When the story ends, the demand doesn’t.
Step inside the hidden engine behind Cartel Babies—a world built from lived experience, deep research, and the real rhythms of modern Sinaloa. Nothing here is fictionalized for spectacle. I do not speculate about private lives, and when public figures appear, they’re drawn only from verified public reporting. Everything here reveals the systems.
Here, you’ll find sample material you can explore for hours.
With the exception of the Ovidio Captures module, every guide on this page is distilled from a nearly 300-page research volume—the Cartel Babies: Encyclopedia of Knowledge—hosted on a separate landing page and accessed with the QR code inside the purchased novel. Each guide is part of a larger whole, a world I’d like you to discover.
THE ROAD
How highway decide who gets taken.
- Breakdown traps, fake checkpoints, and staged accidents.
Quiet rules that govern who is stopped, waved through, or disappeared.
Why some travelers are targeted and others ignored.
How a real highway abduction can unfold in stages.
CONVOYS & VEHICLES
The machines that enforce power.
How motorcycles, pickups, SUVs, and armored trucks signal rank and risk.
What different vehicle roles look like inside a convoy.
Why movement on the road is the cartel’s real strength.
How convoys shape tension in Cartel Babies.
MOUNTAIN CAMPS
Where work, fear, and hierarchy converge.
How hidden camps in the Sierra Madre function like mini-cities.
The daily routines and unspoken rules of synthetic-drug labor.
Why some children grow up full-time in camp life.
How the camp becomes both prison and home for boys like Raúl’s son.
CHILDREN OF SINALOA
Born into a war they didn’t choose.
How camp life and city violence shape childhood in Sinaloa.
Why many kids never see a safe path out.
The fracture between innocence, survival, and inherited choices.
The emotional toll carried by children like Raúl’s son.
THE OVIDIO CAPTURES
Public case studies in how power moves.
The 2019 “Culiacanazo” and the 2023 Jesús María raid in plain language.
Key timelines, terrain, and escape corridors around Culiacán.
What seized vehicles and convoy behavior reveal about each event.
How these operations form the real-world “weather system” around the novel.
MAPS & TERRAIN
The Sierra Madre Mountains as a character.
Culiacán’s layout and its role as an urban hub.
Jesús María and the villages that form the threshold to the mountains.
Foothill structure, ascent routes, and the Mazatlán–Culiacán corridor.
Why some roads become safe or unsafe corridors in the world of the book.
CHEMICALS & LABS
How improvised science reshapes the mountains.
What a real mountain lab looks like from the inside.
Why barrels, hoses, tubs, and runoff trenches define the work.
How fumes, burns, and contaminated water affect everyone in camp.
How Raúl’s operation hides industrial activity inside ordinary rural buildings.
SUPPLY CHAINS
Where the chemicals come from.
How precursor chemicals travel from distant factories into Mexico.
Why Pacific ports and highways become natural gateways.
How diversion happens quietly inside legal trade without naming methods.
Why rural warehouses and front companies matter to Raúl’s camp.
LOGISTICS
What happens after the product leaves the mountains.
How finished product moves from remote camps toward Culiacán and beyond.
Why some roads become high-risk corridors while others stay low-profile.
How stash houses, ranches, and safe stops shape the long path north.
Why Mike’s captivity fits into a larger machine, not a one-off crime.