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. Last time on Forgotten,
Speaker 1: when they like a girl, they find her, no matter
Speaker 1: the cost. The men that I study mostly they operate alone.
Speaker 1: So I started thinking, how could all of these men
Speaker 1: trust each other. Well, our speculation was that when you
Speaker 1: don't want a crime to be solved, it's because the
Speaker 1: resolution of it is going to be extremely either embarrassing
Speaker 1: to somebody in power, or it's going to come back
Speaker 1: to you. I had a night witness who alleged that
Speaker 1: he had been at LEAs parties and eventually the women
Speaker 1: will be killed because they knew too much. Alfredo Corcado
Speaker 1: was leaving the prison in Juarez in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: having finally been introduced by Dante Almaras to an eyewitness
Speaker 1: to the murders of women. This drug dealer had just
Speaker 1: told Alfredo that police were kidnapping women to be raped
Speaker 1: and killed by the cartel as a fall of celebration.
Speaker 1: After the prison interview, Dante drove Alfredo back to the
Speaker 1: bridge to El Paso, but he had one final tip
Speaker 1: to share, and that's when Dante said, there's a name
Speaker 1: for this group, cartel. There's a small sort of division.
Speaker 1: There are the gatekeepers. They're the ones who controlled around
Speaker 1: and make sure that the drugs give into the United States.
Speaker 1: La Lina. At the time, La lina was from what
Speaker 1: you describe it. It's like an unspeakable term. Nobody knows
Speaker 1: about lallna. Nobody says anything about la linea. Why because
Speaker 1: la lina is really when we talk about the power.
Speaker 1: They are the hardest soul as the Quires cartel. La
Speaker 1: ligne means the line. And Dante told Alfredo that the
Speaker 1: group of policemen involved in abducting the women were also
Speaker 1: the enforcement arm for the Juires cartel, and the world
Speaker 1: of organized crime was one that the Devil's lawyer knew
Speaker 1: all too well. He didn't get his nickname for nothing.
Speaker 1: He'd represented people from the Juires underworld in legal cases
Speaker 1: and he had this drug dealer stashed in the city
Speaker 1: jail under a false name. And Alfredo still didn't know
Speaker 1: if his source was playing him. So to corroborate what
Speaker 1: he was hearing, he went to see Phil Jordan, the
Speaker 1: former head of the DA and al Passo. We called
Speaker 1: Phil ourselves and he didn't mince his words. First and foremost,
Speaker 1: the cartel's control the police. A lot of the killings
Speaker 1: that occurred in the Juires Cord were done by members
Speaker 1: of law enforcement. Mexican law enforcement, according to Phil, La
Speaker 1: Lina often killed to enforce silence who's according to the
Speaker 1: intelligence that we have. The police would pick up informants
Speaker 1: and then they would execute them, sometimes burying them alive.
Speaker 1: Phil also corroborated the involvement of this group in the
Speaker 1: abduction and murder of women. He knew them as the Gatekeepers,
Speaker 1: but with the help us some DA documents, he Alfredo
Speaker 1: pieced together that this was another name for the same organization.
Speaker 1: Once we got those documents of the Gatekeepers from the
Speaker 1: US the EA, we could finally go to the Mexican side.
Speaker 1: We met with Luis vas Concelos, the drugs are in
Speaker 1: Mexico City for the AG's office. When I brought up
Speaker 1: La Lina, he did not want to talk about it
Speaker 1: and just kind of pushed us away. He didn't really
Speaker 1: deny La Lina, He just kind of say no thing,
Speaker 1: you know, that kind of very care be very careful.
Speaker 1: Jose Luis Vasconcellos was an assistant Attorney General in Mexico
Speaker 1: whose mandate was to attack organized crime, and Alfredo was
Speaker 1: perplexed by the response to his questions about La Lina,
Speaker 1: so he kept going. I think in one way it
Speaker 1: was good that I was so inexperience and so naive.
Speaker 1: When that happens, you just keep going, and you keep
Speaker 1: pushing and you push. I think some colleagues, my own
Speaker 1: mother would say that stupidity. I would say I didn't
Speaker 1: know what I was getting into. In response to this pushing,
Speaker 1: Vasconcelos introduced Alfredo to the local anti drug prosecutor in Huarez.
Speaker 1: We're having lunch and again, you know, it's the same idea,
Speaker 1: what can you talk about La Linea? And suddenly he
Speaker 1: just I mean, he just got really uncomfortable, really awkward,
Speaker 1: and he says, you know, I have to leave. Something
Speaker 1: else just happened. I had to follow him outside, and
Speaker 1: he just said, stay away from them. What made the
Speaker 1: Mexican drugs are? And his man inquires so uncomfortable, what
Speaker 1: does it say about La Lina and its influence? How
Speaker 1: high up did the corruption go? And what did all
Speaker 1: this have to do with the murders of women. I'm
Speaker 1: as Voloshi and I'm Mona. This is forgotten, the women
Speaker 1: of Baram lasciv you know now? See do you know now?
Speaker 1: Sque Halla Feliceva. So by this point Monica Alfredo had
Speaker 1: all the confirmation he needed that La Lina did exist.
Speaker 1: But who are they? They are the enforcement wing of
Speaker 1: the cartel. They kidnap, they kill, they dispose of bodies.
