Speaker 1: Forgotten is a production of iHeart Media and Unusual Productions
Speaker 1: Before we start. This podcast contains accounts which some listeners
Speaker 1: will find disturbing, but without them, the story can't be
Speaker 1: fully understood. Please take care while listening. Previously un Forgotten,
Speaker 1: I do recall some suggesting that I might temper my
Speaker 1: words because big business is involved. Well, the Mikiela Dars
Speaker 1: are American companies and you might wind up making enemies
Speaker 1: on this side of the border. When they changed her shift,
Speaker 1: she signed an insurance policy. Joking around, she told me,
Speaker 1: if something happens to me, mamma, they're going to give
Speaker 1: you a ton of money. I don't know. If my
Speaker 1: innocent girl had a feeling that something was going to
Speaker 1: happen to her, I don't know. And so when I
Speaker 1: saw where this graveyard was located as it, I can't
Speaker 1: believe it. It's in the middle of the city. Across
Speaker 1: the street is the Association of Macueladoras. Why choose this
Speaker 1: side to dump eight bodies of women? From the beginning,
Speaker 1: Dina Washington Valdez told us that the femicides in Huarez
Speaker 1: were not random, that the women were selected, and Diana
Speaker 1: also mentioned all kinds of strange connections between the victims
Speaker 1: and the maculadoras the mass grave containing eight women's bodies
Speaker 1: at the cotton field was discovered right across the street
Speaker 1: from the Maculadora Association, shortly before Lilia Alejandra Andrade was
Speaker 1: abducted in February two thousand and one, her photographs were
Speaker 1: featured in a promotional brochure for her Maculadora and Diana
Speaker 1: also mentioned that men claiming to be model scouts would
Speaker 1: take photographs of young women outside the factories. And then
Speaker 1: there was Sagrario Gonzalez Flores. After the factory changed her shift,
Speaker 1: Sigario was forced to commute alone. Her mother, Paula, remembers
Speaker 1: the day that Sigario failed to come home from work.
Speaker 1: We knew that she had worked and that she had
Speaker 1: left at the time, everyone left, but no one saw anything.
Speaker 1: And I tell you that very night we began searching
Speaker 1: at the Red Cross and the hospitals, on the streets,
Speaker 1: searching for her. You always san much. That night I
Speaker 1: grabbed all the photos I had of my daughter. I
Speaker 1: would pass them out at gas station saying I'm looking
Speaker 1: for my daughter, can you please help me find her?
Speaker 1: And that nights, I would step outside and I would
Speaker 1: shout her name. I would run around the house and
Speaker 1: shout her name with all my strength. In the silence
Speaker 1: of the night. I felt she could hear me, so
Speaker 1: I would call to my daughter. After a few agonizing
Speaker 1: days and nights of searching for Cigario, I hope that
Speaker 1: she might be found alive began to fade. Paula joined
Speaker 1: a protest group outside the police station with other mothers
Speaker 1: displaying photographs of their own missing daughters. One morning, after
Speaker 1: Segario had been missing for two weeks, Paula arrived at
Speaker 1: the protest to learn that a young woman's body had
Speaker 1: been found the previous night. We arrived at the sit
Speaker 1: in that day as usual, and as soon as we arrived,
Speaker 1: a reporter approached me said, ma'am, did you know they
Speaker 1: found the body of a murdered woman. As soon as
Speaker 1: he told me that, I ran to the photos we
Speaker 1: already had there. I said to the reporter, which one
Speaker 1: did they find? He said, no, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know which one they found. I just know she
Speaker 1: had a white mail. It was then that I sensed
Speaker 1: that it was my daughterdo had her name on the
Speaker 1: white Makilla coat. I had embroidered her name with colorful yarn,
Speaker 1: just her name, Sagaradio, Paula's sense of foreboding was proven correct.
Speaker 1: Next to the young woman's body dumped in the desert
Speaker 1: outside of Huirez was the factory coat that Paula had
Speaker 1: stitched by hand with her daughter's name. And this pattern
Speaker 1: of young women in Juarez disappearing between home and work
Speaker 1: was by no means unique to Sagrario. Lilia Alejandra had
Speaker 1: also disappeared on her way home from work, and Cloudy
Speaker 1: Evet Gonzalez, one of the victims discovered in the cotton field,
Speaker 1: went missing after she was turned away from her factory
Speaker 1: job for arriving two minutes late. These connections between the
Speaker 1: murders and the Maquilas began to attract international attention, including
Speaker 1: the ABC news piece where Heredrik Crawford appeared and where
Speaker 1: Roberto Urea, a former president of the Maculadora Association, appeared
Speaker 1: to blame the victims for their own deaths. We're worth
Speaker 1: these young ladies. Where they were seen last? Were they
Speaker 1: drinking all right? Were they parting? Were they in a
Speaker 1: dark street? Urrea's defensiveness raised all kinds of questions. Did
Speaker 1: he and Immacula Door as he represented, have something to hide?
