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Speaker 1: Philom conspiracy realist. Every so often we do interviews in

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Speaker 1: place of our episodes, and we always put a lot

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Speaker 1: of time into making sure that there are things you

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Speaker 1: should know more about and definitely things we want to

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Speaker 1: learn more about. And we were so fortunate back in

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty to interview none other than the famous Oz

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Speaker 1: Wollution about a project called Women of Waraz. Do we

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Speaker 1: all remember this one?

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Speaker 2: Oh?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, sure do.

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Speaker 2: It's an intense story and Oz is an incredibly astute

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Speaker 2: fellow in a great interview, So yeah, I'm definitely excited

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Speaker 2: to play this one again for y'all.

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Speaker 3: And we didn't get to speak with Monica ortizer Rebe,

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Speaker 3: who's the other journalists who's working with us to create

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Speaker 3: this show, which is still available. You can find it

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Speaker 3: everywhere right now, so if you get intrigued, just listen up.

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Speaker 3: We'll tell you how to find it.

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Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is

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Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. Can turn back now or learn

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Speaker 1: this stuff they don't want you to know. A production

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Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show.

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Speaker 4: My name is Matt, my name is no.

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Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We are joined As always with

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Speaker 1: our super producer Paul, mission control decands most importantly, you

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Speaker 1: are you, you are here, and that makes this stuff

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Speaker 1: they don't want you to know. Today, we are diving

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Speaker 1: into a story that may be cursorly familiar to many

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Speaker 1: of our fellow listeners. You may have heard in the

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Speaker 1: past the headlines of this story. You may have had,

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Speaker 1: you know, a couple of let's say, what do you

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Speaker 1: think a couple sentences length of an idea of what's happening.

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Speaker 1: Of course, in these chaotic times, we have so many headlines, right,

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Speaker 1: we have so many things that we will keep track of,

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Speaker 1: and many things, unfortunately get lost in the shuffle. For

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Speaker 1: decades in SiO dad Warrez in Mexico, women have been

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Speaker 1: going missing. This is something that some of our fellow

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Speaker 1: listeners wrote to us about in our earlier episode on

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Speaker 1: the Lost Highway in Canada, where multiple members of First

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Speaker 1: Nations in the region were being victimized, murdered, often without

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Speaker 1: any acknowledgment or assistance from law enforcement.

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Speaker 2: Also referred to as the Highway of Tears. I believe, right,

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Speaker 2: isn't that yeah?

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Speaker 1: That's yeah, that's correct now, and we are not diving

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Speaker 1: into this case. This ongoing tragedy alone today Today we

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Speaker 1: are joined by the Emmy and Peabody Award winning producer

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Speaker 1: and writer and executive producer of one of our newest

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Speaker 1: peer podcasts, Forgotten Women of War. As we'd like to

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Speaker 1: welcome to the show, Oz Willoshan. Oz, thank you so

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Speaker 1: much for coming on the air today.

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Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me. It's an honest

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Speaker 5: to be having this conversation with you.

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Speaker 4: Guys.

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Speaker 3: We're very much glad that you're here to talk about this,

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Speaker 3: and we're also glad that you're making this show that

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Speaker 3: you're making. All three of us have been listening to

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Speaker 3: the show again, Forgotten Women of Wars. You can find

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Speaker 3: it right now. I think we've all been personally very

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Speaker 3: affected by the stories that you're telling and that you're

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Speaker 3: giving voice not only to you know, the families and

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Speaker 3: the people who've been affected by this, but the reporters

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Speaker 3: who've been working on this for so long. You know,

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Speaker 3: before we jump into all of that, could you just

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Speaker 3: tell us who you are and why you wanted to

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Speaker 3: talk about this story.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, my name is Oz, and I've been living in

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Speaker 5: the States for ten years on various different immigrant visas

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Speaker 5: and now a Green card, and so you know, despite

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Speaker 5: being a white man and having all the privilege that

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Speaker 5: comes with that, I've had this unusual experience of kind

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Speaker 5: of immigration difficulties. And there's something called secondary screening, where

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Speaker 5: you know, when you arrive in the United States, you

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Speaker 5: get taken into this kind of prison esque area in

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Speaker 5: the airport and often have to wait for a couple

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Speaker 5: of hours, will various you know, checks have performed, and

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Speaker 5: so you know, despite fitting in and feeling very comfortable

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Speaker 5: always in the United States, I've always also had this

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Speaker 5: consciousness like what does it mean to be an immigrant

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Speaker 5: in the US? What does it mean to live in

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Speaker 5: the US without being from the US. And that's also

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Speaker 5: something which is part of my family background. My grandfather

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Speaker 5: was a refugee from Ukraine to Britain in after the

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Speaker 5: Second World War. So I've always been very interested in

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Speaker 5: stories about migration and stories about how we define us

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Speaker 5: and them, stories about you know, who gets to be

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Speaker 5: part of the club and who gets excluded from the club.

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Speaker 5: The price of being excluded from the club, which you know,

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Speaker 5: goes from lack of economic opportunity unfortunately to murder. And

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Speaker 5: so I was just very fascinated by this El Paso

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Speaker 5: Juarez border area, because you have these two big cities,

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Speaker 5: el Paso six hundred thousand, Huarez a million, in two

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Speaker 5: different countries, separated by a river which is now dry

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Speaker 5: and a steel fence. And El Paso, Texas, up until

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Speaker 5: the terrible shooting at Walmart, was frequently considered one of

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Speaker 5: america The safest cities of its size.

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Speaker 4: And Juarez, as.

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Speaker 5: People know from movies like Sicario and you know other narcos,

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Speaker 5: the Marcos Mexico is one of the world's the most

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Speaker 5: dangerous and bloody and violent and frightening cities. So I

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Speaker 5: was just curious that how does that happen? Why is that?

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Speaker 5: And I first went down to the border to elt

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Speaker 5: Passo after I read a series of stories in The

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Speaker 5: New Yorker called Faces from the Border, and one of

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Speaker 5: the articles was profiling Hispanic border patrol agents. And I'd

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Speaker 5: never really considered that border patrol agents were majority Hispanic,

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Speaker 5: in fact, eighty percent Hispanic. And so you know, twenty sixteen,

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Speaker 5: and there was all of this rhetoric coming out of

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Speaker 5: the White House about Mexican bad hombres and rapists and

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Speaker 5: increasing militarization of the border. What I found fascinating was

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Speaker 5: the people on the front lines of enforcing it were themselves,

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Speaker 5: usually Hispanic, often with family in Juarez, often with cousins

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Speaker 5: or even brothers and sisters who didn't speak to them

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Speaker 5: anymore or turn them away from church or whatever it

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Speaker 5: may be because of what they were doing. And yet

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Speaker 5: it was a federal job and came with perks in

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Speaker 5: an area with you know, not as many employment opportunities,

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Speaker 5: to say, as New York or Los Angeles or Atlanta.

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Speaker 5: So I was kind of fascinated by this paradox, and

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Speaker 5: I went down there to work on a documentary series

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Speaker 5: about that, which.

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Speaker 4: Hasn't hasn't yet been released.

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Speaker 5: But while I was there, one of the producers on

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Speaker 5: the documentary series started telling me about this, this story

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Speaker 5: of the murders of the women in Huarez, and I

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Speaker 5: didn't know about it. I mean, it was something I

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Speaker 5: couldn't believe he was telling me. They were not tens,

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Speaker 5: but hundreds of women who had been murdered seemingly in

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Speaker 5: a characteristic way, you know, left in strange positions, with

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Speaker 5: strange symbols in some cases left on their bodies, that

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Speaker 5: had been going on for decades that various investigators had

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Speaker 5: looked into it, but that no one knew for sure

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Speaker 5: what was happening. And I thought, what a what a

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Speaker 5: your main topic for a podcast, giving people's interest in

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Speaker 5: the true crime genre, but also what an interesting way

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Speaker 5: to tell what is effectively a tale of two cities.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I massively appreciate the way you phrase it a

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Speaker 1: tale of two cities and your reference to the August

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Speaker 1: twenty nineteen mass shooting there in El Paso. I believe

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Speaker 1: that's when it occurred. One thing that I think will

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Speaker 1: baffle a lot of people, and I want to make

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Speaker 1: sure we don't bury the lead here, Oz, is what

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Speaker 1: you just said about the nature of these murders. Because

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Speaker 1: we know that in various various countries in Central and

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Speaker 1: South America there is an ongoing crisis of femicide and

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Speaker 1: violence against women. This was true even when I was

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Speaker 1: living in Guatemala in the mid two thousands. But what's

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Speaker 1: different here. One of the things that's different here is

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Speaker 1: that there appears to be some sort of methodical system

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Speaker 1: or application to these homicides. And you know, it's something

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Speaker 1: that I personally was I was not aware of the

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Speaker 1: extent of this. I knew that many women were being

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Speaker 1: murdered and then later found and I knew that there

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Speaker 1: were allegations that the police or law enforcement were somewhere

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Speaker 1: on the spectrum between incompetent to willfully negligent. With that

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Speaker 1: in mind, how did you and your co hosts first

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Speaker 1: start exploring the intersection of law enforcement here, or I

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Speaker 1: should say law enforcement's role. Were was the US side

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Speaker 1: of law enforcement interested or involved with any cases here?

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Speaker 5: So that's a very interesting question. And my co host

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Speaker 5: who's not with us today is Monica Ortiz Orribe, who

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Speaker 5: has been a reporter in El Paso for fifteen years,

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Speaker 5: reports the NPR for the BBC, contributes to the New

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Speaker 5: York Times, and she's been covering the femicides for fifteen

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Speaker 5: years with a very strong focus on the experience of

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Speaker 5: the families, on the economic realities that make these women

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Speaker 5: vulnerable in the first place, and with less of a

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Speaker 5: sort of procedural focus on law and order, on law enforcement,

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Speaker 5: on the who, more on the why and the what.

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Speaker 4: So Funny enough.

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Speaker 5: US law enforcement have been very interested in what's happening

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Speaker 5: to the women in Huares. I mentioned that quote about

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Speaker 5: the President talking about murderers, rapists and bad hombres coming

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Speaker 5: from Mexico and Central America into the US. In fact,

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Speaker 5: the FBI in the nineties were very concerned that an

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Speaker 5: American serial killer might be traveling south into Mexico to

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Speaker 5: take advantage of vulnerable population and a less strictly enforced.

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Speaker 4: Laws to basically prey.

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Speaker 5: On vulnerable women in Juarez, and in fact, Huaires has

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Speaker 5: long been a place where things that America wants to

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Speaker 5: have access to but not have responsibility for, happen. So

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Speaker 5: in the twenties, during Prohibition, there was a bourbon distillery

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Speaker 5: in Kentucky that was disassembled part by part and sent

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Speaker 5: by rail to Juarez, where it was promptly reassembled started

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Speaker 5: making Kentucky boars again and smuggling it straight into the

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Speaker 5: United States. And so the most famous bar in Huaires

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Speaker 5: is called the Kentucky Club for that reason.

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Speaker 4: So so, and then in the sixties.

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Speaker 5: After this a long way to answer your question, but

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Speaker 5: in the Second World War there was a lot of

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Speaker 5: male labor was in Europe fighting, and so there was

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Speaker 5: a shortage of farm labor and industrial labor in the

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Speaker 5: United States, and the United States started this thing called

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Speaker 5: the Brassero program where they would allow Mexican laborers to

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Speaker 5: come into the United States.

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Speaker 4: Easily work cross back and forth.

