Ioan Grillo, a British journalist who has lived in Mexico for 25 years, traces the evolution of cartel violence from localized drug trafficking to paramilitary warfare, revealing how cartels have infiltrated every level of Mexican government, how U.S. intelligence and military operations now operate inside Mexico, and how the drug trade has mutated from plant-based smuggling into a synthetic fentanyl crisis fueled by Chinese precursor networks — all while journalists, communities, and governments struggle to respond.
Grillo’s Path Into Cartel Reporting
Grillo arrived in Mexico at 27 in 2000, inspired by the film Salvador, and began covering drug trafficking for an English-language newspaper, The News, earning $600 a month.
He learned the trade by hanging around drug rehab centers and crack scenes, using his familiarity with heroin users from his UK hometown to build sources.
Early assignments included covering the court-martial of generals for drug trafficking and the emergence of Los Zetas, former Mexican special forces who introduced military tactics to cartel warfare.
The Zetas’ arrival in Nuevo Laredo around 2003 marked a turning point: they used helmets, AK-47s, radios, and body armor to wipe out rivals, piling bodies with signs reading “send more pendejos,” forcing the Sinaloa Cartel to militarize in response.
Grillo worked for Houston Chronicle, AP, Time, and the New York Times before going independent and writing a trilogy of books on the cartels.
From Police Protection to Cartel Dominance
In the 1980s and 90s, police controlled the drug trade; traffickers like Pablo Acosta had to negotiate with state police and were tortured before being “hired.”
By the 2000s, the power dynamic flipped: cartels now pay municipal police, who often work directly for them, while state and federal forces vary in allegiance.
The 2024 U.S. indictment of Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha Moya alleges he worked for the Chapitos faction, with police on cartel payroll and politicians integrated into the structure.
Federal forces like the Mexican Marines can outgun cartels in direct combat, but cartels operate as the de facto authority in many territories, controlling movement, justice, and daily life.
U.S. Escalation: CIA Drones, Missile Strikes, and the “Terrorist” Designation
In January 2025, Trump designated major cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and directed the CIA to take a more active role in counter-cartel operations.
The U.S. military began launching Hellfire missiles at suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and Pacific — often small wooden pangas with outboard motors — framing it as a show of force against cocaine trafficking.
Grillo notes the strategy is questionable: fentanyl, the deadlier threat, is manufactured in Mexico and moved overland, not by sea; the strikes appear more theatrical than strategic.
In February 2025, the Mexican military claimed to have killed CJNG leader El Mencho in a cabin raid in Tapalpa involving a CIA drone; his body was never shown, and witnesses reported minimal battle damage, raising suspicions of an extrajudicial execution.
Two CIA operatives died in a suspicious vehicle crash in Chihuahua in April 2025 after raiding a massive meth superlab; the U.S. ambassador quickly confirmed their agency affiliation, sparking speculation about deeper American involvement.
The Maduro Operation and Selective Enforcement
In January 2025, U.S. Delta Force and CIA teams captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a high-risk operation involving Cuban guards who fought to the death; his vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, was installed, and Venezuelan oil deals followed.
Grillo acknowledges Maduro’s brutality and drug ties but argues the operation served U.S. strategic interests, not pure justice — similar to the 2024 pardon of Honduran ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted of drug trafficking, allegedly due to lobbying by Roger Stone and geopolitical calculations.
The pattern: the U.S. uses drug enforcement selectively, targeting adversaries while cutting deals with allies or useful assets.
Cartel Cannibalism, Rituals, and the “Pact with the Devil”
Sinaloa Cartel leader Arturo Beltrán Leyva conducted cannibalistic rituals, feeding subordinates human flesh — sometimes unknowingly — to bind them through trauma and occult practice, often tied to Santería’s darker variants.
At the 2023 trial of Genaro García Luna (Mexico’s former security chief), the judge barred defense attorneys from asking witnesses about cannibalism to avoid prejudicing the jury, illustrating how the U.S. justice system relies on cartel cooperators who commit atrocities.
