"Cartel Chased Us Down!" - The Most Terrifying Cartel Car Chase in Mexico | Katarina Szulc

FULL VIDEO: https://youtu.be/zomfFgNvOis KATARINA's LINKS: Substack: https://katarinaszulc.substack.com/?utm_source=navbar&utm_medium=web&r=3h3gxb X: https://x.com/katarinaszulc?lang=en YT: https://www.youtube.com/@katarinaszulc/featured IG: https://www.instagram.com/katarinaszulc?igsh=eHViMnZnNWExNmk4 --- Katarina Szulc is 24 years old. She is a Canadian freelance journalist based in Mexico. She has reported from Culiacán after shootouts, confronted cartel figures, investigated fentanyl pipelines and government corruption on both sides of the border, and built one of the most credible and most genuinely dangerous investigative reporting platforms covering the Mexican cartel world. In this conversation with Julian Dorey she describes the assignment she never wanted — the human trafficking story she stumbled into through a tip connected to photographs found at El Mencho's cabin — and the town in Tlaxcala Mexico that changed how she understood everything she thought she knew about how trafficking actually works. The car chase that opens the episode sets the tone immediately. Katarina was not supposed to be covering human trafficking. Her work was focused elsewhere when a tip she received about what the El Mencho photographs revealed led her deeper into a story she had been trying to avoid — because she knew what covering it would require and what it would cost her to do it honestly. The story led to Tlaxcala — a state in central Mexico that has been documented by human rights organizations as one of the epicenters of sex trafficking in the country, where multi-generational family businesses have been running trafficking operations for decades and where the local economy in some small communities is so thoroughly dependent on trafficking that the practice has become normalized across multiple generations of the same families. The human trafficker interview is the episode's most extraordinary and most disturbing contribution. Katarina sat across from a man who traffics human beings and conducted the kind of interview that requires a specific and very difficult combination of journalistic discipline, emotional suppression, and professional clarity to pull off. She describes what it was like — how this experience differed from others she had conducted, what the trafficker said that she was not prepared for, and what the specific texture of a conversation with someone who is completely comfortable describing the exploitation of other human beings actually feels like when you are the one sitting across the table from them. The whole town's economy runs off trafficking. That is not an exaggeration. That is what she found. Getting burned from that town is the episode's most practically significant thread for understanding what this kind of journalism actually costs — not just emotionally but operationally. When you report on a community where everyone from the local economy to the local officials to the local families has a stake in the trafficking operation continuing undisturbed you do not just risk physical danger. You risk being identified followed warned off and made an example of in ways that go beyond individual threat and into collective community enforcement. **Inside This Clip:** - The car chase that opened one of Katarina Szulc's most dangerous assignments - Why Katarina never wanted to cover human trafficking — and what changed her mind - The pictures at El Mencho's cabin and the tip that led Katarina deeper into the trafficking story - Tlaxcala Mexico — the state where multi-generational family businesses run trafficking operations - What it is like to sit across from a human trafficker and conduct a journalistic interview - How this trafficker interview differed from others Katarina had conducted - The specific things the trafficker said that she was not prepared to hear - Why the whole town's economy runs off trafficking — and what that actually looks like on the ground - Small towns in Mexico where journalists can be lynched for asking the wrong questions - What getting burned from that town means — and why Katarina says it plainly This is the human trafficking story from inside the communities where it operates — told by the journalist who went there when nobody else would and came back with what she found. --- ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - Car Chase, Human Tr*fficking & El Mencho's Cabin 10:01 - How Girls Get Trafficked, Police Inaction & Gun Pointed at Us 13:01 - 30 Men Per Night Women Held at Gunpoint & Generational Trafficking Economy 23:01 - Humanity in the Darkness, Brutal Trafficker Comments & Best Journalism 33:56 - Journalist K*lled in Veracruz, Security Risks & Young Woman on Assignment 43:00 - Multiple Murders in Culiacan, El Mayo Arrested & CIA FBI in Mexico 53:00 - Sinaloa's Economy Destroyed Chapitos vs Mayo & Crime Scene to Crime Scene Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices