Speaker 1: You're listening to Alive Again, a production of Psychopia Pictures
Speaker 1: and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2: My name is Manuel Va jo Chizerb.
Speaker 3: In June twenty twenty, I was kidnapped by a drunker
Speaker 3: telling the outskirts of Mexico City. I was tortured and
Speaker 3: held for ransom along with my partner, and we came
Speaker 3: out alive. Ever since I was released, I began documenting
Speaker 3: the lives of the many families of the people who
Speaker 3: were also kidnapped and didn't returned.
Speaker 2: This is my story and the story.
Speaker 3: Of how violence has corrupted a country, families and thousands
Speaker 3: of lives.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Alive Again, a podcast that showcases miraculous account
Speaker 1: of human fragility and resilience from people his lives were
Speaker 1: forever altered after having almost died. These are first hand
Speaker 1: accounts of near death experiences and more broadly, brushes with death.
Speaker 1: Our mission is simple, find, explore, and share these stories
Speaker 1: to remind us all of our shared human condition. Please
Speaker 1: keep in mind these stories are true and maybe triggering
Speaker 1: for some listener. Discretion is advised.
Speaker 3: I'm a documentary's photographer. I don't thought of myself as
Speaker 3: much as a journalist because I collaborate very closely with
Speaker 3: the people that I work with, so that's very problematic
Speaker 3: for journalism. I try to use art and photography and
Speaker 3: filmmaking has a way of raising awareness of the horrible
Speaker 3: situation that we are living in Mexico. Since the last
Speaker 3: sixty years, I focus mainly on violence and state terrorism
Speaker 3: and the consequences of both crimes of state and crimes
Speaker 3: made by particulars but sponsored by a criminal state. I
Speaker 3: grew up in Mexico City. I come from a middle
Speaker 3: class family. We ended up with not much left after
Speaker 3: a lot of financial trouble.
Speaker 2: When I was eight nine.
Speaker 3: Years old, I started living in some of the poor's
Speaker 3: neighborhoods here, knowing some of the most marginalized people here
Speaker 3: in Mexico City. But thanks to my dad, I managed
Speaker 3: to break through to go to college. I was studying
Speaker 3: cinema in a very fine public school, but I had
Speaker 3: to drop out after what happened to me. The thought
Speaker 3: of doing films fiction films in a student environment didn't
Speaker 3: fit with what I was doing anymore. It didn't make
Speaker 3: sense after my experience with bioleness to stay. So I
Speaker 3: went out and started looking for answers and for the
Speaker 3: meaning of what happened to me. Violence here started approximately
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty five, when some farmers and rural teachers
Speaker 3: attacked a military barrack in the northern part of the country.
Speaker 3: But the thing with violence before twenty fourteen is that
Speaker 3: it was suppressed from the general public mind. After twenty fourteen,
Speaker 3: the Ajotinapa Masket nappings happened where the army, in coalition
Speaker 3: with Drocker Tales and the local police of Guerrero, took
Speaker 3: forty three students from a rural teacher school. That made
Speaker 3: everyone aware of the situation of Mexico. I used to
Speaker 3: live in the Berry center of Mexico City, very close
Speaker 3: to the Anchle Thella Independency, which is like a national
Speaker 3: monument and at the place where all the protests start. Like,
Speaker 3: if you're protesting here in Mexico City, your protest, most
Speaker 3: problemly starts in that monument. So I lived like a
Speaker 3: few blocks away from there, and that was like my
Speaker 3: first experience with social justice and with protesting here, which
Speaker 3: used to be very very dangerous. Now everything is dangerous,
Speaker 3: and protesting is just like as dangerous as doing anything else.
Speaker 3: But I joined those protests as most of my friends
Speaker 3: has most of younk people. I would say they were
Speaker 3: a massive protests. The funny thing is that I was
Speaker 3: starting to felt the need to document. I didn't know what,
Speaker 3: but I felt the need to document. And I also
Speaker 3: felt very intimidated by Mexico. I was trying to get
Speaker 3: a way to approach Mexico in a less appassive way,
Speaker 3: like not so directly. So I decided to leave.
Speaker 2: Mexico for a year.
Speaker 3: My plan was going to the United States and working
Speaker 3: with Mexican American immigrants. I thought that it might be
Speaker 3: easier for a twenty one year old version of me
Speaker 3: to work with Mexico away from Mexico than working with
Speaker 3: Mexico in Mexico. I was supposed to live on March
Speaker 3: twenty one, twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: I have my ticket.
Speaker 3: I have a lot of people all over America that
Speaker 3: were going to receive me where they were going to
Speaker 3: let me stay in their homes, to take me to
Speaker 3: the people that I needed to work with. But of
Speaker 3: course COVID happened. That just didn't happen. It was very
Speaker 3: sad for at the same time, I think it's the
Speaker 3: best thing that ever happened to me.
Speaker 2: Because what happened next. I mean, I don't know if
Speaker 2: I was naive. It's just that.
Speaker 3: There's levels of knowing, at least from my point of view.
Speaker 3: There's the level, the intellectual level of knowing that you're
Speaker 3: living a dangerous place, and then there's the bodily level
Speaker 3: of knowing. Yet that day I acquire the bodily level
Speaker 3: of knowledge. That's what happens here a lot, like people
Speaker 3: know what they don't know. I knew in my head,
Speaker 3: but I didn't know my body. Again, after twenty fourteen,
Speaker 3: we all know that this is a very dangerous place
Speaker 3: to be, even here in Mexico City, where people feel
Speaker 3: that Mexico is much safer than it actually is, because
Speaker 3: the government has really made an effort to make this
Speaker 3: place as peaceful as possible, because the people here are
Speaker 3: the only people that have a real way of testing,
Speaker 3: because their political opinions are much more built because of
Speaker 3: economic possibilities, because of we have a lot of colleges here,
Speaker 3: a lot of university, is a lot of education, and
Speaker 3: most other places in Mexico don't have them.
Speaker 2: So in Mexico City.