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Speaker 5: And in the sixties there was this political pressure to say,

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Speaker 5: you know, these people are taking our jobs, let's send

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Speaker 5: them back. So millions of Mexicans were you know, basically

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Speaker 5: sent home, and many of them found themselves in Huarez,

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Speaker 5: and so there was both a concern of thinking, well, gosh,

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Speaker 5: there are all these people on the border, you know,

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Speaker 5: who are who don't come from there, but who kind

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Speaker 5: of may want to come back to the United States. How

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Speaker 5: can we make things slightly more appealing for them to

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Speaker 5: stay there. And so basically this duty free zone begins

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Speaker 5: in Huaires where it's much you know, you can assemble

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Speaker 5: goods and re export them to the US and only

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Speaker 5: pay duty on the value added. And so Huires becomes

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Speaker 5: this manufacturing hub, competing with Singapore and Taiwan at the

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Speaker 5: time to create cheap consumer goods, which is still the

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Speaker 5: engine of the economy. There on behalf of American corporations,

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Speaker 5: but using cheap Mexican labor with no labor protections. So

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Speaker 5: fast forward to the nineties and you have Robert Wrestler,

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Speaker 5: who was the man who invented the Psychological Profiling Department

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Speaker 5: of the FBI and on whom the show mind Hunter

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Speaker 5: is based. And he is one of the people credited

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Speaker 5: with coining the term serial killer. And one of the

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Speaker 5: things which he pioneered was data driven serial killer apprehension,

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Speaker 5: so looking for commonalities at crime scenes and using a

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Speaker 5: commonalities to try and apprehend killers, and what he quickly

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Speaker 5: was called the VISCAP, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. And

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Speaker 5: what he quickly realized was that if you didn't include

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Speaker 5: southern Canada and northern Mexico in VISCAP, you could be

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Speaker 5: missing a great deal of what was happening. So Wrestler

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Speaker 5: was basically convinced that there were American serial at least

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Speaker 5: one American serial killer acting in Juarez, and so he

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Speaker 5: went down there to try and learn more about the

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Speaker 5: patterns behind the crimes, to see if they connected to

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Speaker 5: other crimes in the US.

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Speaker 1: Will return and dive deeper into the story of the

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Speaker 1: women of war as after a word from our sponsor,

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Speaker 1: and we're back.

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Speaker 3: So this.

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Speaker 1: Timeline here, I think you've done a fantastic job of

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Speaker 1: filling in the context because so often in mainstream news

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Speaker 1: reports or someone will you know, with the best of

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Speaker 1: intentions read about something and not understand that there are

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Speaker 1: decades of intervening forces and institutions leading to that news

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Speaker 1: story that we read. This leads us to one of

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Speaker 1: the other important pieces of context that I think we

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Speaker 1: need to establish here, Oz, which is that when you

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Speaker 1: and Monica and your team are when you were investigating this,

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Speaker 1: when you are when you're chasing this story, you were

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Speaker 1: going to areas of Mexico and areas of the world

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Speaker 1: that are well, there's no way to say, there's no

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Speaker 1: other way to say it. They are dangerous. Did you yeah,

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Speaker 1: did you ever feel that you or your cohort were

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Speaker 1: were in danger in the course of creating this?

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Speaker 5: I mean it's in short, yes, I mean in Juarez

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Speaker 5: is a dangerous city which has you know, thousands of

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Speaker 5: homicides a year, most of which go unpunished. Mexico is

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Speaker 5: the world's most dangerous country for journalists. I think there

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Speaker 5: have been almost thirty journalists murdered in the last ten years.

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Speaker 5: They're more dangerous than Syria for journalists. And so there's

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Speaker 5: one particular area in downtown Juarez where many of the

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Speaker 5: women were last seen, called Mina Street, which is the

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Speaker 5: central bus exchange in the city, so factory employees basically

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Speaker 5: go from their houses in the outskirts change downtown take

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Speaker 5: another bus to work. And that happens to be a

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Speaker 5: part of town which is controlled closely by a gang

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Speaker 5: called the ballyo Azteca, and so journalists are really not

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Speaker 5: welcomed there. But it's also how Muchnica describes it as

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Speaker 5: ground zero for missing women. And if you walk around

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Speaker 5: that area, you'll see missing posters on almost every lamp post,

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Speaker 5: and you'll see these black crosses painted on pink squares,

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Speaker 5: also on lamp posts, which is where the logo of

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Speaker 5: our show Forgotten took its inspiration from. And so we're

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Speaker 5: walking around it and Monica said on the way, look,

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Speaker 5: we need a cover story because people don't want us

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Speaker 5: to be asking questions about what happens to the women here.

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Speaker 5: So we said, oh, we're reporting on the migrant caravan,

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Speaker 5: and people that come up and ask us, and at

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Speaker 5: a certain point someone sort of made this gun gesture

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Speaker 5: and shouted pat like that at us. And you know,

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Speaker 5: in most cities that might happen it's a bit disconcerting,

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Speaker 5: or maybe somebody's having a bit of a joke, But

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Speaker 5: in a place where you know that most crimes go

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Speaker 5: unpunished and the price of life is very low, it

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Speaker 5: is more scary. And we went after that to go

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Speaker 5: and meet Sandra Rodriguez Nieto, who's the editor of one

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Speaker 5: of the editors at the local newspaper. And she said, yeah,

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Speaker 5: that place where you go where I don't let my

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Speaker 5: reporters go there. It's too dangerous and her colleague. The

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Speaker 5: desk outside her office was empty and had been for

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Speaker 5: ten years since her colleague, Armando Rodriguez was assassinated while

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Speaker 5: he was taking his daughter to school. So I don't

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Speaker 5: want to overplay the state danger that we felt ourselves

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Speaker 5: in person. I think Monica living in the area takes

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Speaker 5: more risk than I did. Who can return to New

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Speaker 5: York City, But certainly being on the ground in Juarez

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Speaker 5: is not a comfortable experience. If you're asking these kinds

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Speaker 5: of questions.

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Speaker 3: Well, well, you know, I think we just have a

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Speaker 3: at least right here in the rooms. The people you're

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Speaker 3: speaking to right now have a great respect for you,

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Speaker 3: and especially I think for Monica and for Diana Diana

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Speaker 3: Washington eld Is. So I want to give our listeners

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Speaker 3: the way you do in your show a specific example

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Speaker 3: of what the experience living and working in Juarez at

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Speaker 3: one of these factories was like, and maybe the vulnerability

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Speaker 3: that existed within the lives of a lot of these

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Speaker 3: women simply because of transportation needs, which you know does

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Speaker 3: speak to a larger economic issue. So in the show,

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Speaker 3: in episode one you talk about Sigario, can you tell

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Speaker 3: us a little bit about her life, what it was

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Speaker 3: like in what she was doing when she went missing?

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Speaker 5: Yes, by all means, So, Ben, you mentioned historical context.

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Speaker 5: The factory started in Huares in the sixties, but it

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Speaker 5: was in the mid nineties after NAFTA was signed that

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Speaker 5: they really boomed, and you had just this tremendous demand

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Speaker 5: for labor and a bit like during the Grapes of

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Speaker 5: Wrath time. There were recruiters going into the interior and saying,

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Speaker 5: come to Huire is going to be fantastic. There are

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Speaker 5: even reports of empty seven four seven's flying to rural

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Speaker 5: and mining states in Mexico and coming back full of workers.

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Speaker 5: So there was this sense that Juarez was a place

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Speaker 5: of opportunity, a place particularly for women to work outside

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Speaker 5: of the home, which wasn't always the case in some

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Speaker 5: other parts of Mexico, and so this one family, the

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Speaker 5: Flores family, in nineteen ninety five they decided to move

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Speaker 5: from El salto in Durango, where Jesus, the father was

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Speaker 5: a lumberjack, and he went ahead with their son and

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Speaker 5: he wrote a letter home to Paula, his wife, and

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Speaker 5: their six daughters, and said, you guys are.

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Speaker 4: Going to come.

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Speaker 5: We found work, We found what we're looking for is

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Speaker 5: going to be fantastic. And Paula replied, well, I've heard

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Speaker 5: they kill women there and we have six daughters. You're sure,

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Speaker 5: And he just said, yes, there's no bad people here.

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Speaker 5: Everyone's starting out. Come and join us. So they did,

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Speaker 5: so they moved there. That the mother and the six daughters,

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Speaker 5: including Cigario, joined and they moved to this squatter community

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Speaker 5: on the outskirts of Juarez where they have to build

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Speaker 5: their own house above their heads, no running water, no electricity,

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Speaker 5: and to build their house they forage scrap from an

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Speaker 5: American dump on the other side of the border. And

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Speaker 5: just this image of these, you know, people who've moved

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Speaker 5: from elsewhere crossing over under with a kind of wink

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Speaker 5: and a nod from border patrol to go and get

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Speaker 5: our trash, to go back and build their houses, you know,

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Speaker 5: is very haunting. There's one story about Cigario being there

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Speaker 5: at the dump with her mother and an American man

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Speaker 5: coming to throw some stuff away and seeing that she's

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Speaker 5: cold and offering him his coat, and Sigario said, no,

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Speaker 5: I can't take it. I'm embarrassed, and her mother says,

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Speaker 5: take the coat, so she does. So anyway, they find

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Speaker 5: what they're looking for, they find work, and they're all

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Speaker 5: working together in a macula dora making I think refrigerated

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Speaker 5: parts in one of these factories. But Sigario is under

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Speaker 5: eighteen and the factory find out and they say, you

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Speaker 5: can't work the night shift with the rest of your

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Speaker 5: family when need used to the day shift, So she

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Speaker 5: has to start traveling to work alone all of a sudden,

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Speaker 5: and her mother begs her. She says, look, we can

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Speaker 5: survive without the money you bring in. Please don't do this,

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Speaker 5: and Sigorio says, look how we're living.

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Speaker 4: I need to.

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Speaker 5: Help, And within two months of her shift changing, she's

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Speaker 5: disappeared and is found dead in the desert two weeks later.

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Speaker 5: With all of the characteristics of the abduction in broad daylight,

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Speaker 5: the disappearance and certain types of trauma that are characteristic

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Speaker 5: of tens, if not hundreds of other young women who

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Speaker 5: meet the same fate.

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Speaker 2: I want to bring up just the idea of a

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Speaker 2: border town Inuarez, in particular, the cartels, the drug cartels

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Speaker 2: and warres had been particularly powerful in the nineties, and

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Speaker 2: I think there may be a little less so, but

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Speaker 2: a lot of the stories we would hear about Wuares

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Speaker 2: were cartel war murders. And can you speak a little

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Speaker 2: bit about that kind of proximity to the United States

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Speaker 2: and the relationship between the drug trade and your story

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Speaker 2: if any exists, and just kind of you know what

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Speaker 2: you took away from that?

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Speaker 5: Yeah, by all means, so, I mean the same reasons

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Speaker 5: why the factories want to be in Juarez is why

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Speaker 5: the drug traffickers want to be in the In Huarez, it's.

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Speaker 4: Very close to the US.

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Speaker 5: You have millions of people crossing the border north, millions

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Speaker 5: of vehicles, tons of freight, and so it's one of

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Speaker 5: the most lucrative drug smuggling corridors in the world. And

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Speaker 5: so what happened was in the nineties. Up until the nineties,

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Speaker 5: there was obviously organized crime in Mexico, but the cartel

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Speaker 5: was a relatively stable organization a bit like the mafia,

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Speaker 5: and so although there was organized crime, there wasn't a

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Speaker 5: huge amount of violence against members of the community. Like

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Speaker 5: once you were under the protection of the cartel, you

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Speaker 5: were basically safe. But what happened was the cartel started splintering,

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Speaker 5: actually under pressure from the US who were doing various

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Speaker 5: you know, raids and arrests and putting pressure on the

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Speaker 5: Mexican government. And when the cartel splintered, basically a cartel

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Speaker 5: civil war start.

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Speaker 4: And this was likely later in the.

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Speaker 5: Nineties, this was the early two thousands, And what happened

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Speaker 5: is El Chappo's seen a lower cartel were coming in

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Speaker 5: from the west because they wanted to take over the

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Speaker 5: Huara smuggling corridor from from the local cartel, and so

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Speaker 5: this began. This that's why you see these terrible images

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Speaker 5: of Huires of you know, men hanging from bridges and

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Speaker 5: with slogans written on their dead bodies and wearing pig masks.

