Kingdom of Shadows (2015) Movie Script
1
[tense music]
- All right.
[sighs]
- It's recording.
- Speeding.
[indistinct chatter]
-[speaking Spanish]
- We're getting tough on drugs,
and we mean business.
For those who are thinking
of using drugs, we say stop.
And to those who are pushing
drugs, we say beware.
- Searches at the border
crossing points
were the main method used
in keeping drugs
and other unwanted materials
out of the United States.
- For all of the big amount
of drug busts,
there's barely a dent
in the multi billion dollar flow
of cocaine and heroin
into the United States.
- If you're offered drugs,
you'll know what to do.
You'll have the courage to
stand up for what you believe
and say "no."
[sombre music]
- I grew up along the border.
I knew how to talk the game.
I knew, you know,
how the game was played.
The town where I grew up,
it was a natural staging
ground for the Juarez Cartel,
for the drugs that crossed.
At that time,
a vast majority of the cocaine
that was coming into the country
was going
through that neighborhood.
[buzzing]
I remember going to a party
during high school.
It must have been
my sophomore, junior year.
We went to these brothers' house
that we used to hang out with.
One of the brothers says,
"Hey, you guys want to
see something cool?"
I'm like, "Yeah."
We go into the garage, and he
opens up one of the coolers,
and it was full
of bricks of cocaine.
I mean up to the top.
There's always a lot
of temptation where there is
a lot of poverty
and a lot of struggle.
A lot of us
fell into that temptation.
It was only natural.
-[speaking Spanish]
Ciento cuatro punto uno
- Norteo y mas
[upbeat Latin music]
- You can't even describe Texas
without including Mexico.
That's what a lot of people
fail to realize.
It's everything, from the way
we speak, the food we eat.
It's just part
of the culture here,
part of the fabric
of this country.
I personally
was not a big-time dealer.
Most of the time,
the loads I smuggled
were in the 200-pound range.
I did buy
from some small-time growers
up in the mountains of Mexico.
And I also bought from very
big, powerful organizations
that primarily operated
on the border.
I was caught up in it.
I was a willful participant,
and I jumped into it headfirst.
- In 2008 and 2009,
we started hearing
from local organizations
in Mexico
that people were being taken,
sometimes by police or soldiers,
sometimes just by armed groups.
The patterns that
we eventually realized
made up the worst crisis
in disappearance
that we had seen in the region
in decades.
The only other precedence we had
for disappearances
on a mass scale
were under the dictatorships
of Pinochet
and also in the dictatorship
in Argentina.
One of the places that we
were getting the most reports
was Monterrey, and
those reports were coming to us
in large part from a small
organization run by a nun.
The nun was Consuelo.
And they were the ones
that were with the families
when they were going
to report the cases
at a time when reporting cases
could get you disappeared.
[phone ringing]
- My life has been impacted
by the narco
ever since I can remember.
For me,
it was just a way of life.
It wasn't anything
out of the ordinary.
People in Socorro
had just immigrated
into the United States.
We really didn't have
any established roots.
The Juarez Cartel used that as
an advantage where they could
reach out to a family member
in Mexico and say,
"Hey, you know, we want to use
your cousin's house
as a staging ground."
Your friends that decided
to get into illegal activity
to try to make ends meet,
you would see them
from one year to the next,
actually from one month
to the next,
have all sons of money
and all sorts of cars
and vehicles.
At the time that
I was growing up as a teenager,
we didn't believe that there was
a lot of opportunity outside,
you know, in the outside world.
Socorro was it, and if somebody
was offering you money,
you know, why not?
He's doing it.
Why shouldn't I do it?
[gentle music]
What are the totals so far?
- There's over 1,000 pounds
of marijuana seized.
They'll probably indict, like,
about ten people later.
- I'm the Assistant
Special Agent in Charge
for Homeland Security
here in El Paso.
I run the Narcotics divisions,
and I also run the Intelligence.
Can you come to my office
for a second?
I was involved in
some high-profile cases that,
had it not been for us
being able to infiltrate
a certain organization,
we would never be able to
really dismantle entire cells.
Yeah, we could do
two or three arrests
and take a couple
of middle individuals off,
but if you truly wanted to know
how the cartels operate
and-and who was running,
who was, you know-
how the... the cartels
were being shapen up,
both in Mexico and here,
you really needed
an undercover in there.
What was appealing was the fact
that not everybody can do it.
Not everybody is effective.
In undercover work,
it's just you and your mind.
You really have
to rely on your smarts.
You have to rely
on thinking on your feet.
When you're dealing with
these individuals, you know,
you would know that, hey,
this guy is Juarez Cartel
or this guy is Sinaloa Cartel,
and this guy is responsible
for murders in Mexico.
You're walking a thin line
'cause you're trying
to convince that guy
that you're as heavy as he is.
And so its almost like
a dance that, you know,
he's telling you
how badass he is,
and he means it
because he's done it,
and you're countering
right back at him like,
"Hey, you're not
impressing me, man.
This is not my first job."
- From about two,
three weeks ago,
we were trying to do
the 15 pounds of meth.
That confidential source
told us that Delgado
is looking to sell
5 keys of meth,
up to 15 pounds, but obviously
that won't happen.
We're going to
take him down today.
- What's our preferred scenario?
As soon as you guys get flashed
with the drugs,
you guys are gonna
give the bust signal?
- As soon as I get
the merchandise,
I'm gonna give it to Juan,
and I'm gonna tell him,
"Cut it to see
if it's the real dope," right?
As soon as that's it, bro,
that's gonna be the signal.
- There's always
the potential for the rip,
especially if they're
not really asking for a flash.
You know what I mean?
And by the same token,
they might be thinking
the same thing.
You know, that you guys are
going to rip them off,
so they might be, you know-
Hey, you guys know
what you're doing,
so just be careful.
Did I ever dream that I would
be running a division? No.
I felt like, you know, I'll be
able to make a difference,
catch a few loads
of marijuana, cocaine,
and be a successful
law enforcement agent.
I just kind of fell
into the covertness
of federal law enforcement,
into the undercover of it.
And a lot of it
has to do with the fact
that I was from Socorro.
[upbeat Latin music]
[dog barking]
- I'm being slow.
- Yeah, I gotta clean
this cloth too.
I first met Don,
he was kind of skinny
at that point.
He's kind of ruggedly handsome,
I think.
You didn't eat those potatoes.
When we started going out,
I learned he was
a marijuana smuggler,
planeloads of it.
He was pretty forthcoming
about the different methods
that they used
to bring stuff back and forth.
He was an outlaw back then.
' [grunts]
I had struggled trying to
make a living in agriculture.
Not here to hurt you.
There is virtually no farmer
that owns land
through conventional means
that isn't in debt
to the bank and slave to 'em.
I owed the production credit
association $800,000
at 14% interest.
It was a struggle.
So I decided to try to go to
Mexico and buy some marijuana.
I walked across the river
and loaded it
into the back of a Suburban,
and I successfully smuggled
my first load.
It was terribly amateurish,
but I got away with it.
I took that load
to a man in Plainview, Texas,
and I sold all of it
in a matter of hours.
One big sack, about 600 a pound.
To me at the time,
that was a lot of money.
So it just became
part of the routine.
About every two weeks do a load.
I would get up, go down
to the river real early.
There was less surveillance,
and most people are about
halfway asleep at that time.
You know,
they don't notice things.
That's when I would come out
and then drive to the city,
drop stuff off,
pick up money
from the previous load,
and head home
and go back to work.
I was not an employee
of anybody down there.
I dealt with rival factions,
and that's very much against
the norm of what goes on today.
You would not be allowed
to do that today.
I'd been buried down
into the organization so far
that I didn't even have
a clue where I...
You know, where I fit
in this thing.
And there was a multinational,
international business going on,
and I was just
a little cog in the wheel.
- Rough justice in
the Mexican City of Monterrey.
The two corpses found hanging
were, according to local media,
members of 21 drugs cartel.
- I actually spent some time
in the Middle East.
You get danger pay.
You get armored vehicles.
You would get escorts.
You know, and it's considered
a danger post,
but I actually felt safer
in the Middle East
than I did in Monterrey.
I was assigned
to the U.S. consulate
in Monterrey.
We were investigating
high-level members
of the Gulf Cartel
and high-level members
of the Zetas.
The difference between the Zetas
and your traditional cartels
is that the Zetas,
they don't follow
any sort of rules.
The majority of the
high-ranking cartel members,
they grew up in the drug game.
Their father was
a cartel member.
Their grandfather
was a cartel member.
All these individuals
know the rules.
You don't kill anybody
unless you're absolutely sure
that they're either
a source, a snitch,
or they're a rival cartel
that needs to be taken care of.
You would never see just mass
killings of innocent people.
It was targeted.
- I've called it a game changer
when the Zetas got
into the dope game.
The Zetas were
a group of military
that were specially trained
to go after the cartels,
ultimately as a group
defected from the military
and offered their services
to the Gulf Cartel.
You give them
a little bit of power,
you know, you give them
unlimited weapons,
and they're military.
If you hit the military,
what do they do?
They strike back,
and so a lot of these guys,
they have that mentality
where, you know,
we don't care who you are.
You know,
we're gonna go after you.
These guys don't have that-
those unwritten rules
engraved in their head.
[gunfire]
- Move!
- We could almost feel
the tension building.
They would try
to intimidate us, you know.
They would follow us.
They would do surveillance
on the consulate
to the point where they shot
at the consulate
and threw a grenade.
[gunfire]
Back in the day,
that was unheard of.
[exhales deeply]
- When I first involved
in the marijuana business,
nobody used weapons.
You loaned somebody a product,
and they came back and paid you.
There was no fear that these
guys were going to shoot you
or come steal your stuff.
And all of a sudden,
everybody is carrying a gun,
and you couldn't trust anybody.
The drug trade changed.
- This is you as a young man?
- Yeah, that's me.
- Man, I wouldn't
have recognized you.
You used to wear
tejano too, huh?
- Yeah.
Used to wear...
- You don't do that any more.
You gave up the-
- When my dad-l was gonna go
visit him in Big Spring.
- Man, he looks young there,
doesn't he?
- I first remember seeing
Don in Piedritas.
He stood out
because this is Mexico,
and all of a sudden you hear-
you see a gringo.
This is towards the end.
- Yeah.
- One of his last pictures.
When you're
in the drug business,
you can't trust anyone.
That's one of the main reasons
why you bring in family,
because you assume
that you can trust family.
My dad found that trust in Don.
It's something
that's beyond friendship.
- One day, he decided
to come look me up.
His name was Oscar Cabello.
He told me that
he could supply my needs.
[laughter]
- He was like a brother to me.
You look at somebody
occasionally,
and you just see somebody
that you connect with
right away.
He was not violent.
Didn't have to worry that
he was gonna come threaten me
or something like that.
And that was the beginning
of a fairly long relationship
that we shared.
- Oscar, he usually had
some really potent marijuana.
It was all packaged the same.
It was all high quality.
This stuff was major production.
Oscar pretty much
controlled the river
in the state of Coahuila.
He was a big player.
I talked to Oscar
about arranging a meeting
with his supplier,
and it turned out
that man was Amado Carrillo.
I asked Oscar, I said,
"Well, who's his boss?"
And Oscar said,
"He doesn't have a boss.
He is the boss."
I had a hard time
believing that, you know?
He was a young man,
a whole lot like myself,
kind of a rural background.
I learned later
that he is probably
the largest drug dealer
that ever lived.
At one time, he controlled
the majority of all the cocaine
coming into the United States.
We snorted some coke together
and bullshitted,
and then Amado and Oscar left.
A few hours later, there was
a real loud knock on the door.
They slammed it open, and
there was a group of commandos
with sub-machine guns.
Amado was probably testing us
to make sure we weren't agents.
And then they disappeared
as fast as they had come.
- Back in the day,
Amado Carrillo Fuentes
was in Juarez
right across the border.
The Juarez Cartel
was at its heyday.
[tense music]
There was times that we knew
that El Seor was in Socorro.
They would throw lavish parties
out in ranch houses
in the outskirts of Socorro.
And, you know, I remember
going to a couple of them,
not knowing that we were
probably in close vicinity
to the top levels of the cartel.
- I guess what we heard
is what ended up being true,
that this guy was going to be
the biggest drug baron.
He went on to become one
of the biggest in the history,
if not the biggest.
He brought the Mexican cartels
and the Mexican drug lords
into the forefront.
Before they were just used
as mules
from the cocaine that
was coming in from Colombia,
when the Colombians were really
the strong cartels
in the world.
It's really hard to smuggle
anything from South America
if it doesn't go through Mexico.
He established
that no Colombian cocaine
was gonna pass through Mexico
for a certain amount of time,
and instead of just being mules,
they actually
became the gatekeepers.
