these people down there, you know, and they do a lot of harm, you know.

Joe Rogan 13:41 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 13:41 So, he's basically giving a voice to somebody. It would be the equivalent of somebody up here giving a voice to somebody that was, you know, responsible for a lot of damage done, done to the US, you know? It's-

Joe Rogan 13:51 Why do you think they did that? Like, what, what, what was the roma- it was, it was romantic, right? There's something about it. It's like, here's Sean Penn, one of our biggest movie stars-

Ed Calderon 14:00 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:00 ... with one of the biggest drug dealers ever.

Ed Calderon 14:03 I mean, he is, uh, El Chapo down, because I, I've been to Sinaloa and I've, I've, I've actually done classes there, which was pretty surreal. Um, he is, uh, he's a folk hero. He's, uh, he's, uh, he's Robin Hood basically to these people. And, like, uh, in this real moment that I had down there, I was driving along this, this bad bumpy ride highway, and all of a sudden it turned into a nice kind of highway. And, uh, the guys that I was, uh, was with told me, "Oh, yeah, this is, the cartel made this highway. And the back part of it, that's the government part of the highway. So, this is the good one."

Joe Rogan 14:41 (inhales deeply)

Ed Calderon 14:41 You know? Uh, schools, uh, careers, lawyers, doctors, uh, all their careers paid for, um, by the cartel.

Joe Rogan 14:49 By the cartel?

Ed Calderon 14:49 Immigration processes of people that wanna come over here, sponsorships and all that type of stuff on both sides, right? So, the, this pan of influence, that's, you know, that's how he kind of got to where he was, you know.

Joe Rogan 15:01 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 15:02 He was always helping people and he was investing in people. And these people, this is, these investments would pay later on, you know?

Joe Rogan 15:10 In a lot of ways it sounds like he, he benefited them, he benefited some aspects of the community.

Ed Calderon 15:16 Yeah. I mean, uh, the, the reason why the military couldn't get him, you, you could, people took corruption, but because the, he was basically, he had a, uh, human shield around him. You know, all these towns owed, you know, schools, uh, hospitals, every, uh, instead of Christmas down there they celebrate the Day of the Kings, you know. Um, so people get presents. Mother's Day, they would all get presents, that type of thing. So, why would we want to help the military come in here and, and get El Chapo if he's-

Joe Rogan 15:45 Right.

Ed Calderon 15:45 ... doing this type of stuff, you know? That's, and that is the same all over Mexico with some of the cartels, you know. The, they, they, uh, hearts and mind, hearts and minds type approach is what makes some of these groups, you know, long-lived.

Joe Rogan 15:58 So, how much of an effort is there to eradicate the cartels? Because if you can get a guy like El Chapo who at least in terms of, like, popularity is at the top ... Is he at the top of the list?

Ed Calderon 16:09 As far as popularity?

Joe Rogan 16:10 But at the top of the, he's at the top of the list as far as popularity, but when, as far as, like, the actual drug dealers, is he at the top of the list or are there more clever folks that hide underground?

Ed Calderon 16:19 Right. There's, there's, there's, yeah. There's, there's rumors of, of people above him that are still out there somewhere.

Joe Rogan 16:24 Well, that's what everybody, like, that's the great conspiracy is that, like-

Ed Calderon 16:28 Uh-

Joe Rogan 16:28 ... El Chapo's basically the bank manager.

Ed Calderon 16:30 But c- it, well, you know, there's, uh, he has a, uh, compadre. You know, a compadre is somebody that if you're the daughter, if you're the godfather of my, my kid, you're my compadre, right? So, he has a compadre out there, uh, El Mayo Zambada, um, and he is still out there, right? And the, the, uh, the extent of, of how he works and where he works is unknown.

Joe Rogan 16:51 So, he's more slick?

Ed Calderon 16:53 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 16:53 He tries to stay more low-key?

Ed Calderon 16:55 Well, uh, there's, you know, some people get sick with the fame probably-

Joe Rogan 16:58 Hmm.

Ed Calderon 16:59 ... and they wanna, they wanna go outside and, like-

Joe Rogan 17:00 Well, once that mo- that TV show Narcos came on-

Ed Calderon 17:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:04 ... then every- well, what people did, I don't, I think there's a lot of people who did not realize how crazy the life of Pablo Escobar was.

Ed Calderon 17:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:10 And what really went down in Colombia.

Ed Calderon 17:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:13 I mean, it's crazy.

Ed Calderon 17:14 Uh, P- Pablo Escobar was a single, you know, he was a phenomenon in his time and age, but he was one man. Now imagine replicating that type of insanity over the span of Mexico and it's about eight or nine guys, you know?

Joe Rogan 17:30 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 17:30 That was the '90s, early h- early 2000s, uh, because these guys were, you know, Legion of Doom type thing where they would be enemies but they would have reunions and they would meet up and kind of agree on, you know, certain things.

Joe Rogan 17:43 Like terms and stuff?

Ed Calderon 17:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:44 Just like in, in the Pablo Escobar show. (laughs)

Ed Calderon 17:48 Yeah, yeah, yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 17:49 They, so they really do that? They get together and have meetings and sometimes they kill each other?

Ed Calderon 17:52 That's, that's the, uh, that's the, uh, that's a reality. You know, they, they do and at times, or did at times because things are currently, after El Chapo, you know, things kind of shifted and changed.

Joe Rogan 18:04 What happened?

Ed Calderon 18:05 Uh, well, the main thing is a power vacuum.

Joe Rogan 18:08 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 18:08 And with the power vacuum and, um, legalization on this side of certain subs- substances like, uh, uh, marijuana-... uh, the po- the, the pot fields are now poppy fields.

Joe Rogan 18:24 Oh.

Ed Calderon 18:25 And, and new, new things like, uh, like, um, like them now dedicating themselves to heroin instead of, uh, instead of the weed was, but mysteriously there's still weed fields down there for some reason. (laughs) You know, you guys are way better at making it than-

Joe Rogan 18:41 (laughs)

Ed Calderon 18:41 ... anybody down there. But for some reason, there's still some weed fields.

Joe Rogan 18:44 Well, I think it's a lot of it is access, especially in the states where it's prohibited.

Ed Calderon 18:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:48 It's just, they're probably more willing to get it to the people.

Ed Calderon 18:51 That's probably it. Uh, meth, uh, meth precursors being brought in from China and, uh, to Mexico are now being made in Mexico.

Joe Rogan 18:59 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 19:00 Like industrial-level stuff.

Joe Rogan 19:02 Right.

Ed Calderon 19:03 And a new up- a new upsurging cartel down there that is trying to overtake the Sinaloa cartel, uh, the New Generation cartel. Uh, it, uh, is coming out of Guadalajara, and they're kind of really militarized kind of wing of cartel activities that are trying to, you know, take control over the whole thing.

Joe Rogan 19:23 What is the plan in terms of the government? I mean, if they, if they can take out a guy like El Chapo, what is the plans to eradicate all this? And is there really a plan to eradicate it or is it one of those things where it's sort of a plan on paper but realistically they sort of accept the fact they're never gonna get rid of these people?

Ed Calderon 19:39 So, uh, I have a, like, I have a thing, like, that, like, basically, uh, Quetzal- Quetzalcoatl was a feathered serpent, and I have a image of a feathered serpent biting its tail. Mexico has a problem with amnesia, a six-year cycle of amnesia. Every president comes in, has all these plans to eradicate the cartels. President goes out, nobody likes him anymore, new guy comes in and says, "Well, I have a better plan." You know? And that's the cycle we always go through. Yeah, well-

Joe Rogan 20:06 So it's a big issue in Mexico.

Ed Calderon 20:08 Yeah. And current, currently we have a leftist president that doesn't want to have anything to do with the past, uh, administrations that are more on the right of the spectrum.

Joe Rogan 20:19 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 20:19 His name is Andrés Manuel López Obrador, AMLO. Uh, vocally supporting Venezuela.

Joe Rogan 20:27 Oh.

Ed Calderon 20:27 Tha- that, that type of guy. Apparently he has a good relationship with, uh, with Trump. Uh, that's, that's what people say. Uh, but his whole thing was amnesty for the cartels as a campaign promise.

Joe Rogan 20:39 Amnesty?

Ed Calderon 20:40 Yes. And-

Joe Rogan 20:41 What does that mean?

Ed Calderon 20:42 Exactly. Nobody knows what that means. Uh-

Joe Rogan 20:44 But that's what he was saying?

Ed Calderon 20:45 That was-

Joe Rogan 20:45 Did he have a plan for this amnesty or is it just, like, uh, a statement?

Ed Calderon 20:49 Uh, it was a statement, and now y- if you see d- uh, counter narcotics operations throughout the country, they've, uh, the military is not as active as it used to be.

Joe Rogan 20:58 Whoa.

Ed Calderon 21:00 Uh, some of the cartels are growing in influence, um...

Joe Rogan 21:03 Because of amnesty?

Ed Calderon 21:05 Could be. You know? Uh, it basically, I don't see the efforts that were there, uh, when I was active down there.

Joe Rogan 21:12 Oh, geez.

Ed Calderon 21:12 Things change, you know? So I don't know. I, I, uh, I, I, I truly think that the upsur- because we're, we're on route of be- to, to having the most violent year in Mexico as far as, uh, car- cartel-related deaths, right? Um, when I got out, Tijuana had been on the top most dangerous cities on the planet list. And I actually worked there when it was on the top. And through efforts both b- for the, from the government and, and through people like, uh, Lieutenant Colonel Lay Zavola, uh, Tijuana w- was gone off the list of most dangerous, uh, uh, cities in the world. And now it's again at number one. Right?

Joe Rogan 21:52 Yeah, you sent me that. I was pretty shocked 'cause you don't hear about that here.

