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Over time, as illicit drug production and use grew to enormous levels, so too did grisly drug violence. In recent years, narcotic traffickers realized that the old forms of production and distribution were of declining value due to changes in the geopolitical environment. Thus, new drug synthesization methods were developed that involves drug production on a frightening scale, with dire consequences to the health of humankind.
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00:13This video is brought to you by the
00:49The war on drugs has engendered new leviathans, invisible, unconquerable prey that are nearly
00:56impossible to spot. Today, out in the open seas, a rare catch.
01:06In the underwater belly of this beast, the Coast Guard discovers over seven tons of cocaine,
01:12loot worth $230 million. When drug lords fall, criminal organizations reinvent themselves
01:22once more.
01:26They never disappear. They simply recompose into networks, not structures. They become
01:34nodes in a wider network. And even the command nodes in these networks, you can take down
01:43a command node, but it doesn't dismantle the workings of the network itself.
01:53A new era for criminal organizations began at the start of the 90s in a system where
01:58everything was accelerating. Transportation, communication, cash flow, globalization.
02:05The triumph of free trade hoped to erase borders.
02:11I believe we have made a decision now that will permit us to create an economic order in
02:18the world that will promote more growth, more equality, better preservation of the environment,
02:23government, and a greater possibility of world peace.
02:31In 1994, the United States, along with Canada and Mexico, inaugurated the greatest free-trade
02:38zone in the world. No more trade barriers and fewer border controls.
02:48Mexican factories stepped up the pace, and lines of trucks at the U.S. border grew longer.
02:57Hiding drug cargo in the stream of vehicles became the favorite pastime of the Mexican cartels,
03:02implanted along the 3,000-kilometer border. Heroin, marijuana, and cocaine flowed practically
03:10unobstructed. Helming the country, Mexico's sole political party, the PRI, received its share of the profits.
03:20As long as the traffickers take drugs to the gringos, and as long as they don't challenge the state,
03:27it's okay. As long as they don't act against the interests of the PRI to keep power, the state will
03:35not interfere with the drug trade very much. In Colombia, at the head of the cocaine trafficking
03:43chain, the political establishment finally let loose on drug traffickers.
03:49Under pressure from the DEA, the criminals who came after Pablo Escobar were hunted down.
03:55Their shell companies were dismantled, and arrests increased.
04:01To absorb losses, those who'd survived counted on their Mexican transporters.
04:06They asked them to step up the pace.
04:10And they weren't flying one at a time. They were flying convoys. Seven or 14 planes would take off at
04:16a time, each loaded up with nearly 1,000 kilos of cocaine and landing in northern Mexico and Chihuahua.
04:24They would be staged there and then smuggled across the border into the US.
04:31The logistics of the Mexican cartels were foolproof. They had the upper hand over the Colombians,
04:36and imposed a new division of labor. The Mexicans took charge of the riskiest and most lucrative
04:43component of the traffic, cocaine distribution in the United States.
04:49The Mexicans entered a more complicated phase that we experienced as well.
04:56The level of corruption in the system sank deeper and deeper, and the violence grew worse.
05:02Why? Because the money from distribution came into play, and it was a huge amount of money.
05:10And in this business, money is synonymous with violence and death.
05:20Mexico got caught up in a never-ending spiral of violence.
05:24Meanwhile, Colombian traffickers stepped back to focus on production,
05:28covering entire swaths of their land with coca crops.
05:35By the end of the 90s, drug production had become concentrated in lawless areas where it is impossible to unseat.
05:44Colombia was the world's leading cocaine producer.
05:47And another country emerged as a permanent player in the story of drug trafficking,
05:52Afghanistan, the world's top opium producer.
06:06Kabul, Afghanistan.
06:10Today, 80% of the world's heroin is produced in Afghanistan.
06:15The completely illicit drug represents one-third of the country's revenue.
06:22From the dusty streets of its capital, Kabul, to the highest levels of state,
06:27all of Afghanistan has become addicted to heroin.
06:34An addiction that was born in the 80s, in the midst of the Cold War.
06:44The Soviet army occupied the country's big cities,
06:47and in the countryside, the Russians strove to repress Afghan resistance.
