FREE BONUS PATREON EPISODE: COLOMBIAN CARTELS WITH TOBY MUSE
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Welcome to the underworld podcast, the podcast where we dive into the worlds of transnational organized crime and other things related to criminal elements. I am one of your hosts, Danny Gold, and today we're doing something a little different. We have an interview that we're doing, and that's going to be up on the Patreon. We're going to be doing a lot of these for the Patreon, so please go sign up.

That's patreon.com slash the underworld podcast. If you chip in five bucks, you'll get access to this. If you're hearing this, actually, we probably made it public too, just because we're

Toby's got a great, great story to tell and a lot of stuff to say. Yeah. And my first guest is Toby Muse, who just came out with a book called Kilo, which is an exploration of the Colombian cartels and the cocaine market. And it's, it's honestly one of the best books you'll ever read on the drug war, if not the best book. It's basically, if you've read Michael Hare's Dispatches, it's that, but

for the drug world. So hey, thanks for having me on, Danny. I really appreciate it. And this is a great podcast. You've said I really enjoyed the first couple of episodes I've heard. You're doing a great job. Toby and I actually go way back since before I was even really a journalist. We met when I was just starting to learn how to do video. And I visited in Colombia and Toby's been there for what you were there for 15, 20 years. Yeah, I arrived to Colombia in the year 2000. I received I arrived for the first piece.

Not the first peace process. I arrived for a Colombian peace process, managed to hang around for enough years to witness another peace process. And after that one, I left in 2017. Arrived in 2000, left in 2017.

And just to illustrate, like, the kind of guy you are, I mean, you are these sort of classic reporters you don't hear about much. You know, going to the bars, beating cartel guys, knowing hitmen, just like in the underworld. You don't see that a lot these days. When I visited Toby, I think this was, what, 2010, 2011? Yeah.

maybe around that time. He, uh, he almost got me killed numerous times. We kept meeting with folks. I, you know, I was just starting out. I had no idea what I was doing. And Toby was nice enough to take me on assignments with him. And we would go to these places. I remember one time we were going out, we were like somewhere in the countryside of Medellin going,

I mean, it was true. Literally.

Yeah, but it was like...

man, you've got to get these sicarios out of here. This poor guy. He was like, get these people out of my bar. But yeah, it was, but it all turned out all right in the end, I think we can say.

Yeah, I mean, I'm still here. So that part worked out. But it was like, you know, I was like a rookie reporter, man. So it was thrilling. And then I think the second time you did that, we were going to meet guys from La Oficina del Embigado. Can you just kind of say who they are real quick? So the Oficina del Embigado, the Embigado office is basically the oldest drug cartel in Colombia at this point. They're still surviving. It was set up by Pablo Escobar. And it was the armed wing of the Medellin cartel. It was the...

It was the outfit that would collect Pablo Escobar's debts. And what happened was it transferred ownership when Pablo Escobar was killed. It was the one relic of the Medellin cartel. His successor took over and kept going. And it still survives to this day. So it's kind of like this piece of history that's still around.

Yeah, and they murder people for drugs and for money. And we went to meet, I think, two guys there who were kind of mid-level operatives. When we met them, they were relatively slick. They had jewelry on. And the place we met them that was supposed to be safe was, I think, the top floor, like the penthouse rooftop of a gay club.

So we walked up these four or five flights of stairs. There's gay pornography playing on all the TVs. But it wasn't even a club. And we just sat down. It was a... I don't know what you would call it here. I mean, in...

So in Latin America, there's this whole thing of motels, right? This was a gay motel. It wasn't a club. It was just literally for fucking. Like, I presume we can swear on your podcast, right? It wasn't a club. I don't think it was a zone for dancing. No, it was motel rooms. And all of this gets set up because the friend who was introducing who you met...

A friend of mine is called Marcus. So Marcus is gay. So he would always organize these meetings in the gayest places possible in Medellin. So I would turn up. These guys from the mafia who weren't gay would turn up and everyone would be like, why are we meeting in the middle of a gay motel? Because Marcus was arranging it. That was the safest place he could find. But you remember, like we were sitting up there, we had set the camera up.

And these two guys, one of them sits there, the kind of more junior guy agrees to do the interview. The more senior one says, no, no, no, he orders. And there's this guy walks in in speedos, like looking for the party, looking for the orgies. And the mafia guy tells him,

Get out. And this poor guy who's just been looking for an orgy has just been threatened midday by a guy from the oficina. And the guy in the Speedo is new. People in Medellin, people in Colombia, people in Latin America, they know when you're dealing with a mafioso. So this guy's just wandering around in his Speedo looking for some daytime action and just gets threatened.

You know, I didn't I didn't remember that. I do remember right before they got there. You were like, you know, if the police come, if anything goes wrong here, they're going to kill us. They're going to blame us and they're going to kill us. So that that I remember. And then also I assumed that Marcus had set up the meet there, but that they had picked the place because it was safe because it'd be out of the way. No one no one else in the cartels would see them talking to journalists.

No, I think it was a surprise for them because I didn't even really figure out where we were until because I was so focused on the job. You know, your adrenaline gets up when you're meeting these people, because, again, it's something I take seriously. If the police turn up by bad luck, this all falls on me.