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Speaker 5: I mean, it was really the most disgusting and symbolic

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Speaker 5: violence playing out in Huarez in a battle for contry,

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Speaker 5: which actually I think probably you can draw a line

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Speaker 5: forward from that to isis and how they weaponize the

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Speaker 5: imagery of violence to be part of their very effective

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Speaker 5: social media campaign. And so this issue of the women

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Speaker 5: being murdered and the cartel in Juarez, it's one of

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Speaker 5: the questions of the podcast, and it's another reason why

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Speaker 5: the FBI tried to get involved to find out what

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Speaker 5: the answers are. But in the early nineties or the

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Speaker 5: mid nineties and the early two thousands, in a sense,

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Speaker 5: it's not clear at that stage just how entrenched the

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Speaker 5: cartel is. So everyone's on the hunt for a serial killer.

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Speaker 5: And then as the podcast goes on and as history

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Speaker 5: moves forward, it becomes clear that it's harder and harder

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Speaker 5: to separate the murders of women from the cancer of

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Speaker 5: cartel violence spreading.

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Speaker 1: M Yeah, and that's something that has I think historically

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Speaker 1: bedeviled multiple cities in Mexico as well as other countries

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Speaker 1: in South America. And you know, a couple of times,

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Speaker 1: a couple of times here as already we've used the

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Speaker 1: phrase serial killer. And you know, for everyone everyone familiar

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Speaker 1: with that, there are some nuts of bolts technicalities, but

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Speaker 1: long story short, uh, serial killer is defined by having

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Speaker 1: a type of victim, having a method of murder, and

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Speaker 1: having a pattern in terms of you know, their timeline,

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Speaker 1: their chronology. One thing that one thing that I think

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Speaker 1: stood out to us here that that differentiates these these

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Speaker 1: specific comicides from so many other tragic comicides in the

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Speaker 1: in the area, is that there did seem to be

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Speaker 1: there does seem to be a fairly consistent method applied here.

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Speaker 5: Right.

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Speaker 1: There are people who are perhaps being shot due to

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Speaker 1: crime or due to you know, or being stabbed in

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Speaker 1: a fight, but these these are different. One thing that

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Speaker 1: stood out to me is early on in the story,

437
00:27:29,960 --> 00:27:35,359
Speaker 1: you explore how one of the victims seemed to have

438
00:27:35,440 --> 00:27:40,360
Speaker 1: been kept alive for some time after being abducted. I believe,

439
00:27:40,960 --> 00:27:43,960
Speaker 1: I believe investigators were able to verify that this victim

440
00:27:44,440 --> 00:27:47,359
Speaker 1: appeared to have been fed, so they were around long

441
00:27:47,480 --> 00:27:51,240
Speaker 1: enough to be fed. And then explore a little bit

442
00:27:51,359 --> 00:27:57,800
Speaker 1: about you explore the method of possibly finding or or

443
00:27:57,920 --> 00:28:02,800
Speaker 1: you know, determining these victims and choosing them. It seems

444
00:28:02,920 --> 00:28:05,960
Speaker 1: like I think one of the most disturbing things is

445
00:28:06,240 --> 00:28:11,760
Speaker 1: how premeditated. Dare I say, how organized it seems. Could

446
00:28:11,800 --> 00:28:16,840
Speaker 1: you tell us a little bit about what appears to

447
00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:19,360
Speaker 1: be this method of determination?

448
00:28:20,040 --> 00:28:23,600
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think you picked up on something which which

449
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:28,199
Speaker 5: was important for us to communicate in the podcast. The

450
00:28:28,280 --> 00:28:31,280
Speaker 5: reporter who's done the most work on this story is

451
00:28:31,320 --> 00:28:34,520
Speaker 5: called Diana Washington Valdez, and she wrote a book called

452
00:28:34,960 --> 00:28:38,640
Speaker 5: The Killing Field Harvest of Women, and her big point was,

453
00:28:39,440 --> 00:28:42,480
Speaker 5: these are not random victims. These are not victims of

454
00:28:42,920 --> 00:28:46,400
Speaker 5: random violence in a violent place. These are women who

455
00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:53,160
Speaker 5: have been specifically selected for certain characteristics, young, poor, from

456
00:28:53,240 --> 00:28:57,480
Speaker 5: immigrant families, often migrant families, who disappear, usually during the

457
00:28:57,560 --> 00:29:02,560
Speaker 5: day to and from work, and who when they're discovered

458
00:29:02,640 --> 00:29:06,640
Speaker 5: later either their body left alone or in four cases

459
00:29:06,640 --> 00:29:10,400
Speaker 5: in Huias, there have been mass graves of women discovered bare,

460
00:29:10,520 --> 00:29:14,760
Speaker 5: characteristic types of trauma, often a broken neck, often hands

461
00:29:14,800 --> 00:29:19,960
Speaker 5: bound by shoelaces. And in this particular case of Lillie Alejandra,

462
00:29:20,040 --> 00:29:24,400
Speaker 5: you mentioned an autoposy that revealed she'd been kept alive

463
00:29:24,480 --> 00:29:28,200
Speaker 5: and fed for several days between disappearing and being murdered.

464
00:29:28,800 --> 00:29:32,760
Speaker 5: And so this is there's clearly something going on here.

465
00:29:32,840 --> 00:29:39,000
Speaker 5: This is not random violence. And that's why there were

466
00:29:39,000 --> 00:29:41,880
Speaker 5: so many people like Wrestler from the FBI theorizing there

467
00:29:41,920 --> 00:29:44,080
Speaker 5: must be a serial killer, because as a type, there's

468
00:29:44,120 --> 00:29:47,719
Speaker 5: a method of selection and one of the most chilling

469
00:29:47,760 --> 00:29:52,800
Speaker 5: methods of selection was this, according to Diana's reporting, computer

470
00:29:52,920 --> 00:29:56,840
Speaker 5: school in downtown Huires called Echo. And again this is

471
00:29:56,880 --> 00:29:59,560
Speaker 5: the early two thousands. These are women who have come

472
00:29:59,600 --> 00:30:02,400
Speaker 5: with their families in search for opportunity to a new city.

473
00:30:02,960 --> 00:30:05,800
Speaker 5: And there's a computer school which apparently offers the type

474
00:30:05,800 --> 00:30:09,160
Speaker 5: of skills that needed to participate in the new economy

475
00:30:09,160 --> 00:30:11,880
Speaker 5: and perhaps get a better job than a factory job.

476
00:30:12,560 --> 00:30:17,160
Speaker 5: And in Dinah's reporting, I think at least ten victims

477
00:30:18,320 --> 00:30:23,200
Speaker 5: were registered at the computer school before they were taken

478
00:30:23,280 --> 00:30:27,160
Speaker 5: and murdered. And the suspicion is that this computer school

479
00:30:27,200 --> 00:30:31,120
Speaker 5: was basically a catalog of victims in Diana's phrase, for

480
00:30:31,200 --> 00:30:33,800
Speaker 5: somebody on the other end who wanted to know, Okay,

481
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:36,040
Speaker 5: I want a picture of the woman, I want to

482
00:30:36,040 --> 00:30:37,880
Speaker 5: know where they live, I want to know who their

483
00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:40,800
Speaker 5: family are, and then using that to select the most

484
00:30:40,880 --> 00:30:44,920
Speaker 5: vulnerable because these crimes were also sexually motivated for murder.

485
00:30:45,680 --> 00:30:51,520
Speaker 3: Wow. And in episode two of the show and we

486
00:30:51,600 --> 00:30:55,480
Speaker 3: don't want to you know, obviously give away too much.

487
00:30:55,800 --> 00:30:57,520
Speaker 3: We want to talk about this, but we don't want

488
00:30:57,880 --> 00:31:01,720
Speaker 3: we want you to go listen to the show. In

489
00:31:02,920 --> 00:31:08,480
Speaker 3: episode two, there are witnesses who have seen things. In

490
00:31:08,600 --> 00:31:10,880
Speaker 3: a lot of these cases, it appears that there are

491
00:31:10,960 --> 00:31:14,760
Speaker 3: witnesses to seeing something because, like we said, this is

492
00:31:14,800 --> 00:31:20,840
Speaker 3: broad daylight, you're in a a large metropolitan area where

493
00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:23,120
Speaker 3: these kidnappings are occurring, or even if it's on the

494
00:31:23,200 --> 00:31:27,800
Speaker 3: edges of them, it seems like there would be more

495
00:31:27,880 --> 00:31:32,240
Speaker 3: people talking. But it also seems like there is a

496
00:31:32,520 --> 00:31:38,880
Speaker 3: very real danger for these witnesses because and correct me

497
00:31:38,960 --> 00:31:42,120
Speaker 3: if I'm wrong here, but I believe it was known

498
00:31:42,200 --> 00:31:49,040
Speaker 3: that someone or some group were posing as agents from

499
00:31:49,160 --> 00:31:54,520
Speaker 3: the FBI and seeking answers from witnesses or getting intel

500
00:31:54,520 --> 00:31:56,120
Speaker 3: from witnesses. Could you tell us about that?

501
00:31:57,040 --> 00:31:57,920
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're right.

502
00:31:58,080 --> 00:32:03,320
Speaker 5: So the women often disappear at these moments of maximum vulnerability.

503
00:32:03,440 --> 00:32:06,360
Speaker 5: So in Sigario Flores's case, it was right after she

504
00:32:07,600 --> 00:32:10,480
Speaker 5: changed shift and was traveling alone to and from work.

505
00:32:10,720 --> 00:32:13,920
Speaker 5: There's another young woman called Claudia Vett Gonzalez who arrives

506
00:32:13,960 --> 00:32:16,720
Speaker 5: for work late and so she'sn't allowed into the factory,

507
00:32:17,240 --> 00:32:19,760
Speaker 5: and that very day she disappears and is later found dead.

508
00:32:19,840 --> 00:32:22,920
Speaker 5: So there's this sense that somebody is watching and somebody

509
00:32:23,320 --> 00:32:27,000
Speaker 5: is taking note of vulnerability. But the peculiar thing is

510
00:32:27,520 --> 00:32:30,680
Speaker 5: then there are never any witnesses. But then in two

511
00:32:30,720 --> 00:32:33,680
Speaker 5: thousand and one, this case comes along and there aren't

512
00:32:33,680 --> 00:32:38,440
Speaker 5: witnesses to the abduction, but witnesses see Lily Alejandra struggling

513
00:32:38,480 --> 00:32:41,000
Speaker 5: in a car with a man a few days after

514
00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:46,080
Speaker 5: she's taken, and so this is also a break because

515
00:32:46,080 --> 00:32:47,520
Speaker 5: they identify the car.

516
00:32:47,600 --> 00:32:48,840
Speaker 4: It's a for Thunderbird.

517
00:32:49,360 --> 00:32:51,680
Speaker 5: It's a relatively common make of car, but it's the

518
00:32:51,720 --> 00:32:55,840
Speaker 5: beginning of the kind of lead that might normally, you know.

519
00:32:55,960 --> 00:32:57,480
Speaker 4: Resolve these types of cases.

520
00:32:58,920 --> 00:33:03,720
Speaker 5: The witnesses, Dinah Washington Valders goes to interview them, and

521
00:33:03,760 --> 00:33:06,440
Speaker 5: they say, oh gosh, how funny. You're not the first

522
00:33:06,480 --> 00:33:09,280
Speaker 5: person who's been here to ask us questions. The FBI

523
00:33:09,280 --> 00:33:13,000
Speaker 5: were here as well, and Dinah says what he says, Yeah,

524
00:33:13,000 --> 00:33:15,160
Speaker 5: the FBI came, and that they came to ask us

525
00:33:15,200 --> 00:33:17,240
Speaker 5: what we've seen and what we knew, and so we

526
00:33:17,280 --> 00:33:20,440
Speaker 5: gave them all the information. Dinah calls her sources in

527
00:33:20,800 --> 00:33:23,640
Speaker 5: the FBI and El Paso, and they never did that.

