Katarina Szulc

Cartels in Mexico?

I would say the top three, CG&G, the Gulf Cartel, Cartel del Noreste, and, well, Sinaloa.

Sinaloa is crumbling, yeah.

That's why I didn't put it in top three, but it would certainly be in top three.

And I think the U.S.

designated eight of them, if I'm not mistaking, as foreign terrorist organizations.

which included all those I mentioned and a few more.

But for example, there were certain factions of cartels or fragmented versions of cartels that were not on that list.

And when you have fragmented groups of a previously stronghold cartel still existing, those groups end up attaching on to a larger cartel that's operating.

And it just makes them stronger because they gain more territory, they gain access to more people, more guns.

It doesn't matter because the Sinaloa cartel is now, it just came out a few months ago, is taking chemistry students from universities in Sinaloa and having them try to figure out how to make the precursors from scratch.

I don't know.

We'll have to wait and see.

I have a feeling that there's probably batches out on the streets or they're preparing batches that have these homemade precursors now.

We'll see if it works.

It's just like what happened with fentanyl.

You have to see what happens with the streets.

But from what I can tell and the people in Sinaloa that I've spoken to, they're still yet to make those precursors tangible enough to actually make the fentanyl from them.

But they're already trying to cut out China.

Yeah, by making the precursors.