I mean, there's no second chances. People aren't going to say, oh, well, what an unhappy coincidence, Toby. I agreed to meet you and the police turned up. They're going to say you sold me out. So your adrenaline is pumping. So I didn't really kind of figure out until I was walking down after the interview. And then I'm walking past one of the open motel rooms and it's a big TV and a right close up of just this gay porn, like as close up as possible. I'm like,

oh, that's where I am. All right. But no, they had sent their security in to clear out every room, not to clear out, but to check. Their bodyguards had gone through that whole place. They were mid-range, but they were upper mid-range.

Yeah, they weren't to be trifled with. I do remember as they walked out down the stairs, they turned back around and made sure they were like, you're going to change our voice, right? And in our face and hide identities. And we were like, yeah. And then one of the guys looked over and said, if you don't, if something goes wrong with this, something along those lines, and then pointed to Marcus, your fixer, and did the thing where he dragged his thumb across his throat and said like,

If something goes wrong, we're going to kill him. Exactly. Kind of laughing about it, too. I mean, just to clarify, Marcus isn't really my fixer. He's a friend I've known for about 13, 15 years. But that's the rule number one of the mafia in Medellin. There's that there's rule number one.

Whoever presents, whoever introduces the person pays it. Now, why is that rule so important? It's because then you can't turn around and say, oh man, I had no idea that guy was an undercover DEA agent. No, you pay. If I introduce someone to someone else, that is 100% on my responsibility. So Marcus, often when he was setting these things up, he was taking a tremendous risk to introduce us to people like that, because if anything goes wrong, it's on him.

And I think one of the more fascinating things I learned while down there, which kind of blew my mind, was about Marcus himself and that the fact that he was pretty openly gay and he was accepted by the cartels, which is generally something in popular culture you don't really think happens, right? The assumption is that these are very machismo-oriented places and gay men are looked down upon or not accepted.

So it was kind of nice to learn about the tolerant nature of these brutally vicious cartels. Can you kind of explain why that is? Yeah, I mean, the thing about Marcus...

And it's now kind of, it's a role. It's an established role in the underworld. There are these, they're often gay guys who will introduce the models and the actresses who have any kind of interest in this. They'll become friends with these models and actresses and serve as a bridge between them and the drug traffickers. So actually, if you go out

for a night to like a heavy narco club, you will see this thing of these kind of, you know, a group of an actress with her gay friend. It's become the cliche. And that's often the way that these guys will arrange these romantic affairs to be kind of romantic and describing them. So it's kind of an established figure in the underworld scene.

And it's gotten an acceptance in, you know, in these violent communities that generally I would assume wouldn't be accepting of that lifestyle. Yeah. I mean, on the whole, they're not. I mean, it's where it's kind of hard because at the end, in the end, cocaine only cares about money. As long as you're trafficking, that's all they care about. But at the same time, the mafia of Medellin is notoriously racist. I've never seen a black mafia.

senior trafficker in Medellin. And Medellin really does represent Colombia. Colombia is about 25% Afro-Colombian. There's never been a major trafficker out of Medellin, as far as I know. So they do hold these kind of racist, sexist, conservative views, hard conservative views.

But in the end, it's all about money. Everything's about money. They have all of these rules and about, oh, about the way you're supposed to behave and about you're never going to snitch. It's always all about the money. If you're making money for people, if you're delivering what they want, they'll accept you.

I just had another memory, and I think it was like 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning in Bogota, and we were at some club. Obviously, it was 3 o'clock and 4 o'clock in the morning. I wasn't in the right mind frame, and a guy walked in, a middle-aged guy, and he had a bunch of transgender women with him, and you just...

told me, you were like, whatever you do, don't look at that guy. He's an established cartel guy. And if he gets the wrong idea about you, he'll kill you. So that was the third time you warned me that somebody might kill me. And then of course, when I'm out of my face, all I'm going to do is stare at that guy and try to figure out like what his deal is and who he is. So again, like really, really well done there. I think I took the state you were in and thought, my God, you may go over there and like hug him or something and like, you know, try and get a selfie photo with the guy or not. And I was trying to

Self-preservation kicked in. I can't remember who that would be. But, oh, wait, I wonder if that was the man. There was a guy I knew at some point who I had interviewed through Marcus again, who was a big, big drug dealer rather than drug trafficker in Bogota who controlled a whole area called Chapinero. I wonder if that was him. I know he had a lot of trans girlfriends. That could be him.

And speaking of Bogota, too, I think one of the things that you taught me about, which I thought was interesting, was the worst neighborhood in Bogota that you spent a lot of time in that was called the Bronx. And their idea was that the Bronx was so bad they were going to call the worst neighborhood in Bogota the Bronx as well.

Yeah, I didn't spend a lot of time actually in the Bronx. It's the Bronx is this kind of so it's this open air drug market. I did ended up doing a big story. We couldn't get in. We tried repeatedly to try and get cameras in there and we just couldn't. The open air drug market, it's basically it's hard to kind of explain. It's basically imagine three or four blocks squared, probably not that big, but, you know, nine, six blocks in total.

