527: Blood, Gun, Money - an investigation into the enormous black market for firearms

the hotels, have two hotels with my family, with Alba, my wife, the Hotel San Rafael and the Hotel Casa Amarilla, here in Mompos, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. That's where I find myself now, recording this episode 527 of the Colombia Calling podcast. Yes, it was a tragedy, a tragedy in the making as well, but Colombia lost the Copa America Final to Argentina. It was the 1-0 in extra time, obviously an excellent goal by the Argentines, but the tragedy in the making was the lack of organization and unruly nature of fans without tickets making their way into the stadium in Miami on Sunday evening. Now that really could have led to a Hillsborough type situation, a Hillsborough type loss of life.

It's kind of incredible that it didn't actually happen. So well, there's a lot to be said about that, and I'm sure there'll be a lot of concern surrounding this, with the U.S. and other countries hosting the 2026 World Cup. But as it stands, Colombia came second in the Copa America, behind Argentina and played with verve and with enjoyment and skill and know-how, and a lot of the team is very young and will be going on to greater things. But, that said, we have to also say why were all those people trying to get in without tickets into an event of this kind?

Where were the authorities? I think you can say that blame rests on both sides. on this one, of course, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what went on and what needs to be done. Of course, massive news up in the North, in the United States, in Pennsylvania and now in Milwaukee.

Donald Trump caused the attempt on his life in Pennsylvania and now he's at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. So we'll see how this all evolves and, of course, at some later date, we'll have a conversation with some expert or another to talk about whomever wins the presidency in November, what this means or what this may mean for Colombia and the war on drugs, which tends to be the most pressing point for governments in the United States. So that's me. This is me talking. this week.

We're going to repeat an episode with Yohan Grillo, who is the writer, the Irish writer, but an expert on Mexico. He's been based in Mexico for a long time. We're going to be talking about his book, but we're also talking about the flow of illegal guns in Mexico through the cartels, to Colombia, through the United States and so on. It's an issue that really affects the whole region, and what better time, what more appropriate time, to be discussing this, the issue of gun control in the region. So we will be discussing this.

It's a great conversation with Yohan, and I know you'll enjoy it. For those of you who hadn't already tuned in, we will be back next week. I've got people lined up. I've got a documentary maker, a book reviewer and others lined up, as well as some academics in the wings waiting to share their stories about Colombia. So thank you again.

Don't go away. Listen to the Colombia briefing with Emily Hart. Remember to sign up to her substack. That's just put into Google substack, Emily Hart, and it will come up and you'll never miss an article she writes or, of course, the Colombia briefing. She is offering a discount, I think, at the moment.

So, of course, take full advantage of that. If you care to support the Colombia Calling podcast, just go to patreon.com forward, slash Colombia Calling and you can make a pledge there. So don't go away. We'll be back in segment two with the Colombia briefing and segment three with Yohan Guerrero. Thank you again.

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The process has, however, been frozen for months after this group also fragmented as the Comuneros del Sur broke away from central command. Both factions are now in separate, parallel talks with the government. The ceasefire between the ELN and the government is due to expire at the start of August. This week, the government delegation urged ELN negotiators to come back to the table and to rebuild momentum around the talks, or, at the very least, to ensure the extension of the ceasefire. Despite these and various other peace processes at various stages, violence continues in Colombia, especially in the southwest, where this week an attack on Vice President Francia Márquez was attempted in Cauca.

Shots were fired at her vehicle, though she was not riding in it at the time. The attack is believed to have been perpetrated by a member of the EMC, reportedly part of the Dagoberto Ramos Front, one of those which abandoned peace talks some months ago. President Gustavo Petro has, meanwhile, been at the UN to discuss the implementation of the 2016 peace accords with the FARC. On Thursday, at the Security Council, Petro proposed the possible extension of the 15-year implementation period for the peace accords, nine of those years have already passed. And a more controversial proposal, also made before the UN this week by Petro, is an expedition mechanism to implement reforms foreseen in the agreements, creating a fast track for relevant legislation, with reduced debate and faster approval.