06:53So, in the mid-1980s, they adopted so-called scorched earth policy.
06:58They decided to destroy the countryside so people could not live there.
07:03And in order to do so, they would burn down orchards, destroyed water systems,
07:09poison wells, but not everyone moved.
07:12Instead, people started cultivating opium poppy.
07:16For ten years, opium poppy funded the tribal leaders' resistance to the Soviet occupation.
07:23What was once a marginal crop became the main source of revenue for peasants and warlords.
07:32When the Russians left Afghanistan, tribal leaders clashed in a struggle to take power.
07:43Several thousand Afghans died in their wars.
07:47Throughout the ravaged land, one movement channeled the anger of a people prostrated by years of conflict.
07:55The Taliban, born in the Quranic schools, gained ground.
08:02They had political objectives, they didn't like drugs.
08:05When they started, they really were very upset with all those corrupted warlords in Afghanistan
08:10that they really didn't like, so they wanted to bring law and order.
08:12It was not the kind of law and order we liked, but that was their perception.
08:15So, part of that was to stop opium. Opium was a vice, it's haram, it's not clean.
08:22Everywhere they went, the Taliban imposed their strict laws, closing movie theatres,
08:28outlawing music, hiding women from view.
08:31Religious law triumphed over everything.
08:33But opium was the livelihood of tens of thousands of families.
08:37If they banned it, the Taliban risked losing support in the countryside.
08:43To build political capital, the Taliban started saying,
08:47well, the Quran says that opium papi is haram, and it's still haram to use it.
08:52But it would say, as long as you produce opium papi for the kafirs, for the infidels,
08:58as long as it goes to Russia or goes to the US, that's perfectly fine with us.
09:06Opium allowed the Taliban to finance their advance on Kabul.
09:10The Afghan capital fell in 1996.
09:15Afghanistan was immediately ostracized by the international community and cut off from the world.
09:22Afghanistan was a ravaged land, and there was no foreign aid.
09:27And so opium was the knife that cut through the Gordian knot of this social puzzle of how to restore
09:36economy.
09:37It's an annual crop. You put the seed in the ground, and a few months later, you've got a commodity.
09:43It's illicit. It magically crosses all boundaries, you know, without any impediment whatsoever.
09:53To fulfill their dream of a fundamentalist state, the Taliban set up labs on their land,
09:59and turned Afghanistan into the world's leading heroin producer.
10:06Drug money made them bold, thinking they could flout international law.
10:11In 1998, they granted a safe haven to members of al-Qaeda.
10:17But heroin could not ensure the survival of an entire country.
10:22Poverty was rife in Afghanistan.
10:25The Taliban regime sorely needed international aid.
10:29In hopes of regaining international favor, the Taliban outlawed opium poppy production throughout the country in 2000.
10:39Peasants risked death if they planted the forbidden seed.
10:43In just one year, nearly every poppy field in Afghanistan had disappeared.
10:50And the international community said things like, well, you know, thank you.
10:56And the United States, under Secretary of State Colin Powell, actually awarded the regime, I think, $41 million in foreign
11:02aid.
11:03But there were other issues. Human rights. The status of women.
11:08And so the U.N. wasn't going to recognize them.
11:12And so the Taliban had, you know, in retrospect, conducted an act of economic suicide.
11:29After the terrorist attacks of September the 11th, 2001, the United States invaded Afghanistan.
11:41And it's not surprising that when the first U.S. bombs started falling, that that hollow shell of a society
11:50and a state collapsed because it was already dead on the inside.
11:55Now, it wasn't very strong to begin with, but whatever strength it might have had was gone.
12:04In a matter of weeks, the Taliban were pushed back into isolated zones doomed to disappear.
12:11But patiently, little by little, they reconquered the land by encouraging the cultivation of opium poppy,
12:18a miraculous source of funds for the rebirth of their movement.
12:41In Colombia, in the mid-90s, coca fields covered whole stretches of land, far from the cities which were now
12:48under high surveillance.
12:50Drug traffickers sought refuge in the jungles and mountains, well out of the state's reach.