The police would only ever go in there as a massive operation. It was basically you had homeless people were there, drug addict homeless people were there who would go to consume their drugs. You'd also have these motels inside where people from the wealthier areas would go and just rent a hotel room and consume drugs for a whole 48 hours. It was this kind of weird, no rule kind of

weird kind of, I don't even know how to handle it. I mean, to some people they've described it as heaven and obviously some people describe it as hell. There are truly atrocious stories that come out there. It was so organized the violence that everyone understood the police knew where to look every Thursday for the bodies. People would die inside and they would just dump the bodies on a Wednesday night in a certain spot. I don't even think the police bothered investigating them. I mean,

I mean, no one was ever going to tell what really happened. But you would hear these stomach churningly sick stories would come out of there of torture houses, of people being disintegrated in acid.

But at the same time, there were these kind of clubs where they would set them up for 15 year olds to go and buy drugs. And the 15 year olds would have their own private dance club. Then the owner of the club would wait for the 15 year olds to get into drug debt and then say, well, you know, there's a way we have of working off that debt. Why don't you be a prostitute here? It's just this kind of thing where everyone went to this kind of violent place.

violent delights, you know, this kind of violent passions. It's very strange and very, very, very dark. It's a very dark area. In the end, this was like five or six blocks from the presidential palace in downtown Bogota. In the end, as they should have done ages ago, they just rolled in there and just took the whole thing down.

But what was interesting is, was a senator who had investigated these, he said, you know, the owners of this thing, this zone, which is the most grimy, desperate, violent part of Bogota, the owners, you know, they live in Madrid. It was great business because they're not exporting cocaine abroad. So they don't have to worry about extradition. They're making all of their money in Bogota. And the most they'll face in Bogota prison is if they ever got convicted, which they won't, would be, you know, 10, 15 years. They're not going to face more than that just for drug selling.

And that's something I think we don't hear about a lot in, you know, foreign press and international media. You know, you hear about the the narcos fighting each other and all that, but you don't hear about the street dealing going on in Colombia itself. I mean, is that is that a huge market? It's huge. I mean, and here's the thing. And it's kind of sad to see, because when I first went to Colombia around about 20 years ago,

The Colombians were deeply hurt about this stigma that they had in the eyes of the world that they were all drug traffickers for understandable reasons. It pissed them off.

And they would kind of recapture a little bit of their dignity by saying this. They would say, well, look, you know, my country may produce it, but we don't consume it. I, you know, well, look, we may produce it, but you guys are the ones who are actually consuming it. You're the kind of, you're the junkies. Unfortunately, that changed because these drug traffickers looked and said, well, we're leaving money on the table. There's tremendous amounts of money to be made in this country. And so the cities all have their kind of open-air drug markets. They're called...

like pots, orgas. So you go to Medellin, you go to Cali, you go to Bogota, they're all there. And the gangs that run a place like Medellin, every neighborhood answers to a certain gang. They're called combos. The majority of their money they make off street drug dealing. So there's a huge amount of drug consumption in Colombia. And drugs are consumed, well, cocaine, I think, is the really interesting one. It's consumed differently in Colombia than it is in, say, somewhere like London.

When a gram of cocaine costs you £50 in London, for most people, the night revolves around that. You've spent so much money, the night is about that. In Colombia, you'll see businessmen who have had one whiskey too many say, "Ah, you know what? I need to sober up a little bit." And they'll take a line of coke. And it's just because the coke is so cheap. A gram of cocaine can be three, four dollars.

So you'll be in a taxi at three o'clock in the morning coming out of the bar. It's not uncommon to see the taxi driver take a little sniff of cocaine. He's got a night shift to go through. So I think it is a different way it's used. And that's always been kind of interesting to me.

It's also almost like a completely different drug, right? Because the stuff you get in even New York or London, how much, like what percentage of that is actually cocaine? You know, it's like filled in with so much other sorts of shit that is going to make it toxic. It's going to make you feel terrible the next day. Whereas in, in, in Columbia, I mean, you got to imagine the stuff that you get on the street is relatively pure, no? Yeah. I mean, obviously in Columbia, they're always looking for a mark as well. They're always looking for the angle. So you can get heavily cut. What I understand is, um,

What I understand a gram of, and this is interesting because it starts to tell you the money that's at stake. I've understood, I saw one report, this was some years ago, but I saw one report where they tested cocaine in London and it came to around about 30, 35%. Let's call it one third. Now I want to just do the kind of the mathematics of why this business functions. You can buy one kilo of cocaine in Colombia for around $1,600. $1,600.

If you get that kilo to London and you're charging 50 pounds per gram, now times that by three because you've watered it down, that's 150,000 pounds for a kilo. I mean, this is life-changing money. And you bought it for $1,600. And it costs now, you know, you're selling it in dollars. What's the dollar to pound? $170,000, $180,000 because you're stamping on it.

I mean, this business just, there's no other business in the world that gives you those returns. So in Colombia, you can find, I think cocaine is rarely, if ever, 100%. I think what you're looking at, the best you're getting in Colombia is like 98%. And that's not difficult to get if you have the right connections.

Yeah, sorry. You know, I got so carried away with talking to you about stuff. I never really intro the book and what it was about. Can you give us the brief summary of the book itself and, you know, how it's formatted? Because I think it's really interesting and what you kind of, the journey you take the reader on. Yeah, absolutely. The book is called Kilo Inside the Cocaine Cartels. And basically the idea was to

was to follow one kilo. So from being a leaf in a field in the badlands of Colombia to being produced into a kilo of cocaine and all of the people whose hands that

That kilo of cocaine passes along. So we go from the farmer who makes it to the narco militias who oversee its production to the sicarios who protect it. Those are the killers for hire for the drug trafficker who will end up sending it abroad. And I wanted to introduce the world to when I set out to write this book, I figured I

There's enough of those books that say Pablo Escobar was born in 1949. I think we've had enough of those. If you're interested in the broad outline of the drug war,

You can find other books for that. I wanted to take the reader and say, this is what it's like to be in the middle of the drug war. This is what it feels like. These are the people that you're going to meet. And I wanted to introduce the people outside of Colombia to the eccentric, crazy characters who live at the heart of the ecosystem of cocaine. So the witch, everything.

