Ben Rhodes

These organizations, by the way, earn typically the GDP of a small country per year.

These are not small.

These are in the billions, multi-billion dollar organizations.

Yeah, like Nueva Generacion, the new generation, had a – their approach was – I mean basically their business model was to be more violent than any other organization, to terrorize their competitors and to get immediate attention.

acquiescence by local authorities and civilians alike.

And so absolutely.

And they wanted that broadcast.

They wanted that to be their brand.

That's their model.

And it was effective because certainly if he or his organization was involved,

He would get cooperation because the alternative was pretty bad.

They were also quite showy about trying to put together these armored vehicles with their emblems on them and uniformed people.

And they have an armed wing as if the whole thing weren't sort of an armed organization.

But they – yeah, there was a big show around the use of violence.

The spectacle of violence was important to him.

Yeah, so what happened in Mexico over the weekend is what was expected to happen.

They had threatened large-scale violence if there was any action taken against the leadership of the organization.

They carried it out.

Most of what they did, there was a lot of visibility.

It was very dramatic.