The Drug Lords and Killer Cops of the Philippines
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Welcome back to another episode of the Underworld Podcast. I am Danny Gold. I'm here with Sean Williams. We are going to talk to you today about some crime stuff. Hey, so it's the 8th of Jan at the moment. I'm in a hotel room in New Zealand. I'm looking out on like some placid lake in the middle of summer. And I can't help thinking that I'm missing the news a bit. Like what the hell is going on? It's all just like...

I saw like some village people in the Capitol building. What's happening there? That's actually a really, really good way of describing it. And as much as I'd love to get into this and like rant for a bit, I kind of feel like people don't come in for that. You know, they want organized crime, not disorganized freaking goofuses committing sedition. And also, you know, those, you know, Trump fans, they also put money into Patreons, you know, so we're going to keep it moving.

Yeah, we'll take all comers. Anyway, yeah, let's move swiftly on. All right, so I'm going to take you back to the end of 2016 in Manila, in the Philippines. 2016. Yeah.

You know, I was so much younger then and skinnier. My hairline was in better shape. Like my soul wasn't. Your hair looks great, man. My soul wasn't completely dead. I had a little bit of hope left in my eyes. Anyway, sorry. Keep it going. I feel like I've got a flicker left. But yeah. So it's like this guy, Rodrigo Duterte, I think people might have heard of him. He's this foul-mouthed political outsider. He's just taken hold of Philippine power. And he's pretty clear what his enemy is, right? It's going to be meth. Or I guess more specifically, meth addicts.

That's September in his hometown of Davao in the country's south. He takes aim in this pretty grim way, right? He says, quote, Hitler massacred three million Jews. There's three million drug addicts. I'd be happy to slaughter them. So, yeah, you've got partial Holocaust denial and a call to genocide, which is pretty impressively evil, even by his standards. And around the same time, he's calling Obama, remember that guy, a son of a bitch. And he does the same to the pope.

And then he says there's a CIA plot to kill him, which he uses as a reason to distance the Philippines from the USA, which is his former colonial keeper. I think I think I think that guy definitely he needs a sub stack or like a political podcast where it's him and a bunch of people in Bushwick just kind of ranting about all that about Obama and the pope and the CIA. But either way, let's let's keep it moving. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, this is clearly a big deal, right? There's this populist guy spouting off about enemies and killings and just being all over the place with what he's saying. At the same time, like we discussed in our episode on the Burmese billion-dollar meth lab, so shout out for that, these Southeast Asian meth lords are getting absolutely massive on a scale way larger even than the narcos in Mexico.

And tons of this stuff is getting into the Philippines. And some of it's just like straight up coming into the port of Manila on like decommissioned submarines, just waltzing straight in. And this is a sprawling massive city of like 13 million people. And they call it Shabu, which is basically ice. And they name it after a Japanese hot pot when you cook it up. And it starts coming on the scene in the 90s when the big labs in Southeast Asia start pumping out ice.

ice alongside Yaba pills, the meth and caffeine tablets that are still massive all over Asia. So what's the difference between meth and Yaba, Shabu? Are these all the same thing? Are there kind of minor differences like red wine and white wine? What are we talking about here? Well, I mean, isn't it the case that you can't even tell what red wine and white wine are if you close your eyes anyway? But like, I think like Yaba is basically a pill that's just cut up with crap like caffeine and like

any old stuff that they want to throw in the pill. And I think people either just like take it straight up or they boil it down and they shoot it. And ice is like pure meth. And that's about as much as my knowledge goes to. But yeah. Out of ice, shabu and meth, which is your favorite to do? I mean, I like hot pot. So, you know, who doesn't like to cook? It's really nice, especially when you're on tour. Um,

So like, yeah, I mean, Duterte is right that Filipinos have a massive meth problem. Like, but 3 million, that would make 3% of the entire population addicts. Actually, in 2016, a government body says there's like 1.8 million users in the country and around 800,000 are on Shibu. That's still a lot, but...

There's more to Duterte's claims than just cleaning up the country. By the way, he calls himself Duterte or Dirty Harry after the Clint Eastwood movie. So you can't deny that he loves the limelight. Was this guy, was he only going after meth users? What about heroin, weed, anything like that?

I don't think there's much heroin there. I don't think anyone gives a shit about weed. So like, yeah, meth was a big scourge. And you can see it in all the sort of major cities that people are like pretty wired all the time. But yeah, like that fall, actually, I went to Manila. So it's a place I've been reporting from for years. I think I've been there like six, seven times now. I absolutely love the place and the country. This particular year, 2016, is tough. I mean...