Speaker 3: People feel that this is a much safer place than
Speaker 3: it actually is. My ex partner and I. She was
Speaker 3: doing an experimental film and we were trying to film
Speaker 3: the sky. She needed to have some shots of the sky,
Speaker 3: so I told her, let's go to the outskirts of
Speaker 3: the city, to the highway that connects Mexico City with Guernavaca,
Speaker 3: which is a nearby city like a summer city, and
Speaker 3: with a Capulco with Guerero, with the places where the
Speaker 3: maskt nappings happened.
Speaker 2: When we started to leave the city, I told.
Speaker 3: Her, let's be very careful these places, like this part
Speaker 3: of Mexico City is known for its violence. That part
Speaker 3: of Mexico City is actually controlled by a cartel called
Speaker 3: the Cartel Lawac.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's still very weird to think about me telling her that,
Speaker 3: but I told her, let's be careful. This place is dangerous.
Speaker 3: Women get raped here constantly.
Speaker 2: People get killed.
Speaker 3: A lot of people have been taken from here.
Speaker 2: Let's be careful. We stopped in front.
Speaker 3: Of a construction side company. Those places, those guys have
Speaker 3: there like millions of dollars of machinery. I don't think
Speaker 3: that nothing is going to happens here. In front of
Speaker 3: the construction site, there was the highway and she took
Speaker 3: out a triple a camera and I took out my
Speaker 3: phone and she started to do her saying like just
Speaker 3: stood there. And at the ten twelve minute mark, I
Speaker 3: thought we should really leave this place, like we should
Speaker 3: like I turned around and I saw like no one,
Speaker 3: just like the Mexican countryside, and I felt like we
Speaker 3: should maybe leave this place at this very moment, like
Speaker 3: this was enough. I thought, like, you're just being paranoid.
Speaker 3: Nothing is going to happen. It's okay. And that's also
Speaker 3: what the families of them missing always say, like you
Speaker 3: always think this is going to happen to someone else.
Speaker 3: You never think it's going to happen to yourself. I was,
Speaker 3: I think filming my fit with my sound like just
Speaker 3: wasting time. I turned to the right and I saw
Speaker 3: five guys with submachine guns running towards us, and I.
Speaker 2: Felt like shed.
Speaker 3: They came forward to us. I raised my hands. She
Speaker 3: saw me with my hands up. She turned to the right,
Speaker 3: she saw the guys. She put up her hands and
Speaker 3: one of the guys came to me and told me
Speaker 3: give me the cartains. I thought that they were going
Speaker 3: to take the car. I just handed him the car
Speaker 3: keys and they told us get in. And when they
Speaker 3: said get in, I had like this moment of my
Speaker 3: life is about to change.
Speaker 2: They had obviously their faces covered.
Speaker 3: They sat here in the middle of two of them,
Speaker 3: and I was facing the floor of the car with
Speaker 3: my face on the ground. I started to ask questions
Speaker 3: and to tell them that that we were well with
Speaker 3: him Christians, and that we didn't have money, and that
Speaker 3: we were that we were from one of the small
Speaker 3: towns nearby. That that backfire soon after I tried to
Speaker 3: raise my head and I got kid.
Speaker 2: They told me don't look at her face.
Speaker 3: So I'm facing the floor of the back of the car.
Speaker 3: I could feel that we were on the on the highway.
Speaker 3: They started driving at like one hundred and fifty kilometers
Speaker 3: an hour, and at some point I can feel the
Speaker 3: road changing or more like gravel. So at the point
Speaker 3: that they entered the road, I knew that it was
Speaker 3: pretty fucking serious. They drove for like ten more minutes
Speaker 3: in absolute silence. At that point, they told us they're
Speaker 3: going to need that two hundred thousand pieces fifteen hundred
Speaker 3: dollars to release us, which doesn't seem like much in America,
Speaker 3: but it's a lot here. I tell them like, there's
Speaker 3: no way that we can give you that, Like, our
Speaker 3: families are not rich. And of course they didn't believe
Speaker 3: that we had a camera, like a very expensive camera
Speaker 3: that was owned by your school.
Speaker 2: Also because of our.
Speaker 3: Skin tone, which is fairly light, they thought that we
Speaker 3: have more money, which is a common misconception.
Speaker 2: So when they asked that, I knew that we were
Speaker 2: in real, real trouble.
Speaker 3: They stop in the middle of the countryside and they
Speaker 3: tell me get out of the car. They take me
Speaker 3: in front of the car and they tell me, like,
Speaker 3: kneel down.
Speaker 2: I thought that these guys are going to shoot me.
Speaker 2: I kneel down.
Speaker 3: They bade me up horribly. At that point, I take
Speaker 3: both of my arms to my face. I think that's
Speaker 3: like natural instinct, and they start kicking me horribly. TA
Speaker 3: could film two of my ribs cracked. They tell me
Speaker 3: that's for Lyon for telling us that you were from
Speaker 3: one of these towns.
Speaker 2: We know you're not.
Speaker 3: Because they are from there. Of course those guys were
Speaker 3: from there, So I fucked up. So I'm completely bat up,
Speaker 3: and they tell me get up. I raise my face
Speaker 3: and I can see like a mountain, a lone tree
Speaker 3: and a corn, and they take out my ex partner
Speaker 3: and they told us to start walking.
Speaker 2: We started to go up into the mountain.
Speaker 3: Which is a very common thing for the cartels to do.
Speaker 3: Most of the clandestine graves are found in the countryside.
Speaker 2: So I started to think about that.
Speaker 3: Some was setting I could still see very clearly, and
Speaker 3: I was just very worried about her. I was in
Speaker 3: front of the group and they were walking with her.
Speaker 3: They took us to these cliffs that they told us
Speaker 3: to call our families. So I was given my phone.
Speaker 3: I called my father and I told him these guys
Speaker 3: came with guns and they need this much money.
Speaker 2: He started freaking out and I told him, like, calm down,
Speaker 2: you have to be like very very calm.
Speaker 3: And they took the phone away from me and they
Speaker 3: started to chalk with him, which we were told to
Speaker 3: lay on the dirt and taste it. There were hands
Speaker 3: still covering or foreheads. At first, they were doing nothing,
Speaker 3: making phone calls to our families and making us speak
Speaker 3: with them. That was about two hours then, I mean
Speaker 3: the song was set. It was dark and they started
Speaker 3: to to.
