Narco Wars

Reporter (over tv): Shake this square world

And blast off for kicksville.

Nixon (over tv): Public enemy number one is drug abuse.

Nancy (over tv): Just say no.

Reagan (over tv): Halting the drug problem in america is

Like carrying water in a sieve.

Bush (over tv): Take my word for it.

This scourge will stop.

Woman: There's now an understanding that the war on

Drugs was an abject failure.

Man: You have to stop and ask yourself,

How did we get here?

Trump (over tv): We will build a wall.

Carl: I was a special agent with the

Drug enforcement administration.

And I was in charge of the mexico section.

All of a sudden you see this new group popping up

On the radar screen.

They went to a nightclub,

And a small nightclub there in michoacán.

And our men dressed in black came in.

Shot the guns off into the ceiling,

Made everybody lay on the floor.

And then they threw five freshly decapitated heads

In the middle of the dance floor.

Ioan: Next to these five decapitated heads,

There was a narco message saying,

"la familia doesn't kill for money.

It doesn't kill women.

It doesn't kill innocent people.

Only those who deserve to die.

Everyone should know that this is divine justice."

This was one of the weird features right away when

La familia michoacana broke onto the scene.

They were claiming this religious inspiration.

They were claiming to be holy warriors.

Man (over tv): The cartel's philosophy is rooted in religion,

Saying that they are protecting the state's people

As part of god's work.

Ioan: This was one of the wake up calls about something

Really bad is happening in mexico.

Who are this crazy drug cartel down in michoacán?

What the hell is going on down there?

Man (over tv): Drug enforcement officials call it

The crack of the 90s.

Ioan: You had loads of people right across america who were

Getting really bad crystal meth addictions.

Philippa: Meth gives you a rush of euphoria.

You feel immense pleasure.

You feel invincible.

Even the most repetitive task feels totally mind-blowing.

Carl: It's just such a devastating drug.

You see people that you would think were in their 50s and

Find out they're only in their early 20s.

They would sit there and just shake, scratching their face.

Man (over tv): Meth destroys.

The high is a lie.

Philippa: The problem with meth

Is that you can make it yourself.

Man (over tv): What you need to make meth is all legal.

Available at a hardware or a discount store.

Philippa: A number of labs exploded in the united states

And that's when it became the wild, wild west.

Ioan: Now because the united states saw a bunch

Of profit off crystal meth,

They passed the 2005 combat methamphetamine act.

And this banned the precursors for meth.

Carl: They pushed the production from the united states,

South of the border to michoacán.

Ioan: Michoacán is a state on the west coast of mexico,

To the south of the sierra madre mountains.

About the size of virginia in the united states.

Michoacán is a place with having lazaro cardenas,

The biggest port in mexico.

Right on the pacific.

You could buy the raw ingredients from countries like china,

Bring them in through lazaro cardenas,

And then create massive super labs

And really start churning meth out.

Carl: This group was basically started by a man by the name

Of nazario moreno gonzález.

The most crazy one was his nickname.

Ioan: Nazario is one of the most mysterious figures in all

Of mexico's narco wars.

There is no video of him and few photos.

And even with the ones we have,

There is doubt whether they really are of him.

But we do have his writings.

He came out with this book, me dicen: El mas loco .

They call me the maddest one.

He talked about growing up in wretched poverty.

Ioan: He grew up in a little hamlet in the tierra caliente,

In the hot land of michoacán.

I mean, really kind of desolate bandit country.

They had a long history of drug trafficking,

Certainly a lot of people living on the edge

Of the law there.

When he was a, a young man,

He had a really crazy temper.

He would snap very fast.

He was playing soccer, there was a fight broke out.

And these guys started really smashing his head in.

So he was flown to a hospital in mexico city

And they cut his head open

And put a metal plate to bind his skull up.

His face would like bulge as he got angry

Because he had this kind of weird look with a metal plate.

So he was kind of a scary guy.

A kind of james bond villain.

He was kind of seen as the, the craziest of all.

El mas loco.

Ioan: Nazario moreno was the founder

And head of la familia michoacana.

His right-hand man is servando gomez martinez, la tuta.

Carl: What we saw was it literally came in

Like a flood.

They made an enormous amount of money very, very,

Very fast.

Ioan: So this one regional cartel were suddenly pumped

With billions of dollars and became a major player

In mexico.

Ioan: Now there's a lot of bad publicity of the zetas.

We were seeing in the newspapers about massacres

By the zetas.

About how evil, horrible this drug cartel was.

So nazario moreno declared war on them

And the familia michoana was about defending the state of

Michoacán from the zetas.

Carl: La familia became so dangerous because that was

Their instrument, to run the zetas off,

So they could regain their state.

Within three years of throwing the heads on the dance floor,

Mexico declared la familia the most dangerous body

To the security of the state of mexico.

Carl: They do this thing we call the robin hood effect.

They would repair a road or they would clean out an irrigation ditch,

Or build a school house.

And then they would publicize that.

They were very good at publicity.

Letting people know,

Especially in areas they want to control,

What they were capable of doing.

Either in a good or bad situation.

The la familia essentially became the de facto government

Because the local government were so weak.

Ioan: I mean you know, 2006, nobody really understood or

Expected the level of violence that would blow up.

The homicidal rate skyrocketing by mass graves

Across mexico.

Ioan: Felipe calderon wants to show

He's the new sheriff in town.

That the state is having power again.

Ioan: I went to aqualia one of these big narco towns

And I saw the troops pouring into the town.

Helicopters and lining people up,

Putting their t shirts over their head

And guns to their head.

Very quickly you start seeing big problems

With military offensive.

The military could win those gunfights,

But the cartel could just disappear into the mountains.

So apatzingán is, is the biggest city of the hot land,

Tierra caliente area.

Cradle of the la familia michoacana.

Very close to where nazario moreno grew up.

Ioan: But nazario moreno and the la familia michoacana

Had the advantage of knowing the territory,

So they have a guerrilla group which is fighting very, very dirty.

Carl: What they realized was they could move their market

To smaller rural cities.

But they were sending people up there that didn't have addictions,

Didn't have problems.

Just fit into society.

Strategy wise it was a pretty brilliant move.

Woman (over tv): In this surveillance video,

A man removes methamphetamine from the wheel well of an automobile

And hands it to a woman who wraps it in a

Blanket before picking up her child.

This is part of the smuggling and distribution network

Of the mexican cartel known as la familia.

Eric: While this cartel may operate from mexico,

The toxic reach of its operations extends to nearly

Every state within our own country.

Carl: We had to stop them.

We had to stop la familia.

Man: Stand by.

Man: Good to go.