Speaker 1: Forgotten is a production of iHeart Media and Unusual Productions.
Speaker 1: Before we start. This podcast contains accounts which some listeners
Speaker 1: will find disturbing, but without them, the story can't be
Speaker 1: fully understood. Please take care while listening. Previously on Forgotten,
Speaker 1: our speculation was that when you don't want a crime
Speaker 1: to be solved, it's because the resolution of it is
Speaker 1: going to be extremely either embarrassing to somebody in power,
Speaker 1: or it's going to come back to you. The thing is,
Speaker 1: the people who did this, they have power to remain
Speaker 1: free to not being investigated, so there's money in powers.
Speaker 1: I believed that the emblematic case of Sagradio has been solved,
Speaker 1: that the murderer was in jail already, and all I've
Speaker 1: always said the opposite, that the authors of the crime
Speaker 1: are still free. For almost thirty years, young women have
Speaker 1: been murdered with brutality and impunity in Juarez. During that time,
Speaker 1: FBI agents, forensics experts, and journalists have corroborated multiple lines
Speaker 1: of investigation, but in the absence of a functioning justice system,
Speaker 1: there can be no definitive answers for a podcast listener
Speaker 1: and certainly a podcast maker. This lack of resolution is frustrating,
Speaker 1: but for the relatives of the victims, it is a
Speaker 1: never ending trauma. It was in this context that Paula
Speaker 1: Flores and several other families created a protest group. It
Speaker 1: was called Voices without Echo. Grabbed our attention because when
Speaker 1: girls disappear, when they ask for help, one hears, which
Speaker 1: now no one knows anything. No one hears anything. I
Speaker 1: posted flyers with strong messages we want our daughter's assassins
Speaker 1: and things like that if girls disappeared. We also helped
Speaker 1: to put up missing posters. We began to fight as
Speaker 1: a group with Nico. After Sir Garrio went missing, Paula
Speaker 1: took matters into her own hands. She led the initial search,
Speaker 1: and when Sir Garrio wasn't found, she appealed to the
Speaker 1: state Attorney general for a real investigation. Finally, she interviewed
Speaker 1: the prime suspect herself. But Paula was never able to
Speaker 1: unmask the people she called the authors of the crime,
Speaker 1: and the flies and posters began to feel like a
Speaker 1: temporary response to an entrenched problem. So the group, including
Speaker 1: Paula's daughter Ye, decided to call out the femicides with
Speaker 1: a more durable symbol. Well doing all that. On one occasion,
Speaker 1: Gia thought and one don't have a protest, but a
Speaker 1: permanent one, because she thought of a black cross with
Speaker 1: a pink background as a symbol for the girls, pink
Speaker 1: background representing the women, and the black cross for the
Speaker 1: morning of their loss. In in March nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: we painted the first cross. Those crosses are now unmissable,
Speaker 1: painted on lampposts all over Juarez. They are themselves an
Speaker 1: echo of the missing women that reverberates around the city,
Speaker 1: and Paula told us there was one place in particular
Speaker 1: she felt that it was important to paint one on
Speaker 1: the city jail, which, as far as she's concerned, has
Speaker 1: never housed the people responsible for Sagario's murder. I painted
Speaker 1: that cross. I had to fight with a police officer
Speaker 1: who wouldn't let me. He said no, that I couldn't
Speaker 1: paint it there. Are you crazy? I said, yes, maybe
Speaker 1: I am. It's clear that you haven't had a daughter
Speaker 1: of yours murdered. That gives me the right to paint
Speaker 1: this cross here because you haven't done anything. The crosses
Speaker 1: in Juarez are a constant reminder that the authorities have
Speaker 1: failed to stop and solve the femicides or hold the
Speaker 1: killers to account. They hint at the corruption and complicity
Speaker 1: that mark this story, even if they don't say it
Speaker 1: out loud, and as a result, the crosses aren't popular
Speaker 1: with the city's officials. When Pope Francis visited Juarez in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, the government painted over several of the crosses
Speaker 1: along his planned route, but the mothers do not permit
Speaker 1: the symbols to be raised or their daughters to be forgotten.
Speaker 1: Each year, Paula goes out to repaint faded crosses in
Speaker 1: memory of Sagario. Personally, what I would do was on
Speaker 1: April sixteenth, the date of her disappearance, I'd go and
Speaker 1: retouch them, and I'd invite people to support us. For me,
Speaker 1: it's to keep denouncing my daughter's case, the injustice she suffered.
Speaker 1: I think that in some way it keeps her memory alive.
Speaker 1: When I hear power speaking, I can't help thinking about
Speaker 1: the word metido. In Juarez, it's often used to explain
Speaker 1: how the drug cartel gets people complicit in small ways
Speaker 1: and then never lets them go. But it was increasingly
Speaker 1: clear that these murders make unexpected people metido. The journalists
Speaker 1: who can't put the story down, and especially the families
Speaker 1: who never get closure, and the line between healthy remembrance
Speaker 1: and more problematic compulsion to repeat can vanish in the sand.
Speaker 1: So how does Sir Grio's death affect the rest of
Speaker 1: the Flores family and who ultimately is responsible for her murder?
Speaker 1: I'm azvoloshin and this is forgotten the women of hires
Speaker 1: unco paramo laera lociv You know now, do you know?
Speaker 1: Gosque hala Felicia. We've heard so many theories, Monica about
Speaker 1: who's killing the women in Houirez, from one or more
Speaker 1: serial killers to La Lina, the corrupt cops, the cartel,
Speaker 1: even powerful industrialists, and yet none of these people were
Speaker 1: ever prosecuted, and the crimes have been going on for
Speaker 1: thirty years. How does this all fit together for you?
Speaker 1: As we've been going along in this series, we've presented
Speaker 1: these possibilities individually. We have experts and investigators attesting to
Speaker 1: the involvement of serial killers, drug cartels, empresarios. But it's
Speaker 1: important to note that the Howatis femicides also include victims
Speaker 1: of domestic violence. Their killers were likely intimate partners who
Speaker 1: covered up their own crime by making it look like
Speaker 1: another serial sexual murder. Other women were themselves involved in
Speaker 1: the drug trade or had a connection to someone who was.