12:58Colombia is a country in spite of itself.
13:01Its geography is extremely complex.
13:05It's a country that still has many communication problems,
13:08and it's had to work incredibly hard to control its land.
13:12We've barely finished inhabiting our land, and there are still many unpoliced areas.
13:21In these remote areas, a modern-day far west, land belonged to whoever had the means to take it.
13:29Large landowners purged Colombia's land of its wealth.
13:34Gemstones, minerals, oil, rare woods.
13:38To extend their operations, these large families created militias that would move populations by force.
13:46Colombians called them paramilitaries.
13:51With coca crops booming in the countryside, drug traffickers also outfitted themselves with paramilitary groups.
14:03The paramilitaries protected the land for the drug traffickers, who ordered them to clear the land of peasants and settlers
14:09and everything.
14:12Then the paramilitaries started to accumulate lots of money,
14:17and they took the initiative to enter into the drug business themselves.
14:25The paramilitary leaders gradually took control of coca production and the labs,
14:30and handled connections with the Mexican cartels and major international crime networks.
14:40Deep in the jungle, the scramble for coca would change the fate of another armed group.
14:49The FARC, a Marxist guerrilla group, fought for a fair distribution of land.
14:56Active on a few fronts, but with meagre means, they would extort large landowners and kidnap them for ransom.
15:04But in the mid-90s, FARC guerrillas adapted to the changing times.
15:14There's nothing more conservative than a communist.
15:16Communists are very conservative.
15:18And at first, they were against drug trafficking because it was going to corrupt the revolution.
15:22But there was a lot of pressure from peasants because they needed money.
15:27And so they say it's okay to cultivate coca.
15:32And being good revolutionaries and trying to build a social base,
15:36so they start delivering a variety of public services flush with the money they get from taxing cultivation.
15:47The FARC used drug money to buy arms and ammunition,
15:51but also communication tools that allowed them to synchronize their various fronts and make rapid progress.
15:59The FARC continued their abductions, targeting the very heart of the government.
16:04Governors, deputies, and former ministers were all held hostage.
16:09The guerrillas camped outside Bogota, they were here in Medellin, and they were outside Cali.
16:16And at the end of the 90s, people were talking about the potential of Colombia becoming a narco state,
16:22with the guerrillas taking power.
16:28Faced with the FARC's growing power, paramilitary groups wanted to retain control of coca production zones.
16:35In 1997, all the paramilitary factions gathered under one commander.
16:41A far-right militia of 20,000 men, the United Self-Defenders of Colombia, defied the guerrillas.
16:48Meanwhile, Colombia's legitimate military suffered ambushes by the FARC. Soldiers were abducted in their hundreds.
16:56In that kind of desperate situation, there were elements of the military who said,
17:01look, you know, we have to get into bed with this, with the paramilitaries.
17:05This is the only way to stop the guerrillas taking power.
17:12So what happens?
17:15These mafias end up carrying out a number of massacres throughout Colombia, claiming to be fighting the guerrillas.
17:23But actually what they do isn't just drive the guerrillas out of certain areas,
17:27but take the land themselves and use it as export corridors for coca.
17:37The paramilitaries eliminated their opponents.
17:42The systematic killing led to the displacement of millions of people.
17:49The paramilitaries dictated their laws in the zones they took over, areas the state could never reach.
17:57If you're looking for crimes against humanity in Colombia, this is where you'll find them, with the paramilitaries.
18:06They were the main violators of human rights and committed the most massacres and barbaric acts.
18:14Now, the political class in Colombia, as we've seen, has nothing honest about it and is extremely corrupt.
18:19And at a certain point, it saw the paramilitaries as a great opportunity to obtain votes and political representation.
18:31It's quite practical to receive the votes and armed support of the paramilitaries.
18:37But it's less practical when you become governor and they ask for a spot in the Housing or Health Administration,
18:42where the largest public contracts are.
18:46And if you're a senator and a paramilitary phones to tell you to resign for a year because one of
18:51his men is going to take your seat.
19:01In the early 2000s, the paramilitaries were in the same position as Pablo Escobar 20 years earlier.