Brexit, Trump, there's all kinds of stuff going on around the world. But Duterte has kind of fired the starting gun on this bloodbath, and I'm out there reporting on it. Our listeners might have heard some stuff about the Philippine drug war, and there's this thing called a night shift. Basically, it's heading down to the police station in Manila and waiting for a murder to get called in. I actually did that in San Salvador, too. I think we were waiting with a coroner, maybe, and it turns out a murder just happened three blocks away. We just walked over, and I imagine the Philippines is very similar.

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. I mean, like some nights around 2016 at that time, they're like two dozen killings a night, which is absolutely crazy. And you're constantly hurtling around in flatbeds searching for body bags and gunned up cars. Usually you start around 10 p.m. and the bodies start dropping around midnight, 1 a.m. It probably doesn't need saying, but this kind of stuff takes its toll. And I can't imagine what it's like, like following this stuff for a year, two years or so. I think there's a couple of good films that were made about reporters who do that, too.

Yeah, yeah. I think I've dropped a load in the reading list for the patrons as well. I've got a load of docos and feature stories that people can read. Anyway, so one night I'm in the station around 2.40 a.m. and my fixer gets a call. Some officer tells me there's a, quote, drug-related homicide. And a clique of us jumps up in this battered old van and speeds across the city, running reds and doing some pretty terrifying racing on the dead streets.

At one point, my driver clutches this little rosary, which isn't a great sign. But that's about like half an hour later. We're in this slum in Calucan, which is a sprawling maze like district where tons of the drug murders are taking place. Cinder blocks, corrugated roofs, tight alleys, guys sitting on plastic chairs, drinking cheap beer in the streets, kids running around that kind of place.

thousands have been in the city manila's huge anyway we jump out the van and we head to this small clearing like a little square the size of half a tennis court there's this big guy shirtless basketball shorts high tops face down he's gone blood's still fresh and he's been shot six or so times he's fallen down some concrete steps shot from above so you can see you can kind of see exactly where the guy is running

I reckon he was dropped like less than an hour before we showed up. He's pretty fresh. And his blood's streaming down the alley. His black hair is matted. Brain's all over the place. Big caliber thing got him, it looks like.

There's a dog barking, cops all round, and there's two women huddled on one side crying, and there's a news camera shoved in their faces. Another woman chucks a bucket of water over their blood and it starts gushing down a drain. None of the cops are taking statements, nothing. There's a plainclothes guy with a ponytail hiding this big fucking pistol, standing at the back staring at everyone. My fixer says it was him who did it, so no one's going to go to jail for this.

Soon the cameras go and the big guy is zipped up in a body bag, carried off on a gurney to an ambulance. And suddenly it's just me and these two women and everyone else is gone. And one of them I think is the guy's wife. She's brushing his blood and brains down with a straw broom and kind of crying under her breath, sniffling. And I felt so gross being there when she's trying to grieve. It was like a really nasty moment. And then my fixer comes back and grabs me and she tells me there are two more bodies across town. Same MO and off we go again. Oof.

It's a rough one, man. It's just like, yeah, I mean, it's dark. It seems so pointless. And this was one of my first experiences of the Philippine drug war, just like body after body. I mean, you might have seen some in the papers. They've got placards hanging from their neck saying don't use drugs like I did or something pretty medieval like that. It's nuts. I never saw that. But I saw guys like hanging out cars shot in front of their kids, you

disabled drug users cornered by cops and shotgunned in cemeteries. Actually, yeah, like that last one. I visited this mom in a cemetery in central Manila where thousands of people literally live in shanties between crypts. And she says her son was mentally ill and using Shabu. And cops one night had called his name out across the cemetery and just chased this terrified guy across the tombstones before shooting him four times with pump-action shotguns. Pretty merciless. I mean, that's just brutal. There aren't even...

Like those aren't clean hits, right? Like I thought I had seen some videos of these. I think it's a really famous video of a tuk-tuk driver getting popped by a guy on a motorcycle. It seemed professional, but this just seems, you know, merciless and brutal. Yeah, I mean, it ranges, right? I saw loads of stuff like that as well, these kind of like more clinical deaths. But this one, I mean, you could see where the guy was carrying down in the corner. It was pretty horrible. Yeah.

And I mean, I know we go into one particular group or mafia or famous gangster or someone on this show, but I want to give listeners a bit of a view on the Philippine drug war because, well, it's still going on. So 8000 folks have been killed since 2016, according to the government. But rights groups think it's many, many times more. And I'm inclined to believe them from what I've seen. Actually, even though this stuff has been out of the headlines, there's been a spike in the number of deaths during COVID-19.

And B, I've written a bunch of the stories over this subject in the last few years, all from different angles and different parts of the country. Not just Manila, which is where like 99% of journalists have reported from. It's a bit like your St. Louis episode, really. There's tons and tons of smaller cities in the Philippines that the foreign press has barely bothered traveling to, where the showdowns between cops, gangsters and drug addicts have been no less brutal. But people aren't getting there. So take us there, Sean. Take us there.

