Now that the riots in L.A. have brought it into the open that this is about much more than immigration, it's about the belief that California was stolen from Mexico, I thought it'd be timely to repost the conversation I had with three old Mexican gentlemen in San Diego County, back in '88.
1988. The Hell's Angels controlled the meth trade in California, I had a friend in San Diego County who was fourth generation Italian-American, deep roots in San Diego, well liked by the Catholic fathers in the Mission system, by the Natives out on the rez, and by the old-time Mexicans.
I walked into his house one day, and three old Mexican men, who could have been anywhere from sixty to a hundred and ten years old, or more, stopped their conversation and looked to my friend for permission to proceed. He assured them that I was cool, and they told me what they were talking about.
They believed they could take over the meth trade in California, by switching over from the P2P-based recipe the HA used, to an ephedrine based recipe which was much cheaper and easier to produce. They would flood the market with it, while staying ahead of the law by using pagers, meeting people on street corners and parking lots, and using illegals, because back then, if an illegal was caught with drugs, they just deported them, whereupon they would turn around, sneak back into the country, and be back in business before you knew it.
They had other things figured out, like how to disrupt the upward progression of investigations by the law, by having no permanent "Mr. Big." Rather, there would be a rotating cast of characters: Juan on a bicycle selling bags to the homeless; Carlos, with a Camaro selling eight-balls; Luis on the hill with a Porsche, selling pounds - but every so often, they'd rotate, and Luis would be moving bags out of a flea-bag motel, and Juan would be high-dollaring it, selling pounds. They figured, at that point, any law-enforcement investigations would have to start all over, chasing that non-existent local kingpin.
They also told me they planned on putting heroin into the meth.
"Isn't that kind of expensive?" I asked them, and they said, "Not to us, it isn't." And they explained why they would do it.
Real speed keeps you up for days, and when you run out, you simply go to sleep. They wanted something that would bring in money faster, and steadier. By putting heroin (or any other addicting narcotic) into the speed, they would cut down the duration of the high, making people want to buy more, sooner, and more importantly, after doing it for more than three days, there would be physical addiction, with painful withdrawals and the works.
When they were done (there was a lot more - these boys had spent a lot of time thinking about this, obviously), they asked me what I thought.
I knew what I thought -- I thought, "Good luck getting past the HA," but I said I thought they had covered all the bases, and I got the hell out of there, never thinking that it would happen.
But that's not all. Before I left, they asked me if I was curious as to why they would embark on such an endeavor. I told them, "Yeah - the money!" and they said that would be nice, but their main purpose would be the taking back of California. They considered California to have been stolen from them. They knew they couldn't take it back militarily, or by diplomacy, so they planned on getting it back by osmosis.
The plan with the cheap, heroin-laced meth was to, "weaken the white male populace," as they put it. If they could get enough of the white boys strung out, rendering them impotent, strung out on the street, in prison, or dead, then the jobs they once held, in farming, logging, construction, etc, would be left open for Mexican men to take, and once they were established, they would bring their families in, or start new families with the girlfriends of the white boys who were strung out, in prison, or dead. Eventually, they would be established well enough in the community to become a political force, making it easier for more to come in, and eventually they would be here in enough numbers that they, for all intents and purposes, would own the place.
And they do. Everything those old Mexicans said they were going to do, they did. It has turned out exactly as they planned. The heroin's been replaced with Fentanyl, but they took the business over from the HA, and everything else has gone exactly like they said it would, to the point that the governor and many mayors put them before their own constituents.
I've told the story a few times since, and been called a racist for it. But how is it racist to relate a conversation? And now they're saying it out loud, in public. I reckon I got me an apology coming.
1988. The Hell's Angels controlled the meth trade in California, I had a friend in San Diego County who was fourth generation Italian-American, deep roots in San Diego, well liked by the Catholic fathers in the Mission system, by the Natives out on the rez, and by the old-time Mexicans.
I walked into his house one day, and three old Mexican men, who could have been anywhere from sixty to a hundred and ten years old, or more, stopped their conversation and looked to my friend for permission to proceed. He assured them that I was cool, and they told me what they were talking about.
They believed they could take over the meth trade in California, by switching over from the P2P-based recipe the HA used, to an ephedrine based recipe which was much cheaper and easier to produce. They would flood the market with it, while staying ahead of the law by using pagers, meeting people on street corners and parking lots, and using illegals, because back then, if an illegal was caught with drugs, they just deported them, whereupon they would turn around, sneak back into the country, and be back in business before you knew it.
They had other things figured out, like how to disrupt the upward progression of investigations by the law, by having no permanent "Mr. Big." Rather, there would be a rotating cast of characters: Juan on a bicycle selling bags to the homeless; Carlos, with a Camaro selling eight-balls; Luis on the hill with a Porsche, selling pounds - but every so often, they'd rotate, and Luis would be moving bags out of a flea-bag motel, and Juan would be high-dollaring it, selling pounds. They figured, at that point, any law-enforcement investigations would have to start all over, chasing that non-existent local kingpin.
They also told me they planned on putting heroin into the meth.
"Isn't that kind of expensive?" I asked them, and they said, "Not to us, it isn't." And they explained why they would do it.
Real speed keeps you up for days, and when you run out, you simply go to sleep. They wanted something that would bring in money faster, and steadier. By putting heroin (or any other addicting narcotic) into the speed, they would cut down the duration of the high, making people want to buy more, sooner, and more importantly, after doing it for more than three days, there would be physical addiction, with painful withdrawals and the works.
When they were done (there was a lot more - these boys had spent a lot of time thinking about this, obviously), they asked me what I thought.
I knew what I thought -- I thought, "Good luck getting past the HA," but I said I thought they had covered all the bases, and I got the hell out of there, never thinking that it would happen.
But that's not all. Before I left, they asked me if I was curious as to why they would embark on such an endeavor. I told them, "Yeah - the money!" and they said that would be nice, but their main purpose would be the taking back of California. They considered California to have been stolen from them. They knew they couldn't take it back militarily, or by diplomacy, so they planned on getting it back by osmosis.
The plan with the cheap, heroin-laced meth was to, "weaken the white male populace," as they put it. If they could get enough of the white boys strung out, rendering them impotent, strung out on the street, in prison, or dead, then the jobs they once held, in farming, logging, construction, etc, would be left open for Mexican men to take, and once they were established, they would bring their families in, or start new families with the girlfriends of the white boys who were strung out, in prison, or dead. Eventually, they would be established well enough in the community to become a political force, making it easier for more to come in, and eventually they would be here in enough numbers that they, for all intents and purposes, would own the place.
And they do. Everything those old Mexicans said they were going to do, they did. It has turned out exactly as they planned. The heroin's been replaced with Fentanyl, but they took the business over from the HA, and everything else has gone exactly like they said it would, to the point that the governor and many mayors put them before their own constituents.
I've told the story a few times since, and been called a racist for it. But how is it racist to relate a conversation? And now they're saying it out loud, in public. I reckon I got me an apology coming.