19:15Before the Congress, one of their leaders, Salvatore Mancuso, defended the role of his men.
19:25A few years later, Salvatore Mancuso, nicknamed Triple Zero, would admit to the murder of 300 people.
19:41Salvatore Mancuso, who was the leader of the U.S.A.U.S.A.U.S.A.U.S.A
19:43.U.S.A.U.S.A.
19:43to salvaguardar a Colombia libre, digna, segura y en paz, sigue en pie.
19:53Salvatore Mancuso spoke to an appreciative audience.
19:59Paramilitaries controlled a third of parliament.
20:01Colombia had failed to push traffickers out.
20:04The paramilitaries had turned it into a narco-state.
20:18Unlike Colombian traffickers, the cartels in Mexico never tried to take the reins of the government.
20:26Traffickers accepted the game of corruption orchestrated by the single party, the PRI, in power for 70 years.
20:35In 2000, Mexicans shrugged off the authoritarian reign of the PRI by electing Vicente Fox as president.
20:44It was the promise of a new era for Mexico, and the change in power reshuffled the cards for traffickers.
20:51It did break what I would call the Pax Mafiosa, and that is to say, essentially the understanding between the
21:00Mexican state and the major narcotic trafficking organizations that they were untouchable, they weren't going to be touched.
21:08So it did break that certainty that you had had for years under the PRI.
21:17The PRI acted as a mediator between the cartels.
21:24Once they were gone, violence was the only way to weed out competitors.
21:29Overlapping wars soon broke out among all the cartels.
21:37At that time, the local and regional political class no longer had the means to contain the drug lord's power.
21:45And so in Mexico, we could say that the drug war is the price of democratization.
22:02In this cartel war, the historic bastion of trafficking, the Sinaloa, was on every front.
22:09Driven by the insatiable appetite of its leader, El Chapo, freshly escaped from a high security prison.
22:15El Chapo Guzman is one of the most successful drug traffickers ever in history.
22:21And his nickname before Chapo was El Rapido, the quick one, because he was able to move drugs into the
22:27US at a very, very high speed.
22:32He became an emblematic figure, practically a mythical figure of Mexican drug culture.
22:41Chapo was also very diligent and very systematic in how to manage brutality and extortion against rivals.
22:53Clever and ruthless, El Chapo would have to strike even harder if he wanted to stay in the game.
22:59On the other side of the country, the Gulf cartel recruited elite soldiers from the Mexican army and created an
23:05armed wing, Los Citas.
23:08Military discipline, planned operations, intelligence methods were redirected with a single goal.
23:15Terrorize the competition and take over their territory.
23:19Los Citas triggered one upmanship among the other cartels.
23:23Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez and Sinaloa all outfitted themselves with elite units.
23:29Scenes of horror erupted.
23:30My God, they were in Michoacan, I mean, the organized crime group there.
23:37They were cutting off heads of rival cartels and literally tossing them on the dance floor.
23:46I mean, it was out of hand.
23:52In 2006, the newly elected president, Felipe Calderón, declared war on the cartels and sent the army to the front.
24:0045,000 soldiers tried to win back the lost territories, focusing their efforts on Los Citas, the most bloodthirsty of
24:07the cartels.
24:12Under the army's blows, Los Citas imploded into a multitude of groups.
24:17They tightened their grip on smaller territories, and the violence ratcheted up a notch.
24:23Los Citas filmed their murders and tortures in detail, leaving a Z on the walls and bodies of their victims.
24:33What happened with Los Citas is that they didn't have enough money to remain in constant conflict with the state.
24:42So they turned violence into a commodity.
24:48Los Citas didn't sell the logistics to move cocaine.
24:54Los Citas sold the ability to use violence in a professional manner in order to impose a local state of
25:02terror.
25:08They didn't just stay involved in drug trafficking. You had to pay what's called the PISO for everything.
25:12So if you were running human smuggling through their territory, if you were engaged in kidnapping in their territory, extortion,
25:19they got involved in all.
25:20You had to pay the Citas.
25:25The army, unable to fight on every front, left the Sinaloa cartel to prosper.