Speaker 1: That said, you've also told me that the situation hasn't
Speaker 1: been stable or constant for thirty years, and even if
Speaker 1: the murders have the same fundamental drivers, they're most likely
Speaker 1: committed by different people over time. How do you explain
Speaker 1: how the femicides indhuires have changed since the nineties. The
Speaker 1: trajectory of femicide in howattis is that it's come in
Speaker 1: waves over the last thirty years. Beginning in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties was one strong wave. In the early two
Speaker 1: thousands came a second strong wave, the apex of which
Speaker 1: was the cotton Field murders. And then in the later
Speaker 1: two thousands, beginning in two thousand and eight, you see
Speaker 1: a third wave of femicide come on. And so by
Speaker 1: then Diana had stopped going to Hoattas and Alfredo Corcado
Speaker 1: was mostly in Mexico City, and I was just beginning
Speaker 1: to test my wings as a radio reporter as this
Speaker 1: drug war was raging. In these waves, the first one
Speaker 1: in the early nineties that culminated with those mass graves
Speaker 1: being discovered in nineteen ninety five and nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: the second being in the early two thousands, which is
Speaker 1: when Lily had a hundred disappeared and which culminated in
Speaker 1: the discovery of the mass grave at the Cotton Field.
Speaker 1: Tell me about this third wave and you're reporting on it.
Speaker 1: I'll never forget the moment when I got the first
Speaker 1: tip that something was happening to women in Huattas yet again.
Speaker 1: It was December two thousand and eight. I was at
Speaker 1: a protest of doctors in Huatas near the university, and
Speaker 1: as I was turning to leave, some college students walked
Speaker 1: up to me and handed me a missing person's flyer
Speaker 1: and on that flyer was the black and white photo
Speaker 1: of a young woman. She had dark, curly hair and
Speaker 1: a soft smile. I asked when she went missing. It
Speaker 1: had been just twelve days. I just remember this sinking
Speaker 1: feeling in my gut, thinking, oh no, not again. And
Speaker 1: from that moment on more women continue to go missing
Speaker 1: in just a short amount of time. Many were last
Speaker 1: seen in downtown waters. In other words, the same pattern
Speaker 1: we've seen before. So that's when I stepped in and
Speaker 1: started reporting, and once again, these disappearances culminated in a
Speaker 1: mass grave being discovered. What happened there? Fast forward to
Speaker 1: late twenty eleven. A rancher is on his horse going
Speaker 1: to check on his land out in the rugged mountainous
Speaker 1: desert on the outskirts of waters, and they're riding along
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, the horse stops and kind
Speaker 1: of seems spooked, and the rancher looks down and sees
Speaker 1: some bone fragments. He gets off his horse, takes a
Speaker 1: closer look, and realizes he's found a clandestine graveyard. He
Speaker 1: gets back to his ranch, calls the police, and it
Speaker 1: turns out that this was a graveyard of women's bones
Speaker 1: eleven and all. Many of these women were women whose
Speaker 1: missing flyers were posted all over downtown, some whose mothers
Speaker 1: I interviewed, including the mother of a seventeen year old
Speaker 1: girl named Lupa. I had gone to interview her mom,
Speaker 1: Susanna months just sixteen days after Lupitita went missing. Susanna
Speaker 1: showed me her daughter's room. All her things were there,
Speaker 1: her backpack, her clothes. Lupita was last seen downtown, and
Speaker 1: Susanna had been going there almost daily asking around, posting
Speaker 1: missings and people downtown told her something very disturbing. Susanna said.
Speaker 1: They told me she's probably being sold, that there's an
Speaker 1: organized group downtown that's taking them. It's not just my daughter,
Speaker 1: Susanna told me, it's more. More girls are missing. A
Speaker 1: friend who worked at a fabric store downtown reported seeing
Speaker 1: Lupeta cradline a pair of new tennis shoes in her arms.
Speaker 1: He said he last saw Lupeita rushing down Mina Street
Speaker 1: like so many other young women before. Lupeta was last
Speaker 1: seen on Mina Street. That's the central bust interchange in Huirez,
Speaker 1: which has all kinds of brothels and nightclubs nearby. After
Speaker 1: our own trip to downtown, Sandra Rodriguez, the Huires journalist
Speaker 1: at Al Diario, on us never to go back. That's
Speaker 1: where a lot of the girls were seen for the
Speaker 1: last time. We were ready. Yea, there's a very very
Speaker 1: very dangerous place of the city. Yeah, that's had certainly
Speaker 1: a song where they have lookouts. Absolutely who's day plus
Speaker 1: as tikas the gangs. That's how they control the area
Speaker 1: through intimidage. Sandra also reported on the third wave of femicides,
Speaker 1: and she explained that Los Aztecas is across border criminal
Speaker 1: enterprise that began life as an Elpasso prison gang. They
Speaker 1: now work with the Cartail to traffic drugs and control
Speaker 1: various other illegal businesses in downtown Quirez. What do you
Speaker 1: think the Aztecas lookout to thinking when they're looking at us,
Speaker 1: but you might be investigating them. I think that's their concern. Certainly.
Speaker 1: I think that they were protecting their women exploitation business,
Speaker 1: because you couldn't go through Downtarrea without being chasten or
Speaker 1: follow business. This was the key word in a new
Speaker 1: line of investigation, and according to Saunders reporting, many of
Speaker 1: the victims in the third wave of femicides were trafficked
Speaker 1: for profit. When we were last in downtown Juarez, we
Speaker 1: saw missing posters with the faces of young women who
Speaker 1: disappeared within the last few weeks, and that raised the
Speaker 1: haunting question, was it possible those women were still alive
Speaker 1: and perhaps even in the area we were walking around
Speaker 1: downtown while as you know, where they went missing. There's
Speaker 1: so many people, and you think they're here somewhere. Why
Speaker 1: can't why can't we find them? I sometimes wished I
Speaker 1: was a man and I could go into the brothels
Speaker 1: and just look for the women. I have tried. You
Speaker 1: have tell me. I tried to get into with a friend.