Speaker 1: Could there be some truth to Heredrich Crawford's assertion that
Speaker 1: his advocacy for the women disturbed big business interests on
Speaker 1: both sides of the border and contributed to his downfall.
Speaker 1: And could there be another group of men operating with
Speaker 1: or in parallel to the cartel who were also praying
Speaker 1: on vulnerable young women in Huarez? Amos voloshin and this
Speaker 1: is forgotten the women of Juarez? You know now see
Speaker 1: Hala Felicia. That comment from Urreya Monico where he's saying,
Speaker 1: you know, where were the women last seen? Were they partying?
Speaker 1: Were they drinking? That really stuck with both of us.
Speaker 1: First of all, I have to point out how infuriating
Speaker 1: it is to listen to that interview. That sort of
Speaker 1: victim blaming has been done by police and politicians, and
Speaker 1: now it was being done on national television by a
Speaker 1: former president of the Makiladora Association. How dare he shirk
Speaker 1: the responsibility his industry bears for not recognizing and responding
Speaker 1: to the risks their employees clearly faced. This kind of
Speaker 1: attitude alone puts women in danger, and in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties and early two thousands, it wasn't just ABC
Speaker 1: News who were drawing a line between the maquilas and
Speaker 1: the murders. Diana was also pointing out the connections, as
Speaker 1: were Amnesty International correct Yes. In the beginning, the whitest
Speaker 1: femicides were known as the maki Ladora murders because so
Speaker 1: many of the murdered women worked in the factories. Women
Speaker 1: were actively recruited because of these sexist stereotypes, like they're
Speaker 1: more docile and nimble fingered. Pressure from the victims' families,
Speaker 1: combined with international media scrutiny, did push the Maculadoras into
Speaker 1: making some efforts to improve, especially providing transport to stop
Speaker 1: young female employees disappearing on their way home from work,
Speaker 1: But the fundamental situation in Juarez hasn't changed. Some people
Speaker 1: get rich there because others stay poor. There are two
Speaker 1: groups in particular who benefit, the largely American corporations who
Speaker 1: manufactured goods in Juarez, and the city's own industrialists. Here's
Speaker 1: how Diana describes them in her book. Mexico's business elites
Speaker 1: are called impresarios, a word that sounds like emperor which
Speaker 1: is how they are viewed. The business emperors in the
Speaker 1: border state of Chihuahua benefit directly or indirectly from the
Speaker 1: labor of young women. Diana goes on to write, they
Speaker 1: own the industrial parks, at least buildings to maculadoras they
Speaker 1: produce materials for housing, and they produce them sell consumer
Speaker 1: products that all families in Juarez purchase. But I still
Speaker 1: want to know just how powerful these empressarios really were.
Speaker 1: Were they powerful enough to pressure the state Department to
Speaker 1: silence a senior FBI official like Hardrick Crawford. To find out,
Speaker 1: we spoke to one of the few journalists who's gotten
Speaker 1: access to Huires's secret business elite. My name is Lauren Edder.
Speaker 1: I'm an investigative reporter at Bloomberg News. In twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: Lauren wrote a cover story for Bloomberg Business Week about
Speaker 1: how crucial huires Is manufacturing industry is to the global economy.
Speaker 1: I think there is this invisibility about wires in general,
Speaker 1: but I don't think you could walk through an average
Speaker 1: day without touching something that was made in a maquila,
Speaker 1: whether it's the pockets of your genes or the heart
Speaker 1: stent inside your body. Any product that you pick up
Speaker 1: today will have made its way through the border region
Speaker 1: for one reason or another. There are over three hundred
Speaker 1: maculadoras in Huirez, employing roughly three hundred thousand people, more
Speaker 1: than half of whom are assembling products for US companies.
Speaker 1: But the goods manufacturing what Lauren calls the quote guts
Speaker 1: of the consumer economy. The windshield wipe on a car,
Speaker 1: a blood pressure cuff, a medical glove. So to make
Speaker 1: the story land, the journalist needed a character. Somebody brought
Speaker 1: up Don Jaime, the godfather of the makila industry. Jaime
Speaker 1: Bermudez had a very storied career where he interacted with
Speaker 1: extremely prominent business men. You know, he went to England
Speaker 1: and was the guest of the Queen for a polo match.
Speaker 1: And I was just fascinated to learn that there was
Speaker 1: a somebody behind this massive manufacturing economy along the border.
Speaker 1: So Lauren traveled to Juarez to interview the then ninety
Speaker 1: four year old business magnate. Benmordez has since passed away,
Speaker 1: but in life he was one of the city's leading empressarios.