Every drug trafficker has his own witch who casts spells to protect the drug trafficker. I wanted the reader to meet the narco's girlfriend. These are fascinating people. I wanted to get beyond the headlines of what it's like to be a contract killer, but to kind of understand where these people come from, how they act, how they are to be around with them. And that's

Yeah, I mean, essentially, that's it. And I kind of it's also a book that there's not one expert is in interview, not one senior general, not one politician, not one expert, not one analyst. It's all people who are living and dying on the front line of cocaine from the beginning to the end. It's either policemen, policewomen who are on the front line fighting cocaine every day. No one sits behind a desk in my book. You're there doing it. You're there living it. And I want to take the reader to that point.

that moment, this is what it feels like. And it really does flow like that. I think I read it in two or three days. It's full of vignettes that really do make you feel like you're on the ground in Colombia and get at, I think, in Underworld and the people that are part of it that not a lot of other reporting I have

seen or read or watched on the drug war really gets to. And I think it's a testament to how much time you spent in there and how much, I know you worked your ass off on this book, but it's, it really is something that, that if you're interested in this, you should definitely pick up. What's the, what's the situation in Columbia like right now? You know, I've only seen bits and pieces, but it seems like things are not going well when it comes to drug war, peace, violence, and all of that.

Well, I mean, unfortunately, you know, my predictions, unfortunately, in the book are coming true that you had this peace process in 2016. It was the largest, longest running insurgency in the world. The FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, this kind of almost caricature of a South American guerrilla force in their military fatigues and AK-47. They sign a peace deal with the government.

Part of that peace deal is, by the time of the peace deal, the FARC were controlling much of the territory where coca, the raw material used to make cocaine, was being grown. What the government needed to do, the FARC were going to lay down their weapon and hand all of this territory over. We needed the government to step in and enforce basic law and order. The government completely dropped the ball. And now the real issue.

The bitter seeds that were planted in 2016 by that inaction by the government, we're seeing. Colombia is now running more than 50 massacres this year. The age of the massacre has returned to Colombia as these new narco militias are fighting for control of different areas. Much of this revolves around fighting for control of the cocaine industry.

And so the country really has squandered this once-in-a-generation moment. They had this overwhelming optimism in 2015, 2016, 2017.

But the government let it slip through its fingers. And I don't know if there's a way back now. The FARC themselves, the majority of the FARC, 90% of them committed to this peace deal. 10% did form a dissident group. But those who laid down their weapon, these brave men and women who said, we have enemies, but I'm going to trust in peace. I'm going to lay down my weapon. More than 200 demobilized FARC guerrillas have been murdered since 2016. It

It's just, it's endlessly sad. It's just, it's very hard to see any optimism on the horizon. And a final point, as long as Colombia, as long as there's cocaine in Colombia, Colombia will not know peace. And as long as the world continues to consume cocaine, Colombia is likely to continue producing it. Who is killing the demobilized members of the FARC?

So this is part of these new narco militias that are coming out. So on one hand, it's the old far right paramilitaries who will often kind of assume new names. They'll kind of demobilize. The far right paramilitaries will demobilize in a big show, but then often they'll just keep on doing it. And in some cases, it's been members of the army and members of the army who were not ready to forgive what they did.

saw happen in that civil war. And they've taken this advantage in a very cowardly way to get their enemy when the enemy is no longer armed. I mean, it's contemptible that. And that's certainly one case we know of where one guerrilla was stopped on a lonely path and he was driving his motorbike and he was killed within minutes of this encounter with these soldiers.

Yeah, you know, it seems like, too, despite all the massacres and murders, there's no shortage of young people that are still joining these organizations and taking part in these narco wars. And it reminds me, you had this line, I think, in an old article about how Colombia's greatest natural resource wasn't cocaine. It was angry young men or something along those lines. I mean, is that – are people still looking to get into this world despite knowing the consequences? And why? Yeah.

Absolutely, because Colombia is one of the most unequal countries on earth. And Colombia can feel feudal once you get out into the countryside. It's just incredible when you go to these different parts of the countryside, the poverty is almost without limit. It's just it's heartbreaking. And these kids, you know, and this is the one thing that you kind of really appreciate.

I know it's obvious. I know it's so obvious. But you really need to see these things up close to be reminded of it. Everybody wants to be somebody in this life. And if you're grown up in this country where if you're born poor, it's almost a certain ticket to dying poor.

How do you break free of that? Well, one way is saying, well, the legal path, I have nothing, nothing open to me legally. I may as well join the illegal groups. Then I can be someone. I can command some sort of respect. And I've seen it. I was with the FARC. Now, this is a controversial, not controversial, but this is back in the news again. I was with the FARC in about 2018. And they had this teenager who was with us, a sadistic little bastard. He must have been about 14, 15 years old.