Well, I will. I will. Yeah, later on, I'm going to take you down to the south in Mindanao, which is the southern island that Davao Duterte's home is the biggest city on. That's where I spent a bunch of time with this killer cop who's one of the maddest people I've ever met and who kind of sums up a lot of the morality of this drug war. You've got firing brimstone preachers, M16 massacres, magic pendants, bank robbers, tropical islands. It's a good story. I should have written it for someone better. But...

As always, there's a reading list we'll put up for the patrons. Yeah, I mean, Patreon, Patreon slash The Underworld Podcast. Come on, guys. Help us making these things. Patreon.com slash The Underworld Podcast. I mean, that's all I have to add. I'm just going to let you cook right now because you're in it. Yeah, I mean, I'm going to stick with Duterte for now, though, because I want to show you how this guy's grip on the country became so tight so quick.

and how his attacks on civil society, politicians, religion and the press have kind of built this personality cult that has let him preside over this mass bloodletting without getting any real pushback at all.

He's actually a lot like a gangster himself. I mean, he probably is a gangster, to be honest. And I'm probably going to reveal some information later that's libelous, so perhaps we'll have to pull this episode at some point. No, actually, I met with our lawyer. He's a guy named Pee Wee, and he operates out of the back of a jerk chicken spot in Richmond Hill. He also buys gold. And his response was, what the fuck is a podcast? So I think we're in the clear. Has he got my bonds yet? Yeah.

Wikipedia says Duterte's term is, quote, expected to end in June 2022, which is probably a decent hedge in the current climate. And while we make comparisons to other leaders or former leaders, Duterte, born in 1945, isn't really the man of the people we'd like to make out. His dad is devout province governor, which is a pretty big job considering it's almost two million people and it's the country's third biggest city.

Duterte's mother is a community organizer and she plays a role in the deposing of Ferdinand Marcos, the dictator who ruled from 1965 to 1986 and is reckoned to have stolen up to $10 billion from the country. And all those shoes, right? The shoes. Imelda. Yeah. Yeah. Imelda Marcos and the shoes. Yeah. They were kind of like, you know, one of the first true piss-taking corruption leaders. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway, young Rodrigo gets a law degree in Manila and he joins Deval's prosecution office in 1977. By all accounts, he sounds like a complete tool during this time. Like there's stories about him basically beating people up in the government offices and everything. He's a bit of a bully. By 1986, he's vice mayor and he becomes the mayor a couple of years later.

Basically, ever since, he stays in power despite limits on terms, letting his daughter Sarah be mayor while he pulls the strings in the background, kind of Putin-Medvedev deal. Interestingly, at the time Duterte comes to power, Davao is one of the Philippines' most dangerous cities, and it's being overrun by crooks and communist rebels. Then suddenly, poof, they all vanish.

Perhaps it's because Duterte, who people call the Punisher, another nickname, goes on a rampage setting up a vigilante group called the Devour Death Squad that's reckoned to have greenlit over a thousand extrajudicial killings. Is this going to be one of those things where the whole Death Squad extrajudicial killing thing actually has popular support because people are just kind of fed up with the lawlessness and all that? Yeah, I mean, let's see.

I mean, one of these guys actually came out and spoke publicly in Feb 2017. He said it was their leader back in the day. Quote, we started the salvaging. Salvaging is a word they used for killing people back then. We started the salvaging of people when Mayor Duterte first sat down as mayor in Davao City. The people we targeted are criminals and were into illegal drugs. We're implementing the personal orders of Duterte.

All the killings that were committed in Deval City, whether they were buried or thrown in the sea, were paid for by Mayor Duterte. That language, though, like the salvaging of people is dark. I mean, that's pre-genocide talk, you know, like during genocide talk. Oh, yeah, for sure. And we're going to get into some of that later. But another word that some of these groups use was salvation. They would like be...

giving people salvation by releasing them from communism. So you can kind of see the sort of rhetoric that we're going to get into, yeah. This former officer, Arthur Lascañas, he says he even killed two of his own brothers who were on Duterte's death list at the time, and he hadn't told the family until this statement. So if you just had an awkward family Christmas, imagine what that guy went through. Jesus.

Yeah. Anyway, this guy says Duterte personally pays around 400 bucks for a death, except in one case where a critical journalist named Jun Pala is kidnapped and assassinated. Lascagna said his boys are paid 60 grand to do that one, and he's told to murder Pala slowly. Jesus. I mean, murder him slowly is just hell. And also, 60K seems remarkably high given the others were 400. Yeah, I mean...

I don't really know a huge amount about that killing. Like it kind of came out in drips when Duterte came to power. But I mean, he's definitely more of like a Lex Luthor character than like the man of the people that he makes out. Awful. Yeah. Yeah. Really bad. Another whistleblower called Edgar Mataboto has said that bodies were chopped up and done so with the blessing of a police chief named Ronald De La Rosa. And he's actually the current head of the Philippine police. So yeah, you can see where this is all going. Is there any reasoning why these guys came forward?

