Latest / Tales From Aztlantis / Episode 96: Tragedy at Teotihuacan

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Episode 96: Tragedy at Teotihuacan · Tales From Aztlantis

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Excuse me.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_04: Greetings, dear listeners, and welcome to Tales from Aslantis, the podcast where we take you on a journey through Chicano, Mexicano, and Mesoamerican history and archaeology, and along the way, we challenge pseudo-historical distortions and confront the disinformation that too often surrounds these very topics.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_04: We are your hosts, Curly Tlapoyawa.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_04: And Ruben Ariano Tlakatecat.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_04: How are you this fine morning, Dr.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_04: Tlakatecat?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: Is it morning?
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: I lose track of time nowadays.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: Everything kind of bleeds in and out into itself.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like a loop.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's a flat circle, bro.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: Is it flat?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: Does that uh correspond with the flat earth in some way?
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_04: Uh maybe.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_04: It could.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_04: You know what?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_04: Speaking of flat earth, how do you like this segue?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, oh, oh.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_04: Uh for our peeps here in New Mexico, well, probably Albuquerque and surrounding areas if you were so interested in making the trip.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_04: This Saturday from 10 AM to six PM, your boy will be present at Skepticamp, New Mexico 2026.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_04: Skepticamp.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_04: That sounds like a cool event, Skepticamp.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_04: You know what?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_04: I did the the last one and it was freaking awesome.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_04: Um I really enjoyed it.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_04: I got to meet some really cool people.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Brian Dunning was there presenting a uh of Skeptoid podcast, was there presenting uh his documentary, and Ben Radford gave a talk.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: Is that the one about the things that they don't want you to know?
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, the U the UFO movie that they don't want you to see.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_04: That's it.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: That's it.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_04: Uh it was a lot of fun.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_04: Got to meet great people.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_04: Um a lot of folks from the uh New Mexicans for science and reason were there.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_04: And the next one is this Saturday.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_04: It's going to be taking place at 1634 University Boulevard.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_04: For those here in town, that is the UNM Continuing Ed building.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: Now, where is that?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: Because I'm familiar with that part of Albuquerque.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: So to what end of University Boulevard is that?
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_04: So it is like north.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_04: If you get if you're on Central and you hit University Boulevard and you head north, um you'll get there.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_04: It's not really like part of the UNM campus proper.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_04: So you There's like a satellite campus?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, exactly.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_04: But it's not very far.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_04: It's like less than five minutes.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_04: I know where that is.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, I remember.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_04: And uh it's gonna be a cool event.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_04: There's gonna be lots of speakers, including yours truly.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_04: I will be giving a talk on New Mexico's Hispano population myth and uh the reasons why so many folks in New Mexico are absolutely convinced that they descend from conquistadorks instead of uh their true mixed-blood indigenous cultural inheritance.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_04: And there's a uh gonna be a good lineup of speakers.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_04: Um it's May 2nd, this Saturday, like I said.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_04: We're gonna have Mark Boslow, a physicist and space impact expert.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_04: He's gonna be talking about the claims of ancient asteroid impacts.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, we're gonna have Suzanne Gerbick, founder of the Gorilla Skeptics on Wikipedia.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_04: And she's gonna be talking about how professional psychics employ a technique called cold reading to manipulate their audiences.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Melanie Tresick King, the author of A Field Guide to Spotting Misinformation, will be giving a talk.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_04: I will be giving a talk.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_04: Uh this one sounds really interesting.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_04: David Weinberg, professor of ophthalmology, will be discussing the bizarre practice called eating the sun.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_04: Eating the sun.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_04: Eating the sun.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_04: I'm curious.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_04: That's piqued my interest.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh shooting the moon.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, right?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_04: Shoot shoot for the moon, eat the sun.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_04: Eat the sun.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_04: Uh friend of the show, Benjamin Radford, will be talking about the pachacomic mystery of Peru.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Matthew Lee Loftus, who also goes by The Credible Hulk, will be talking about public pushback against scientific consensus.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Ruth Frazier will discuss the legacy of her late husband, Ken Frazier, the longtime editor of Skeptical Inquirer.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_04: And Dave Thomas, who's just a really all-around cool guy.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's what everybody says.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_04: Uh he's an adjunct professor at New Mexico Tech.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_04: He is going to be talking about the flat earth movement.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_04: That's the segue right there.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_04: That's the segue.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_04: Uh the event is absolutely free.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_04: There is no need to pre-register, just show up and walk in.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_04: And for those that are interested, uh Sunday, the next day, we will be running a little field trip to the Los Lunas Mystery Stone.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_04: Which we've talked about on the show.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, we've discussed it here on the podcast.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_04: And Dave Thomas, uh, Ben Radford, and I, and uh, you know, Michelle was there.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_04: There was a small group of people.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_04: Uh about a month ago, we went out, uh, did some pre-scouting for this field trip, and we went out and located the mystery stone and uh just talked about its origins.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not really that hidden, right?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's something that I remember from the show that it's that you can get to it, but it's not like you have to want to go see it, right?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_04: Let's not like right off of the road or something.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_04: It's more of a drive than a hike.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_04: So you've got to want to drive to Hidden Mountain.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_04: And then it's a short.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: Now let me ask you this.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: Is it is it like the um what's the name of that church in Chimayo where they have the magic dirt?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: So is it the Santuario?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: The Santuario.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: Is it some kind of uh thing with the with the Los Lunas um stone where you can like chip off like a little piece of it?
