Speaker 1: We've spent two days and night trying to locate the plane.
Speaker 1: We hoped to find. Unfortunately, the bodies and what was
Speaker 1: left on the garago, we couldn't find him. Fernando Blancos
Speaker 1: Ascenda spent months coordinating a major cooka in sight from
Speaker 1: Columbia Tobacco, California. It arranged for clandestine runways to be
Speaker 1: built in the desert, and then it rained. The pilots
Speaker 1: couldn't find the washed out runway. They lost communication with
Speaker 1: blank Hill and were forced to crash the end of
Speaker 1: the dunes. But for two days of looking for the
Speaker 1: crash site, some fishermen arrived at the gas station in
Speaker 1: the area asking for blank Hill's cousin. They knew where
Speaker 1: the plane was. They quickly mobilized to find the plane.
Speaker 1: The goods were practically intact, maybe a few package torn.
Speaker 1: There were six people on board, two of them in
Speaker 1: one piece. Blink said about getting the wounded to the
Speaker 1: hospital and the coke to expire and nest of bias Mota.
Speaker 1: They sent for them and were stabilized. They injured, They
Speaker 1: were very hurt. I had my plane register as an
Speaker 1: air ambulance, so I flew them toward Senda. He wanted
Speaker 1: to fly the wounded to Cardillo's secret clinic in New
Speaker 1: Mexico City, but Bias Mota insisted they treat them locally well.
Speaker 1: Mota was overseeing the shipment of the cocaine across the border.
Speaker 1: Linkhio says that he hired some people to take dynamite
Speaker 1: out to the crash site and blew up the plane.
Speaker 1: Then he got word from Mota. It was said, the
Speaker 1: last kid has crossed the border, meaning the last killo
Speaker 1: had that right to the state heire. Blankhio says that
Speaker 1: they all celebrated by partying for two days. He refers
Speaker 1: to what would be international sex trafficking in the following terms.
Speaker 1: We went on a bush, she wrote, as the girls
Speaker 1: from Vega and the room, but began today's sparking non
Speaker 1: stop if you can't imagine those sputies. As I noted earlier,
Speaker 1: the use of such violent sexist language is common in
Speaker 1: blank Hill's tales and throughout what often gets called the
Speaker 1: Narco cultura. Blank Your continues, we were staying at the
Speaker 1: Holiday Inn, and we moved with the girls to the
Speaker 1: Colonial hotel, precisely to avoid attracting unnecessary attention At the
Speaker 1: Holiday Inn. The next day, we decided not to sleep
Speaker 1: at the Holiday Inn because we felt like we were
Speaker 1: being followed. Having just recovered five tons of cocaine from
Speaker 1: a plane that has flown from Colombia and crashed in
Speaker 1: the desert, beaking four people critically wounded in a local hospital,
Speaker 1: and then moving that coke across the border into the
Speaker 1: United States, it makes sense that Blankio and his cohort
Speaker 1: would feel a bit apprehensive, feel, for example, as if
Speaker 1: they were being followed. You walk around your tail and
Speaker 1: so some strange stuff. I had even seen some flu
Speaker 1: when I left, and indeed there was something they didn't know.
Speaker 1: Yet those guys didn't blow up the plane. Someone found
Speaker 1: the plane and tipped off the authorities. Federal police have
Speaker 1: been tracking blank you on his team for days. So,
Speaker 1: to paraphrase Kurt Cobain, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean
Speaker 1: the Feds aren't following you. On edge Link. You and
Speaker 1: buy as more as half brother decided to pick up
Speaker 1: their things from the holiday and leave town. The cops
Speaker 1: are waiting for them. Heard as ambushed us. There are
Speaker 1: your kill. They took us to the back. They lock
Speaker 1: us up in our rooms. They knew who we were.
Speaker 1: They knew practically everything. Then the Calindada began, and his
Speaker 1: interviews with TV Thank You exhibits an unusual relationship to
Speaker 1: acts of violence, often orients his life story around violence.