Speaker 1: La Lina is comprised primarily of state and local cops.
Speaker 1: And these state and local cops are pulling a double duty.
Speaker 1: And how do these cops end up getting corrupted by
Speaker 1: the cartel? The simplest way to put this is with
Speaker 1: the phrase plato or plomo, which means silver or lead.
Speaker 1: Either you take a bribe or we put a bullet
Speaker 1: in your head. And this goes for anyone, not just
Speaker 1: a cop. It goes for a politician, street vendor, even
Speaker 1: a journalist. But sometimes this ultimatum is even necessary. Some
Speaker 1: people are willingly corrupted in exchange for some of the
Speaker 1: spoils of drug trafficking. And you told me about a
Speaker 1: word that's used in Juarez to describe this kind of complicity.
Speaker 1: Metido so medivo can mean involved or implicated, and in
Speaker 1: Mexico and in Huas it's often used to describe someone
Speaker 1: that's involved or implicated in the drug trade. Just like
Speaker 1: Alfredo walked into his story and the underworld naively, so
Speaker 1: do many of the people who become methidos. By the
Speaker 1: time they realize just what they've gotten themselves into, it's
Speaker 1: too late. And it's through the process of methido that
Speaker 1: Laalnia is able to exert its power. And Alfredo's reporting
Speaker 1: revealed that some of the cops in Huires were metido
Speaker 1: in the most horrific way. They were involved in the
Speaker 1: murders of the women. How shocking was Alfredo's story at
Speaker 1: the time, well, other reporters before Alfredo had also reported
Speaker 1: on this theory that the police may be involved in
Speaker 1: the murders of women, including Diana. The difference with Alfredo
Speaker 1: is he's able to get confirmation from top federal sources,
Speaker 1: and he's able to get a name, La Lina indicating
Speaker 1: that it's not just one or two or three corrupt cops. No, no,
Speaker 1: this is a formal organization and that that is scary.
Speaker 1: La Lina translates as the line, and you mentioned the
Speaker 1: name might have some connection to the border, but I
Speaker 1: was very struck by the fact that it's unspeakable. Well,
Speaker 1: La Lina exerted its power through terror. It mercilessly went
Speaker 1: after enemies and snitches. And so this pact of silence
Speaker 1: is far reaching, to the point where even Mexico's hop
Speaker 1: drugs are and his men in Huatis are hesitant to
Speaker 1: talk about La Lina. And if you have the authorities
Speaker 1: in collusion with the drug traffickers, achieving justice is impossible.
Speaker 1: These men, they had so much power. They could pick
Speaker 1: a woman off the streets, do unthinkable things to her,
Speaker 1: dump her in a vacant lot, and not suffer any
Speaker 1: consequences for it. They would be protected by law enforcement.
Speaker 1: Alfredo had returned to Juarez to answer what he thought
Speaker 1: was a straightforward question, who is killing the women? But
Speaker 1: the answer to that question seemed to involve a level
Speaker 1: of conspiracy and corruption that he never believed was possible.
Speaker 1: And the deeper Alfredo dug, the more complicity in the
Speaker 1: murders he discovered. It's not here are the bad guys
Speaker 1: and here good guys. They were not good guys. Everybody
Speaker 1: was involved you have a very powerful groups, so in
Speaker 1: order to have power, they share the profits. And then
Speaker 1: suddenly it becomes solvicious that you never know who was
Speaker 1: the government and who are the criminals. They're one and
Speaker 1: the same. Alfredo's mother had made him promise that he'd
Speaker 1: never report on organized crime, but he was finding that
Speaker 1: promise so hard to keep. His reporting on the murders
Speaker 1: of women had exposed to him why so many investigators
Speaker 1: had failed to unmask the killers, and he was leaning
Speaker 1: new understanding of how power worked in Mexico. But Alfredo
Speaker 1: maintained some degree of optimism. He believed that if he
Speaker 1: exposed what was happening, things might change. So he accepts
Speaker 1: an invitation to Juarez shortly after his story was published
Speaker 1: to discuss the findings with some Mexican leagues, but he
Speaker 1: didn't get the response he was expecting. One colleague came
Speaker 1: out to me and says, Alfredo, there is no La Linea.
Speaker 1: And this is someone I knew and someone I trusted,
Speaker 1: a Mexican reporter, And I said, listen, if there is
Speaker 1: no La Linea, we will write a correction and we
Speaker 1: will understand. We don't want to give quite as a
Speaker 1: bad name. But I'm telling you, we got documents, we
Speaker 1: have people on the record, and he just kind of
Speaker 1: looked at me, like, thank we all be careful. Exactly
Speaker 1: what the drugs are in Mexico City, had told Alfredo.
Speaker 1: But was it a friendly warning or a veiled threat?
Speaker 1: Was the trusted colleague himself Matido? Well, Alfredo had all
Speaker 1: the DA documentation about La Linea, but even so he
Speaker 1: started to doubt himself. Then within minutes of leaving the panel,
Speaker 1: he got all the confirmation he'd ever't need. Now I'm
Speaker 1: walking away and there's a number comes in and not
Speaker 1: a number, it's just unknown. It says unknown on the phone,
Speaker 1: and person says a keyboys or Lazzi says, I'm right
Speaker 1: behind you. On sixteenth of September, Avenue, I was being
Speaker 1: watched and I hung up the phone, and I'm looking
Speaker 1: at everything with this paranoia. It goes from one minute
Speaker 1: you're doubting you're reporting to the next moment you're like,
Speaker 1: holy shit, they do exists, and they're here, and they
Speaker 1: may be right next to me, or the car may
Speaker 1: be right here, or the guy walking behind me, maybe
Speaker 1: the person. I am scared shitless. What do I do now?