Ed Calderon 21:56 Yeah, it's, uh, six murders a, a night, you know? I was down there, uh, two days ago and it was... It's, uh, basically cartel on cartel, so they're cleaning each other out and-

Joe Rogan 22:09 Oh, geez.

Ed Calderon 22:09 ... just bodies appear i- in the morning, you know, on, on bridges, hung from bridges, um, tortured, shot, you know, that's, you know... But again, the, there's nobody doing anything about it. They should, you know, but they're kind of turning a blind eye in a lot of ways.

Joe Rogan 22:24 Oh, man.

Ed Calderon 22:26 (coughs)

Joe Rogan 22:27 And so with this leftist president, this guy w- who has this idea of amnesty, the, the people that are in charge of handling the cartel, the, the military and the police officers, they've gotta feel like a little abandoned.

Ed Calderon 22:42 Yeah. Or maybe some of them have a business plan and they're working a- one side.

Joe Rogan 22:47 Oh, so that's a problem too.

Ed Calderon 22:49 Yeah. So, so people that aren't aware, you know, we have a separation of powers down there as well, so the army constitutionally shouldn't be engaging and combating the cartels. They shouldn't be engaged in police roles, but there were some amendments done to the con- constitution and, you know, laws passed. But you have to realize that some of these people that are fighting the cartels in a policing type role from military, uh, some of them can't read, right? Or some of them come from rural parts of Mexico that shouldn't, they shouldn't be doing that type of activity. So you get a lot of, you know, a lot of, uh, failures on that side of, of the fence. We do have some high-level SF, uh, com- uh, community members in, in Mexico that are doing the work, but they're few and far between. And then you have the federal police, uh, which has gone through about four or five name changes in the past, you know, 10 years. Because every time the, "Well, not gonna call them that and change his uniform because they're all corrupt."

Joe Rogan 23:48 Jesus. (laughs)

Ed Calderon 23:49 But now they're, now they're this police, right? So, um...

Joe Rogan 23:53 So they just change appearances.

Ed Calderon 23:54 They change the name, you know, but, like-

Joe Rogan 23:56 Try to refresh the public opinion of it.

Ed Calderon 23:59 Yeah, there was a famous, uh, uh, you know, modi- uh, investigation, federal investigation police called the AFI, and they were, like, modern investigative federal police that's gonna g- go after... man, they were corrupt as hell, you know?

Joe Rogan 24:13 (laughs)

Ed Calderon 24:13 And they, all they did was, you know, get a name change and all these guys got shuffled around and looked around and was like, "Hey, I know you." Like, "What, what? No, I'm, I'm this now," you know?

Joe Rogan 24:22 But they're still the same person who compromised.

Ed Calderon 24:24 Yes. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:24 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 24:25 So, those are the federal guys, right? Currently, they, they wanna do like a national, uh, national police force. And you're like, "Wow, they're gonna get new people that are gonna be national police force?" No. It's the same guys changed uniforms, change a hat. So, that's on the federal side, you know. So, we're pretty, you know, wanting there. Uh, state side, each state has their own police force. Uh, investigation police force and a preventative-type force. And these are politicized because each state government may be opposed to the federal government, so there's a... there's some static there now.

Joe Rogan 24:57 (sighs)

Ed Calderon 24:58 And each municipality has its own police force. And they may... might be completely different, uh, politically than the state and federal, so...

Joe Rogan 25:07 It must... (coughs) F- for you to have your life on the line over there and see all this chaos and obvious-

Ed Calderon 25:14 (coughs)

Joe Rogan 25:14 ... either lack of organization or outright corruption, it must be insanely frustrating.

Ed Calderon 25:19 Yeah, I mean, well, the, uh, the peop- putting people in c- that were clearly, uh, guilty of things, you know, and then seeing them come out or the legal system down there that I got... that I had to endure, you know, you would have to go and do a face-to-face with all these people. Right? Go into a federal courthouse, leave your firearms behind, do a face-to-face with these people inside that you just got... uh, that you just got for however many tons of cocaine or pot or whatever. And then go outside and they're outside, you know. "Now, now I know who you are." You know, there's no anonymity in that, in that regard. So, uh, you, you would have to sign things, you know. And then seeing some of the people that were with you working on your side and seeing then how some of them would fall into corruption charges and then sue the government and then get their jobs back, but now you have somebody's who's compromised within your own unit.

Joe Rogan 26:12 Wow.

Ed Calderon 26:13 Right? So, they, they did try a few things to try and clean out police forces. Um, one of them was a plan they called, uh, the s- the C3 Plan. It was like a, like a filter for police officers down there. It's still in, it's still in action, but, you know, it's questionable if it's, uh, effective or not. I've saw a lot of people go through it and (laughs) later on, they would turn out to be cartel guys. Basically, they would do a background check, FBI background check, a polygraph exam, a drug testing, uh, all the, all of these things to see that you were, you know, clean to work on these police forces. Uh, the problem is that the polygraphs turned out to be unconstitutional to fire somebody over them. So, a lot of these people (laughs) got hired back after they would fail polygr- basic polygraph exam.

Joe Rogan 27:00 (inhales deeply)

Ed Calderon 27:01 So, uh, again, there's a lot of attempts to clean it up, you know, and I, uh... you would be on the, on the level and all these people wouldn't be on the level, but they were still there. So, you would feel-

Joe Rogan 27:11 Like, what, what percentage of people are not on the level, if you had to guess, roughly?

Ed Calderon 27:16 (sighs) The... I mean, I w- I'd say it would depend. I'd say 30% probably.

Joe Rogan 27:20 (exhales loudly) That's a lot.

Ed Calderon 27:20 But like, uh, the... on, on, on, uh, of my experience of the people that I worked with, 30% weren't on the level.

Joe Rogan 27:25 Well, you must cherish the 70?

Ed Calderon 27:27 Oh, uh, like family.

Joe Rogan 27:28 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 27:29 Like family. Um, and you, you, you, you, you, you would know when some of these people (laughs) weren't on the level because, you know, I have this running joke that I have this... I, I, I went in with the same car that I drove out of the office with, you know. A shitty truck that I had, that I bought, uh, that I bought when I, uh, you know, off, off my own dime. First truck, first car. And I drove out of the office when I quit the j- when I quit the job that same day, you know. I, I drove the... I drove out of the office in that truck. But a lot of these guys would come in with their, you know, Hummers and H2s and just weird cars. I'm like, "Wait a minute." (laughs) "This doesn't make sense."

Joe Rogan 28:07 (sighs)

Ed Calderon 28:07 Like, "We work in the same office. Why do you, why do you have a three-story house?"

Joe Rogan 28:11 That's so obvious, though.

Ed Calderon 28:14 Prove it, you know.

Joe Rogan 28:15 Yeah, but, but the, the obviousness of it.

Ed Calderon 28:18 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:18 Like, the blatant... You're driving a nice car, living in a big house, and everybody else is like, "What?"

Ed Calderon 28:24 Yeah. Uh, there, there, there's... you know, there's, there's obviously these, this, uh, these unwritten rules of, you know, you won't, you wouldn't tell on this guy, or-

Joe Rogan 28:30 Of course.

Ed Calderon 28:31 But, you know, it was obvious.

Joe Rogan 28:34 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 28:34 And, and when it came time to share information of a certain kind or "We're gonna go over here." And you would have to turn around and look around, see who was listening, you know.

Joe Rogan 28:45 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 28:45 Uh, you wouldn't trust a lot of these people, so how are we gonna... how are we gonna do our job if we can't trust the people that are working with us?

Joe Rogan 28:52 (sighs) Wh- who was it that recently called for decriminalization? The c- was it th- your president that called for a decriminalization-

Ed Calderon 29:00 (coughs)

Joe Rogan 29:00 ... of all drugs in America to go along with Mexico? Is that what it was?

Ed Calderon 29:03 Yeah. Uh-

Joe Rogan 29:04 To try to do something about the cartels.

Ed Calderon 29:05 Yeah. We, we, we are on the, uh, brink of, uh, legalizing marijuana in, in Mexico right now. Like, there's been a few landmark cases and, you know, it's gold rush type situation right now.

Joe Rogan 29:16 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 29:16 There's a lot (laughs) of companies down there that g- that have had experience up here that wanna go down there.

Joe Rogan 29:21 Right.

Ed Calderon 29:21 Uh, so the culture is ready for it, I think.

Joe Rogan 29:24 Do you think that would help?

Ed Calderon 29:26 (sighs) I don't know. Uh, uh, when it comes to legalizing pot up here, it hasn't helped down there as far as lowering things. It's actually made things kind of worse.

Joe Rogan 29:34 How has it made things worse?

Ed Calderon 29:35 Uh, they changed-

Joe Rogan 29:37 (coughs)

Ed Calderon 29:37 I don't know. They changed the, uh... they changed what they were producing. So, I think that, the, the reason-

Joe Rogan 29:42 They moved to meth, yeah.

Ed Calderon 29:43 The reason why there's a heroin, heroin epidemic up here and fentanyl, uh, epidemic up here, uh, I think has some relationship with how things got legalized up here and how they switched, um-

Joe Rogan 29:54 Hmm.

Ed Calderon 29:54 ... product down there.

Joe Rogan 29:56 Hmm.

Ed Calderon 29:56 So, um, lighter-colored heroin is coming down from Mexico and I've seen... I, I, I, I work with law enforcement, uh, up here in the US, uh, doing classes and, and kind of, you know... They send me things like, "What do you think about this, Ed?" Um, and I've s- I've seen that lighter-colored heroin pop up in places as far off as Chicago.

Joe Rogan 30:14 That's... so you know it because of the color?

Ed Calderon 30:16 Yeah, the color, the smell, the consistency. You can kinda tell if it's Asian or from Mexico-

Joe Rogan 30:21 How... like, is it a different strain? Like...