Speaker 2: They started to torturous.
Speaker 3: They called our families and there's this common practice here.
Speaker 2: In Mexico called tablada, which is like.
Speaker 3: Planking, grabbing a plank, a plank of wood and beating someone.
Speaker 3: So they started planking me. Then I really thought like
Speaker 3: I might have like a broken something after this, if.
Speaker 2: There is an after this.
Speaker 3: And that's the point where I started to think like
Speaker 3: there might not be an after this. They started to
Speaker 3: beat me up with a plan to kick me. One
Speaker 3: of them he had like his feet on top of
Speaker 3: my head and then he stood up in my head.
Speaker 3: I just remember like pushing with my hands to the
Speaker 3: floor in order for my head not to touch the floor,
Speaker 3: hoping for it to relieve some of the pressure because
Speaker 3: I felt that my head was going to explode. They
Speaker 3: really started to push me in order for me to
Speaker 3: scream and beg when my family was listening. Begging for
Speaker 3: your life is the most degrading human thing that you.
Speaker 2: Can do to another human being.
Speaker 3: It's not the physical pain, is the psychological pain. I
Speaker 3: feel that torture really changes you, like being in at
Speaker 3: the complete mercy of someone. It really changes your mindset,
Speaker 3: It really changes It really changes how you buried your
Speaker 3: own dignity and your own sense of self. And it
Speaker 3: never leaves you. I think that's the that's the most
Speaker 3: horrible thing. It makes you feel dirty for life again,
Speaker 3: losing to your technity. And I was very worried for
Speaker 3: her too, like they were beating her up that much locally.
Speaker 3: But she was being really fucking strong, like very calm.
Speaker 3: She was telling them, we want to cooperate, we want
Speaker 3: to get out of this alive.
Speaker 2: Please don't hurt.
Speaker 3: Him, like she was really.
Speaker 2: She was really strong.
Speaker 3: Things got like much worse. They grab the nice again.
Speaker 3: Going back to that racial thing, we're speaking about a
Speaker 3: country where racism is a real issue as much as
Speaker 3: in America.
Speaker 2: For me, it's much more worrying because it's invisible.
Speaker 3: People here, like round, people here have been oppressed during
Speaker 3: the last five hundred years, and they have been completely
Speaker 3: eradicated from most top positions, from economic positions, from political
Speaker 3: positions until like the.
Speaker 2: Last three years.
Speaker 3: So there's a real racial resentment that is very valid.
Speaker 3: And they saw my very curly European looking hair and
Speaker 3: they told me like, oh, we hate your curls, which
Speaker 3: again is very much understandable. And then they started to
Speaker 3: to cut it with a knife and they took a
Speaker 3: bunch of skin from the back of my head.
Speaker 2: I could feel the worms or.
Speaker 3: Blood like covering my face and.
Speaker 2: Mixing with dirt.
Speaker 3: I could feel like the dirt in my lungs, and
Speaker 3: I could feel the dirt in my throat and my mouth.
Speaker 3: I kept spinning a mixture of blood, saliva and and dirt,
Speaker 3: like my saliva was coming out of me like in bulks.
Speaker 3: They started hitting me with the gun in my head,
Speaker 3: and I could just hear like if I was inside
Speaker 3: of a fat Greek pottery thing, like if you hit
Speaker 3: it with your finger, how it sounds like like almost musical.
Speaker 3: I could hear that inside of my head after the
Speaker 3: first four or five and it went on like I
Speaker 3: felt that they were going.
Speaker 2: To blow my head off.
Speaker 3: They kept torturing those for eight or nine hours, and
Speaker 3: I could hear my father during that whole time, like
Speaker 3: how she was trying to negotiate and to lower the money.
Speaker 2: That had to be.
Speaker 3: That had to be delivered, while I was like enduring it.
Speaker 3: I didn't feel any disassociation. I couldn't disassociate because I
Speaker 3: would be disassociating from what happened to her.
Speaker 2: So I was very much afraid of what happened to her.
Speaker 3: At some point they did like sexual torture.
Speaker 4: I I don't want to talk about it, not so
Speaker 4: much because of me, but because of her. Yeah, And
Speaker 4: that also never leaves you like again, that loss of dignity,
Speaker 4: like in front of people.
Speaker 2: It's really fucked up.
Speaker 3: It was very very cold, and she had like a
Speaker 3: skirt and a little blouse, and I was wearing.
Speaker 2: A leather jacket.
Speaker 3: And at one point when they had stopped because people came,
Speaker 3: and when they were about like ten people, one of them,
Speaker 3: when there was just one of two of them, he
Speaker 3: told me, rise and called your girlfriend, because it's very cold.
Speaker 3: So I stood up facing the ground in order not
Speaker 3: to see their faces. I kneeled and I hogged her
Speaker 3: with the leather jacket and I.
Speaker 2: Told her I love you. She told me I love you.
Speaker 3: And I was covering my face from the ground, and
Speaker 3: I could see the moon leaking like to my fingers,
Speaker 3: and I could feel like the warmth and really that
Speaker 3: that was a really peaceful moment. I could hear like
Speaker 3: the wind blowing through the through the trees, and and
Speaker 3: I think that was like the happiest moment of my life.
Speaker 3: I felt at that point that if they killed me,
Speaker 3: it was okay, and at the end everything reduces to
Speaker 3: its minimum expression, which is like this search of of
Speaker 3: of meaning true through finding other people that loved you.
Speaker 3: And I had that because I had someone with me
Speaker 3: and we were not alone.
Speaker 2: And I think that's what life is about.
Speaker 3: After a bunch more torture, like nine hours into it,
Speaker 3: they told us to go back to where we came from.
Speaker 3: We started walking. They gave me the tripod, which is
Speaker 3: which was a very big tripod, and they told me
Speaker 3: like carryings. I carried the tripod and I could see
Speaker 3: like the whole countryside. I could see no highway, but
Speaker 3: I could see like the little hills, and the sky
Speaker 3: was purple. I have no explanation for that, but the
Speaker 3: sky was.