Speaker 1: He suffered multiple kidnappings and torture sessions, but he does
Speaker 1: not describe those events in detail. He also shies away
Speaker 1: from discussing other acts of violence, whether obscure or famous,
Speaker 1: that are related to his story. Only at one point
Speaker 1: in his interviews that he seemed to hint that he
Speaker 1: had to commit an extreme act of violence to defend himself.
Speaker 1: He often describes very close friendships with people like Maloka
Speaker 1: Fuentti and who were involved in countless kidnappings and murders.
Speaker 1: He talks about flying their families, but does not mention
Speaker 1: anything about the violence they carried out, but that Aleva
Speaker 1: himself was killed by Mexican marines in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: commandos repelled from helicopters to storm Leva's luxury apartment in Cordovaca.
Speaker 1: Those same commandos also placed bloody baso and dollar bills
Speaker 1: on his lifeless torso and led the press photographers through
Speaker 1: the apartment to take the pa sure this for me
Speaker 1: was a key moment in the so called drug war,
Speaker 1: the state openly speaking the language of narco terrorism. Some
Speaker 1: say that Elapauzman ordered the Marines to produce that image,
Speaker 1: which would only add one more turn of the screw.
Speaker 1: Throughout his story, Blinkio will often say the name of
Speaker 1: a good friend and colleague, someone like Miguel Basan or
Speaker 1: Juan al Gomez, and then quickly say they killed him,
Speaker 1: without ever saying who they were, what happened, or why.
Speaker 1: Violent seems to always hover on the edge of his story,
Speaker 1: having just passed through or lingering just out of you.
Speaker 1: Reading Blinkfield's transcripts, I was struck by the casual way
Speaker 1: he had mentioned that so many of his friends had
Speaker 1: been murdered. Was he so inured to the violence of
Speaker 1: his trade? Was he avoiding details so as not to
Speaker 1: draw attention to himself and have to face questions about
Speaker 1: his involvement in such acts of violence? Is it possible
Speaker 1: to imagine that a man and old for nearly thirty
Speaker 1: years in international drug trafficking would not have participated in kidnappings, torture,
Speaker 1: and murder. In January two one colleagues that reached out
Speaker 1: to me about a curious individual they've been interviewing using
Speaker 1: a clandestine cell phone from inside of prison in North Carolina.
Speaker 1: The man claimed to have worked as a pilot, entrepreneur
Speaker 1: and air logistics coordinator in the international drug trade for
Speaker 1: some thirty years. My friends at the Dictive produced a
Speaker 1: podcast in Spanish and wanted to know if I'd be
Speaker 1: interested in working on a sister podcast in English looking
Speaker 1: into this man and his story. Sure, I said, but
Speaker 1: I need to do my own investigations see what I
Speaker 1: can find. Thetieve invited the legendary Mexican actor Joaquin Coco
Speaker 1: to read the English translations of Transportista's quoted interviews with
Speaker 1: Manue Latius. My name, I guess is John Gibbler, and this,
Speaker 1: in a sense is Transportista episode six. Las Callin tell
Speaker 1: us the police rushed to blink you in his colleague
Speaker 1: as they approached the holiday in. They took them into
Speaker 1: a back entrance and up the blink Hill's room, where
Speaker 1: they began to torture them. They put us both in
Speaker 1: there in my room, and that's when it all went down.
Speaker 1: We could listen to the complete ciasco through the radios.
Speaker 1: There we are getting the beating of our lives. Blink
Speaker 1: Hill says that he and his colleague tried to deny
Speaker 1: who they were and what they had done, but it
Speaker 1: was obvious that the police knew everything. They took them
Speaker 1: both to a federal police station and continued to beat them.