Speaker 1: They were two guys in the front door. No, you
Speaker 1: cannot get into. Why you cannot just like that, they
Speaker 1: were two guys. I didn't see if they were armed,
Speaker 1: but I had thought, what kind of things do you
Speaker 1: have inside? That you have two guys protecting your dark
Speaker 1: so they have the girls. Sandra couldn't get into that brothel,
Speaker 1: but there was another location where women were allegedly being
Speaker 1: held after being abducted. It was called Hotel Verde and
Speaker 1: it was essentially a safe house for Los Aztecas, a
Speaker 1: place where they store weapons, sold drugs, and traffic women.
Speaker 1: It was located near the downtown and not far from
Speaker 1: the border with El Paso. Sandra interviewed a young woman
Speaker 1: whose mother sold food to the clients at the hotel.
Speaker 1: The girl that he was interviewing told me, my mother
Speaker 1: found out that they were just teenagers being exploited. And
Speaker 1: I said, why didn't your mother do something? I mean
Speaker 1: call the police, to whom there was a lot of militaries,
Speaker 1: the troops, federal police, municipal police. They were all consuming
Speaker 1: the girls. There there is no place to go and
Speaker 1: announce this. You know. It was heartbreaking for me to
Speaker 1: know that these girls when they were alive, were seen
Speaker 1: by a lot of people in downtown horns while the
Speaker 1: mothers were trying to look to find them and have
Speaker 1: already connect this too. I mean, where are you going
Speaker 1: to go to announce this? They are there. They know
Speaker 1: if the people who are supposed to be protecting you
Speaker 1: are actually involved in the exploitation of the women. According
Speaker 1: to this mother who was bringing food in, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: where are you turn for help? Oh? I think that
Speaker 1: was the most choking part. According to Sandra, despite the
Speaker 1: fate of women like Lupeta being an open secret, the
Speaker 1: authorities failed to solve the crimes. There was a trial
Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen and there were convictions, but at best
Speaker 1: the jailed men was seen as low level operatives of
Speaker 1: Los Aztecas and at worst as yet more scapegoats. Once again,
Speaker 1: the authorities were accused of not just being incompetent, but
Speaker 1: of being complicit and in an environment while getting away
Speaker 1: with murderer is so easy, femicide has become normalized. Sandra
Speaker 1: told us that these days, another missing woman in Juarez
Speaker 1: doesn't even make the front page of the city's newspaper.
Speaker 1: It became like more part of my normal life or
Speaker 1: everybody's life. But yeah, they killing skipon and their disappearance
Speaker 1: is skip on happening in their promises, squars, this is
Speaker 1: not the country where I grew and now we're just
Speaker 1: to the bioleness they impunity and embarrassed care of thinking
Speaker 1: how fast you can go backwards in society. While on
Speaker 1: a Nieman fellowship at Harvard, Sandra wrote a book called
Speaker 1: La fabric The Crime Factory. In it, she traces a
Speaker 1: line from the permanent poverty of the Maculadora workers to
Speaker 1: the murders of women to the metastasis of organized crime
Speaker 1: in the city. I was trying to explain so to
Speaker 1: express how killing was turning into our business. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think that metaphor the crime factory, relates to the
Speaker 1: industrial character of the city, but also the criminal industry
Speaker 1: and trying to express that crime. It's obviously not just
Speaker 1: a social issue, but also its fueled by economic forces.
Speaker 1: I think sas city with a lot of suffering. The
Speaker 1: people is completely exploited. The people doesn't make enough to
Speaker 1: live even when they work the whole day, and I
Speaker 1: think it's this phase of globalization that you can see here. Immediately.
Speaker 1: The whole country depends on America, but in the city
Speaker 1: you can see it like in matter of minutes, how
Speaker 1: we are connected, connected economically, but separated by a border.
Speaker 1: Sundra remembers driving at night through the Franklin Mountains in
Speaker 1: Texas and looking down into the valley at Uarez and
Speaker 1: El Paso, so you can see exactly where the line
Speaker 1: between the two countries was. Because the Mexican side was
Speaker 1: so much more densely populated and thus brightly illuminated, the
Speaker 1: lights appeared to Sandra like wave breaking against the wall.
Speaker 1: I was looking at the border from very high you
Speaker 1: can see the line the border, and then a lot
Speaker 1: of flights in my viaut. It was like the whole
Speaker 1: pressure of the whole rest of the continent trying to
Speaker 1: reach American then again stopped trying at the border, which
Speaker 1: is what it is, and I thought, this city cannot
Speaker 1: contain this much poverty or violence. I mean, all Latin
Speaker 1: Americas is coming. For some reason. That broke my heart,
Speaker 1: like this city cannot hold this and it's going to explode.
Speaker 1: No city in the wall can hold the whole pressure.
Speaker 1: This pressure turned into violence, This pressure turned into legal business.
Speaker 1: This pressure turns into very bad conditions of fleeing for
Speaker 1: the people. I just felt that. I start to cry
Speaker 1: and cry walking around Juarez seeing the crosses and the
Speaker 1: missing posters. The femicides can appear as a self contained tragedy,
Speaker 1: but from a vantage point up on high it becomes
Speaker 1: clear how the city's position in relation to the US
Speaker 1: creates the conditions for its violence. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we look at how US financial institutions have been washing
Speaker 1: the hands of Juare's criminals by laundering cartel money through
Speaker 1: the global financial system. So there was this third wave
Speaker 1: of femicide Monica that involved human trafficking at belte Verde
Speaker 1: and other locations, and that's something that you and Sandra
Speaker 1: both reported on. How does that relate to Alfredo Corcillo
Speaker 1: and what he reported about La Ligne and the cartel parties.
