All language subtitles for Narco Wars 1x06 - Rise of the Narco Army (English)

~subtitles ripped and corrected by~
Rapunzel@addic7ed.com

Shake this square world and blast
off for Kicksville.

Public enemy number
one is drug abuse.

Just say, "No."

Solving the drug problem in America

Is like carrying
water in a sieve.

Take my word for it,

This scourge will stop.

There's now an
understanding that the war on

drugs was an abject failure.

You have to stop and ask yourself,

'How did we get here?'

We will build a wall.

Mexico's drug
cartels have turned roads into

the US into super-highways
for their narcotics.

It occurred
last month in downtown

Matamoros, Mexico.

An FBI and a DEA agent were
riding with an informant when

they noticed they
were being followed.

After a pickup truck
blocked their path,

15 armed men emerged and
ordered the agents and

informant out of the car.

As one of the gunmen
leveled an AK-47,

the agents flashed their badges
and pleaded for their lives.

My name is Daniel Fuentes,

and I was that FBI agent.

In 1999, this individual assisting
us there in Matamoros,

he was showing us some
residences that were

associated with members
of the Gulf Cartel,

including the house of
Osiel C�rdenas Guill�n.

Osiel C�rdenas Guill�n
started off his career,

believe it or not,
helping out a local law enforcement

agency in Matamoros.

He rose to sole leader of the Gulf
Cartel right around July 3rd of 1999,

when it is said that he
murdered his partner,

Chava G�mez.

As we're driving through
these neighborhoods,

my partner thinks that we may be
followed by a dark colored pickup.

We're seeing multiple
cars joining.

One particular vehicle,
there's an AK-47 weapon

sitting on the bench of his
truck right next to him.

We're realizing that, that things
are about to start going bad.

I start collecting
all of my ammunition,

and the informant told us,
you know, "Here comes Osiel."

He recognized his vehicle.

We're boxed in,
we're completely surrounded,

and that's when we were
forced off the road.

They start exiting
their vehicles.

They're completely in uniform,
in tactical gear,

like soldiers.

They're all heavily armed
with high-caliber weapons.

Osiel comes over to my window.

And he proceeds to point
his gold-plated AK-47,

cussing up a storm,
demanding who it is that we are.

So, I show him my
diplomatic passport saying we're

diplomats from the US
consulate in Monterrey.

You know, 'Who are you?'

And I could see
Osiel kinda grinning.

He said, "I don't give
a **** who you are.

You're gonna die.
I'm gonna kill you."

He sticks his head into the car,

and he looks to the backseat,
and he says,

"Ah, so it's you. You're
with the FBI, huh?"

The guns go up,
total chaos.

He wants this
guy really badly.

He says, "You give him to me,
and I'll let you go."

And we said, "No, no-one's
getting out of the car."

We were literally in a
Mexican standoff.

If I fire a shot,
we're all dead,

because everyone's
gonna start shooting,

and so Osiel continues to
point his AK-47 in my head.

I start getting what's referred
to as "tunnel vision."

I can't see beyond this
hole that's in front of me.

Everything else is black.

Although you resign yourself to the
fact that you're going to die,

your training kicks in.

My partner tells him,

"You better think about
what you're doing here,

because if you kill us,

you're gonna have 30,000
enemies from the US that

are coming out here
looking for you.

They're gonna hunt
you down like a dog."

And it seems like something
clicked in his mind,

and he realized,

"They're gonna find me,

and it's going to affect
my operation here."

So, Osiel says, "I'm
gonna let you go.

and you in the backseat, I'm
gonna deal with you later,

and I don't want you guys
to ever come back here,

cause if you do come back,
I'm gonna kill you."

We later learned that amongst
those individuals were some

former special forces
Mexican soldiers.

The Zetas were
created by the Gulf Cartel

in a corner of northeast Mexico
on the border with Texas.

The Gulf Cartel controlled key
towns from the gulf of Mexico

right up to the city of Nuevo Laredo,

and the hub of their
operations is the border

crossing between Nuevo Laredo
and Mexico, and Laredo, Texas.

My name is Art, Arturo Fontes.

I was an FBI agent for
approximately 28 years.

People laugh at me because
I left sunny San Diego,

With beaches and everything,
and nice big house,

to be in a small town in Laredo.

They call it the "Armpit of Texas."

It takes you all
the way to Dallas,

and it even goes all the
way to the north in the US.

Now, this is an area
where there was the biggest

number of trucks crossing
the whole border.

It was a very important route.

The Gulf Cartel was
shifting marijuana, cocaine,

and heroin through Texas to
across the United States.

The Gulf Cartel was on to a good thing,

but it was about to get a
whole lot better with the

North American Free Trade Agreement.

After we tear down trade barriers
between our three nations,

it will create the world's
largest trade zone.

Today we have the chance to do what our
parents did before us.

We have the opportunity
to remake the world.

