Speaker 1: Forgotten is a production of iHeartMedia and Unusual Productions Before
Speaker 1: we start. This podcast contains accounts which some listeners will
Speaker 1: find disturbing, but without them, the story can't be fully understood.
Speaker 1: Please take care while listening. A couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: I went to El Paso, Texas because I was making
Speaker 1: a documentary about the US Mexico border. While I was there,
Speaker 1: I asked one of the producers a question. I said,
Speaker 1: if you could tell any story about this place, what
Speaker 1: would it be. He told me that right across the
Speaker 1: border from where we stood, there were young women who
Speaker 1: worked in American owned factories in the Mexican city of
Speaker 1: Silt Wires, and they were being killed with horrific brutality.
Speaker 1: The victims were often found half naked in the desert,
Speaker 1: someone found in mass graves with strange symbols left on
Speaker 1: their bodies. The producer told me there were all kinds
Speaker 1: of theories about what was happening to the women, but
Speaker 1: that no one knew for sure. So I asked him
Speaker 1: if I could interview him on the record. When he
Speaker 1: thought about it and said no, it was too dangerous.
Speaker 1: But others did speak and it became clear that the deaths.
Speaker 1: The disappearances of these women, they aren't random. They seem
Speaker 1: to follow a pattern. You'd have women or girls even
Speaker 1: fifteen seventeen nineteen, And they have a similar look the
Speaker 1: slem in Darker you know, which suggests they may have
Speaker 1: been selected. All from poor families, all from mostly poor neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: They hold the same types of jobs, usually students, factory workers,
Speaker 1: and commute regularly alone on public buses through downtown Juarez.
Speaker 1: And then they're never seen again, at least not alive.
Speaker 1: I quickly realized I'd never be able to understand the
Speaker 1: depth and complexity of this story without a partner. I
Speaker 1: asked a friend if they knew anyone who might be
Speaker 1: prepared to work with me. It turned out they knew
Speaker 1: the perfect person. In the first three weeks of twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: there have been more murders in Quaddas than days in
Speaker 1: the new year, when a crush of Central American families
Speaker 1: has overwhelmed officials at the southern border. We're going down
Speaker 1: to the basement where other migrants are hanging out at
Speaker 1: this hotel. There's a horrific history of violence against women
Speaker 1: insou thout Quads in the last three decades, hundreds of
Speaker 1: women have been brutally murdered here. Many of their cases
Speaker 1: remain unsolved, and that's how I first got to know
Speaker 1: my co host, Monica Quarter from El Paso, a regular
Speaker 1: voice on public radio and an authority on the region.
Speaker 1: Together will explore who is responsible for the deaths of
Speaker 1: so many women in Juarez and why the crimes have
Speaker 1: remained unsold for decades. I'm as Volosha and I'm Monica.
Speaker 1: This is forgotten the women in Juarezcano Barama. You known
Speaker 1: Sisque la Felicia. I've always been fascinated by borders, and
Speaker 1: something about El Paso called to me long before I
Speaker 1: ever went there. It was this city of several hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people in the desert, surrounded by mountains, whose name
Speaker 1: literally means the pass right across the dry bed of
Speaker 1: the Rio Grand River, separated by a twenty foot metal fence,
Speaker 1: is el Paso's twin city, Sulad Juarez. When you drive
Speaker 1: along the highway in El Paso, the barrier becomes a
Speaker 1: brown blur of rusted metal, but if you stop and look,
Speaker 1: you can see right through the slats. In Juarez, there's
Speaker 1: a cathedral originally built by Spanish colonialists. There's the Kentucky Club,
Speaker 1: a bar that claims to have invented the margharita and
Speaker 1: that traces its name to the city's history of whiskey
Speaker 1: distilling and smuggling during Prohibition. There are huge, colorful murals
Speaker 1: celebrating local ledge like the musician Juan Gabriel. And for
Speaker 1: all the things you read about the cartel violence, the