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_04: Don't don't suggest it.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_04: Oh no, I'm sorry.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_04: But you can collect dirt there, I'm sure.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_04: You can get a little vial of ancient Hebrew dirt.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_04: It's not the same.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_04: And uh what's cool about the stone though is it's surrounded on uh two sides by rocks that have actual uh petroglyphs.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_04: Ooh.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_04: Um, yeah, you want to protect those.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_04: Are they protected?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, insofar as anything could be protected when it's out of sight and you know people go hiking to it.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_04: But um when we went, we didn't know exactly because the the directions are on the website are really poorly written and they're not very clear.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_04: And so the descriptions they give, I swear, they're like walk 50 feet until you come to a rock that looks like a hedgehog.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_04: What?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_04: And then turn left at the rock that looks like a lizard.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_04: It's like, who the fuck wrote this?
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_04: So we w wound up taking this way too long um side excursion to try to get there.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_04: It was it wasn't a bad hike.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_04: Actually, it it turned out to be a pretty enjoyable hike.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um see, that's the trick.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: The trick is to get you to go hiking.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: That's the whole thing.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's very clever.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_04: Very clever.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: But you can but it's accessible, is what you're saying.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, it's easy to get to.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_04: So if you want to go check it out, it's very short.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_04: You don't have to worry about um you know being in great shape to go on this long, arduous case.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, hopefully people who are interested um will come to Skepticamp, and while they're at Skepticamp, we'll tell you the uh or caravan out there, maybe.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, we'll we'll we'll we'll tell you the the time and the location to meet everybody to to caravan out there.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_04: Um so it it should be fun.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_04: I'm I'm looking forward to it.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_04: But uh yeah.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_04: It's the the ad for it says cold readings, political pseudoscience, nexico mysteries, comet crazies, and eating the sun.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_04: But should be fun.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: Favorite pastimes of the land of enchantment, right?
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, exactly.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_04: So uh if you want to come, once again, it's at the continuing ed building, it's at the north building in room 123.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_04: The I'm sure there'll be signs up and stuff to to help you get there.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_04: Uh it starts at 10 a.m.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_04: and it runs until 6 p.m.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_04: So even if you could just drop by for a little bit.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_04: Um we'd love to see you.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, cool.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_04: It broaden your uh your skeptical horizons and sharpen those skills of discernment.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: Discern away, sir.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: Discern away.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_04: What is going on on your end?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_04: You have anything coming up?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: The end of the semester.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm really looking forward to it.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's been a super long semester, and um, you know, I kind of lost steam halfway through it.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, I bet.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's been it's been uh rough.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um but um we're managing, we're we're getting through it, and we have our ups and downs, especially me.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: But um you know, you have to keep pressing forward.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing but but to but to keep doing that.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: So that's really all I have on the plate, not nothing special.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I I told myself and I told the family and and and everyone uh that's close to me that you know I was going to kind of you know stay away from a lot of the stuff that I'm usually involved uh in for for a while and maybe try to slowly get back into things.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm kind of waiting waiting for the semester to wind down to come to a close.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna be teaching over the summer as I usually do, but uh it's gonna be you know less classes and it's also um online.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um so it's uh it's not it's not the same as having to get up and go to campus.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, that makes it easier.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: Makes it easier, and you know, you get a little bit more flexibility and and time to yourself, which one of the things that I have been doing, and I really encourage, I don't know, maybe some of our listeners uh have their own routine that they that they enjoy for self-care, but one of the things that's really been helping me um like just um clear my head and and uh also at the same time trying to get back into to have uh some kind of uh health uh uh routine because I've been slowly kind of getting lazy over the years, um, is uh whenever I have time in the morning, if I'm not teaching, because my my classes uh are usually eight o'clock in the morning, but I don't teach every every day in person.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: So like on my non-in-person teaching days, instead of going to campus, the first thing that I do is I go for a long walk for about an hour and a half, two hours.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not like a stroll.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like I power walk.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: And in my neighborhood, you know, you've been here, there's it's very hilly, so it's there's yeah, it's like being out in in in the country, except you know, uh it's it's paved.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: It has its it has its uh uh uh nature areas.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I live uh near uh a couple of uh a creek and some branches uh from the creek, and so there's a lot of wooded space and green space.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so it's not like uh uh you know uh urban-centered type of neighborhood, but I mean it does allow for for some exercise, and and uh that's what I've been doing.