Nuevo Laredo
is more important than

almost any other
area in Mexico,

and that's why it's
a battle ground.

It's the crown jewel
for drug trafficking.

Everybody wants that.

Osiel was a genius at
being able to read people and

manipulate them.

He was brilliant at
influencing people to do

things that they
shouldn't be doing.

In the special forces,
they had radio code with the

"Z" letter, so they
would have, like...

would be, like, you know,
"Zed two, I'm on alert."

They quickly became
called the "Zetas,"

or the "Zeds"
after that radio code.

Osiel saw in them a
discipline that your regular

trafficker did not have,
and that was a militarized discipline.

A respect for chain of command,
loyalty,

the willing to attack
the hill when told,

regardless of the outcome.

We saw that the Zetas
were becoming a threat.

There was definitely a
foreboding of things to come

as the Zetas began to
grow and become stronger,

and they were learning
the drug trade from the Gulf Cartel.

Osiel is definitely
in the crosshairs

of, of the FBI and DEA.

He is public enemy number one.

The arrest was like a scene out
of Afghanistan, Iraq.

The Mexican military,
I believe,

may have lost one or two
soldiers during the course of

that gun battle.

Osiel survived.

He was apprehended,
but it was quite the shootout.

After Osiel was
out of the picture,

what we didn't anticipate
was how strong the Zetas

were going to become.

They were outta control.

They turned Mexico
into one giant war zone.

Good evening!

Suddenly guns are back in the middle
of the presidential campaign,

triggered by
what happened today,

a ten-year ban on 19 kinds of
military assault weapons ran out.

Gun manufacturers are already

preparing for what some predict
will be a gun buying frenzy.

You have the
Sinaloa Cartel going in to try

and take the city of Nuevo
Laredo from the Zetas.

But they did not
understand the Zetas.

They underestimated the Zetas.

Nuevo Laredo was on fire.

There were shootouts
in the streets,

grenades being
launched in the house.

It was just extremely violent.

They had commando
hit squads operating.

It was brutal.

The Zetas and the Gulf Cartel,
they have the help of fire

power to actually counter any threat,
and they did.

They kicked ass.

This was the beginning
of the Mexican drug war

as we know it.

When you talk to
people who live this,

who fight in this conflict,
and who do see themselves as

being soldiers and,
you know, like,

they might not live till they're 25.

Now, the Zetas became
so powerful the Gulf Cartel

could not contain them.

So, you had the Zetas breaking
away from the Gulf Cartel.

So, suddenly it wasn't
only northeast Mexico.

They started spreading all the
way down the gulf of Mexico.

And then across, penetrating into these
states on the west coast, as well.

They were going to new
towns and villages and start

recruiting or saying, you know,
to local criminals,

"You either work for us or
we're gonna kill you."

The Zetas were really starting
to pioneer these tactics,

controlling a territory through fear.

The Zetas started hanging bodies up.

It wasn't enough just
to kill somebody.

You wanna hang their body up.

So suddenly you start to see
bodies hanging from bridges,

so people, kids, families who are there,

see hung up bodies when
they wake up in the morning,

when they're going to school,
and they put messages,

big banners saying,

"If you inform on us, this is
gonna happen to you."

And this propaganda of fear,

propaganda of terror,
started to spread around Mexico.

So, as violence
increased in Mexico,

the United States didn't
know how to react,

and didn't even know what to call
this thing that was happening.

The Zetas changed the
entire game in the drug world.

My name's Joel Salda�a.

I'm a retired DEA agent.

I was assigned to Monterrey, Mexico,
from 2003 to 2009.

In October of 2008,
Zeta members threw a hand grenade

and an M67 grenade
at the US consulate.

They had gotten
approval from El Trevi�o.

And I'm, like, 'I think
we should retaliate.

We need to hit 'em back and
show 'em that we're not weak.'

We decide to
go with an operation.

We have this warehouse
we wanna hit,

so that night we found
18 tons of marijuana,

we found a room full of ammo,
five gallon buckets of

.40 caliber, 9mm, .223.

We also found 26 grenades,
and of those grenades,

two or three of 'em had the
same lot number of the one

that had been thrown
at the US consulate.

We arrested one
guy at the place, and he told us,

he said, "Hey, they just left,
like, ten, 15 minutes ago.

If you're still here, they're
gonna show up in ten,

15, 20 vehicles, .50 calibers used.

They're gonna kill all you guys.
It's gonna get messy."

We're, like, "We need
to call the military."

So, it's three in the morning,
so I called the general up.

His aide answers.

I tell the aide, I said, "I
need to speak to the general."

He says, "Well, the general's asleep."

I said,

"Look, I'm a DEA agent and
we're in a world of ****.

If you don't wanna spend the
rest of your career washing cars,

you better wake him up now."

General answers the phone.

I said, "Look, general,
this is what we got."

He says, "What do you need from me?"

I said, "I need manpower."