528
00:33:24,120 --> 00:33:27,920
Speaker 5: So somebody has come to lead their own parallel investigation,

529
00:33:28,160 --> 00:33:30,960
Speaker 5: either to find out what these witnesses know or to

530
00:33:31,040 --> 00:33:34,120
Speaker 5: intimidate them and to make sure that the information they

531
00:33:34,160 --> 00:33:36,800
Speaker 5: have doesn't make it into the right channel. So that's

532
00:33:36,840 --> 00:33:40,080
Speaker 5: one of the big challenges of this story and why

533
00:33:40,120 --> 00:33:43,560
Speaker 5: so many people have approached it and struggled to get

534
00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:46,920
Speaker 5: to answer this is because, unlike a normal crime in

535
00:33:46,960 --> 00:33:51,600
Speaker 5: the US, people are often scared for good reason to

536
00:33:51,680 --> 00:33:52,920
Speaker 5: come forward and share what they know.

537
00:33:53,480 --> 00:33:57,000
Speaker 3: And I bring this up, Oz, because you spoke with

538
00:33:58,080 --> 00:34:01,440
Speaker 3: at least one FBI agent that I've heard on the podcast,

539
00:34:01,440 --> 00:34:06,440
Speaker 3: Hardrick Crawford Jr. Who was I believe the FBI special

540
00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:09,600
Speaker 3: agent in charge of El Paso in around that two

541
00:34:09,600 --> 00:34:12,520
Speaker 3: thousand and one time and a little bit after. And

542
00:34:14,239 --> 00:34:18,319
Speaker 3: you know, he says some things in the show that

543
00:34:19,040 --> 00:34:22,080
Speaker 3: at least that I've heard thus far that are really disturbing,

544
00:34:22,160 --> 00:34:25,800
Speaker 3: specifically talking about how easy it is to kill someone

545
00:34:25,840 --> 00:34:28,239
Speaker 3: and bury them and hide a body in Warrez in

546
00:34:28,280 --> 00:34:31,640
Speaker 3: the surrounding areas. But you know, just listening to him

547
00:34:31,719 --> 00:34:38,920
Speaker 3: talk about these murders and what's happening, and knowing that

548
00:34:38,960 --> 00:34:43,760
Speaker 3: the FBI is involved and does breach across the border

549
00:34:43,800 --> 00:34:47,160
Speaker 3: there for a lot of different cases, but in this

550
00:34:47,200 --> 00:34:49,920
Speaker 3: one in particular, they were at least doing some work

551
00:34:50,080 --> 00:34:52,719
Speaker 3: on it. I guess my big question to you is

552
00:34:54,440 --> 00:34:56,680
Speaker 3: how much of a hand did the FBI have in

553
00:34:56,760 --> 00:35:00,279
Speaker 3: investigations here if I mean, we know they had, but

554
00:35:00,440 --> 00:35:03,200
Speaker 3: how large of a role did the FBI play?

555
00:35:04,040 --> 00:35:04,360
Speaker 4: Well.

556
00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:09,560
Speaker 5: They were actually three attempts the FBI made to involve

557
00:35:09,600 --> 00:35:13,239
Speaker 5: themselves in solving these crimes. The first time was in

558
00:35:13,280 --> 00:35:16,960
Speaker 5: the mid nineties when Robert Wrestler, the serial killer expert,

559
00:35:17,040 --> 00:35:20,960
Speaker 5: came down and he came motivated in large part by

560
00:35:21,320 --> 00:35:25,480
Speaker 5: wanting to get more data for his VISCAP Violent Criminal

561
00:35:25,640 --> 00:35:29,680
Speaker 5: Apprehension program. He came because he wanted to do a

562
00:35:29,680 --> 00:35:33,080
Speaker 5: better job of solving crimes in the US. Then you

563
00:35:33,160 --> 00:35:37,280
Speaker 5: had Frank Evans, who ran an operation called Operation Plaza

564
00:35:37,400 --> 00:35:41,600
Speaker 5: Sweep in the late nineties that was a full on

565
00:35:41,760 --> 00:35:47,000
Speaker 5: FBI operation in Mexico to exsume bodies male bodies from

566
00:35:47,040 --> 00:35:50,759
Speaker 5: the deserts surrounding Huarez believed to be American citizens in

567
00:35:50,840 --> 00:35:56,120
Speaker 5: order to secure an indictment against the cartel leader Coreofuentes,

568
00:35:56,480 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 5: in order to get an extradition request, which they were

569
00:35:59,200 --> 00:36:02,520
Speaker 5: successful in doing. Evans said, at that point, we offer

570
00:36:02,560 --> 00:36:06,520
Speaker 5: the local quire's police assistance with solving the murders of women.

571
00:36:07,160 --> 00:36:09,200
Speaker 5: But he was very explicit in saying that the FBI

572
00:36:09,280 --> 00:36:12,000
Speaker 5: made that offer because they wanted to test out how

573
00:36:12,040 --> 00:36:16,320
Speaker 5: trustworthy the local police were, and it turned out they weren't.

574
00:36:17,200 --> 00:36:20,800
Speaker 5: Then you have Hardrick Crawford, who comes along in the

575
00:36:20,840 --> 00:36:25,799
Speaker 5: early two thousands, and, unlike Wrestler and Evans, who had

576
00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:31,880
Speaker 5: a clear United States interest motivated reason to engage themselves,

577
00:36:31,880 --> 00:36:36,280
Speaker 5: in this case, Hardrick says, I had a mission from God.

578
00:36:36,800 --> 00:36:40,040
Speaker 5: I had a higher calling than the US Constitution. I

579
00:36:40,080 --> 00:36:44,080
Speaker 5: have my own daughters. It was my moral duty to

580
00:36:44,160 --> 00:36:47,239
Speaker 5: find out what was happening to these women. And his

581
00:36:47,320 --> 00:36:51,279
Speaker 5: story is one of the most interesting plot lines in

582
00:36:51,320 --> 00:36:55,880
Speaker 5: the podcast. We come to it later on, but safe

583
00:36:55,920 --> 00:37:00,120
Speaker 5: to say when law enforcement officials start to follow something

584
00:37:00,400 --> 00:37:04,320
Speaker 5: that they view as being high than the constitution, chaos

585
00:37:04,360 --> 00:37:05,320
Speaker 5: sometimes ensues.

586
00:37:05,800 --> 00:37:08,240
Speaker 2: Okay, we're going to talk more with Oz, but first

587
00:37:08,320 --> 00:37:18,960
Speaker 2: a quick word from our sponsor, right, and we're back

588
00:37:19,160 --> 00:37:24,040
Speaker 2: with oswall lotionan of Forgotten Women of Warez. Back to

589
00:37:24,080 --> 00:37:26,719
Speaker 2: a specific point about the story, and this is all

590
00:37:26,800 --> 00:37:29,319
Speaker 2: None of this is spoiler territory. It's all covered pretty

591
00:37:29,400 --> 00:37:33,040
Speaker 2: quickly in the first episode. But I think it's fascinating

592
00:37:33,160 --> 00:37:38,080
Speaker 2: how little was known at the time about the cartels.

593
00:37:38,640 --> 00:37:41,480
Speaker 4: Kind of oh gosh.

594
00:37:41,520 --> 00:37:44,279
Speaker 2: Trademark, I guess, or signature for a lot of this

595
00:37:44,480 --> 00:37:47,480
Speaker 2: violence that we maybe now take for granted. But some

596
00:37:47,560 --> 00:37:52,000
Speaker 2: of the methods of the killings and some of the

597
00:37:52,080 --> 00:37:55,879
Speaker 2: kind of calling cards really did have almost an occulted

598
00:37:56,520 --> 00:37:59,319
Speaker 2: kind of you know, feel about them, or some sort

599
00:37:59,320 --> 00:38:03,040
Speaker 2: of ritualist stick, you know, qualities. Can you speak to

600
00:38:03,080 --> 00:38:04,680
Speaker 2: that a little bit about it and about how that

601
00:38:04,719 --> 00:38:08,080
Speaker 2: in particular maybe muddy the waters and then made it,

602
00:38:08,360 --> 00:38:10,120
Speaker 2: you know, be a big part of that search for

603
00:38:10,120 --> 00:38:13,520
Speaker 2: a serial killer as opposed to realizing perhaps that this

604
00:38:13,719 --> 00:38:15,040
Speaker 2: might be something else.

605
00:38:16,000 --> 00:38:17,640
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a great question.

606
00:38:17,800 --> 00:38:21,040
Speaker 5: I mean, bear in mind, you know, these crimes in

607
00:38:21,080 --> 00:38:24,440
Speaker 5: the nineties, this is not long after the Satanic panic

608
00:38:25,200 --> 00:38:28,359
Speaker 5: in the US, and so you know, I think there's

609
00:38:28,960 --> 00:38:33,320
Speaker 5: a tendency in any case to read on to unsolved

610
00:38:33,440 --> 00:38:38,680
Speaker 5: murders and horrific murders some kind of satanic or ritual element.

611
00:38:39,840 --> 00:38:44,120
Speaker 5: But in fact, in the case of these murders, it

612
00:38:44,160 --> 00:38:48,759
Speaker 5: does seem like they were ritualized. There were strange marks

613
00:38:48,960 --> 00:38:52,160
Speaker 5: left on the bodies of the victims. There was this

614
00:38:52,280 --> 00:38:56,799
Speaker 5: use of shoelaces to bind the wrists, and the way

615
00:38:56,800 --> 00:39:01,240
Speaker 5: in which the women's bodies were left was not random,

616
00:39:01,280 --> 00:39:07,480
Speaker 5: They were arranged in certain dehumanizing ways. And so one

617
00:39:07,520 --> 00:39:10,120
Speaker 5: of the early hypotheses was indeed that there was some

618
00:39:10,200 --> 00:39:15,920
Speaker 5: kind of satanic or ritual cult killing these women. And

619
00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:20,160
Speaker 5: one of the phenomena in Mexico has been the rise

620
00:39:20,200 --> 00:39:25,000
Speaker 5: of this interest in Santauerte the Holy Death, which is

621
00:39:25,239 --> 00:39:30,439
Speaker 5: a sort of religion esque which sort of worships death.

622
00:39:30,480 --> 00:39:32,400
Speaker 5: And people were wondering, you know, is it possible these

623
00:39:32,400 --> 00:39:38,960
Speaker 5: are human sacrifices that most of our sources dismissed fairly quickly.

624
00:39:39,520 --> 00:39:43,480
Speaker 5: But the idea of ritual killings, ritual killings for the

625
00:39:43,520 --> 00:39:48,040
Speaker 5: purposes of hazing or bonding, or creating loyalty or creating

626
00:39:48,120 --> 00:39:51,520
Speaker 5: codes of silence, that was considered to be a much

627
00:39:51,600 --> 00:39:56,200
Speaker 5: more realistic avenue of investigation. And in fact, when Wrestler

628
00:39:56,280 --> 00:39:58,440
Speaker 5: was there from the FBI, he was there with another

629
00:39:58,480 --> 00:40:03,800
Speaker 5: forensic criminology called Candyscropic, and it came at one of

630
00:40:03,840 --> 00:40:07,560
Speaker 5: these crime scenes, this woman left in an utterly dehumanizing way,

631
00:40:07,600 --> 00:40:09,160
Speaker 5: and she turned to restaurant and said, have you ever

632
00:40:09,200 --> 00:40:10,680
Speaker 5: seen anything like this in your career?

633
00:40:11,360 --> 00:40:12,040
Speaker 4: And he said no.

634
00:40:12,520 --> 00:40:16,040
Speaker 5: And what they started to speculate was that these women

635
00:40:16,400 --> 00:40:20,239
Speaker 5: were being sacrificed by some kind of group in order

636
00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:22,880
Speaker 5: to achieve purposes which at the time weren't clear.