Speaker 1: The evolution of femicide, I guess you could say that
Speaker 1: it began as a way to strengthen the bonds between
Speaker 1: organized crime. Then it evolved to a kind of sick
Speaker 1: form of celebration and sport, and then it became a
Speaker 1: means of profit. It became a business just like everything else,
Speaker 1: the drugs and the manufacturing. This third wave of femicide
Speaker 1: involved women being sexually brutalized over the course of weeks
Speaker 1: or months multiple times. You know, they found if we
Speaker 1: can keep them, we can make some money here. So
Speaker 1: ultimately it sounds like although serial killers and even perhaps
Speaker 1: wealthy industrialists took advantage of this atmosphere of impunity in Huarez,
Speaker 1: where violence against women up to and including murder was permissible,
Speaker 1: the heart of this is really organized crime. Organized crime
Speaker 1: and drug trafficking is at the root of all of
Speaker 1: Mexico's problems, and until that gets resolved, nothing is going
Speaker 1: to get better. I don't care how many goodhearted American
Speaker 1: judges and attorneys come down and do training sessions. The
Speaker 1: ability to corrupt police and the judicial system is still there,
Speaker 1: and until you can get rid of that, nothing is
Speaker 1: going to get better. That problem is largely out of
Speaker 1: Mexico's hands when the demand persists on the American side,
Speaker 1: and the US has been more than willing to pour
Speaker 1: billions of dollars into the law enforcement side trying to
Speaker 1: stop the drugs from coming over. And now it's clear
Speaker 1: to me, I mean, I mean that is an unwinnable fight.
Speaker 1: You have to address demand. Demand for illegal drugs in
Speaker 1: the US creates the revenue on which Lalna, Los Astecas,
Speaker 1: the Sinaloa Cartel, and the rest of Mexico's organized criminal
Speaker 1: enterprises depend. To understand more about the financial underpinnings of
Speaker 1: all this violence, we called Ed Bulliami. He's a British
Speaker 1: journalist who made his name covering the war in Bosnia
Speaker 1: in the nineteen nineties, as well as the First and
Speaker 1: Second Gulf Wars, and he's also reported extensively from Juarez.
Speaker 1: He wrote a book called a Mexica War along the Borderline,
Speaker 1: and while working on it, he spent time with the
Speaker 1: likes of Diana Washington Valdez, Sandra Rodriguez, and Paula Flores.
Speaker 1: I realized actually that I first interviewed Paula Flores twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, so it's two decades now reporting this atrocity.
Speaker 1: You know, impunity is a hallmark of those twenty years.
Speaker 1: In the course of his reporting, Ed came to view
Speaker 1: young women like Sagrario as the casualties of a type
Speaker 1: of conflict that he never encountered elsewhere. I think what
Speaker 1: interested me in what has appalled me and confused me
Speaker 1: is that, well, whereas Iraq and Bosnia were wars, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, and shells landing, cowering in cellars, columns of
Speaker 1: refugees through the dust of the stone, these are wars.
Speaker 1: And yet if we take sort of that experience into Mexico,
Speaker 1: we've got we've got a death toll since two thousand
Speaker 1: and six in Mexico which is three times that of Bosnia.
Speaker 1: One hundred thousand in Bosnia, three hundred thousand in Mexico.
Speaker 1: We've got, perhaps most appallingly of all, in its different way,
Speaker 1: a number of disappeared, vanished people leaving families who have
Speaker 1: no body to bury in the limbo of disappearance. And
Speaker 1: yet we've got this situation in a country that is
Speaker 1: irresistibly wonderful, where the football league functions very well and
Speaker 1: is great to watch, where the markets are open and vibrant.
Speaker 1: It's a new kind of war in what is supposed
Speaker 1: to be peacetime. Things look normal, but they're not. It's
Speaker 1: a completely brutalized society. It has the darkest shadows in
Speaker 1: many ways of one's whole career as a war correspondent.
Speaker 1: According to ed the root cause of this new kind
Speaker 1: of war is drug trafficking and the cartels who've profited
Speaker 1: from it. I mean there is no ring around narco
Speaker 1: violence now, I mean narco violence becomes domestic violence, becomes extortion,
Speaker 1: becomes trafficking, becomes sex, trafficking becomes migrant smuggling. You know,
Speaker 1: there will come a time, I think when actually drugs
Speaker 1: is probably a minority interest of these cartels because the
Speaker 1: expansion of their business is so big within Mexico business.
Speaker 1: There's that word again. Sundra used it to describe the
Speaker 1: exploitation of women in the third wave of femicides, but
Speaker 1: it's also the key to understanding why the war in
Speaker 1: Mexico is so amorphous. The conflict is not about political
Speaker 1: identity or national boundaries. It's about profit. And to understand
Speaker 1: the cartels you have to think of them as commercial
Speaker 1: enterprises for whom violence is a tool of domination. Cartels
Speaker 1: are corporations. They're not opponents of our financial and economic
Speaker 1: capitalist system. They're not even pastichious of it, are actually
Speaker 1: innovators of it. Pablo Escobar, he was doing Pan American
Speaker 1: duty free trade long before Nafter or Bill Clinton had
Speaker 1: the idea and cocaine. You can flood the market without
Speaker 1: a drop in price. You can soll the good stuff
Speaker 1: to bankers, politicians, lawyers and journalists, and the ship in
Speaker 1: the ghetto to be cooked as crack. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: the perfect commodity. The one problem with cocaine the sums
Speaker 1: generated are too big to be launded through small businesses
Speaker 1: or stored in stash houses, and that requires innovation. The
Speaker 1: profits are so vast, hundreds of billions of dollars. Now,
Speaker 1: you can't go around Mexico spending net out of a
Speaker 1: back of a truck. No, you have to bank it.
Speaker 1: You have to find a banker, and a bank and
Speaker 1: a lawyer who's prepared to get that money into the system.
Speaker 1: To get their profits into the legitimate economy, the cartel
Speaker 1: needed help from establishment partners. Ed became obsessed by uncovering
Speaker 1: who they were, and in two eleven he broke a
Speaker 1: story under the headline how a big US bank laundered
Speaker 1: billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs. The bank was Word Covier,
Speaker 1: and once again the story began with somebody who wanted justice.
