No One Comes Out Alive: The Hidden Narco Outpost Where Law Enforcement Is Afraid to Go

0:00 Narcos started investing in expanding in the jungle because they're like,

0:03 "Hey, maybe this is a good time to get off the grid.

0:05 Maybe this is a good place to go get

0:06 off the grid." Did that continue in the post era?

0:10 How much of the jungle did they actually kind of get their tentacles into?

0:13 We went up river one day and we

0:15 saw this huge area of deforestation along the river

0:18 and I can't explain to you how much how

0:21 strange this is because when I first arrived there,

0:23 you had to go for days just to get to this area.

0:25 And the only way to get there is by river.

0:27 And now that that trans-Amazon,

0:29 they cut a road off of this that accessed the river.

0:31 Why would they want to do that?

0:33 So, they can take out the timber.

0:35 They can bring it down by boat

0:36 to these huge trucks that then take out the timber.

0:39 Well, then the Narcos came from another part of Peru and went, "Wait a second.

0:42 There's no one here." This is just wilderness from horizon

0:46 to horizon for weeks and weeks in any direction.

0:49 And I mean, if you dropped a person in the middle of the Amazon and, you know,

0:53 you're between rivers and you had 60 to 100 miles before the next river,

0:58 it might as well be endless.

0:59 You're not going to make it.

1:00 You know, you can barely walk 10 ft or see 10 ft in front of you.

1:03 You have to have a machete.

1:05 It's so dense that it it's almost like being on a different planet.

1:10 And so, these now they have, you know,

1:12 chainsaws and they have bulldozers and they're

1:15 they're well-funded and so, they go out there.

1:17 They they cut a huge section of our river and we assumed they were like,

1:20 you know, we just said,

1:21 "Oh, this looks like loggers or something." And so,

1:23 we didn't know that the threat level had increased.

1:27 We had no idea that what we were dealing with was

1:29 something that was outside of anything that we'd ever experienced.

1:33 And so, we used a drone to get pictures and then we brought the police

1:38 in and these guys instantly realized the only

1:41 people messing with us are these jungle keeper people.

1:44 And so, they started hitting back and coming after us and then that me

1:49 and JJ currently have a hit out on us where the police they arrested

1:53 a few of them and and they they hacked their they got into their they

1:56 broke their phones and in their WhatsApp

1:58 messages on their little narco group chat, it was like, "If you see Paul or JJ,

2:03 just take him out." They're like, "There'll be a reward." And so,

2:07 we're dealing with that, which is very different from the old

2:09 days where I'd be in a boat just driving through the wilderness,

2:12 you know, stop and fish, take pictures of things.

2:15 It was There was nobody out there.

2:16 It was just the elements.

2:17 Now, if I hear a boat motor, it's like,

2:19 "We got to hide." Damn, that changes the calculus for sure.

2:25 Uh does that change your I mean, obviously,

2:28 your passion for this isn't going to change.

2:30 How about your risk tolerance?

2:32 The amount of time that you spend there, the way, you know,

2:34 I mean, it's your again, your passion for this isn't going to change.

2:38 How does that level of threat though change the way

2:40 you look at the time you spend down there?

2:42 It changes it in the sense that while I'm down there,

2:45 I have to work with my rangers

2:47 and the the the police to have a security force around me.

2:50 Now that I'm a target for both my team, keeping my team safe and myself,

2:56 you know, I have to I'm I'm not military trained.

2:59 I'm not, you know, I'm not going to be able to defend myself against,

3:01 you know, 20 guys with guns.

3:03 And so, we've had to really ramp up.

3:06 probably nobody is.

3:06 Like one versus one v 20, these aren't good odds.

3:09 No.

3:10 And, you know, they're they're never going to It's not like they're going

3:13 to like It's not like it's going to end up being a fair fight.

3:16 They're going to hit you when you least expect it.

3:17 They're going to, you know,

3:18 come up behind you and just Yeah, they'll ambush you.

3:21 they'll ambush you.

3:22 And so, we've just had to be super super careful.

3:24 We have not stopped our operations.

3:26 We've been supporting the local Peruvian law enforcement,

3:28 which is actually surprisingly not corrupt.

3:30 Everybody assumes third world country, you know,

3:33 the police force is going to be super corrupt.

3:35 It's the first thing everybody says to me.

3:37 And I'm like, "No, man, these are good people.

3:39 They're working hard to get control.

3:40 They want their country to be better." And so,

3:43 when we say, "Hey, look, we'll give you boats and gasoline.

3:45 Could you guys please go arrest these people?