Though it has historically faced resistance from the political right, this fast track mechanism has been used at various points in recent decades, including by then-President Juan Manuel Santos, around the creation of the peace accords. Also, at the UN, the Colombian president spoke about the climate crisis and drug policy, linking both to peace in Colombia. If tomorrow the UN Commission on Drugs were to say cocaine is legal, the war in Colombia would be over, he said. Also in New York this week, in the UN's Sculpture Garden, Petro will inaugurate a new monument, created with 1.4 tonnes of molten weapons and ammunitions, of the now-defunct FARC insurgent group. Former paramilitary commander Salvatore Mancuso has been released from prison in Bogotá after much controversy around his liberty.

He has been back in Colombia since February, returning having served an 18-year sentence for drug trafficking in the US. Mancuso was formerly commander of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, at the time the country's most powerful paramilitary group. He was, however, appointed as a peace manager last year, a role which he can only fulfil while at liberty. He also remains a key witness in several legal processes, including hearings at the Special Peace Tribunal, the HEP, where he is now providing evidence about army collaboration with paramilitaries during the civil conflict. And after Colombia placed second in the Copa America men's football tournament, losing 1-0 to Argentina, in extra time, the president tweeted about the unity the national team had inspired in the country, having already decreed a day's holiday to mark the participation of the Colombian team in the final.

Police reported, however, that during the evening of the match on Sunday and in the early hours of the following day, more than 5,000 calls were received regarding fights and brawls across the country. Those were your top stories for this week. Thanks for listening. More from me next week, but in the meantime, I did want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has supported this news briefing by subscribing. This month marks four years since I started doing the Colombia briefing, and I'm really so grateful to everyone who has signed up.

And for those not signed up yet, good news, it is in no way too late. Head to my Substack, where I'm currently doing a four-week free trial to celebrate the briefing's fourth birthday, that's substack.com forward slash at e-h-a-r-t. Or head to the Colombia Calling Patreon, where you can also subscribe and get the week's top stories as audio and text every Monday. That is all from me for now. Have a great week.

Welcome, and thank you for agreeing to come on the Colombia Calling podcast.

You ended up, you came to Latin America. You've been here since 2001..

It's a tricky time now, 2022.

. Only recently in your home city up there in Mexico now, there have been protests because of the nature of how, you know, deaths in journalism. I think in 20 years, it's more than 160 journalists there in Mexico. You're taking on these stories. Tell us how it feels to be a journalist up there right now.

It's very depressing and tragic, with the murder of Mexican journalists. The vast majority, there have been a few foreign journalists killed here as well. One American journalist, Bradley Ronan Will, was killed in 2006.. An American, non-American journalist was killed around 97, a bit before I arrived, 97-98 here. And a couple of other, like there's a Honduran journalist, killed.

But the vast majority have been Mexican citizens from here.

And it's very depressing and tragic. I covered stories of journalist murders going back to my early years here, 2004-2005, did these stories and covered then the issues of newspapers being intimidated, being threatened, journalists being murdered. And it just carried on and got worse and worse. And then we had big protests. There was a big wave of journalist murders from about 2011-2012..

You start seeing a big murder, these high-profile murders of Regina Martinez, who's a reporter for a news magazine called Proceso here in Mexico, biggest news magazine in the country. And she was murdered. There's a whole series. And then you got to 2017, when Javier Valdez, a very renowned, very famous journalist from Sinaloa, who was also a friend of mine, was murdered in his home state of Sinaloa. And waves of protests and protests.

And then we get to 2022, and three journalists killed. in almost a week. Three journalists were murdered. So very, very depressing in this time, protests, letters, statements, made, demands, and then, like the mechanism to protect journalists gets created. Doesn't help.

In fact, journalists who were murdered were inside this mechanism to protect journalists, which is kind of some system where people who feel threatened should go into. There was creation of a special prosecutor to prosecute crimes against journalists. Again, hasn't stopped this. So very, very, very sad. And I'm just trying to find a positive note of this really depressing thing.