Speaker 1: I got a whistleblower from inside the banker, a man,
Speaker 1: a brave man called Martin Woods to tell me the
Speaker 1: whole story over seven long sessions and published it. Up
Speaker 1: until two thousand and eight, WA Covier was one of
Speaker 1: the biggest banks in the US, but in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of the financial crisis, it was sold to Wells Fargo,
Speaker 1: which is now the world's fourth largest bank. Martin Woods
Speaker 1: worked at work Covier, and his job was to spot
Speaker 1: money laundering. So when Woods noticed a series of dubious
Speaker 1: transactions at current the exchanges in Mexico, he started issuing
Speaker 1: suspicious activity reports to try and stop them, but then
Speaker 1: a manager quietly advised him to quote develop a better
Speaker 1: understanding of Mexico. Undeterred, Woods continue to flag more suspicious
Speaker 1: transactions coming out of Mexico, but instead of heeding his warnings,
Speaker 1: the bank decided to discipline him. Wakovia claimed that Woods
Speaker 1: had exposed them to quote potential regulatory jeopardy and quote
Speaker 1: large fines. Wackovia had been moving an ineftable amount of
Speaker 1: money that actually belonged directly and was provably flowing from
Speaker 1: the sonealoa cartel. The mind boggling some of three hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy two billion dollars. I mean, that's the GDP
Speaker 1: of a nation in some parts of the world. Criminal
Speaker 1: proceedings in the US were eventually brought against Wacovia for
Speaker 1: failing to quote maintain an effective anti money laundering program.
Speaker 1: The federal prosecutor argued that quote were Covia's blatant disregard
Speaker 1: for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual
Speaker 1: carte blanche to finance their operations. In other words, WHA
Speaker 1: Covia was more interested in its own profits than preventing
Speaker 1: organized crime from entering the banking system. They ultimately settled
Speaker 1: out of court for one hundred and sixty million dollars,
Speaker 1: a tiny fraction of the launded sums. The amount was
Speaker 1: paid by the new parent bank, Wells Fargo, who had
Speaker 1: recently been bailed out by US taxpayers. Now, the reason
Speaker 1: we can talk about this without fear of the Wells
Speaker 1: Fargo legal department is because WHA Covia got court, admitted it,
Speaker 1: and settled out of court. Too big to fail, too
Speaker 1: big to jail for sure ed reports that as were
Speaker 1: Covia was being investigated, another bank, HSBC stepped in and
Speaker 1: filled the void to launder money for the senor lower
Speaker 1: cart hell with HSBC is even more extraordinary because the
Speaker 1: narcos were actually going to branches of HSBC in Mexico
Speaker 1: with boxes especially may to fit through the teller's windows,
Speaker 1: filled with hundreds of dollars in cash, be given a
Speaker 1: receipt for the amount, without the teller actually opening the
Speaker 1: box to look what was inside. And yet we didn't
Speaker 1: know anything about this. The Financial Times covered the settlement
Speaker 1: out of court with the following line, Mexico was becoming
Speaker 1: a compliance nightmare for HSBC full stop. Ye Oh, all
Speaker 1: these little dark people abusing our good bank. Once again.
Speaker 1: No one goes to jail, No one's even prosecuted or charged.
Speaker 1: A few apologies, wrap on the knuckle again. Not all
Speaker 1: of the media was as forgiving. The New York Times
Speaker 1: described HSBC as quote too big to indict and reported
Speaker 1: that the Justice Department decided against prosecution because they were
Speaker 1: worried about quote, destabilizing the global financial system. I've tried
Speaker 1: to make it my bus to report to the best
Speaker 1: of my ability on the impunity in our system whereby
Speaker 1: the blood money the fat cats, who basically face absolutely
Speaker 1: no sanction whatsoever for taking these vast profits and swilling
Speaker 1: them around the so called legal economy. Whoever paid Socario
Speaker 1: Flores killer to do what they did to her is
Speaker 1: missing an action so far as the justice system is concerned,
Speaker 1: as is HSBC. But there is a line, There is
Speaker 1: a direct line from that's atrocity right up to the
Speaker 1: boardrooms of Wall Street. In the game of joining the dots,
Speaker 1: there's only two dots to join. The drug cartels exist
Speaker 1: to make money, and they spend that money corrupting officials
Speaker 1: and creating a reign of terror in Mexico, largely in
Speaker 1: order to make more money, including from trafficking young women.
Speaker 1: And according to Ed, one of the ways to prevent
Speaker 1: this from happening would be to aggressively prosecute international money laundry.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that peace is better than war, and
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that you could actually do something to
Speaker 1: abate this appalling new kind of war if you simply
Speaker 1: throttle the money, if you actually just made it not
Speaker 1: lucrative or impossible to bank this money. And as my
Speaker 1: whistle blower, Martin Woods said, from if you don't get that,
Speaker 1: you're missing the story. The United States Justice Department effectively
Speaker 1: chose to ignore that part of the story because they
Speaker 1: were worried it could trigger another financial crisis. Meanwhile, Martin Woods,
Speaker 1: the whistleblower, says that it was impossible for him to
Speaker 1: get a job at another bank after exposing the money
Speaker 1: laundry activity at WA Covia. And it is these figures
Speaker 1: who speak out in pursuit of justice who motivate Ed's
Speaker 1: work war journalism. It's quite a weird. Some people report
Speaker 1: conflict because deep down they quite like it, because it
Speaker 1: gives them a bit of a bit of a buzz.
Speaker 1: I'm the opposite to that. I get terrified. I have PTSD.
Speaker 1: I hate it. I have a sort of shortcoming whereby
Speaker 1: when I'm reporting something, I try to think myself into it.
Speaker 1: I can't just write down an account of what was
Speaker 1: done to Parla Floris's daughter without trying to imagine what
Speaker 1: it must have been like to be her in that
Speaker 1: room with those people, you know, who have eyes, who
Speaker 1: had faces, who she could see, presumably the blades they
Speaker 1: were about to apply and applied a body. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not a very psychologically benefitabing to do, but I
Speaker 1: think it's professionally necessary. But what you get is the
Speaker 1: addiction to the people who were against it, because it's
Speaker 1: a humbling thing. Being with the soldiers in Bosnia, the
Speaker 1: guerrillas who were trying to oppose the genocide, was itself
Speaker 1: up and humbling. Being with the mothers of the women
Speaker 1: to whom this was done leaves you oddly enriched in
Speaker 1: a way. I mean, it's the last line of Samuel
Speaker 1: Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, A sadder and a wiser man who
Speaker 1: woke the morrow morn. That is what one should aim
Speaker 1: to be as a combat journalist, sadder and wiser. And
Speaker 1: your job is to make other people sadder, and the whistleblowers,
Speaker 1: the truth seekers, the mothers. Painting across or defending a
Speaker 1: scapegoated bus driver, or even calling out non compliance with
Speaker 1: money laundering regulation. Any of these actions can cost you
Speaker 1: anything from your livelihood to your life, and none of
Speaker 1: them is sufficient to produce the kind of systemic change
Speaker 1: required to stop femicide. But that doesn't diminish the importance
Speaker 1: of bearing witness as making the invisible visible from the
Speaker 1: pocket of your genes to the bank card in that pocket.
