Ed Calderon: Mexican Drug Cartels | Lex Fridman Podcast #346

... when it's quiet, that's when it hits you. That's what, uh, I think that's what a lot of people experience when they come back from a conflict zone. You know, the, uh, everything that was life and death, everything that mattered, all the noise, all the chaos, all the people that are around you that would die for you, kill for you, you would kill for them, uh, all the millions of dollars worth of equipment and stuff like that you were responsible for, now all- are all gone and it's just you.

The following is a conversation with Ed Calderon, a security specialist who has worked for many years on counter-narcotics and organized crime investigation in the northern border region of Mexico. I highly recommend you follow the writing and courses on his Patreon and website, edsmanifesto.com. This is the Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, and now, dear friends, here's Ed Calderon. What does your experience in counter-narcotics, investigating the Mexican drug cartel teach you about human nature?

Well, I mean, first off, anybody can be got. Uh, anybody can be corrupted. Uh, you know, you, you work in that field and you, you... Realistically, the training we got and profiling and investigation and stuff li- stuff like that was basically you learn from the older guys there, and some of those guys were already corrupted from the, from the start. So, trust no one. I remember seeing that X-Files episode where that was stated. You quickly learn that even if you are somebody that, uh, to your own, uh, mind appears incorruptible, you know, small changes happen around you, wheels get greased, money gets put in front of you and/or things get threatened, like your life. And, uh, sometimes a payment for some of this corruption is just to continue on living. You encounter people that seem incorruptible that, uh, go through FBI background checks, that go through all of the, uh, the sec- the security measures that all of us were put throu- through. Um, you know, polygraph tests, and then later on, you know, it turns out they were on the take, or they became somebody that was corrupted. I think what I found out is that anybody, at any level, uh, they could be a very strong, hard-to-get person right now, but, uh, people get corrupted through their families, uh, through need. Uh, Mexico is a place where a lot of, uh, instability occurs. Um, so financial needs, health.

So a crack could form through the wall of integrity and then over time, it seeps in somehow.

Mexico has a culture of corruption. Like, you know, you have your kid that goes to school, at public school, and you want him to be in the morning, not in the afternoon school, uh, time period. So, you go off and, uh, grease the wheels with the, uh, director of the school. People hearing this in Mexico will nod their heads, because this is something that happens from early on. So there's systemic thi- there's a systemic and cultural thing to it, you know, as far as getting around rules. And this k- happens because, you know, the people are in charge in Mexico, the government, is, you know... Their, their tandem amount is trust, uh, between criminals and the cartels down there for a lot of the culture. So people don't trust the government, and much less, uh, criminality, so.