I mean, it all came out just after Duterte came to power, so you would suspect that maybe some political rival had something to do with it, but I don't know, man. I mean, maybe they just got a crisis of conscience, but if you're chopping up bodies and feeding them to crocodiles and stuff, then...

Yeah, I don't know how much of a moral conscience you're going to have. And it all gets a bit weirder even. At the time, Duterte's reckons to have shot a mayoral rival to death with an Uzi himself. He puts two magazines in the guy after the death squad's injured him. And he fed one body to a crocodile, like I just mentioned, which is like super Bond villain. And he's even admitted to the BBC he killed, quote, around three men while mayor of Deval, which is a pretty strange turn of phrase. Wait, he just admitted that in an interview? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He says all this stuff way out in the open. You can see his quotes are complete madness. But yeah, this guy's not Harvey Milk, right? He's like hardened, proud killer. And this stuff is well known when he comes to power in 2016. The death squad is still a bit of a sort of urban myth. It's not been officially confirmed by the time he gets to power in 2016. But people know about it. It's like an open secret.

And when he comes to power in 2016, he uses tons of social media trolls to upend the country's political establishment. I've actually met dozens of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters whose family members have been shot dead by the cops in this drug war. And almost all of them have still said that they support Duterte and they blame the cops instead of him. What? How? Whatever. I mean...

Yeah, I mean, like, it's this is crazy, right? I was covering an ISIS led insurgency in Mindanao. And the government's jets were just like battering the homes of Muslims in what most people I spoke to was collective retribution. And kids whose houses were rubble were posing for photos with their hands clenched in the fist that Duterte has used as his kind of logo. It's complete bonkers.

I think he speaks to something deep about masculinity and perfectness, that kind of thing. He's far from polished. He speaks rough. These kind of things political correctness has gotten rid of for loads of politicians that bunches of folks really hate. And it's also really important to mention that Philippine politics has been dominated by dynasties pretty much ever since it stopped being an American colony in 1946.

So people have been getting tired of wealthy career politicians who they don't think have done much to help them out of poverty. And when I say like, when I say poverty, I mean the most abject, horrific poverty. But his dad was a big time governor. Isn't he like technically a wealthy dynastic candidate as well? Well, yeah. And that's like the myth that he's been able to spin about himself, right? That he's not a daddy's boy. It's like that guy that you know that started his own like data startup in Silicon Valley and bootstrapped it. And then you find out like...

His dad put in about two million. I don't know any of those guys.

Ah, you're lucky. So when I first visited the Philippines in 2014, I did a story about pool, like billiards, which is one of the national sports there. You get these hustlers who built pool tables out of driftwood and shit at a slum called Smoky Mountain, which is literally a giant pile of trash in Manila that people live on. And then they work their way up to playing tournaments and so on. I actually wrote that one for Vice years ago. Sorry, mate. If it was in the first half of 2016, it's okay because technically I was still there.

Actually, an editor lost the file and it didn't get published for nearly another year. Typical. So maybe it's a good story for you. Yeah. And when I was in this slum, which had been devastated in a massive tropical storm, people were living in plywood boxes that were like hanging off the bottom of a bridge that was going over a river with water so dirty it was actually black. And the water would rise and flood all these little hanging boxes I could barely get my fat ass into. And loads of these guys ate something called pagpag, which is...

reconstituted bits of leftover food, like the leftovers of leftovers. You're like squishing chicken nuggets into a new chicken nugget. Anyway, you mix this with dirt cheap drug prices, police who can be bought, and a population with few hopes and lots of time on their hands, and no wonder so many Filipinos are taking to Shibu.

I mean, that's just dark. And I hate to bring this up because it contributes nothing of any insight. But I remember hearing stories of a bar in downtown Manila that was staffed only by little people. And also just in general, how wild the nightlife is there, which I think is fertile ground for for drugs like Shabu and dealers in general.

Yeah, I know the name of that place. Have you been? I've been. I'm going to hold my hands up and say I walked in, but I walked out after a few minutes. I think it's called the Knockout Bar or something. It's like little people boxing. It's fucking horrible. Sounds disturbing. Yeah, it is. It is. So here you've got this perfect storm for a bloodbath. A president who successfully convinced the people he's one of them, when really he's this rich kid lawmaker who's murdered people and got famous for running death squads.

Then there's a colossal meth industry bubbling away just across the South China Sea in Burma and Southeast Asia. Again, check out our episode on that for a ton more info. And you've got this population held back by centuries of colonialism by Spain, then brutal Japanese invasions, American rule, and given almost nothing by dictators and shitty politicians who've raked it in from the top. It's perfect building blocks right there.