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's been really helpful.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: So if anyone has that kind of time, whether you do it in the morning or in the afternoon, if you can't do it during the week, maybe on the weekend, just get out there, you know, get go for a long walk and just let your mind uh, you know, meditate and and you know, wander and appreciate, you know, the moment that you're in.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: And then you know, get away from all the nonsense and the noise and put your phone away and just uh you know, be with yourself or with your loved one if you if you like to walk uh with someone or or your friend, uh your your walking or running partner, uh and just be there in the moment, you know.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_02: Because in today's day and age, like it's it's so easy to just um get into this routine of always being behind a screen, whether it's behind a computer or if it's uh behind a television set or if it's staring at your phone, right?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's like put it away for at least an hour and a half and just go for a long walk if you if you're close to a nature area.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: I I highly recommend it.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's very good for uh for a lack of a better way of saying it, it's good for the soul, right?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_04: So mental health and just general well-being, right?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what I've been up to, really.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_04: That's oh yeah, that sounds great.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_04: I'm happy for you.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_04: Well, thank you.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_04: But uh to segue once again from happiness to absolute shittiness, we're gonna talk about the topic.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_04: You know, today's topic.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_04: Uh it's a heavy one.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_04: Um and it's one of these things where you know the initial reports coming out really try to tie this guy to an incel type movement, but uh you know, as with anything, there's always something deeper going on there.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_04: So I present to you, dear listeners, the tragedy at Teotihuacan.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_04: On the morning of April 20th, tourists climbed the ancient steps of the Temple of the Moon at Teotihuacan, taking in the grandeur of the once thriving Mesoamerican metropolis.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_04: Now, from personal experience, I can tell you that the air that day was probably thin and dry, and the stones were likely still cool from the night before.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_04: Families would have paused briefly to catch their breath as they ascended a path that had been walked for centuries, while the many guides spoke in low voices about the legacy of a city that was once one of the largest in the ancient world.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_04: Then sadly and tragically, everything would change.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_04: At approximately eleven twenty AM, a lone gunman, later identified as Julio Cesar Haso Ramirez, moved into position atop the structure and opened fire.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_04: The first shots rang out in a way that did not immediately register as an act of violence, as anyone who has spent any time at Teotihuacan can tell you, sound behaves strangely there, ricocheting off the temple walls.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_04: And because of this, it wasn't immediately apparent what was going on.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_04: But then the second shot rang out, and then the third, and the reality of what was happening quickly snapped into focus.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_04: Immediately panic erupted.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_04: Visitors dropped to the ground, some flattening themselves against the ancient steps, others ran, misjudging the steep descent and stumbling as they tried to escape.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_04: People shouted warnings in multiple languages while parents frantically searched for their children.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_04: Strangers grabbed each other, pulling one another toward whatever cover they could find.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_04: The geometry of the site, so inspiring only minutes before, had essentially become a trap.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_04: One of the tourists, Doctor Giovanna Guidicini of Scotland, was among those who fled that day.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_04: She later told the BBC.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: We were trapped seventy feet f from the ground with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: Quickly we lay flat on the ground.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_02: It was a really scary feeling.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: Just total helplessness.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_04: And that had to be terrifying.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_04: Within minutes, the shooting left a devastating toll.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_04: A Canadian woman was killed, and at least thirteen others were injured, their ages ranging from six to sixty one.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_04: Among them were visitors from across the indigenous South and Europe.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_04: As of this recording, the name of the deceased has not been made public out of respect for the family.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_04: Witnesses would later describe the sound of gunfire reverberating across the landscape, punctuated by cries for help.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_04: Then the attack ended as abruptly as it had begun, when the gunman turned the weapon on himself.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_04: Emergency responders moved in quickly, but the damage had already been done.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_04: The ancient city, a place of kill pilgrimage for people seeking connection to the deep past of Mesoamerica, had suddenly become the setting for a distinctly modern form of violence.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_04: In the aftermath, investigators began the difficult work of reconstructing not just what happened, but why.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_04: Mexican authorities soon confirmed that the attack had been planned in advance.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_04: Among the items recovered were materials referencing past mass shootings, including the 1999 Columbine massacre.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_04: It should be noted that the date, April 20th, marked the 27th anniversary of that tragic day in Colorado.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_04: That detail placed the event within a troubling and well-documented pattern.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_04: Over the past several decades, certain acts of mass violence have taken on symbolic lives of their own, circulating through media, social media forums, and various subcultures where they are dissected, mythologized, and in some cases emulated.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_04: Researchers describe this phenomenon as the contagion and copycat effect.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_04: It's not imitation in the simple sense, but something a little more layered.