637
00:40:23,160 --> 00:40:27,240
Speaker 2: Because there were things like markings, triangles and various symbols

638
00:40:27,239 --> 00:40:30,560
Speaker 2: carved into the bodies that have this you know, feel

639
00:40:31,040 --> 00:40:33,400
Speaker 2: of some sort of ritual or some sort of blood

640
00:40:33,400 --> 00:40:36,560
Speaker 2: sacrifice or what have you. And again don't want to

641
00:40:36,560 --> 00:40:39,560
Speaker 2: get into spoiler territories about the story, but when did

642
00:40:39,560 --> 00:40:42,759
Speaker 2: it become clear that it was something different, or at

643
00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:45,400
Speaker 2: least when you know, in your coverage of the story,

644
00:40:45,520 --> 00:40:49,320
Speaker 2: in your following these folks that have lived this literally

645
00:40:49,360 --> 00:40:52,200
Speaker 2: on the ground and in research and reporting for years,

646
00:40:52,280 --> 00:40:54,319
Speaker 2: when did it become clear to you that what was

647
00:40:54,400 --> 00:40:57,000
Speaker 2: really going on or that maybe that was barking up

648
00:40:57,000 --> 00:40:58,000
Speaker 2: the wrong tree a little bit.

649
00:40:58,600 --> 00:41:01,440
Speaker 5: Well, so I think it's the mass graves that really

650
00:41:01,880 --> 00:41:05,040
Speaker 5: clarify for people what's going on, because you know, young

651
00:41:05,040 --> 00:41:09,200
Speaker 5: women are going missing apparently following a pattern being found

652
00:41:09,239 --> 00:41:13,400
Speaker 5: in the desert on the outskirts of Huarez with characteristic trauma.

653
00:41:13,960 --> 00:41:17,759
Speaker 5: But nineteen ninety five, nineteen ninety six, two thousand and one,

654
00:41:18,040 --> 00:41:21,560
Speaker 5: and twenty twelve, these mass graves of women who have

655
00:41:21,560 --> 00:41:24,080
Speaker 5: been killed in the same way are discovered and at

656
00:41:24,080 --> 00:41:27,279
Speaker 5: that point it becomes impossible for anybody to argue that

657
00:41:27,320 --> 00:41:30,760
Speaker 5: these crimes are connected. These are not victims of random violence.

658
00:41:31,239 --> 00:41:36,320
Speaker 5: And each of these times there's been a great hope that, okay,

659
00:41:36,480 --> 00:41:39,160
Speaker 5: the authorities have to acknowledge there's something going on here

660
00:41:39,160 --> 00:41:44,279
Speaker 5: which is connected, and a belief in the community that

661
00:41:44,440 --> 00:41:47,840
Speaker 5: although this is terrible, we must have hit rock bottom

662
00:41:48,400 --> 00:41:52,200
Speaker 5: after this, no more, this can't continue. We will find

663
00:41:52,239 --> 00:41:55,520
Speaker 5: the real culprits. And indeed, after each of the mass

664
00:41:55,560 --> 00:41:59,359
Speaker 5: graves were discovered, somebody took the fall. In nineteen ninety five,

665
00:41:59,400 --> 00:42:03,640
Speaker 5: it was an a chemist called Abdel Latif Sharif Sharif

666
00:42:04,040 --> 00:42:06,760
Speaker 5: who had self deported from the United States under threat

667
00:42:06,800 --> 00:42:10,279
Speaker 5: of being actually deported to Egypt, and had decided to

668
00:42:10,320 --> 00:42:12,880
Speaker 5: go and live in Juarez where he could continue working

669
00:42:12,880 --> 00:42:15,680
Speaker 5: for his US employer but not be subject to the

670
00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:18,719
Speaker 5: US law. And so he was a big partier in

671
00:42:18,760 --> 00:42:21,400
Speaker 5: downtown Huarez, and he had these rape charges against him

672
00:42:21,400 --> 00:42:23,839
Speaker 5: in the US. When the first mass grave of women

673
00:42:23,880 --> 00:42:27,880
Speaker 5: is discovered, he's taken in and declared as the serial killer.

674
00:42:28,560 --> 00:42:29,480
Speaker 4: There's one problem.

675
00:42:29,840 --> 00:42:33,000
Speaker 5: In nineteen ninety six, another mass grave of women is discovered,

676
00:42:33,360 --> 00:42:37,759
Speaker 5: so as briefly a bit of a concern for the authorities. Well,

677
00:42:37,800 --> 00:42:39,759
Speaker 5: how do we explain this? And what they come up

678
00:42:39,800 --> 00:42:43,120
Speaker 5: with is that a gang called the Rebels is being

679
00:42:43,200 --> 00:42:47,239
Speaker 5: paid by Sharif to murder women on his behalf in

680
00:42:47,360 --> 00:42:50,319
Speaker 5: order to attest his innocence, and that he's demanding their

681
00:42:50,440 --> 00:42:54,600
Speaker 5: underwear as evidence from his jail cell. This sounds pretty

682
00:42:54,640 --> 00:42:57,440
Speaker 5: preposterous and lurid, but I mean this was the official line.

683
00:42:57,680 --> 00:43:01,040
Speaker 5: Two thousand and one comes along, another mass grave is discovered.

684
00:43:02,360 --> 00:43:05,040
Speaker 5: A journalist to ask the Attorney General at a press

685
00:43:05,080 --> 00:43:08,400
Speaker 5: conference is it possible Sharif is behind these crimes as well?

686
00:43:08,880 --> 00:43:11,280
Speaker 5: And the Attorney General says it's something we're looking into.

687
00:43:11,800 --> 00:43:14,200
Speaker 5: That's not the line they end up going with. In fact,

688
00:43:14,239 --> 00:43:18,560
Speaker 5: two bus drivers take the fall this time. It turns

689
00:43:18,560 --> 00:43:23,839
Speaker 5: out they've been tortured with cattle prods, suffocation, beatings into

690
00:43:23,880 --> 00:43:27,680
Speaker 5: confessing to the crimes. And it's actually this scapegoating, this

691
00:43:27,800 --> 00:43:33,520
Speaker 5: third scapegoating that sets off this process where a lawyer

692
00:43:33,560 --> 00:43:35,040
Speaker 5: takes on their case.

693
00:43:36,280 --> 00:43:38,840
Speaker 4: And through his investigation.

694
00:43:38,600 --> 00:43:41,160
Speaker 5: We start to get some answers about what's really happening,

695
00:43:41,520 --> 00:43:44,040
Speaker 5: But it leaves another trail of death in its wake,

696
00:43:44,520 --> 00:43:45,600
Speaker 5: and not just of women.

697
00:43:45,680 --> 00:43:46,440
Speaker 4: Of men as well.

698
00:43:48,000 --> 00:43:53,759
Speaker 1: And while we are on the subject of mass graves,

699
00:43:54,040 --> 00:43:58,720
Speaker 1: one very important and I think profoundly disturbing thing here

700
00:43:59,440 --> 00:44:02,759
Speaker 1: is if we do not ultimately know.

701
00:44:04,360 --> 00:44:07,040
Speaker 4: The group or the people.

702
00:44:06,800 --> 00:44:10,319
Speaker 1: Responsible for these murders, and we do not ultimately know

703
00:44:11,120 --> 00:44:15,080
Speaker 1: their motive, that it means we also do not ultimately

704
00:44:15,200 --> 00:44:21,719
Speaker 1: know how many victims exist. And the pattern that you're

705
00:44:21,760 --> 00:44:26,920
Speaker 1: describing of finding mass graves and then you know, this

706
00:44:27,120 --> 00:44:35,200
Speaker 1: rush to find some I hesitate to say necessarily scapegoat

707
00:44:35,200 --> 00:44:40,719
Speaker 1: because Abdul Latif Sharif was a horrible person, clearly a

708
00:44:40,719 --> 00:44:45,960
Speaker 1: horrible person, but there's this pattern on law enforcements. Part

709
00:44:46,040 --> 00:44:48,279
Speaker 1: of Okay, we found a grave, let's find a way

710
00:44:48,320 --> 00:44:51,239
Speaker 1: to explain it. Oh, we found another grave. Let's find

711
00:44:51,239 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 1: a way to explain it. And what I think is,

712
00:44:55,400 --> 00:44:59,239
Speaker 1: you know, most troubling here and something that I feel

713
00:44:59,320 --> 00:45:03,000
Speaker 1: obligated to ask you about, is is it possible that

714
00:45:03,040 --> 00:45:06,400
Speaker 1: there are more mass grave sites out there that have

715
00:45:06,480 --> 00:45:09,920
Speaker 1: yet to be discovered? I mean, is is that like

716
00:45:10,040 --> 00:45:13,040
Speaker 1: within the realm of probability, is it within the realm

717
00:45:13,080 --> 00:45:17,000
Speaker 1: of plausibility? Or where does this leave us?

718
00:45:17,640 --> 00:45:21,160
Speaker 5: I mean to the early part of your question about culpability. Actually,

719
00:45:22,080 --> 00:45:26,960
Speaker 5: there is a witness to these murders who tells an

720
00:45:27,000 --> 00:45:29,920
Speaker 5: American journalist called Alfredo Corcallo.

721
00:45:30,920 --> 00:45:34,239
Speaker 4: What he's seen, why these women are being killed.

722
00:45:34,480 --> 00:45:37,640
Speaker 5: And so we do get to that reveal in the podcast,

723
00:45:37,760 --> 00:45:39,680
Speaker 5: and that kind of sets off the second half of

724
00:45:39,719 --> 00:45:43,360
Speaker 5: the podcast. So there are some answers, but they're not

725
00:45:43,480 --> 00:45:47,440
Speaker 5: answers which the officials ever take seriously. In Huirez and

726
00:45:47,520 --> 00:45:49,759
Speaker 5: so your question is a very good one. Are there

727
00:45:49,760 --> 00:45:51,000
Speaker 5: more mass graves in the desert?

728
00:45:51,640 --> 00:45:52,160
Speaker 4: Very likely?

729
00:45:52,239 --> 00:45:56,120
Speaker 5: Yes, certainly, many many more bodies that were never found.

730
00:45:57,320 --> 00:46:00,480
Speaker 5: One of the most interesting things for me about this

731
00:46:00,640 --> 00:46:05,399
Speaker 5: reporting slightly adjacent to the story in two thousand and one,

732
00:46:05,719 --> 00:46:10,600
Speaker 5: After the mass grave is discovered, the authorities fail to

733
00:46:11,000 --> 00:46:14,360
Speaker 5: identify the victims before they declare the case is closed,

734
00:46:15,480 --> 00:46:20,879
Speaker 5: and so the families never have closure. They never really believe, Okay,

735
00:46:21,040 --> 00:46:24,160
Speaker 5: was this my daughter? Was not my daughter? So Gario Flores,

736
00:46:24,360 --> 00:46:30,520
Speaker 5: who we mentioned, she gets exhumed three times because there's

737
00:46:30,560 --> 00:46:34,279
Speaker 5: no clarity ever for the family on whether it's her.

738
00:46:34,840 --> 00:46:38,000
Speaker 5: Once the grave next to her is incorrectly exhumed and

739
00:46:38,120 --> 00:46:40,000
Speaker 5: a man's body is brought in for analysis.

740
00:46:40,040 --> 00:46:41,359
Speaker 4: I mean, this is a.

741
00:46:41,360 --> 00:46:47,719
Speaker 5: Level of either incompetence or corruption, which is quite quite staggering.

742
00:46:48,320 --> 00:46:52,879
Speaker 5: So a team called the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team come

743
00:46:53,040 --> 00:46:56,040
Speaker 5: in two thousand and one at the request of various activists.

744
00:46:56,680 --> 00:47:00,080
Speaker 5: They have experience in identifying bodies from the end of

745
00:47:00,120 --> 00:47:03,040
Speaker 5: the regime in Argentina when there were many mass graves

746
00:47:03,080 --> 00:47:07,400
Speaker 5: and many families looking for answers, and this woman, Mercedes Dorretti,

747
00:47:07,480 --> 00:47:11,319
Speaker 5: who's a MacArthur Genius grant holder, basically founded this team

748
00:47:11,320 --> 00:47:15,239
Speaker 5: of anthropologists to identify bodies. They go to Huaire's in

749
00:47:15,239 --> 00:47:19,080
Speaker 5: two thousand and one to try and finally, using DNA techniques,

750
00:47:19,520 --> 00:47:23,239
Speaker 5: answer who these eight women definitively in this grave are.