Yeah, yeah. And Duterte quickly goes after the press. He's revoked the broadcasting license of TV networks who've criticized him, and he's trumped up charges against Maria Ressa, who's the CEO of Rappler, which I think is probably the best outlet in the country. Actually, there's a great Frontline doco called A Thousand Cuts about Ressa from last Jan. I've put that in the reading list too. There's also a great one on Frontline from my friends Olivier Sarbille and James Jones on the President's Orders, which is just a remarkable piece of work on the drug war there. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that's there too. That's brilliant. Yeah, he's also attacked the clergy, which is an interesting thing in a country which is like the third most Catholic nation on earth. The reason probably being that they played a big role in denouncing the violence and they were instrumental in ousting Marcos all those years ago. Duterte has actually even tested the water about reviving Marcos' image, by the way, which shows you we might be headed somewhere pretty undemocratic in the future.

In his election campaign, Duterte even promises to kill 100,000 criminals in six months, and he wins in a landslide, right? And then in October 2016, he produces this list of mafiosos, gangsters, corrupt politicians and cops, he says, are in the pocket of drug lords.

I'm going to defer to Patrick Sims, who I love, who wrote a long piece of the New York Times mag in 2017 about all this stuff. He writes, quote,

The list was a promise to cleanse society and surrendering to the police or even being innocent was no defense. Damn. I mean, you see that similar pattern in El Salvador we talked about, right? Where it's just like people are fed up and obviously, you know, it's horrible, but they're just so tired of dealing with things that they're going to support this. Any sort of strike back against the people that they think are running rampant in like a lawless area.

Yeah, it shows you where the ground is fertile for a strongman, right? That's where they kind of come in. Cops in the Philippines, they even enact this policy of knock and plead, which is tokang tokang, I think, which basically gives them the right to bang on your door and make you surrender to them with no warrant, evidence, nothing. They encourage folks to rat out their neighbors and they put them on blacklists for raids, which obviously drug dealers do to take out rivals, even like love rivals do to take out people in love triangles. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff going on.

I met one family whose father was shot dead in a motorbike drive-by. It was just mistaken identity, and the guys who'd been caught doing it on CCTV were pretty much acknowledged to be bent coppers. It's total chaos, like the Stasi and the Gestapo rolled into one.

So the cops are doing this. Are they doing it as part of their actual assignments or they're doing it? It's like a gray area where they're doing it, but they're not on duty technically. I don't understand. Yeah, it's part of their duty. I mean, they've got the blacklist and Duterte's giving them direct orders that they can kill from the top. They have this knock and plead thing, which gives them the right to get into your home. And once they're there, I mean, they can...

We're going to get into it, but there's a word called nanlaban, which basically means self-defense. And the same as we spoke about in the stuff about India and Mumbai, where the cops would just like chuck a gun on a guy and say he started the fight. Then they do that, and then that's pretty much the end of the case. Are there any drug lords or dealers who are like winning or rising because of this, sort of how some of the cartels in Mexico cooperated with law enforcement to take out their rivals?

Yeah, there's lots of stuff about how the kind of like organizations in the Philippines aren't as well defined as they are elsewhere. I mean, there are groups bringing it in, but they're usually working with triads or like Thai groups. They're usually foreign gangs that have a presence in the Philippines and use kind of local smaller scale gangs to to get the stuff out. Yeah.

But pretty much, I mean, apart from a few high profile ones, and we're going to get into the highest profile one in a minute. Um, most people who have been caught up in all of this are the poorest drug users in the country. Duterte has even come out and said that it's a war on the poor, which is like some amazing shit when you consider that he's supposed to be running this populist campaign. Um, so yeah, it's, it's just such a mixed up thing. Um,

But now I'm going to take you way back, right, away from Manila. I'm going to take you to the start of a story I think sums up this whole mixed-up morality play that the drug war has become. I think it's an important story because it shows how totally messed-up violence can be justified by people who've been oppressed for so long, and how Duterte has managed to, by and large, keep the country on side, despite these murders most outsiders, like myself, find repellent.

It's a story that plays out in Mindanao. And I actually stumbled on it when I was in Marawi, the ISIS siege place. Me and my pal were stopping through this city called Ozemiz. They had just crazy numbers of people addicted to meth. One rehab guy told me that half the city was getting high and others pretty much backed him up. I wanted to ask about Mindanao, Marawi, the whole ISIS thing. Can you give a little bit of background on that?

Yeah, Mindanao is, I think, a quarter Muslim. Muslims in, and this is an island, there's basically three main parts of the Philippines. There's the north, where Manila is, there's the middle where all the beautiful tropical islands are. And then south, you've got this island kind of near Borneo. And it's, for years, it's been kind of a hotbed of Islamism in the southwest towards Indonesia. There are groups like Abu Sayyaf that have like twinned up with ISIS in recent years.