Ed Calderon 30:23 It's pr- it's, uh, probably a different strain and it's also the amount of sun it gets in the region where it's con- being grown.

Joe Rogan 30:28 Hmm.

Ed Calderon 30:28 It's high, higher altitude.So it's lighter color, not as stinky. I don't know.

Joe Rogan 30:33 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 30:33 Um, but I think it's a relation- that, that kind of relates to the legalization issue down there. They didn't affect them in the pockets. They just switched, uh, product.

Joe Rogan 30:43 It's got to be ... It's such a strange relationship because-

Ed Calderon 30:46 (coughs)

Joe Rogan 30:46 ... the reason why these drug cartels have so much power is bas- because they're selling drugs to the United States.

Ed Calderon 30:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:52 So it's like you have this connection to this country that has this great big wall that it wants to build and on one side everybody's buying up all the illegal drugs and the other side everyone's killing everybody to try to make and sell these illegal drugs.

Ed Calderon 31:05 Yeah. I mean, and, and there's a lot of holes underneath that, uh, wall.

Joe Rogan 31:09 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ed Calderon 31:09 And, uh, drones.

Joe Rogan 31:11 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 31:11 Drone technology. Uh, tre-

Joe Rogan 31:12 Is that wall gonna help anything?

Ed Calderon 31:14 Well, the wall's already been up, uh, for a few years.

Joe Rogan 31:17 Part of it.

Ed Calderon 31:18 In, in, in, in place like Tijuana which is-

Joe Rogan 31:20 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 31:20 ... like one of the richest drug rout- routes on the planet and its, the drugs are, cost the same, you know.

Joe Rogan 31:26 It's the same?

Ed Calderon 31:26 It's ... Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:27 And what about like the ocean?

Ed Calderon 31:29 (coughs)

Joe Rogan 31:29 Can't they just take a boat?

Ed Calderon 31:30 Uh, I've, I've seen one large submarine in my time working.

Joe Rogan 31:36 Really?

Ed Calderon 31:36 Yes.

Joe Rogan 31:37 A large, like, like military size?

Ed Calderon 31:39 Uh, like, uh, like scientific size.

Joe Rogan 31:42 Where the fuck does somebody buy a submarine?

Ed Calderon 31:44 Online apparently.

Joe Rogan 31:45 Really?

Ed Calderon 31:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:46 You can buy a submarine?

Ed Calderon 31:47 You can buy a small submarine for a small amount of money. I think the main part of the submarine ownership is, uh, maintain- maintenance. That was ... The reason we found it is that it wasn't properly maintained, so it, uh-

Joe Rogan 31:59 Sunk?

Ed Calderon 32:00 Yeah, it, uh, it actually ... No, it actually floated. Couldn't sink.

Joe Rogan 32:04 Oh.

Ed Calderon 32:04 And it had a bunch of things, uh, hanging off behind it.

Joe Rogan 32:07 (laughs)

Ed Calderon 32:08 But-

Joe Rogan 32:08 S- uh, submarines scare the shit out of me. You can't see where you're going.

Ed Calderon 32:11 (laughs) Well ...

Joe Rogan 32:13 (coughs)

Ed Calderon 32:13 So there, so, yeah, I've seen submarines, uh, drones, like a squadron of drones with a bunch of loads on it-

Joe Rogan 32:18 Wow.

Ed Calderon 32:19 ... you know, flying.

Joe Rogan 32:19 How heavy can a drone get and still fly?

Ed Calderon 32:22 Uh, times I've seen full like two kilos on it.

Joe Rogan 32:25 Really?

Ed Calderon 32:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:26 Pfff. So just flying the coke over the top.

Ed Calderon 32:30 Yeah. So ... And the only reason we ... I f- I found out about those is one of those crashed, uh, in, uh, in a, uh, at a roadside next to the border fence.

Joe Rogan 32:38 Were you around when that CIA drug plane crashed in Mexico with, uh, tons of cocaine on it?

Ed Calderon 32:46 Y- I, I, I wasn't there, but I, I was aware of that situation.

Joe Rogan 32:49 What the fuck is that about?

Ed Calderon 32:52 I, I mean, realistically, uh, there's, there's a lot of Americans running around in Mexico.

Joe Rogan 32:57 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 32:57 That's, that's, th- that's in-

Joe Rogan 32:58 And there's a lot of cowboys, right?

Ed Calderon 33:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:01 A lot of people say, "Listen, we just make this one run."

Ed Calderon 33:04 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 33:04 They're like, "The government doesn't give a fuck about us."

Ed Calderon 33:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:06 "My pension sucks."

Ed Calderon 33:08 It could be, you know. Uh-

Joe Rogan 33:09 Could be.

Ed Calderon 33:10 You know, every now and then, you know, and this is, this is, this isn't a secret. Every now and then you would see a dude out there that's blond, tall, and has a bunch of tattoos that d- don't belong down there working on the military side of things in Mexico.

Joe Rogan 33:23 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 33:24 Or some dude's doing something some place near there and you, then you would get a call, you know, "Oh, they're, they're fine. Just, you know, just leave them alone," type thing. You know?

Joe Rogan 33:32 (laughs)

Ed Calderon 33:32 So who knows? You know, who knows?

Joe Rogan 33:34 So if it's three out of ten were corrupt where you were, it might be like one out of ten-

Ed Calderon 33:39 (laughs) I have no idea.

Joe Rogan 33:40 ... CIA guys?

Ed Calderon 33:41 I, I mean, uh ...

Joe Rogan 33:43 (coughs)

Ed Calderon 33:43 You know, uh, usually we would get to ... Uh, since I have a pretty good, uh, spoken English, I would get, uh, I would get, I would get sent places for training or for liaison work with some people that would go down there. And I would never know where the hell some of these people were from, you know.

Joe Rogan 33:59 Hmm.

Ed Calderon 33:59 So who knows? You know.

Joe Rogan 34:01 Well, it seems like it's very loose, like there's a lot of room for fuckery.

Ed Calderon 34:06 Uh, uh, Calderon era and Bush administration era, it, there was a lot of, there was a lot of stuff going on. Uh, Obama administration era, after, uh, the whole Fast and the Furious thing, things kind of got ... went dark for a while.

Joe Rogan 34:21 Yeah. Explain the Fa- A lot of people don't know what the Fast and the Furious is.

Ed Calderon 34:24 (coughs)

Joe Rogan 34:24 It was a ... They had sold guns to the cartel under the guise that this is the way they would track the guns.

Ed Calderon 34:32 Yes.

Joe Rogan 34:32 It seems so fishy.

Ed Calderon 34:35 Oh, I, I, I, I, I learned about it from CNN and I ... A few of my friends were killed with some of those guns down there which is ... You know, everybody talks about the, the US agent that was in Mexico was killed by some of these guns, but there was a lot of, you know, Mexican agents and people, civilians killed by these guns as well. So there were very specific types of guns, you know. So like, imagine somebody giving you a shopping list about types of guns you want, right?

Joe Rogan 35:02 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 35:02 Including in these lists were .50 cal Barrett gun- Barrett rifles and FN Five-sevens which are very, uh, it's a, it's a pistol with a very high velocity round that could, goes through, uh, soft armor. Like this, this, this type of stuff that was issued to us. All right? So all of the sudden we're seeing these space pistols (laughs) in the hands of the cartels in very specific parts of the country and we're like ...

Joe Rogan 35:26 But what a preposterous idea that they were gonna sell it to the cartel-

Ed Calderon 35:29 To track 'em.

Joe Rogan 35:30 ... so they could track 'em.

Ed Calderon 35:31 Well-

Joe Rogan 35:31 Like, th- that, that sounds like horse shit to me. That sounds like someone's trying to make money and they said, "Ah, we'll just, uh, say we're selling it to them to track it."

Ed Calderon 35:39 Well, the, the, the, the suspicious part is that all of them went to one specific cartel, the Sinaloa cartel, so ...

Joe Rogan 35:46 It sounds like such horse shit. The fact that ... I mean, who went to jail for that? Eric Holder didn't go to jail.

Ed Calderon 35:51 Oh, he should've. He should've.

Joe Rogan 35:53 He should've.

Ed Calderon 35:54 He should've. I mean, there's, there's blood, you know.

Joe Rogan 35:56 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 35:56 There's ... People died. I, uh, there was a ... And I, I can't say the name, uh, but somewhere in, uh, in Baja, uh, a little girl lost her arm, uh, an agent that was a friend of mine got killed and, uh, the wife got killed with FN Five-sevens that were (laughs) directly related to that, uh, whole thing. Right? So ...

Joe Rogan 36:15 You can go to jail for fucking tax evasion-

Ed Calderon 36:17 Right.

Joe Rogan 36:17 ... but this guy can get away with that?

Ed Calderon 36:19 Uh-

Joe Rogan 36:19 Just the, the, the idea that you would r- run that by people and they would go, "Yeah, good idea."

Ed Calderon 36:25 Yeah, and-

Joe Rogan 36:25 "Give them guns."

Ed Calderon 36:26 And, and to be clear, I don't know the, the realities of that operation on this side. People say it's, uh, that was, it was, uh, it was happening way before. All I know is that when that happened, nobody told us and there was definitely some weird resentment on part of the, the government down there-

Joe Rogan 36:41 That's sick.

Ed Calderon 36:41 ... and some people down there.... as far as, you know. And, and, uh, there were some, like, weird conspiracy theories going on as well down there.

Joe Rogan 36:48 How could there not be?

Ed Calderon 36:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:50 I mean, that seems like it's a p- conspiracy theory right in front of your face.