It's the fact that I've still seen, in the 20 years I've been in Mexico, Mexican colleagues still carrying on doing great work, a great generation of journalists since I've been here, at all kinds of different levels, from people who are writing great books, directly accusing the government, they're all big names, to the people with the massive radio shows and TV shows who are also doing good, cutting edge stuff, people like Carmen Aristegui, to loads of great journalists all over the country. And still, when I go to any places that can be Apatzingan, Michoacan,

Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Tijuana, and finding the colleagues there working in the field, digging up the daily news stories, they're still doing it, despite the wave of murders.

And so, and I tell this to people, and some of the Americans don't believe me, but I tell them that Mexico City has actually got a lower murder rate than about 40 American cities right now. But you've got places like Tijuana, which have got some of the worst murder rates in the world. So it's very varied in that sense.

When? now this issue of murdering journalists is complicated, but cartels, drug cartels, are a huge part of this, often working with local authorities, police, who are corrupt. And it's kind of a narco complex of corrupt police and law enforcement and drug traffickers. But they're a huge factor. Now, when I go to these places to work, which are very intense and very crazy, some of these places, I mean, you know, just go back from Michoacán, the hotland of Michoacán, the Michoacán-Jalisco border, which is just, you know, these are crazy.

These are areas of this kind of weird hybrid armed conflict. I mean, these are really out there when you see that on the field, these places. But you can go to these places and go and live that craziness for a while and then go home. Whereas people who live in those areas, they can't get away from that. So some of these small, a small town like a Patsingán, Michoacán, Reynosa, Tamaulipas, you go, there's a very intense cartel.

You go there, you might be at a murder scene where there's cartel guys present. You might interview a cartel hitman or a cartel affiliate, and then you could be going to the cinema, going to the shops, and you see the same people around. So you're much more intense, very close, and they know where you live. So it's much more intense there. Now, I wouldn't, from the point of view of saying I'm a foreign journalist, I wouldn't want to tempt fate by saying I'm in some way protected, I've got like an invisibility shield, because you see very intense situations.

And, you know, you see, in some cases, it's actually very few journalists who have died from from shootouts. But there have been cases with journalists who have been covering these big shootouts and just been hit by a stray bullet, doesn't recognize who you are. But also, you know, some of these cartel murderers, I mean, these can be sometimes 17 year old kids with AK-47s who are not really that accountable. And there have been various cases of myself and various foreign journalists in the last few years who have been held up by armed groups and had equipment taken away. And it's been held for some time at gunpoint and had equipment taken away and had threats made.

So it's not, you know, still has been a difficult and rough place to report on.

I want to visibly. I mean, we read it and how affected you are. And there's a young girl who's paralyzed from the waist down and just lies on her bed all day. And, you know, this just through reading through the lines, there's a trauma there, you know, PTSD.

I, you know, like maybe 10 years ago, remember, you know, running around covering these really intense things and then going, you know, going home and finding it a bit hard to just kind of slow, to change level and not be in the supermarket with a trolley. And it's only like before, you know, really, really intense situation to kind of go, kind of having that, you know, turning it off or going, you know, remember, covering the prison fire in Honduras is 2012.. There's 360 deaths. You know, the smell of charred bodies in the cells of of this prison. And now that's the biggest prison tragedy ever in the world.

There are 360 dead, you know, running around covering that and then kind of hitting a bar, you know, drinking half a bottle of rum, trying to calm the nerves. But I think over time, I got more used to this to try and not turn it on, turn it off. Try and pace myself a bit, covering these things. And I think it is emotionally, it is weird. And this is, this goes for a lot of journalists.

I think, doing this kind of stuff, you go there, you with people, you see like a lot of intense suffering. You know, you see people, like the case of a young girl who was paralyzed from the waist down. In fact, she died shortly before the book was published. She died later on and connected to her injuries. Real, tragic case.