Speaker 2: Really, really really purple.
Speaker 3: I've never seen a night like that in my life.
Speaker 2: And the moon was so.
Speaker 3: Bright I could see like perfectly every single detail. Was
Speaker 3: that very strange part of Mexico, which is the place
Speaker 3: where rural areas.
Speaker 2: And ccenies join.
Speaker 3: The car we were in, which was a white folkswagon,
Speaker 3: came in and they parked in front of the of
Speaker 3: the lawn tree and they told me give me the trypod.
Speaker 2: I gave them the tripod.
Speaker 3: They told me, kneel down, we're going to kill you.
Speaker 3: I kneel down. They put the gun in my head,
Speaker 3: and there was like this moment of silence. I just
Speaker 3: like stood there completely silent, and they just stood there,
Speaker 3: completely silent for what felt like hours, and one of
Speaker 3: them said like, no, get them in the car. That's
Speaker 3: where physical pain really started to go up. They weren't
Speaker 3: torturing us anymore, but I could feel my cracked rips,
Speaker 3: I could feel a cracked backbone, and I was completely speed.
Speaker 2: Up facing the floor of the car.
Speaker 3: I had like a all of bloods alive.
Speaker 2: And dirt in front of me.
Speaker 3: I was just like my lungs were expelling all these
Speaker 3: dirt that had that I had like swallowed during the
Speaker 3: during the torture. And then there comes the part where.
Speaker 2: We built a relationship.
Speaker 3: Fifteen sixteen, seventeen years old.
Speaker 2: Of course, these.
Speaker 3: Guys don't control the operation, but these are the guys
Speaker 3: who who are in charge.
Speaker 2: Of doing the dirty work.
Speaker 3: They started speaking like between them, and then they started
Speaker 3: to talk to us, and one of them in this
Speaker 3: very strange moment of.
Speaker 5: Clarity that I now feel that is the best field
Speaker 5: work that I will ever do in my life because
Speaker 5: of the level of sincerity that I felt coming from them.
Speaker 2: They told us, like, we do this so they don't
Speaker 2: do this to us.
Speaker 3: They they started talking about other things that they have done,
Speaker 3: talking about people that they have killed, and that.
Speaker 2: They were very afraid of the of.
Speaker 3: The guys making like paying them to do this so
Speaker 3: so that this was their way of keeping their families
Speaker 3: safe too. We have told them that we were pillow students.
Speaker 3: And then one of them told us, like, you should
Speaker 3: do a movie about this, and we told them, like
Speaker 3: you think that's a good idea and told us yeah,
Speaker 3: and please in by us if you if you do it,
Speaker 3: please do in bide us. Uh please bring it here
Speaker 3: uh to the to the to the town's nearby so
Speaker 3: we can go.
Speaker 2: And honestly, I will do it. I'm going to do it.
Speaker 3: Uh, I'm going to do it.
Speaker 2: I have to.
Speaker 3: These guys were again they weren't like this uh military
Speaker 3: guy in one time aimal torturing like the case, were
Speaker 3: like children and I could feel that they were as
Speaker 3: afraid as has us. That's what I mean when I
Speaker 3: say that that those guys are victims, like those are
Speaker 3: so young and have so like so so few opportunities,
Speaker 3: that it's a real tragedy that they are doing this
Speaker 3: and that they are losing their humanity. That's such a
Speaker 3: young age. One person goes missing each hour, and ninety
Speaker 3: four people gets killed every day. That's during the last
Speaker 3: during this last administration, which is the most violent that
Speaker 3: we have ever got. Again, when I see when I
Speaker 3: hear these guys telling us to do a movie and
Speaker 3: to invite them after torturing and abusing us, like if they.
Speaker 2: Were like.
Speaker 3: Some children excited to know, like some random filmmakers, it's
Speaker 3: really like the personification of the social problems in Mexico,
Speaker 3: of all the things of racial issues, of class issues,
Speaker 3: of extreme poverty, of everything, it's concentrated in those people
Speaker 3: that were speaking to us on that day, on the
Speaker 3: true big time of this thing. We are also victims,
Speaker 3: but again we kept our humanity intact. We came out
Speaker 3: of that better people. Those guys came out of that
Speaker 3: without their humanity. Again, in that sense, those guyes are
Speaker 3: the ones who are really suffering the consequences of this
Speaker 3: terrible violence. From my point of view. Later I found
Speaker 3: out that my father had a friend in the part
Speaker 3: of the police that takes care of kidnappings if I
Speaker 3: get away completely honest, I don't have the certainty for this,
Speaker 3: but there's no other explanation because.
Speaker 2: They didn't got the money. They didn't get the money.
Speaker 2: So what I.
Speaker 3: Really think is that someone in the police asked them
Speaker 3: to let us go. The cartels, which are also the
Speaker 3: people who kidnap.
Speaker 2: Most of the time.
Speaker 3: They are controlled by the police, and they work very
Speaker 3: very closely with the police. Like law enforcement and criminals here,
Speaker 3: they're the same. There's no other way for them to
Speaker 3: let us go after asking for so much money and
Speaker 3: letting us go for one tenth of what was asked
Speaker 3: or doesn't make sense. I felt the gravel road, then
Speaker 3: I felt the highway, and they told us we're going
Speaker 3: to let you go. Here, we're going to be following you.
Speaker 3: You're going to drive until until you get home.
Speaker 2: Don't stop.
Speaker 3: They opened the doors, they went out, they went to
Speaker 3: the back. There was this moment of thirty seconds of silence.
Speaker 3: They told us to wait ten minutes. After thirty seconds,
Speaker 3: I told her, get into the driver, turned on the vehicle,
Speaker 3: and let's fucking go. She started driving. She uses glasses
Speaker 3: and she didn't have her glasses. It was like five
Speaker 3: thirty in the morning. Still there wasn't light. It was
Speaker 3: so misty, and I just started laughing. I said, like,
Speaker 3: there's no way that we came out of this shit alive.
Speaker 3: And we drove until our house completely covered in dirteen
Speaker 3: blood and got into her house and we were free.
Speaker 2: The first thing I did.