They became the powerful cartel.
There was a famous saying
that he would say,
it was that,
"Todos estamos comiendo."
Everybody's eating.
There's no sense in us
warring against each other.
We're all making money.
We're all being stable.
So there was no need
for fighting.
The community knew
who the plaza boss was.
They knew that
their government was corrupt,
but they were willing
to put up with that
because everything was peaceful.
I really feel that
the Mexican community,
they long for the days when
there was one strong cartel.
- When my parents
first arrived in El Paso,
I can't even imagine
just the sacrifice
that they went through.
They had left their ranch
where they had been working
in the family ranch in Sonora,
and they wanted to make
a better life
for their children.
- My dad crossed the river.
He folded up his pants,
took off
his shoes and his socks,
holding them in his hand,
and he crossed the river,
got into the United States,
and as he's sitting down
putting on his-
his pants and shoes
to-to wait for somebody
to pick him up,
you know, outcomes
a Border Patrol agent.
In that split second,
he made a decision that
ultimately changed our lives,
because he said, "If I allow
this guy to arrest me,
"I'm gonna be detained,
I'm not gonna have a job,
my children aren't gonna
be able to immigrate."
So he took off running.
Male announcer:
In the twilight hours
when most of the country
is sleeping,
we're out there,
guarding our borders,
protecting the homeland.
[indistinct radio chatter]
- 10-4, air support and
ground units are on the way.
Announcer The Border Patrol,
we protect America.
Are you up to the challenge?
[applause]
- It took a lot for me to decide
to really join
the Border Patrol.
It took a lot
for me to tell my dad.
Quite frankly, I had rehearsed
my speech over and over,
saying this is how
I'm gonna convince him.
You know, "Dad, you know, it's
a good opportunity for me, Dad."
To my astonishment,
he sat back for a few seconds,
and then he just told me,
"You know what?
"They need people like you.
"The people that are coming
here just to make a living,
"just like we did,
the only thing I can tell you
is treat them with respect,
and I know you will."
Now, you know,
and this is his words, like,
"Now the drug dealers
and, yeah, those guys,
go after them 110%."
[gentle music]
What really kicked off
my undercover career
in federal law enforcement
was picking up phones
from loads that we had
intercepted at the border.
Rather than just let
the phone sit there, you know,
they would start calling
and say, "Hey, did you make it?
And I would actually talk
to the individual
we had just arrested,
and I would just talk to him
to see how he would talk,
and I would try to mimic
how he would talk.
I would ask him like,
"Hey, you know, where you from?
Where you going? What-"
And this is all within,
you know, five minutes of us
taking-taking-
you know, taking the load down.
The guy would call.
I'd be like, "Dnde ests?"
And they'd be like,
"Well, where are you?"
And I'd hit him back like,
"Well, you know, I got nervous.
"You know, the Border Patrol
was behind me,
but I was able to get away.
But where are you guys at?"
So I would show up,
and then I would start calling,
and I'd see who was the ones
that are answering the phone,
and we would arrest that load,
and then we would play
with those phones.
At that time, Border Patrol
had what they called
the anti-smuggling unit.
It was special agents
within the Border Patrol.
After, like,
six or seven successful cases
where they said, "Hey,
it was this guy that started
getting on the phone
that led us to"-
They were like, "You know, hey,
you wanna come on a detail
and work with us?"
And I was like, "Of course."
I was still a trainee,
and that was unheard of
at that time.
From that point on, that's
basically what my career was,
just working undercover.
[whistle blowing,
soldiers chanting]
- [speaking Spanish]
[speaking Spanish]
[gunfire]
- [speaking Spanish] [gunfire]
- [speaking Spanish] [gunfire]
-[speaking Spanish]
-[speaking Spanish]
- It's very common in Mexico
for elected officials
to make a major part
of their platform
overhauling their police force,
and with good reason,
because the police forces
that they inherit are corrupt.
The missing piece is that
you can train police force
and give them all
the resources that they need
and look for the best people,
but if you don't
hold them accountable
when they commit crimes
or they're corrupt
or they commit abuses,
you're never gonna build
a trustworthy police force.
There are many cases where
we have been able to document
very strong evidence that
shows that these disappearances
were carried out by security
forces, by soldiers and police.
Even in those cases,
they don't do anything.
The most that will happen to you
is that you might lose your job,
you know?
If you disappear someone
or you kill someone,
you're not gonna be prosecuted.
[elevator bell dings]
[all chanting in Spanish]
[chanting continues]
- The drug business can't be
looked at through a microscope.
You need to look at it as
a picture of a larger puzzle.
The real underlying cause
is poverty.
Fact is, you can't make money
subsistence farming in Mexico.
They're born
into a certain station in life,
and they can't get out of it.
And if they're born poor,
they're gonna die poor.
That's just the way it is.
Oscar Cabello
was the guy in charge,
but in all honesty,
everybody was involved.
The whole town
derived an income from him
and from the business.
They helped him.
- There was a sense of pride
that I heard, you know.
"Your father was this,"
"Your father was that."
And naturally, I wanted
to follow in his footsteps.
I started at the age of 15.
You know of the dangers,
the risks,
but it's not something
that you're constantly
thinking about.
- There wasn't such a thing
as quitting from my station.
It was very, very difficult
to get out of it.
Dead or prison.
That was
the only two exits for me.
- The airplane
has become the major vehicle
used by smugglers to bring
contraband into the U.S.
- Oscar fronted me
about 200 pounds of marijuana.
We loaded the plane,
and we took off
for the United States.
As we broke out
of the cloud cover,
we encountered a plane
coming directly towards us,
almost like driving
by the freeway.
They would pull up and fly up,
right up in front of our prop.
- The Customs Bureau
has set up
an aerial interdiction program
using military type aircraft,
searching the sky
for any aircraft
not on a regular flight plan.
- The prop wash would propel us
up into the air,
and then when you hit that
down-burst, the plane would fall.
It would fall a lot.
And it was extremely scary.
These guys began to motion
for us to go down
or for us to pick up the radio.
As we stopped, people with arms
appeared from
all over the place.
Even the security guard
at the airport
came outwith his shotgun.
And I still had
a seat-belt on,
and there was a guy
with a 12-gauge shotgun
pointed at my face.
And he could not see
what I was doing with my hands.
Every time that I would
go to lower my hands
to undo the seat-belt,
I'd see this guy tightening up
on that trigger.
Finally I yelled loud enough
to these guys.