So you've got to see these things, see these cases of. You know, people really suffering or be, you know, spend time with, with gangsters, with serial murderers, be around it and then kind of switch off and go back. And you've got to get used to that kind of switching on and off and that kind of kind of and used to trying to assess the levels. I mean, recently I was spending time a couple of meetings with the federal policeman who.

was well, he actually kicked out of the federal police and he had various beefs and I was talking to him, and then he was murdered. And so, you know, got this kind of like, oh, is that a big alarm? How do you assess these kind of panics of things? Kind of get used to them.

Part of it is a freaky place covering the kind of violence in Mexico. So I've worked with a lot of foreign TV crews who come in and aren't used to it. And people just, you know, like it can create and induce a lot of fear. How can I go and cover that? Or, you know, and you kind of get used to turning off and just trying to assess the threats and not be too freaked out by these situations as well.

Hmm.

Obviously, this is funding what's going on in Mexico, for a large part, of course, what we are here in Colombia. And you wrote an editorial or an opinion piece in the New York Times, a war on drugs. And of course, you know, it must end now. And I've been thinking about this. And of course, it's 1971..

It's Nixon. And that war, as they call it, hasn't evolved. It's all about, you know, sort of eradication and military aid and so on. And this has been a huge, hugely damaging to Colombia, really. We've got a militarized society all through this.

Do you have sort of thoughts on this, Colombia, Mexico related? I mean, we're at a real crossroads here at Colombia right now, with the elections coming up later in the year. And of course, well, fortunately, the aerial fumigation of glyphosate was ruled. for now. It's been overruled, you know, the recommencement of this, because they didn't talk to the communities who'd be affected.

But I mean, this is known to be damaging as well. I just, I mean, you know, obviously, we produce so much of what goes up to Mexico and so much which funds it. I just, I find ourselves in this tricky situation. What, I mean, Mexico not only is a, let's say, a transshipment country, but they also produce other, I think there's opium, and I think there's amphetamines and meth and everything else. So, I mean, it's a complex situation.

And then they have all the big work in Florida and bringing in the Navy and the Miami Task Force or South Florida Task Force and all this kind of stuff, which kind of makes it more difficult to take cocaine directly from Colombia right over the sea, directly into the United States. And then you get pushed more to Mexico. And then you have, you know, still with Bill Clinton, you have a certain enthusiasm, and then taking down of Pablo Escobar in 1993..

I would say by the turn of the millennium, and definitely after 2001,. if you want to have a marker, September 11th, America losing interest in the war on drugs and not really having the same belief in it as it did then. So I would argue that after that, now we go into a zombie war on drugs. So where is the original war on drugs? And you see that if you look at the speeches of Richard Nixon, we can abolish drugs from American life.

We could transform in a very absolutist promise. There would be no drugs, so that American parents would not worry about their kids taking heroin. And it's still with Ronald Reagan. Just say no, which is back in the UK. We had a weird version on the Grange Hill.

Also, just say no. Old enough to remember Grange Hill.

I mean, that was this was, you know, nowadays, you know, I mean, well, actually, drugs, drug addiction is a huge issue now, but it's different in that, you know, I don't see from, you know, definitely from post 9-11 onwards. There's not the same enthusiasm. It's not. it wasn't such the real driving attempt for a while. Kind of drugs went off the agenda now since 2000,, 2020, which is a massive increase in deaths.

And now we've got a horrific issue with drug addiction in the United States and drug deaths. But it's not even then still really an enthusiasm for the kind of real hard. Maybe they'll regain it again, but a kind of hardcore approach from high levels are promising it. But we get these prohibitionist policies carrying on in these militarized policies, carrying on, carrying on. Now, the way that Colombia and Mexico developed and other countries in Latin America, the problem is, then we have.

It's connected to drugs in a big way and particularly to drug money. So, you know, all this drug money pouring in. now, the numbers, we don't know the real numbers, but we've got vague estimates. I mean, you look on the on the US side, the you know what, there's. a White House survey, what Americans spend on illegal drugs estimates about 150 billion dollars a year.