Speaker 3: Is I told someone, my camera is on my closet,
Speaker 3: grab it. Take a picture of Boss right now. And
Speaker 3: I feel that that's where it started. I knew that
Speaker 3: I had to take a picture of Boss, of the
Speaker 3: state that we had returned in, but I know that
Speaker 3: it started there, like five minutes after we got home,
Speaker 3: and it's this picture of the two of us and
Speaker 3: were like completely covered in drivel, and that my first
Speaker 3: tempulse was to capture that moment. I went to the hospital.
Speaker 3: They told me I had like a collapsed long that
Speaker 3: the lung had leaked air between the lungs and my heart.
Speaker 3: If it didn't go away in two days, they would
Speaker 3: have to open me and do something about it. Luckily,
Speaker 3: it went away, but I couldn't breathe fairly well for
Speaker 3: a couple of months. I had some broken ribs, and
Speaker 3: of course I was completely bit up. So for like
Speaker 3: ten days I couldn't move, and then I was back.
Speaker 3: I was back, but changed and in peace, very strange
Speaker 3: way that I just knew that something had changed one day.
Speaker 3: I don't know where it came from. What I remember
Speaker 3: in college they had told us about this guy who
Speaker 3: was missing, who was kidnapped, who was from Guerreroro, and
Speaker 3: that something had happened with the International Criminal Court of
Speaker 3: Human Rights with his case. I started googling around and
Speaker 3: then I found the case, the case of this man
Speaker 3: cross and Radilla, who he was kidnapped because he was
Speaker 3: part of the Rea of Guerrero and he was taken
Speaker 3: by the army.
Speaker 2: Because he wrote songs.
Speaker 3: He wrote revolutionary songs, and he was taken, never to
Speaker 3: missing again.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 3: So I saw that and his daughter had won a
Speaker 3: case in the Inter American Court of Human Rights making
Speaker 3: the government admit that they had taken his father. So
Speaker 3: I wrote to Pittsburgh Hilt International, and I told them like, Hey,
Speaker 3: I'm trying to get to this woman. This happened to
Speaker 3: me like ten days ago.
Speaker 2: I need to speak with her. I don't know why.
Speaker 3: I have no idea why, and they took me to her.
Speaker 3: On my way there, I had like my camera and
Speaker 3: a bag of clothing, and I was shaking. I was
Speaker 3: with this guy from Mexico City that works with them,
Speaker 3: and he saw me. I was shaking horribly. She told me, like,
Speaker 3: calm down, We're just.
Speaker 2: In a bus. Really, calm down.
Speaker 3: One month and ten days, I was in Guerrero, the
Speaker 3: most dangerous part of this country, in the thera, in
Speaker 3: the house of this woman that I have never met
Speaker 3: in my life. And I didn't know why I was there.
Speaker 3: I knew I was going into the mouth of the wolf.
Speaker 2: As we say here, into.
Speaker 3: The center of the problem, try to make a sense
Speaker 3: of what had happened to me, Try to find that genealogy.
Speaker 2: Of of all.
Speaker 3: These crimes, to put myself into a into a social context,
Speaker 3: and not just an isolated crime, but like a series
Speaker 3: of state sponsored crimes and situations that have led to
Speaker 3: the situation that we're currently living in Mexico. I was
Speaker 3: looking for the source of violence, and I was looking
Speaker 3: for the for the meaning of it, and the meaning
Speaker 3: of the conversations that I had with the kidnappers.
Speaker 2: That's the thing to.
Speaker 3: Make sense of my pain and their pain. I had
Speaker 3: to understand where where it had originated from. It's like
Speaker 3: a river. It comes from a rock somewhere in the mountains.
Speaker 3: If you really follow or really you're going to find
Speaker 3: a rock that throws water away. That's the same. I
Speaker 3: try to follow the water that I I came out
Speaker 3: of to find out who was pouring that river of
Speaker 3: blood on my country.
Speaker 2: And I found it.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm struct I found it, but I'm still
Speaker 3: trying to make sense out of it because it's very
Speaker 3: confusing and it's very complex. But I know that I've
Speaker 3: seen it a number of times. The source both in
Speaker 3: the eyes of the guys who kidnapped those and in
Speaker 3: the eyes of me and my ex girlfriend, and in
Speaker 3: the eyes of the other subvibors and the families of
Speaker 3: the missing. And that's that's the source of all pain, conflict,
Speaker 3: and resistance, the history of violence here in Mexico.
Speaker 2: I mean, one loses everything with especially with torture, both
Speaker 2: sexual physical torture. One loses absolutely everything. Each time I
Speaker 2: see a movie, especially.
Speaker 3: An American movie, where one person is being tortured, I
Speaker 3: always think, like, these people do.
Speaker 2: Not understand what they are speaking about.
Speaker 3: One loses absolutely everything but I think I've also gained
Speaker 3: a number of things.
Speaker 2: First of all, I've gained that family.
Speaker 3: These people, the families of the missing, really changed my
Speaker 3: life forever in the same way that these kidnappers changed
Speaker 3: my life. These people that I've known really changed my life.
Speaker 2: They have really endured. Hell.
Speaker 3: What happens with these people is that they have been
Speaker 3: trying to find their missing loved ones for fifty years.
Speaker 3: And not only the people of this downboard, all over
Speaker 3: the country and in different that time periods they have
Speaker 3: been trying to find their children. So I what I
Speaker 3: did is.
Speaker 2: Go with them and.
Speaker 3: Try to to give back to their struggle through my
Speaker 3: pictures and through my presence, to give back to their pictures,
Speaker 3: to build memory, to build like an archive that can
Speaker 3: be this caused and can be consulted in the future.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of journalism. Don't about this, but journalism
Speaker 3: is very brief and very volatile. It just comes and
Speaker 3: burns like a piece of paper. You have to have
Speaker 3: a different product for it to last. You have to
Speaker 3: really sit in front of people and listen to them
Speaker 3: and understand them and understand the issue that you are
Speaker 3: dealing with. In order to make a product that is everlasting.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that my pictures.
