Transcription
How are you, friends of this community? As always, it's a pleasure to have you with us.
We are celebrating a special occasion today, as we are joined by Maestro Epigmenio Ibarra, a person whom I personally respect and admire greatly. We will discuss a topic that is currently in the spotlight: the narrative construction that portrays Mexico as a narco-state. This narrative often justifies or attempts to normalize U.S. intervention, trying to convince us of the benefits of the United States, while also showing the need to consolidate a front around the figure of Dr. Claudia Sheinbaum.
But who better to talk to us about this narrative construction and the information manipulation than our dear Epigmenio Ibarra? Epigmenio, it’s a true honor to have you in our community. How are you?
Very well, dear Jesús. Thank you very much. On the contrary, thank you for allowing me to be with you and with the people who watch you on YouTube.
For us, it’s always a learning experience with you, dear.
I would ask you about this narrative construction that we see replicated, for example, when Trump applies tariffs, claiming that Mexico hasn't done enough against drug trafficking. Or when Dr. Sheinbaum gets upset because they meddle with the Mexican narco, trying to justify U.S. interventionism. How do we distinguish this narrative? How do we challenge it, dear?
Well, it’s a very pedestrian and hypocritical slander. It’s pedestrian because it has no basis in reality, and it’s made by people who are indeed linked to the narco, people who have been connected to the narco, like Genaro García Luna. I mean, seeing Loret talk about this and knowing that he was a neighbor of García Luna in Miami, and that he was one of the creators of the García Luna legend, well, it’s frankly disgusting.
Then you see others online telling you to be afraid because they’re coming for you, as if they watch too many movies and believe that Americans are sending their forces and special commands around the world. No, Americans in general don’t shed their blood; they want others to shed blood.
The truth about Mayo may come out, perhaps, because it’s an undercover operation, and U.S. undercover operations don’t have to be reported even to the President of the United States. That’s an executive directive signed by Eisenhower in 1954. The U.S. in its fight against communism and against drug cartels is an extension of that same paranoia.
The U.S. government agencies should be willing to do repugnant things, and then they established the principle of plausible deniability, which means the President shouldn’t be informed so he doesn’t have to say, “I knew.”
So, it’s a bit complicated to ask for explanations because, first, who is going to give them to you? And second, what we will discover is not that a U.S. command and a U.S. pilot arrived, but that it was a conspiracy by the chapitos to get rid of the character.
And as always, they are in contact with the DEA because the DEA negotiates all the time with criminals. They arranged, “You bring me this one, I’ll get so-and-so out of jail, I’ll respect your fortune.” All the tricks that the Americans have been doing for decades started when cocaine was sent to Miami. Those who carried three grams were thrown in jail for decades, while those who carried three tons made deals and continued living freely in Miami.
So, there’s a lot of hypocrisy and a lot of fiction. Raimundo Riva Palacio has a direct line to Claudia and Trump because he listens to their conversations. Or Loret himself saying that the command post of the drone that bombed the drug lab was in the command post with the pilot. I mean, what are we talking about? Everything is fiction, and it’s all a campaign that started with “They’re coming for López Obrador,” then they said López Obrador went to hide in Havana, and now they’re going after Claudia.
They want to equate 100 fires with García Luna, but the purest expression of the narco-state in Mexico is Felipe Calderón, the PAN, and Loret, and all those who spread this slander.
So, rather than dismantling it, we simply need to know where it comes from, why they say it, and what the reality is. The reality is that they lie. The reality is that they lie, and both Claudia and López Obrador have absolute protection due to their honesty.
Do you think, my dear Jesús, that if López Obrador had a comma raised against him, with all the campaigns against him for so many years, it wouldn’t have been leaked by now?
Of course! Why haven’t they destroyed López Obrador? Because they couldn’t. Why won’t they destroy Claudia? Because they can’t. Honesty is an extraordinary shield, and democratic legitimacy is another.
Calderón was a nefarious character, a hitman for the U.S. government. I had the thesis that Calderón stole the presidency and went to tell the Americans, “Here I am at your service; you tell me what to do.” I think I was wrong. The Americans made a deal with Calderón for the theft of the presidency. They commissioned him and told him, “You’re going to do this, you’re going to steal the presidency, and we’ll quietly recognize you. Then you’re going to send the army into the streets and declare war against the troops.”
So, the guy unleashed hell as a hitman; he was the chief hitman for the United States in Mexico, for the DEA, the worst of the United States.
Today, I write about the war on drugs. You know, it started 54 years ago with Richard Nixon. What results has this war had? Drug has never stopped entering the United States. Weapons and dollars from the United States have never stopped flowing south. The number of addicts has grown exponentially.
Americans sell weapons to the armies of Latin America and to the narcos. This arms sale is governed by a law called the proportionality law. What it achieves is that if I sell you armored cars, I sell you rifles to pierce armor. If I give you helicopters, I give you rockets. I still don’t give you missiles; they are rockets, RPGs, and with those, you can take down a helicopter if you’re at an appropriate distance.
But they don’t give them the other ones because they are very expensive weapons that they keep under control. Yes, it puts commercial aviation at risk. But if you bring out an armored vehicle, my obligation is to match my armament with yours.
So, what has the 54-year war achieved? Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people dead in Latin America. The Americans who have died in this war can be counted on the fingers of two hands; there are no more than ten. On the other side, hundreds of thousands have died.
What else has it achieved? The folkloric smuggling bands that were the narcos have become almost armies. They don’t have doctrine, they don’t have fire discipline, they don’t have principles, but they have comparable armament due to this law of proportionality.