It's hard to know exactly how much that really goes to Mexico. But over, we're talking about tens of billions a year over decades, you know, reaching trillion dollar kind of levels. So it's money gets pumped in, pumped in, pumped in and funding murderers, corrupting police, really tilting the system. So the problem is, then, you have in Mexico right now, particularly this situation with with generally very, very violent armed groups.

As well as corrupt and violent security forces. So it's kind of the worst of both worlds, but it's not actually an easy, as easy as pressing a button and pressing the stop button on this. It's become a kind of weird thing that you can't win and you can't pull out of quite as easily. An example of that, you get places where, you know, like some, there's a military there and it's also a very violent cartel there and a military put out, and then the cartel doing heavy extortion or kidnapping, and then a bunch of residents get up and then the military go back in again. You know, suddenly there's kind of this back and forth, which we're stuck in right now.

And, you know, we can say and give these solutions. like, you know, in my three books, I always write about these solutions of like being, you know, one area, drug policy reform, which I do believe in, one area, prevention and transforming communities where the criminals are coming from, and one area, building a justice system that actually works. We can say these things, but saying them is very different in a long way from them really being put into practice. And politicians are not great in Mexico, they're pretty terrible in the middle of Mexico, but those are dealing with a very hard reality of Mexican politics.

So, I mean, how do you feel when you see this next thing? It's like, well, we're going for the head again, but it doesn't really solve anything. I mean, really, the Medellin cartel never went away. It just sort of evolved into different cartels, less flamboyant, for example, when Escobar went, maybe it wasn't Escobar anymore. He did kind of do himself a major disservice by running as a politician, you know, bringing himself into, you know, very much public knowledge, and so on and so forth.

Now, you know, we see different types of cartel leaders. But how are things being addressed there in Mexico? What is I mean, is there an actual coherent plan?

And you get the kind of the fragment of the fragment of the fragment. And these kind of young hitmen suddenly running these really violent groups in carrying out a bunch of a bunch of horrific murders and crimes. The problem is, and it's a kind of double bind here, is that.

So this current president has backed away from the kingpin strategy to an extent, I mean, he said we're not going after kingpins. The problem is he hasn't really got an alternative plan as well. So it doesn't. if you don't go after him, you haven't really got an alternative plan as well. The violence just carries on.

So he takes heat for still very high levels of homicide. One of the problems is, is it's bad going off the kingpins doesn't work, but it is also bad to allow impunity. So if you have got the head of a cartel that's committed a very large amount of murders, I mean, even forgetting about the drugs issue itself, but if someone's committed a bunch of murders and kidnappings and extortion and horrific acts. Should just like not go after that person, not arrest them. You know, that's a bad thing as well.

It's kind of a double bad thing. So either way, though, whether you go after them or not, and I think, you know, sometimes you shouldn't allow, you know, real criminals to flagrantly move around, but there's got to be a bigger plan.

So, you know, again, in a long term, plan, drug policy reform, I think they have to talk about this or reach it at some point.

Drug policy reform, which is a complicated question. Really, what it means is not simply, again, is a button you press and all drugs become legalized. But I think, you know, drug policy reform, and Mexico is such a moral high ground to better start talking about this. as, you know, you start seeing some politicians talk about this, but it's become, and there have been some movement, you know, with drug policy reform, but it started to kind of hit a bit of some speed bump, really. But drug policy reform, meaning looking at harm reduction, accepting the premise that the war on drugs idea.

So 1971, Richard Nixon promised there would be no drugs. In the late 90s, there was a United Nations drug conference that actually had the slogan there, a drug free world, we can do it. And they were still, with this kind of ideas, you know, like fantasy. Accepting realism,

people are going to take. people are taking drugs, unless you have a very, very powerful authoritarian approach, you know, even more authoritarian than we've got now, you know, executing every drug dealers. You're not going to stop this because the money incentives are too high. So accepting that people take drugs and how we reduce the damage. Now, I realize it's not easy because, OK, I think we should legalize marijuana.

