Natalie Kitroeff

Wow.

Yes.

Former drug dealer becomes a police officer.

Kind of a wild career switch.

Okay, so he becomes a police officer in a police force that is notoriously corrupt.

What happens?

This is in the midst of the last time the Mexican government did a really serious push to dismantle the cartels, a war on these cartels.

And what is the defining feature of this new group he's leading, the Jalisco cartel?

So El Mencho becomes a kind of pioneer in this much more aggressive, violent way of doing business.

And when I was in Mexico, it was also clear that part of his signature was also diversifying the purpose of that violence, right?

He pursued a broad range of business opportunities that went beyond just drugs.

Just talk about that, the extent of the corruption and what this group can do.

It becomes incredibly powerful, right, and rich.

So that gives them resources to do this kind of work.

Okay, given what you've both laid out about the steady and menacing rise of this group and their power across Mexico, I think a lot of people are going to be wondering at this point, what was the government doing this whole time that this was happening?

Were they going after the Jalisco cartel in El Mencho?

What was their response?

So it's both difficult for the Mexican government to fend off the pull of this multibillion-dollar corporation, which is the Jalisco cartel, and at the same time, there's been a hesitance or reluctance to go at them head-on because it means going up against a whole system that perpetuates their power.

And it's what makes it even more shocking that the Mexican government was able to go up against El Mencho this time and actually get him.

So, Jack, walk me through how that operation went down.