Original subtitles

Hello and welcome to a new series of Global Eye,

from the BBC World Service.

Every week, we'll bring you some of the most thought-provoking

and compelling investigations from our teams around the world,

and stories that shine a light on hope and resilience.

I'm Shawn Yuan and I'm here in Mexico

investigating the extraordinary story

of a suspected Chinese drug kingpin,

one of the world's most wanted fugitives

and a man accused of fuelling the global fentanyl crisis.

Coming up on this programme, we'll bring you an investigation

into the online manosphere, from Mexico to Kenya.

That's what the word means.

Yeah.

And we're in Ecuador to find out

why scientists believe these remote villagers

living with a rare disease

may hold the key to conquering some of the world's deadliest diseases.

He is known by numerous aliases,

but his real name is Zhang Zhidong,

a 39-year-old Chinese national

alleged to have been the critical bridge

between China's chemical factories

and Mexico's most feared drug cartels.

Chinese communities have existed in Mexico for over a century,

and within them, in the grey space between legitimate commerce

and organised crime, so have Chinese criminal networks.

Zhang Zhidong understood that world intimately.

A fluent Spanish speaker,

he found work in the mining industry

and built powerful connections on both sides of the Pacific.

His access to manufacturers in China gives him

something the cartels couldn't easily source themselves -

the chemical building blocks, known as precursors, of fentanyl.

His fluency in both cultures

meant US prosecutors believe he became trusted

by Mexico's two dominant cartels - the Sinaloa

and Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG.

It's alleged he sourced ingredients, supplied the labs

and traffic the drugs up north to the US.

In October 2024, Mexican authorities caught up with him,

but events were far from over.

This residential neighbourhood in southern Mexico City

is where Zhang Zhidong's story took its most dramatic turn.

In what was deemed a highly controversial decision,

a judge had ordered his transfer from maximum-security prison

to house arrest.

That decision had dire consequences.

On the 11th of July last year,

Zhang reportedly destroyed his electronic tag,

passed through a tunnel connecting his residence

to the adjoining property and disappeared.

It came at a time when the US was intensifying its pressure on Mexico

to fight against drug trafficking.

For Washington, a frustration.

For Mexico City, a crisis.

Because Zhang wasn't operating alone.

According to the indictment,

US law enforcement identified more than 150 shell companies

and 170 bank accounts tied to his organisation.

Zhang was exceptional but he was not unique.

American investigators believe there are others like him -

bilingual, bicultural, invisible - operating in the same space.

This is Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state,

and for decades the operational heartland

of one of the world's most powerful criminal organisations.

The Sinaloa Cartel built its empire on cocaine and heroin

but fentanyl changed everything.

Unlike coca or poppies, fentanyl doesn't grow,

it's entirely manufactured.

1kg of this compound,

costing a few hundred US dollars,

can produce over $1 million worth of fentanyl tablets,

potentially enough to kill many thousands of people.

Prosecutors allege Zhang Zhidong was the critical link

in that particular supply chain.

I wanted to understand just how crucial a figure Zhang Zhidong was

in the Mexican fentanyl trade,

so I went to meet a coordinator for the Sinaloa Cartel in Culiacan.

We're not naming him to protect his safety.

He nearly pulled off an audacious escape.

Zhang managed to fly to Cuba

after escaping his house arrest

and then on to Russia,

where Russian border officials spotted his forged papers

and sent him back to Cuba.

This time, Cuban border guards uncovered his true identity,

and he was transferred back to Mexico

before being extradited to the US,

where he now faces drug-trafficking charges.

Zhang Zhidong has pleaded not guilty

and remains in federal custody in the US.

So, did Brother Wang's arrest affect the supply chain at all?

If anything, Zhang's rise shows that this is a resilient system

that can survive the fall of any man.

The question now is how many more like him are still there?

Over the last few years, women's rights have been the subject

of an increasingly heated public discourse here in Mexico,

and the emergence of the online manosphere subculture

has added to those tensions,

raising questions about what it means to be a man today

in Mexican society.

Now, behind me is Barras Insurgentes,

a public gym in the heart of the city,

where followers of influencer El Temach meet to work out.

El Temach is part of the global manosphere,

one of many copycats of influencer Andrew Tate,

with his message of male empowerment and misogyny

attracting more than 11 million followers.

Jacqui Wakefield has been investigating

this growing phenomenon here in Mexico and around the world,

meeting the influencers, their followers

and women who've suffered as a result.

It started in the West, but now the manosphere has gone truly global.

First, influencers like Andrew Tate

flooded our algorithms with testosterone-fuelled content.

If a woman is going out with a man...

100% of the blame is always on the female.

Now copycats are everywhere.

They have the same slang, the same look,

the same talking points,

spreading their message around the globe.

If a woman slept with 200 men, she is worthless.

Mexican influencer El Temach is the biggest manosphere creator

in Latin America, with over 11 million followers.

He's gained popularity with his message of discipline

and self-improvement.

I've come to see his show in Las Vegas,

the second stop on his world tour.

CHEERING

Most people have paid at least $90 for the show.

CHEERING

El Temach had invited us to his show a couple of months earlier,

but days before we were due to fly out, he went live.

We decided to come anyway.

With no invitation, we had to film the show on our phones.