I think that debate has largely been one of those.

But but then, you know, how do we actually deal with heroin? How do we deal with crystal meth? How do we deal with cocaine? And these are still tougher questions. But we need to have debate about it, at least, you know, try and reduce the consumption, the buying of these.

I think there's a big, big part of it in terms of drug money. But also, how do you build law enforcement? How do you build police forces that actually function and protect people?

That's a very tough one. And that's a conversation. I mean, we're in Mexico, they're constantly throwing these things of like, creating new names and purifying this. It's like, you know, it's very basic. But again, it's like, how do you know you need that?

I mean, you know, there needs to be protection of people. It's not good to live in a society with 36,000 murders in a year. It's not good to live in a society with, you know, 90% of murders going unsolved in some states, 98% of murders going unsolved. I mean, those are not good conditions.

And of course, you'll have known about the protests last year. And, you know, the official figure is around 40 people killed during the protests. But the figure, the actual figure, is probably much higher. There are still people unaccounted for today. And these questions, I mean, and these the court cases and the investigations keep getting put back and put back and put back.

And then, you know, they do something like change uniforms, because they're going to look a bit more accessible. And but the big deal is, they need to be taken out of the Ministry of Defense, you know, and put into the interior or something else. But of course, they won't get the same money, because it's almost like a national sovereignty thing because of the internal conflict. But it's all this mess that we've got. But to keep it short, if I were a policeman, I don't earn enough to save someone else's life.

That's the truth. I don't earn enough. And I know that I don't know that my family is going to be looked after should something happen to me. And of course, you know, that temptation of taking a cut somewhere else is, I mean, it's just, it's almost self-preservation in a lot of circumstances. I don't condone it, but there's this issue.

But I want to. I want to jump on a bit, because whenever we get something sort of more sinister stuff going on here in Colombia, then there's always a an implication or an indication. And some journalists write it. I don't know how much knowledge they have or how accurate it is, but they do say that there's the interference and intervention of the Nuevo Jalisco cartel and the Sinaloa down here in Colombia. Now, I don't doubt that they're working hand in hand with the Clan del Golfo and other outfits, the Pelusos, et cetera, et cetera.

And of course, the dissident FARC and probably the ELN guerrillas and so on. But how much do you know about this connection between the two countries? Do you, I mean, have your investigations revealed some of this for?

And he was up here in Mexico. There was, there was some documents I've seen with him being in Mexico in 79, those kind of times. So pre Pablo Escobar, there was already connections, even before the Reagan really cut down, clamp down on the Florida route. There was connections already between Colombians and Mexican gangsters. And then you see this now, talk to one pilot who was cited in my book, quite briefly, but longer interviews done with him, where he was flying cocaine a lot from Colombia to Mexico and talking about the deals that were being made going through the 80s and 90s, the 20 hundreds.

And he was talking about this whole development. So there used to be the Colombians paying the Mexicans an amount per kilo. So, you know, we'll give you the cocaine, pay him up a kilo. You do just the United States. Then we did it.

Then gradually, then it, then it became for a while to 60, 40.

. And then, you know, we'll give you pay you in cocaine and then became 50, 50.. And then became the Mexicans, graduates, buying and paying a price per kilo. I attended some of the trial of El Chapo. And there's recordings there of El Chapo with Colombian figures, or was meant to be El Chapo.

There's a lawyer saying we can't really tell if it's his voice. Yeah. There's a kind of very, this very Sinaloan accent.

It's like these kind of rough recordings you're hearing. But, like I said, going there now, with the current rise of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which is a real power and a real presence, and now competing with the Sinaloa Cartel as the most powerful force in Mexico, the biggest force in Mexico. You know, you're definitely seeing them with big links down to Colombia and very, very broad, as well as Sinaloa Cartel. So continuing to do this. So this is being another thing that I mean, you want to talk about this.