Speaker 1: After a while, it became clear that the two million
Speaker 1: dollars Blinkyo's employer had paid to the police have been
Speaker 1: stolen by a subordinate. The truth came out the commandante
Speaker 1: had stolen the bribe money. The police commander thus realized
Speaker 1: that the people he had been torturing were not responsible
Speaker 1: for the mishap, and offered to write their supposed confessions
Speaker 1: in such a way that a judge would be forced
Speaker 1: to throw them out. Thank you. To thank the man
Speaker 1: who had tortured him, offered to give him a collector's
Speaker 1: watch man. They say, thank you very much. Commandante over there,
Speaker 1: I had a goal GMT Master too. I'm going to
Speaker 1: give it to you. No, no, no, no, he said,
Speaker 1: I don't need anything. I have plenty of watches. Keep
Speaker 1: your stuff, you're gonna need it, he said. Thank your
Speaker 1: story here, assuming it's true, illustrates a common feature of
Speaker 1: the drug war. The federal police don't arrest drug traffickers
Speaker 1: when they traffic drugs, but rather they kidnap and torture
Speaker 1: drug traffickers who haven't paid them. Once the police found
Speaker 1: out who owned the cocaine shipment and that they had
Speaker 1: made the proper payment, they lost all interest in blank
Speaker 1: you on his colleague. One can only imagine, however, what
Speaker 1: happened to the subcommandante. So blink You in jail then
Speaker 1: faced an unusual problem. From the beginning. They said it
Speaker 1: was a total nobody, but it was in the room
Speaker 1: place of the room time, which obviously wasn't the case.
Speaker 1: He said he was a nobody and his confession was admissible.
Speaker 1: It seemed he'd be released quickly, But then his various
Speaker 1: employers got worried and they all sent their best lawyers
Speaker 1: to help him out. But with all those lawyers, they're waiting,
Speaker 1: speaking with the prosecutor, speaking with the judge. The judge said, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not letting you go at the preliminary huting man.
Speaker 1: I'll pass and leave the problem into a district judge
Speaker 1: or some other judge who gets your case. Blink You
Speaker 1: goes into detail, naming the famous Narco lawyers who went
Speaker 1: to defend him, but in the end he would be
Speaker 1: in prison for eighteen months and then released. And his interviews,
Speaker 1: he recalls those eighteen months in jail and the rather
Speaker 1: offensive terms we already heard an episode four. The way
Speaker 1: Blankiell talks about women was the first thing that struck
Speaker 1: me when I listened to a story, but we won't
Speaker 1: repeat that here. Once out of jail, blank he says
Speaker 1: that he moved around quite a bit. My first traveled
Speaker 1: to Tijuana, Mexicali to get myself together, so to say.
Speaker 1: I divided my time between Mexico City and SENAA Mexicali,
Speaker 1: Tijuana and got to work. I did a few jobs.
Speaker 1: It was coordinating with some Colombian friends, and got back
Speaker 1: to work. And we keep going doing pretty well, driving
Speaker 1: with some lucky strikes, magnificent negotiations. Everything was moved sailing.
Speaker 1: During this time, blank as that he was kidnapped and
Speaker 1: forced to fly for the nephew of a well known trafficker.
Speaker 1: After his plane broke down on one of those flights,
Speaker 1: he fled to Los Angeles. There he worked for a
Speaker 1: time selling planes to drug traffickers. Then Amalo Carrillo once
Speaker 1: again sought him out, and asked for a favor. He
Speaker 1: wanted to know if Linkio could fly a lear Jet
Speaker 1: thirty five for a friend. Blenko went to Chihuahua to
Speaker 1: meet this friend, and there he also met a man.
Speaker 1: He asked that the divette not to name. I'll call
Speaker 1: him Steve. Steve is in prison for many years. He
Speaker 1: was released some ten years ago in a technicality, with
Speaker 1: the Mexican Federal Attorney General immediately appealed. He is known
Speaker 1: to be given to extreme acts of violence, and he
Speaker 1: is currently at large. Back in the mid nineties, Blinkio
Speaker 1: decided to work with both Amalo Carrio's friend and with Steve.