Ed Calderon 36:53 Yeah, there, there's-

Joe Rogan 36:53 Just the, the fact, "Oh, yeah, we just sold them the drugs-"

Ed Calderon 36:56 (coughs)

Joe Rogan 36:56 "... or the guns so that we could track 'em."

Ed Calderon 36:59 Yeah, the, the main-

Joe Rogan 36:59 You know? "No one's gonna die. It's not, like, a bad idea."

Ed Calderon 37:02 The main thing you would hear is people were-

Joe Rogan 37:04 "Settlement in fast and furious executive privilege lawsuit between DOJ and house." Yeah, this is, this is how it ended, or wrapped up with in the last two weeks, I guess. Yeah.

Ed Calderon 37:13 Really?

Joe Rogan 37:13 It's just some settlement. This is just wrapping up? Yeah, just some settlement on March 28th.

Ed Calderon 37:16 Wow. 'Cause this is from, what, nine years ago, 10 years ago?

Joe Rogan 37:19 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 37:19 At least. And, and the guns are still showing up, so I don't know-

Joe Rogan 37:22 Oh, fuck.

Ed Calderon 37:22 ... how many of them they ... I don't ... I've never s- known what numbers, but I ... Last time, like, we found some, and I, I have, I actually have, uh, images of the ones we found. They were buried in somebody's, uh, backyard inside of a, a, a water barrel. And all of them were obviously US, uh, origin guns. And they're like, "Wow, what do you mean?" Uh, all of them had very specific, uh, accessories on 'em that n- nobody else in the world puts these accessories on their guns except the US, because they're pretty ridiculous accessories, but-

Joe Rogan 37:56 Like what kind of accessories?

Ed Calderon 37:58 (sighs) Um, things that had things, uh, letters on 'em, like, uh, uh, "See you in hell" type things on 'em.

Joe Rogan 38:04 (laughs)

Ed Calderon 38:04 And then punisher-

Joe Rogan 38:05 America.

Ed Calderon 38:05 ... pu- punisher skulls and-

Joe Rogan 38:06 Punisher skulls are the big one, right?

Ed Calderon 38:08 Yeah. Uh, and (coughs) um-

Joe Rogan 38:10 That is hilarious that a cartoon skull has b- from a Marvel comic book has become a gigantic-

Ed Calderon 38:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:15 ... part of spec ops.

Ed Calderon 38:17 Yeah, it is, it is pretty ridiculous. Well, well, the main rumor down there, like, with, conspiracy theory-wise, and you would hear all sorts of things, you know, uh, because down there, there's, there's no such thing as top secret clearance in Mexico, you know? There's like, there's like, "Hey, don't say anything." You know? That's,-

Joe Rogan 38:31 (laughs)

Ed Calderon 38:32 ... that's about it, you know? Uh, so you'd hear crazy, crazy things, uh, uh. Main thing was that the US was planning an invasion, you know? They're, th- th- they're stabilizing the region so they can put boots on the ground.

Joe Rogan 38:43 Oh, Jesus.

Ed Calderon 38:44 You know, that was the, the, like, like a going conspiracy theory going on.

Joe Rogan 38:48 The US invading Mexico?

Ed Calderon 38:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:50 How fucking crazy would that be?

Ed Calderon 38:52 Well, you know, uh, uh, as far as a, uh, a reaction on the side of Mexico, uh, people want ... and this is, again, this is purely speculation, and, and they ... weird rumors that I would hear, uh, people were planning to, to poison drug loads on that side, uh, to create a health crisis in, in the US as a reaction.

Joe Rogan 39:11 Whoa.

Ed Calderon 39:12 Right? And that was pretty ... Like, when I heard it, it's like, "Holy ... Who's talking about this shit?" You know? Uh, and, yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:18 So full out war, almost?

Ed Calderon 39:20 Could be, you know. Uh, and then you would try and see, "Well, who's doing that? You know, the cartels? So the cartels and the government are the same thing?" Like, "What's going on?" You know?

Joe Rogan 39:26 Right, right, right.

Ed Calderon 39:28 And th- again, this is just weird stuff you would hear.

Joe Rogan 39:30 What a cr- this is a crazy perspective, right? That the (coughs) cartels would poison the drugs to punish the Americans for the military invading the country.

Ed Calderon 39:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:41 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 39:42 So to create a, to create a health crisis in the US so they would, you know, have to go back.

Joe Rogan 39:47 Wow.

Ed Calderon 39:48 I mean, uh, the rumors, you know? They're stuff like-

Joe Rogan 39:50 Do they know how many guns they brought over?

Ed Calderon 39:52 Uh, I've heard all sorts of numbers. We never got told a significant number.

Joe Rogan 39:56 Damn (coughs) his gun. Nearly 2,000 firearms were illegally purchased for $1.5 million according to the DOJ Inspector General Report. Fuck. Hundreds of guns were later recovered in United States and Mexico.

Ed Calderon 40:09 Yeah. Ma- uh, .50 cals were ... So the, the, the ... And it's always an escalation with the cartels, right? So the, we, they would get, uh, AK-47s and we would get, uh, German-made GIIIs that were the s- around the same caliber and we could fight back, right?

Joe Rogan 40:26 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 40:27 And then all of our leadership started rolling around in armored vehicles, so let's get .50 cals to, you know, make holes in the, in, in these armored vehicles. So, so it was al- it's always been an escalation, you know? Uh-

Joe Rogan 40:39 Jesus Christ. You guys were getting .50 cals so you could shoot holes in the armored vehicles?

Ed Calderon 40:43 Uh, yeah, those ... So the cartels were getting them first, and then, uh, then we had to get them because they were rolling around in armored vehicles.

Joe Rogan 40:49 (sighs) Wow.

Ed Calderon 40:50 So Mad Max-type armored vehicles.

Joe Rogan 40:52 Wow.

Ed Calderon 40:53 They would make, they would ... First, first they would make 'em, like homemade Mad Max armored vehicles (laughs) . Uh, uh, they, they found a few o- they're online somewhere. One of them was called La Bestia, which is like a giant ... The, they ... All, all that, all that was missing was the guy with the guitar on the back of it, you know, like he's Mad Max.

Joe Rogan 41:09 (laughs)

Ed Calderon 41:10 Um, and they would use these to roll into town and, like, how, how would you fight that, you know?

Joe Rogan 41:14 Right. So you had to get a .50 cal.

Ed Calderon 41:18 Or the, or get the military to shoot them from the sky, you know?

Joe Rogan 41:20 Oh my God.

Ed Calderon 41:21 Yeah, there's a, there's a famous video from somewhere down in Mexico where they shoot a Vulcan, uh, rifle do- uh, down at a cartel member in a car, an armored vehicle. But then you'd see, well, you know, well, uh, uh, checkmate. Checkmate government against the cartel. But then you realize that the cartels, like the new generation cartel in Guadalajara, have actually downed helicopters in Guadalajara, (laughs) military helicopters, because they have anti-aircraft capabilities.

Joe Rogan 41:45 Jesus Christ.

Ed Calderon 41:47 So th- then you, now you're like, "Checkmate, cartels." You know? That's, that's how it is.

Joe Rogan 41:52 Where does this go? Like, where d- where ... I mean, how far does it escalate?

Ed Calderon 41:56 Uh, that's, that's, that's the thing that, you know, you ha- you have to think about. The ... So killing and death is not a- a- at the industrial level, uh, it's, that is being done in Mexico. Not just killing, but, you know, disappearing bodies. Uh, making bodies disappear. Uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was around when they got, uh, the Stew Maker. The Stew Maker was a guy, uh, that worked for the Sinaloa cartel in Tijuana, and he would get rid of bodies using caustic soda, all right? So he would get bodies every night and he had these, basically these industrial level just barrels of it just going-

Joe Rogan 42:35 What is caustic soda?

Ed Calderon 42:37 It's a chemical mixture. Uh, you can get most of the components at a hardware store. Basically it dissolves bodies, you know? He would get, get some of this, uh, mixture. He, he said in interviews, uh, that he got trained by Israelis that ... how to do that. So who knows if that's true or not. Uh, but in the night, he said he would get rid of, you know, dozens of bodies.

Joe Rogan 42:58 (sighs)

Ed Calderon 42:58 And this gets rid of everything, you know (coughs) ? DNA-... bone, everything. So, uh, there's a lot of families in Mexico that are looking for their kids for years, and there's just no way of giving them a body. Um, and the amount of ju- youth that goes into cartel work and just gets, you know, killed there, it's just, it's, uh, whole generations and whole towns, uh, of women and old men. You know? They're out there.

Joe Rogan 43:26 Wow.

Ed Calderon 43:26 Which is... Like, whole generations just gone, you know? All the men in the... gone. I've, I've gone to, gone to a few small towns where, like, they looked at me like... "Youth," you know? "A young man," just like-

Joe Rogan 43:37 So, it's rare.

Ed Calderon 43:38 At some places, it is.

Joe Rogan 43:40 Because the men are all getting killed?

Ed Calderon 43:42 All getting got, got, got in the, uh, you know, in the cartel operations and killed or just recruited, you know, forcefully recruited or, you know, voluntarily recruited, but, you know, whole generations just wiped out.

Joe Rogan 43:53 Now, the people in your line of work.

Ed Calderon 43:55 (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 43:55 The people that are boots on the ground, who really understand the problem, what is the thought in terms of what could be done to fix this?

Ed Calderon 44:04 I think, uh, main thing is any sort of, uh, any sort of plan-

Joe Rogan 44:08 (coughs)

Ed Calderon 44:09 Any sort of plan to fight the cartels, that involves just a six-year plan, won't work. Because that's what, that's what the main problem has been with Mexico. Each president coming-

Joe Rogan 44:18 Is that what your, your presidential, um... Each, e- each term is six years?

Ed Calderon 44:22 E- each president comes in with a six-year plan.