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_04: Perpetrators will study earlier attacks, absorb the imagery and narratives, and adopt certain elements into their own actions.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_04: The intended purpose is not only to commit violence, but to insert oneself into an already existing lineage of notoriety.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_04: The references to Columbine suggest that Jaso Ramirez may have been operating within that symbolic framework, drawing from a script that has been repeated over and over again.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_04: On the tales from Astlantis Discord, we begin examining the shooter's digital footprint, or at least his alleged digital footprint, I should put that out there.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_04: As we all know, it is extremely difficult to discern hoax sites and posts from fact these days.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_04: But after having cross-referenced his social media across different news sites, I feel pretty confident that the account was actually his.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_04: Our initial findings indicate that his social media presence contained imagery and references that pointed toward a very specific ideological orientation.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_04: For example, an ex account linked to Julio Cesarjaso contained several images and posts that can help us clearly identify his political leanings.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_04: His profile pic appears to show him throwing up the Nazi salute, and the first post on his page is a repost from the far right Alianza Nacional, or the Spanish language version of the group, National Alliance, that depicts an AI image of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, along with the text.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: Oh the most Heroic gestures that took over half of the world into Spanish and Christian uh culture.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: Happy uh day of the people and of uh the Hispanic culture, basically.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: Whack.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: I mean that's that's the that's the origin of the Dia de la Rasa was originally to shift it away from celebrating Columbus to celebrating Spain.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: Really?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of people don't realize that, yeah.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_04: I did not.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_04: And then we have the header image for this account.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_04: For this, he used a photograph of three flags standing side by side, billowing in the wind against the backdrop of a cloudy sky.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_04: The tallest flag, located in the center, is the national flag of Spain, but what is most telling are the two other flags.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_04: On the left side of the image is the cross of Burgundy, a symbol that pays homage to the Spanish monarchy and the quote unquote civilizational crusade it carried out in its former colonies.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_04: This flag is often used by modern far right ultranationalist groups in Spain as a call for a return to traditionalist, Catholic, and imperial values.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_04: In Mexico and the indigenous South, right wing parties have adopted this flag to represent a nationalist discourse focused on Spanish colonial heritage and resistance to modern leftist established order.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: According to one online user on the website Quora, the Cross of Burgundy represents pride and awe and disgusting at the republics at which replaced our once great empire.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: The republics were established by an elite class who sought to keep all other classes oppressed, selling out to foreign interests.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_02: The cross of Burgundy represents strength, honor, unity, empire, and adherence to the only true faith Roman Catholicism.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: The only true faith.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_04: Obviously.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_04: On the right side of the image sits another flag, the flag of the Falange Espanola.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_04: And so if you uh uh Dr.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_04: Tlacateca would be so kind to uh read the next part.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: The Falange Espanola.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: This group was founded in 1933 during a period of intense political instability in Spain.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: It emerged as a fascist movement that sought to fuse ultranationalism with a vision of cultural and spiritual unity rooted in the legacy of imperial Spain.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_02: Its ideology rejected liberal democracy and class-based politics alike, instead advocating for a hierarchical, authoritarian state that would restore what it saw as a lost sense of national purpose.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: During the Spanish Civil War, the Falange aligned with the forces of Francisco Franco, and after the war it became integrated into the machinery of his dictatorship.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: Under Franco, the symbols of the Falange, particularly the yoke and arrows, were elevated into official emblems of the Franco regime.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: They evoked both the Catholic monarchs of early modern Spain and the expansive reach of the Spanish Empire.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_02: In this way, the imagery condensed centuries of history into a symbol that represented authority, unity, and domination.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: While Franco's dictatorship ended in the 1970s, the symbols associated with the Falange did not disappear.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: They persisted in various forms, sometimes openly, sometimes coded.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: In contemporary contexts, they are often used by French groups and individuals who seek to revive or reinterpret elements of that earlier ideology.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: Online spaces have played a significant role in this process, allowing these symbols to circulate across borders and be recontextualized in new political environments.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: This is where the idea of Hispanismo enters the picture.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: In its broadest sense, Hispanismo refers to an interest in or appreciation of Spanish language and culture.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: However, in certain political subcultures, the term has taken on a more specific meaning.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: It can denote an ideological current that romanticizes the Spanish Empire and frames it as a source of civilizational unity.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: Within this framework, colonial history is recast as a period of order and cohesion, and contemporary social and political conflicts are interpreted through that lens.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: Not all expressions of Hispanismo are extremist, but some strands overlap with far-right thought, or as we here on the pot like to call it Hispano-White nationalism.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_02: These versions often emphasize patriarchy, hierarchy, tradition, and a rejection of pluralism.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_02: In online environments, symbols like the flange flag function as signals.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: They communicate affiliation, provoke reaction, and create a sense of belonging among those who recognize them.