Separately, one of the things inside the book is the whole, the whole weapons transfer and weapons deals. So in Mexico, that is a huge country for trafficking guns from the United States into Mexico, including guns such as rifles that fire 50 caliber bullets, you know, Barrett 50s. And then these, it trades them down into Colombia. And this pilot said it very well that, you know, it's about business. and there's no point in flying a plane down and paying for the fuel and flying it down empty.

You're flying it back with cocaine, fly it down with guns, tequila, riding, saddles, whatever else they want from Mexico. You stash it full of stuff. So you bring it down. So you see this chain. Now, other chains have seen the interesting connections between cartels.

And this was going back a couple of years. There was a few car bombs going off here. And an explosive specialist in the US agency looked at some of these car bomb circuits. And these are the same circuits that they had down in Colombia. Now, those circuits were said to be the same circuits that they use in Northern Ireland.

These IRA figures, there's a famous case of these IRA figures going to selling this technology to the Colombians. So you see all these kind of Colombians. And there's various Colombian gangsters up here in Mexico as well who actually become players here in the Jalisco New Generation cartel. There was a Colombian figure. But there's various, well, actually, there's a lot of back and forth.

RAOUL PALSAROWITZ, They were birdwatchers. They're back there sipping tea in Ireland. I know that. Because they bailed, didn't they, and got back. And yes, yeah, that was a big deal.

And of course, that led to all Irish people who wanted to come to Colombia had to get visas, because that was immediately the reaction. The visa requirement has since been lifted. But then your book, yes, now that the arms, as you say, this, flow, I was so amazed at the figures of guns being sold in this kind of gray area between legal and illegal, and then, of course, being in the hands of, I don't know, in failed DAA operations that led to the deaths of DAA operatives. And those guns then come on down. I mean, cases and cases, thousands and thousands of guns.

And, as you say, once they're in Mexico and the plane's coming down, and so on, and some of the other things. was you talked all about it. You got, I guess it wasn't it, was it Menem brokering guns for up here, Carlos Menem from Argentina that came through the Balkans, and so on. I mean, this network is just, it covers everything. And I don't think it's talked about enough, because it goes hand in hand with, let's say, the inverted commas, war and drugs as well, because the two go together.

So your book reveals this to quite an extent. I mean, first of all, how have the sales been?

Guns are not an easy sell as drugs, funny enough.

And my first book, El Narco, was a very big seller. And partly, I think I was, the timing is the Mexican drug war was really starting to explode then. And I think there was in some ways, particularly for Americans, more of an appetite at that time to kind of know about foreign issues.

Guns are a tougher seller in some ways. You know, it was when I first got into this and was like jumping into writing about one of America's very biggest sacred issues, guns. So I made a big effort to try and understand as well, get all the facts right. I mean, a really big effort, because I've written about this gun issue for many years in Mexico. And I realized that the gun enthusiasts, the gun, in some cases, the Second Amendment fanatics or fundamentalists are very, very keen to look exactly what you do and go through with a red pen.

So get all the facts right, go spend time around these massive gun shows and gun trade fairs, talk as well with militia members and the head of the AR-15 Hunters of America and try and get that. Now, this issue, so I came to this as well, I'm not going against the Second Amendment, I'm against the selling of guns to drug cartels, the selling of guns to gangsters. This is an issue you've got in the United States, with a lot of firearm deaths and rising firearm deaths. And these same guns from the United States are reaching 175 different countries a year, 130 different countries around the world, including Colombia, and basically right across the entire continent of the Americas. But also far away as Asia, Africa, these guns are reaching.

And it's a tough issue. It's kind of now one of the good signs. I mean, the book was cited in a lawsuit filed by the Mexican government against gun companies in the United States. And it's good to see that now, this has been, I think, part of. with this lawsuit happening and with various amount of media coverage, you've now seen this issue of guns become much more firmly put in the agenda of US Mexico.