Joe Rogan 44:25 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 44:25 He either does really good or does really bad, and then it gets forgotten and another one comes in and... Uh, there's also definitely an addiction to money, uh, from the US side for car- uh, counter-cartel operations. Uh, there's a, uh, Plan Merida, it's called. It's a international plan where the US pays for, uh, counter-narcotics type operations in, in, in Mexico. So, there is an addiction to that money on the side of the government, so it, uh, there's a lot of interest for that to keep going.

Joe Rogan 44:55 Hmm.

Ed Calderon 44:56 You know?

Joe Rogan 44:56 So, they don't want to resolve the problem as much as they wanna, like-

Ed Calderon 44:58 I- in some ways, you know?

Joe Rogan 45:00 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 45:00 Um, uh, they, they, they refuse to professionalize the police forces down there. Uh, they don't put en- enough effort in that, in that regard. You know, good people that are there that I ve... I know there's some amazing guys down there doing amazing work. Uh, and they get passed up for promotion because they don't, they don't have any... they don't know anybody high level, uh, they don't work for... by their side of the gang, you know?

Joe Rogan 45:24 (coughs)

Ed Calderon 45:24 So, a lot of these people just get cast aside, you know? And, uh, you know, it's kind of hopeless in that, in that regard, you know? A lot of, a lot of the good guys, uh, when they get, uh, when they come out of the job, there's only a few options for them, right? Um, I had, I had options, but a lot of the guys that go out of a job don't, so they get recruited by the cartels, right?

Joe Rogan 45:47 Did you... Did anybody ever attempt to recruit you?

Ed Calderon 45:49 Yeah, yeah. You get offers, you know? You get offers.

Joe Rogan 45:52 What kind of offers?

Ed Calderon 45:53 Um...

Joe Rogan 45:54 (clears throat)

Ed Calderon 45:55 There's a, there's a famous, uh, uh, there's a famous corrido, which is like a Mexican folk s- folk song, uh, called, uh, I'm Going to Talk About My Past, right? And it's a pretty interesting song. It's about a cartel guy that used to work as a cop and, and somebody from his past approaches him and says, "You want..." "Te quieres aventar un jale?" "You wanna, you wanna do a job?" You know? That's what you would get, you know? People within the police forces is asking you, "You wanna, you wanna work on the side?"

Joe Rogan 46:21 Hmm.

Ed Calderon 46:21 You know? That was the entry, you know? And/or, you know, "We'll pay you this much."

Joe Rogan 46:28 But what... What is it like when you say no?

Ed Calderon 46:30 Uh, it's pretty, pretty hard. (laughs) It's, uh, it's not, it's not, it's not specifically saying no, um, but just saying, "I'm not the one to ask for this," and, and you say, you know, "I'm not the one to ask for this. You know what? I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm only in this for the money, uh, for my paycheck, and, you know, I don't wanna risk anything," so...

Joe Rogan 46:49 And how do they leave that?

Ed Calderon 46:51 They don't... They're not, they're not happy, usually, you know? So, you get on a list sometimes, and, you know, you... something that follows you. But it's a much better thing than actually going, getting into one of these guys' pockets.

Joe Rogan 47:01 Hmm.

Ed Calderon 47:02 You know? Once you take something, you're theirs, you know?

Joe Rogan 47:05 Right, like the mob.

Ed Calderon 47:07 Like the mob, you know? A lot of thing-

Joe Rogan 47:09 Same thing.

Ed Calderon 47:09 It's... A lot of these, uh, guys actually took, uh... You know? They, they have... The... A lot of these cartels down there, they kind of venerate the whole gangster era of the US.

Joe Rogan 47:17 Hmm.

Ed Calderon 47:17 It's like a thing.

Joe Rogan 47:18 Oh.

Ed Calderon 47:18 So, it's like a thing they looked up, like, look up to, you know?

Joe Rogan 47:21 Right.

Ed Calderon 47:22 So, like, you see a lot of, uh, gold-plated, uh, Thompson machine guns (laughs) down there-

Joe Rogan 47:26 (laughs)

Ed Calderon 47:26 ... so you take a picture with them.

Joe Rogan 47:28 So, there's a, a, a lack of professionalizing the police force?

Ed Calderon 47:33 Yes, uh-

Joe Rogan 47:33 And that, you think, is a conscious effort?

Ed Calderon 47:35 I think, I think it's, uh... So, you know-

Joe Rogan 47:37 To keep them fairly incompetent?

Ed Calderon 47:39 I think so, you know? A lo- uh, a lot of ways, we- I- w-... We were, we were, uh, as a group, the wor- the group that I used to work with, uh, we... There was a lot of efforts to professionalize us to... like, a car- getting a, getting, that, a career path to actually being, um, you know, a... making it a, a career. There's no... Right now, where I used to work, there's no pension, you know? There's no retiring.

Joe Rogan 48:02 Wow.

Ed Calderon 48:02 Uh, if you wanna get, uh, any sort of a credit for anything, the credit, the credit companies won't, uh, even touch you because you're too high risk, you know?

Joe Rogan 48:11 (laughs) Too high risk 'cause you might get shot?

Ed Calderon 48:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:14 Wow.

Ed Calderon 48:15 Yeah. Well, well, well, it is the most dangerous city on the planet, right?

Joe Rogan 48:18 (laughs)

Ed Calderon 48:19 So, so they, they wouldn't touch us. Um, and realistically, culturally, being a cop in Mexico is, you know... Male porn actor and cop are probably, uh, along the same range as far as-

Joe Rogan 48:34 Really?

Ed Calderon 48:34 ... shame, you know?

Joe Rogan 48:36 Wow.

Ed Calderon 48:37 Yeah, uh, we... Uh, I... We wouldn't eat at any restaurant w- that we didn't know the people, you know, because it would spit in there, there's a lot of-

Joe Rogan 48:44 Really?

Ed Calderon 48:44 Yeah, there's hate. You know, hate or-

Joe Rogan 48:46 Why, why do they hate cops so much?

Ed Calderon 48:48 Uh, they, they... Like, uh, as a, as a culture in Mexico, uh, the police c- police culture of Mexico has earned it, you know? A lot of guys working both sides. A lot of guys being, uh, you know, um... Again, the whole, uh-... you're gonna be a cop because you know somebody in there, and there's people that shouldn't be (laughs) in any sort of public service.

Joe Rogan 49:09 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 49:10 Uh, so there's a lot of corruption, again, a lot of corruption, a lot of, uh, a lot of things done w- wrongly by the cops, a lot of abuses, you know, a lot of human rights violation type situations. So-

Joe Rogan 49:20 (sighs)

Ed Calderon 49:20 ... i- it's earned, you know?

Joe Rogan 49:21 So, the big shift over there in terms of crime (clears throat) , in terms of cartel crime occurs first with September 11th, the tightening of the borders. Then it starts to ramp up after that because of what? Uh...

Ed Calderon 49:37 Uh, the government first started, uh, targeting certain, uh, cartel heads. You cut one head off, hydra, you know?

Joe Rogan 49:44 Yeah, many spawn.

Ed Calderon 49:46 Two heads... Two heads, three heads pop up.

Joe Rogan 49:47 Power vacuum.

Ed Calderon 49:48 Power vacuum.

Joe Rogan 49:49 People fight to try to gain power.

Ed Calderon 49:51 You know, and the cartels realize, "You know what? You know, the... we are standing on the richest drug routes on the planet, so we should probably, you know, start fighting over them." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 50:04 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 50:04 And also, what... also what happened is that, you know, a lot of these people, it's something that peop- Americans kind of don't have- don't get yet. Uh, this isn't a Mexican problem anymore, specifically, as far as the cartel violence going on. A lot of these people had their kids up here in the US in the '90s, a lot of these cartel guys. You know, El Chapo has kids... had kids in the US. And a lot of these people are now coming of age, you know? Um, so cartel influence in the US is a thing you're gonna start seeing if... you're already seeing it, but you're gonna see more of it because a lot of these people are actually American-born, uh, US citizens now working in, in tandem with any sort of interest down there. So-

Joe Rogan 50:48 Oh.

Ed Calderon 50:49 ... this... that's gonna be the new shift, you know? And, um, you know, peop- people are sometimes kind of horrified by some of the stuff that I post up, some of the cases down there.

Joe Rogan 50:57 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 50:57 Uh, people can look up the Los Palillos gang in, in Southern California. They were an actual cartel, uh, group that would kidnap people in the US dressed as federal agents in the US and drag them back down to Mexico. Now, this happened a few... uh, almost, I think, like, nine years back. But this is happening in the U- in the US, you know? It's not something foreign anymore, you know? A lot of people want to think that you w- you can build a wall and keep all that down. Don't get me wrong, bui- build that wall, I have nothing against it. But selling it as a security thing? Uh, it just... I don't... I don't think it makes that much sense. In a lot of... in a lot of the parts where it's... it is up, violence is rampant on both sides.

Joe Rogan 51:42 But if the b- the a- the argument would be that if the wall didn't exist, then it would be-

Ed Calderon 51:47 It's too easy.

Joe Rogan 51:48 ... too easy to come back and forth.

Ed Calderon 51:49 Okay. Um-

Joe Rogan 51:50 At all spots.

Ed Calderon 51:51 (coughs) Um, yeah, it could, could, you know? But again, drug tunnels, uh, catapults-

Joe Rogan 51:56 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 51:57 ... drones, uh-

Joe Rogan 51:57 For drugs.

Ed Calderon 51:58 And, and, and-

Joe Rogan 51:59 But in terms of, like, kidnapping people and a lot of other things that... you cut off at least some of the vehicle routes.