And as I came across
the pilot's seat,
they grabbed me,
and my first step back
onto American soil was
face first into the tarmac of-
of an airport.
I barely got in before the
minimum mandatory sentencing
were issued to the judges that
took away their discretion.
It was after
I got into the jail,
and they began
to describe this stuff
that I realized
how fortunate I was,
because some of the people
that were busted right after me,
they would have been facing
a 20-year sentence
without any possibility of
them-you know, mitigation.
I was lucky to have been caught
when I was caught.
I ended up getting paroled
for having completed five years.
, Okay-
Okay.
A lot of the undercover work
that we did along here
was transportation.
I had a commercial
driver's license.
I was able to infiltrate
a lot of organizations
that used tractor trailers
to transport the narcotics
from the supplier in Mexico.
[radio chirps]
[radio chirps]
It's not like
when you see in the movies,
you know, that they find out
you're a federal agent
and they're going to kill you.
The danger is where you've sold
that role that you're
trying to play,
that you've sold it so good
that this guy has no
inclination that you're a cop.
And it could be that they try
to rip you off.
- The individuals
that are picking up
want to keep both the money
and the product,
and they'll just kill you.
They're going to wait
until you're not looking
and then shoot you in the head.
- Do you work tomorrow?
- Yes.
- It never really
crossed my mind,
me thinking I'm living
a dangerous lifestyle
or if anything could happen.
I thought it would never
come to our family.
I thought we were
always protected.
Me not realizing how dangerous
his job really is,
I guess I just
put a blind side to it.
I didn't want to know
what would go on.
When I was pregnant,
there was a list that came out.
There was just
a bunch of threats,
and Oscar was mentioned in it.
You don't wanna
eat your chicken?
The government sent some
security armor system
for our house,
and they actually issued
Oscar a couple more guns
and an automatic weapon
for the family
to keep in the house.
He's actually taught me
how to shoot the gun,
how to shoot in the dark,
so I can help to protect
the family.
- Okay, well,
then take this one.
- Here, let me have it.
- Trade.
- Where did you do
most of your time?
- In Three Rivers.
- Three Rivers.
That's a medium also, isn't it?
- That's a medium.
- Yeah.
- I reached out to Don
when I was incarcerated.
It was a sense of joy
hearing of Don.
That he was doing well.
He was out.
At the time of sentencing,
you get sentenced to months.
Sol hear 150 months,
and it didn't seem like much.
But I go back to my cell
and I start breaking it down
into years.
It's 14 1/2 years.
Because of marijuana
being illegal,
I lost all my 20s.
- All that stuff
is so old and gone,
but the way these idiots
are down there now,
it's almost as though
you fear retribution
just so they can say, you know,
"I - I killed so-and-so and
that makes me achingon."
What Auden got is just
absolutely unreasonable.
14 years for marijuana.
That's just absolutely insane.
Our law is unjust.
It's not effective.
Yes, it is a path I took.
Yes, it did result
in me going to prison.
I think my children paid a
heavy price for my actions.
I was young.
I had a lot of kids.
I started having kids
very early.
I thought, "I'm providing
money and a place for them,"
but there was always
some selfishness involved.
I bear some shame for that, but
I can't change any of it now.
- The biggest thing
was to see him
brought in by guards,
handcuffed.
He had raised his hand to
ask to go to the restroom.
Just the process of going
through door after door
of locked door behind you
to go see your father,
that was really
strange for me as a child.
We always kind of
would try to hide it,
that my father
was a drug dealer,
but it would get out.
Principals find out,
teachers find out.
It makes its way through school.
Some people were
almost intrigued by it
to the point
that they idolized that,
and then some people
really looked down at you.
- I'm gonna live with my share
for having committed a crime,
but it grows from the bottom up.
There's always somebody else
just ready to take
the place in line.
I don't think they stop
one damn joint, to be honest.
I mean they catch some of it,
but there's always surplus
created to deal with that.
- We're still seeing
the traditional drugs
that we always saw:
cocaine, marijuana.
What's troubling to us
as U.S. law enforcement
is the fact that we're seeing
more and more meth.
Marijuana still continues to be
a heavy profit earner
for the Mexican cartels,
but the laws are shifting
to where more and more places
are legalizing it.
They're businessmen,
they're gonna adapt.
If they're not getting a profit
from smuggling marijuana,
then they're gonna
move into something else
that is profitable.
Meth is more addictive
than any drug
and it's more destructive.
So they're trying
to push more and more meth.
There's been
some historical marks
where the drug game changes.
One of them was the death of
Amado Carrillo Fuentes.
He died during a botched
plastic surgery attempt
in 1997.
After his death, there wasn't
one true cartel leader.
That's when people started
scrambling
to take territories,
take plazas.
That's when you saw
the violence spike up
both in the United States
and Mexico.
The reason that I do
a lot of media now
is that I'm not going to
remember everybody
that I encountered
doing undercover work,
and to me,
putting my face out there,
it's, in my way,
it's my sense of protection.
The more people to know
that I was a federal agent,
so that they know that if
they go after me
they're going after
somebody that has backing,
that has some sort
of protection.
[Taps plays]
A lot of people ask me,
"You've had a good career.
"You've made a positive name
for yourself.
You'll be able to help your son
follow in your footsteps."
And, you know, I really hope
that he doesn't.
When you're working
against the cartels,
you see the worst of the worst.
You see the worst in people.
I saw stuff that I wouldn't
wish my worst enemy to see.
I wouldn't want my son
to be exposed to that.
[playing drums]
- Consuelo!
- I used to kid myself
thinking that-
that I could be more and
more effective
in going after drug traffickers.
But the more and more
that I look at it is,
we're all a pawn in a game.
We as Americans, you know,
tend to look at Mexico as,
"Oh, you know, those guys are
flooding our streets with drugs
and they're flooding our
economy with illicit money."
But, you know, you really
wouldn't have that problem
if there wasn't demand.
We're the country with the
highest consumption
of illegal
narcotics in the world.
And so we have a lot
to do with that, too.
- We're all trapped in these
things to a certain extent.
And that's what
the real catalyst was
that drove me into the business.
The fact that it was illegal
made it profitable,
and that's what fueled
the whole business
and that's what fuels it now.
I just don't want
to be involved any more.
I don't want to grow it,
don't want to be around it.
I don't want any part of it.
It's an excuse now
to prosecute people
that are undesirable
for other reasons.
It's a convenient tool to put
anybody they want behind bars.