So that's a good thing. Now you see all these bilateral talks, and there's various things coming out. There's an announcement just from yesterday from the US ambassador here saying that other talks about how to stop this. On the sadder side, I see the United States, and one of the things that's kind of mind boggling for me is there's so much low hanging fruit they're not taking trying to tackle this issue. And what I mean by that is when we look at some of the issues, like how do you build a police force that works in Mexico?

That's a pretty daunting task.

But some of these issues is like, how do you stop a cartel guy walking into a shop and buying 85 firearms in the United States? That doesn't seem that hard to do. It seems mad that somebody can walk in a shop and go, I'll have 85 guns, please. And there's no longer going, who's this guy? How come he's paying in cash?

How come this guy's 23 years old without an official job? And so this basic stuff, this basic low hanging fruit in these cases where you have people abusing a kind of loophole in the law, people selling 1,000 guns through gun shows where they're really buying and selling, they're not even clamping down on that. They're not stopping that. So they're not doing the very most basic thing of trying to stop this flow, and where you see estimates of more than 200,000 firearms a year going from the United States to Mexico. Now, what's frustrating, and I was even wondering when I wrote the book and it came out in February last year, would I be too late?

And would they have already, Biden's going to win. Democrats are going to take the houses. They're bound to pass universal background checks. Maybe I'll be even late to the game of pointing this stuff out, because they'll actually deal with it. Didn't, I know?

Then Biden came along and made a speech saying we're going to talk about guns. Nothing's come of it. And I've been invited to some of these forums about this and asking, well, they don't have the numbers. They still don't have the numbers. now.

There's still Democrats in certain districts, with a lot of, there's still. this issue of guns is managing, even now, to kind of clog this up. Even though the service fund, 89% of Americans, the majority of gun owners, conservatives are in favor of universal background checks, they're still not even able to move on this basic stuff. So that's kind of a bit depressing. And I feel the problem with,

one of the problems, I think, in American, one of many problems in American politics right now, but one of the problems in American politics, and I think, from the point of view of the left in America right now, although supposedly we're seeing a time of a kind of big resurgence of the left and much more of a consciousness and so forth,

if we're talking in general terms, the left is very bad about dealing with concrete issues and trying to find concrete solutions. So a lot of these left commentators, left politicians, they're not, and I feel this issue on guns, and also the fact that there's a lot of Americans dying of gun violence, and there's a lot of these same issues could try and help reduce that. They're not actually really coming to try and confront these concrete issues head on.

Sadly, I've spent 20 years working around newspapers and magazines. Sadly, they're not what they used to be in terms of budgets, a lot of changes. I mean, there's still some good stuff happening, but there's a bit of a boom in the TV industry, and it's very interesting. So I've been working on two big projects, two big TV projects of different TV series, connected to Mexico, Mexico and the US. And yeah, I've been really kind of on these since the book was published.

It kind of happened right away. I kind of jumped right into this, and I've been really kind of... So right now, I'm writing some pre-shooting scripts, sitting around with script, writing programs and dealing with that, and a bit nervous about the pressure. One of the big pressures of these TV series is you have to line up all these people. They have to show up and then go for long TV interviews, but that's been good.

So I'll be doing that right now, and I'm certainly going to write more books, but I'm not sure what the next book is right now. I don't have the exact title in the cookie yet.

Everyone out there, I've read it, and I enjoyed it massively, Blood Gun, Money, How America Arms Gangs and Cartels. It takes a different look at the problems from the context of the arms trade, and I think that's really fascinating. That's why I liked it. I mean, I read enough books on drugs, obviously, being located here. Toby Muse's Kilo, which was very good this last couple of years, and so on.

But this was really interesting, and I recommend it to all of you out there. Can I just say, Johan Grillo, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you sharing some of your insights and being so unselfish with your knowledge.

Please continue to tune in. We continue to have great interviewees on this podcast. I'll be back next week. Bye-bye. The Columbia Calling podcast is sponsored by Latin News, a leading source of political and economic analysis on Latin America and the Caribbean since 1967..

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