Shuang Yuan
speaker
178 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 12 Jul
Shuang Yuan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
An actor is speaking his words, translated verbatim.
Luis leads us into a small room covered in white tiles and offers a seat next to some large plastic containers.
There's a strong smell of chemicals, and I suspect this room is used for cooking fentanyl.
One hot afternoon in 2019, Luis says he was at a ranch on the edge of the city, running errands for his boss when he was told to stop what he was doing and guard the perimeter.
The product he's offering?
Precursor chemicals needed to produce fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans over the past decade.
Number one is Zhang Zhidong, also known by his alias, Brother Wang.
Luis says the cash tips were the sign of what was to come.
Luis is talking about Naco Corridos, ballads about the cartels sung by local folk musicians.
How do you think he managed to become Number One, become the King of Fentanyl?
I want to ask more, but we've been talking for about 40 minutes, and I notice Miguel Angel is starting to get twitchy.
We say hasty goodbyes, and Miguel Angel explains that a place like that could be attacked any time.
As we're leaving, he points out a house a few doors down, which is pierced with hundreds of bullet holes from a previous hit.
He's keen for us to hear some nacocorridos for ourselves and finds a group of musicians.
They're drinking beers on the corner of a crossroads, waiting for someone to drive up and pay them to perform a song.
Four guys set up their instruments as the sun goes down.
I want to speak to someone higher up in the cartel to see if we can shed any light on how Zhang Zhidong managed to become brother one and gain the trust of the drug traffickers.
Early the next morning, we meet a guy I'll call Enrique.
He's in his early 30s and works as a coordinator for the cartel.
We talk in our car as he's worried about being overheard.
Showing 21–40 of 178 · page 2 of 9
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