Speaker 1: I had talked to people ahead of time, and people
Speaker 1: said you should probably have a bodyguard, but it turned
Speaker 1: out that Don Jaime had more bodyguards than me. So
Speaker 1: it was funny traveling around this very gritty city. And
Speaker 1: essentially what was a motorcade almost like floating through Juarez
Speaker 1: in a chariot of some sort. The destination of the
Speaker 1: motorcade was the Bedmudes industrial parks, where many maculadoras operate.
Speaker 1: When you get into the manufacturing sector, inside these little fiefdoms,
Speaker 1: as I described them, it's just a different world. Really.
Speaker 1: There is a sense of security and a sense of insulation. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, most of the workers live in places that
Speaker 1: do not have that sense of security. To understand how
Speaker 1: Juarez became a city of such stark contrasts, you need
Speaker 1: to understand the history of the Beermudes family and how
Speaker 1: their relationship with the US transformed their cotton fields into fiefdoms.
Speaker 1: It all started in the nineteen twenties when the family
Speaker 1: partnered with an industrious Kentucky distiller called Mary Dowling. After Prohibition,
Speaker 1: she was like, hell, no, am I going to shut
Speaker 1: down this business. So she literally hired people to dismantle
Speaker 1: her distillery, loaded onto rail cars, and she had it
Speaker 1: shipped to Warez and so when she arrives in Warez,
Speaker 1: she meets with Jaime Bermudez's uncle. They end up going
Speaker 1: into business together. Prohibition didn't stop America's demand for liquor,
Speaker 1: It just pushed it onto the black market. And this
Speaker 1: is the story of Warez, a place that constantly responds
Speaker 1: to what America wants, but what America doesn't want to
Speaker 1: take responsibility for bootleg liquor, sex, tourism, drugs, and from
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties onward, outsourced labor. But this last chapter
Speaker 1: in Quires began when the US ended the so called
Speaker 1: Brassero program, which had allowed Mexican workers to fill labor
Speaker 1: shortages in the US created by the Second World War.
Speaker 1: After the war ended, it became really a sensitive topic.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of people that were very concerned
Speaker 1: that the Mexican laborers were taking jobs that were otherwise
Speaker 1: suited for Americans. So the Brassero program was ended in
Speaker 1: what has been called the largest mass deportation in history.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of thousands of workers were sent across the border
Speaker 1: into Mexico. Many of them ended up in Huirez, and
Speaker 1: both the Mexican and US governments were nervous about the
Speaker 1: potential for unrest if these men remained unemployed, So the
Speaker 1: two countries collaborated on the Border Industrialization Program, which created
Speaker 1: a duty free zone with no tariffs on imports and exports.
Speaker 1: And this would have effectively allow American companies to rehire
Speaker 1: the Bresseros. But in Mexico, the Bermulez family, who made
Speaker 1: a fortune distilling whiskey with Mary Dowling, were tasked with
Speaker 1: turning the vision into a reality, and none other than
Speaker 1: Don Jaime traveled to the US to pitch companies on
Speaker 1: the idea of outsourcing to Mexico. His trip paid off
Speaker 1: in spectacular fashion. By nineteen sixty eight, Hime was standing
Speaker 1: in the family's old cotton fields laying the foundation for
Speaker 1: a one hundred and fifteen thousand square foot plant to
Speaker 1: assemble television parts for the Radio Corporation of America. Our
Speaker 1: CIA no longer exists, but companies from Dell to General
Speaker 1: Electric followed the path to Huarez that they forged. This
Speaker 1: was really the beginning of the globalized economy, and the
Speaker 1: beachhead of that was Inhuirez. That was where we saw
Speaker 1: American companies going and testing out this new model, which
Speaker 1: was a cross border transnational global manufacturing economy. That's originally
Speaker 1: why RCA started manufacturing its televisions and warez. They didn't
Speaker 1: want to have to pay the higher wages, they didn't
Speaker 1: want to have to pay the increasing benefits that the
Speaker 1: unions were demanding. And no matter how you look at
Speaker 1: the makula industry, and the fact of the matter is,
Speaker 1: it's still completely dependent on low wage workers. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the reason why the industry exists, that's why companies
Speaker 1: continue to go there today. The Benmula's family remain among
Speaker 1: Huarre's's most important local partners to the Macula doors and
Speaker 1: there's no suggestion that they were involved in the murders.
