Here’s a bizarre story, of a former Olympic snowboarder from Canada who became a drug lord in Mexico and is now in U.S. custody.
Ryan Wedding is a Canadian Olympic snowboarder turned drug lord, but his crime career is over for now. Wedding turned himself in at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City and is now in the U.S. awaiting trial.
You may have wondered about the surname “Wedding”, I hadn’t heard it before. It actually derives from a place called “Wadding” in Yorkshire, England.
Ryan James Wadding was born in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, in 1981 and competed for Canada at the 2002 Winter Olympics (Salt Lake City) as a snowboarder.
After that, Wedding became a drug trafficker and made quite a name for himself, winding up in Mexico in the Sinaloa Cartel.
Wedding ran an operation transporting cocaine from Colombia through Mexico to the U.S. and Canada. His operation would move it by truck from Mexico to Los Angeles.
By 2005, Wedding made it to the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
Wedding’s FBI wanted poster reads“Ryan James Wedding is wanted for allegedly running and participating in a transnational drug trafficking operation that routinely shipped hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia, through Mexico and Southern California, to Canada, and other locations in the United States. Additionally, it is alleged that Wedding was involved in orchestrating multiple murders in furtherance of these drug crimes.”
The Canadian drug lord used the aliases “James Conrad King” and “Jesse King”, as well as a number of colorful nicknames: “Giant”, “Public Enemy”, “Boss”, “Buddy”, “Grande”, “El Jefe”, “El Guerro” and “El Toro”.
So why did he turn himself in and what does the deal consist of? Is Wedding going to rat out a lot of other people?
Another curiousity is that the day he turned himself in, FBI Director Kash Patel was at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, on an unpublicized visit. Hmm, that’s interesting.
Here’s a photo of U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ron Johnson, Mexican Security Secretary Omar Garcia Harfuch, and FBI Director Kash Patel.
Ambassador Johnson, Secretary Garcia Harfush, Director Patel. Source: Excelsior
On the 23rd, Wedding was flown to California (landing in, coincidentally, Ontario, California) to face charges on cocaine trafficking and murder.
Nicolas Maduro has been removed as president of Venezuela and U.S. President Donald Trump has set his sights on the communist island of Cuba.
Mexico is now Cuba’s main supplier of petroleum. And the Trump administration is ok with that.
What’s going on?
U.S. in orange, Mexico in green, Cuba in red, Venezuela in blue. Source: mapchart.net
Mexico has been sending oil to Cuba since the 1980s. But by 2025, even before Maduro’s removal, Mexico had surpassed Venezuela in the quantity of oil shipped to Cuba.
According to CiberCuba, in calendar year 2025, “…Mexico exported an average of 12,284 barrels of crude oil per day to Cuba last year, which accounts for about 44% of the island’s total oil imports and represents a 56% increase compared to 2024. In contrast, Venezuela contributed only 9,528 barrels per day, a 63% decrease compared to 2023.”
So even before Trump’s arrest and removal of Maduro, Mexico had become Cuba’s biggest suplier.
According to Reuters, the last shipment of Venezuelan oil sent to Cuba was mid-December, 2025. Maduro was removed on January 3rd, 2026.
From another article in CiberCuba: “Amid a deep energy crisis in Cuba and growing geopolitical pressure from Washington, Mexico has emerged as the main supplier of oil and fuels for the island, replacing the collapsed flow from Venezuela.”
Venezuela and Cuba had an arrangement: “Venezuela, which for decades sustained the Cuban regime with subsidized oil in exchange for medical and intelligence services, has seen its production and export capacity plummet due to sanctions and structural collapse.”
With Maduro out of the picture, and Trump’s new relationship with Venezuela, Mexico remains as the communist island’s main petroleum supplier.
“The recent arrival of the ship Ocean Mariner in Havana Bay, carrying 86,000 barrels of fuel from Mexico, confirms this.”
“The loss of Venezuelan oil, combined with the limited national refining capacity and a collapsed electrical system, keeps millions of Cubans experiencing power outages of up to 20 hours a day. The Cuban regime has tried to survive by reselling part of the imported oil, while maintaining relations with Russia—limited by the war in Ukraine—and with Mexico as its main current support.”