Within ten minutes,
lieutenant colonel calls me to say,

"We're mobilizing 100 troops."

So, they showed up.

As soon as they arrive,
they get into a big

shootout with the Zetas.

They start taking heavy fire.

Two soldiers were wounded
and one of our Feda guys,

a Mexican federal agent,
was also shot.

They end
up getting away.

It was a long night.
It was a long night.

The Zeta started putting
surveillance at the military camp

and what they would do,
they'd pick up soldiers,

kidnap 'em, torture
'em and then kill 'em.

So, within eight days they
killed nine soldiers because

of, of this little operation.

They were between 18 and 20.

I think the outcome has
always weighed heavy on me,

knowing uh, what happened
to those soldiers.

The retaliation
for this operation.

I guess hindsight, if I would've know
this would've happened,

I prob, probably would've never
have gone through with it,

since I kinda feel spearheaded it.

Drug cartels are now taking
on the attributes of a

lot of the insurgent and
terrorist groups that we see

elsewhere around the world.

You see them being much
more organized in a kind of

paramilitary way.

In fact, one of the most violent of the
drug gangs are former

special forces members from
the Mexican army who went over

to the dark side.

So, this is a, this is a struggle
that has a huge consequence

for the United States.

We had reports
that they were killing 150,

200 people in one month.

That they would
dismember people,

that they would behead people.

The goal that we had,
I believe,

was an admirable goal.

The goal was to try to get
these guys captured and

arrested so that the
killings would stop.

There were some individuals
that we interviewed who were

the original founding
members of the Zeta Cartel,

And even they were amazed at
the amount of brutality that

Miguel Trevi�o had brought
to the organization.

There were some that were
willing to cooperate because of that,

who wanted out of the organization.

They indicated, "We got into
this business to make money.

We didn't get in this business to
kill hundreds of people at a time."

I mean, I, I personally
felt the impact that these

individuals were having on
the innocent people of Mexico.

As a human being,
as a prosecutor,

you wanna see justice done.

Trevi�o never slept in the same place.

They had hidden tunnels
that they would hide from.

They were very shrewd,
and they had the structure

where they had evaded
capture for a very, very long time.

Obviously, we could use
the information on the

cell phones to track those
individuals and find their locations.

That information is leaked.

The Zetas are tipped off that
someone in their organization

has provided us that information,

and that unleashes
the furor of Trevi�o.

Now we know that it was because
of the leak of information.

We know that it was Miguel Trevi�o
trying to get some

retribution for the lack of allegiance
from some of their members.

I don't think I've ever
seen anything like that,

and I've been investigating
or, or prosecuting these types of cases

for 25 years, and this is the worst

of the worst that I've ever seen.

I cannot compare Zetas'
violence to anything that had

ever been witnessed in
Mexico from any cartel.

Just beyond the imagination
of what a human could

do to another human.

The Zetas brought violence
to a whole new level.

And it's fun for
them just killing people.

They have to be deranged.

I, I, I can't see how some of
these guys could sleep at night

knowing the crimes, the
atrocities they've committed.

I mean, how can you sleep?

There's a quote from a Zeta,

"We use drugs to finance the war."

The drugs almost become, like,

"Ok, we'll keep on turning that
so we can keep on financing,

and buying more guns,
and killing more people,

and taking more territory, and
then sell some more drugs."

It becomes this circle and what
really is the objective?

These attacks really brought
the wrath of the United States.

They said, "We have to stop the Zetas.

We have to get the Zetas.
This is too bad."

It was a part of
the pattern that

Miguel Trevi�o had somehow
developed that they were going

to stay in power, but his thirst
for power is going to

cause him to be less careful.

It's gonna cause him to
come out into the open.

I wanted
to keep going,

I wanted to, to, to try
to achieve the goal that we had set out.

We continued
to work the case,

we continued to cultivate information
from co-operators and informants.

Information has strong value
in any kind of investigation,

and especially in this one.

This is yet another
advance by the people of

Mexico in dismantling
organized crime,

so we really commend our
Mexican partners in this regard.

It takes a toll on you.

It's toxic.

You know, it's not healthy.

Seeing and, and, and hearing
and, and talking to the families

and feeling the, feeling the heat and
the, and the sorrow and the,

and the, and the hurt, and, it,
it really takes a toll on you.

It, it's a really tough
assignment, it really is.

If someone tells you it isn't,
they're, they're lying.

DEA, in my personal opinion,

is that we're like gardeners,
and we have no choice but to

keep cutting the grass,
because if we don't keep

cutting the grass, we're gonna
have a jungle of weeds,

And then we won't be
able to control it.

Now it's other cartels
here, you know, the Sinaloa,

you have Ju�rez Cartel, you
have the Knights Templar.

It's still a country under
siege by these cartels because

there's money to be made
and there's power to be had.

~subtitles ripped and corrected by~
Rapunzel@addic7ed.com