And in 2017, they attacked this city called Marawi, which is this kind of like historic...

city full of these beautiful, colorful minarets and stuff. And they just besieged the place. They overran it and they pledged allegiance to al-Baghdadi. And it lasted like, I think, maybe two months. And the whole city got completely razed to the ground. It was kind of like a mini Mosul. And I was there just as it was finishing up, really. It was just the kind of last throws of the kind of battle. But that's...

But they were still dropping bombs on the area. They were still having gun battles. And it was pretty rough. I think all of the rebels were killed in the end. But yeah, it kind of summed up a lot of the hatred towards the government that a lot of Muslims who have been sidelined in the political process in the Philippines have felt for a long, long time. So I guess in the same way as we're talking about various drug cartels around the world, you know, the underlying currents of that poverty, you

racism, these kind of issues. They're the same stuff that caused this insurgency. So yeah, we were there. We were kind of covering this battle

And we just were stopping through basically on our way back to I think we were going to go to Davao actually in the end. And we just stopped in this city and it just seemed so weird. The whole place was like quiet, just as if a duel was going to happen in the middle of the street. Everyone was like people were clearly high. The drugs were coming in off boats on the city's port. It used to be a Spanish colonial fort.

and they were dished out in the fish market in town. Just a dollar or so a hit, a guy told me it was easier than buying pancakes. And when we arrive in 2017, the city has just taken on this right-wing Christian cop called Jovi Espinido.

who's infamous for the killing of a drug kingpin in a separate city just months before. He's pretty much become the poster boy of the drug war at this point. And in 2018, I'm going to end up spending a week living with his family, which is pretty weird. But anyway, in 2017, Ozymes, there's one mafia. They're called the Parahinogs. These guys are absolutely loaded. The patriarch of the family, Reynaldo, is the city's mayor.

His daughter, Nova Princess, he's swapped the role with her, kind of like the Putin-Medvedev thing again, on a smaller scale. And she's like a mini Imelda Marcos. She's always flaunting Gucci bags and heels and stuff online. But they're just strangling the city, this family. And everyone's kept on the leash. The cops are paid off. Guys with guns wait on every corner, ready to administer jungle justice.

So, I mean, obviously, like, we're anti-death squad here, but it sounds like someone should have tried to rein in something going on there, right? Like, things got really far, and it's like we talked about. If no one does that, it's perfect. It's fertile breeding ground for these populous leaders to come up and just be like, well, what if we just start killing everyone? Yeah, and I mean, we're going to see lots of crossovers between this and Medellin. I mean, some people told me pretty much outright about the comparisons between the two cities then.

The family started out in the ashes of Marcos' rule in 86. Back then, communists ran amok all over Mindanao, backed by China, and Manila just pretty much deferred to vigilante groups, many of whom killed in the name of Jesus. The Philippines, like I said, the third most Catholic country on earth behind Brazil and Mexico. One of these groups near Ozemes was called the Chop Chop or Tad Tad because it beheaded its victims. These groups are pretty grim. But in Ozemes, the Parahinogs formed a group called the Curatong Balaleng.

So writes Nikai de Guzman in Esquire Philippines, quote, So sindicato is essentially this stand-in phrase for crime.

any organized crime which kind of shows you how disorganized really and and not centralized the philippines is for that stuff anyway these guys the kb as most people know them they come out of the vigilante movement and a group called the botanical youth club which is basically just a bunch of herds heading out into the jungle and killing commies does botanical mean something different there like that's a weird translation or otherwise just like a terrible name for a scary gang

It's bad, right? I don't think it is. I think it's just because they're in the jungle and they like maybe like allotments and gardening and shit. But soon these guys, they get their hands on M16s, RPGs, other goodies, and they make a thing of dragging their dead, the victims through Ozymes to show everyone what a dead rebel looks like.

They renamed themselves the Curitong Balaleng, which is this ancient bell villagers would use to warn off attacks. And basically at the start, the people loved them. They're heroes. Octavia, who's the father of the family at the time, the Parahinogs, he's known as a Robin Hood character and he builds loads of projects across town. It sounds very much, even with the religious component, like the auto defenses in Mexico. Like there's a lot of similarities there. Yeah, it's way like that. Yeah.

But unsurprisingly, the KB goes rogue over time. Octavio spreads his men across the region, and he gets pally with a young Rodrigo Duterte in Davao, who's got his own killers, of course, at the time. In 1988, the military tries to disband the KB, but they fail. In 1990, Octavio is shot dead at a cop fight, and his three sons take over. Wait, say more. He was...

Cock fight gone wrong? Gambling? Like how, what happened? As far as I understand, the cop shot him, but there's a bit of a gray area around that. People aren't sure whether some rival got him, but yeah, anyway, he's gone. And he gives his business to three boys.