“In this context, Mexican shipments have avoided a total collapse, and they are even tolerated by Washington, which fears a new migratory or social outbreak if the country falls into a prolonged and widespread blackout.”
What does Mexican President Sheinbaum say about the situation?
“President Claudia Sheinbaum has defended the shipments to Cuba as part of a long-term humanitarian agreement. ‘No more oil is being sent than what has historically been sent,’ the leader assured at the beginning of this month during a press conference, responding to revelations from the Financial Times, which estimate a current volume of 12,000 barrels per day being sent to the island.”
But Mexico doesn’t profit off of petroleum exportation to Cuba.
According to Gonzalo Monroy, director of the consulting firm GMEC, “…Cuba does not pay, and the current scheme includes discounts and lenient conditions that end up accumulating as ‘accounts receivable’ that never get settled. ‘That debt accumulates and then is forgiven, as Enrique Peña Nieto did in 2013,’ he explained.“
“The situation creates internal tensions, not only due to the lack of transparency regarding the data -Pemex has not officially responded about the volumes or the amounts involved- but also because of the precedent of multimillion-dollar debts that end up being forgiven in the name of foreign policy.”
Mexico has had close relations with Cuba ever since the communist takeover in 1959. One reason, I believe, is for Mexico to demonstrate its independence from the United States. It certainly doesn’t profit much from it.
When I visited Cuba in 2014, I hardly saw any Mexican products for sale.
Then there’s another issue. Can PEMEX, Mexico’s state oil company, handle supplying Cuba with oil?
“PEMEX, the Mexican state oil company, has not met its production targets, and experts like Ramsés Pech doubt its ability to maintain consistent exports abroad if the current trend continues.“
“ ‘Pemex and its private partners produce 1.6 million barrels per day (mbd), of which only 1.3 mbd are from Pemex, falling short of the official target of 1.8 mbd,’ ” noted Pech, a partner at the energy consulting firm Grupo Caraiva.”
“Each barrel sent to Cuba additionally competes with internal needs and profitable export goals, which could trigger alarms within the company if the production backlog continues.”
“‘The opportunity cost can become unsustainable,’ agree Pech and Monroy.”
As for the Trump administration, it is totally aware of Mexico’s oil exports to Cuba, and doesn’t oppose it.
As reported by CBS News, “…the current U.S. policy is to allow Mexico to continue to provide oil to the island, according to Energy Secretary Chris Wright and another U.S. official. Cuba desperately needs the oil, since Venezuela is no longer supplying it, after Nicolás Maduro’s ouster…“
So what’s the administration’s thinking here?
“The U.S. does not seek to trigger a collapse of the Cuban government, but rather seeks to negotiate with Havana to transition away from its authoritarian communist system, according to a U.S. official. Mr. Trump’s post Sunday morning [January 11th] threatened Cuba, advising the island to make a deal ‘before it is too late.’ ”
The administration doesn’t really want a total cutoff to Cuba.
“The U.S. assesses that a total cutoff or embargo of Cuba would be a shock to Havana’s already overtaxed and decrepit electrical grid, which has been suffering from rolling blackouts. Cuba’s economic condition is dire — a U.S. official confirmed to CBS News that the regime has been so cash strapped that its leaders were reselling some Venezuelan oil to China, the New York Times first reported. This was exacerbating the ongoing energy shortage on the island even before Maduro’s arrest. “
“That economic strain on Havana intensified, now that it has lost virtually all its patrons, and Russia has been tied up in Ukraine.”
Is the communist regime on Cuba in its last days? Or will the regime survive this crisis as it has since 1959 ?
There’s a lot of talk nowadays about the U.S. government attacking Mexican drug cartels in Mexico.
A recent example is Sean Hannity’s interview with President Trump on January 8th, in which Trump said that “And we are going to start now hitting land with regard to the cartels. The cartels are running Mexico, it’s very sad to watch, see what happened to that country. But the cartels are running and killing 250-300,000 in our country every single year.”