Speaker 1: So I just made a bee line. I ran alfraid.
Speaker 1: It was only a mile from the bridge to the
Speaker 1: US and he needs to get to the Buddha to safety.
Speaker 1: But as he runs through the streets, he's suspicious that
Speaker 1: every person who looks his way, and he's starting to
Speaker 1: attract notice. He knows he might not make it all
Speaker 1: the way, So, with his life on the line and
Speaker 1: in desperation, Alfredo makes a bee line towards someone he
Speaker 1: doesn't even know if he can trust. Alfredo is running
Speaker 1: through the very streets where so many women had disappeared
Speaker 1: without witnesses. He's realizing that in hunting the story, he
Speaker 1: himself has become the prey because La Lina, the organization
Speaker 1: responsible for the abduction and murder of so many young women,
Speaker 1: won't tolerate any more revelations about us inner workings. But
Speaker 1: silencing journalists and murdering women is not the reason that
Speaker 1: La Lina exists, although both do play a role in
Speaker 1: protecting their real business, drug trafficking. So Alfreda receives this
Speaker 1: call Monica on his cell phone, and it's not exactly
Speaker 1: like the Dallas Morning News would have given his number out.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of crazy because not only does this
Speaker 1: person on the other end of the line know where
Speaker 1: he is, they've managed to get his cell phone number.
Speaker 1: How's that possible? Jeez, wouldn't we all like to know that?
Speaker 1: Wouldn't Alfredo like to know that? But the fact that
Speaker 1: they've got it is very concerning. That means that someone
Speaker 1: he thinks he can trust is betraying him. I mean,
Speaker 1: it just proves how far their tentacles reach that even
Speaker 1: an American journalist for a major US newspaper can be
Speaker 1: threatened by them. You can imagine this phone call that
Speaker 1: Alfreda receives was exactly what his mother was fearing when
Speaker 1: she made him promise not to cover these kinds of stories.
Speaker 1: Do you know? Think about the conversation between them, But
Speaker 1: I imagine that it was no different from the interaction
Speaker 1: I had with my own mother. Leave them alone, because
Speaker 1: if you don't, they're going to come after you. And
Speaker 1: I don't want to be one of those grieving mothers
Speaker 1: I see sobbing into the news cameras on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: How do we get here? Where mothers from Paolaflores to
Speaker 1: Alfredo's mother to your mother so scared about that children
Speaker 1: in Hoarez the drug cartels in Mexico are like a cancer,
Speaker 1: and it's a cancer that's been metastasizing ever since the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. And why is it so severe Inhuarez. Well, honestly,
Speaker 1: it comes down to simple geography. I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: reason why the Spaniards called my hometown the pass. Four
Speaker 1: hundred years ago, bel Pasohuadis region was the mid section
Speaker 1: of one of the most important trade routes in the Americas,
Speaker 1: the Camino Real. It went from Mexico City all the
Speaker 1: way to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Now fast forward a
Speaker 1: few centuries, people in goods are still moving in droves
Speaker 1: across this region, only now there's an international border restricting
Speaker 1: that movement. And those restrictions created a golden opportunity for
Speaker 1: the black market, and with help from Laalna, the hottest
Speaker 1: cartel was one of the groups that exploited this black
Speaker 1: market opportunity. So Miami had this reputation of being the
Speaker 1: place to smuggle drugs into the US, which is why
Speaker 1: movies like Scarface were set there. But basically the government
Speaker 1: got wise to that and traffickers started looking for alternate routes. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is when Colombian traffickers discover the US Mexico border,
Speaker 1: which turns out to be a far superior route, and
Speaker 1: the FEDS they didn't catch up until nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: In that year, they busted a warehouse in North Los
Speaker 1: Angeles and found twenty one tons of cocaine, reportedly worth
Speaker 1: six point five billion dollars, still the largest seizure of
Speaker 1: cocaine in American history. And guess where those twenty one
Speaker 1: tons came from, huh, El Paso Horres. This was now
Speaker 1: the new hot spot. By the late nineties, the estimate
Speaker 1: was that seventy percent of all drug shipments to the
Speaker 1: US were coming through the US Mexico border. But the
Speaker 1: reason that these drug cartels are so powerful is because
Speaker 1: of demand on the American side, and that demand is
Speaker 1: worth billions of dollars every single year, and that's the
Speaker 1: money that goes to corrupting the state and local police
Speaker 1: who are kidnapping and raping and dumping these women in
Speaker 1: the desert. El Paso and Huirez have been smuggling cities
Speaker 1: for a hundred years, but Juirez has only been what
Speaker 1: Diana Washington Valdez calls a killing field for women since
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties, So what changed? How did La Ligna
Speaker 1: come into existence and become so brutal. To help answer
Speaker 1: these questions, we spoke with Howard Campbell statement. He's an
Speaker 1: anthropologist at the University of Texas El Paso, and in
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
Speaker 1: asked him to testify about how the US might respond
Speaker 1: to escalating violence in Mexico. I don't think in a
Speaker 1: long term we're ever going to stop drug cartels exactly.
