Chirping Like A Cricket, or Grillo

An October shout to subscribers

This photo above shows the Grillo family posing in a yard in Watford, north of London, in 1901. The patriarch with the serious moustache is Mattia Grillo, my great granddad, who came over from a village called Senerchia, near Avellino, in southern Italy, grinding an organ in the Clerkenwell area of London before settling in Watford to found the Grillo ice-cream stalls empire. My granddad is the little fellow standing at the front in the funny outfit, then three years old, while his older brothers wear the Peaky Blinders flat caps. Like the Blinders, they all went off to fight in the trenches in World War One.

There is currently a debate in the UK about who is really English, and so I guess the Grillo name makes me lose a few English points, although the other three quarters of my family are all of indigenous British and Irish descent. Yet in Mexico, where I have lived quarter of a century, the Grillo name turned out to be a good one for a journalist. In both Spanish and Italian it means cricket, and in Mexico there is a phrase “echar grilla,” which means to stir up noise in politics, probably coming from the idea of chirping like a cricket. It’s so fitting that people have asked if I made it up as a pen name.

Chirping like a cricket here on CrashOut, these last few months the stories include:

• A series “Piso” on extortion, with chapters in Acapulco, Mexico State, and Cuautla.

• Intrigue on the plane and pilot used in the kidnapping of El Mayo, who was finally sentenced.

• Self-defense militias in the mountains of Guerrero.

• A series on Iván Archivaldo Guzmán, the son of El Chapo, with chapters one, two, and three.

• Exclusive archives on Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico and on the shooting of Eugenio Garza Sada in Monterrey.

• Features from our globe-trotting crime correspondent Niko on the Moroccan hash mob and Israeli ecstasy mafia.

We couldn’t have done any of it without you paid subscribers so thanks as always for supporting a chunk of real independent journalism. For any of you sitting on the edge, now is a great moment to make those couple of clicks and WHAM, you are a valued member of the CrashOut community.

Subscriber Substacks and Narco News

Talking of the CrashOut community, several subscribers have been making their own waves in the Substack matrix (and any subscriber who wants to mention their work, please shoot me a message and I can include in one of these quarterly “shouts”).

• The Quirky Guide To Musical Bliss is authored by a scribe who those who read the comments will know from his fine interventions. He describes himself as, “Refugee from the Golden State always involved in the dark murky waters of political affairs and history rescued by the musical tones that can change your very emotive being.”

• Mima Lecocq pens from embattled Mazatlán on the wonderful world of cuisine, which I could see myself writing about in another life but in this one just enjoy eating. As well as reading about the treats, you can learn how to make some fine dishes.

• Viri Ríos has been making a splash with her Mexico Decoded and congrats to her for passing the 10,000 subscriber mark. (I appeared in a podcast on her Stack here).

Meanwhile, narco news stories to watch out for include:

• U.S. corruption cases against Mexican politicians continue to gain steam and expect developments.

• Venezuela’s Interim President Delcy Rodríguez met with Trump in New York, solidifying Washington support for the current Caracas regime (minus Maduro) and making it clear the Venezuelan opposition were royally screwed over.

• A crew of Sinaloans were busted cooking meth in quaint North Warwickshire in Blighty. Benjamin T. Smith, author of The Dope, teaches history at the nearby University of Warwick but assured CrashOut he is not involved.

The Mummies of San Angel

Thanks as always to all of the commentators lighting up the CrashOut pages and to all of the contributors who make this happen. Special shout to Javier Verdin and Servando Mellin in Guerrero, who bring immense knowledge and skill from that wonderful yet troubled state. Here we are enjoying a cold one in Acapulco after coming down from the highlands.

Finally, for those looking for something different in Mexico City, and who like the macabre, I discovered there is a crypt of mummies in the Museo de El Carmen in San Angel. While the mummies of Guanajuato are more famous and plentiful, the mummies of San Angel (mummified by chance through a natural process) are impactful and provocative. Hoping these are not too grim to show, I say “see you soon” with some photos from the crypt, which left me deep in thought about life and death, where we all come from, and where we all go to.

Copyright Ioan Grillo and CrashOut Media 2026