I haven’t even read this and dropped it a mega like. It looks like an article in a nice Sunday supplement magazine or something. Looks amazing.
1 Like
Please keep posting more of this, it’s genuinely fascinating.
1 Like
Ah man, cheers cereal.
This shit is fascinating.
Cool. I think when I first got really interested in this was after seeing Cartel Land in 2015 (I can’t find a free stream of this right now). Things have changed a lot since then, and it’s become way more sophisticated and complex. The new president of Mexico has only worsened the situation, and added to that, Biden’s more humane immigration policies are making things worse too (because the cartels run human trafficking and right now there’s a huge surge to get the border because of the relaxation of policies).
I can’t stress enough how insane the CJNG guys are though - and they’re sort of revered by many young guys who have no other opportunities - not dissimilar to the yoof here getting caught up in dealing, or more extremely, joining extremist religious groups. Many of the guys leading CJNG actually are ex-military but they recruit or more often force young guys to join. If you don’t join they’ll kill you. Simple as that. They create catchy tik-tok and insta compilations like this one. TBF this one is probably not actually their creating, but instead a compilation made by a paisano - a somewhat derogatory term used by Mexicans for a Mexican who lives in the US but who latches onto his ancestral ‘culture’. I have a fair few insta handles for their sicarios, but I won’t post here for obvious reasons. Also, it helps that my insta is fairly anonymous anyway so they’re not as cautious and I assume that they think I’m either a bot or someone who might actually be part of their network (they often change handles from week to week and so they expect others in their circles to do the same). Added to that, if they saw you’re a skateboarder in the UK they realistically won’t add you. Off the top of my head, one which is ‘tame’ and not closed off is aguaje50 (mods remove if you wish, I’ll remove it later too anyway). They only really post status updates (stories?) rather than posts but I believe there’s one story from a couple of weeks ago which is up. The one from aguaje50 from yesterday doesn’t appear to be up anymore, but it’s mainly him cruising into towns with his crew, brandishing machine guns and whatnot. The purpose is essentially to say to other cartels “we’re here now”.
This lady, Mariana von Zeller from Nat Geo is one of the only journalists they’ll work with for some reason. This channel has short videos depicting what’s going on from day to day offering a round-up of the bigger stories. He’s a journalist based in Mexico but he seems to be more like someone who kind of embraces it more than anything else.
Vice actually have pretty informative documentaries on this stuff. This one actually gives you a little insight into the avocado story. Actually, just looking here, Vice has shit loads of stuff about them.
If you turn on the translated subtitles this one provides quite an insight about El Mencho, leader of CJNG.
I also lurk some forums related to it, and of course the infamous ‘dump’ for the cartels themselves, El Narco Blog.
Happy to post more, but it should be also noted there’s an increasing presence of Chinese criminal networks present in Mexico. Without China, fentanyl doesn’t really exist, but also without them, the pre-cursors for methamphetamine wouldn’t be there either.
Final edit - just came across this article which offers a similar but much more comprehensive account to what I’ve done
7 Likes
Legend, thanks. Will get through all that later tonight.
This is fucking awesome. I want to find something to get interested in like you have. So rad
1 Like
Maybe just start a cartel.
Forum business plan thread?
4 Likes
There’s enough smart people on this forum to make a success of something. (Something legit obviously)
Nothing to do with skateboarding if you want to make any money.
3 Likes
I dunno. I’ve got idea for an app that’ll tell you how high you can ollie.
9 Likes
Going through the forms for my sons new nursery and they have a lost child policy. It doesn’t fill me with a lot of confidence that.
3 Likes
Might go for the pink one.
2 Likes
Wouldnt worry too much, my mrs was a teacher so had to write kidnap/terrorism into risk assessments and virtually none of the kids she looked after ever got kidnapped
2 Likes
Oh no Jill Dando saying it just makes it worse.
2 Likes
7 Likes
I was thinking about this last night and I reckon we have enough talent to collectively make a film.
Forum meet up in Cannes.
2 Likes
3 Likes