And we were on donkeys and he would whip the donkey, you know, a deranged little bastard. But he had his AK over his shoulder. But you would see him walking through the village and he commanded some respect. That was one of the few ways he was going to be able to command some sort of respect from people because otherwise he thought his life was just going to be, oh, another peasant.

And parts of that country are so abandoned. I'll give you an example. This is in the book as well. I hung out in this area called Catatumbo, which is right up by the border with Venezuela. The farmers there installed a toll on this dirt track.

in order to raise money to build a school. It took them three years of raising money to build this school. Where was the local government to build this school? It wasn't there. They themselves had to raise the money. And then it gets even weirder. How were people paying that toll? What was being transported along that dirt path? COCA. COCA built that school, not the government. COCA.

So these people have no options. They genuinely don't. So, you know, these groups can seem like attractive propositions. The respect thing is huge. I mean, one thing I've seen when it comes to street gangs is

In America, in cities here, it's not just respect. There is, for lack of a better term, there's a cool factor there. Kids want to be associated with these groups, especially if they're dominant in their areas. They want to be seen as these tough guys that are living that life. I don't know about Columbia. I assume this is the case as well.

Instagram, social media, like people are putting all that stuff out there and kids are seeing it younger and younger. And that factor lowers them in, in a way that I think other stuff doesn't.

Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. And then add on this as well, a kind of element of family as well. You know, if there's any sort of trouble at home, these kids can be seduced into the idea that the new militia is their new family. And there are tight bonds between these people. But a further thing I'll say is it's all a con. And this is what you actually find people who will admit it openly. It's all just one big con. And they all live to regret it, I've noticed.

time and time and time again when I would be speaking to a sicario I'd be speaking to a gang guy who was rising in the ranks so many times they would say I wish I hadn't gone down this path because they always think and I kind of it's like the first time you go to a hot front line as a reporter you always think you can just turn around and there's that moment when you say oh shit I

I can't turn around anymore. I'm now stuck on this front line for the next couple of hours or something. You always think there's a way out and you don't realize until the door slams firmly behind you. And that's what these kids learn. Everybody who gets into it, they all come to regret it because when you're 16 and you say, oh, I'm not going to live until I'm 30. I don't care. I'm just going to have a great 14 years or whatever. Okay, that's cool. But what happens when you're 27 now?

And then the time is running out in front of you and you regret it. They all come to regret it.

You had a lot of experience with these guys. I mean, what's that like when you're at bars, at parties, up in the countryside at the ranches they have their parties at, and you're there just hanging out with them? And I mean, I assume some of them know you're a journalist. How do you prepare yourself for that? What sort of precautions do you have? I mean, stupid. Yeah, I mean, I didn't really take that many precautions. I kind of, you know, it would be these nights out in these clubs. And I knew enough of the people that I could...

And I think people were forewarned. So I could kind of say, hey, how you been? And I would see that person. I would see that person from that story.

I mean, sometimes it was very, very strange. I somehow got invited to, at some point in time, the office of Mbigado would have this weekly meeting where they would have dinner. They would have dinner in this very humble little, it wasn't the senior leadership, but it was guys who ran neighborhoods. So they would come in and then I went with Marcus. I don't know what the fuck Marcus was thinking, but

There, it was one of Columbia's most famous models, who's still tremendously famous, was acting like she was dressed in this kind of white, long dress. It was like an English tea party for the queen or something. And she's surrounded by these guys, some with huge beer bellies, wearing baseball caps, wearing night trainers. She's this vision of...

a refined lady and she says, oh, welcome, welcome. And what is your name? And speaking to me like this. And then this guy behind her burping and ordering more chicken soup. And these guys would look at me. And I guess everyone thought someone else must have invited me. And it must have been later. They must have been like, who the fuck was that guy, right? But yeah, you know, it went off without problem. And, you know, I built up trust within that world. You start off small.

You start off interviewing a Sicario, and a Sicario can go from someone who's a neighborhood Sicario who's about as expendable as anything on this planet. They don't care. They can get another Sicario like that, a

a bottom rung Sicario. I mean, a top rung Sicario is a tremendously important person, but you know, a neighborhood Sicario. So it started off there. People realized I wasn't setting them up. I was honoring my word. And, you know, again, so many people want to hear their story told. People really dig that. So you've got in Mexico, I'm just back from Mexico, and just that whole thing about those narco corridos, the songs, right? People dig that. People dig the feeling of other people hearing about their lives. Right.

The Sicario thing, man, it's just like, you know, you have this image in your head before you meet these kids of a killer, right, of someone who's a contract killer, who's like slick and well put together. These kids were like 15 wearing mesh shorts and flip flops. And I mean, that was another thing, too. This was what got almost 10 years ago that I think I was relatively shocked by.

Oh, absolutely. Because when you hear the word assassin, you think it's like Day of the Jackal kind of shit, right? You think it's like, you know, on a rooftop with the sharpshooter and you're going to, you know... Doing the suit. Exactly. You're taking out some... You're taking out a nice motorcycle and Ray-Bans on it. Or you're taking out some senior member of NATO or something. No, these are kids with baseball caps in shorts. They're on the back of a bike. It's brutal, man. But...

that shows you how violent these societies are. And it's this kind of, I would trace it back to just the horror and the violence of that conquest by the Spanish. These have always been very, very violent societies. Colombia more than most, I should say. Colombia is

is violent even by a violent part of the world. And let's remember, I don't think enough people understand how violent that part of the world is. I think if you go from Mexico down to Chile, including the Caribbean, you have about 500 million people, 600 million people. So you can figure out what's that like? Less than 10% of the world's population, 8%.

