My name is JJ Arms the 3rd.
I'm an international private investigator.
My firm is based in Dallas,
TX. It's ARMS International Investigative Services.
So what's going on in
in Cancun and Tulum and the area that they refer
to as the Riviera Maya
in the state of Quintana Roo.
The problem is you've got kind of a perfect storm
happening down there now.
You've got like a trifecta of
of things that are happening that
are coming together and converging to create the situation that
you're seeing now.
You know, the incident involving the woman in Tulum that
was found or she was killed in a crossfire
between rival drug gangs 80 miles away in Cancun.
You had five men that were hacked to death by
machetes.
They just caught the six people that they say are
involved in,
in perpetrating that crime.
I mean to us it's it's horrifying.
It's note it's noteworthy it's newsworthy because
you know the the woman was
you know a a foreigner in in Mexico
and
the the crime in Cancun was a little shocking because
you know five people were hacked to death.
But to people in Mexico
it's a Tuesday. It it's something that happens all the
time.
So it's it's disappointing, it's shocking to them as well,
but it's not as shocking as it into us
because this is what's going on in in throughout Mexico.
This is not just a problem in the state of
of Quintana Roo
or the Riviera Maya or Tulum or Cancun.
This is something that's happening throughout Mexico right now and
it's all because of the drug trafficking.
The drug traffickers are fighting each other over territory,
and that area right now is territory that
really was originally kind of off limits people.
The drug traffickers in Mexico used to not
dabble in that area because it interfered with tourism.
It was bad for business.
It it any kind of incident like what we're seeing
now would create
a backlash that was kind of a mandatory backlash from
law enforcement,
law enforcement, Mexican government, Mexican president
would demand that something be done because it's hurting tourism.
It makes the country look bad.
It determines foreigners from coming to Mexico to spend money
because it's just too dangerous.
They'd rather go somewhere else where it's safer,
the Bahamas or the Virgin Islands or Hawaii or somewhere
else instead of going to Cancun.
But now the rules have kind of changed.
All that is kind of out the window,
you know, because of the travel bloggers and
the Internet and Zoom, not Zoom.
TikTok, TikTok. You've got all these TikTok influencers that are
going,
putting themselves on TikTok, showing how much fun they're having
in Tulum
and Cancun and all these areas down there,
You know, it's created a huge influx of people going
to that area that we're never going there before.
Tulum used to be kind of a best.
It used to be kind of a best kept secret.
Tulum was kind of one of the places that you
went to
when you were at going to Cancun and you wanted
an extra adventure.
Like, where else can I go after going to see
the pyramids in Chicha,
Lisa, where else can I go?
And they'll tell you, hey,
there's a little place down the coast 80 miles away
called Tulum.
There's some ruins there too.
It's really cool. It's got a beautiful beach area.
So that's how people used to find out about Tulum.
Now they are because of all the people posting stuff
on on,
on the Internet and TikTok and everywhere else.
They've built entire resorts there.
There's
Airbnb's, there's all kinds of infrastructure being put in
and now you've got 15,000,000 people a year going down
to that area that we're never going before.
That caught the attention of the drug dealers and the
drug traffickers,
multiple cartels are are have people
in place selling drugs to the tourists.
I can tell you for a fact they're selling
drugs out of the bathrooms
in those tourist areas. And
you know, multiple cartels are fighting for that same customer
base.
You know, we call them tourists.
We see them as tourists.
The drug cartels see them as either potential customers
or potential victims.
So in that area you have three primary cartels and
you have one kind of smaller cartel that that is
operating in that area.
The primary cartel is the Sinaloa cartel,
and then you have the Gulf cartel,
and then you have the new generation cartel,
the CJNG from Jalisco. And then you have a smaller
cartel called Grupo regional
or regional group, which are former Zetas,
former
enforcers that ultimately ended up having their own
their own cartel. But those guys that fractioned off ended
up with the Grupo.
They're also down there all fighting for the same
customer base and territory.
One of the unfortunate byproducts of the drug wars and
and the drug trafficking and the drug cartels fighting against
each other is inevitably some innocent person
is going to get caught in the crossfire when they're
shooting at each other.
And this is exactly what happened to the woman who
was killed in Tulum.
There was rival gun drug traffickers that were fighting over
the territory
and this woman was actually accidentally shot and killed in
the crossfire.
When the five men that were found hacked to death
in Cancun,
80 miles away, that's completely different.
That is drug, that is violence
amongst drug traffickers, between rival cartels.
Whenever you have a killing like that where it's a
very public killing
and they leave the bodies to be found
in the trunk of a car,
inside a car on the street,
in a public place, hanging from a bridge,
that's a message that's being sent from one cartel to
another cartel saying
every time you send one of your men down here,
this is what's going to happen to them.
Send five will kill 5,
send 10, will kill 10.
And that's why you have
killings like that, that are very public and very brutal
and very graphic.
Because if they're designed to send a message to the
rival cartel
and to put fear into the populace,
going back to the conversation that we just had about,
you know, getting in a bar fight,
you know, and the different types of of killings.
So you get the girl that is an innocent person
walking down the street,
eating in a restaurant, laying out on the beach,
and you know there's drug violence and you're caught in
the crossfire inadvertently.
And then you have the people that are drug dealers
that have upset a rival cartel because they're working in
that
cartel's area.
Those are intentional killings. And then you have the scenario
that we discussed where you have a guy in a
bar that gets in a bar fight with
a group of guys that's in the drug trade or
his family or friends of someone in the drug trade.
They make a call, that guy walks outside,
they grab him and make him disappear.
That is a very common thing that happens among
border communities or areas where you know,
the drug trafficking is prevalent.
They're not trying to send a message.
The guy wasn't caught in the crossfire.
He just was in the wrong place at the wrong
time and got in a fight with the wrong guy,
or he was hitting on a drug
trafficker's girlfriend. That's all it takes.
Literally.