25:31By the end of the bloody wars, El Chapo had expanded his zone of influence to Tijuana and Ciudad Guajes.
25:41The use of the army to try to reduce violence was counterproductive.
25:55Not only did the violence continue in the atrocious forms we'd seen, but it gradually increased quantitatively until it hit
26:05dramatic levels.
26:18At the start of the 2000s, the US and Colombia also chose the military option.
26:24They elaborated the most extensive plan for battling drug trafficking, Plan Colombia, $4 billion over five years.
26:42Hundreds of American advisers revamped the Colombian army.
26:47Bolstered by these new means, Colombia turned away from its initial goal.
26:53The main traffickers, paramilitaries, allies of the state were not targeted.
26:59The plan against drugs became a war plan.
27:03Bogota poured everything it had into fighting its main enemy, the FARC guerrillas, active in nearly half of the country.
27:13The situation shifted in the state's favour for the first time, and Colombia's army began to regain control of territory
27:20for the first time in many years.
27:24To put it plainly, it was the most effective plan of American military aid in the past 20 to 25
27:31years.
27:32Plan Colombia restored the country's security and brought kidnappings down from 3,000 to 200.
27:42So in that way, I think it was very important.
27:46But there was a high price to pay for a war waged in those conditions.
27:51It was an irregular war, with bombings we never even heard about here in Bogota.
27:59The dirty war waged far from the cameras, dealt a severe blow to the FARC.
28:04Its historic leaders were eliminated.
28:07In time, a process of negotiation would begin with the guerrillas.
28:11For Colombia, the military offensive was just the first step.
28:17The next stage was initiated under pressure from Washington.
28:21Despite Plan Colombia, tons of cocaine were still flowing into the US.
28:27The Colombian government was ordered to take action against the paramilitaries.
28:33In 2006, the hard right in power practically offered them an amnesty, leaving over 100,000 killers unpunished.
28:42Paramilitary fighters turned in their weapons to carnival music.
28:54At the very first stage, they were being picked up by the Great War,
28:57They were gathered at their war and the fedengs over the world.
29:04The German staffed in the他的人 who were named in the US.
29:07The German staff of South Africa was called the American families to become the Dubuque's
29:07Even the government, he was elected to the US.
29:07The German staff had to attend the US.
29:07They were charged in the US.
29:07The German staff of North Africa, and the German and the German staff of the Caribbean
29:08The German staff of the Spanish parlvan had already been laid out.
29:11The German staff that came to call a Pakistani familia.
29:26The agreement was made in a way that the perpetrators didn't need to compensate their victims for
29:31their land or property, nor by telling the truth.
29:35And that's something that hurt me deeply.
29:38For all the massacres they committed, including the one that concerns me, in which my sister
29:43was killed, for all those years the paramilitaries enjoyed infinite impunity.
29:52The biggest jolt came from the Supreme Court.
29:56The judges decided to open an investigation into the incestuous relationships between
30:02paramilitaries and political leaders.
30:04A large-scale clean-up began.
30:05The court examined, flushed out and convicted several politicians.
30:13What changed the life of Colombians was the unrelenting effort Colombia made to strengthen
30:19its public force, its security and rule of law.
30:23That's what has transformed and changed Colombia.
30:34These efforts towards justice and memory continue today in a Colombia that seems to be catching
30:40its breath.
30:42violence is diminishing in the big cities and Colombia is becoming a tourist destination.
30:50Yet, well out of sight in hard to reach areas, the same actions are carried on endlessly.
31:02Here, we harvest the coca and take it to the lab every three months.
31:06Every three months we harvest it and take it to the lab where it's transformed into paste.
31:11And the buyers come to our home.
31:19Like thousands of coca growers, this farmer has endured eradication campaigns led by authorities
31:25with the help of the DEA.
31:30For 30 years, Agent Orange, Monsanto's glyphosate and thousands of litres of herbicides were sprayed
31:37on coca plants and ravaged entire regions.
31:50In 1994, I was in Caqueta.
31:53It was a great place to grow coca.
31:56With the harvests, you could earn a little money.
32:00But when they started spraying, everything was ruined.