Grillo describes this as a deliberate “crossing of a line” to create unbreakable loyalty: once someone has eaten human flesh or decapitated a living person, they cannot return to normal society.
Mass Graves, Missing Persons, and the Mothers Who Dig
In Veracruz, mothers of the disappeared were handed a hand-drawn map leading to a cow pasture where they began digging; authorities eventually exhumed 298 bodies from the largest mass grave found to date.
Families in nearby homes endured the stench of rotting corpses while life continued around them — children’s bikes, basketball hoops — illustrating Mexico’s “weird paradox” of extreme violence coexisting with ordinary modernity.
Closure matters: one mother found her son’s remains two years after the grave’s discovery, allowing her to “put this out of my mind.”
Sinaloa’s Civil War, Forced Recruitment, and Psychological Toll
Since September 2024, a civil war between the Chapitos and Mayo factions has brought daily gunfights, roadblocks, and WhatsApp alerts about convoy movements to Culiacán; residents suffer anxiety, insomnia, and physical symptoms from constant hypervigilance.
Cartels forcibly recruit young men (18–22), often with state police complicity; one father described his son’s kidnapping and the stress-induced skin condition that followed.
Grillo himself experienced acute stress while reporting there: “my stomach was all messed up and I was just like, you know, a bag of nerves.”
Community Self-Defense: Indigenous Militias in Guerrero
In Guerrero, an indigenous community formed a legal militia (policía comunitaria) armed with hunting rifles to patrol their territory and expel cartels; volunteers serve rotations, maintaining checkpoints and deterring incursions.
Such models work locally but cannot scale nationally; some self-defense groups have been co-opted by cartels, becoming their enforcement arms.
Grillo sees this as one piece of a solution, alongside federal policing and judicial reform — but Mexico’s 30-year “generation of violence” may not end soon.
El Mayo’s Kidnapping: A Cartel Godfather Betrayed
Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, who trafficked for 56 years without arrest, was lured to a meeting in July 2024 under the pretense of mediating a dispute with Sinaloa Governor Rocha Moya and Chapitos representatives.
He was beaten, his bodyguards killed, and flown against his will to a New Mexico airfield in a Beechcraft King Air — a plane later displayed in a museum with a plaque celebrating the “daring operation by American federal agents.”
The plane’s tail number was “doubly cloned” (three aircraft shared it), suggesting deep U.S. federal involvement; a former Mayo security chief claimed American agents were on the ground during the handoff.
The FBI claimed the Chapitos simply called and asked to land with a prisoner; Grillo finds this implausible given the operational complexity.
Chinese Precursors, Superlabs, and the Fentanyl Revolution
The shift from plant-based drugs (cocaine, heroin, marijuana) to synthetics (meth, fentanyl) began with Chinese chemist Shenlei Yeigong, who linked Chinese pharmaceutical firms to Mexican cartels in the 2000s.
After the 2005 U.S. Combat Methamphetamine Act restricted precursor sales, Mexican “superlabs” exploded; Shenlei was caught with $25 million cash in a Mexico City mansion and lost over $100 million laundering through Las Vegas casinos via loss rebates.
When U.S. opioid prescriptions were curtailed circa 2013, Mexican heroin filled the void; cartels began cutting it with Chinese fentanyl (“chiva sintética”), then switched to pure fentanyl — cheaper, stronger, easier to transport.
China shifted from shipping finished fentanyl to shipping precursors after U.S. pressure; cartels now synthesize it in Mexico, creating a supply chain resilient to interdiction.
Why Legalization Didn’t Break the Cartels
Grillo once advocated marijuana legalization to defund cartels; after legalization collapsed the Mexican cannabis market (smuggling down 90–95%), cartels simply pivoted to fentanyl, extortion, illegal mining, and human smuggling.
He is now “disillusioned”: legalization didn’t reduce violence or cartel power, though eliminating the entire illegal drug market would hurt them — but Mexico would still need functional law enforcement to dismantle the organizations.