[gentle music]
[Latin music]
-[singing in Spanish]
[tense music]
- All right.
[sighs]
- It's recording.
- Speeding.
[indistinct chatter]
-[speaking Spanish]
- We're getting tough on drugs,
and we mean business.
For those who are thinking
of using drugs, we say stop.
And to those who are pushing
drugs, we say beware.
- Searches at the border
crossing points
were the main method used
in keeping drugs
and other unwanted materials
out of the United States.
- For all of the big amount
of drug busts,
there's barely a dent
in the multi billion dollar flow
of cocaine and heroin
into the United States.
- If you're offered drugs,
you'll know what to do.
You'll have the courage to
stand up for what you believe
and say "no."
[sombre music]
- I grew up along the border.
I knew how to talk the game.
I knew, you know,
how the game was played.
The town where I grew up,
it was a natural staging
ground for the Juarez Cartel,
for the drugs that crossed.
At that time,
a vast majority of the cocaine
that was coming into the country
was going
through that neighborhood.
[buzzing]
I remember going to a party
during high school.
It must have been
my sophomore, junior year.
We went to these brothers' house
that we used to hang out with.
One of the brothers says,
"Hey, you guys want to
see something cool?"
I'm like, "Yeah."
We go into the garage, and he
opens up one of the coolers,
and it was full
of bricks of cocaine.
I mean up to the top.
There's always a lot
of temptation where there is
a lot of poverty
and a lot of struggle.
A lot of us
fell into that temptation.
It was only natural.
-[speaking Spanish]
Ciento cuatro punto uno
- Norteo y mas
[upbeat Latin music]
- You can't even describe Texas
without including Mexico.
That's what a lot of people
fail to realize.
It's everything, from the way
we speak, the food we eat.
It's just part
of the culture here,
part of the fabric
of this country.
I personally
was not a big-time dealer.
Most of the time,
the loads I smuggled
were in the 200-pound range.
I did buy
from some small-time growers
up in the mountains of Mexico.
And I also bought from very
big, powerful organizations
that primarily operated
on the border.
I was caught up in it.
I was a willful participant,
and I jumped into it headfirst.
- In 2008 and 2009,
we started hearing
from local organizations
in Mexico
that people were being taken,
sometimes by police or soldiers,
sometimes just by armed groups.
The patterns that
we eventually realized
made up the worst crisis
in disappearance
that we had seen in the region
in decades.
The only other precedence we had
for disappearances
on a mass scale
were under the dictatorships
of Pinochet
and also in the dictatorship
in Argentina.
One of the places that we
were getting the most reports
was Monterrey, and
those reports were coming to us
in large part from a small
organization run by a nun.
The nun was Consuelo.
And they were the ones
that were with the families
when they were going
to report the cases
at a time when reporting cases
could get you disappeared.
[phone ringing]
- My life has been impacted
by the narco
ever since I can remember.
For me,
it was just a way of life.
It wasn't anything
out of the ordinary.
People in Socorro
had just immigrated
into the United States.
We really didn't have
any established roots.
The Juarez Cartel used that as
an advantage where they could
reach out to a family member
in Mexico and say,
"Hey, you know, we want to use
your cousin's house
as a staging ground."
Your friends that decided
to get into illegal activity
to try to make ends meet,
you would see them
from one year to the next,
actually from one month
to the next,
have all sons of money
and all sorts of cars
and vehicles.
At the time that
I was growing up as a teenager,
we didn't believe that there was
a lot of opportunity outside,
you know, in the outside world.
Socorro was it, and if somebody
was offering you money,
you know, why not?
He's doing it.
Why shouldn't I do it?
[gentle music]
What are the totals so far?
- There's over 1,000 pounds
of marijuana seized.
They'll probably indict, like,
about ten people later.
- I'm the Assistant
Special Agent in Charge
for Homeland Security
here in El Paso.
I run the Narcotics divisions,
and I also run the Intelligence.
Can you come to my office
for a second?
I was involved in
some high-profile cases that,
had it not been for us
being able to infiltrate
a certain organization,
we would never be able to
really dismantle entire cells.
Yeah, we could do
two or three arrests
and take a couple
of middle individuals off,
but if you truly wanted to know
how the cartels operate
and-and who was running,
who was, you know-
how the... the cartels
were being shapen up,
both in Mexico and here,
you really needed
an undercover in there.
What was appealing was the fact
that not everybody can do it.
Not everybody is effective.
In undercover work,
it's just you and your mind.
You really have
to rely on your smarts.
You have to rely
on thinking on your feet.
When you're dealing with
these individuals, you know,
you would know that, hey,
this guy is Juarez Cartel
or this guy is Sinaloa Cartel,
and this guy is responsible
for murders in Mexico.
You're walking a thin line
'cause you're trying
to convince that guy
that you're as heavy as he is.
And so its almost like
a dance that, you know,
he's telling you
how badass he is,
and he means it
because he's done it,
and you're countering
right back at him like,
"Hey, you're not
impressing me, man.
This is not my first job."
- From about two,
three weeks ago,
we were trying to do
the 15 pounds of meth.
That confidential source
told us that Delgado
is looking to sell
5 keys of meth,
up to 15 pounds, but obviously
that won't happen.
We're going to
take him down today.
- What's our preferred scenario?
As soon as you guys get flashed
with the drugs,
you guys are gonna
give the bust signal?
- As soon as I get
the merchandise,
I'm gonna give it to Juan,
and I'm gonna tell him,
"Cut it to see
if it's the real dope," right?
As soon as that's it, bro,
that's gonna be the signal.
- There's always
the potential for the rip,
especially if they're
not really asking for a flash.
You know what I mean?
And by the same token,
they might be thinking
the same thing.
You know, that you guys are
going to rip them off,
so they might be, you know-
Hey, you guys know
what you're doing,
so just be careful.
Did I ever dream that I would
be running a division? No.
I felt like, you know, I'll be
able to make a difference,
catch a few loads
of marijuana, cocaine,
and be a successful
law enforcement agent.
I just kind of fell
into the covertness
of federal law enforcement,
into the undercover of it.
And a lot of it
has to do with the fact
that I was from Socorro.
[upbeat Latin music]
[dog barking]
- I'm being slow.
- Yeah, I gotta clean
this cloth too.
I first met Don,
he was kind of skinny
at that point.
He's kind of ruggedly handsome,
I think.
You didn't eat those potatoes.
When we started going out,
I learned he was
a marijuana smuggler,
planeloads of it.