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: That the shooter's social media included such imagery suggests that his worldview was shaped at least in part by these beliefs.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that when I saw that flag, I shared that image with uh uh Luis Erran, and that was the first thing that he saw.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_04: He was like, oh fuck, they got they have the phalange flag on there.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_04: And what's funny is I hadn't even I noticed the cross of Burgundy, and I was like so fixated on that that when I sent it to the city.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_04: And the other because the Falange flag is kind of in the shadow on the on the on one side, and that was like the first thing he noticed.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_04: He was like, Oh shit, look, yeah, the phalange flag.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, right.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_04: Um another element that drew our attention is this shooter's use of the social media handle, Hasso FNSI.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_04: And you were the one who pointed this out on the Discord.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_04: You had uh you had looked up uh uh this acronym.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_04: And I mean, to be honest, like we were talking about earlier, there there are a lot of possible meanings of this acronym, and we don't know exactly which meaning he was intending.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um but what were some of the ones that we had found that was like the uh Well the the most uh I guess the the funniest one was um the Friday night sew-in, FNSI.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I we don't think he was part of the Friday night sewing.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, he's probably not a part of the Friday night sewing.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't strike me as a as a unless he was sewing the the fascist flags, maybe that could be it.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: Then the other one that I found with those uh acronyms was Functional Nutrition Skin Initiative, which eh that's that's a stretch.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_04: I mean maybe, I mean, maybe it's like an herbal life fucking multi-level marketing scheme.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: Or or if you're if you want to be a fascist influencer, you're gonna have good skin.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_02: But um the other one, which I don't think has anything to do with this guy, because this is an Italian organization called the Federazione Nazionale Stampa Italiana, which is if I'm not mistaken, uh some kind of journalistic association of some sort.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_02: So I doubt it's probably not.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so we can scratch those.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I believe there's another one I couldn't find it again when I uh did the research uh over, but uh initially I'd seen something that those initials, the S stood for something that in Mexico at least that is associated with soccer, but then again, maybe not because in Mexico they don't call it soccer, they call it football.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: So that could be something that's maybe I'm misremembering that, but but the one that that that I did find, and uh you can go ahead and and talk about it, but the the one that I think is the closest associated with uh that has any relation to anything as far as like what we're talking about.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: So if you want to take it away, sir.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, absolutely.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_04: So the acronym FNSI is commonly understood to refer to the Federacion Nacional de Sindicatos Independientes Independientes, a labor organization based in Monterey Nuevo Leon.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_04: At first glance, this might seem unrelated to the kind of extremist symbolism we just described with the Falange Espanola.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_04: The FNSI is not a paramilitary group or political party in the conventional sense.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_04: It operates within the realm of labor relations.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_04: However, its history is distinctive.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_04: The organization is closely associated with what are known as Sindicatos Blancos or White Unions.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_04: These unions emerged in the early twentieth century as an alternative to the more militant labor movements.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_04: They were often established by industrialists who sought to maintain control over labor relations and prevent the spread of socialist or communist organizing.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_04: So, like basically right-wing anti-communist type of stuff.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_04: In Monterrey, powerful business families played a key role in shaping this model.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_04: The ideology behind these unions emphasized cooperation between workers and employers, framed as a form of social harmony.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_04: Conflict was to be avoided, and productivity was prioritized, of course.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_04: This approach aligned with broader currents of conservative thought in northern Mexico, particularly those influenced by Catholic social doctrine and a distrust of radical political change.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_04: Over time, organizations like the FNSI became embedded within the economic and social fabric of the region.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_04: While this does not make the FNSI a far-right extremist organization, its historical positioning has led some observers to see it as part of a conservative institutional landscape.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_04: It's part of the background noise of everything that was going on.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_04: The use of its acronym in a social media handle raises questions about the shooter's self-identification and his preferred use of symbols.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_04: It may reflect a personal affiliation, an attempt to signal ideological alignment to like-minded individuals, or something more ambiguous.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_04: Without definitive evidence, it remains an element that deserves more scrutiny.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_04: Investigators are now tasked with piecing together these fragments into a coherent understanding of motive.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_04: Acts of violence, like the one at Teotihuacan, rarely have a singular cause.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_04: And behind the question of motive, the attack has also, and behind, goddammit, and beyond the question of motive, the attack has also forced a reckoning with more practical concerns.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_04: Teotihuacan, which was designated an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, is one of the most visited archaeological sites in Mexico, drawing millions of people each year.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_04: Its openness is part of its appeal.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_04: Visitors are free to move through the space, climb its structures, and experience it in a direct and physical way.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_04: That openness, however, also creates vulnerabilities.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_04: Have you been to Teotihuacan?