Speaker 1: For thirty five years we've been doing this, but we
Speaker 1: don't see much change in the supply or demand. The
Speaker 1: most effective ways the US can help Mexico with a
Speaker 1: drug problem are by first of all, cutting our demand
Speaker 1: for illegal drives, second, slowing the flow of guns from
Speaker 1: the US to Mexico. Third fighting drug organization. I believes
Speaker 1: that the nature of the murders of women in Houarres,
Speaker 1: the patent in the selection, and the sexual violence that
Speaker 1: goes hand in hand with the killings, has meant that
Speaker 1: many outside investigators have focused on the wrong leads. I think,
Speaker 1: to some extent, the understanding of this femicide issue was
Speaker 1: seen through the filter of the American phenomenon of serial killers,
Speaker 1: Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy. If you think the
Speaker 1: problem as serial killers and the problem is catching the
Speaker 1: serial killers. But if your other interpretation is that the
Speaker 1: problem is the lack of a functioning police system and
Speaker 1: judicial system in Mexico, corrupt politicians, drug cartels, and gangs.
Speaker 1: If you think that's the source of the violence, and
Speaker 1: that's what you need to attack first. As far as
Speaker 1: how it is concerned, no matter how many mamuelios are
Speaker 1: taken off the streets of Juarez, or even how many
Speaker 1: El Chapo Guzman's extradited to the US, the sums of
Speaker 1: money involved in drug trafficking means that corruption is endemic
Speaker 1: on both sides of the border. It's a multibillion dollar
Speaker 1: industry in these two cities, I mean El pasoas are
Speaker 1: probably some of the most important places in the entire
Speaker 1: world for narcotics trafficking. That's another misnomer about drug trafficking
Speaker 1: is that it's Mexican groups invading and I'd say it's no,
Speaker 1: it's it's Mexicans and Americans working together to produce, to transport,
Speaker 1: to smuggle, to sell drugs. You're talking about at least
Speaker 1: one hundred years of history. In fact, up until eighteen fifty,
Speaker 1: El Paso and Juarez, or one community, both were in Mexico.
Speaker 1: It was only after the Mexican American War that El
Speaker 1: Paso became part of Texas, with Juarez Romani in Mexico,
Speaker 1: but the two cities stayed deeply connected, and by the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties the area was as smug as paradise, from
Speaker 1: bootleg liquor to illegal narcotics, with the business in Juarez
Speaker 1: run by an unlikely figure. Starting around the time of prohibition,
Speaker 1: the smuggling of marijuana and heroin was largely monopolized by
Speaker 1: one person, a woman called La Nacha. She had a
Speaker 1: career that lasted forty or fifty years, quite a long time.
Speaker 1: That's quite a long time. And so Lanacha died of
Speaker 1: natural causes in her seventies, and so that's reaching heaven
Speaker 1: or something like. So Lanacha was a genius. She was uneducated,
Speaker 1: I grew up as a poor woman and eventually somehow
Speaker 1: figured out how to make this drug business work. What
Speaker 1: protected her for that long, So she was well protected
Speaker 1: by a vast extended family, but also her accomplices in
Speaker 1: the municipal police. Surely within the municipal government of Juarez,
Speaker 1: but also even at the federal level. From the beginning,
Speaker 1: in Juarez, illegal business thrived with the complicity of the
Speaker 1: police and government, but this didn't include the abduction and
Speaker 1: murder of young women who had nothing to do with drugs.
Speaker 1: In fact, for a while, drug smuggling in Juarez operated
Speaker 1: like the old school Italian mafia, violent to its enemies,
Speaker 1: but woven into the fabric of the community. Things began
Speaker 1: to shift when America's consumption habit shifted. People started to
Speaker 1: use cocaine. It was sort of the passing of the
Speaker 1: hippie era into the disco era, and the Mexican trafficking
Speaker 1: organizations adapted to that. In the nineteen eighties, there was
Speaker 1: an enterprising Huire's local who was more than happy to
Speaker 1: help meet this new demand, even if that meant taking
Speaker 1: on the second job. Raphael Ailaharo was head of the
Speaker 1: federal police in the Chihuahua area, so he formed the
Speaker 1: first Waters Cartel and they began the smuggle cocaine. That's
Speaker 1: when things changed. There wasn't that much violence in Waters
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties, and so you had this very
Speaker 1: impressive drug trafficking organization that was making hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars, but not that many people were getting killed.