Speaker 3: Are everlasting, but that's what I aim to to make
Speaker 3: a thing that is artistically valuable, that is journalistically valuable,
Speaker 3: and that has this level of research that makes it
Speaker 3: different from just stating the fact in a newspaper.
Speaker 2: And I have no idea how to do it.
Speaker 3: I have no idea how to do it, but I
Speaker 3: keep trying to find ways to do it, either to
Speaker 3: making films or to making photography books that are going
Speaker 3: to come out someday at some point. But that was
Speaker 3: my next step trying to build it. And it was
Speaker 3: just me, a bus ticket and my camera, and I
Speaker 3: knew at that point that I that's what I had
Speaker 3: to do. I had to I had to document the
Speaker 3: history of Mexico through the voices of these people, because
Speaker 3: they had the real history, which is the history of
Speaker 3: resistance and the history of not forgetting, and their struggles
Speaker 3: and their lives and their happinesses and sadness and everything
Speaker 3: they live is the history of my country. The history
Speaker 3: of my country is the hist of the people we
Speaker 3: don't have, of the lives we've lost.
Speaker 6: Welcome back to a live again joining me for a
Speaker 6: conversation about today's story are my other Alive Again story
Speaker 6: producers Nicholas Dakowski and Brent Dye, and I'm your host
Speaker 6: Dan Bush. I heard the story in the New York Times,
Speaker 6: and I thought, you know, this is an amazing story.
Speaker 6: What I did not anticipate was several things, one of
Speaker 6: which was his insane story about the drive back, like
Speaker 6: after he had been abducted and he and his girlfriend
Speaker 6: were tortured and relentlessly for you know, hours and hours
Speaker 6: and hours, and then on the drive back, while he's
Speaker 6: coughing up blood in the back seat in the floorboard
Speaker 6: of the car, he starts to get to know his kidnappers,
Speaker 6: and they don't they're not apologetic, but they're basically explaining
Speaker 6: to him, we're the muscle we have to do this.
Speaker 6: If we don't do this, then we become Then they'll
Speaker 6: hurt our families. And in that moment, he has this
Speaker 6: epiphany and he realizes that these people are victims. He
Speaker 6: had the foresight to go, Okay, yes, victim, but I'm
Speaker 6: not the only victim here. Yeah. His story and his
Speaker 6: identity and his sense of purpose that he gleaned after
Speaker 6: this experience are all bound to that of his country.
Speaker 6: It's a much bigger issue. And he goes, sure, I
Speaker 6: lost my dignity and I will never get that back.
Speaker 6: Like when you've been violated like that, when you've been tortured,
Speaker 6: you lose your dignity, You lose a sense of yourself
Speaker 6: and a sense of safety that you will never ever
Speaker 6: get back. The PTSD of that will be with you.
Speaker 6: But his captors lost something greater, They lost their sense
Speaker 6: of humanity. He doesn't look at it as an isolated incident.
Speaker 6: He sees what happened to him as part of a
Speaker 6: series of state sponsored crimes and an epidemic in his
Speaker 6: country and his country's history and his country's legacy and
Speaker 6: a point in time and history for his country and
Speaker 6: his people that he was a part of. And so
Speaker 6: he's compelled to go do something about it. And it's
Speaker 6: just so fascinating because I thought about, you know, some
Speaker 6: other stories. We've talked to Kathy Preston, right, and she
Speaker 6: basically had she walked away, I believe, saying, you know,
Speaker 6: I'm not a victim, I'm a survivor. And he walked
Speaker 6: away similarly, but he was like, I am a victim.
Speaker 6: You know, I did survive. But I am a victim,
Speaker 6: but I'm not the only vite.
Speaker 7: I mean, that's the thing that frightened me the most
Speaker 7: about his story was when he said, it's the personification
Speaker 7: of the social problems of Mexico, of the racial issues,
Speaker 7: the class issues, the extreme poverty, you know. And I
Speaker 7: think when you see the division we're experiencing in our
Speaker 7: own country, when people feel like they don't have a
Speaker 7: stake in society, I think it can lead people to
Speaker 7: a really extreme place. And I kind of viewed his
Speaker 7: story as as a warning we have a society that
Speaker 7: doesn't take care of its basic social needs. This is
Speaker 7: the obvious place it leads to. I think, you know,
Speaker 7: people are going to do what they have to do
Speaker 7: to survive. They can easily be manipulated, They can do
Speaker 7: horrible things to other people, very.
Speaker 8: Reminiscent of I mean, Jean Valjean in Les Miserab. You know,
Speaker 8: it's he steals bread to feed his family, gets thrown
Speaker 8: in jail and tortured by this state, and he comes
Speaker 8: back out and he's this absolutely desperate man who ends
Speaker 8: up having to do whatever he can to survive for
Speaker 8: a while, and he ends up becoming this incredible case
Speaker 8: of like his situation has made him incredibly empathetic, and
Speaker 8: so he's becomes this like decent, loving man who is
Speaker 8: incredibly empathetic to the plight of the people around him,
Speaker 8: sometimes to his detrict.
Speaker 7: And I think Manuel is in a position where he
Speaker 7: can be empathetic because he's from a much more secure
Speaker 7: economic class. But his tormenters, you know, like he's saying,
Speaker 7: you know, they lost they're losing their humanity in this situation.
Speaker 6: There's a parallel that's happening across a bunch of these stories.
Speaker 6: It's in one form of that thing is to do
Speaker 6: good as a form of resistance. In another form, it's
Speaker 6: the only way to move on and to survive is
Speaker 6: to get is to get yourself out of the out
Speaker 6: of the equation. And so Manuel quickly realize this is
Speaker 6: not about him, right, It's not an isolated story. It's
Speaker 6: not about his ego, It's not about what happened to him,
Speaker 6: It's about what's happening to his whole entire country.
Speaker 8: I agree with you, Dan, that there's this through line
Speaker 8: through a lot of these especially people who have I
Speaker 8: guess been done to, like who have had shit like
Speaker 8: people act badly on them. You know, a lot of
Speaker 8: these stories are sort of finding like zest in your
Speaker 8: life again, or finding meaning in your life. But I
Speaker 8: think that a lot of these stories are also about
Speaker 8: like really finding the core of your humanity and choosing
Speaker 8: your humanity when you've experienced something that could take that
Speaker 8: away from you. You know, Manuel could have come out
Speaker 8: of this just embittered and angry, and that attitude could
Speaker 8: have perpetuated bad things in his own life. But instead
Speaker 8: he has a moment where he just is suddenly connected
Speaker 8: more deeply to his humanity.