Speaker 1: But Capcom, the Makuela ware Sagaria worked and Leah the
Speaker 1: Maquila ware Claudia Vet worked are both located on Bedmudez
Speaker 1: Industrial Park, and both Claudia Yvette and Sagrario disappeared after
Speaker 1: leaving work. Although the Makilas do now provide transportation, the
Speaker 1: vulnerability of the workers remains constant. I mean, you can't
Speaker 1: ignore the fact that at the end of the day
Speaker 1: they're getting paid seven dollars a day. You can't ignore
Speaker 1: the fact that, yeah, they're bust in every day to work,
Speaker 1: but when they're bust home, their homes might be a
Speaker 1: cardboard shack, and they might not have running water or electricity,
Speaker 1: And ultimately American consumers benefit in cheaper televisions and cheaper
Speaker 1: washing machines. The Bermudez family drive around in SUVs, they
Speaker 1: played Polo don jaime, even hung out with the Queen
Speaker 1: of England. And although they're among the richest of the
Speaker 1: Juires impresarios, by no means the only Juires industrialists who
Speaker 1: have profited from generations of doing business with US companies. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: those US companies who have key manufacturing operations in Huarez
Speaker 1: have hundreds of billions of dollars of market capitalization and
Speaker 1: the political clout that comes with it. But was there
Speaker 1: some kind of direct conspiracy to keep profit margins high
Speaker 1: by deflecting attention from the vulnerable women who worked in
Speaker 1: the factories and paid the ultimate price. Could Hardrich Crawford
Speaker 1: have been silenced because of drawing attention to the connection
Speaker 1: between the Makilas and the murders. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we asked the US ambassador who revoked Hardrick's country clearance.
Speaker 1: So before the break Monica Lauren mentioned some thing that
Speaker 1: you've been telling me since day one, which is that
Speaker 1: Juarez as it exists today exists because of low wage workers.
Speaker 1: Firstly with the Brasseros, and then once the Makilas were there,
Speaker 1: they attracted internal migrants like the Flores family for the jobs. Now,
Speaker 1: the Flores family arrived thirty years ago, but what's the
Speaker 1: condition of the workers like who arrived today. I'll never
Speaker 1: forget visiting one of these factory workers Insu love Huais
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen. Her name was Brenda Estralla and she
Speaker 1: worked for Comscope, a multi billion dollar communications company headquartered
Speaker 1: in North Carolina. This is the company that outfitted the
Speaker 1: Dallas Cowboys new football stadium with Wi Fi. Brenda assembled
Speaker 1: cables for Comscope in Huatas for seven dollars a day,
Speaker 1: not per hour per day. And when you go to
Speaker 1: her house, you can see what kind of a life
Speaker 1: you can live on that salary. But in the lived
Speaker 1: in a government subsidized three rooms cinder block home. She
Speaker 1: had no central heating or cooling. In the winter, she
Speaker 1: stayed warm by tossing plywood in a middle trash bin,
Speaker 1: and that plywood is worth half her daily salary. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: in its annual letter to its shareholders, Comscope brags about
Speaker 1: saving them money by putting its factories in quote low
Speaker 1: cost geographies like Wattas. And you told me that for
Speaker 1: the lauge international companies who do business in Huarez, these
Speaker 1: conditions aren't just an open secret, but almost pot of
Speaker 1: Wuires's appeal. Yes, here's another example. In Alpasso, there's a
Speaker 1: regional business alliance that's dedicated to helping big companies set
Speaker 1: up in Huattas. And one of the selling points they
Speaker 1: advertised on their website about WA was a quote cooperative,
Speaker 1: predominantly non union workforce. In other words, come to Juares.
Speaker 1: The workers here are submissive and they won't try to
Speaker 1: defend themselves. When Howard Campbell first told us about how
Speaker 1: the cartel bribes US law enforcement officials to facilitate the
Speaker 1: flow of drugs across the border, I began to see
Speaker 1: the wall that separates El Paso and Juarez in a
Speaker 1: new light, and now my understanding was shifting again. The
Speaker 1: wall also disguises the deep connections between the legitimate economies
Speaker 1: of Mexico and the US. It obscures the reality that
Speaker 1: many Juarez femicide victims died, creating value for the US economy.
Speaker 1: This was the situation that FBI Special Agent in charge
Speaker 1: of El Paso, Hardrick Crawford, was beginning to shed light
Speaker 1: on when he received a warning that he was making
Speaker 1: enemies on the US side of the border. He even
Speaker 1: alluded to a possible moiracy to silence him, involving big
Speaker 1: business interests and the US State Department. So we had
Speaker 1: to ask the ambassador from that time, Antonio Gaza, if
Speaker 1: that was possible. Do you remember Hardrick Crawford. I remember
Speaker 1: in general terms. I don't remember having any personal interaction
Speaker 1: with him. Yeah, you effectively withdrew his country clearance. Why
Speaker 1: would you have done that? I likely would have done
Speaker 1: it on the recommendation of people working within the embassy
Speaker 1: that felt that having him in country would not be
Speaker 1: beneficial to the US interest. I did interview Hardrick Crawford
Speaker 1: for this podcast, and this is what he said to me,
Speaker 1: which I'd love your response to. If I was a
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorist, I would say that the State Department and
Speaker 1: the US Corporation said, look at this guy who's harming
Speaker 1: the makuladora industry and Mexico are upset We're going to
Speaker 1: have to make a sacrifice out of him. But I'm
Speaker 1: curious as to what you think about this idea that
Speaker 1: the Mikuiladora industry were in some sense putting pressure on
Speaker 1: the State Department to avoid too scrutiny of the fate
Speaker 1: of their workers. Yeah. No, I think that's absurd, And
Speaker 1: I and it's no, I just find I find that absurd.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. Many of America's most important and
Speaker 1: valuable companies outsourced to quires, So it was at least
Speaker 1: plausible that bringing bad press to the manufacturing industry there
Speaker 1: would not be smiled upon by the US government. How
Speaker 1: did the maculator industry interact with the State Department and
Speaker 1: how much of a priority was maintaining good relations with them,
Speaker 1: you know, in a very very broadly. You know, I'll
Speaker 1: go back to the day I took my oath, and
Speaker 1: it was to represent and protect and defend the United
Speaker 1: States interests abroad, and largely my focus in terms of
Speaker 1: priority was our citizens and our US interest and investments.