Speaker 1: As the FBI agent Frank Evans put it best, you
Speaker 1: can kill me, but you can't eat me. When we
Speaker 1: come back, Monica returns to Juarez for a final conversation
Speaker 1: with Paula Flores about Sagaria's legacy and the price of activism.
Speaker 1: Before we concluded this series, I knew I had to
Speaker 1: have one last conversation with Paula. I wanted her to
Speaker 1: tell me about what happened to her husband, Jesus. Femicide
Speaker 1: is largely viewed as the realm of women. It's something
Speaker 1: that happens to women, that hurts women and those fighting
Speaker 1: against aside our primarily women. We focus on the pain
Speaker 1: of the mothers, but rarely do we talk about fathers.
Speaker 1: So despite escalating drug violence, a record heat wave, and
Speaker 1: a raging pandemic, I traveled to Hawais again. But before
Speaker 1: we began, I asked Paula she was ready to have
Speaker 1: the conversation. I knew it wouldn't be an easy one, okay.
Speaker 1: I started by asking Paula to tell me how she
Speaker 1: met her husband. Well, I was eighteen. I met him
Speaker 1: in a farming village near the little town where I lived.
Speaker 1: My sister took me. She asked me to go with
Speaker 1: her to a dance. We went walking. It was two
Speaker 1: hours on foot, so that's when I met him. From
Speaker 1: Elsto to his village, we walked together talking and he
Speaker 1: told me that he wanted me to dance with him
Speaker 1: at the dance. In fact, that night I only danced
Speaker 1: with him if so. From there he started to fall
Speaker 1: in love and we only saw each other for a
Speaker 1: short time. I knew him for less than a month.
Speaker 1: When I married him. Paula was just eighteen and Jsus
Speaker 1: was twenty five. He visited her at home twice, and
Speaker 1: on the third visit he proposed. Paula accepted, packed a
Speaker 1: few things, and left with him that same day. It
Speaker 1: was sudden, but Paula was living with an abusive stepfather
Speaker 1: and saw it as a potential escape. I think these
Speaker 1: things are predestined. You know my stepfather, he was very
Speaker 1: harsh with us. He wouldn't let me go out. He
Speaker 1: would hit me a lot. Hissus also came from an
Speaker 1: abusive household, and together he and Paula formed the kind
Speaker 1: of loving family they yearned for. Jewey, their only son,
Speaker 1: was their firstborn. Then they had six daughters, guille Juana, Sagrario, Lupe,
Speaker 1: Claudia and Alicia. From the moment I met I felt protected.
Speaker 1: He would take care of me. He was always worrying
Speaker 1: about me. Even in the street. He wouldn't let me
Speaker 1: walk on the traffic side of the sidewalk. He was
Speaker 1: a really responsible man, an exemplary father. From my children,
Speaker 1: he never hit them. To this day, now that they're
Speaker 1: all grown, they still have fond memories of him. In
Speaker 1: their home state of Durango, his who's worked as a lumberjack,
Speaker 1: disappearing for days at a time to the nearby mountains.
Speaker 1: Balla would send him off with a batch of homemade
Speaker 1: Dorotheas the family was poor, guille the oldest sister, recalls
Speaker 1: erasing her notebooks at the end of a school year
Speaker 1: so she could reuse them the following year. In Howatis
Speaker 1: Jesus saw an opportunity to make a better life for
Speaker 1: his family. He went to work at the factory alongside
Speaker 1: his children, and then two years after their arrival, Sagrario disappeared. Well,
Speaker 1: when our daughter went missing, he went looking for her
Speaker 1: along with the rest of the family. From the very
Speaker 1: first night, I think as the head of the family,
Speaker 1: as the father of our daughters, he showed that he
Speaker 1: was going to find her. He would say, I promise
Speaker 1: you that we're going to find our daughter, but Jesus
Speaker 1: could not keep his promise. Instead, fourteen days later, he
Speaker 1: walked into the Howatis morgue to claim what authorities said
Speaker 1: was his daughter's lifeless body. As soon as the family
Speaker 1: search for Sagarrio ended, their search for justice began, this
Speaker 1: time with Paula in the lead, has who stuck with her,
Speaker 1: following alongside when she broke into the Attorney General's meeting.
Speaker 1: He marched with her in protests, combed the desert looking
Speaker 1: for remains, and painted crosses on lamp posts. I would
Speaker 1: say to him, let's go, dear, and he would never
Speaker 1: say no. He would always say let's go. Even though
Speaker 1: I was the one who always talked, he would never
Speaker 1: speak up. And one day he told me, he said,
Speaker 1: I don't talk. I don't say anything because it's enough
Speaker 1: to hear you speak. He said, very shaky, I feel bad,
Speaker 1: I can't talk. Although mostly silent, Jsus was one of
Speaker 1: the few fathers at the front lines. Most have to
Speaker 1: continue working to support their families. During the fight for
Speaker 1: justice for Sagrario, Jus started getting harassed in his own neighborhood.
Speaker 1: He was even beaten by a couple strangers. On his
Speaker 1: way back home from a Hamburger stand, came back to
Speaker 1: the truck. There were three men and waiting for him.
Speaker 1: They were dressed normally in jeans and T shirts. He
Speaker 1: told me, they started asking me for money. He told
Speaker 1: them I don't have anything, so they beat him up
Speaker 1: pretty badly. He turns out they didn't rob him of anything,
Speaker 1: not his watch, not the little money he had, nothing.