Speaker 1: desert landscape has a stark beauty, and Juarez is chaote
Speaker 1: and bustling, a city of over a million people and
Speaker 1: a city of dreams. People come here to find education,
Speaker 1: to find work. I had come here because I wanted
Speaker 1: to know what living on this divide meant. But then
Speaker 1: I heard about the women. Young women who have been
Speaker 1: going missing and turning up dead since the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: often dumped in the desert. At first, the authorities tried
Speaker 1: to claim the murders were random and individual, but then
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety five, the first mass grave was discovered
Speaker 1: in a place called Lotte Bravo. Nine women's bodies were
Speaker 1: discovered in this deserted plot of land, not far from
Speaker 1: the airport. The bodies were around as if the killer
Speaker 1: hadn't even made an effort to hide them. Some of
Speaker 1: the victims had their hands tied with shoelaces, others had
Speaker 1: a severed left breast. One had a triangle carved on
Speaker 1: her back. Who could be capable of this? Speculations ran
Speaker 1: from a satanic cult to a serial killer. Then, in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, another mass grave was discovered, and then another,
Speaker 1: and another and another. The most recent was in twenty
Speaker 1: and twelve. These were crimes that shopped people in both cities,
Speaker 1: and that made it clear how powerfully a border can
Speaker 1: shape a person's fate. I needed to know more, so
Speaker 1: I sent Monica an email to ask if she'd consider
Speaker 1: working with me, and well, I received a cool reception.
Speaker 1: I was very guarded at the beginning, because, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a story that I called close to my heart,
Speaker 1: and I was very hesitant to work with anybody I
Speaker 1: didn't know. With a stranger, I just presumed you were
Speaker 1: a gringo, even though you're not quite a gringo. I
Speaker 1: don't know. For us border ladies, I suppose we're naturally
Speaker 1: suspicious of gringo's coming in from the outside. Telling the
Speaker 1: most sensitive story of our careers, the story takes an
Speaker 1: incredible emotional toll on you, and you're suffering all this
Speaker 1: distress because of it, so much so that I was
Speaker 1: ready to walk away. But then I get this email.
Speaker 1: So what made you agree to work on this together? Well, honestly,
Speaker 1: because I've got this conscience that's eating away at me
Speaker 1: and won't let me go. When I started reporting in Wattis,
Speaker 1: there was one day when I was getting into the car.
Speaker 1: My mom followed me into the garage and got into
Speaker 1: the passenger seat with me, and she said, if you're
Speaker 1: going to go over there and put yourself in danger,
Speaker 1: then I'm going to go over there and put myself
Speaker 1: in the same danger. I can't let you go and
Speaker 1: expose yourself alone. Wow, that moment really forced me to
Speaker 1: grapple with what are you willing to give up for
Speaker 1: this story? The hottest that I knew growing up is
Speaker 1: not the hottest that exists today. It's really sad, But
Speaker 1: today I think twice before I go to hottas because
Speaker 1: of the dangers. So why did I let you pull
Speaker 1: me back in? Well? Because I identify so strongly with
Speaker 1: the victims. There are women there that look like me,
Speaker 1: that are my same age, but confront a completely different
Speaker 1: horrific reality. The border between El Paso and Juarez is
Speaker 1: increasingly militarized, but the line between the two cities has
Speaker 1: always been poorous. Every year, millions of people cross back
Speaker 1: and forth over the three bridges that connect them. For
Speaker 1: this reason, it wasn't long before the murders of the
Speaker 1: women in Huarez made it onto the radar of the
Speaker 1: FBI's El Paso office. It strikes the heart when you
Speaker 1: see women being left like their garbage. That's Heredrik Crawford
Speaker 1: Junior speaking. He was the FBI Special Agent in charge
Speaker 1: of El Paso from two thousand and one to two
Speaker 1: thousand and three. He first learned about the crimes when
Speaker 1: he was preparing for his assignment at the FBI's headquarters.