Speaker 1: The ambassador went on to deny that he gave any
Speaker 1: undue consideration to the mackela industry. Nonetheless, he did say
Speaker 1: that protecting US investments in Mexico was a top priority,
Speaker 1: and in fact, trade between the US and Mexico is
Speaker 1: now worth more than half a trillion dollars each year.
Speaker 1: That figure has risen almost eight hundred percent since the
Speaker 1: start of the North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA.
Speaker 1: Just this year, the current American ambassador publicly put pressure
Speaker 1: on Mexico to keep the Macula doors open in the
Speaker 1: face of work of protests about death from COVID, because
Speaker 1: the factories were manufacturing key medical and defense supplies for
Speaker 1: the US. In a further demonstration of just how intertwined
Speaker 1: business interests are between the countries, Ambassador Gaza himself married
Speaker 1: one of Mexico's richest industrialists in two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: opening him up to accusations of conflicts of interest, which
Speaker 1: he also denied. But in the end, as much as
Speaker 1: the US economy does benefit from low wage workers in Juarez,
Speaker 1: it seemed unlikely that there was a direct conspiracy to
Speaker 1: keep them vulnerable by silencing Hardrick Crawford. But maybe somebody
Speaker 1: else with big business interests in Huarez did feel Hardrick
Speaker 1: was getting too close to the truth. Remember those Empressarios,
Speaker 1: those emperors of industry, well his Diana. Again, there was
Speaker 1: a suspicion on the part of authorities in Mexico City
Speaker 1: that the Aduana the customs was not collecting the assessments
Speaker 1: people have to pay at the border to take items
Speaker 1: into Mexico. In fact, the authorities in Mexico City suspected
Speaker 1: that they were off by two hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a month. The federal government in Mexico was worried
Speaker 1: that several business people in Huarez weren't paying their fair
Speaker 1: share of import duties, so they started listening in on
Speaker 1: their conversations. The investigation involved the use of a sort
Speaker 1: islens equipment. It was during these interventions of telephone calls
Speaker 1: that the investigators became aware of people involved in the
Speaker 1: disappearances and murders of Wadis. They notified their superiors in
Speaker 1: Mexico City, Hey, you know the sort of stuff we're
Speaker 1: hearing and bodies and being transported and blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and so they said. Their superiors told them keep it
Speaker 1: quiet for now, just continue with the investigation. We'll do
Speaker 1: that later. The customs investigators were assigned to solve a
Speaker 1: tax issue, but they stumbled across evidence that connected certain
Speaker 1: industrialists to a much larger crime, the femicides. Here's what
Speaker 1: they told Diana and her colleague, said Hio Gonzalez Rodriguez.
Speaker 1: A group of powerful men killed the women with impunity
Speaker 1: sort of became a sport. And by the way, the
Speaker 1: victims of the group, not all of them have been found,
Speaker 1: because the sources indicated they were buried in properties that
Speaker 1: the public does not have access to. Although these revelations
Speaker 1: about powerful men abducting and murdering women for pleasure weren't
Speaker 1: the crimes the investigators had been asked to solve, they
Speaker 1: passed along their findings to their superiors in Mexico City,
Speaker 1: anticipating an intervention. A lot of recordings were made, and
Speaker 1: so the principal investigators were very proud of themselves and that, wow,
Speaker 1: we solve the femicide. And so, you know, they wrapped
Speaker 1: up their field work and waited and they waited it,
Speaker 1: and they waited and they waited. Nothing happened. And so
Speaker 1: that's when they started contacting, said and myself. When it
Speaker 1: became clear that the federal government wasn't going to do
Speaker 1: anything with their discovery. The investigators gave Diana and Sergio
Speaker 1: a huge tip, not just the general profile of the killers,
Speaker 1: but the specific names of the men involved. And when
Speaker 1: Diana heard them, she didn't even need to do a
Speaker 1: background check. She already knew who these people were. We're
Speaker 1: talking about people involved in major industries. According to Diana,
Speaker 1: the men were major players in industries ranging from transportation
Speaker 1: to energy, to communications and real estates. And Diana also
Speaker 1: told us she had received an off the record tip
Speaker 1: about these men being implicated in the murders once before
Speaker 1: from a source in US intelligence. And what was amazing
Speaker 1: to me is that there were the same names, the
Speaker 1: same names that came out. And so you're investigating this story,
Speaker 1: you get a call about these phone conversations where these
Speaker 1: names come up after the authorities have also been handed
Speaker 1: this information. Don't do anything, I mean, you must want
Speaker 1: to publish something. Well, actually, my first reaction was to
Speaker 1: want to crawl under a desk and hide. It was scary.