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_04: No, never visited.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_04: Man, you gotta go.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_04: It's freaking phenomenal.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_04: It's where I proposed to Michelle.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, on on top of the very top of the Temple of the Sun.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_02: That's on my bucket list.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_02: Man, we can make it to Teotihuacan one day.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's it's amazing.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_04: Uh the fact that a gunman was able to enter the site with weapons and carry out an attack in such a visible location has prompted urgent discussions about security.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_04: Officials have begun deploying additional personnel and considering new screening measures.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_04: These efforts are complicated by the need to balance safety with accessibility.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_04: Transforming a sacred cultural site into a heavily policed environment risks altering the very nature of the site.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_04: The events of April 20th also extend beyond the immediate context of tourism and security.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_04: They've become part of a larger conversation about violence, ideology, and the ways in which the past is invoked in the present.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_04: Teotihuacan is a place that embodies tradition, and the intrusion of contemporary violence into that space feels extremely jarring.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_04: It's as if two incompatible timelines have collided.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_04: In the days and weeks ahead, narratives will continue to form.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_04: Some will emphasize aspects of the shooter's personal life, searching for clues in his background.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_04: Others will focus on ideological influences, tracing connections to broader movements, and still others will look at systemic issues from mental health to the regulation of weapons.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_04: Each perspective offers part of the picture, but none captures it fully on its own.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_04: But what remains at the center of all of this, and what we cannot forget, are the lives that have been affected.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_04: The woman who lost her life, the injured who must now recover, and the witnesses who will forever carry the memory of that day.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_04: The Temple of the Moon still stands as it has for over two thousand years.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_04: Visitors will return climbing the same steps, looking out over the same expanse.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_04: The history it holds has not changed, but the meaning of the place has slightly shifted because it now carries the imprint of a moment when the past and present collided in the most tragic of ways.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_04: In every single story that they have published about this incident, they all mention human sacrifice.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_04: And now granted during the shooting, the shooter did reference human sacrifice.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um and and strangely, I don't know if did you hear any of the audio?
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_04: I did not.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_04: He's talking in like a fake uh Spanish accent.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_04: It's bizarre, like Spanish from Spain.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_04: He he uses vosotros while he's shouting at everybody, and he's like, This is a place of sacrifice, and you're never going back to Europe, and just like this bizarre shit that he's yelling at them.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_04: But before any of that even became known, the New York Post was like in a city associated where you know human sacrifices once held, you know, more violence continues.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_04: And so even before this guy that it was even known that this guy had in you know invoked human sacrifice during the shooting, the New York Post was already jumping all over it, which is something that we talked about in uh a pri the our human sacrifice episode, right?
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_04: Like they can't fucking help themselves.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_04: Like it's the go-to, it's the dominant narrative, it's all they know.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_04: And so uh I pulled up the New York Post just to look, and uh sure enough, one of the most recent stories, the the headline is you know, Mexican pyramid gunman wanted to recreate the temple's dark history of human sacrifice.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's like wait a minute, do we even know what the the templo at at Teotihuacan was even used for?
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: The temple of the sun?
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_02: This assumption that it must have have something to do with sacrifice automatically, as we discussed in the sacrifice episode, just comes to mind with most people who are ignorant about these things.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: But I mean, do we even know like the purpose of it?
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_02: Is there any actual evidence that mass sacrifices were taking place at Teotihuacan?
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: I do not believe so.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_04: I'm sure that there must have been some sort of offerings offered.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_04: But to say that that was the soul, this is why this was built.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I'm that's what I mean.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like do we know if that's the case?
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_02: Have they found any evidence of that taking place at the Teotihuacan?
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_04: No.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_04: Um and and the thing, the the closest that I could think of is the clearest connection is if you look at Teotihuacan, because of course Teotihuacan predated the arrival of the Mexica into the Valley of Mexico.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_04: And when the Mexica uh came into Teotihuacan, it was already largely in disuse, right?
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_04: Like people like to say it was completely abandoned, but that's not really true.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_04: There was a much smaller population living there, but it it was no longer the giant, thriving, you know, multi-ethnic, multicultural.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: It was still a center of of uh congregation.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_02: People came because they still went there.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: They went there, and maybe they they had like uh some kind of uh marketplace, or maybe just to to get together to share space, but no one I mean, do we know if people were actually living there as well?
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_04: So like living within the primary what they call the avenue of the dead, we don't think anybody was living there, but that in there's smaller barrios, like indigenous barrios that exist on the outskirts?
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_04: On the outskirts, and people were still living there.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: Still living there.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_02: So that makes sense.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_02: Because that that that kind of follows, I mean, you're the archaeologist here, but I mean, as far as I can tell, that follows a trend worldwide.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_02: When you have major um urban centers like like Teotihuaca and the metropoles of of a of a space, when they begin to go into decline, it still continues to have human presence, but most of the presence tends to be like around the periphery of the metropole, right?
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so what I think, I mean, the the clearest connection to you know any sort of quote unquote sacrifice is the Mexica attributed that to the place where like the the son was born, right?
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_04: And if you know the hist the story of the creation of the sun, it it involved one of the teteos leaping.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_04: Sacrificing himself by leaping into a fire.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_02: And it's that's a symbolic sacrifice, it's not an actual sacrifice, right?
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that's the um the biggest like Jesus, but when we talked about how people consume the quote unquote flesh of Jesus and drink his blood, it's a symbolic thing, right?