And because they have the open market for armed forces, they have also turned the smugglers into combatants. And on the other hand, since they send money all the time, that ensures the narco’s ability to replenish losses, which is very important. An army depends substantially on three things: logistics, which the narco has secured by the United States; the social base, which is secured by terror; and their ability to replenish losses, which is secured by dollars.
So, what have the United States achieved with the war on drugs? That we kill each other while they manage the slaughter and the drug continues to flow into their territory because the truth is that they need the drug. It’s a tool of social control. There would be no internal peace in the United States without drugs.
What else has it achieved? Weak governments in Latin America. It’s a tool of domestic control and external subjugation. That has been the war on drugs, and the PRI and PAN governments have been the expression of that structural weakness because they are linked to the narco and are therefore easy victims of extortion.
They all have skeletons in their closets. If you investigate any fortune of these characters, you will find the narco. On the other hand, they become hitmen, agents of the CIA. Luis Echeverría was an agent of the CIA.
So, this narrative is, I insist, pedestrian and hypocritical, and it needs to be dismantled in one fell swoop. What we need to do with Loret is mute him, and with that fantasist Riva Palacio, stop reading him. Let him spew his nonsense and let the naive consume it; they are becoming fewer.
Right now, there’s a resurgence. If you notice, I’ve been seeing on social media that Loret is wrapped in the national flag because they have that vision that the Americans are coming, and now they will rescue them. No, Napoleon III sent an expeditionary force in the 1800s. The Americans are not going to send troops to save them; they are not going to do what they didn’t do at the polls.
No, it’s all fantasies, but they are infamies. Fortunately, we have López Obrador; he was right, and Claudia is the best thing that could have happened to us.
Epigmenio, do you see that the U.S. government is using this fentanyl discourse with political pressure to achieve economic goals? In other words, again using the drug market in geopolitical matters?
Yes, the drug is always a geopolitical element. Yes, the war on drugs and the pressure from the agencies, it’s all been an instrument of subjugation for them. It’s a constant threat: “If you don’t do this, I will do that.”
But what they don’t do is, if they really wanted to end fentanyl, they would be pursuing their American drug cartels that do exist, which Hollywood doesn’t portray, which the media don’t see, and which Washington simply ignores. But the figures are very clear: who traffics fentanyl into the United States? Americans.
Who owns the drug business? A Mr. Smith, a Mr. McKenzie, a Mr. Wallace—super white, super Anglo-Saxon, super Protestant—who controls the last mile in commerce. And Trump knows this because he’s a businessman. He knows that the drug business is in the last mile, and he knows that the Wall Street executives are not undocumented Mexicans or Colombians selling the drugs.
The politicians in Washington are not immigrants selling the drugs. The Hollywood stars are not being sold drugs by undocumented immigrants. Why, my dear Jesús, have we never heard of a seizure of three tons of cocaine in Los Angeles? Where is the warehouse that supplies drugs to New York, Chicago, or Boston?
Are those houses of black people in projects or multifamily buildings? No, there are super organized logistics centers. They talk about the porosity of the border, saying they will put so many thousands of men on the border. Mexico just put 10,000 National Guard members; I think it’s a very intelligent measure, especially for the safety of those living on the border.
I see it more as a measure to preserve the safety of Mexicans and as a political gesture because the problem of the border is not so much that drugs cross, but how they penetrate the line. It’s a zone of, I don’t know, 50 km, 25 km deep.
The problem is what happens afterward. Why do tons of drugs arrive in New York, Chicago, Boston, Milwaukee? Because there are corrupt American police, American prosecutors, and American judges.
Why don’t American media investigate how drugs penetrate the border? It’s not so much that the border is porous; what is porous is the territory of the United States, and what is porous is the governmental structure of the United States.
What the hell is the DEA doing in our country instead of investigating who is the boss of Chapo Guzmán? Because there is a clear boss. Who pays him? How much does a kilo of cocaine cost in Sinaloa? How much does a kilo of cocaine cost in Los Angeles?
Let’s say that in the trafficking across the border, the cartels multiply the cost by 10, 20, or 30. What happens when it arrives in Los Angeles and starts to be distributed? The cost goes up 100 times. We’re talking about fabulous fortunes of Chapo Guzmán, of Mayo. Well, those fortunes, all the money from Pablo Escobar and all the Latin American capos combined, is barely a fraction of the money of the American capos.
So, there’s a reality: on one hand, social control through drugs, and on the other hand, oxygen for the American economy. It must be over 300 billion dollars a year from drugs, perhaps more.
All Americans are also very hypocritical. They say they don’t want young people to keep dying. If they really wanted that, they would treat consumption as a public safety problem, and they would be fighting their mafia in strict terms.
They didn’t want drug consumption to end. In Vietnam, they experimented with LSD and then marketed it in the United States. In Vietnam, the CIA created an airline called Air America that was responsible for bringing heroin from Cambodia and Laos and trafficked with the warlords in Laos and Cambodia to finance arms for the Nicaraguan contras.
The CIA sent planes with weapons and returned them with drugs from Pablo Escobar. Here, they supplied arms to the narcos, saying they would put a chip in them. The supposed sufficiency of the combat capabilities of the U.S. special forces is a myth.
This idea that DEA agents are heroes who capture narcos, like in the Netflix series Narcos, is a fantasy narrative from Hollywood. The reality is very different.
Totally, totally, my dear Epigmenio Ibarra. I truly appreciate these minutes you allow us to learn from you, and it’s a pleasure to listen to you and talk with you.
On the contrary, Jesús, I’m at your service. You know I’m here.