Speaker 1: HuaaS remained a city that Lanacho would have recognized, but
Speaker 1: the sums of money pouring in because of cocaine began
Speaker 1: to attract notice from outsiders, not least from a man
Speaker 1: from the western Mexican state of Sineloa. He too, was
Speaker 1: a federal policeman called Amalo Kario Fuentes. Carrio Fuentes was
Speaker 1: the great innovator in Mexican drug trafficking of bringing seven
Speaker 1: forty seven airplanes was a seats removed filled with cocaine
Speaker 1: from Colombia all the way up to the northern Mexican border,
Speaker 1: and then smuggling them into the United States, sometimes in
Speaker 1: eighteen wheel trucks right across the rebridge central El Paso
Speaker 1: and parts, many times with paid off US customs agents
Speaker 1: or US immigration officers. When you spend time in El Paso,
Speaker 1: you can't help but notice the steel fence that bisects
Speaker 1: it from Juarez and the militarization of the border. But
Speaker 1: no amount of infrastructure can protect an organization from an
Speaker 1: inside job, and Careo Fuentes, the police officer turned trafficker,
Speaker 1: understood this better than most. He recognized that the bigger
Speaker 1: his organization got, the more money it could bring in.
Speaker 1: The more money, the more corrupt officials on both sides
Speaker 1: of the border, and so it went on. But he
Speaker 1: also recognized that he was operating far from his home turf,
Speaker 1: so he brought in some associates from Sinaloa. Kario Fuentes
Speaker 1: brought in a whole bunch of Scario's head man. He
Speaker 1: had a very complex organization involving people are guarding safe houses.
Speaker 1: You have drivers, you have gunmen, you have accountants. You
Speaker 1: have essentially an informal criminal corporation, and that's what Kario
Speaker 1: Fuentes created. At first, the two former policemen, Aguilar and
Speaker 1: Carrio Fuentes worked together, solidifying an empire of cocaine trafficking.
Speaker 1: But after a while, the outside has always opportunity to
Speaker 1: go to loane. Now this isn't the same way as
Speaker 1: when you have a big American corporation buys up another corporation.
Speaker 1: It isn't as neat and clean. Carrio Fuentes had Aguilar,
Speaker 1: the original founder of the Juadist cartel, murdered in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three. That's when all the violets. That's when the
Speaker 1: ship hit the fan. Was when the Carrio Fuentes cartel
Speaker 1: took over in Juadas. Despite the loss of their leader,
Speaker 1: the local cartel weren't going to roll over for the
Speaker 1: man from Sina Looa, So Carria Fuentes began a reign
Speaker 1: of terror. So in the early nineteen nineties, Quadas becomes
Speaker 1: part of this kind of globalized, multi national, extremely violent
Speaker 1: drug cartel. You say nineteen ninety three as the takeover
Speaker 1: of Amalo Carrillo Fuintis of the Juaas Plaza, nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: three is also when these brutal, horrific women's murders began
Speaker 1: to happen in the city. So if you saying it's
Speaker 1: not a coincidence, no, I would say that it's not
Speaker 1: a coincidence. I'm not saying it's a conspiracy. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying the cartel game and they said, okay, we're gonna
Speaker 1: start committing femicides. What I'm saying is I think it's
Speaker 1: an excellent hypothesis to think that many women that were raped, kidnapped,
Speaker 1: murdered in Huatas were killed and mistreated by Ciccardios hit
Speaker 1: men for the drug cartels. Outsiders who don't feel connected
Speaker 1: to the local population, whose job is to brutalize and kill,
Speaker 1: would see women walking on the streets as pieces of meat,
Speaker 1: just like the people they would kidnap and murder who
Speaker 1: were enemies of their drug organization. Alfredo's reporting had already
Speaker 1: revealed the hand of organized crime in the murders of women,
Speaker 1: but Howard was helping us piece together how a hostile
Speaker 1: takeover of the Juarez cartel had turned the women who
Speaker 1: lived in the city into targets. As FBI special Agent
Speaker 1: in charge of El Paso, Heredrick Crawford had called them
Speaker 1: antelopes at the water Hole. So Laalna was an organization
Speaker 1: that exerted total control and whose policy of plato plomo
Speaker 1: left their victims with nowhere to turn, and Alfredo was
Speaker 1: experiencing this first hand as he ran through the streets
Speaker 1: of downtown Juarez, hoping to make it back to the bridge.
Speaker 1: The one person he could think to turn to for
Speaker 1: help was Dantown Maras, But as he got closer to
Speaker 1: the lawyer's office, he realized that he was running towards
Speaker 1: the very people he was trying so hard to escape.
Speaker 1: I'm just pushing forward, I realized where Danta's officers. And
Speaker 1: I'm just pushing and looking all around me. I've noticed
Speaker 1: that right next to Danta's. Just forgot there was a
Speaker 1: police station. I'm thinking, oh my god, you know the
Speaker 1: cals are was La Lina? What am I doing? I ran,
Speaker 1: I come in and I just went straight to his office.
Speaker 1: Paula Flores and so many other mothers had learned that
Speaker 1: there was no point in going to the police, and
Speaker 1: as far as Alfreda was concerned, doing so would further
Speaker 1: endanger his life, so he put his faith into the
Speaker 1: hands of the very lawyer he'd been told by so
Speaker 1: many people was not to be trusted as a source,
Speaker 1: let alone a savior. So I explained to Dante, what's
Speaker 1: you know? This is what's going on. I think was
Speaker 1: the first time I saw Dante and I look worri
Speaker 1: and then he finally says, yeah, the chinghaste, you're fucked.