Speaker 1: The only thing he lost was an address book, a
Speaker 1: small one he fit in his pocket, and there he
Speaker 1: had our home telephone number. He had telephone numbers of
Speaker 1: other activists. After that, I started getting calls at night
Speaker 1: to our home phoney. The men started making those calls
Speaker 1: to say they needed sex services. The activism, the harassment,
Speaker 1: the grief, it all took its toll on the entire family.
Speaker 1: His sus began drinking more than usual, and neighbors warned
Speaker 1: Baola that he was having an affair. His whos had
Speaker 1: told Paula that a woman a neighbor had been provoking him.
Speaker 1: He'd always complained to me, he would curse, I've fucking
Speaker 1: had it with her. Wherever I go, she finds me.
Speaker 1: Paula says this went on for years. His shus swore
Speaker 1: on his children that he remained loyal to Paula. One day,
Speaker 1: I asked him to take me shopping downtown. He said sure,
Speaker 1: let me just go visit with a tailor first. So
Speaker 1: he got in the shower and in the meanwhile, I
Speaker 1: ironed his clothes. When he got out of the shower,
Speaker 1: he came to me and held me. He told me
Speaker 1: he loved me very much, and he told me he
Speaker 1: wanted to take my breath with him. My mouth hurt.
Speaker 1: He kissed me so much and he kept telling me
Speaker 1: I want to take your breath with me. I didn't
Speaker 1: understand what he meant. After that, he said goodbye. He
Speaker 1: stood at the door and turned toward me, and I
Speaker 1: told him, my eyes that watch you leave, when will
Speaker 1: they see you return? I don't know why I said that, yes,
Speaker 1: and then he left. Balla got into the shower herself
Speaker 1: and got ready to go out. Then at two o'clock
Speaker 1: the phone rang. It was his sous and I thought
Speaker 1: it was strange because he was supposed to be on
Speaker 1: his way back home right. So I answered the phone
Speaker 1: and asked what's up? And he said, no, honey, I
Speaker 1: just want to ask you to ask God that you
Speaker 1: forgive me, forgive me. He said, I love you so much,
Speaker 1: so much, and then he said it's better this way.
Speaker 1: And I said, but where are you? And he said
Speaker 1: it's better this way. He said, I love you, and
Speaker 1: then hung up, and he told me the truck is
Speaker 1: parked in front of the tailor's shop. It was drizzling
Speaker 1: to us when it rains. It was very sad because
Speaker 1: it was raining when Sagadio disappeared. So we went to
Speaker 1: the truck and I told my son, Chewy, look see
Speaker 1: what he's left us. Yes, he left us a letter
Speaker 1: in the glove compartment, these words, I ask your forgiveness
Speaker 1: and bid you farewell. Carry you all in my heart,
Speaker 1: and Paula, I take your breath with me. Have faith
Speaker 1: that you will persevere, will do it for our family.
Speaker 1: That's my final wish. Don't deny me of it. If
Speaker 1: God doesn't forgive my bad actions, I hope you will.
Speaker 1: I can't continue writing. I'm shaking all over. It is.
Speaker 1: I left your money in the piggy bank music for
Speaker 1: God's sake, to finish your home. That's what it's for. Goodbye,
Speaker 1: my love. The newspaper reported a man and a woman
Speaker 1: had been discovered shot to death in a cardboard shack
Speaker 1: in Lomaspoleo. They were both lying on a twin mattress,
Speaker 1: a pistol resting between them. The man was his sous
Speaker 1: the woman was the neighbor with whom he was supposedly
Speaker 1: having an affair. Police ruled the incident a murder suicide. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The only thing I wanted was not to live anymore.
Speaker 1: I would think of my daughters, that they were grown,
Speaker 1: that they didn't need me anymore, that I had done
Speaker 1: my part. And besides, he and I made a pact
Speaker 1: that whoever died first would come for the other one,
Speaker 1: and I would admonish him. You didn't keep your promise,
Speaker 1: because I'm still here. You see where you're I wanted
Speaker 1: to kill myself. I would grab the car and sometimes
Speaker 1: I would drive in a zigzag. I would get on
Speaker 1: the busiest streets of what is were five lane streets,
Speaker 1: and I would say to him, you are my pilot.
Speaker 1: I was your pilot many times. I was always at
Speaker 1: your side. Well, now you're my pilot. You will determine
Speaker 1: how all this will end. The sudden loss of her husband,
Speaker 1: her constant companion, broke Baula as with her daughter Sagrario.
Speaker 1: She was never fully satisfied with the police investigation into
Speaker 1: Jesus's death. Still, Faula told me she felt muzzled by
Speaker 1: the possibility that Jesus had committed a femicide. How could
Speaker 1: she continue to show her face in meetings and marches
Speaker 1: to protest that very crime. It felt like the ultimate hypocrisy. Later,
Speaker 1: Paula remembered something his suss had told her not long
Speaker 1: before his death. He would tell me that I was
Speaker 1: a badass woman, and that's how he would say it.
Speaker 1: He would always tell me, you're a badass woman. You
Speaker 1: can handle it. The day I'm no longer here, you
Speaker 1: can do it again. In the letter he told me
Speaker 1: the same thing, that I could do it, but I
Speaker 1: could keep going. I've always continued to give interviews, offering
Speaker 1: my testimonials because I want to keep dennouncing what happened
Speaker 1: to my daughter. I'll say too that when we're no
Speaker 1: longer here, she'll live on and say a documentary a book,
Speaker 1: and that's where the memory of Sagadio will remain. But
Speaker 1: I want to keep dennouncing that her case is not
Speaker 1: yet resolved, that girls continue to disappear I want to
Speaker 1: keep going, but it's true that it takes its toll.
Speaker 1: There's something so heartbreaking about Jesus's story, Monica, the way
Speaker 1: he stands by Paula and supports her in her acts
Speaker 1: of bearing witness, but can't take it himself, and in
Speaker 1: the end seems to be involved in the murder of
Speaker 1: yet another woman in Juarez. I know you hesitate to
Speaker 1: even bring this story up with Paula, but why did
Speaker 1: you feel it was important. Jesus's story is an extreme
Speaker 1: version of what happens to the fathers of femicide victims.