Ronaldo is portly, quiet. He's a bit of an academic in his youth, I think. He keeps watching Ozemes while his two brothers, Nato and Ricardo, go on a bank robbing spree across the Philippines throughout the 90s. But Ronaldo realizes that the real money's in drugs, and he ships tons of Shabu on boats carrying rice, sugar, and cigarettes into Ozemes, and he makes it his headquarters.

He does this alongside Taiwanese triads, according to reports, and the boats come in from Malaysia. The KB completely takes over Ozemis. Everyone pays them a tax like a pizzo in Sicily. In 1999, when a reporter asked Ronaldo how many people in the city are KB members, he replies, quote, almost everybody.

Ronaldo and Duterte are close friends, by the way. They set up these charity basketball matches together and they hand over seafood as presents. I mean, if a politician handed me, you know, like a solid, good quality fresh shrimp cocktail, I'd be on his side too. Yeah, I think he was giving him mug crabs, which, if I recall, aren't that impressive. So I don't really know why they were such close friends. But anyway, around that time in like the 90s,

jovi espenido is climbing up the police ladder he's made his name hunting down a career criminal called denden mojado i love filipino names shooting him and encompasses on his own with an m16 in a jungle clearing denden has escaped jail once before and espenido goes vigilante himself when i spent time with him three years back he told me of that moment quote what kind of law is this in the philippines i will make a decision i will get your life

It's just like one of those situations where in the 80s, there were only like two VHS tapes available in English and they were all diehard. So every person there seems to think they're like John McClane or some Bruce Willis character.

I'm thinking more like Arnold Schwarzenegger pilot, like in the early eighties, broken English. I was so annoyed when he said that quote, I was like, take your life, take your life. Um, for more information about Espanito, you should read my feature. I did for a UK mag called tortoise that I don't really get on with these days. Um, and if anyone can't get it, I might, I think it's beyond a paywall these days. So I might stick a good draft on the Patreon too.

Basically, he's this crazy, zealous Adventist who believes he's killing in God's name. Just this like absolute black and white version of morality. He's a master of Nanlaban, which is what the cops always cite when they shoot someone in the drug war.

We talk sometimes. He sends me Facebook posts about how women's skirts are too long, stuff like that. So you guys agree on a lot. I mean, you should take this guy for a weekend, like take him for a weekend in Berlin. He'd probably think he was in Sodom and Gomorrah and just like completely lose his mind and have a breakdown. He would love the sex clubs. Actually, the Kit Kat sounds like it could be a Filipino name as well. So yeah, I'll get him on board.

I mean, he's never told me anything about Leva Chaps, so I think he might be game. Well, you haven't asked. I haven't asked, no. So Espinillo's been killing crims for years before Duterte comes to power. He even admitted to me once that he doesn't know how many people he's killed. So he's the perfect Christian family man to front this war. And at first he's sent to this port town called Albuera, where he winds up getting this famous gangster killed in jail, like,

quote marks, accidentally. That means a promotion. And Ronaldo ends up on Duterte's drug list.

Some people thinking he's worried that KB knows a lot about his own death squads in Davao and alleged drug deals. Yep, Duterte has been credibly accused of shipping drugs himself. This could get me in a bit of trouble, but a senior politician actually showed me pretty good evidence of that fact. And Duterte's own son has a triad tattoo on his back. That's public record. I don't think I can stand it up fully enough for a story, but I don't know. I'm not going to say it's true. I'm just going to say I've seen very compelling evidence.

I'll probably end up on the list myself now. I think we just go with it. I mean, if we can risk pissing off local Albanians, we can definitely risk off pissing. We can definitely risk pissing off far away Duterte, you know? Yeah, yeah.

Anyway, Duterte's message to the KB is clear. Their days are numbered. And Espinido starts chipping away at the empire. He enforces this crash helmet law for bikes and laws on leaving trash outside, the kind of broken windows thing that people told me actually helped. He gets his officers to pray twice a day in these happy-clappy sermons he leads with a karaoke machine. I went to so many of them, God. And he tells me, he tells Ronaldo to give up all of his drugs and guns, which is, I guess, more conventional policing.

He says, quote, you'll surrender all the illegal guns and your vice mayor will surrender all your illegal drugs and you will surrender all your corrupt men of Curitong Balaling. So wait, I mean, what what are all these crusaders doing during the time ISIS is taking over parts of the Philippines? I would assume I would assume they would be pretty vicious when it comes down to going after those guys or wanting to take on the chart, like literally acting like crusaders.

This is kind of a weird thing, right? These two things act in complete parallel. So the insurgency that's left to the military and the kind of the Islamist issues on the island, they don't really ever cross over with the drug war. Although there are talks that some of the insurgents and rebels use Shabu money to get some of their guns, which is, again, something you might see from the Taliban or Al-Qaeda.