32:05People got sick and wound up nearly blind.
32:08And cattle, trees, everything, it destroyed the earth.
32:12When they sprayed, you couldn't plant anything anymore because the soil was no good.
32:19And when they sprayed, and it was all over, I came here to Nariño
32:25and I pulled out all the coffee plants to grow coca.
32:31On his three hectares, this grower produces roughly 70 kilos of coca paste,
32:36which earns him 10 times more than if he grew coffee.
32:42The transformed paste goes to the other side.
32:45They send it to Mexico, the US, to other countries, because that's where it's worth money.
32:52Because one kilo here is worth almost nothing, whereas over there, it is.
33:01To make one kilo of cocaine, it takes 350 kilos of coca leaves, $400.
33:08Once it is transformed, crosses borders, is sold bulk then retail, and cut.
33:13All this means that same kilo of cocaine sells for over $120,000 on the streets of New York,
33:20300 times its base price.
33:22When part of the harvest in Colombia is eradicated, the price of the coca leaf could triple.
33:28Out on the streets, this makes the cost of one gram rise from $122 to $122.77.
33:35Not enough to discourage the New York user or to slow down the traffic.
33:41In Colombia, coca still finances dozens of armed groups.
33:45They are the distant successors of the great cartels, direct descendants of the paramilitary factions,
33:51or FARCs who refused the historic peace deal in 2016.
33:58After 30 or 40 years of waging the war on drugs in Colombia, we're producing more cocaine than ever.
34:03But nevertheless, we consider this a success because criminal organizations are governing less.
34:11We've made progress for sure, but we're still in a complicated and difficult situation,
34:16with the fear that these amounts of coca crops could reactivate things we're unable to control.
34:23And yes, I'm scared that fuse will get lit again.
34:38As long as drug crops grow, criminal or insurgent movements can take possession of them.
34:43In Afghanistan, the US underestimated this latent danger.
34:49After driving the Taliban out of power in 2001, Washington thought the problem was solved.
34:55A few years later, the US Army was facing a powerful insurrection.
35:00The Taliban had used drug money to enlist thousands of fighters.
35:07In 2004, under pressure from Washington, President Hamid Karzai declared a jihad against opium.
35:23But the Afghan president would play against his side.
35:26His authority was held only by the fragile coalition of warlords and former Mujahideen,
35:31who used drug money themselves to run their fiefdoms.
35:35Of course, there are many people in the Afghan government who were involved in the drug trade.
35:39Same as in the other opposing forces.
35:42This is not the secret. Everybody knew it.
35:44It was not very convenient in those days to talk about it because there are political allies.
35:48That was the logic.
35:52In 2005, in the region of Helmand, over nine tons of opium were discovered in the governor's basement.
35:59President Hamid Karzai had to remove him.
36:04Without his revenue, the governor's militia changed sides.
36:08His 3,000 men joined the Taliban and upset the balance of power.
36:16The region of Helmand fell into the hands of the Taliban,
36:19who turned it into the country's leading zone of heroin production.
36:27To cut off the Taliban's main source of revenue, the US beefed up its military response.
36:35U.S. B-52 bombers and U.S. F-22 Raptor fighters bomb Taliban heroin labs.
36:46So here's an F-22 fighter, costs about $400 million.
36:53And a heroin lab, which sounds fancy, but really is a mud brick shed
36:59with some rusting tin drums and a cheap electric heater.
37:04Probably $50 worth of equipment.
37:09Where the U.S. uses its most sophisticated military equipment,
37:14and all of its targeting and intelligence and research,
37:17the drones to monitor movement, you know, the satellite imagery,
37:22the B-52 bomber, which is the biggest military airplane on the planet.
37:27To attack these tin roof sheds with their steel drums is, I think,
37:35a demonstration of the limits of coercion.
37:42There is not one case where eradication has bankrupted belligerents
37:47or significantly weakened them to make them easier to defeat.
37:50People go hungry. They literally don't have anything to eat.
37:54And they will protest and they will mobilize.
37:58And so what happens is that the criminal groups, insurgent groups,
38:05like in Afghanistan or in Colombia, get a lot of political capital.