Speaker 1: I said why. He says, there aren't you La Linia's
Speaker 1: aunto and he says, you know, the only good thing
Speaker 1: is a year American. I said, yeah, but my cousin
Speaker 1: is a cop aitas coup and I have family in
Speaker 1: Quitas and he says, well, then you're really fucked. Something
Speaker 1: may happen to them because of you. Alfredo doesn't have
Speaker 1: time to dwell on the consequences of his reporting. As
Speaker 1: far as he's concerned, his own life depends on getting
Speaker 1: back to the US as fast as possible. So I
Speaker 1: tell Dante, so, look, how do I get across? And
Speaker 1: he basically says, why don't I drive you back? Because
Speaker 1: I don't think you should walk. I'll just drive you
Speaker 1: an SUV and basically just put me in the bag,
Speaker 1: crossing the bag and I'm looking through the windows, and
Speaker 1: I'm looking at all these places that I grew up,
Speaker 1: Mighty Sky, you know, again, the Marches. At one point
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a songwriter and a singer, and
Speaker 1: we had a little studio but in that area. You know,
Speaker 1: all these things are going through my mind. And I'm
Speaker 1: also thinking, what if Dante is in on this, What
Speaker 1: if he's not taking it as the bridge, but if
Speaker 1: he's taking me somewhere, but he's taking me to the
Speaker 1: cap And then I seen him on the phone and
Speaker 1: he's he just sounds so nnchalant. It's just another normal day.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to sort of get danted tell me everything's
Speaker 1: gonna be okay. But the whole time he's in that
Speaker 1: damn phone, Alfredo was panicking. He wasn't sure whether he
Speaker 1: could trust the Devil's lawyer, whether Dante might still be
Speaker 1: me Tito or on La Linea's payroll. In fact, Alfredo
Speaker 1: wasn't even sure if he'd make it out of hauire
Speaker 1: as alive. Alfredo was in the back of Dante's suv
Speaker 1: trying to make out where they were going. It was
Speaker 1: just a quick, little dry but to me it just
Speaker 1: felt like forever. Finally it became that the lawyer was
Speaker 1: taking him back to the border, and as they arrived
Speaker 1: at the bridge that would allow Alfredo to escape to
Speaker 1: the safety of El Paso, the lawyer got off the
Speaker 1: phone and once again he had some final words for
Speaker 1: the journalist. I think he saw how scared I was,
Speaker 1: and he's trying to tell me how important it was
Speaker 1: what I did. But he says, I get the metal wars,
Speaker 1: it's who awaits. You have to have bars, don't be afraid.
Speaker 1: So basically he's telling you, don't be intimidated, continue your work.
Speaker 1: I think one of his lands was esposuis chained out.
Speaker 1: There's a squid's damn, you know. Don't be intimidated. Keep searching,
Speaker 1: keep asking questions, keep digging. In the moment that Dante
Speaker 1: dropped him off at the bridge, Alfredo realized once and
Speaker 1: for all that he could trust him. In fact, it
Speaker 1: was the lawyer who helped him get to El Paso,
Speaker 1: beyond the reach of La Lina and perhaps saved his
Speaker 1: life in the process. So monica that moment where Alfredo
Speaker 1: gets back to the bridge and he's able to cross
Speaker 1: into Alpasso. You told me you understood exactly how he's feeling. Yeah. Certainly,
Speaker 1: when I was reporting on the drug war in Huadis,
Speaker 1: once I crossed over the bridge and drove underneath the
Speaker 1: sign that said nis Welcome to the United States, I
Speaker 1: would feel this rush of relief come over me, and
Speaker 1: I would recognize just how stressed I had been on
Speaker 1: the other side. But I knew where to draw the line.
Speaker 1: As long as I reported on the victims of the
Speaker 1: violence that the cartel exacts on the city of Huatas,
Speaker 1: I was unlikely to be bothered. They don't care about
Speaker 1: the victims. It did involve going into a dangerous city
Speaker 1: where being in the wrong place at the wrong time
Speaker 1: could get you killed. But the kind of reporting I
Speaker 1: tried to do was reporting that wouldn't result in me
Speaker 1: being specifically targeted. Nonetheless, you told me about those cowboy
Speaker 1: boots and about thinking about what it might be like
Speaker 1: to be stuffed in the back of someone's car. And
Speaker 1: it's kind of astonishing to me how much risk Alfredo
Speaker 1: took and you took to cover this story. But also
Speaker 1: that both of you get to come home, And that's
Speaker 1: something I found very striking about that exchange between Dante
Speaker 1: and Alfredo. When Dante says to him, keep digging, it's
Speaker 1: almost as though he's passing the torch because Alfredo can
Speaker 1: go back to safety and Dante has to turn around
Speaker 1: back to the city where his friend Mario Escobado was
Speaker 1: assassinated not that long ago. It's a very poignant moment
Speaker 1: in a sense, Dante sees Alfredo as this beacon of hope.
Speaker 1: Maybe if the Americans can call out what's truly happening
Speaker 1: in what is, something will change the fact that this
Speaker 1: conversation takes place at the foot of the international bridge
Speaker 1: that connects what is to al Passo. The bridge to
Speaker 1: Dante might have symbolized the bridge between impunity and justice.