Today, one in three of every homicide that has been carried out today will occur in that zone. We think the Middle East is violent. We think Africa's violent. No, it's not. Not compared to Latin America. This place is on fire.

Latin America, from Mexico to Brazil to Colombia to Venezuela to El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, these are tremendously violent societies and they're also tremendously unequal societies. And it's this history of political violence often in these countries. Colombia is a perfect example of that. I would say it was the rich and the oligarchy of Colombia that really taught everybody in that country how to use political violence to achieve your aims.

I mean, I imagine the cocaine and the tremendous amount of guns has got to factor in as well, too. Yeah. But I mean, there's less guns in Colombia than there is, say, in the United States. There's less guns in there than, say, you know, look at somewhere like Switzerland, where I think every able-bodied, at least man, has to have some access to a gun. It's when you mix a kind of when you mix tremendous inequality with a dysfunctional state,

throw the drugs industry into that cocktail, you're sitting on a nuclear bomb. And that's the fact of it. The tremendous damage the war on drugs does to that part of the world, and it's all being carried out in your name, in my name, in everybody who's listening to this podcast, that war is being carried out in your name. And it's the biggest public policy failure I can think of. And no one questions it. That's the thing that blows my mind.

Get 10 leading journalists around the table. Every one of them will say, oh, well, of course, the war on drugs is we failed. So why isn't anyone writing a front page story on the New York Times? End the war on drugs. Reform the war on drugs. Why is no one asking for that? It blows my mind. I mean, I think they are to a degree, no, especially domestically when it comes to prosecuting people for nonviolent drug offenses and things like that. And there's there's been debates about legalizing. I mean,

Obviously, it's still taking forever for weed to get legalized around the country, but there's been some progress made in that too. I got to assume...

like I can't say for certain, but that the weed industry isn't as violent as it once was 10, 15, 20 years ago when everything was illegal. No, and I hope you're right. But I would say this too. Look, I mean, probably politically, I'm probably sensitive more in line with the people who say legalize it all because I don't see any other. I'm not firmly committed to that position, but I don't see any other option. But just to take that legalization and let's look at the model for marijuana. This was a 40 year project.

of guys setting up grassroots organizations, getting celebrities to go forward. Remember Willie Nelson? People would laugh at him. Oh, you're the weed head. You're the pothead. He was brave enough to say, I believe in this. Go forward, be mocked. Where is the person? Where is that actor who is giving an interview to promote their new film and say, by the way, I think all drugs ought to be legalized? There's a test I would say about

how far advanced the political work has done. Turn up to your uncle and your aunt tonight and just say, uncle, auntie, I believe heroin ought to be sold at every chemist. Just look at, I believe cocaine ought to be sold at the chemists. When you see their mouth hit the floor, you'll know how much political work is still to be done.

I got to be honest with you. I got an uncle in my family that I'm pretty sure might have been involved. I'm not going to say which uncle. I've got a bunch of them. But I don't think his mouth would drop. I know you were making a rhetorical point, but I just wanted to throw that out there. Peace to the uncle, you know.

But yeah, the last question I have, this has been always illuminating and fun, is something that I was taken by surprise when you were telling me about it, I think a couple months ago. And that's this legend of this cartel guy, Don Berna, who I hadn't really heard much about, but it seems like he's someone that should be

really well known. Can you kind of tell us his story? What's the situation with him right now and what he could potentially bring to the table when it comes to having some sort of peace in Colombia? So Don Berner is this tremendously fascinating character. He's in, for the people who have seen Narcos, he's in the second, he's in the second, is it the second series when he's instrumental in the takedown of Pablo Escobar.

And people ask me often about Narcos, and I'll talk for Narcos in Colombia, is this real? Is this true? When it comes to the actual Narcos themselves, yes. It's basically following real life. What they're presenting in that series is basically real life. Obviously, they've hyped up the participation of the Americans. That's a natural. It's for an American audience primarily. But

when they're dealing with describing the actions of these Colombian Marcos, it's pretty truthful. So Don Berner is this... Yeah, Don Berner... Basically, Berner starts out...

In the EPL, which is the Popular Liberation Army, a guerrilla group. Colombia has countless numbers of guerrilla groups. It's often like in Colombia, basically people will get pissed off about something and they'll say, all right, let's go to the mountains and start another guerrilla group. I mean, there's just so many of them. Just to give you an example, the ELN was founded to be inspired by the Cuban Revolution. The FARC was inspired by Marxist-Leninism.

The EPL was a Maoist group, right? I mean, it's just anything you want, the Colombian guerrillas can be there. He's there in the EPL. He gets attacked by, we believe it's a guerrilla, I think. Sorry, a grenade. This gives him a pronounced limp for the rest of his life. He needs a walking stick. He then becomes a driver for these important traffickers in the Medellin cartel. One of them is called Galeano.

Galliano is killed by Pablo Escobar in this infamous turning point in the drug war when Pablo Escobar says he's in the prison that he himself has built, the cathedral. He invites these traffickers over and says, you've been stealing from me. And he kills them.