He was pretty forthcoming
about the different methods
that they used
to bring stuff back and forth.
He was an outlaw back then.
' [grunts]
I had struggled trying to
make a living in agriculture.
Not here to hurt you.
There is virtually no farmer
that owns land
through conventional means
that isn't in debt
to the bank and slave to 'em.
I owed the production credit
association $800,000
at 14% interest.
It was a struggle.
So I decided to try to go to
Mexico and buy some marijuana.
I walked across the river
and loaded it
into the back of a Suburban,
and I successfully smuggled
my first load.
It was terribly amateurish,
but I got away with it.
I took that load
to a man in Plainview, Texas,
and I sold all of it
in a matter of hours.
One big sack, about 600 a pound.
To me at the time,
that was a lot of money.
So it just became
part of the routine.
About every two weeks do a load.
I would get up, go down
to the river real early.
There was less surveillance,
and most people are about
halfway asleep at that time.
You know,
they don't notice things.
That's when I would come out
and then drive to the city,
drop stuff off,
pick up money
from the previous load,
and head home
and go back to work.
I was not an employee
of anybody down there.
I dealt with rival factions,
and that's very much against
the norm of what goes on today.
You would not be allowed
to do that today.
I'd been buried down
into the organization so far
that I didn't even have
a clue where I...
You know, where I fit
in this thing.
And there was a multinational,
international business going on,
and I was just
a little cog in the wheel.
- Rough justice in
the Mexican City of Monterrey.
The two corpses found hanging
were, according to local media,
members of 21 drugs cartel.
- I actually spent some time
in the Middle East.
You get danger pay.
You get armored vehicles.
You would get escorts.
You know, and it's considered
a danger post,
but I actually felt safer
in the Middle East
than I did in Monterrey.
I was assigned
to the U.S. consulate
in Monterrey.
We were investigating
high-level members
of the Gulf Cartel
and high-level members
of the Zetas.
The difference between the Zetas
and your traditional cartels
is that the Zetas,
they don't follow
any sort of rules.
The majority of the
high-ranking cartel members,
they grew up in the drug game.
Their father was
a cartel member.
Their grandfather
was a cartel member.
All these individuals
know the rules.
You don't kill anybody
unless you're absolutely sure
that they're either
a source, a snitch,
or they're a rival cartel
that needs to be taken care of.
You would never see just mass
killings of innocent people.
It was targeted.
- I've called it a game changer
when the Zetas got
into the dope game.
The Zetas were
a group of military
that were specially trained
to go after the cartels,
ultimately as a group
defected from the military
and offered their services
to the Gulf Cartel.
You give them
a little bit of power,
you know, you give them
unlimited weapons,
and they're military.
If you hit the military,
what do they do?
They strike back,
and so a lot of these guys,
they have that mentality
where, you know,
we don't care who you are.
You know,
we're gonna go after you.
These guys don't have that-
those unwritten rules
engraved in their head.
[gunfire]
- Move!
- We could almost feel
the tension building.
They would try
to intimidate us, you know.
They would follow us.
They would do surveillance
on the consulate
to the point where they shot
at the consulate
and threw a grenade.
[gunfire]
Back in the day,
that was unheard of.
[exhales deeply]
- When I first involved
in the marijuana business,
nobody used weapons.
You loaned somebody a product,
and they came back and paid you.
There was no fear that these
guys were going to shoot you
or come steal your stuff.
And all of a sudden,
everybody is carrying a gun,
and you couldn't trust anybody.
The drug trade changed.
- This is you as a young man?
- Yeah, that's me.
- Man, I wouldn't
have recognized you.
You used to wear
tejano too, huh?
- Yeah.
Used to wear...
- You don't do that any more.
You gave up the-
- When my dad-l was gonna go
visit him in Big Spring.
- Man, he looks young there,
doesn't he?
- I first remember seeing
Don in Piedritas.
He stood out
because this is Mexico,
and all of a sudden you hear-
you see a gringo.
This is towards the end.
- Yeah.
- One of his last pictures.
When you're
in the drug business,
you can't trust anyone.
That's one of the main reasons
why you bring in family,
because you assume
that you can trust family.
My dad found that trust in Don.
It's something
that's beyond friendship.
- One day, he decided
to come look me up.
His name was Oscar Cabello.
He told me that
he could supply my needs.
[laughter]
- He was like a brother to me.
You look at somebody
occasionally,
and you just see somebody
that you connect with
right away.
He was not violent.
Didn't have to worry that
he was gonna come threaten me
or something like that.
And that was the beginning
of a fairly long relationship
that we shared.
- Oscar, he usually had
some really potent marijuana.
It was all packaged the same.
It was all high quality.
This stuff was major production.
Oscar pretty much
controlled the river
in the state of Coahuila.
He was a big player.
I talked to Oscar
about arranging a meeting
with his supplier,
and it turned out
that man was Amado Carrillo.
I asked Oscar, I said,
"Well, who's his boss?"
And Oscar said,
"He doesn't have a boss.
He is the boss."
I had a hard time
believing that, you know?
He was a young man,
a whole lot like myself,
kind of a rural background.
I learned later
that he is probably
the largest drug dealer
that ever lived.
At one time, he controlled
the majority of all the cocaine
coming into the United States.
We snorted some coke together
and bullshitted,
and then Amado and Oscar left.
A few hours later, there was
a real loud knock on the door.
They slammed it open, and
there was a group of commandos
with sub-machine guns.
Amado was probably testing us
to make sure we weren't agents.
And then they disappeared
as fast as they had come.
- Back in the day,
Amado Carrillo Fuentes
was in Juarez
right across the border.
The Juarez Cartel
was at its heyday.
[tense music]
There was times that we knew
that El Seor was in Socorro.
They would throw lavish parties
out in ranch houses
in the outskirts of Socorro.
And, you know, I remember
going to a couple of them,
not knowing that we were
probably in close vicinity
to the top levels of the cartel.
- I guess what we heard
is what ended up being true,
that this guy was going to be
the biggest drug baron.
He went on to become one
of the biggest in the history,
if not the biggest.
He brought the Mexican cartels
and the Mexican drug lords
into the forefront.
Before they were just used
as mules
from the cocaine that
was coming in from Colombia,
when the Colombians were really
the strong cartels
in the world.
It's really hard to smuggle
anything from South America
if it doesn't go through Mexico.
He established
that no Colombian cocaine
was gonna pass through Mexico
for a certain amount of time,
and instead of just being mules,
they actually
became the gatekeepers.