Speaker 1: When you sit down and think about who may be
Speaker 1: involved in the names. Oh my god, it's like, oh
Speaker 1: my god. You know, these are people that are well
Speaker 1: known not just at the border, but in Mexico nationally
Speaker 1: and they have global business interests. I mean, they're powerful economically,
Speaker 1: they're influential, and you know, I'm just a little old reporter,
Speaker 1: you know. And I also saw an explanation for the
Speaker 1: impunity of these crimes. All right, I could understand the
Speaker 1: cartels and the gangs serial killers to an extent, but this,
Speaker 1: this was bigger than all of that together. What Diana
Speaker 1: was being told about powerful man and murdering women for
Speaker 1: pleasure was almost exactly what Alfredo had been told about
Speaker 1: the cartel parties by his source in the Huirez jail.
Speaker 1: But these new revelations didn't rule out the previous ones
Speaker 1: about La Ligna or make it impossible that one or
Speaker 1: more serial killers were praying on a vulnerable population. The
Speaker 1: murderers were not mutually exclusive, and I was starting to
Speaker 1: understand better how Diana had chosen the title The Killing
Speaker 1: Fields for her book. When We Come Back, Diana attempts
Speaker 1: to make contact with the industrialists alleged to be involved
Speaker 1: in the murders. Diana told us that when she heard
Speaker 1: the names of the businessmen allegedly involved than the femicides,
Speaker 1: her first reaction was to want to crawl under her
Speaker 1: death but it didn't take long for her reporter's instincts
Speaker 1: to kick in. I made an effort to contact a
Speaker 1: lot of these people. UN left all messages as well
Speaker 1: as emails, faxes, I went through personal secretaries. I never
Speaker 1: got an answer from any of them, not a single
Speaker 1: solitary answer. You know. Despite the lack of response, Diana
Speaker 1: and her editors at the El Paso Times felt confident
Speaker 1: enough in the story that they ran it in the paper.
Speaker 1: But crucially, they decided not to identify the industrial lists
Speaker 1: by name, both for legal and for safety reasons. There
Speaker 1: were no names named, but they were characterized. The editor
Speaker 1: chose the word cabal to describe this network of powerful
Speaker 1: businessmen involved allegedly in these murders. I wonder how far
Speaker 1: you were able to go or were you just these
Speaker 1: are too big and I better not. I think I
Speaker 1: weren't as far as I could journalistically speaking. But I
Speaker 1: also knew that even if their names appeared, nothing would happen,
Speaker 1: and in fact, the messenger with them would become a target,
Speaker 1: meaning you, meaning me. Of course, Now, given the time
Speaker 1: that his past your series was published, would you be
Speaker 1: willing to name those names now, Monica, I mean just
Speaker 1: can't get away with her, they'll bury you. This is
Speaker 1: the same Diana who walked into the neighborhood where Lilia
Speaker 1: Alejandra had last been seen, despite Ahuire's lawyer literally tearing
Speaker 1: up a map he'd drawn for her and telling her
Speaker 1: to stay away. The same Diana would continue to report
Speaker 1: on the murders after receiving a death thread traced back
Speaker 1: to Mexican military intelligence. But it was these business people
Speaker 1: pool who Diana seemed to fear more than anyone else.
Speaker 1: We wanted to know if it would be possible to
Speaker 1: speak to the customs investigators ourselves, but sadly, Diana said
Speaker 1: that wouldn't be possible. Nobody knows where they are anymore.
Speaker 1: The two guys, one of them told Sethio Gonzalez that
Speaker 1: he was asked to provide a proof of his loyalty
Speaker 1: by Mexican officials. It may be that they were already
Speaker 1: suspecting that there were leaks, and they were probably trying
Speaker 1: to tear down who could have been leaking during the
Speaker 1: cartail wars. There's a suspicion that they might be dead.