Speaker 7: He was interesting that he was saying, you know that
Speaker 7: he had plans to come to the United States, he
Speaker 7: had people were going to sponsor in him in his
Speaker 7: quest to become a filmmaker. And he said, then COVID happened,
Speaker 7: And he said it was sad, but I think it
Speaker 7: was the best thing that happened to me because of
Speaker 7: what happened next. And what happened next was this incident.
Speaker 7: And you know, you think of like in literary turns,
Speaker 7: it's the inciting incident that sends the protagonist on the
Speaker 7: hero's journey, and he's so thankful for the growth. But
Speaker 7: I don't think I'd want to go through something like
Speaker 7: this even to have the kind of growth that he expected,
Speaker 7: he said, He said so, and this is you know,
Speaker 7: this is echoing throughout the show.
Speaker 6: I don't think we've met anybody yet who says that
Speaker 6: they would take back what happened to them. Maybe one,
Speaker 6: but the overwhelming majority of people who have had these
Speaker 6: brushures with death to the point of severe bodily harm,
Speaker 6: and having reconstructive surgeries and having to rehabilitate and relearn
Speaker 6: how to walk, and all of these things horrific car
Speaker 6: accidents that forever changed them, and they all come back
Speaker 6: with the same thing of like, I wouldn't change a thing.
Speaker 6: I wouldn't I wouldn't change any of these experiences because
Speaker 6: of who I am now and what it has taught me.
Speaker 6: Some other things happened that would not have happened to
Speaker 6: him had he not experienced this. Manuel, for instance, he
Speaker 6: talks about these moments of beauty that happened amidst this
Speaker 6: extreme stress and pain and torture. You know, he talks
Speaker 6: about the colors of the sky and how taking his
Speaker 6: coat and crawling over to his girlfriend and his captors
Speaker 6: let him sort of keep her warm for they said,
Speaker 6: it's cold, you need to keep her warm. So he walked,
Speaker 6: he kind of crawled over there, and he put his
Speaker 6: coat around her, and he had this moment of intense, incredible,
Speaker 6: a feeling of love like he had never felt, a
Speaker 6: feeling of compassion for another human being like he had
Speaker 6: never felt.
Speaker 2: And this yin yang of.
Speaker 6: The beauty only exists relative to the suffering, you know.
Speaker 6: And that's a philosophical conceit that echoes throughout a lot
Speaker 6: of different spiritual practices and so forth. But you know,
Speaker 6: I think that that's we have to maybe we have
Speaker 6: to go through and experience some adversity to whatever degree,
Speaker 6: to however extreme, that is the impetus for us to
Speaker 6: transform and see the beauty on the other side. Like
Speaker 6: we can't see the beauty unless we also experience.
Speaker 8: But I mean that's also that's also how empathy is
Speaker 8: created in people. But I think a lot of people
Speaker 8: can extrapolate from their own experiences how they might feel.
Speaker 8: But I do think that like going through something like that,
Speaker 8: even on the smallest scale, a kid falling down and
Speaker 8: hitting their head or getting pushed on the playground, they
Speaker 8: now know what it's like to have something bad happen
Speaker 8: to them, and that is the birth of empathy right there.
Speaker 8: And I think that, you know, there's some people who
Speaker 8: are extraordinarily good at it. And I don't know if
Speaker 8: these people are born with in innate ability to feel empathy,
Speaker 8: or if empathy is sort of thrust upon them.
Speaker 7: Well, like Manuel said, they were as afraid as us.
Speaker 7: They were afraid of the people that were forcing them
Speaker 7: to do these things. And it reminded me. I don't
Speaker 7: know if you remember, in two thousand and eight, there
Speaker 7: was a massacre at the taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai,
Speaker 7: and I remember watching like a Frontline or some episode
Speaker 7: about this, and they talked about how they recruited very
Speaker 7: young kids to go do this terrorist attack, and as
Speaker 7: they had them on the video cameras just walking through
Speaker 7: the hallways of this beautiful hotel, just marveling at the
Speaker 7: beauty of it. They'd never seen anything like.
Speaker 6: That, you know, and.
Speaker 7: They were just terrified. You know, they were forced to
Speaker 7: go commit these atrocities, you know, because there was no
Speaker 7: other option for them. But but I think, you know,
Speaker 7: like his his empathy for them. You know, of course,
Speaker 7: there's this racial history here in Mexico and of course
Speaker 7: they're going to be offended by my curly European hair,
Speaker 7: you know, of course they're going. Like his understanding of
Speaker 7: his own privilege, I think is what gave him that empathy.
Speaker 7: You know, like he understood that that he's in a
Speaker 7: and he's just he's just in a much more stable,
Speaker 7: secure situation than they are, you know, And you know,
Speaker 7: I think it gave him the sense that he's not
Speaker 7: forced into this degrading, inhumane situation that they've been put into.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean that, I mean for me, that that
Speaker 8: just goes back to like, was he just by circumstance
Speaker 8: or or by birth, like able to see the humanity
Speaker 8: and them just like that? Because you listen to you
Speaker 8: can listen to a lot of shit from people who
Speaker 8: have never gone through this stuff, talking about like who
Speaker 8: paint everybody who does you know, who commits any sort
Speaker 8: of crime, or even as has the audacity to just
Speaker 8: be poor, like they're incapable of looking at that and
Speaker 8: understanding that they're but for the grace of God go
Speaker 8: I you know, whereas whereas Manuel already knows, you know,
Speaker 8: that he's privileged when he walks into this thing.
Speaker 6: Mm and just to come out of these with the
Speaker 6: idea that compassion is that is the connective tissue of life.
Speaker 6: And you know, and we talked about this before too
Speaker 6: where where you know, I think Nick, you you were like,
Speaker 6: you know, I don't. You can't expect and there's no expectation.