Speaker 1: Dante had taken enormous risk in exposing to Alfredo who
Speaker 1: was complicit in the murders of women in Juarez, and
Speaker 1: it was because of him that the systematic involvement of
Speaker 1: the police was confirmed and that the name La Lina
Speaker 1: was published, disturbing their culture of silence. But as nonchalant
Speaker 1: as Dante was talking on the phone as he drove
Speaker 1: Alfredo back to the border, he was well aware that
Speaker 1: they would likely be a price for talking to a journalist,
Speaker 1: let alone saving his life. After publishing his story, Alfredo
Speaker 1: moved on to Mexico City as he planned, and Dante
Speaker 1: stayed in Juarez, but they stayed in touch. We talked
Speaker 1: several times, but every time he caused it was like
Speaker 1: a sense of emergency. It was like he was scared.
Speaker 1: So I would just say, Dante, okay, I keep I
Speaker 1: saw what's what's going on. I came back to Squats
Speaker 1: because he wanted to meet me. He said, look, I
Speaker 1: have things I want to share with your things I
Speaker 1: want to tell you. But I thought he's got something big,
Speaker 1: and we decided to meet somewhere near the bridge. I
Speaker 1: was at the Kentucky club. I was there for an
Speaker 1: hour than two hours, never showed up. Like a few
Speaker 1: days later, I saw it in the news. He had
Speaker 1: been killed right near the same area where I had
Speaker 1: run to his office to gun down by hitman with
Speaker 1: a car with new Mexico plates. Conveniently, the cameras were
Speaker 1: not working that day. Dante was gone. Was his murder
Speaker 1: ever solved? Murder was never saw. Do you have any
Speaker 1: ideas while he was killed? I think oftentimes when people
Speaker 1: get killed Mexico's because they know too much. I think
Speaker 1: it's something I've learned. It's not always maybe smart to
Speaker 1: try to know so much. But again, you know, we
Speaker 1: were young, we were hopeful. You were certainly played a
Speaker 1: role in my trying to steer away from covering the
Speaker 1: drug cartels. Because I'll never forget a voicemail you left
Speaker 1: on my phone. This is about ten years ago. Now
Speaker 1: it's me, don't don't tell your mom. She means something
Speaker 1: like Monica, we we like our soup cold or hot,
Speaker 1: And I was like, that's some dark humor out of
Speaker 1: why did you get from the cartels? You know, this
Speaker 1: is like the cartels saying they liked a soup color hot,
Speaker 1: you know it. Maybe five years it maybe ten years.
Speaker 1: They might forgive you, but they're never going to forget,
Speaker 1: and they might catch up with you someday. Equally, So
Speaker 1: I got the gist of Alfredo's joke about the soup monica,
Speaker 1: But what exactly does it mean? In other words, you
Speaker 1: were their soup, and sooner or later they're gonna eat
Speaker 1: you hot or cold. Sooner or later they'll take their revenge,
Speaker 1: perhaps when you least expect it. So Alfredo came to
Speaker 1: learn this, but Dante knew it all along, but nonetheless
Speaker 1: he kept going. Remember Dante told Alfredo, this is what
Speaker 1: is damn it. You've got to have guts, and Dante did.
Speaker 1: In the end, he died, living up to his own
Speaker 1: saying he suffered the same fate as his friend Mario Escobedo,
Speaker 1: gunned down in the typical drive by execution favored by
Speaker 1: La Lina. Dante may have started out as the devil's lawyer,
Speaker 1: but in the end you could say he and Mario
Speaker 1: gave their lives in the name of justice. La line
Speaker 1: the line Dante had knowingly crossed it, and he paid
Speaker 1: the ultimate price. He did live long enough to see
Speaker 1: one of the bus drivers exonerated and the truth of
Speaker 1: what was happening to the women in Huirez exposed in
Speaker 1: the American press. But the other bus driver died in
Speaker 1: prison in mysterious circumstances after a botched operation. Mario Escobado's father,
Speaker 1: who led the protest in front of the huire As
Speaker 1: Attorney General's office carrying his son's casket, was assassinated in
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine at his office, along with his
Speaker 1: other son, Edgar. There were eight women's bodies discovered in
Speaker 1: the cotton fields in two thousand and one, and in
Speaker 1: some sense that was just the beginning of the crime.
Speaker 1: Within the space of a few years, at least four
Speaker 1: people seeking to reveal the truth of those women's murders
Speaker 1: had themselves been assassinated, and several others caught up in
Speaker 1: the story also died prematurely. Even Vasconcelos, the drugs are
Speaker 1: in Mexico City, who Alfredo met died in a plane
Speaker 1: crash in two thousand and eight, and some suspected foul play.
Speaker 1: Demanding justice in Juarez is a deadly business, which makes
Speaker 1: that other line, the one that separates it from al Passo,
Speaker 1: all the more significant. Alfredo could cross the bridge back
Speaker 1: to safety, and he lived. Dante could drive Alfredo up
Speaker 1: to the bridge, but he'd die in Huirez. But as
Speaker 1: Howard Campbell told us, the cartel's reach doesn't stop at
Speaker 1: the border. Al Pass was a dormitory for drug traffickers,
Speaker 1: high level direct traffickers, hit man from the cartels, hundreds
Speaker 1: of drug smugglers, probably hundreds of stash houses where drugs
Speaker 1: are stored, trucking businesses that are dedicated to drug trafficking,
Speaker 1: and so the economy of Elpass was completely saturated with
Speaker 1: drugs and illegal money. And we consider this here normal
Speaker 1: and not particularly a problem. As long as you don't
Speaker 1: get hurt or you don't get in trouble, people just
Speaker 1: kind of turn a blind eye. Even to this day,
Speaker 1: there's dramatic inequality and unfairness in the relationship between the
Speaker 1: two cities. Even though it has made a living off
Speaker 1: of drug smuggling. Elpass is incredibly safe where I see
Speaker 1: Lahuata is where half the population of Elpaso has relatives
Speaker 1: and friends and the like. Is one of the most
Speaker 1: violent cities in the world and dangerous cities in the world.