They became the powerful cartel.
There was a famous saying
that he would say,
it was that,
"Todos estamos comiendo."
Everybody's eating.
There's no sense in us
warring against each other.
We're all making money.
We're all being stable.
So there was no need
for fighting.
The community knew
who the plaza boss was.
They knew that
their government was corrupt,
but they were willing
to put up with that
because everything was peaceful.
I really feel that
the Mexican community,
they long for the days when
there was one strong cartel.
- When my parents
first arrived in El Paso,
I can't even imagine
just the sacrifice
that they went through.
They had left their ranch
where they had been working
in the family ranch in Sonora,
and they wanted to make
a better life
for their children.
- My dad crossed the river.
He folded up his pants,
took off
his shoes and his socks,
holding them in his hand,
and he crossed the river,
got into the United States,
and as he's sitting down
putting on his-
his pants and shoes
to-to wait for somebody
to pick him up,
you know, outcomes
a Border Patrol agent.
In that split second,
he made a decision that
ultimately changed our lives,
because he said, "If I allow
this guy to arrest me,
"I'm gonna be detained,
I'm not gonna have a job,
my children aren't gonna
be able to immigrate."
So he took off running.
Male announcer:
In the twilight hours
when most of the country
is sleeping,
we're out there,
guarding our borders,
protecting the homeland.
[indistinct radio chatter]
- 10-4, air support and
ground units are on the way.
Announcer The Border Patrol,
we protect America.
Are you up to the challenge?
[applause]
- It took a lot for me to decide
to really join
the Border Patrol.
It took a lot
for me to tell my dad.
Quite frankly, I had rehearsed
my speech over and over,
saying this is how
I'm gonna convince him.
You know, "Dad, you know, it's
a good opportunity for me, Dad."
To my astonishment,
he sat back for a few seconds,
and then he just told me,
"You know what?
"They need people like you.
"The people that are coming
here just to make a living,
"just like we did,
the only thing I can tell you
is treat them with respect,
and I know you will."
Now, you know,
and this is his words, like,
"Now the drug dealers
and, yeah, those guys,
go after them 110%."
[gentle music]
What really kicked off
my undercover career
in federal law enforcement
was picking up phones
from loads that we had
intercepted at the border.
Rather than just let
the phone sit there, you know,
they would start calling
and say, "Hey, did you make it?
And I would actually talk
to the individual
we had just arrested,
and I would just talk to him
to see how he would talk,
and I would try to mimic
how he would talk.
I would ask him like,
"Hey, you know, where you from?
Where you going? What-"
And this is all within,
you know, five minutes of us
taking-taking-
you know, taking the load down.
The guy would call.
I'd be like, "Dnde ests?"
And they'd be like,
"Well, where are you?"
And I'd hit him back like,
"Well, you know, I got nervous.
"You know, the Border Patrol
was behind me,
but I was able to get away.
But where are you guys at?"
So I would show up,
and then I would start calling,
and I'd see who was the ones
that are answering the phone,
and we would arrest that load,
and then we would play
with those phones.
At that time, Border Patrol
had what they called
the anti-smuggling unit.
It was special agents
within the Border Patrol.
After, like,
six or seven successful cases
where they said, "Hey,
it was this guy that started
getting on the phone
that led us to"-
They were like, "You know, hey,
you wanna come on a detail
and work with us?"
And I was like, "Of course."
I was still a trainee,
and that was unheard of
at that time.
From that point on, that's
basically what my career was,
just working undercover.
[whistle blowing,
soldiers chanting]
- [speaking Spanish]
[speaking Spanish]
[gunfire]
- [speaking Spanish] [gunfire]
- [speaking Spanish] [gunfire]
-[speaking Spanish]
-[speaking Spanish]
- It's very common in Mexico
for elected officials
to make a major part
of their platform
overhauling their police force,
and with good reason,
because the police forces
that they inherit are corrupt.
The missing piece is that
you can train police force
and give them all
the resources that they need
and look for the best people,
but if you don't
hold them accountable
when they commit crimes
or they're corrupt
or they commit abuses,
you're never gonna build
a trustworthy police force.
There are many cases where
we have been able to document
very strong evidence that
shows that these disappearances
were carried out by security
forces, by soldiers and police.
Even in those cases,
they don't do anything.
The most that will happen to you
is that you might lose your job,
you know?
If you disappear someone
or you kill someone,
you're not gonna be prosecuted.
[elevator bell dings]
[all chanting in Spanish]
[chanting continues]
- The drug business can't be
looked at through a microscope.
You need to look at it as
a picture of a larger puzzle.
The real underlying cause
is poverty.
Fact is, you can't make money
subsistence farming in Mexico.
They're born
into a certain station in life,
and they can't get out of it.
And if they're born poor,
they're gonna die poor.
That's just the way it is.
Oscar Cabello
was the guy in charge,
but in all honesty,
everybody was involved.
The whole town
derived an income from him
and from the business.
They helped him.
- There was a sense of pride
that I heard, you know.
"Your father was this,"
"Your father was that."
And naturally, I wanted
to follow in his footsteps.
I started at the age of 15.
You know of the dangers,
the risks,
but it's not something
that you're constantly
thinking about.
- There wasn't such a thing
as quitting from my station.
It was very, very difficult
to get out of it.
Dead or prison.
That was
the only two exits for me.
- The airplane
has become the major vehicle
used by smugglers to bring
contraband into the U.S.
- Oscar fronted me
about 200 pounds of marijuana.
We loaded the plane,
and we took off
for the United States.
As we broke out
of the cloud cover,
we encountered a plane
coming directly towards us,
almost like driving
by the freeway.
They would pull up and fly up,
right up in front of our prop.
- The Customs Bureau
has set up
an aerial interdiction program
using military type aircraft,
searching the sky
for any aircraft
not on a regular flight plan.
- The prop wash would propel us
up into the air,
and then when you hit that
down-burst, the plane would fall.
It would fall a lot.
And it was extremely scary.
These guys began to motion
for us to go down
or for us to pick up the radio.
As we stopped, people with arms
appeared from
all over the place.
Even the security guard
at the airport
came outwith his shotgun.
And I still had
a seat-belt on,
and there was a guy
with a 12-gauge shotgun
pointed at my face.
And he could not see
what I was doing with my hands.
Every time that I would
go to lower my hands
to undo the seat-belt,
I'd see this guy tightening up
on that trigger.
Finally I yelled loud enough
to these guys.