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_04: Wait, are you saying that that wasn't really Jesus that I was eating?
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_04: I guess not.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: Damn.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_04: The thing I I I never liked about that was when Jesus stuck to the roof of my mouth.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_04: That was always annoying.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_04: You're like, Jesus, get down from there.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_04: Come on, man.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_04: And you would think that God would have more flavor.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_04: That's all I'm saying.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_04: I'm just putting that out there.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_04: God should be more like he would taste more like a Ritz.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_04: Or uh But they're trying to keep it kosher.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_02: God damn it.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_02: So, so when I was doing uh some digging on this for the FNSI, um one of the groups that I I think the one that I had in mind is the one that I'm about to mention here, but there's a few others that I want to get to.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um not that they have anything anything to do with this individual, but just so that people understand, because I think that even though we've talked about this before, we did a show on this, we had Luis as a guest to discuss this.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's still a lot of uh people out there who aren't very familiar with the ultra right wing uh groups in in Mexico, and some of the ones that, as far as I can tell, at uh to this point are still active in some way, are Frenna, uh which stands for Frente Nacional Anti AMLO.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_02: You know, obviously that's against Morena.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my god.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_02: This one was founded in 2020.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_02: And according to what I was able to see, some individual businessman by the name of Gilberto Lozano is the one that founded it.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_02: And it's known for its intense opposition to the current government under the par the party of Morena, which is the same government that uh the current president of Mexico, Scheinbaum, is a part of, right?
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: So while it characterizes itself as a quote-unquote citizens movement, kind of like think of like the the citizen maybe uh not an equivalent but similar to the sovereign citizens movement here in the US, the critics point to its nationalist rhetoric and ultra-conservative leaning.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_02: So it's one of those groups where it it presents itself as one thing, but their internal uh rhetoric and and its logics are a little bit more sinister.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's just one of those deals.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the next group is Frente Nacional por la Familia, FNF, established in 2016.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_02: This is a powerful social conservative organization.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_02: It focuses on opposing abortion and same-sex marriage, often uh mobilizing large-scale pro-family marches across the country, and it has strong ties to international conservative networks.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_02: Because uh, I did we talk about I feel like we talked about this at some point where uh there's like an international coalition that has been building over the years with different right-wing conservative religious groups um across the world, uh, especially across the Western world, or or places where uh there's some kind of European connection to the colonies or to places that were previously colonized by European Catholic nations.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_02: And and this is one of these groups that's that's part of that um uh global coalition of conservative uh groups that are opposing you know LGBTQ communities and individuals and opposing uh abortion and things like that, right?
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_02: So it's yeah, it's starting the focus on the family, focus on the family.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's still part of that same um that lineage of of uh I mean, even though the Catholic Church does have its progressive wing, there's uh the majority, if you look at the tenets of Catholicism, it's I mean, you can't get more conservative than that, right?
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_02: So um and then the one that I was thinking that this guy might have been a part of, but I don't know.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, not that he was not, because I think that uh one of the things that we we uh didn't mention uh earlier is that the not only is in the the investigation ongoing, but there really hasn't been a lot of new information that as far as I can tell that has been um given to the public about this guy's background and what was going on with him.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_02: But one of the groups when I before I didn't uh came across the FNSI that I was thinking this guy might have been a part of, if it was true that he was tied into these right-wing movements, was the Nationalist Front of Mexico, Front de Nacionalista de Mexico, right?
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_02: That's what it goes by in Spanish.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_02: And this group is an overtly nationalist and uh in some cases also described as irredentist group, right?
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_02: They advocate for the reconquista or the return of the territories lost to the US, and they oppose globalism, uh so they c that kind of taps into that whole uh you know right-wing conspiratorial thinking of the globalists are out there to get you, right?
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_02: And and we all know what they mean by globalists, exactly, right?
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_02: And often utilize aesthetics reminiscent of European nationalist movements.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_02: So think of like the Falange, for instance, right?
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like this is what when so if you're if you're asking yourself, what does the Falange look like?
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, if you want to look up the Frente Nacionalista de Mexico, that that's kind of what it might have looked like.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, that's a kind of modern version of it in Mexico.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_02: So, but they're not really a registered political party, although I think that they would probably if enough people supported them, if there was enough mainstream support for such a thing, I think they kind of envisioned themselves almost like the way that the Nazis uh saw themselves before they rose to power in in uh 1929, right?
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_02: And by 1933, you know, you have uh Hitler being um elected as the the was it the Chancellor, is that what they called it?
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_02: So so the Frente Nacionalista da Mexico is the way that it operates now, it's kind of like the way that the Nazi Party operated in the late teens, early 20s of the 20th century before it rose to power.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think they kind of see themselves as like if there's a chance, right, we can we can shift focus from being what we are now as just some kind of loose collection of individuals with an ideological persuasion into an actual registered political party that could be viable in elections and such, right?