3:46 It's illegal to cut down primary forest.

3:48 It's illegal to be farming cocaine." And so,

3:51 they're like, "Yes, we'd love to do that.

3:53 We don't have the resources to do it.

3:55 But if you guys give us the boat and the boats and the gasoline,

3:57 we'll go out there and kick some ass." And so,

3:59 we've been fighting back against this whole thing and actually

4:03 compared to last year at this time where I was

4:06 almost certain that our project was going to to to fall

4:09 apart and that we were going to be killed,

4:11 now we've significantly disrupted the narco trafficking force and the police

4:18 are fully on our side helping to to to bring this back

4:21 and the support that we've gained over the last year has through

4:25 the the book and going on Joe and doing podcasts like yours,

4:29 so many people are finding out about this that then they go to our website

4:32 and the whole model that we're using is people go to junglekeepers.org and they,

4:39 you know, for $5, $10, $100 a month,

4:43 they just, you know, they become jungle keepers donors.

4:46 And so, through that we're able to if there's

4:48 a piece of land that the logging companies own, we go, "Hey, hey, hey,

4:51 what if we paid you right now for that land

4:54 and you don't log it?" And a lot of times they're like,

4:56 "Wait a second." It's kind of similar.

4:58 Instead of doing work, we'll just get paid to to sell the land.

5:01 Sure.

5:02 They're like, "We have no problem with that." Handshake,

5:04 sign the papers, we're done.

5:05 And so, people around the world are allowing that to happen.

5:07 And what I tell people is, you know, you're over there spending six $5,

5:11 $6 on a single coffee every day all month long.

5:14 And I'm saying for one of those per month, for $5 a month,

5:17 if we get enough people doing that, we can we can protect this whole river.

5:22 So, we have 140,000 acres protected and we need to protect

5:26 about 300,000 acres to turn it into a national park.

5:30 We're almost halfway there.

5:32 And so, we know this works.

5:33 We know that when we give loggers and gold miners better jobs,

5:36 they're happy to do them.

5:38 We can better the lives of the local people.

5:39 We can save the rainforest.

5:41 We can inspire people all over the world.

5:43 So, we have proof of concept.

5:45 And now it's just can we get the message out there enough?

5:47 Can we can we let enough people know that this is happening?

5:51 Because if it's not if it As long as they know it's happening,

5:53 you know, one out of 10 people is going to go, "Wait a second.

5:55 I actually care about that.

5:57 Sign me up." You know, and then we and then we, you know,

5:59 and then of course, we bring people down

6:01 and let them experience it and everything else.

6:03 Yeah, the storytelling aspect there, capturing their attention and again,

6:06 that that bridge between doing something about it.

6:09 Have a It's interesting the narco narco is

6:12 a term I think would often be synonymous with cartel.

6:15 When we talk about this drug trafficking,

6:18 is this a localized or are these guys have any

6:21 ties to probably what people would associate with the Mexican cartels,

6:25 maybe Colombian cartels?

6:26 And I only ask because it might be another way you could

6:28 connect the dots to get people to You know what I mean?

6:31 Like, I can't do anything here right in front of my face,

6:33 but maybe I can go all the way upstream and have

6:36 some impact at the origin of where these things are being,

6:39 you know, these criminal organizations are kind of operating with impunity.

6:42 Yeah, in our region, it's very artisanal.

6:45 So, like Peru and Peru has become one

6:47 of the major cocaine producers in in Latin America.

6:51 And so, these these are guys they're pretty dis Thank God,

6:54 they're pretty disorganized.

6:56 They're it's really like a group of people that'll come

6:59 from part of another part of Peru and they'll go,

7:02 "Look, we think we can operate far outside the law where they can't get us.

7:06 Cut down some rainforest.

7:07 Let's grow some plants, make some coke,

7:09 and then we'll just ship it out." And so,

7:11 they're so bottom rung that they're going to the city and selling

7:15 to the middleman who's selling to somebody else and then they're getting it.

7:17 So, these guys are These guys are thankfully easier to deal with.

7:22 They're not like full-scale machine gun cartels.

7:25 Yeah, that's good for you.

7:27 us.

7:27 It's really good for us.

7:28 Your life expectancy will continue to be a larger number.

7:32 That would be That would not be great.

7:33 Okay, if they had direct ties to those more upstream cartels.

7:37 We'd be absolutely slaughtered.

7:38 We're not we're not equipped to deal We're not equipped to deal with this.

7:40 That would be far outside of our thing.

7:42 But there was I mean, just the we we measure you know,

7:47 we measure distance in days that it takes to get there.

7:50 And like 3 days out into the forest, we saw it on Google Earth.

7:54 There was a there was a clearing in the middle of the forest.

7:56 We don't even know how they got there.

7:58 There's no boat access.

7:59 There's no How they how they brought their chainsaws is a mystery.

8:03 But they cleared several acres of forest, set up a farm,

8:08 and we're actually producing white It's not

8:10 even like they were exporting the leaves.

8:11 They had a a factory there.

8:13 They were making white powder on such a scale

8:16 that the Peruvian government notified the American DEA to be like,

8:21 "This is a major event." We have an entrepreneur located.

8:26 They have vertically integrated their operation.

8:28 Yes, this was a serious one.

8:30 And the good news with that was, you know,

8:32 within a few days we had, you know, police helicopters flying overhead.

8:37 They went in and completely eradicated that one.

8:39 That was But see, that's what happens.

8:40 When it gets bigger, it almost gets more attention.

8:42 And so, that one was concentrated.

8:44 They went in cleared it out and that was

8:46 a good message to the rest of them being like, "Look,

8:48 this is not going to happen." And so, it's been an ongoing fight,

8:51 but but I you know, that's like an unfortunate part of the storyline.

8:55 It's It It was bad enough trying to save the rainforest

9:00 and I'm in the middle of I'm over there doing scientific inventories,

9:02 counting butterflies, trying to live out in the wilderness,

9:05 and it was really hard.

9:07 Being shot at is a whole other level.

9:08 It's like, "Can I at least protect

9:10 the rainforests without being shot at?" It would be

9:12 It would still be a really hard task

9:14 to sort of fight global developmental entropy Yeah.

9:20 without being hunted, you know.

9:21 So, I was like, "I really don't need this on top of that." Yeah,

9:24 man, that's a different level of risk for sure.

9:26 You know, the first time you were on the show,

9:27 I think we were basing the conversation mostly around the gold mines.

9:33 And uh is there has there been any change in the size,

9:38 scope, and scale of those type operations?

9:40 And then, obviously, the impact that it can have.

9:41 You were talking about how it fuels uh human trafficking,

9:45 you know, brothels, like the whole nine yards.

9:47 Is that still operating at scale?

9:48 Have you noticed any change for better or worse?

9:51 The Peruvian government's been pushing back at that and thankfully,

9:53 that's not Most of it isn't on our river.

9:56 It's It's a few hours away on a different

9:58 in a different watershed where it's really bad.

10:01 That's they've been pushing back on that slowly,

10:03 but even the police are scared to go there.

10:06 Cuz the gold miners are in control.

10:07 So, even if you go in there with 50 police, there's more of the gold miners.

10:11 They're going to win.

10:11 And And the funny thing is, you know, society feels, you know, there's rules.

10:16 You can't kill someone, you're going to go to jail.

10:18 Sure.

10:19 Unless you're in the middle of the Amazon,

10:20 because 50 police officers come in and the gold miners go,

10:23 "Well, we're just going to kill them all." And then then what's going to happen?

10:26 Well, then then everyone's just going to be scared.

10:28 So, they're going to make a statement.

10:30 And so, it really comes down to the size of your teeth

10:32 and the and the strength of your muscles and the size of your guns.

10:35 It's really original earth.

10:39 And so, they've been working hard to get control out

10:41 of that, but every time they clear out one area, another one springs up.

10:44 If they throw 300 people in jail, well, eventually they're going to get out.

10:47 They can't get them, you know, prove that they were all gold miners.

10:49 Who the hell knows?

10:50 It's like they're back out on the street in a couple of weeks,

10:53 and then they go get another motor and start gold mining again.

10:55 On our river that's turning into a an ecological reserve,

10:59 we had uh our rangers identified a spot where they

11:03 they'd cleared like half a football field right on the river,

11:06 and we saw smoke coming off.

11:08 Rangers went there, sent the directors sent us uh images,

11:12 and these people had a classic gold mining,

11:14 you know, the motor, the hose, guns, a few clothing lines.

11:18 It's like, you know, they just had like it's just a tarp as a roof.

11:21 It was just these pathetic operations.

11:23 The gold is in the soil, so they have to dig up the soil,

11:26 and they're getting micro amounts of gold dust.

11:29 So, they have to dig up a lot of the land to get it.

11:32 But, we had we had our rangers report,

11:34 and then we had police out there the next day,

11:36 and the day after that they arrested everybody.

11:38 So, within 48 hours, that was done.

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