Ed Calderon 52:05 Yeah, I g- yeah, I get it. I get it. And I, and I think, again, I'm not against the wall, you know? Build the wall. Um, uh, there, I interviewed a guy f... uh, I, I do articles for a few magazines, and I interviewed a guy who's a, a, is a coyote, you know, coyote. He moves people from the border. And he said this about the border... because I asked him in the interview about the border wall, and he said, "It's good for business, you know? Uh, you make something seem like it's harder when it isn't, and it's good for business."

Joe Rogan 52:33 Oh, so you say, "Listen, I can't get you over 3,000. It's gonna be five now."

Ed Calderon 52:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:37 It's tighter.

Ed Calderon 52:37 Yeah. Or fly them to Canada, and they walk down, which is... that was his... one of his... one of his new favorite methods, you know?

Joe Rogan 52:44 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 52:45 So-

Joe Rogan 52:46 Northern United States probably got a lot of Mexicans now.

Ed Calderon 52:50 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 52:50 (sighs)

Ed Calderon 52:51 Yeah. (coughs)

Joe Rogan 52:51 The Canada border, border is hilarious. It's a path.

Ed Calderon 52:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:55 It's a carved out 100-yard path. We, we, we p- put pictures of it up the other day. We're like, "Look how hilarious this is, the difference between Mexico and Canada."

Ed Calderon 53:03 So true.

Joe Rogan 53:03 Canada, they make it easy to know where the border is. Like, "Just get across here, eh? You'll be fine."

Ed Calderon 53:09 And there's no Mexicans, you know?

Joe Rogan 53:10 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 53:10 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 53:11 It's really strange.

Ed Calderon 53:12 Well, I mean, it's... the, the, the cr- the amount of creativity and, and problem-solving that goes on, on the, on the criminal side, you know?

Joe Rogan 53:19 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 53:20 Um, uh, the... i- if, if, if your best plan is, is a wall, a, a secure wall, these guys have been working against that best plan for the past 20 years. So they are... they're already way ahead of the curve-

Joe Rogan 53:32 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 53:33 ... you know, in that regard, you know? Uh, there was an interesting time in, uh, drone... and people can look this up. Uh, d- drone technology had a l- had an upsurge in, in innovation in Tijuana out of all places in the world for a time, you know?

Joe Rogan 53:47 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 53:47 Like, why?

Joe Rogan 53:48 That's funny. (laughs)

Ed Calderon 53:50 You know, why?

Joe Rogan 53:50 I wonder. Hmm.

Ed Calderon 53:52 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 53:53 (laughs)

Ed Calderon 53:53 Yeah, hmm. Don't know what they were doing with those.

Joe Rogan 53:54 What could be done to radically curb this?

Ed Calderon 53:59 (sighs) Uh, you know-

Joe Rogan 54:01 Like, if you were the king of the world, you said, "Ed, what are we gonna do?"

Ed Calderon 54:04 Uh, f- first off, legalizing some s- some of the substances would probably help. Uh, that would help a lot. Um, (sighs) that's a pretty good question.

Joe Rogan 54:17 But even some substances that are legal, like fentanyl is essentially legal because you can get a prescription for it. But you're never gonna have, like, fentanyl just over the counter. It's just too deadly.

Ed Calderon 54:30 Uh, you know, another thing that, you know-

Joe Rogan 54:32 (coughs)

Ed Calderon 54:32 ... I think about... and that's a very good question, (laughs) I wish I could answer it, uh-

Joe Rogan 54:35 I think everybody wishes they could answer it.

Ed Calderon 54:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:37 And everyone just sort of l- like, shrugs and-

Ed Calderon 54:39 So, the, the, the cartels aren't just a drug-fueled business.

Joe Rogan 54:44 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 54:44 They also have money that is in property and i- illegitimized businesses. Uh, they work in human trafficking. Like, they ac- you... it used to be you can cross that border and go to the desert and cross it yourself, but now you have to pay a toll. Uh, protection rackets across the... on both sides of the, uh, of the border. Um, sex trafficking, um, p- piracy.... like, like, you name it, they have, they have hands in it, right? So-

Joe Rogan 55:13 So, they just essentially took that drug money and just-

Ed Calderon 55:16 Diversified.

Joe Rogan 55:17 ... created a, a crime business?

Ed Calderon 55:18 They diversified. You know, they've been-

Joe Rogan 55:19 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 55:19 ... diversified for a long time. Like, y- yeah, there was recently two, uh, three, three cartel members from Sinaloa, uh, in Malaysia released, out of all places. So you, th- just think about that. Two Sinaloa cartel guys somewhere in Malaysia got caught somewhere, and now they've been released and, and they got, like, a hero's welcome in Mexico.

Joe Rogan 55:41 They got a hero's welcome?

Ed Calderon 55:42 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:43 Really?

Ed Calderon 55:43 Well, Sinaloa, that, you know, again, Sinaloa is a pretty ... That's, uh, I have this, uh, nickname for Mexico, I call it The Upside Down, you know, uh, because everything's, you know, basically upside down down there.

Joe Rogan 55:53 Right.

Ed Calderon 55:53 And, uh, yeah, these guys, uh, got, uh ... Funny thing is that the Mexican government was involved in their release and then they, you know, sent 'em back and, you know, hero's welcome. What were they doing all the way (laughs) over there in, in that part of the world? Uh, I don't know, you know, diversifying, you know (laughs) business.

Joe Rogan 56:08 (laughs) Diversifying.

Ed Calderon 56:09 (inhales deeply)

Joe Rogan 56:11 So no one has a real plan. Here it goes, "Malaysia pardons three Mexicans on death row." Oh, they were on death row?

Ed Calderon 56:17 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 56:19 Damn.

Ed Calderon 56:19 You wanna talk about a kick-ass corrido, like a folk song-song about you?

Joe Rogan 56:22 Man.

Ed Calderon 56:22 Those guys are probably gonna get an amazing folk song, you know? Um ...

Joe Rogan 56:27 So there's a lot of romanticism connected to the cartel?

Ed Calderon 56:30 Oh, yeah. I mean, it's, uh, it's romanticism, it's religion. There's definitely-

Joe Rogan 56:34 Hm.

Ed Calderon 56:34 ... some, some occultism, uh, involved in a lot of the, uh, higher-ups in these cartels, uh-

Joe Rogan 56:40 I can remember when I found out about the narco music, the, these ... What are those songs called?

Ed Calderon 56:44 Uh, corridos.

Joe Rogan 56:45 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 56:46 The, the, the folk songs. Um, there's a lot of them, you know? There's, uh ... And they're ... A- all of them have a secret language in them sometimes, uh, or, or they're all a history of something that happened. And you pay somebody to, to, to, to, to s- to, to, to make one for you, or somebody makes it for you.

Joe Rogan 57:04 Hm.

Ed Calderon 57:04 And then if you do a, a good corrido song for somebody, uh, then the rivals will send somebody to kill you, you know?

Joe Rogan 57:11 Really?

Ed Calderon 57:11 So, like, even, even the musicians are on either side of the cartel, kind of groupings as well, which is pretty weird, I know, but it's ...

Joe Rogan 57:19 Wow.

Ed Calderon 57:20 Weird.

Joe Rogan 57:20 So, if you're, if you're f- for the wrong cartel, like, if you make a song, you kinda have to, like, go into hiding.

Ed Calderon 57:28 Or, or, or-

Joe Rogan 57:29 Make a good song?

Ed Calderon 57:29 ... or not, or not play any, in any places where the, the rival cartels, you know, territories are.

Joe Rogan 57:34 Oh, Jesus Christ.

Ed Calderon 57:35 (coughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:36 Will they come to your territory to come get you if you're like-

Ed Calderon 57:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:38 Oh.

Ed Calderon 57:39 Yeah. There's a, there's been a few, been a few high-level, uh, singers, Mexican folk singers that got their, you know, killed-

Joe Rogan 57:45 Inhales deeply ]

Ed Calderon 57:46 ... uh, for messing with, uh, girlfriends of cartel members or for singing the wrong song in the wrong place.

Joe Rogan 57:51 Wow.

Ed Calderon 57:51 Uh, so that's in the culture. And, and, and the religious, uh, occultism that the cartels have as well, you know, it's a pretty interesting thing. Um, things like Santa Muerte, the, the, the, the death cult that is kind of i- in different parts of Mexico. It's like a ... Think of a very dark, uh, Freemasonry type thing, right?

Joe Rogan 58:11 Mm.

Ed Calderon 58:12 Certain, certain levels, you have people that are part of the c- uh, part of that cult, from the cops, to the military, to the cartels. It's kind of ... Uh, to, uh, prostitutes, to drug dealers. Uh, it's interesting how y- how tha- that kind of also has an influence on, on, on the way some people go into very risky businesses, like being cops or, or, or cartel guys, and how they wear or they empower themselves by some of these occult iconographies, you know? Like a reaper.

Joe Rogan 58:40 Wow.

Ed Calderon 58:41 Or, or, um, there's t- the- this is the ... The trinity is, uh, uh, Jesus Malverde, which is a, it was a folk, uh, hero from turn of the century Sinaloa. Basically, a bandit that got caught and killed, and he turned into a saint. And now there's a giant church to him in Sinaloa with a bunch of money stuck to the walls and, and, um, pictures of guys in the US with like a F-150, uh, f- a, a truck or a Hummer, like, "Thank you, Malverde. I'm, I'm living the dream now because of you."

Joe Rogan 59:12 Wow.

Ed Calderon 59:13 And two roadside altars with a, with a, uh, statue of the Virgin Mary. And then you look behind her and there's a reaper behind it because it's a, you know, the hidden Santa Muerte, uh, shrine. And they do that to- so the military doesn't destroy him because they have standing orders to destroy these things, which shouldn't be, but, you know, a kind of religious persecution, but they actually do that.

Joe Rogan 59:38 It's so ...

Ed Calderon 59:39 (coughs)

Joe Rogan 59:39 It's so different than the United States.