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_02: And then of course you have the old standby that we've covered before, El Junke, the Anvil, right?
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_02: One of the most notorious ones in at least the since the 60s forward, um, perhaps the most infamous.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_02: This is an alleged ultra-catholic secret society that is it its existence was first brought to light by the investigative journalists uh that were conducting some research into it back in 2003.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_02: And didn't Netflix was it Netflix or Hulu that did a version of the Netflix did that documentary, right?
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_02: And it is said to have significant influence within the PAN, the National Action Party of Mexico, the Partido Acción Nacional, and focuses on Christianizing public life through the infiltration of political and business institutions, right?
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_02: So they kind of they they work in the background, right?
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_02: They're one of those uh secretive groups that works behind the scenes to try to get things uh uh legislations and and maybe business uh affiliations to to kind of uh go by by by their side, right?
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_02: And then I mean there there's a whole list of them.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_02: The last one that I'll mention and then we'll just uh leave it there, is Union Nacional Sinarquista, the UNS, which was founded in 1937.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I should add here the FNSI it dates to about this period.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_02: They just uh recently, I if I'm not mistaken, celebrated their 100th anniversary in existence.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um so this the FNSI dates to about the same time as the Union Nacional uh Sinarquista, and this one was a very massive uh fascist leaning movement that sprung up in the mid early to mid-20th century, uh most uh significantly among the rural uh populations out in the countryside, and its peak has long passed, but the remnants of it uh of that type of organizing and and mindset still exist in many corners of uh rural Mexico, and they maintain a platform of social catholicism and uh Mexican ultra-right wing nationalism.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_02: The Sinarquista, so they're still out there, and I mean the list keeps going, but I'll just stop there.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_04: All I can say is I am so glad we don't have anything like that in the United States.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_04: The US USC USC.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_04: So, yeah, n putting all of this, you know, the the broader context of all of these things, all of this has to be taken into account, into consideration when events like this happen, uh like the one at Teotihuacan.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_04: Because what I see is that news organizations, news outlets, they tend to like hyper focus on one little string and then they just follow that strand, but they don't it seems like they never bother to step back and like big picture everything and be like, well, what's the broader context of of all of this?
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_04: And you'll see it online where somebody had accused the guy of being a uh a Hitler worshiper or uh, you know, like a Nazi worshiper, and the the first responses were from people who you know, willfully ignorant, they were just like, Oh yeah, right, a white supremac with the last name Ramirez, or you know, whatever.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm like what the fuck?
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_02: Do you you guys like get out of your little bubble at all anywhere?
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_02: Wasn't the leader of the Proud Boys uh Cuban American?
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what was his name?
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_02: I right I don't remember.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't an Anglo name, that's for sure.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_02: Or like fucking Nick Fuentes.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_02: Nick Fuentes.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, isn't he like white and and Mexican?
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_02: Something like that.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_04: And so like all of this needs to be considered when we start looking into like possible motives uh behind these things.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_04: Because some people immediately were just like, oh, this guy's an incel.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_04: And so they're just trying to key into that, right?
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_04: Like men's rights movement, manosphere influencers, and he's part of that.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_04: But it's like, well, it's it's a lot bigger than that.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_04: You know, these guys don't exist in vacuums, they're they're inspired uh by this larger landscape of right-wing ideologies, and each one comes from its own place.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I think often oftentimes we get stuck with the 20th century examples uh because they're the more most recent you know, examples that we can look back and and and and draw connections to.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_02: But like I think I've mentioned this before, like even just in Mexico itself, going all the way back to the founding of the country after independence from Spain, like you you had a lot of political factionalism taking place, a lot of infighting, and literally we had Iturbide, right, who establishes the first uh Mexican Empire, yeah, and the first Mexican emperor, uh, and and so I mean to call yourself an emperor, I mean, right off the bat, you're already on the right side of the political spectrum, right?
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_02: So so this idea that this is something that has not been an issue for Mexico is uh anyone who says that doesn't know Mexican history, period.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_02: Period.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_02: So I would encourage you, if you are of that mindset, to pick up a book on Mexican history and or or just go back to uh part episode with uh Luis Herran Avila.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_02: That too.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_02: That too.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_02: Did we go all the way back to Iturbide with that Luis?
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_02: I don't remember if we did or not.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_04: I you know what I I don't remember.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_02: I know we went back to the gold shirts.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_02: I know that we talked about at one point doing an episode just on uh Iturbide, but I don't think we've done it yet.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_02: We should.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_02: We've we've touched on it a lot.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_02: We you know he he comes up because such a big figure.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_02: We came up with uh the false flag episode because of uh the other iturbide.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_02: The the one with five doctorates or twelve doctorates?
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_04: Good one, Bob.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_04: Well, the main thing, uh dear listener, is that you focus on acquiring the truth.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_04: Because you know what I like to say, my brother.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_04: The truth is like medicine.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_04: It doesn't always taste good, but it is always good for you.