751
00:47:24,120 --> 00:47:27,480
Speaker 5: And as part of their work they start analyzing other bodies.

752
00:47:27,800 --> 00:47:30,040
Speaker 5: And what Mercedes Doretti told me was this is the

753
00:47:30,040 --> 00:47:33,800
Speaker 5: first time in her career that she would analyze bodies

754
00:47:34,440 --> 00:47:38,920
Speaker 5: and there would be no matches from the local area

755
00:47:39,239 --> 00:47:43,040
Speaker 5: of people who had missing persons in their family, so

756
00:47:43,600 --> 00:47:46,680
Speaker 5: she had to In the end, often the missing person

757
00:47:46,719 --> 00:47:48,560
Speaker 5: would be found in Huias, the body would be found

758
00:47:48,560 --> 00:47:51,680
Speaker 5: in Ahuires, but the family would be eight hundred miles

759
00:47:51,719 --> 00:47:54,440
Speaker 5: away because the person was a migrant. And of course

760
00:47:54,719 --> 00:47:56,920
Speaker 5: in the early two thousands in Huires. This was the

761
00:47:56,920 --> 00:47:59,560
Speaker 5: first time she'd ever seen that in her career, and

762
00:47:59,600 --> 00:48:03,400
Speaker 5: now it's common their bodies all along the US Mexico

763
00:48:03,480 --> 00:48:06,520
Speaker 5: border from Central America belonging to people from Central America

764
00:48:07,160 --> 00:48:10,239
Speaker 5: other places in the world whose family maybe thousands of

765
00:48:10,280 --> 00:48:10,920
Speaker 5: miles away.

766
00:48:11,239 --> 00:48:11,720
Speaker 4: But this.

767
00:48:13,400 --> 00:48:16,400
Speaker 5: That the technique of identifying bodies and matching them to

768
00:48:16,480 --> 00:48:20,359
Speaker 5: people a long way away began in Huarez because there

769
00:48:20,400 --> 00:48:23,040
Speaker 5: was so much migrant labor into the factory jobs, and

770
00:48:23,080 --> 00:48:26,600
Speaker 5: so that really has foreshadowed what's happening now on the

771
00:48:26,600 --> 00:48:30,719
Speaker 5: border with all of these tragic deaths and families who

772
00:48:30,760 --> 00:48:33,120
Speaker 5: don't get closure, who may live thousands of miles away.

773
00:48:33,840 --> 00:48:37,160
Speaker 3: You know, we're talking about the lives of these women.

774
00:48:37,800 --> 00:48:41,480
Speaker 3: A lot of it is a gruesome end that their

775
00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:44,600
Speaker 3: lives met. But this show, I think is pretty firmly

776
00:48:44,680 --> 00:48:49,319
Speaker 3: set on the life lived by these women and what

777
00:48:49,480 --> 00:48:52,880
Speaker 3: they were going to survive for themselves and their families.

778
00:48:53,520 --> 00:48:58,080
Speaker 3: And in an early episode in the show, there's a

779
00:48:58,120 --> 00:49:03,120
Speaker 3: moment where I believe it's Sigaria's mother is talking about

780
00:49:03,160 --> 00:49:07,080
Speaker 3: when her daughter came home excited to tell her mom

781
00:49:08,200 --> 00:49:11,000
Speaker 3: that the company has taken out life insurance on her

782
00:49:11,239 --> 00:49:15,000
Speaker 3: and if anything happens to her, the family, you mom,

783
00:49:15,120 --> 00:49:17,520
Speaker 3: will will get money. The family will get a lot

784
00:49:17,520 --> 00:49:23,719
Speaker 3: of money if something happens to me. And you know

785
00:49:23,800 --> 00:49:26,920
Speaker 3: she's she and her father and her other siblings are

786
00:49:26,960 --> 00:49:30,480
Speaker 3: all working in this factory, and they're living in this

787
00:49:30,640 --> 00:49:34,520
Speaker 3: small town where their home was, you know, originally built

788
00:49:34,560 --> 00:49:38,120
Speaker 3: by the trash, like you said, from across the border,

789
00:49:39,800 --> 00:49:42,719
Speaker 3: and I believe it is five family members working in

790
00:49:43,280 --> 00:49:48,799
Speaker 3: this factory at that point. Just imagining that five of

791
00:49:48,840 --> 00:49:53,560
Speaker 3: your family members could be working at a factory and

792
00:49:53,600 --> 00:49:57,200
Speaker 3: you can still barely afford to live while you're making

793
00:49:57,239 --> 00:49:59,920
Speaker 3: goods that are going to be shipped across the borders.

794
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:03,200
Speaker 3: It's a tough thing for me personally too to understand,

795
00:50:03,239 --> 00:50:06,000
Speaker 3: because of my privileged life that I live here in

796
00:50:06,040 --> 00:50:08,160
Speaker 3: the United States, and because of who I am and

797
00:50:08,239 --> 00:50:13,680
Speaker 3: what I look like. I wonder if these families have

798
00:50:14,840 --> 00:50:18,120
Speaker 3: you know, they obviously haven't been able to find full

799
00:50:18,160 --> 00:50:21,440
Speaker 3: closure because of everything you just talked about, Oz, but

800
00:50:21,520 --> 00:50:23,879
Speaker 3: I wonder if they're being taken care of in any

801
00:50:23,880 --> 00:50:27,080
Speaker 3: way by these companies that you know, maybe a lot

802
00:50:27,120 --> 00:50:30,480
Speaker 3: of these victims were a part of or by some

803
00:50:30,600 --> 00:50:32,400
Speaker 3: other groups, like what are what are there. What are

804
00:50:32,400 --> 00:50:35,799
Speaker 3: their lives like now, the families who have had such

805
00:50:35,880 --> 00:50:37,600
Speaker 3: loss in their lives.

806
00:50:37,840 --> 00:50:41,839
Speaker 5: I'm sorry to say that they're difficult. They're very difficult.

807
00:50:42,920 --> 00:50:50,520
Speaker 5: Often that often the mothers become tireless advocates for for justice.

808
00:50:51,280 --> 00:50:55,480
Speaker 5: There's an amazing energy and passion in the protest movement

809
00:50:55,520 --> 00:51:00,040
Speaker 5: in Huaires led by mothers and and and indeed, you

810
00:51:00,120 --> 00:51:04,400
Speaker 5: know those demands for justice. Although they haven't always answered

811
00:51:04,440 --> 00:51:08,560
Speaker 5: individual questions, there is some sense of the power of

812
00:51:08,640 --> 00:51:12,839
Speaker 5: collective action, and conditions in the factories and in those

813
00:51:12,840 --> 00:51:19,280
Speaker 5: communities have improved under pressure from the mother's Paola Flora's

814
00:51:19,280 --> 00:51:23,560
Speaker 5: Sagaria's mother founded a kindergarten in their neighborhood so that

815
00:51:23,600 --> 00:51:26,719
Speaker 5: the local children could get more of an education. It's

816
00:51:26,719 --> 00:51:29,719
Speaker 5: called a Saguaria of Flora's Kindergarten, and so she told us,

817
00:51:30,160 --> 00:51:32,080
Speaker 5: it makes me happy that every child in the neighborhood

818
00:51:32,120 --> 00:51:36,879
Speaker 5: graduates with my daughter's name on their diploma. And it's

819
00:51:36,960 --> 00:51:41,239
Speaker 5: tempting to find a lot of solace in the individual's

820
00:51:41,239 --> 00:51:44,680
Speaker 5: struggle against their circumstances. But the reality is the conditions

821
00:51:44,880 --> 00:51:50,120
Speaker 5: are very poor. There still these factories which manufactured goods

822
00:51:50,120 --> 00:51:52,879
Speaker 5: that we will use continue to pay people less than

823
00:51:52,880 --> 00:51:56,040
Speaker 5: ten dollars a day, when the similar job on the

824
00:51:56,200 --> 00:51:58,000
Speaker 5: two miles away on the other side of the border

825
00:51:58,040 --> 00:52:01,080
Speaker 5: would bring in eight to ten dollars an hour, And

826
00:52:01,120 --> 00:52:04,800
Speaker 5: that in itself creates the conditions of vulnerability and violence.

827
00:52:05,120 --> 00:52:08,359
Speaker 5: And in fact, during the COVID crisis, the American ambassador

828
00:52:08,960 --> 00:52:13,080
Speaker 5: put great pressure on Mexico not to close the factories

829
00:52:13,120 --> 00:52:17,080
Speaker 5: the Meculadoras because they're creating things like blood pressure cuffs

830
00:52:17,120 --> 00:52:20,399
Speaker 5: and medical gloves and supplies. We needed to keep our

831
00:52:20,480 --> 00:52:25,239
Speaker 5: citizens safe during COVID, And of course there were outbreaks

832
00:52:25,320 --> 00:52:28,879
Speaker 5: and deaths which ravaged these factories, but the workers were

833
00:52:28,880 --> 00:52:30,600
Speaker 5: being told they have to keep coming to work. And

834
00:52:30,640 --> 00:52:35,799
Speaker 5: so people often say, other murders still going, and the

835
00:52:35,840 --> 00:52:38,799
Speaker 5: answer is, well, you know, the last mass grave of

836
00:52:38,800 --> 00:52:41,680
Speaker 5: women was discovered in twenty twelve, which is eight years ago.

837
00:52:42,840 --> 00:52:47,120
Speaker 5: But the people who work in these factories remain very

838
00:52:47,200 --> 00:52:50,640
Speaker 5: vulnerable and the conditions haven't improved very much. And in fact,

839
00:52:50,920 --> 00:52:52,759
Speaker 5: there's a second generation of women who were born in

840
00:52:52,840 --> 00:52:57,520
Speaker 5: Juarez and who are perhaps more politically conscious than their

841
00:52:57,560 --> 00:53:00,880
Speaker 5: parents were. There's one protest group called the Daughters of

842
00:53:00,880 --> 00:53:04,080
Speaker 5: the Maquilla Workers, and one of the young women who

843
00:53:04,120 --> 00:53:06,240
Speaker 5: was part of that protest group, and a local artist

844
00:53:06,640 --> 00:53:10,360
Speaker 5: called Isabelle Cabagnes de Latore. She was cycling through downtown

845
00:53:10,440 --> 00:53:14,239
Speaker 5: Juarez in January twenty twenty and she was shot in

846
00:53:14,280 --> 00:53:18,640
Speaker 5: the head and her murder is unsolved. And so this

847
00:53:19,560 --> 00:53:25,200
Speaker 5: place of vulnerability and gender violence, and you know, a

848
00:53:25,200 --> 00:53:29,280
Speaker 5: locus really of rapacious consumption. I mean refrigerator parts, steering wheels,

849
00:53:29,760 --> 00:53:32,720
Speaker 5: you know, medical gloves, their manufacturing huaires and of course

850
00:53:33,000 --> 00:53:37,000
Speaker 5: it's where cocaine and other drugs come through. So unfortunately

851
00:53:37,040 --> 00:53:42,240
Speaker 5: our consumption habits have a price, and often it's thousands

852
00:53:42,280 --> 00:53:45,040
Speaker 5: of miles away. But what makes Huairez so arresting as

853
00:53:45,080 --> 00:53:47,000
Speaker 5: a place is that you can see it from the

854
00:53:47,080 --> 00:53:52,640
Speaker 5: United States. You can see the consequences of certain choices

855
00:53:52,680 --> 00:53:56,280
Speaker 5: we make playing out within sight of where you stand.

856
00:53:56,320 --> 00:53:59,000
Speaker 5: And that's really coming back to the beginning of your

857
00:53:59,080 --> 00:54:01,120
Speaker 5: question about why going interest in this story. I think

858
00:54:01,120 --> 00:54:04,480
Speaker 5: it's a place where you can understand the consequences of

859
00:54:05,480 --> 00:54:08,959
Speaker 5: institutions and choices and borders in a very very very

860
00:54:09,080 --> 00:54:10,040
Speaker 5: very immediate way.