Speaker 1: Many succumbed to quick and sudden depths, whether it be
Speaker 1: from illness or cancer or a heart attack. In the
Speaker 1: case of Jesus, by his own hand. The newspaper report
Speaker 1: says he had a gunshot wound through his chest, but
Speaker 1: I read a gunshot wound through his heart, almost as
Speaker 1: if he was shooting himself in the heart. Because he
Speaker 1: couldn't take the pain that he carried there. He wanted
Speaker 1: to feel like the strong one, you know, the man
Speaker 1: of the family with whom we felt safe, so he
Speaker 1: kept all his feelings trapped inside. We never talked about
Speaker 1: it because for all of us. The main focus was
Speaker 1: to keep demanding justice for Sagardio and the rest was
Speaker 1: pushed aside. We didn't even sit down to eat as
Speaker 1: a family anymore. Yeah, life is passing me by. We're
Speaker 1: all getting sick, our children too, and where is the justice.
Speaker 1: That's when they say to me, well, what have you
Speaker 1: gained from all this, Mom, It's nothing. We've lost Saradio,
Speaker 1: We've lost our dad. And yet I never quit. I
Speaker 1: wish some day to get out of here, for all
Speaker 1: of us to leave and never hear about any of
Speaker 1: it again. And I wish there would be a day
Speaker 1: just for me, day without Summersides. It's heartbreaking to see
Speaker 1: how Paula's strength drives her on and on at the
Speaker 1: same time, how the active protests itself can create more
Speaker 1: trauma for the family. But her strength is remarkable, and
Speaker 1: I'm wondering how you make sense of it all. I
Speaker 1: guess it's your typical David and Goliath story, only in
Speaker 1: this case, David has not slayed the giant. The giant
Speaker 1: lumbers on and Paula is simply trying to get by
Speaker 1: day by day, and she's got her daughters. I mean,
Speaker 1: the one thing that I do take heart from is.
Speaker 1: After Paula and I did the interview, I sat and
Speaker 1: I visited with her for just a little bit longer.
Speaker 1: She opened the door to her bedroom, and the minute
Speaker 1: she does that, people start flowing in, including her two
Speaker 1: daughters and a grandson, And they all ended up on
Speaker 1: her king size bed in her bedroom. Like the grandson
Speaker 1: is on his phone, and like Kuana and Guille, they're
Speaker 1: lying there and chatting and laughing, and Paula comes in,
Speaker 1: what do you all want for lunch? What are we
Speaker 1: gonna What are we gonna make for lunch? And there's
Speaker 1: a softness there. Not everyone has a family that they
Speaker 1: get along with that they feel so at home and
Speaker 1: cozy with that they can just walk into their mother's
Speaker 1: bedroom and sprawl on her bed, almost as if they
Speaker 1: were little children. I'm certain they all draw strength from
Speaker 1: each other. But I hope it's the last interview I
Speaker 1: do with Paula about the tragedies in her life. I
Speaker 1: don't hope it's the last time I see her or
Speaker 1: the last time I talk to her, but I do
Speaker 1: hope it's the last time I ask her to recount
Speaker 1: the tragedies and trauma in her life. She's done that
Speaker 1: enough and I think I think she needs a rest.
Speaker 1: And what about you, Monica. Well, when you first start
Speaker 1: out as a journalist and you're young and fresh and
Speaker 1: optimistic that if you just tell the story, something will change.
Speaker 1: And then you get to the point where where I am,
Speaker 1: where you report the same thing over and over, not
Speaker 1: only does it keep happening, it gets worse and there
Speaker 1: is not much change, and then you wonder what is
Speaker 1: it for. I'm just going to leave it all behind.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to walk away, like I said at
Speaker 1: the beginning of this podcast. But then you realize, no, no,
Speaker 1: you just always have to fight. It doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: you're going to win. But if you don't fight, then
Speaker 1: all is lost. When you make a little progress, there's
Speaker 1: going to be pushback, and you just have to keep going.
Speaker 1: And maybe you do need to step away for a
Speaker 1: spell to collect yourself and eel and gather strength again.
Speaker 1: And once you do, then you get back out there.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about that word again, Metido. Once this
Speaker 1: story touches you, it never lets you go. Last night
Speaker 1: I dreamt that I was stuck in Huarez, being watched hunted,
Speaker 1: but of course I woke up in the safety of
Speaker 1: my bed. Paula and generations of her family will never
Speaker 1: wake up from the nightmare of Sagario's murder, but they'll
Speaker 1: keep going. The story of the Flores family is just
Speaker 1: one of hundreds like them in Huarez, and today Quires
Speaker 1: itself is just one city among many where institutions have
Speaker 1: collapsed in the face of money and power, and violence
Speaker 1: against the most vulnerable prevails. But there is sadness and
Speaker 1: wisdom to be gleaned from all of this. Wisdom at
Speaker 1: the very least, to recognize one another's humanity. I'm as
Speaker 1: Flushing and I'm Monica Ordzibe. Thanks for listening. You know
Speaker 1: not Sie, so you know Mysia. We go as Basque
Speaker 1: Teniers Halla Felicia Forgotten The Women of Juarez is co
Speaker 1: hosted by Me Monica and me oswal Oschen. Forgotten is
Speaker 1: executive produced by Me and Mangesh Hattikila. Our producers are
Speaker 1: Julian Weller and Katrina Novel sound editing by Julian Weller,
Speaker 1: Jacopo Penzo, Aaron Kaufman, and Michelle Lands. Lucas Riley is
Speaker 1: our story editor. Caitlin Thompson is our consulting producer. Production
Speaker 1: support from Emily Maronoff and Aaron Kaufman. Recording assistance this
Speaker 1: episode from Phil Bodger. Music by Leonardo Heblum and Hakkabo Liberman.
Speaker 1: Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Carla Tassara is the voice
Speaker 1: actor for Paula Flores Special Thanks to Ryan Martz and
Speaker 1: to Cynthia be Gerano and Maria Socorro Tabuenca for their
Speaker 1: support to this series. Thanks also to the producers of
Speaker 1: the documentary La Carta. This podcast is dedicated to all
Speaker 1: the women lost to senseless violence in Hoattis and all
Speaker 1: around the world. Esta Sia, Cedica Attola, Las Mocheres, Guen Sufrio, Vajola, Volencia,
Speaker 1: Nina mass