Speaker 1: The problem that the drug cartels wars created for everyone
Speaker 1: is that then became like a way to off people
Speaker 1: who might be inconvenient and just make it look like,
Speaker 1: you know, the cartels did it a drug hit? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so many, so many of them. It seems remarkable to
Speaker 1: me that these Mexican investigators would come and reach out
Speaker 1: to to journals lists they wanted justice. Two more people
Speaker 1: who wanted justice for the women in Huires, two more
Speaker 1: people who disappeared presumed dead. So let's rewind for just
Speaker 1: a second. Remember when Alfredo Corcillo first learned that Uirez
Speaker 1: police officers were involved in the kidnap and murder of
Speaker 1: young women. He wasn't sure what to believe, so he
Speaker 1: turned to Phil Jordan of the DA who was able
Speaker 1: to corroborate that reporting and the existence of La Ligna.
Speaker 1: Phil was the director of the El Paso Intelligence Center,
Speaker 1: a multi agency initiative to gather as much information as
Speaker 1: possible about the movement of drugs south of the border.
Speaker 1: We wanted to know, in the course of all of
Speaker 1: his intelligence gathering whether Phil had ever heard anything along
Speaker 1: the lines of what the Mexican customs investigators had told Diana,
Speaker 1: so we called him. Diana has a line of investigation
Speaker 1: that suggests that some of the powerful industrialists in Silajuarez
Speaker 1: were involved in having the women abducted. Did your informants
Speaker 1: ever tell you anything which suggested that may be true?
Speaker 1: I would be lying if I tell you I didn't
Speaker 1: hear about that. Yes, I believe those rumors to be accurate.
Speaker 1: Diana Washington was accurate in the powerful and the elite
Speaker 1: could pick up women, party with them, and then do
Speaker 1: away with them. But since it did not involve directly
Speaker 1: drug trafficking, we obviously didn't get involved. No, I don't
Speaker 1: know if the FBI got involved or not, but yes,
Speaker 1: La Lina existed primarily to traffic drugs, and so the
Speaker 1: DA actively tracked their activities, including the kidnap and murder
Speaker 1: of women, to celebrate successful drug shipments. But the city's
Speaker 1: business elites were outside at the agency's direct purview. So
Speaker 1: despite believing the rumors to be true, Phil never followed
Speaker 1: up on them, but he did mention the FBI. So
Speaker 1: we've reached out to Frank Evans, the former Assistant Special
Speaker 1: Agent in Challenge of El Paso, to find out what
Speaker 1: he knew. We were getting uncorroborated information of involvement by
Speaker 1: prominent officials and warez in what we're purported to be
Speaker 1: you know, no holds barred sex parties. If that's in
Speaker 1: fact the case, the victims cannot be left alive because
Speaker 1: they know they've seen certain people. If you had a
Speaker 1: victim that turned up and says, hey, I was dragged
Speaker 1: into this house and this guy was there, and that
Speaker 1: guy was there, and this guy was there and that
Speaker 1: guy was there, now you've got a real problem. But
Speaker 1: if the victim's killed and it's a nonsolved thomicide, did
Speaker 1: anyone try to cooperate this for us? The ability to
Speaker 1: one hundred percent corroborate did not exist. Unlike the drug information.
Speaker 1: You call Diana Washington Vold as a witness to the truth.
Speaker 1: I think you know if you read her book, there
Speaker 1: are some very concrete facts in there. Like any investigative reporter,
Speaker 1: some of what she reports cannot be one hundred percent corroborated.
Speaker 1: But the simple fact that the matter is she's a
Speaker 1: witness to the truth. The only way that you stop
Speaker 1: this is somebody has to say I'm not running, whether
Speaker 1: it's a Diana Washington or someone else. We used to
Speaker 1: make a joke. It was you can kill me, but
Speaker 1: you can't eat me, and people would say, what the
Speaker 1: hell does that mean. It's an attitude of you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm here and I'm not leaving. That's one of the
Speaker 1: things I respect about Diana Washington and the news media
Speaker 1: and wires. They're getting blown up and killed, but you
Speaker 1: have people that still go to work every day and
Speaker 1: they still do their jobs. And that's when I called
Speaker 1: Diana a witness to the truth, because once you're a
Speaker 1: witness to the truth, you can kill me, but you
Speaker 1: can't eat me. Although they can't put you in a
Speaker 1: bat of acid and dissolve your bones. You can kill me,
Speaker 1: but you can't eat me. So in the end, Alfredo
Speaker 1: Corciallo was able to corroborate his story Monica about police
Speaker 1: being involved in the kidnapping of women in Juarez. He
Speaker 1: got the documents from the DA, he got the confirmation
Speaker 1: from the drugs are in Mexico City. Diana never got
Speaker 1: the same degree of corroboration about the rich men. So
Speaker 1: what do you make of it? To me, the investigation
Speaker 1: into powerful men being involved in the murders of women
Speaker 1: is not far fetched in the least. I mean, time
Speaker 1: and time again, there are examples of powerful men abusing women,
Speaker 1: whether it's Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Dominique Straskon, r Kelly
Speaker 1: Roger Ales. I could go on and on. I mean,
Speaker 1: our own president was caught on tape describing how he
Speaker 1: feels he has license to sexually abuse women. Two men
Speaker 1: are now sitting on the US Supreme Court despite strong
Speaker 1: allegations of sexual abuse. The differences, you know, their victims
Speaker 1: were still around to make allegations and tell their stories.