Speaker 6: But you can't expect somebody who's been victimized to be
Speaker 6: forgiving of the of the person who's got a boot
Speaker 6: on their neck. And I totally understand that that you
Speaker 6: can you know, that's not But I do wonder if
Speaker 6: the only pathway towards any healing is if not forgiveness,
Speaker 6: some compassion for the person who whose soul has been
Speaker 6: damaged because their humanity. You know, when you act against
Speaker 6: another living being, or you act against another human, doesn't
Speaker 6: it damage your soul to some degree? And I think
Speaker 6: that's what was striking at a Love Manual's perspective. He said,
Speaker 6: these guys lost their humanity. I lost my dignity, They
Speaker 6: lost their humanity.
Speaker 7: And I think he understood that because he was one
Speaker 7: class maybe higher with one with a very small margin
Speaker 7: of benefit of a privilege that these kids didn't have. Well,
Speaker 7: but that he might have realized that he's part of
Speaker 7: the boot that's on their neck, you know, like it's
Speaker 7: all he understood where that frustration was coming from. I
Speaker 7: love when he said, there's an intellectual level of knowing
Speaker 7: you live in a dangerous place. Then there's the bodily
Speaker 7: you know, like he he you can intellectualize all these
Speaker 7: social problems, and until you face to face with what
Speaker 7: it's like to have to sleep in the street or
Speaker 7: what it's like to have a knife held up out
Speaker 7: your throat, you don't realize that we're all living right
Speaker 7: on the cusp of an unstable society unless we take
Speaker 7: care of these problems that drive people to these desperate situations.
Speaker 7: And by privilege, I mean he was marginally marginally like
Speaker 7: he had. The only privilege I think he really had
Speaker 7: was you know that he wasn't as exposed to these situations.
Speaker 7: But his family didn't have any money. They were not
Speaker 7: by any means wealthy. He had a few more opportunities,
Speaker 7: but probably because of the way that he was raised
Speaker 7: in the family's concern. But it's not like there is yeah,
Speaker 7: I mean, like I said, it was a marginal difference,
Speaker 7: But I mean he seemed very aware of what social
Speaker 7: division does to society. And the fact that he's going
Speaker 7: to take this experience and put himself right back in
Speaker 7: that line of fire and go right back into these
Speaker 7: dangerous situations to document it is astounding to me.
Speaker 6: Within a month of his of his incident, he was
Speaker 6: on a bus heading into the same neighborhood where it
Speaker 6: had happened. I mean, I can't believe. And he was
Speaker 6: shaking like a leaf, and you know, I can't imagine it.
Speaker 6: It's just so intense. But he had to. He was
Speaker 6: compelled to. And the other thing I wanted that took
Speaker 6: away from his story was he he was clear. He said,
Speaker 6: I don't think journalism is the best product. For a
Speaker 6: message to last or to be received, it has to
Speaker 6: be nuanced, it has to be artistically valuable, and it
Speaker 6: has to have a level of personal story and research.
Speaker 7: He is an incredible photographer. People should definitely go check
Speaker 7: out his website and his way with words, you know,
Speaker 7: like the way he described things. You know, I found
Speaker 7: myself in that strange place where the rural area and
Speaker 7: the cities join. I mean, his his speaking was almost
Speaker 7: like Hemingway, very simple, but very so much poetry and
Speaker 7: everything he was saying, and that's what made it really
Speaker 7: hard for me to listen to the parts where he
Speaker 7: did have his face in the dirt when he was
Speaker 7: being beaten by a plank of wood, you know, where
Speaker 7: his he could see his girlfriend being tortured for nine hours.
Speaker 7: Like the pacing of this story, the way he was
Speaker 7: able to bring in those moments of beauty, they really
Speaker 7: hit when you were experiencing viscerally what he had gone through.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he was open to all senses and he was
Speaker 6: open to all experiences. He had been freed of any
Speaker 6: preconceived notions about what was coming next, and he was
Speaker 6: pretty sure he was going to die. And in that moment,
Speaker 6: knowing that you're going to die with some certainty that
Speaker 6: you're not going to make it out of the situation,
Speaker 6: that allowed him to see beyond the veil and to
Speaker 6: see the beauty of the moment he was in in
Speaker 6: a way that you know, it's that that's a really
Speaker 6: strange and interesting phenomenon.
Speaker 1: Next time on Alive Again, we meet Annalise Cochrane, who
Speaker 1: survived the devastating Hina fires in Hawaii. Her story is
Speaker 1: one of insight and rugged survival amidst unimaginable destruction.
Speaker 9: You always hear the question what would you do if
Speaker 9: you had twenty minutes left to live? I found out twice.
Speaker 9: It was a beautiful day. The skies were clear and blue,
Speaker 9: the water was.
Speaker 10: Calm, and we were all about to die.
Speaker 1: Our story producers are Dan Bush, Kate Sweeney, Brent Die,
Speaker 1: Nicholas Dakaski, and Lauren Vogelba Music by Ben Lovett, additional
Speaker 1: music by Alexander Rodriguez. Our executive producers are Matthew Frederick
Speaker 1: and Trevor Young. Special thanks to Alexander Williams for additional
Speaker 1: production support. Our studio engineers are Rima El Kali and
Speaker 1: Names Griffin. Our editors are Dan Bush, Gerhartslovitchka, Brent Die
Speaker 1: and Alexander Rodriguez. Mixing by Ben Lovett and Alexander h Riaz.
Speaker 1: I'm your host Dan Bush. For more about Manuel and
Speaker 1: to see his amazing photography and to hear more about
Speaker 1: his projects, go to Manuelbeo.
Speaker 2: Guspert dot com.
Speaker 1: That's m A n U E l B A y
Speaker 1: O g I s B e r T dot com.
Speaker 1: Alive Again is a production of iHeart Radio and Psychopia Pictures.
Speaker 1: If you have a transformative near death experience, to share.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear your story. Please email us at
Speaker 1: Alive Again Project at gmail dot com. That's a l
Speaker 1: I v e A g A I N p R
Speaker 1: O j e c T at gmail dot com