Ed Calderon 59:42 In, in a, a lot of ways, it is. I mean-

Joe Rogan 59:44 I, I don't think we understand, like, all this stu- like, I, I think the average person has no idea about the songs, uh, no idea about the culture of it all. They have no idea the depth and how deeply it's connected to society down there.

Ed Calderon 59:59 I mean, the death, the death cult worship is ... I think it- you could probably trace it back to the Aztec days, right? So there's definitely ... When you see all these highly gra- highly violent, bloody cartel executions and, and, and things like that, I don't know, I mean, yeah. I, I think there's some sort of genetic memory from that t- those times. Uh, it's not abnormal physically for some of these people to do that type of thing. You know, ripping somebody's heart, uh, next to a tree is a ... Like, there's videos of that stuff out there. I remember getting contacted by people that I knew on this side of the, uh, of, of the border in the US, uh, that were very curious why all these people from the Middle East were looking at all these cartel execution videos. And then a few years later, you had ISIS h- doing some high production execution videos that were-

Joe Rogan 1:00:43 Hm.

Ed Calderon 1:00:43 ... inspired by the cartels, you know?

Joe Rogan 1:00:45 Wow.

Ed Calderon 1:00:46 So-

Joe Rogan 1:00:46 I- isn't that interesting that we don't think about that? We think about, "Oh my God, look at ISIS, they're cutting people's heads off." What have they learned from Mexico which is connected to us by land?

Ed Calderon 1:00:54 It's right down there.

Joe Rogan 1:00:55 You can fucking walk there.

Ed Calderon 1:00:56 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:56 Like (laughs) , you don't have to fly to Afghanistan, you could walk there. It's not in Libya, it's near La Jolla.

Ed Calderon 1:01:02 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:03 You, you just (laughs) ...

Ed Calderon 1:01:05 (laughs) It's ...

Joe Rogan 1:01:05 You go to La Jolla, you see these fucking multimillion dow- dollar estates with this gorgeous view and everyone's driving Ferraris and Porsches.... 20 minutes drive, you're in Tijuana.

Ed Calderon 1:01:16 Yeah. The, the most violent city on the planet right now, so it's-

Joe Rogan 1:01:19 That's so crazy.

Ed Calderon 1:01:21 ... a real thing. Yeah. And then-

Joe Rogan 1:01:21 When I go to San Diego, that's the f-... one of the first things I think, is how, what a juxtaposition, how crazy it is that this is the border to Mexico and it's all military. San Diego is filled with fucking SEALs and rangers and marines and bases and it's just all military down there. So it's so military-influenced and it's right next to the most violent, dangerous city on planet Earth. More than Karachi. More than Pakistan.

Ed Calderon 1:01:49 Uh, uh, we were, uh, as... we were insured by MetLife, and the MetLife agent said, s- said, uh, something along those lines, like, "You're better off going to Afghanistan or Iraq than, you know, working here, basically, numbers-wise." And I was like, "Uh, thank you for that," you know?

Joe Rogan 1:02:05 (laughs)

Ed Calderon 1:02:06 Uh, that felt, uh, that felt like a good pat on the back. Uh-

Joe Rogan 1:02:08 But it seems like they're getting cartel, on cartel crime-

Ed Calderon 1:02:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:12 ... confused with regular person crime.

Ed Calderon 1:02:15 So th- but that's how it always starts, you know?

Joe Rogan 1:02:18 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 1:02:18 It's, uh... usually starts off... and again, this goes back to everything's cyclical down there, that s-... that snake eating its tail.

Joe Rogan 1:02:26 (coughs)

Ed Calderon 1:02:26 So you get cartel on cartel crime, and then they finish each other off and then they realize that, "Well now, now what do we do?" So they start abducting people, extortion, d- for-

Joe Rogan 1:02:34 Just for money? Just-

Ed Calderon 1:02:36 Extortion comes, uh, in- into play, uh, you know, p- protection rackets. (breathes deeply) A cross-hairs, uh, guy, now they're very bold. Uh, now they're at the, uh, party somewhere and somebody looks a bit funny so they come back and they shoot up the whole party. Uh, "I like your daughter. She's pretty hot. I'm gonna steal her and if you do something, I'll kill you and you're, you're never gonna see your daughter again." That's how it starts, you know. That's, that's how it starts kind of growing.

Joe Rogan 1:03:00 Just bold, brazen-

Ed Calderon 1:03:01 Yeah, that's, that's-

Joe Rogan 1:03:02 ... and cruel.

Ed Calderon 1:03:03 That's how you get it, you know?

Joe Rogan 1:03:04 Sociopathic.

Ed Calderon 1:03:05 That's how you get... that's how you get to that point. And then, uh, again, I experienced it back in 2006 era. And I saw it get into all the way to when the whole of the pe- municipal police were, were... they, they... basically the army surrounded the municipal police office of, uh, the pol- uh, the, the police in Tijuana and they took all their guns. And a few of them were taken on a plane ride to Mexico City. And th- there, for a few weeks, there was no armed police in Tijuana, the municipal armed police. Imagine somebody-

Joe Rogan 1:03:35 Wow.

Ed Calderon 1:03:36 ... imagine somebody disarming the whole LIPD, uh, all of the LIPD and just having the army in there instead, you know?

Joe Rogan 1:03:42 Wow.

Ed Calderon 1:03:43 So you would see, you would see these events and then things calming down, you know. The only success story as far as a s-... uh, as far as a city coming back from the brink was Tijuana for... with f-... when all that, uh... like the raging drug war went down. Uh, Lieutenant Colonel Elizalde, the guy that I used to work with, uh, he w- took numbers down, like everybody down in Mexico. He got hired then on to go to Juarez to try and replicate his success. Uh, the only successes were there because he basically treated the problem as a counter-insurgency problem, not a policing problem.

Joe Rogan 1:04:17 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 1:04:18 And he had... he got, uh, nine attempts on his life. The last one, uh, took the use of his legs. And, uh, he's currently, uh, he's current- currently running for mayor of Tijuana, believe it or not.

Joe Rogan 1:04:30 Wow.

Ed Calderon 1:04:30 And he's, uh... he's in a wheelchair, but he's still... I wouldn't wa-... not wanna mess with that guy. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:04:35 Wow.

Ed Calderon 1:04:35 Uh, yeah, we're, we're, uh... in fact, my- m- myself and some members of my family are actually helping out with his campaign. But he's, you know, he's, uh, he, he got, uh... his, uh... one of his campaign offices got shot up, shot up recently. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:04:48 So i- is there any plans or is there any, uh, push to try to treat the entire problem as a counter-insurgency problem-

Ed Calderon 1:04:58 Uh, uh, again-

Joe Rogan 1:04:58 ... to replicate the success that they had in Tijuana?

Ed Calderon 1:05:00 No. It's e-... it's, uh... that was a solution brought in by the right side of the political spectrum in the... in Mexico. So it's, it's n-... a no-go right now because everything's to the left.

Joe Rogan 1:05:14 And this guy just got in office?

Ed Calderon 1:05:16 He's, uh... he's, uh... he's has a few months in, so yeah, he just got into office, so...

Joe Rogan 1:05:20 So you got five and a half more years of this dude?

Ed Calderon 1:05:24 We're in for a ride. That's-

Joe Rogan 1:05:25 Wow.

Ed Calderon 1:05:25 ... that's all I can say.

Joe Rogan 1:05:27 Yeah. Kindness doesn't seem to work when it... you're dealing with cartels, it seems like.

Ed Calderon 1:05:32 No. You, you give them a hand and they'll take your feet. That's, that was... that's a Mexican saying, you know?

Joe Rogan 1:05:36 Oh.

Ed Calderon 1:05:37 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:39 Man. It d-... for you to have been in that business and to sort of be connected to it but outside of it now, it... d- did it s- seem like... does it seem... I mean, it must be incredibly frustrating, but it also must feel futile, like you've wasted time almost 'cause there's no, there's no, no progress is ever going to be made.

Ed Calderon 1:05:59 Uh, I have a, you know, I have a weird experience that I had. I burned about two acres of pot somewhere in Baja, right, uh, towards the end of my career. And then things happened politically, a bunch of shakes a-... shakeups up at the office. I got called in and the director at that... of the institution that I was in at that time was a shady character. And I decided to s-... say, "You know what?" My, my mo-... my mom had just passed away and that kind of affected me a little bit, a lot a-... a lot a bit, you know? And starting a family and stuff like that and, you know, I said, "You know what? This is, this is not worth it." So I left. Quit my job, handed everything in and, um, people were suspicious about why I did it, you know? Like, "You probably found a million dollars somewhere and you're-"

Joe Rogan 1:06:47 Right.

Ed Calderon 1:06:48 "... running our of it." Shit like that, right? So I had to leave in a hurry, you know? Got a few threats.

Joe Rogan 1:06:53 Wow.

Ed Calderon 1:06:53 Uh, gladly I, uh, gladly I had... I, uh... luckily I had some great people on this side of the, uh, of the border, the friendships that I've developed, uh, f- for a long while, um, and they helped me out, you know?I went to Denver about two weeks after I got done with a job and, uh, old lady handed me a special cookie at one of the dispensaries. And I saw all the people walking in, you know, and it's like, "This is, this, is this what I've been, you know-"

Joe Rogan 1:07:22 Right.

Ed Calderon 1:07:23 ... burning and chasing people in the middle of the night and looking at drug planes and violence and all this for, for this lady with a cookie.

Joe Rogan 1:07:32 Now it's a store.

Ed Calderon 1:07:33 It's a st- it's a beautiful store in Denver.