Speaker 1: He went to Vanna's, California to take some lear Jet
Speaker 1: flight courses while he was off studying. However, and my
Speaker 1: look Ario's friend was murdered, so it would just be
Speaker 1: blank Hill and Steve. In the beginning, my business was
Speaker 1: using my planes in exchange for a percentage for the transportation.
Speaker 1: That's how it began. I did a couple of world
Speaker 1: It is around this time that Blinkio says he became
Speaker 1: close friends with Artur and started working with him as well.
Speaker 1: Blankio charged Steve around two hundred thousand dollars per flight.
Speaker 1: Steve decided this was too expensive. Instead of taking his
Speaker 1: business elsewhere, however, he decided to buy blank Hill's business
Speaker 1: from him and then hire him as a pilot. Wait,
Speaker 1: when I buy the planes and helps you on a
Speaker 1: pay your role. It wasn't a suggestion, but rather an order.
Speaker 1: So he bowed the planes. Steve started plankling. He was
Speaker 1: sixty five thousand dollars of light. Blank Hill says he
Speaker 1: quickly became tired of this arrangement. He started flying more
Speaker 1: with Artur beltran Leva, who he says, for a time
Speaker 1: would only fly on turboprop planes with blank He as
Speaker 1: a pilot. In this context, Blanko tells a long and
Speaker 1: convoluted tale of multiple airplane acquisitions and sales gone wrong
Speaker 1: that led Steve to accuse Blankio trying to rip him off. So,
Speaker 1: even though I hadn't done anything, they called me to
Speaker 1: Toluca there in Alamalatia restaurant. We had a couple of
Speaker 1: rings and some delicious stakes, and we left for Mexico
Speaker 1: City to an apartment that belonged to police commandant. I
Speaker 1: wasn't guilty of anything, like I said, thank you, insists
Speaker 1: that he did not try to rip Steve off, but
Speaker 1: that he was the victim of other people's ill will
Speaker 1: and nefarious dealings. He also makes it clear that he
Speaker 1: did not like his arrangement with Steve. I was looking
Speaker 1: for a way out still while he was chewing on
Speaker 1: his fine stick, he didn't foresee what lay ahead without
Speaker 1: expecting it. Of course, Fiesta here does not refer to
Speaker 1: the kind of party he probably wished for. She started
Speaker 1: complaining and abusing me in a way I don't even
Speaker 1: want to describe, man and that kind of things. They
Speaker 1: time me up literally means the heating up, but a
Speaker 1: more sober terms, it means torture. Coincidentally, perhaps after having
Speaker 1: been tortured by a federal police commander in his own
Speaker 1: hotel room, here it was Blankio's business partner torturing him
Speaker 1: in a federal police commander's luxury apartment. And once again
Speaker 1: we see that violence is not exercised in the battle
Speaker 1: between the infringement and the enforcement of the rule of law,
Speaker 1: but rather as the preferred manner of conflict resolution in
Speaker 1: an industry that depends on official invisibility. Having been captured
Speaker 1: and tortured by Steve, the possibility of jail was the
Speaker 1: least of Blankio's worries next Time. Transportista is a detective
Speaker 1: a production with Exile Content Studio in partnership with iHeart
Speaker 1: Radios Michael Dura podcast Network. Directed and narrated by John Gibbler,
Speaker 1: Transportista's voice by jrquin Cosio, Editing and sound design by
Speaker 1: Ferrando de la Rossa and Pedro Garcia. Reporting by John
Speaker 1: Gibbler Emanuelarios produced by Juli Gonzales. Voice recording by Ugo
Speaker 1: Merino and Rene Garcia. Transportisas interviews translated by Carlo Rice Arguis.
Speaker 1: Production supervision by Nando Vila and Alberto Cespedes. Associate producers
Speaker 1: Alonzo Hilar and Alejandro Duran Diego and Riquez rro Is
Speaker 1: the creator and executive producer, along with Daniel Eilenberg and Eakle.
Speaker 1: Executive producers for I Heart Media are Comma Burn and
Speaker 1: just Sell Bunches. For more podcasts from my Heart, visit
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. H