861
00:54:10,360 --> 00:54:14,680
Speaker 2: No, it's a really really good point because people think about, oh,

862
00:54:14,840 --> 00:54:18,360
Speaker 2: if I choose to do cocaine, that's a personal choice.

863
00:54:18,520 --> 00:54:22,840
Speaker 2: If I choose to contribute to capitalism, that's a personal choice,

864
00:54:22,840 --> 00:54:25,279
Speaker 2: and that's not affecting anybody but me. It's something that

865
00:54:25,280 --> 00:54:28,040
Speaker 2: I'm doing. But no, it shows there are ripple effects

866
00:54:28,080 --> 00:54:30,680
Speaker 2: to the choices that we make, and this is part

867
00:54:30,719 --> 00:54:32,959
Speaker 2: of that. And I think you do a fantastic job

868
00:54:33,000 --> 00:54:34,880
Speaker 2: of I mean, it's not like a it's not a

869
00:54:34,880 --> 00:54:37,520
Speaker 2: political show, but it is a show about experience and

870
00:54:37,520 --> 00:54:39,360
Speaker 2: about the lives of the folks that are caught up

871
00:54:39,360 --> 00:54:42,279
Speaker 2: in these systems, and I think that's what makes it

872
00:54:42,280 --> 00:54:43,160
Speaker 2: all the more powerful.

873
00:54:43,719 --> 00:54:44,440
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely.

874
00:54:44,480 --> 00:54:46,799
Speaker 5: But I also, I mean there's a big, you know,

875
00:54:46,880 --> 00:54:51,000
Speaker 5: ethical consumerism movement in the US, and I think that's

876
00:54:51,080 --> 00:54:54,600
Speaker 5: very valuable and important. But really these are like systems

877
00:54:54,600 --> 00:54:58,920
Speaker 5: and policy problems, not individual choice problems. I mean, of

878
00:54:59,000 --> 00:55:00,840
Speaker 5: course we can all be more at in our actions,

879
00:55:00,880 --> 00:55:04,920
Speaker 5: but a lot of the responsibility for you know, cartel violence,

880
00:55:05,400 --> 00:55:10,160
Speaker 5: the drug problems in Latin America, working conditions in huires

881
00:55:10,200 --> 00:55:13,879
Speaker 5: that they come from very conscious policy decisions, and one

882
00:55:13,960 --> 00:55:16,200
Speaker 5: of them interesting We had a very interesting interview with

883
00:55:16,239 --> 00:55:19,880
Speaker 5: a historian called Oscar Martinez who said, in the sixties,

884
00:55:20,440 --> 00:55:23,440
Speaker 5: and you know, there were factories in Singapore and Taiwan

885
00:55:23,520 --> 00:55:27,000
Speaker 5: doing the same thing which happens in Huaires, but the

886
00:55:27,040 --> 00:55:30,520
Speaker 5: wage increases in those places has have been multiples in Huaires,

887
00:55:30,560 --> 00:55:34,680
Speaker 5: they say the same. Why is that was because Mexico

888
00:55:34,760 --> 00:55:37,040
Speaker 5: is close to the United States, so the United States

889
00:55:37,040 --> 00:55:41,200
Speaker 5: can enforce intellectual property and patent infringements much more effectively,

890
00:55:41,600 --> 00:55:45,080
Speaker 5: and so the wealth creation of you know, basically what

891
00:55:45,160 --> 00:55:47,520
Speaker 5: we always get angry for China of doing of basically

892
00:55:47,880 --> 00:55:51,200
Speaker 5: manufacturing and then copying the ip that never happened in Mexico.

893
00:55:51,320 --> 00:55:53,840
Speaker 5: So there's this kind of poverty trap which comes with proximity,

894
00:55:53,840 --> 00:55:55,160
Speaker 5: which is very interesting as well.

895
00:55:55,840 --> 00:55:58,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is I mean, at this point we're

896
00:55:58,640 --> 00:56:05,520
Speaker 1: also talking about the power of systems, right, the power

897
00:56:05,560 --> 00:56:13,239
Speaker 1: of institutions, which which affect us profoundly. One one thing

898
00:56:13,320 --> 00:56:17,720
Speaker 1: that I don't want to lose in our conversation here

899
00:56:18,440 --> 00:56:26,280
Speaker 1: is the the concept of the news cycle. To Matt,

900
00:56:26,320 --> 00:56:29,840
Speaker 1: I believe earlier you would ask the question at some

901
00:56:29,960 --> 00:56:35,359
Speaker 1: point about what happens to these to the survivors, right,

902
00:56:35,400 --> 00:56:39,560
Speaker 1: the people left behind after these unspeakable tragedies, which I

903
00:56:39,560 --> 00:56:44,319
Speaker 1: don't think it's hyperbolic to call them that. After these tragedies, Uh,

904
00:56:44,760 --> 00:56:51,320
Speaker 1: what happens to the people who are still living their lives,

905
00:56:51,360 --> 00:56:53,799
Speaker 1: you know, after the news crew and the and the

906
00:56:53,920 --> 00:56:58,600
Speaker 1: cameras cut and the van drives away to the next story.

907
00:56:59,200 --> 00:57:06,920
Speaker 1: That's that's something that I think is profound and is

908
00:57:07,280 --> 00:57:12,880
Speaker 1: tremendously important us because we're talking a lot about things

909
00:57:12,920 --> 00:57:17,480
Speaker 1: that have developed in the nineteen nineties, in the early

910
00:57:17,560 --> 00:57:24,880
Speaker 1: two thousands. Right now, as I'm sure you're aware, many

911
00:57:24,880 --> 00:57:28,520
Speaker 1: of our listeners may not be aware, war as murders

912
00:57:28,520 --> 00:57:33,040
Speaker 1: and war as just overall are up forty two percent

913
00:57:34,040 --> 00:57:39,840
Speaker 1: in March over May. Without you know, I know, we're

914
00:57:39,960 --> 00:57:44,840
Speaker 1: interviewing you in the midst of forgotten women of war

915
00:57:44,920 --> 00:57:48,360
Speaker 1: as coming out and coming to the public eye, but

916
00:57:48,960 --> 00:57:51,080
Speaker 1: or the public ear, I should say, I guess, But

917
00:57:51,960 --> 00:57:57,760
Speaker 1: could you tell us a little bit about the current

918
00:57:58,520 --> 00:58:03,400
Speaker 1: state of war as applied to homicides, as applied to

919
00:58:03,480 --> 00:58:10,000
Speaker 1: this case ibe, what happened after all of the investigations

920
00:58:10,160 --> 00:58:11,280
Speaker 1: over the nineties, in.

921
00:58:11,240 --> 00:58:16,160
Speaker 5: The two thousands, Well, so when Monica began reporting in Juarez,

922
00:58:16,440 --> 00:58:18,880
Speaker 5: she grew up in al Paso, but she began reporting

923
00:58:18,880 --> 00:58:21,640
Speaker 5: in Juarez on the drug war in two thousand and eight,

924
00:58:22,880 --> 00:58:25,880
Speaker 5: and this was that period when the Sinaloa cartel were

925
00:58:25,920 --> 00:58:27,880
Speaker 5: trying to move in on Juarez, and there was basically

926
00:58:27,920 --> 00:58:32,000
Speaker 5: a civil war and people were being butchered and left

927
00:58:32,040 --> 00:58:34,840
Speaker 5: in the most disgusting ways. And it was in that

928
00:58:34,880 --> 00:58:38,600
Speaker 5: context that Monica cut her teeth as a reporter in Juarez.

929
00:58:38,640 --> 00:58:41,520
Speaker 5: And the reporter who introduced me to Monica is called

930
00:58:41,520 --> 00:58:44,720
Speaker 5: Angela Cochega, and she told me very casually, she would

931
00:58:44,760 --> 00:58:47,280
Speaker 5: drive over the border to do a day of reporting,

932
00:58:47,880 --> 00:58:51,120
Speaker 5: come back to the US, arrive at Starbucks, take off

933
00:58:51,120 --> 00:58:54,360
Speaker 5: her shoes and abandon them because they were so soaked

934
00:58:54,360 --> 00:58:56,760
Speaker 5: in blood. And this idea of a war zone in

935
00:58:56,800 --> 00:58:59,160
Speaker 5: your backyard is just very, very hard to get your

936
00:58:59,200 --> 00:59:02,600
Speaker 5: head around. So eight twenty eleven, the drug violence was

937
00:59:02,600 --> 00:59:05,320
Speaker 5: at its absolute height, and homicides were, you know, in

938
00:59:05,360 --> 00:59:09,680
Speaker 5: the three and a half thousand a year, you know area.

939
00:59:11,200 --> 00:59:15,240
Speaker 5: After twenty eleven, things got a bit quieter. In twenty sixteen,

940
00:59:15,560 --> 00:59:19,240
Speaker 5: there was the Choir's tourist board. We're trying to sort

941
00:59:19,280 --> 00:59:23,720
Speaker 5: of encourage travel to Wires again because it was historically

942
00:59:23,720 --> 00:59:26,840
Speaker 5: a place where Americans, much like Havana and Cuba, went

943
00:59:26,880 --> 00:59:28,880
Speaker 5: to go and have fun, to go and drink and

944
00:59:29,000 --> 00:59:32,680
Speaker 5: bring when they're underage and you know, gamble and maybe

945
00:59:32,840 --> 00:59:35,880
Speaker 5: you know all things which are worse than that as well,

946
00:59:36,160 --> 00:59:41,000
Speaker 5: the sex trade. But the Quires was kind of rebuilding

947
00:59:41,040 --> 00:59:47,760
Speaker 5: its reputation and its tourism industry in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen. Unfortunately,

948
00:59:48,640 --> 00:59:52,960
Speaker 5: the homicide rate is starting to approach, you know, the

949
00:59:53,000 --> 00:59:56,400
Speaker 5: three thousand number again based on monthly averages of two

950
00:59:56,480 --> 01:00:00,960
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty people being murdered now, and that's really

951
01:00:01,040 --> 01:00:07,160
Speaker 5: really frightening because it basically indicates that it's happening again.

952
01:00:07,600 --> 01:00:10,880
Speaker 5: Why it's happening is not clear, but generally when there

953
01:00:10,920 --> 01:00:14,320
Speaker 5: are power shifts in the cartels, for example, twenty sixteen

954
01:00:14,400 --> 01:00:17,280
Speaker 5: or twenty seventeen, L Chapo gets extradited to the US

955
01:00:17,320 --> 01:00:21,440
Speaker 5: and is now in ADX Florence Supermax in Colorado. He

956
01:00:21,560 --> 01:00:24,040
Speaker 5: was the most powerful cartel leader in Mexico and now

957
01:00:24,040 --> 01:00:27,400
Speaker 5: he's gone. And similar to what happened after the Iraq

958
01:00:27,480 --> 01:00:32,640
Speaker 5: War with the formation of ISIS, or when you disturb

959
01:00:32,720 --> 01:00:37,840
Speaker 5: the leadership of these organizations, it comes with splinter groups,

960
01:00:37,880 --> 01:00:40,760
Speaker 5: and splinter groups bring violence, and I think right now

961
01:00:40,880 --> 01:00:43,960
Speaker 5: there is a civil war in Huarez, which it doesn't

962
01:00:43,960 --> 01:00:46,360
Speaker 5: have the same spectacular violence as the two thousand and

963
01:00:46,360 --> 01:00:50,480
Speaker 5: eight twenty eleven period. But the numbers are approaching the

964
01:00:50,480 --> 01:00:54,280
Speaker 5: same height, and that's bad news for all vulnerable people.

965
01:00:55,440 --> 01:00:57,920
Speaker 5: Monica said that the last mass grave was discovered in

966
01:00:57,960 --> 01:01:01,280
Speaker 5: twenty twelve, and she would not be surprised if if

967
01:01:01,320 --> 01:01:02,959
Speaker 5: another one was discovered soon.

