MITT ROMNEY: Drug trafficking, that's one more of those areas
of concern.
It's time for the United States of America to take
responsibility for the pain, and suffering, and torture,
and murder that's going on throughout Latin America.
SHANE SMITH: Maybe one of the reasons that Mitt Romney is so
concerned with the drug wars taking place just south of the
American border is that it affects him and his family
personally.
Hi, I'm Shane Smith and we're here at the VICE headquarters
in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Now Williamsburg is ground zero for hipsters, which means
it's also ground zero for partying, which means it's
ground zero for cocaine.
Now VICE has talked a lot about cocaine over the years.
In fact, one of our magazine covers featured a mirror with
a big line of coke chopped up on it.
But recently we followed a story that made us think twice
about our historical fascination with coke.
And it has to do with Mormons--
as in Mitt Romney's family type Mormons--
Mexican drug cartels, polygamy, kidnapping, cocaine,
and finally, murder.
Now it's a freaky, freaky story.
And it's taking place just south of the US border.
So we went to check it out first hand to see
what was going on.
We just passed through from El Paso, Texas, which is actually
one of the safest cities in America, into Juarez, Mexico,
which is actually one of the most dangerous
cities in the world.
In fact, it's the most dangerous city in the world
for journalists.
And we're driving with a camera rolling, which is, in
retrospect, very fucking stupid.
People always ask me what the most dangerous place I've ever
been to is.
And when I say Mexico, they're a bit flummoxed
and they say, Mexico?
I've been to Mexico.
I've been to Cancun, Joe's tequila foam party,
and Boom Boom Room.
But this Mexico here in Juarez, is the Mexico run by
the narco lords.
They don't care about what you're shooting.
They don't walk up and say, hey, what's that camera for?
They just see a camera and go, that can't good, and bam.
Now the drug lords that rule northern Mexico are like most
mafia around the world.
They're very wealthy, and they're insanely ruthless.
But the thing that sets the Mexican cartels apart from the
other mobs is their seemingly profound love of murder.
They put other crime syndicates to shame with the
sheer scale of their killing, not to mention the gruesome
eye-catching way they present their murders with a kind of
evil inventiveness.
And it's not just traditional gang on gang violence either.
The cartels kill anyone and everyone in their way.
Rivals, witnesses, journalists, politicians, and
police are all targets.
And rather than hiding the bodies like most criminals,
they actually want you to see them.
And they want you to know exactly who did it.
In fact, the war on drugs in Mexico is so violent that its
body count is almost 10 times that of American soldiers
killed in the real wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And in a country where it's supposedly illegal to own
guns, the narcos are armed to the teeth with
state-of-the-art weaponry, 90% of which are smuggled in from
the United States, which is something we got to see first
hand as soon as we arrived in Juarez.
MEXICAN OFFICIAL: [SPEAKING SPANISH]
SHANE SMITH: We came in here and we saw this huge bunker.
And we're like, oh.
This is where they hold all the guns, and all the drugs,
and everything in this big, massive concrete bunker.
And they're like, no, no.
The drugs and the guns are here in the trucks.
That's a nightclub called the Sphinx.
So last night the police caught these guys trying to
smuggle in 268,000 rounds of ammunition in a truck with
Oklahoma plates.
It was driven by a guy from Dallas.
Over a quarter million rounds of ammunition, this is the
kind of firepower that they have.
This is a .30 caliber Browning, which shoots super
fast and can shoot through armored cars.
And then they have this anti-aircraft, .50 cal.
Can I pick it up?
MALE SPEAKER 1: No.
No.
You can't touch that.
SHANE SMITH: Shit, I did.
I put my finger on it.
I'm going to get in trouble.
They just confiscated these weapons.
And I touched the .50 cal.
And they haven't dusted them for prints yet.
So now my prints are on a murder weapon.
Not good.
MEXICAN OFFICIAL: [SPEAKING SPANISH]
MITT ROMNEY: These look like they're from America.
America, America, America, all the guns are from America.
They're all homicides?
They've tested them out?
MEXICAN OFFICIAL: [SPEAKING SPANISH]
SHANE SMITH: Oh, sorry.
That was loud.
It smells very strong.
Holy Jesus, I know this doesn't look like crazy.
But you can smell.
Wow, it's a lot of drugs, drugs and flak jackets.
So this is sort of a rustic type of smuggling.
They call it a burrero, which is like a donkey.
And they just walk through the desert with the
pot on their back.
So the market for the drugs is America.
The market for the weapons is here in Mexico.
And they go like this.
When you look at this, like .50 cals, assault rifles,
military grade machine guns, you realize, OK, how do the
police fight them, let along regular people, let alone
Mormons who aren't allowed to own guns.
It's crazy.
So we're about 200 miles south of Juarez now.
And we're out in the middle of nowhere.
This is like the narco superhighway.
There's actually 300 different smuggling trails
right through here.
There's no big wall or anything.
You can just walk off into the desert with your
pack full of cocaine.
And then, all of a sudden, folks in Williamsburg and
hipsters are doing coke.
As you're out here, it kind of dawns on you that there's
nowhere to go.
Like if something happens or if somebody even chases us,
where are we going to run to?
Because you can't trust the police.
You especially can't trust the local police because they're
all corrupt.
So basically, right now, it's a straight shot to the
Mormons, their guns, and their god.
Ah, we've come to God's country.
MALE SPEAKER 2: Joel LeBaron was killed by his
own brother, Ervil.
He started to kill in the name of God.
SHANE SMITH: That's some crazy shit.