What would a U.S. attack on Mexican drug cartels consist of?
Would lobbing missiles at cartel bosses solve the problem?
To begin with, which cartels?
A January 9th CNN article by Mary Beth Sheridan is entitled Trump wants Mexico to ‘take out the cartels.’ Here’s why that’s so hard. It explains the challenge: “Most of the old cartels have splintered. Around 400 groups of different sizes now operate around the country, said Eduardo Guerrero, director of Lantia Intelligence, a Mexican consulting group that tracks them. ‘They’re practically everywhere,’ he said. The biggest ones have become more sophisticated and more complicated. The most powerful, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, is composed of around 90 organizations, Guerrero said, up from 45 just a few years ago. ‘This fragmentation has meant that you’ll need a more complex, more sophisticated strategy to weaken and dismember them,’ he said.”
What about sending in Delta Force to kidnap drug lords, as they just did with Maduro of Venezuela?
“Even snatching several of the top drug lords wouldn’t necessarily cripple a trade worth billions of dollars a year. Mexican authorities tried that approach in an aggressive, decade-long hunt for narcotics ‘kingpins’ starting around 2007. The Mexican military and police, backed by US intelligence and equipment, arrested or killed dozens of leading cartel figures. But others emerged to take their place. Tons of drugs continued to flow over the US border.”
“The cartels have evolved into intricate economic networks with a large consumer base, more like multinational corporations than traditional terrorist groups, said Benjamin T. Smith, author of ‘The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade.’ ”
” ‘If you took out the CEO of Coca-Cola tomorrow, you wouldn’t stop Coca-Cola sales,’ he said. ‘As long as you have a major demand for the drugs, you’re not going to get rid of the supply.’ ”
“Indeed, many analysts argue the ‘kingpin’ strategy backfired, fracturing cartels into smaller groups that battled each other and the government and leading them to change the way they operate.”
“Increasingly, they have sought to control territory and impose ‘taxes’ on nearly everyone in their turf. That includes both legitimate businesses like avocado growers, and smugglers moving drugs and migrants toward the United States. Those who don’t pay risk being killed.”
We often hear that the cartels “run Mexico”? Is that really correct?
“What makes the country’s security particularly challenging is that ‘no one is firmly in control, neither the cartels nor the government,’ said Falko Ernst, a researcher of Mexican organized crime. In some areas, like Mexico City, the government has the upper hand. In others, armed groups rule.”
“ ‘You have a mosaic of different forms of power,’ he said. ‘This makes it so complex that you cannot simply execute one simple solution for the entire country. Power, conflict violence, drugs and crime don’t follow one model. They follow 1,000 models.’ ”
“The cartels have become ever more resilient as they have penetrated the country’s political structure. That was evident in the 2024 national elections, when crime groups openly sought to install their own mayors in different regions. Three dozen candidates were killed during the campaign, and hundreds more dropped out because of intimidation.”
“Crime groups are embedded in many local police forces and have assumed a growing role in the economy. In some areas they effectively operate their own intelligence services, paying or threatening local street vendors, construction workers, taxi drivers and others to report on the movements of security forces.”
“Removing the leaders of cartels won’t eliminate that kind of structure, Smith said.”
This all indicates that defeating the cartels is much more difficult than shooting rockets or missiles at them. It’s very complex.
We often hear Americans talk about drug cartels spreading their poison in our country and thus killing people.
That’s true, but there’s another side to it.
Many Americans are willingly seeking and purchasing their products.
Part of defeating the drug cartels is reducing the demand for the products.
If drug users don’t get their drugs from the Mexican cartels wouldn’t they look elsewhere for them?
On January 2nd, 2026, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Federación Internacional de Periodistas (FIP) in Spanish, released a report on journalists killed in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2025. You can see it here.
According to the IFJ/FIP, there were at least 11 journalists murdered in the region in 2025. In addition, there were 8 other cases that might also count, except that they are still under investigation or it’s not proven that they were actually killed for their journalistic work.
In Mexico there were three confirmed murders of journalists. In addition there are five still under investigation.