And as I came across
the pilot's seat,
they grabbed me,
and my first step back
onto American soil was
face first into the tarmac of-
of an airport.
I barely got in before the
minimum mandatory sentencing
were issued to the judges that
took away their discretion.
It was after
I got into the jail,
and they began
to describe this stuff
that I realized
how fortunate I was,
because some of the people
that were busted right after me,
they would have been facing
a 20-year sentence
without any possibility of
them-you know, mitigation.
I was lucky to have been caught
when I was caught.
I ended up getting paroled
for having completed five years.
, Okay-
Okay.
A lot of the undercover work
that we did along here
was transportation.
I had a commercial
driver's license.
I was able to infiltrate
a lot of organizations
that used tractor trailers
to transport the narcotics
from the supplier in Mexico.
[radio chirps]
[radio chirps]
It's not like
when you see in the movies,
you know, that they find out
you're a federal agent
and they're going to kill you.
The danger is where you've sold
that role that you're
trying to play,
that you've sold it so good
that this guy has no
inclination that you're a cop.
And it could be that they try
to rip you off.
- The individuals
that are picking up
want to keep both the money
and the product,
and they'll just kill you.
They're going to wait
until you're not looking
and then shoot you in the head.
- Do you work tomorrow?
- Yes.
- It never really
crossed my mind,
me thinking I'm living
a dangerous lifestyle
or if anything could happen.
I thought it would never
come to our family.
I thought we were
always protected.
Me not realizing how dangerous
his job really is,
I guess I just
put a blind side to it.
I didn't want to know
what would go on.
When I was pregnant,
there was a list that came out.
There was just
a bunch of threats,
and Oscar was mentioned in it.
You don't wanna
eat your chicken?
The government sent some
security armor system
for our house,
and they actually issued
Oscar a couple more guns
and an automatic weapon
for the family
to keep in the house.
He's actually taught me
how to shoot the gun,
how to shoot in the dark,
so I can help to protect
the family.
- Okay, well,
then take this one.
- Here, let me have it.
- Trade.
- Where did you do
most of your time?
- In Three Rivers.
- Three Rivers.
That's a medium also, isn't it?
- That's a medium.
- Yeah.
- I reached out to Don
when I was incarcerated.
It was a sense of joy
hearing of Don.
That he was doing well.
He was out.
At the time of sentencing,
you get sentenced to months.
Sol hear 150 months,
and it didn't seem like much.
But I go back to my cell
and I start breaking it down
into years.
It's 14 1/2 years.
Because of marijuana
being illegal,
I lost all my 20s.
- All that stuff
is so old and gone,
but the way these idiots
are down there now,
it's almost as though
you fear retribution
just so they can say, you know,
"I - I killed so-and-so and
that makes me achingon."
What Auden got is just
absolutely unreasonable.
14 years for marijuana.
That's just absolutely insane.
Our law is unjust.
It's not effective.
Yes, it is a path I took.
Yes, it did result
in me going to prison.
I think my children paid a
heavy price for my actions.
I was young.
I had a lot of kids.
I started having kids
very early.
I thought, "I'm providing
money and a place for them,"
but there was always
some selfishness involved.
I bear some shame for that, but
I can't change any of it now.
- The biggest thing
was to see him
brought in by guards,
handcuffed.
He had raised his hand to
ask to go to the restroom.
Just the process of going
through door after door
of locked door behind you
to go see your father,
that was really
strange for me as a child.
We always kind of
would try to hide it,
that my father
was a drug dealer,
but it would get out.
Principals find out,
teachers find out.
It makes its way through school.
Some people were
almost intrigued by it
to the point
that they idolized that,
and then some people
really looked down at you.
- I'm gonna live with my share
for having committed a crime,
but it grows from the bottom up.
There's always somebody else
just ready to take
the place in line.
I don't think they stop
one damn joint, to be honest.
I mean they catch some of it,
but there's always surplus
created to deal with that.
- We're still seeing
the traditional drugs
that we always saw:
cocaine, marijuana.
What's troubling to us
as U.S. law enforcement
is the fact that we're seeing
more and more meth.
Marijuana still continues to be
a heavy profit earner
for the Mexican cartels,
but the laws are shifting
to where more and more places
are legalizing it.
They're businessmen,
they're gonna adapt.
If they're not getting a profit
from smuggling marijuana,
then they're gonna
move into something else
that is profitable.
Meth is more addictive
than any drug
and it's more destructive.
So they're trying
to push more and more meth.
There's been
some historical marks
where the drug game changes.
One of them was the death of
Amado Carrillo Fuentes.
He died during a botched
plastic surgery attempt
in 1997.
After his death, there wasn't
one true cartel leader.
That's when people started
scrambling
to take territories,
take plazas.
That's when you saw
the violence spike up
both in the United States
and Mexico.
The reason that I do
a lot of media now
is that I'm not going to
remember everybody
that I encountered
doing undercover work,
and to me,
putting my face out there,
it's, in my way,
it's my sense of protection.
The more people to know
that I was a federal agent,
so that they know that if
they go after me
they're going after
somebody that has backing,
that has some sort
of protection.
[Taps plays]
A lot of people ask me,
"You've had a good career.
"You've made a positive name
for yourself.
You'll be able to help your son
follow in your footsteps."
And, you know, I really hope
that he doesn't.
When you're working
against the cartels,
you see the worst of the worst.
You see the worst in people.
I saw stuff that I wouldn't
wish my worst enemy to see.
I wouldn't want my son
to be exposed to that.
[playing drums]
- Consuelo!
- I used to kid myself
thinking that-
that I could be more and
more effective
in going after drug traffickers.
But the more and more
that I look at it is,
we're all a pawn in a game.
We as Americans, you know,
tend to look at Mexico as,
"Oh, you know, those guys are
flooding our streets with drugs
and they're flooding our
economy with illicit money."
But, you know, you really
wouldn't have that problem
if there wasn't demand.
We're the country with the
highest consumption
of illegal
narcotics in the world.
And so we have a lot
to do with that, too.
- We're all trapped in these
things to a certain extent.
And that's what
the real catalyst was
that drove me into the business.
The fact that it was illegal
made it profitable,
and that's what fueled
the whole business
and that's what fuels it now.
I just don't want
to be involved any more.
I don't want to grow it,
don't want to be around it.
I don't want any part of it.
It's an excuse now
to prosecute people
that are undesirable
for other reasons.
It's a convenient tool to put
anybody they want behind bars.
[gentle music]
[Latin music]
-[singing in Spanish]