We're hoping to put some questions to El Temach before the show's over,

but he moves on before I get a chance to ask a question.

CHEERING

Those who love him - and pay an extra $50 -

get the chance to meet him face to face.

But before we get the chance to speak with him, he disappears.

His manager comes out instead.

We left Vegas without an interview.

El Temach's journey started here, in Mexico.

In recent years, women's rights have been at the centre of fierce debate.

Abortion has been decriminalised

and the country has its first female president.

But there's also been a backlash,

with rising rates of gender-based violence and femicide.

THEY CHANT

It's a global phenomenon.

In countries from Kenya to South Korea,

women have taken to the streets to protest.

But more than half of young men globally now believe

they're being discriminated against,

and their social media feeds are backing them up.

I am Luis' sister.

I don't like saying El Temach

because, for me, it's like a different person completely.

Anything I would express from my perspective on life

was taken like a feminist belief,

like an affront to his persona, to his manlihood.

Alex and El Temach haven't spoken in over two years

after falling out over his views.

It's really astonishing to me

to see him now because he was a totally different person.

He was very free.

He moved to LA and he just pursued the dream of becoming an actor.

He went expecting greatness and, when he had nothing left,

he just came back, like, "I have nothing else to give."

Maybe a bad break-up, a bad relationship,

like, the final straw of, "I've had enough of being mistreated,"

led him to start, like, posting content

about how to help guys with their problems. He boomed.

He copied everything from Andrew Tate.

Like, we even talked about it when he started creating content,

he was like... Andrew Tate was super-big at that time.

If I meet a beautiful woman and she has a child,

the chance of me being long-term with that woman

while she has another man's kid, for me, personally, is 0%.

In that journey where he was becoming El Temach,

what do you think caused the switch?

People started speaking out about how... About suicide.

I think that made him feel

responsible for men's health and men's lives.

So I think that's when it twisted.

He got this messiah complex of, like,

he's the one that has to fix it.

Saving men is a lucrative business.

We estimate he earns up to 1.5 million US dollars per year

from social media views. On top of that,

he makes bank on YouTube Live Chats

where fans pay to boost their comments.

Many of them ask for his advice on personal problems.

We calculated this made him $200,000 to $300,000 in the past year.

Then there's the merchandise.

And event tickets.

9,000 miles away, in Kenya,

masculinity influences are also booming,

tripling their following in just a few years.

This is Andrew Kibe, one of the biggest in the Kenyan manosphere.

#andrewkibe has attracted 530 million views on TikTok alone.

A failed pastor, he went on to host a popular radio breakfast show.

He's now a content creator,

earning a dedicated audience of young men

with his message of male empowerment.

But his misogynistic rants

have resulted in him being suspended from YouTube.

Yeah, is that OK?

We first met last year with my colleague Anita Nkonge.

That's what the word means.

Yeah.

Why not just respect both ways?

Why does it have to be worship one way or the other?

What's one thing you'd want

the world to know about you and what you stand for?

Listen here and listen well.

I'll be coming to ten counties very soon.

Kibe told us he was going on tour, promoting a new book.

He invited us to come along.

Our first stop is a nightclub in western Kenya.

People start crowding around Kibe's table.

INDISTINCT SHOUTING

Many are young men wanting him to sign copies of his book.

But some women also approach.

At the club, we meet one of his eager fans, Ryan.

Ryan agreed to share his social media data with us.

Ryan regularly searched "self-improvement",

"success",

but also masculinity tips

specifically for boys without a father figure -

which gave him Kibe videos.

Ryan agreed to an interview with us.

What advice specifically do you follow?

Is this something that you've personally...?

Content from the Western manosphere

also appeared in his social media algorithm.

So they may be quite rude... Yeah.

...but does that deserve physical violence?

After spending time in the global manosphere,

I've seen how young men get drawn into this world,

putting their time, money and energy into it.

It's all allowing the influencers to make money

from aggressive and hateful content,

leading to real-world harms.

I think he knows what he's doing on some level.

I think that he sees and realises that if he ever

owns up to what he did, it'll destroy him.

I also feel bad that his life detoured

into this weird, dystopic hell,

and he's just this...

...violence robot.

It's very sad.

Here's another highlight from the World Service this week.

A BBC Eye investigation exposes the torture and sexual violence

committed against Ukrainian civilians in Russian-run prisons.

This film tells the powerful story of survivors,

including Lyudmila Huseynova,

as they search for justice

and track down the Russian officials who likely abused them.

Since 2014, thousands of Ukrainian civilians

have been held illegally in Russian-run detention centres,

yet only a handful of Russian officials have been tried

for war crimes and none for sexual violence.

You can watch the full documentary,

BBC Eye Ukraine Survivors: Finding My Abusers,

on BBC iPlayer in the UK and on the World Service YouTube channel.

Now to Ecuador, where a community of 200 people

with a very rare form of dwarfism, known as Laron syndrome,

may hold the key to understanding and curing

some of the world's deadliest diseases.

Virtually no-one with Laron syndrome ever develops cancer,

diabetes or dementia.

BBC Mundo went to Ecuador to find out

how this isolated community could change the world.

Thanks for joining me in Mexico. We want your feedback on Global Eye.

Let us know what do you think on social media using the hashtag...

Next week, we'll be reporting from Hungary. Goodbye.