Click here for the IFJ list of all 128 journalists killed worldwide.
The three confirmed murdered journalists in Mexico were: 1. Calletano de Jesús Guerrero, of the Global Mexico social media platform, on January 17th, 2025. According to the IFJ report, “Armed individuals on motorcycles attacked journalist Calletano de Jesús Guerrero in the parking lot of the San Antonio parish on 17 January. The journalist was killed despite having had state protection for more than ten years.”
2.Kristian Zavala, of El Silaoense, on February 3rd, 2025. According to the report, “Journalist Kristian Zavala was shot dead in the early hours of 2 March in Silao, Guanajuato, while inside a vehicle with another person. Zavala covered local politics and public safety on his social media page El Silaoense and had been under state protection since 2021 due to threats related to his reporting.”
3. Miguel Angel Beltran, October 25th, 2025. According to the report, “The body of Miguel Ángel Beltrán, journalist and owner of the news outlet La Gazzetta Durango, was found on a section of the Durango–Mazatlán highway.” Other countries in the region on the list are Peru, with 4, Ecuador (1 confirmed and 2 still under investigation, Guatemala (two as yet unconfirmed cases), Columbia (1) and Honduras (1).
Another organization, RSF (Reporters Without Borders), released a report covering the period from December 1st, 2024, to December 1st, 2025. You can see it here and here.
According to that report, “In Mexico, organised crime groups are responsible for the alarming spike in journalist murders seen in 2025. This year has been the deadliest of the past three years — at least — and Mexico is the second most dangerous country in the world for journalists, with nine killed.”
RSF says nine journalists were killed in Mexico, while IFJ says there were 3 confirmed and 5 under investigation.
Both lists included the three slain journalists mentioned above.
In case you’ve been living in a cave with no internet, on January 3rd, 2025, under President Trump’s direction, U.S. forces attacked Caracas, Venezuela, captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife and took them to the United States.
U.S.A. in orange, Mexico in green, Venezuela in red. Source: mapchart.net
What is the reaction of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum?
In a nutshell, President Sheinbaum has condemned the action but continues business as usual with the U.S.A., nor does she appear to think there is much chance of a similar operation in Mexico.
On January 5th, at the beginning of her morning press conference (watch or read here), Presidenta Sheinbaum read a prepared statement about the Venezuela situation.
“The position of Mexico in the face of any sort of intervention is firm, clear and historic. As a result of the recent actions in Venezuela…Mexico reaffirms a principle that is not new and is not ambiguous. We categorically reject intervention in the internal affairs of other countries. “
This is not surprising, non-intervention is a longstanding Mexican foreign affairs doctrine. With some exceptions, that’s how Mexico has practiced its foreign policy since the Mexican Revolution.
Sheinbaum said this was a principle of both the Mexican constitution and the UN Charter. But she also cited George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
“In 1796, George Washington called for the practice of good faith and justice among all nations, to cultivate the peace and harmony of all.”
And, “Lincoln defined democracy as ‘the government of the people, by the people and for the people’. ”
Sheinbaum said that the Western Hemisphere faces new challenges, including “global economic competition, particularly in the face of the growth of Asia”. On that issue she is clearly on the side of the U.S., look at Mexico’s tariff policy.
She also called for “a regional economic integration based on shared production chains, just and beneficial commerce for all the countries of the hemisphere, which permit us to be self-sufficient as a region, on an equal level to compete with the growth of Asia.”
President Sheinbaum spoke of Mexico’s cooperation with the United States, but she said “Cooperación, sí; subordinación e intervención, no” – Cooperation yes, subordination and intervention, no.
Later in the press conference, Sheinbaum was asked about the possibility of the U.S. intervening in Mexico, and she responded that “I don’t believe in the invasion”.
Sheinbaum said of her 14 phone conversations with Trump that “On various occasions he [Trump] has insisted that ‘the U.S. Army should go into Mexico’. We have always said no very firmly.”
To summarize: 1. Sheinbaum has condemned Trump’s Venezuela intervention, but isn’t really doing anything about it. 2. Sheinbaum rejects an American intervention in Mexico, even with Mexican permission. 3. Otherwise, it’s business as usual with the U.S.A.