Cartel Tech: Pegasus, Weaponized Drones, and Phone Hacking
Mexican journalists and officials are routinely hacked via Pegasus spyware (sold to the Mexican government by Israel’s NSO Group); zero-click exploits now compromise phones without user interaction.
Cartels deploy weaponized drones — modified agricultural/industrial models dropping fire-extinguisher bombs (incendiary or shrapnel) — to terrorize villages into fleeing, enabling territorial conquest.
In Guerrero, Grillo filmed a downed drone and interviewed a captured 21-year-old operator from La Familia Michoacana who had been abandoned by his convoy in the mountains.
Nuclear Risks and Arms Trafficking
Cartels traffic heavy weapons (RPG-7s, grenades) from corrupt Latin American militaries (Honduras, Suriname) and even steal U.S. military gear; a truck carrying nuclear material was hijacked near Mexico’s only nuclear plant in Veracruz.
Grillo doubts cartels would use nukes or bioweapons — the fighting is too localized, and fallout would hit their own territory — but their integration into global black markets for arms and contraband (pre-Hispanic artifacts, exotic animals) is deep.
Journalist Safety and the Cost of Truth
Over 150 journalists have been murdered in Mexico since 2000; Grillo’s friend Javier Valdez, a prolific Sinaloa reporter, was killed in 2017 after publishing an interview with a rival faction leader; the Chapitos tried to suppress the edition, then had him shot 12 times on his lunch break.
The federal prosecutor blamed Valdez’s murder on the son of the rival leader (El Mini Lic), but the son claimed the Chapitos paid $1 million to frame him.
Grillo lives with constant risk, PTSD, and moral injury; he copes through meditation, prayer, and spiritual practice, acknowledging that “when you really think you could be gone, you turn to God.”
Bukele’s El Salvador: Mass Incarceration as Popular Authoritarianism
Nayib Bukele, a marketing-savvy politician of Palestinian Christian heritage, went from “peace and love” mayor (building soccer pitches) to president overseeing the incarceration of ~1% of El Salvador’s population (equivalent to 3 million Americans).
MS-13 and Barrio 18, born in 1980s LA from Salvadoran refugees bullied by Mexican gangs, adopted the “devil horns” hand sign from Ronnie James Dio concerts; their status system rewarded body counts, fueling endless war.
Bukele’s crackdown crushed homicide rates but jailed innocents, silenced journalists, and centralized power; most Salvadorans still support him because the gangs were “psychotically antisocial” — raping women who entered rival neighborhoods, extorting the poor, recruiting abandoned children.
Lee Harvey Oswald, the DFS, and the JFK Files
Grillo researched declassified Mexican DFS (secret police) files at Lecumberri prison, revealing Oswald’s September 1963 visit to the Cuban embassy in Mexico City seeking a visa to Cuba/USSR.
A Nicaraguan informant claimed to have seen a “red-haired Black man” give Oswald thousands of dollars inside the embassy; the FBI dismissed him as a fabricator, but the DFS recorded it.
Three theories: Oswald was a lone eccentric; Cuba plotted with him; or CIA elements staged the encounter to frame Cuba as a diversion for a domestic coup — a “can of worms” Grillo approaches cautiously.
The “Conspiracy Theory” Label as CIA Tool
The phrase “conspiracy theory” existed in the 19th century but exploded after JFK; CIA memos instructed station chiefs to weaponize the term to discredit allegations of agency involvement.
Adam Curtis’s documentaries (The Century of the Self, HyperNormalisation, Shifty) trace how media narratives manufacture consent — a lens Grillo finds essential for understanding how power obscures itself.
What Comes Next
Grillo is writing a new book due out next year with “very kind of US angles and some very kind of interesting stuff behind the scenes,” while continuing weekly field reporting via his Substack, Crash Out Media.
He remains in Mexico, taking it “a day at a time,” believing the violence is a historical stage that will pass — though he admits England “isn’t looking great” either.