968
01:01:03,640 --> 01:01:08,800
Speaker 1: And this is the again, as you said, Odds, this

969
01:01:09,040 --> 01:01:13,480
Speaker 1: is the modern day. We are recording this episode for

970
01:01:13,560 --> 01:01:16,680
Speaker 1: Peepe behind the Curtain here, folks. We're recording this episode

971
01:01:16,760 --> 01:01:24,560
Speaker 1: on June twelfth, twenty twenty. As at this point, I

972
01:01:24,680 --> 01:01:28,440
Speaker 1: believe that the best way for our listeners to understand

973
01:01:28,480 --> 01:01:32,080
Speaker 1: more of this story, to learn more about it, is

974
01:01:32,400 --> 01:01:37,200
Speaker 1: to honestly to stop our podcasts right now and to

975
01:01:37,280 --> 01:01:41,000
Speaker 1: head over to whatever their podcast platform of choice is

976
01:01:41,320 --> 01:01:46,720
Speaker 1: and check out Forgotten Women of Warres, which is available now.

977
01:01:47,040 --> 01:01:50,360
Speaker 1: We want to thank you profoundly for being so generous

978
01:01:50,800 --> 01:01:54,640
Speaker 1: with your time on our show here, but more importantly,

979
01:01:54,800 --> 01:01:59,520
Speaker 1: much more importantly for the time that you and Monica

980
01:01:59,720 --> 01:02:04,160
Speaker 1: have dedicated to bringing to shedding light on this because

981
01:02:04,680 --> 01:02:09,600
Speaker 1: it's I am attempting not to be emotional about this,

982
01:02:10,280 --> 01:02:17,080
Speaker 1: but it is it is reprehensible that these that this

983
01:02:17,160 --> 01:02:19,880
Speaker 1: is this is occurring. As you said, you know, at

984
01:02:19,880 --> 01:02:22,640
Speaker 1: the very beginning you said a tale of two cities.

985
01:02:23,920 --> 01:02:30,840
Speaker 1: It's it's offensive that this sort of mass homicide continued,

986
01:02:30,920 --> 01:02:33,520
Speaker 1: that it continues today, that it seems like the systems

987
01:02:33,560 --> 01:02:41,240
Speaker 1: that were created to vouchsafe people are broken have failed.

988
01:02:41,720 --> 01:02:47,959
Speaker 1: And on my end, I'm wondering what would you, if

989
01:02:48,040 --> 01:02:53,600
Speaker 1: you would recommend next steps? If you if you would,

990
01:02:54,920 --> 01:02:58,880
Speaker 1: if you, for instance, were able to dictate to law

991
01:02:59,000 --> 01:03:05,440
Speaker 1: enforcement in the community, what they should be doing about this,

992
01:03:05,720 --> 01:03:11,240
Speaker 1: about this ongoing horrific activity, what would you say?

993
01:03:11,880 --> 01:03:15,160
Speaker 5: Well, firstly, thanks for your kind words about our time,

994
01:03:15,200 --> 01:03:19,000
Speaker 5: and I would like to emphasize my role in Forgotten

995
01:03:19,280 --> 01:03:23,880
Speaker 5: was to come in as the naive outsider and ask,

996
01:03:24,400 --> 01:03:28,960
Speaker 5: you know, framing questions and frankly obvious questions. You know,

997
01:03:29,120 --> 01:03:32,240
Speaker 5: why is this happening? What's going on? And Monica is

998
01:03:32,240 --> 01:03:35,120
Speaker 5: the person who's devoted years of her life and her

999
01:03:35,160 --> 01:03:39,360
Speaker 5: career and taken risks that I haven't, as our other

1000
01:03:39,440 --> 01:03:42,680
Speaker 5: sources did, in particular Dinah Washington Valdez. And so what

1001
01:03:43,000 --> 01:03:48,000
Speaker 5: makes me proudest about this project is to have used

1002
01:03:48,040 --> 01:03:51,080
Speaker 5: it as a as a frame for their stories and

1003
01:03:51,120 --> 01:03:53,640
Speaker 5: their reporting to reach a wide audience.

1004
01:03:53,680 --> 01:03:54,680
Speaker 4: And so that that's been.

1005
01:03:56,000 --> 01:03:59,080
Speaker 5: That, that's been you know something, I'm personally proud of

1006
01:04:00,120 --> 01:04:02,400
Speaker 5: your second question about what can we do? I mean,

1007
01:04:03,280 --> 01:04:05,360
Speaker 5: there was an American journalist who went to Huaires in

1008
01:04:05,400 --> 01:04:09,440
Speaker 5: the nineties called Chuck Bowden, who called Huires a laboratory

1009
01:04:09,440 --> 01:04:12,920
Speaker 5: of our future. And you're basically taking the women's murders

1010
01:04:12,960 --> 01:04:17,520
Speaker 5: as a starting point, said, well, what happens when you

1011
01:04:17,600 --> 01:04:23,400
Speaker 5: basically create a permanent underclass. What happens when law enforcement

1012
01:04:23,400 --> 01:04:26,760
Speaker 5: aren't trusted by the community, What happens when there's state

1013
01:04:26,800 --> 01:04:30,720
Speaker 5: sponsored violence against people who seek the truth? What happens

1014
01:04:30,760 --> 01:04:34,400
Speaker 5: when journalists gets murdered? What happens when the imperatives of

1015
01:04:34,520 --> 01:04:38,760
Speaker 5: profit are put above the imperatives of human life. And

1016
01:04:38,800 --> 01:04:42,880
Speaker 5: that's not a conversation which is unique to Huaire's anymore.

1017
01:04:42,880 --> 01:04:45,400
Speaker 5: That's a conversation we're having right now at the United States.

1018
01:04:45,600 --> 01:04:49,480
Speaker 5: And Sandra Rodriguez Nieto, one of the editors at Eldario

1019
01:04:49,480 --> 01:04:52,800
Speaker 5: and Huarez, said, Huires wasn't always like this, Like it's

1020
01:04:52,800 --> 01:04:54,880
Speaker 5: always been a tough city. It's always been a gritty

1021
01:04:54,920 --> 01:04:59,880
Speaker 5: border city. But thousands of unsolved murders every year, you know,

1022
01:05:00,480 --> 01:05:06,680
Speaker 5: institutions are fragile and be careful in the US. Be careful,

1023
01:05:07,080 --> 01:05:11,160
Speaker 5: don't fall asleep, because it can happen faster than you think.

1024
01:05:11,800 --> 01:05:15,400
Speaker 5: And so you know, I don't want to overemphasize the

1025
01:05:15,440 --> 01:05:17,560
Speaker 5: connection of this podcast to what's happening with the protest

1026
01:05:17,600 --> 01:05:20,440
Speaker 5: movement in the United States right now. But when you

1027
01:05:20,600 --> 01:05:25,320
Speaker 5: have injustice ongoing in justice, when you have lack of

1028
01:05:25,920 --> 01:05:29,240
Speaker 5: trust between law enforcement and citizens, and when you have

1029
01:05:29,280 --> 01:05:33,040
Speaker 5: a tax on independent judiciary and the media, you can

1030
01:05:33,080 --> 01:05:35,880
Speaker 5: find yourself in a pretty hellish situation pretty quickly.

1031
01:05:36,720 --> 01:05:40,120
Speaker 3: Thank you for that, Oz, and then you thank you

1032
01:05:40,160 --> 01:05:42,200
Speaker 3: for making the show with these amazing women who have

1033
01:05:42,240 --> 01:05:46,640
Speaker 3: been working on this story for so long. Just prepare

1034
01:05:46,680 --> 01:05:50,600
Speaker 3: yourself when you're listening to the show, because they are

1035
01:05:50,600 --> 01:05:54,280
Speaker 3: tragic stories, but they are very important to hear.

1036
01:05:55,360 --> 01:06:00,440
Speaker 1: Agreed, one hundred percent. This concludes today's episode, But this

1037
01:06:00,480 --> 01:06:03,840
Speaker 1: does not conclude our show, and it does not conclude

1038
01:06:03,920 --> 01:06:09,280
Speaker 1: the story of the podcast Forgotten Women of War, as

1039
01:06:10,240 --> 01:06:14,920
Speaker 1: we want to hear from you, We want your perspective.

1040
01:06:14,960 --> 01:06:18,400
Speaker 1: As we often say, you are the most important part

1041
01:06:18,440 --> 01:06:22,440
Speaker 1: of this show, specifically you, so write to us. You

1042
01:06:22,520 --> 01:06:25,440
Speaker 1: can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Twitter,

1043
01:06:25,600 --> 01:06:29,440
Speaker 1: you can find us on Instagram. We're frankly like many

1044
01:06:29,480 --> 01:06:34,480
Speaker 1: people in too many places on the Internet nowadays. But

1045
01:06:34,560 --> 01:06:39,680
Speaker 1: before you do any of that, check out this podcast.

1046
01:06:39,920 --> 01:06:43,840
Speaker 1: It's available now wherever you find your favorite shows. As

1047
01:06:43,840 --> 01:06:48,440
Speaker 1: we say, it's free to listen to. And this is

1048
01:06:48,720 --> 01:06:53,680
Speaker 1: an important story that is has not and is not

1049
01:06:56,240 --> 01:07:03,040
Speaker 1: receiving the attention and the analysis it deserves. And while

1050
01:07:03,040 --> 01:07:06,480
Speaker 1: you were listening to that, if you have any thoughts,

1051
01:07:06,880 --> 01:07:09,880
Speaker 1: if you have feedback, you want to talk to us,

1052
01:07:09,960 --> 01:07:13,320
Speaker 1: but you hate social media, we of all people get it.

1053
01:07:13,720 --> 01:07:16,920
Speaker 1: You can contact us a number of other ways. We

1054
01:07:17,000 --> 01:07:18,240
Speaker 1: have a phone number.

1055
01:07:18,400 --> 01:07:20,240
Speaker 2: Yes, you can give us a call at one eight

1056
01:07:20,480 --> 01:07:25,080
Speaker 2: three three std WYTK where you can leave messages for

1057
01:07:25,240 --> 01:07:28,520
Speaker 2: us in audio form in three minute increments. I know

1058
01:07:28,680 --> 01:07:30,800
Speaker 2: it's not ideal, but hey, if you need more time

1059
01:07:30,840 --> 01:07:32,919
Speaker 2: than that, you just call back and then we'll stitch

1060
01:07:32,960 --> 01:07:36,600
Speaker 2: them together for when we inevitably do another listener mail

1061
01:07:36,640 --> 01:07:41,640
Speaker 2: episode where we field questions from you. You also might

1062
01:07:41,680 --> 01:07:43,720
Speaker 2: be one of the lucky ones that gets a true

1063
01:07:44,440 --> 01:07:49,120
Speaker 2: callback from Matt Frederick himself. I also would like to

1064
01:07:49,160 --> 01:07:52,000
Speaker 2: start being a little more conscient just about participating that too.

1065
01:07:52,080 --> 01:07:56,040
Speaker 2: But man, that talk about the Golden Ticket of conspiracy

1066
01:07:56,680 --> 01:07:59,080
Speaker 2: listener mails that when you get that call from Matt,

1067
01:08:00,280 --> 01:08:02,240
Speaker 2: wish you all the best of luck, because you will

1068
01:08:02,280 --> 01:08:02,960
Speaker 2: definitely do it.

1069
01:08:03,040 --> 01:08:04,360
Speaker 3: If you don't want to do any of that stuff,

1070
01:08:04,400 --> 01:08:07,280
Speaker 3: we still have one of those old fashioned emails. You

1071
01:08:07,280 --> 01:08:08,000
Speaker 3: can email us.

1072
01:08:08,000 --> 01:08:30,120
Speaker 1: We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

1073
01:08:30,280 --> 01:08:32,320
Speaker 3: Stuff they don't want you to know is a production

1074
01:08:32,439 --> 01:08:37,000
Speaker 3: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1075
01:08:37,040 --> 01:08:40,920
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.