Speaker 1: And I don't think most people in Olpasso really care
Speaker 1: about changing that. There's a kind of way in which
Speaker 1: people accept this inequality and this exploitation of Mexico as
Speaker 1: a source for illegal drugs that we enjoy consuming and
Speaker 1: we farm out the risk to the Mexicans who were
Speaker 1: the ones that die by the thousands and the drug violence,
Speaker 1: and so it isn't right. It's hypocritical, it's unjust, it's unfair.
Speaker 1: But whether you like it or not, it's just everyday
Speaker 1: life here on the border. Howard got an insight into
Speaker 1: the depths at this hypocrisy from one of his students
Speaker 1: at the University of Texas, El Paso. I believe he
Speaker 1: was an immigration officer, and in the class we would
Speaker 1: debate she was related to Mexico, and he would always
Speaker 1: stand up for the US government and the other students,
Speaker 1: many of them were Mexican Americans, hated the US Immigration
Speaker 1: Service and so they didn't liked him, and he would
Speaker 1: come to class in uniform. But I found it interesting
Speaker 1: that he would wear a gold necklace around his neck
Speaker 1: with a gold anchor, very expensive piece of jewelry. And
Speaker 1: then one time I saw him at a very fancy
Speaker 1: mall in West El Paso and he came out with
Speaker 1: huge bags of expensive clothing that he had just purchased.
Speaker 1: Well soon after he was my student, he was arrested
Speaker 1: for being a corrupt immigration officer allowing large amounts of
Speaker 1: cocaine the Huadas cartel to cross into Alpaso from Huadas
Speaker 1: on the bridge. According to court documents Howard's student, the
Speaker 1: immigration officer was charging the cartel ten thousand dollars for
Speaker 1: each cocaine laden car that you waved through. This was
Speaker 1: La Linea in action, except in Olpasso. They weren't murdering
Speaker 1: young women or people who dared to ask questions, but
Speaker 1: their money was just as capable of corrupting US officials.
Speaker 1: And I was beginning to understand the deep irony of
Speaker 1: the fence that divided the two cities. I would say
Speaker 1: that it's a very contradictory place because even though you
Speaker 1: have thousands of people that are involved in dirugt trafficking,
Speaker 1: drug smuggling, drug dealing, and you also have thousands of
Speaker 1: federal law agents, d EA, Customs, you name the agency.
Speaker 1: You have one of the largest military bases in the world,
Speaker 1: Fort Bliss, So there's soldiers everywhere. There's municipals, you know,
Speaker 1: city cops, you know, state cops, any umber of law
Speaker 1: enforcement agencies, the FBI in al Paso. So it's a
Speaker 1: simultaneously it's this kind of zoo of criminals and the
Speaker 1: law living together and even marrying each other. Alfredo was
Speaker 1: talking about Juarez when he said, everybody's involved metito. But
Speaker 1: the thing about metito is that it's never really clear
Speaker 1: just how compromised a person is. And that brings us
Speaker 1: back to an American law enforcement official whose name is
Speaker 1: lightly familiar by now, Hardrick Crawford, who was head of
Speaker 1: the FBI, started to go over there a lot and
Speaker 1: God associated with high ranking businessman in Huadas. Hardrick was
Speaker 1: the most outspoken American official on the killings of women
Speaker 1: in Juarez. He even gave a quote to a Mexican
Speaker 1: newspaper where he called the murders crimes against humanity. I
Speaker 1: had a moral mission that I felt that I was
Speaker 1: empowered on a different level than US constitution. That mission
Speaker 1: would give Hardrick a first hand understanding of the word metito,
Speaker 1: and it would unleash a series of events that called
Speaker 1: his own life into question. So I was in the
Speaker 1: house by myself and my brother said, direct, did you
Speaker 1: ever think about eating your gun, I said, I did.
Speaker 1: I did seriously consider killing myself. I'm as Velashan and
Speaker 1: Monica see you next time you see. Do you know
Speaker 1: I Felicia Forgotten? The Women of Juarez is co hosted
Speaker 1: by Me, Monica and me oswald Oshin. Forgotten is executive
Speaker 1: produced by Me and Mangesh Hattikila. Our producers are Julian
Speaker 1: Weller and Katrina Norvell. Sound editing by Julian Weller, Jacopo
Speaker 1: Penzo and Aaron Kaufman. Lucas Riley is our story editor.
Speaker 1: Caitlin Thompson is our consulting producer. Recording assistance this episode
Speaker 1: from Michael Perez. Production support from Emily Maronoff and Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 1: Our theme tune is the Chemo as performed by Natalie Lae.
Speaker 1: Music by Leonardo Hablum and Hakkabo Libermann. Additional music by
Speaker 1: Aaron Kaufman.