Don Berner was supposed to be in that meeting. He doesn't turn up by luck. So now he is out for revenge on his bosses. He creates and is instrumental in this organization called PEPES, the persecuted by Pablo Escobar. This is the group that works with the DEA, the CIA, the Colombian police, the army. They all work together.

to come to bring down Pablo Escobar. And it's one of those things that when Pablo Escobar was finally killed in 1993, the Colombian government says, "The era of the big drug lord is over." Of course, it wasn't because now we had Don Berna. Don Berna ran Medellin for around from 1993, let's say, until 2008. His will, his word was utterly, you couldn't question it. And people who tried to at the beginning suffered greatly.

People often talk about power. I remember reading Henry Kissinger talking about meeting one of the Assad's, the elder Assad. And there was some anecdote about an assistant. I can't remember the details, but an assistant running in saying, President, President, this is urgent. You must look at it. And Assad just silencing the aid as if I'm talking to this person. I will stop time to keep this conversation going. That's power. Don Berner, when he was running Medellin, I would notice if you spoke about him,

Even in a closed room, people would lower their voice. They would say, well, you know, Don Berner is doing this because no one knew where his spies were. It wouldn't occur to you in 2005 to be sitting in a restaurant and loudly talking about Don Berner. That's power. I've never seen it since. I imagine in these...

In these savage dictatorships, you've got something similar. But it was true power. Then he joins the far-right paramilitaries. This is what all of these drug traffickers want to do. They want to launder their image. The position of the Colombian government is it will never negotiate with narcos. So he joins the far-right paramilitaries. They unleash this...

campaign of murderous violence. The worst massacres were carried out by the far-right paramilitaries in the wake. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. He starts off as a far leftist and then he joins the far right. Yeah, exactly. And again, this is more common than you think. These guys are never doctrinaire. The FARC would try to instruct the guerrillas, their political class, but often what these guerrilla groups is just looking for loyal fighters.

I mean, you would have political conversations with a heavy fighter of the FARC. You're not going far. I mean, these guys are just like, hey, I'm a Marxist-Leninist. And you'd say, what does that mean? They would say, I mean, but they understand it is about redistribution. I don't want to mock them too much. Because again, you know, the FARC did try to do their teaching when they could. So yeah, he does start off as a far right, far left. Then he becomes someone called Adolf Piess, right?

And this is, you would see a number of these narcos. There's one who's really funny called Gordo Lindo, which is like,

God, I don't like the cute fatty. This was this obese guy. Your viewers can't see it, but I'm demonstrating on Skype video. This guy was obese and he would like he must. I don't know where he ordered his military fatigues, but he had this military outfit. It was he would have to squeeze himself in and he would stand there and like try and pretend he was commanding troops in front of the camera. He was what they called a pure blood narco and he got the name fat.

cute fatty because he would give every girlfriend a Volkswagen Beetle. And these women, these models would say, oh, fatty, he's so cute. And so that's called the lindo, right? So it's adorable. Exactly. So all of these narcos, they take over the AUC, the right wing paramilitaries. And that's really interesting because the right, the far right paramilitaries starts off. How long do you have? Do you have a few more minutes?

Oh, I got time. All right. I got time. So I just want to tell you about this.

Let's just take a little digression. So the far-right paramilitaries, they're mainly set up by this family called the Castanhos. If you want to talk about a Greek tragedy all happening to one family, read up on the Castanho family of Colombia. So the main figure is called Rambo. That's his nickname. Fidel Castanho takes the name Rambo. Their father, their farmers, their father is kidnapped by the FARC. Again, brilliance by the FARC, consistently shooting themselves in the foot.

They kidnapped the father and they played this game that they would do so many times. They demanded the ransom, the family paid the ransom, the FARC said we need another ransom. Rambo said screw it, I'll take that money and set up a new paramilitary group to kill rebels. They set up the AUC, the Far Right paramilitaries. Rambo is killed in combat. His brother Carlos takes over.

Carlos sets up this political ideological paramilitary unit that is trying to rid the country of the Marxist guerrillas. But he needs money. And his brother, Vicente, starts overseeing drug trafficking. Carlos is never very happy about this, we think.

But he understands the only way to raise funds is cocaine trafficking, but he never wants to do it. Vicente is a cocaine trafficker. Vicente will essentially, when Carlos at some point in around 2002 says, you know what? This trafficking has gone on long enough. I want out of this war. I am going to America to stand trial and show them I am innocent of cocaine trafficking because he never did it personally. Vicente convenes a meeting. Don Berner is there. Vicente, his own brother, says, okay.

I think Carlos will be a danger to all of us. I vote we kill Carlos. This is his own brother. And Carlos Castaño, this tremendously important figure, a lunatic. He's in Narcos series two as well. A complete lunatic. There's a scene that really encapsulates Carlos Castaño in Narcos, which is good. He's walking down the street and they've done this raid in Medellin, one of Pablo Escobar's neighborhoods. And he walks up to some dude and he shoots him in the back of the head and says, for Colombia.

And this is the type of lunatic he genuinely was. So Don Burnham is one of the narcos who infiltrates this far right paramilitary group. And he achieves tremendous success. And he's trying to launder his image. And in 2008, as part of a peace process with the government, this is what the narcos have all been aiming for. A peace process with the government where they can clean their image. They can keep some of their money.