Speaker 1: In what is the victims can no longer speak up
Speaker 1: against their attackers. But are there examples of powerful men
Speaker 1: being involved in this kind of twisted and sick and
Speaker 1: deadly behavior. Absolutely, in Mexico, the elite and powerful, whether
Speaker 1: it's in business politics, act with just as much impunity
Speaker 1: as the drug cartells do. One thing I'm still not
Speaker 1: completely clear on. Does Diner's reporting suggest that there were
Speaker 1: two sets of parties where women were trafficked and used
Speaker 1: for sport or the industrialists and the knockers attending the
Speaker 1: same parties. Both the drug cartels and the powerful men
Speaker 1: were said to consume these women under similar circumstances in
Speaker 1: these horrific parties. Whether or not these were the same parties,
Speaker 1: I don't think we know. But what we do know,
Speaker 1: as Candace Scrapic, the forensic psychologist, told us, it's a
Speaker 1: way to cement bonds, ensure silence, and fament a brotherhood.
Speaker 1: We know that even college frat boys engage in this
Speaker 1: kind of behavior. These men feel empowered to you, possess
Speaker 1: and attack women because they're used to getting away with it.
Speaker 1: Rarely are they ever held accountable for their actions. That's
Speaker 1: one of the most frustrating parts about this particular story.
Speaker 1: When you have the police and the judiciary not doing
Speaker 1: their jobs, and when you have journalists being threatened or
Speaker 1: killed for asking questions, and you have powerful bestive financial
Speaker 1: interests in keeping a population vulnerable, you just don't get
Speaker 1: any answers. On the other hand, Diana, it seems, was
Speaker 1: so close to revealing the identities of these industrialists who
Speaker 1: were allegedly involved in the murders, and we know she
Speaker 1: was willing to risk her life so many other times.
Speaker 1: Why do you think she drew a line on theyre
Speaker 1: trying to publish their names. Some of my initial reactions were,
Speaker 1: what do you mean you're not going to publish these names?
Speaker 1: What do you mean you're not going to try to
Speaker 1: get more confirmation, I mean, for God's sakes, for the
Speaker 1: sake of justice, for the sake of accountability. But the
Speaker 1: reality is, even if you were able to get some
Speaker 1: kind of solid confirmation, the retaliation you could expect could
Speaker 1: be deadly. And I mean you just have to think.
Speaker 1: You just have to think, how hard is it to
Speaker 1: hold powerful men accountable in this country, in the US
Speaker 1: To even begin to fathom how much more of a
Speaker 1: challenge it would be to hold them accountable in a
Speaker 1: place like Quattas, where you have cops in alliance with criminals.
Speaker 1: When you talk about power and protection in Wattas, the
Speaker 1: elite business class seems to be more powerful and more protected,
Speaker 1: more untouchable than even the top drug cartels. The odds
Speaker 1: that young women in Huarez are up against are overwhelming,
Speaker 1: the poverty, the corruption, the invisibility. It was in response
Speaker 1: to all of this that Paula, a daughter Ye and
Speaker 1: several other families came up with a symbol of resistance
Speaker 1: that they went on to paint all over Juarez, a
Speaker 1: symbol that made it impossible to forget the fate of
Speaker 1: Sagrario and so many others like her. Why not have
Speaker 1: a protest, but a permanent one is. She thought of
Speaker 1: a black cross with a pink background as a symbol
Speaker 1: for the girls, the pink background representing the women, and
Speaker 1: the black cross for the morning of their loss, but
Speaker 1: its main purpose was one of prevention, that whenever a
Speaker 1: girl stood by one of those lampposts and saw the cross,
Speaker 1: she would know that she was in danger. Next time,
Speaker 1: I forgotten Paula's continuing demands for justice and the consequences
Speaker 1: for her and her family. I'm Asoloshin and I'm Monica.
Speaker 1: See you next time? Do you Know? See? Do you Know? Halla?
Speaker 1: Felicia Forgotten? The Women of Horres is co hosted by
Speaker 1: Me Monica and me oswald Oshan Forgotten is executive produced
Speaker 1: by Me and Mangesh Hatia. Our producers are Julian Weller
Speaker 1: and Katrina Norvelle. Sound editing by Julian Weller and Jacopo Penzo.
Speaker 1: Lucas Riley is our story editor. Caitlin Thompson is our
Speaker 1: consulting producer. Production support from Emily Maronoff and Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 1: Recording assistant to this episode from Miguel Perez and Ethan Bean.
Speaker 1: Music by Leonardo Hablum and Hakkabo Libermann, Additional music by
Speaker 1: Aaron Kaufman,