None of this is surprising of course. But it’s worth noting.
Mexico City has an extensive train/subway system called the Metro, I’ve ridden it when I was in the city. See my article about it from back in 2013 entitled Moving Millions Through Mexico City’s Metro (how do you like that alliteration?).
In the just-concluded calendar year 2025, three babies were born in the Metro system.
All 3 were born to young mothers. According to Excelsior, one mother was 21 years of age, another was 17 years of age, and one of the mothers was 13 years of age.
None of the three actually gave birth on a moving train car, but in stations of the Metro system.
During the year, assistance was provided to 163 pregnant women in the Metro system.
It’s been reported that babies born on the Metro receive the right to ride free the rest of their lives, but according to a statement by the Metro reported in 2024, that’s not correct.
Popocatepetl is an active volcano located in central Mexico, in the states of Puebla, Morelos and Mexico. Its name is from the Nahuatl “Smoking Mountain”.
Popocatepetl is 43 miles southeast of Mexico City. Depending on air quality, sometimes it is visible from there, sometimes it’s not. Here’s a photo of a day on which it was visible:
Popocateptl as seen from Mexico City. Source: Ukaizen
What if this volcano had a serious eruption? There are 25 milion people living within a 62-mile radius of it.
A team of researchers from Mexico’s UNAM (the Autonomous University of Mexico), under the direction of Italian UNAM professor Marco Calo, has been studying Popocateptl and is on the verge of releasing a 3D image of its interior.
From the Associated Press: “In the predawn darkness, a team of scientists climbs the slope of Mexico’s Popocatépetl volcano, one of the world’s most active and whose eruption could affect millions of people. Its mission: figure out what is happening under the crater.”
“For five years, the group from Mexico’s National Autonomous has climbed the volcano with kilos of equipment, risked data loss due to bad weather or a volcanic explosion and used artificial intelligence to analyze the seismic data. Now, the team has created the first three-dimensional image of the whole 17,883-foot (5,452-meter) volcano’s interior, which tells them where the magma accumulates and will help them better understand its activity – and, eventually, help authorities better react to eruptions.”
“Marco Calò, professor in the UNAM’s Geophysics Institute’s vulcanology department and the project leader, invited The Associated Press to accompany the team on its most recent expedition, the last before its research on the volcano will be published.”
Despite the highly-publicized violence in Mexico, foreign tourism to Mexico continues to grow.
According to one prediction, in 15 years Mexico could be in the top five tourist destination countries.
From Mexico News Daily: “Mexico continues to be one of the most visited countries in the world, currently holding the sixth position and on course to break into the top five by 2040, according to a study conducted by Google and the international professional services network Deloitte.”
“The report, dubbed ‘NextGen Travelers and Destinations: Our Vision on the Transformation of the Tourism Sector,’ estimates that the country will go from 45 million foreign tourists registered in 2019 to 90 million visitors in 2040.”
“This increase assumes an average annual growth rate of 2.5-3.5% through 2040, meaning a virtual doubling of incoming travelers compared to pre-pandemic figures.”
“The five most visited countries, according to recent data from the UN World Tourism Organization (UNTWO) consists of these tourism powerhouses: France, Spain, the United States, Italy and Turkey.”
“Mexico ranks immediately behind Turkey at No. 6. It would need to surpass or equal its current blistering pace in international arrivals to break into the elite top five. Indeed, data shows that Mexico is heading in that direction.”
“Last year, Mexico welcomed more than 45 million international tourists, surpassing pre-pandemic levels for the first time and consolidating its position in the world’s top six.”
Calendar year 2025 is not yet over, and its complete stats are not in, but according the EIN Presswire, “From January through October 2025, Mexico received 79.3 million international visitors, a 13.6% increase compared to the same period in 2024, marking the strongest January-to-October performance in the country’s history.”
Here are the world’s top six tourist-attracting countries:
From left to right: U.S.A. (red), Mexico (green), Spain (red), France (green), Italy (red), Turkey (red) Source www.mapchart.net
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