Leon Crassé

They have a constant stream of high caliber weapons coming from the United States.

Is it an everyday concern for everyday Mexicans?

I think I would be more cautious there because we are not talking about a terrorist organization with political aims.

We're talking about an illicit corporate conglomerate that is focused on doing business.

Annie, the recruitment tactics of groups like the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación are one of the most brutal expressions of the collapse of the Mexican state.

They do not only recruit through money or intimidation, they recruit through deception, kidnapping, forced labor...

terror, luring young men with false job offers and promises, and then turning them into disposable foot soldiers.

I have to say that that cruelty connects directly with the crisis of disappearances in Mexico, because many people who vanish are not simply, you know, missing, quote unquote, in the abstract.

They have been absorbed, exploited, killed, erased by criminal economies that need bodies.

One of the main stories in Mexico now is the never-ending quest of parents who have lost their kids, who go around Mexico quite literally digging for

with the hope of finding their missing children or just a fragment of their missing children, a bone, any hint of the fate of their missing child.

He was, you know, by most measures, the most powerful drug lord in Mexico's recent history.

And he led this cartel, Jalisco New Generation cartel.

The United States, as you know, had put a $15 million bounty on his head, which tells you how central he was to the drug war as Washington understands it.

He was born in Michoacán, then spent time in the United States, was imprisoned for, I think, heroin distribution there, returned to Mexico, married into a powerful criminal family, served as a police officer before becoming part of the Jalisco underworld.

One singular aspect of organized crime in Mexico has been how mysterious and secretive

these drug lords have been.

These people in Mexico don't want to be seen.

They live very isolated lives.

So there were a million stories surrounding him to do with his cruelty, his efficiency, and his intelligence as a criminal mastermind.