38:10People switch allegiance to them.
38:13And in fact, the history of the so-called narco-militancy nexus,
38:20narco-insurgency nexus, is that the state wins against insurgents
38:24when it stops eradicating.
38:29After 50 years of war, Kabul, Afghanistan's capital,
38:33is now home to the world's highest concentration of drug addicts.
38:37In the countryside, practically one out of every two families
38:41is affected by heroin addiction.
38:43The country continues to founder.
39:02In Mexico, a century after trafficking first began,
39:06popular culture celebrates narcos and their swift rise in society.
39:11The small farmers who planted poppies in the last century
39:14in the mountains of Sinaloa gave birth to traffickers
39:17able to exploit every crack in the system.
39:21Absolute symbol of the revenge of the weak,
39:23El Chapo Guzman, leader of the Sinaloa cartel,
39:26dodged authorities for 15 years
39:28and amassed a fortune of $1 billion,
39:31which police are still looking for.
39:35The drug trafficking organisations can afford the best lawyers.
39:39They can afford the best investment brokers.
39:42They can afford the best accountants.
39:45And the security forces and law enforcement are hugely outgunned
39:51in terms of accountants and lawyers.
39:58Hundreds of millions of dollars belonging to the Sinaloa cartel
40:01were found laundered in the accounts of the world's biggest banking institutions.
40:07The banks all obtained a legal settlement.
40:10No convictions were pronounced.
40:17But rather than say that this financial system is deeply unstable and fueled by dirty money,
40:23we continue not to penalise it and say that, for lack of anything better,
40:27we're moving forward this way, and we close our eyes a little.
40:30So for them, it's always worth it to continue this trafficking.
40:35It remains profitable.
40:36And that shows on the level of big banks with legal departments
40:40that provision more and more money from one year to the next.
40:43In other words, in the prospect of a trial,
40:46they've evaluated and set a price on fraud,
40:49on skirting the rules and on lack of banking responsibility.
41:00In 2015, El Chapo was caught when he contacted an actress he'd grown infatuated with.
41:20One of the world's greatest drug kingpins was brought down by an amateur mistake.
41:27Extradited to the United States and sentenced to life in prison,
41:31El Chapo left in his wake a nebula of drug trafficking
41:34and the myth of a hierarchical cartel held by a single man.
41:43The current criminal world is no longer in the hands of those whose names we hear in the media.
41:54And perhaps, what remains of the Sinaloa Cartel for Mexico
42:01is, above all, nostalgia.
42:06The nostalgia of a criminal organization
42:10that used violence in a predictable manner.
42:15Today in Mexico, violence has crept in everywhere all the time.
42:20Yesterday's big cartels have been split up by the army,
42:23which is still deployed throughout the country.
42:25A myriad of small, elusive groups appear, decline, disappear and reform constantly.
42:42On the Pacific coast, Acapulco, Mexico's crown jewel, has become one of the most dangerous cities in the world.
42:50Around 30 crime organizations are active in the region.
43:03Around 30 crime organizations are active in the region.
43:06Small groups in Mexico are a major problem.
43:10And the fact that there are small and very many,
43:13and that they operate in the context of law enforcement
43:17that is seen as weak and incompetent, means that there is tremendous violence.
43:34I am the person who picks up the bodies from the hospitals,
43:38from the coroners, from homes.
43:46I am the one who offers support to people, who help support them in their pain.
43:58I have already had to go to collect corpses from graves where there were eight or nine bodies.
44:07When there are disembodied bodies, we have to inject them piece by piece,
44:11sew the bodies together so they are in one piece,
44:14so families can see their relatives.
44:18And then we give the families an explanation.
44:23Often, in many cases, the bodies can't be given a wake because of their state of decomposition.
44:32We prepare them, then we close the casket, because you can't see a body in a state like that.
44:47In Mexico, death has every right.
44:51The bodies are stacked one on top of the other.
44:56And there's no power that can repair the damage that is done each day.
45:06Every day, every day we wake up to the news of another hidden grave.
45:11We wake up to learn a new organized crime group has emerged.
45:19Over the past ten years, more than 40,000 people have disappeared in Mexico,
45:24killed by criminal organizations that blindly strike, extort or kidnap for ransom,
45:29people who oftentimes are innocent.
45:34I'm searching for my brother Tomas, my big brother,
45:37who was kidnapped on July 5, 2012, from Huitzico Guerrero.
45:44Mario Vergara combs the land relentlessly, searching for his brother's body.
45:49With other grieving families, he has dug up over 400 bodies over the last five years.
45:55Here, just an hour's drive from Acapulco.
46:00In this place, which is called the Lake of Iguala Guerrero, we found 21 bodies, all bearing signs of torture.
46:10Hands and feet bound, blindfolded.
46:18They recruit your children to turn them into killers.
46:22If you're a farmer, they force you to give up your corn crops to plant opium poppy instead.
46:33They can make your husband go missing, and you might spend your whole life looking for him,
46:39because they've recruited him for criminal work.
46:43Or you could find him dead in one of the secret graves.
46:54The mountains are very beautiful, and the landscape is stunning, it's true.
47:02But it hides the horror that man has committed within it.
47:26Here's the skull.
47:40This is someone's skull.
47:45You can see where the bullet went in here.
47:51According to what I was told, this man was brought here, they shot him, and he fell face first.
48:03We're digging up the truth of this country.
48:05We're telling the government, yes, people have disappeared in Mexico.
48:09Yes, there are secret graves in Mexico.
48:11And you're not doing your job, we're doing it for you.
48:18The only good thing in all of this is that the Mexican people are getting more and more organized each
48:23day.
48:24There are lots of women's organizations that are standing up to a state that lacks the capacity to provide justice
48:31and to find their loved ones.
48:52Each mass grave must be visited by the authorities who are storing over 27,000 unidentified bodies as of today.
49:15A new chapter in the story of drug trafficking is opening somewhere in China.
49:20A return full circle.
49:23Criminal organizations have stolen yet another secret from the pharmaceutical industry.
49:28By manipulating chemicals, they've managed to synthesize fentanyl, a distant cousin of opium.
49:37Manufactured since the 1950s for medical use, fentanyl is made without the slightest trace of poppy flower.
49:43The drug is 100% synthetic. Today, these ports where the first bundles of opium arrived in the 19th century
49:51mark the point of departure for invisible cargoes of an infinitely powerful drug.
49:57Fentanyl is at least 100 times more potent than heroin.
50:02So, it might take several trucks, trailer trucks of cocaine to supply the U.S. drug market for a year.
50:10While it might take just one car load to supply, a small car load to supply the U.S. entire
50:18opioid market with fentanyl.
50:21You can basically forget about the agriculture.
50:24I mean, you don't need peasants growing opium poppies in Afghanistan or in Mexico or Colombia.
50:33You don't need armies and warlords who are shipping opium.
50:38If you simply have chemicals that you can manufacture in China and then ship to Mexico and then use them
50:46to produce drugs like fentanyl, it greatly simplifies the process.
50:51And it means that you can base your operations anywhere.
50:55So, modern synthetic drugs really have the potential to radically change the illegal drug trade and the politics, international relations
51:05and geopolitics to surround it.
51:11Fentanyl flows into a country grappling with the greatest addiction epidemic in its history.
51:16In the United States, the over-prescription of painkillers encouraged by pharmaceutical lobbies has caused hundreds of thousands of patients
51:24to become addicted to opiates.
51:26When their treatment stops and the illusion of well-being is shattered, they turn to illicit markets.
51:33Every day, middle-class men and women join the horde of heroin addicts and fall victim to fentanyl, which is
51:39less expensive and a lot more powerful.
51:43Fentanyl kills 30,000 people each year in the US.
51:54This vial is a death trap for those who seek refuge from the pain of living.
51:59Yet there's nothing fatal about that.
52:01As long as the war targets drug trafficking rather than the causes of drug use, we will live in a
52:06constantly shifting mafia environment.
52:08The world of drugs was created by our societal choices and our economic system.
52:14The only solution is to change it.
52:21¶¶
52:22¶¶
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