Joe Rogan 1:07:35 There's a store in front of LA, uh, in front of the improv that I have to, I have to put a video up 'cause me and Andrew Santino were there last night making fun of it. I'll send it to you, Jamie, right now 'cause it's so ridiculous. They have shit under glass, like, uh, you're look- you're looking at art pieces.

Ed Calderon 1:07:53 I, I mean, again, um, I don't know why they're still producing pot in Mexico when you guys have it, have it in the stratosphere as far as an art form.

Joe Rogan 1:08:02 I'm gonna send you this right now, Jamie. Yeah. Well, they definitely have it down now.

Ed Calderon 1:08:08 (coughs)

Joe Rogan 1:08:08 But it's just, it shouldn't be illegal in the first place and that's not hurting anybody. I just sent it to you.

Ed Calderon 1:08:14 Um, there's a bunch of, uh, there's a, a large, uh, shamanism and occultism all over Mexico and, and mushrooms-

Joe Rogan 1:08:22 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 1:08:22 ... have been used down there for ce- like forever.

Joe Rogan 1:08:24 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 1:08:25 And, uh, you know, growing up and stuff like that, you would see it and it wasn't... You know, the demonization comes from the conflict around it, not that itself.

Joe Rogan 1:08:34 Mm. Right.

Ed Calderon 1:08:34 You know?

Joe Rogan 1:08:35 Well, there should, should be real demonization when it comes to things like fentanyl to just whack... Look at this. The, turn the volume up so we can see, hear this.

Ed Calderon 1:08:41 People don't understand the state of marijuana in Southern California and some teens- I'm inspecting the crystals, Joe. The crystals. ... they, they leave behind a magnifying glass.

Joe Rogan 1:08:49 (laughs)

Ed Calderon 1:08:49 This is no bullshit. These are all in glass so you can look at the crystals- (laughs) ... because, uh, a lot of these marijuana dorks are like wine dorks or any, any other thing where people really get into it. You take it too far. When you're looking at weed under glass, if Joey Diaz had been here right now, he'd spit in your mouth- Oh, shit. Cock sucker, fuck this shit.

Joe Rogan 1:09:08 (laughs)

Ed Calderon 1:09:08 He'd spit right in your mouth. If you try to have weed under glass, like it's a fine Chardonnay or some nonsense-

Joe Rogan 1:09:14 That's awesome.

Ed Calderon 1:09:15 It's just weed, man. What is it? It's just weed, man. That's all it is. It's just fucking weed. Right. Andrew Santino speaks the truth. It's just weed, man. That's some Antique Roadshow type level stuff.

Joe Rogan 1:09:23 How ridiculous is that? They give you a magnifying glass and they had all these displays with the, "This is a hybrid. This is, uh, an indica/strong hybrid. This is a sativa/strong, sativa dominant." How are you supposed to smell it under th- that glass? Good question.

Ed Calderon 1:09:37 Yeah. That's very-

Joe Rogan 1:09:38 The right, the right stores have a little jar that you can smell through. It's a very good question. Yeah. It's like-

Ed Calderon 1:09:42 We, we would just grab all of it, machetes, and just put it in a big pile and-

Joe Rogan 1:09:45 And just chop it up.

Ed Calderon 1:09:46 ... and look, "Where's the wind coming from? Over there? I'm gonna sit over here."

Joe Rogan 1:09:51 Wow.

Ed Calderon 1:09:51 Yeah. You know, you would get a pass after that. So it was fine.

Joe Rogan 1:09:54 You got to get a little fucked up-

Ed Calderon 1:09:55 Oh.

Joe Rogan 1:09:56 ... burning all that stuff.

Ed Calderon 1:09:57 Of course.

Joe Rogan 1:09:57 Secondhand smoke.

Ed Calderon 1:09:58 It's the peanut butter M&M's, that was my thing.

Joe Rogan 1:10:00 (laughs)

Ed Calderon 1:10:01 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:10:02 W- a- was there a sense of frustration when it was legalized in so many states in the United States?

Ed Calderon 1:10:08 Y- y- uh, in s- in s- in some regard, yes.

Joe Rogan 1:10:10 Like, what are we dying for? What are we fighting for?

Ed Calderon 1:10:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:12 Why have we lost brothers?

Ed Calderon 1:10:13 Exactly. Uh, you know, uh, you know, a lot of people were killed over finding tons of pot somewhere and now it's fine.

Joe Rogan 1:10:22 Yeah. Now you could just buy it.

Ed Calderon 1:10:23 And it's... I mean, but, you know, the frustration isn't, isn't with the pot itself. Again, it's, it's, it's what happens around, the politics around it, the amount of money invested into fighting it and-

Joe Rogan 1:10:34 Mm.

Ed Calderon 1:10:35 ... and, and the violence and interest around it. But the plant itself, a- again, my, my mom used to grow it and put it in a jar with alcohol and rub it on her muscles, you know? And, you know, it's a thing, you know. It's, it's always, it's, it's always been there.

Joe Rogan 1:10:50 Yeah.

Ed Calderon 1:10:50 And all of a sudden, uh, you have m- full a- full auto machine guns protecting it in a grow somewhere and full auto machine guns in other place, people coming in there to burn it because you shouldn't be selling it.

Joe Rogan 1:11:03 (sighs)

Ed Calderon 1:11:03 It's just... While, while I was doing it, uh, you know, my mindset was, these are bad people. When I, when I started, you know?

Joe Rogan 1:11:11 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 1:11:11 These are bad people that are d- drugs. And later on I was like, "It's just a f- it's just a pl- it's just a plant, a stinky plant."

Joe Rogan 1:11:19 (laughs)

Ed Calderon 1:11:20 Some people are smoking it." And never, never in my life did I encounter a hyped up, you know, pothead that wanted to fight, you know?

Joe Rogan 1:11:26 (laughs)

Ed Calderon 1:11:26 So I was like, they should m- they should make this exclusive. Everybody would calm down. D- difference... Coke is different, meth is different. But-

Joe Rogan 1:11:32 Of course.

Ed Calderon 1:11:33 But, you know, pot...

Joe Rogan 1:11:35 When you were talking about how everyone with a six-year plan, it's not gonna work, it's never gonna work.

Ed Calderon 1:11:40 (coughs)

Joe Rogan 1:11:40 It seems to me that with the romanticism of the cults and the way that it's ingrained in a culture and that they, they look at these people like folk heroes, that this is a generational problem.

Ed Calderon 1:11:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:53 Like, it seems like, like a many generations before it changes and calms down. And I, I would struggle to s- to think of what would be the thing that could cause it to calm down. Like, what, what could be the catalyst for change?

Ed Calderon 1:12:05 Yeah. A- a- and, and more so than things kind of, uh... Things are getting even more complicated now with, uh, mi- migrant caravans going through, through Mexico now. And now you have all these di- displaced, uh, people from South America now adding onto the problem-

Joe Rogan 1:12:22 Mm.

Ed Calderon 1:12:22 ... of an already existing-

Joe Rogan 1:12:23 How big is the caravan? We hear about it on the news, like, from Fox News talks about it, like, f- scare tactics.

Ed Calderon 1:12:29 Okay. So, um, I was... I don't know, and people can fact check me on this, but I was probably one of the first ones to publicly say that they were going to go, the first caravan is gonna go straight to Tijuana. Everybody was, "No, they're not gonna go straight to Tijuana." They're, that's just too far off. They should just go to Texas. And they went straight to Tijuana and, you know, there, they were about 3000 strong when they got there and maybe a bit more. And, you know, uh, a bunch of memes came up because of it. Uh, as they were going through all of Mexico, most of the people were pretty welcoming because they weren't gonna stay, you know? They were like, you know-

Joe Rogan 1:13:07 Mm-hmm.

Ed Calderon 1:13:07 ... here's a water... Like, when somebody's doing a jog, a run-

Joe Rogan 1:13:09 Right.

Ed Calderon 1:13:10 ... marathon, they would hand them a bottle, water bottle and, you know, good riddance. They finally got to TJ and TJ is very conservative.... like, politically, it's a very conservative place. And they met with a wall of protestors wearing "Make Tijuana Great Again" hats.

Joe Rogan 1:13:25 No.

Ed Calderon 1:13:26 Yes. Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:13:27 No.

Ed Calderon 1:13:28 Yes. Yes. And I may or may not have produced a few of those myself in Tijuana.

Joe Rogan 1:13:33 (laughs)

Ed Calderon 1:13:34 Uh, and all of a sudden you see the mayor of Tijuana with a "Make Tijuana Great Again" hat on his head.

Joe Rogan 1:13:40 Wow.

Ed Calderon 1:13:40 And the reason why they were so adverse to these guys coming in, is that, uh, they were, a lot of them, gang members, you know, 14th Street gang members. The reason why they didn't go the other route is because they would have to have crossed Los Zetas territory, which is a cartel that has problems with the 14th gang. So they were curtailing that.

Joe Rogan 1:14:00 Mm.

Ed Calderon 1:14:01 They were complaining about the food they were getting at the shelters.

Joe Rogan 1:14:03 (laughs)

Ed Calderon 1:14:04 This is a third world country feeding third world migrants, and we were feeding them, uh, tortillas and beans. And there's a famous lady that was like, "I'm not gonna eat these. This is pig." You know, it was pig meat. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:14:15 Look at this. Make Tijuana great again.

Ed Calderon 1:14:17 So-

Joe Rogan 1:14:18 (laughs)

Ed Calderon 1:14:18 ... it's trolling on another level.

Joe Rogan 1:14:20 Wow.

Ed Calderon 1:14:20 Uh, so, um, these guys came in, but people started calling me- the, the people from Tijuana racist, the brown people from Tijuana racist against other brown people.

Joe Rogan 1:14:29 Wow.

Ed Calderon 1:14:29 And you would see some of the, the, uh, you know, some of the news agencies from the US come down and volunteer groups, hippies, you know,