So, spoiler alert, Ronaldo does sweet F.A. about all this. What is F.A.? F.A.? Oh, fuck all. Okay. But actually, if you want a bit of Cockney trivia, F.A. originally means sweet Fanny Adams, which is like some Cockney way of saying fuck all. Anyway, I'm sure someone can pull me up on that.

On June 10th, 2017, Espinido and his men go down to a KB-affiliated home. A trap house, is that right? Yeah, there you go. You're learning. I've got it. I've got it. And they shoot dead six men, and they claim Nan Laban, of course.

Then on July 30, he heads to Ronaldo's compound and just goes batshit. They knock out CCTV, machine gun down guards and family members. They even chuck grenades through the windows, which blow one cousin's stomach wide open, and she bleeds out, calling a friend in the process of speaking to the friend. So after all this, there are 16 bodies, including Ronaldo, and

And Espinido told me his first words were, quote, Lord, thank you very much. Yeah, I think Bruce Willis would have done better. But, I mean, are there movies about this? Like, this sounds insane. I mean, there are movies about the KB. Rainbow type of characters? I mean, about this cop. No, about this cop.

The cop there should be. There should be, which is why I'm still sore about where it got published. But yeah, I think he's just such a fascinating guy. He's like, he's a vegan. He's very into conservation. He says that he shot one guy for illegal logging once. He usually shoots guys that he doesn't like. Let's put it in context. But soon Duterte, actually, he likes this guy too. And he gives Espinido this prestigious award in Manila.

And he tells remaining KB members, quote, I will wipe you from the face of the earth. I'm telling you, I will finish off all of you. So that message is pretty clear. That's a decent John McLean sort of Rambo-esque. That's better. Yeah. Yeah. You can see why he's in the government office. Yeah.

And all that sounds kind of horrific, right? Just shooting people, chucking grenades in windows. Well, most people in Oza means they love it. They welcome the killings and the end of a mafia that has held them captive for decades. When I return the next year in 2018, more shops are open. People are out drinking at night. There was a curfew before, by the way. The city was actually alive, ironically. Some people actually thought Espinido should be met. Actually, a lot of people thought that.

Some were scared, of course. One cafe owner told me, quote, the ends doesn't always justify the means. That's unfortunately probably not a popular sentiment, right? I'm sure there's tons of people there because it's like we said, you leave things to fester for too long. People just want to see cleaned up any way they can. Yeah, I mean, that guy wouldn't wouldn't give me his name. I mean, he's really, really scared. I only knew him because I was working in a cafe where he was every day.

But the reason I'm telling this story is really to show how in many parts of the Philippines, this drug war isn't viewed in the same way we see it abroad. These meth cartels like the KB, they're real and they destroy communities. And Duterte in his horrible way has convinced folks he's going after them and not the poor users, despite the opposite being true.

The story of the KB and Espinido, it's like the fairy tale Manila brings up to show it's doing the people's work. Does that make sense? Like, I think it's really important to understand why people love Duterte and guys like Espinido, even though by most measures, they're like total monsters. Yeah, it's definite shades of the MS-13 episode where it's, you know, people support death squads because they're tired of...

I mean, pushed around is like a very inaccurate term and light term, but you know what I'm saying? Like people just don't. Yeah. They want to see their streets cleaned up. And unfortunately, sometimes the only people doing that are horrific. And that's who they sort of express their support for. Yeah. I mean, they don't see any way out. This is their only option.

And that's the Philippine drug war. There's tons I haven't gone into. There's extrajudicial killings, NGOs being targeted, political blackmailing by Duterte, including releasing a sex tape of one of his political rivals. There's Chinese triads.

There's even a giant casino heist. That's a good story. But I'm going to get into some of that stuff in an episode that I'm going to do soon, an interview episode for the Patreon. I hope that this episode helps people kind of untangle some of the stuff that's been left out in the drug war, which despite everyone's eyes being on DC at the moment, and rightly so, is still carrying on today. Yeah, see, people had kind of...

I mean, I hate to say that because I think a lot of people, a lot of times people say, oh, why is the mainstream media reporting this? And they generally, they generally are. You just haven't been paying attention. But it definitely sounds like we're hearing a lot less now about what's happening in the Philippines. Yeah, again, like you're going to see a lot of good stuff from local reports, but the foreign eye has pretty much turned away from it. But yeah, I mean, Duterte is going to be in power for another year at least. And I'd expect the bodies to keep piling up, sadly.

Damn. Thanks, man. And thank everyone else for tuning in. We really appreciate you guys supporting us, listening, downloading, and all that. Holler at us if you guys have anything you want to say, theunderworldpodcast.gmail.com. We are actually looking for advertisers now, so if you want to advertise anything too, definitely shoot us an email and let us know it's up. Later. Later.