The problem is them and the government can't come to terms about what the peace deal should be. The government wants a pretty serious eight years in prison

Well, it's not that serious. It can be at their own kind of farms. But the paramilitaries are saying that's too much. The paramilitaries start to hint that they have a lot of information about which were the politicians, generals, colonels who worked with them. And they start hinting that they're prepared to share that information overnight. The government extradites

10, 15 of the most important paramilitaries to the US where they all were convicted of cocaine trafficking. Don Berner got a 32-year sentence. Now, where does Don Berner sit at the moment? I would speak to narcos in Medellin. Even a couple of years ago, I said, what would happen if Don Berner came back? These narcos told me if Don Berner wanted it, they thought people in Medellin would step aside. I don't know if Don Berner would want it. He would be under the microscope. I don't know how he would get away with it.

But that's the respect they still hold for this tremendously important figure. Step aside in a way where there would be kind of, I mean, there would still be obviously drug trafficking, but there would be peace. Like, are we talking about you get the, you bring the head of the snake back and things calm down underneath? That's a great question. So when Don Berner runs Medellin SSA from 1993, roughly to 2008, what happens in 2008? He's extradited to the US. Medellin has been in consistent chaos since then.

Now, we had a massive drug war immediately after his extradition as people tried to take the crown. It was this long, long drawn out war between two figures within the office of Envigado. They think 4,000 people died in that drug war.

Finally, one side, one of the capos took control, but he had bled so much for the crown, no one had to respect him. In my book, what's interesting is the trafficker I get to know, Alex, has this plan.

His plan is he wants another war in Medellin. Why? Because there hasn't been a single leader of the drug world. All of these other independent drug traffickers have emerged in the shadows. And he wants to oversee, again, the dream is a deal with the government. He wants to get all of the drug traffickers to agree to a deal and then they can keep their money. Get out of the game, keep the money. But as long as you have all of these unaccounted drug lords...

It's like the old cliche of herding cats. You can't get them together. So he wants a bunch of them killed in a war, those left to come together as a kind of all in agreement, negotiate with the government. That was his plan. So Medellin still to this day is in chaos. You have basically three drug cartels in that city. Another drug war is just a matter of time. Are there rumors of him potentially being released from prison, some sort of deal where he would go back and then...

you know, sort of calm things down. I know efforts are underway to try and get Bernard legally to get his sentence shortened. Damn. But yeah, I mean, that's the whole thing, right? You always, and interestingly enough, that was a plot point in Sicario too, right? When you have people fighting over territory, that's when things are always the worst. Absolutely. And that's the history of, I mean, you look at Mexico right now. Again, I was just in Tijuana, a fantastic city. I mean, just what an amazing city. But I mean, that's...

I mean, that place is just on fire. Because again, you've got three, at least three major cartels fighting for control of this strategically important city. Colombia is the same way. And that's why you're seeing all of this violence across the whole country. Because again, remember, 2016, the FARC not completely, but largely controlled a lot of the coca.

When they handed over that territory, they had instilled peace in that territory. When they gave it over to the government, it became a free-for-all. It was like a starting pistol going off. And all of the cartels, all of the different guerrilla groups raced to control that coca. And that's what we're living through now. And honestly, I don't see much hope of... I don't see much cause for hope at the moment. And a final thing that I don't think enough people are really aware of

It's portrayed by books like, by TV series like Narcos and books that Pablo Escobar was the golden age of cocaine. That's not true. You and I are living through the golden age of cocaine right now. There is more cocaine right now than ever before. This is it. And on that positive note, yeah, on that positive note, I think we're going to, we're going to call it

Thank you so much for coming on. Do you want to plug your book or anything else one more time? Yeah, absolutely. The book is called Kilo Inside the Cocaine Cartels. It's available here in America by William Morrow. In England, it's published by eBerry. It's going to be published in Turkish. It's going to be published in Slovakian. It's going to be published in Germany. It's going to be published in Holland. So all of your listeners around the world, there's many different versions for them to get their hands on.

Last I saw, we were number one in documentary podcasts in Latvia. Is there going to be a Latvian version or are you letting my fans down? I'm going to get on that right now. I'm going to speak to the agents right now. They apparently love good stories. But yeah, the book is fantastic. Thanks again for coming on. For those of you who want to hear more interviews like this, patreon.com slash the underworld podcast. We're going to have

More interviews coming up every few weeks with folks like Toby and really good reporters and maybe even some folks who are on the opposite side of the reporting as well. And yeah, thanks again, Underworld Podcast, signing off. Yeah, and Danny, just to say one thing as well, I just want to say, first of all, thanks for having me on, but also...

Good job for what you're doing, you know, because a lot of the media is so, so boring at this point. And, you know, people like you and Jake really creating your own media. I think that's the future because I am so bored by the majority of the media output. I want those independent voices, media that has a voice, not the bland consensus we see. So I wish your podcast the best of luck and, you know, keep doing what you're doing because you're doing a good job so far.

Thanks, man. I don't really have a choice or anything else at the moment. And yeah, I mean, we're trying, right? I was, I'm pretty bored by the other options out there as well. Hopefully people are not bored by this. So thanks again for having us on. I mean, thanks again for coming on. Whatever. You're still listening now. It doesn't, it doesn't matter. Like you love us. It's my pleasure to have you on Danny. Come back on whenever you want.