Speaker 1: You look at the newspaper clips and one of the
Speaker 1: things that jumped out at me was the murder of
Speaker 1: women in wars. To me, it's a crime on the
Speaker 1: level of the war crimes in Bosnia, in Croatia, you know,
Speaker 1: ethnic cleansing. It hit me on a personal level, more
Speaker 1: soul than it did on a professional level. It sounds funny,
Speaker 1: but I thought, okay, now I know why Goad sent
Speaker 1: me to ol Perso. Was this, This was the reason
Speaker 1: I was sent here. Nowadays, Hardrick lives in the suburbs
Speaker 1: of Washington, d C. The day we pay him a visit,
Speaker 1: he's taking care of his grandchildren. But he was once
Speaker 1: one of the country's top law enforcement agents protecting the
Speaker 1: real He spent years investigating some of the world's most
Speaker 1: dangerous criminal networks, fair guys, evildoers. He went under cover
Speaker 1: to bus Columbian organized crime at Miami while wearing a recorder.
Speaker 1: It was kind of dacy. In nineteen ninety eight, he
Speaker 1: set up the FBI's command post in Nairobi, Kenya. After
Speaker 1: I saw him in Laden bombed the embassy there. I
Speaker 1: was a senior man in the continent. But the assignment
Speaker 1: that he can't stop thinking about is El Paso, Texas.
Speaker 1: Just a sheer number of women was alarming that The
Speaker 1: most unsettling fact was the lack of tracking or information
Speaker 1: gathered as to the number of women when they occurred.
Speaker 1: Their motive stopper, What were the women doing? No database?
Speaker 1: The lack of official data presented Hardrick with a concrete problem.
Speaker 1: In fact, at least six of the murdered women in
Speaker 1: Huarez were US citizens, and meanwhile, there was a letter
Speaker 1: to the editor of the El Paso Times in two
Speaker 1: thousand and two suggesting that the number of sex offenders
Speaker 1: paroled to the city from elsewhere had become a crisis.
Speaker 1: Could they have been drawn by the proximity to the
Speaker 1: border and the possibility of crossing back and forth into Mexico.
Speaker 1: Well in this binational community. A big part of Hardrick's
Speaker 1: responsibility was solving binational crimes. If you look out of
Speaker 1: your office at the FBI, you could see warriors in
Speaker 1: downtown El Paso. Driving you could see warriors. It's there,
Speaker 1: it's looming large. Shortly after he arrives at the border,
Speaker 1: a chilling hypothesis about who might be killing the women
Speaker 1: begins to take hold his hard Giving an interview to
Speaker 1: ABC News in two thousand and one, there is a
Speaker 1: real possibility then an American or someone who is residing
Speaker 1: on our side of the border is conducting these murders.
Speaker 1: Hardrick goes on to describe Juarez as a killing field
Speaker 1: for young women. We discussed the fact that it would
Speaker 1: be easy for an El Paso based predator to walk
Speaker 1: across the border every day, commit a terrible crime, and
Speaker 1: then come back to El Paso and live a life
Speaker 1: with nobody to be the wiser. I mean, if you've
Speaker 1: ever been to warres, disposing of bodies is really easy.
Speaker 1: You don't have to dig through hard dirt. You're digging
Speaker 1: through sand. Uarez is surrounded by desert. Law enforcement is
Speaker 1: under resourced, and you can walk that from El Paso
Speaker 1: in a matter of minute. All of this was on
Speaker 1: Hadrick's mind when he worried that it could be a
Speaker 1: hunting ground for an American serial killer. And there was
Speaker 1: something else too. Juarez was a city of migrants, young
Speaker 1: women in their families who had moved from rural Mexico
Speaker 1: to this industrial metropolis drawn by the many factories or maculadoras,
Speaker 1: and they didn't always have people to look out for them.
Speaker 1: It was like a perfect storm. You have the women
Speaker 1: coming from southern Mexico, from Central America, desperate for work
Speaker 1: to help their families, to come work at the micheladoras.
Speaker 1: They're alone. The flip side of the coin is you'd
Speaker 1: have to be a Cretan if you're a Cereal murderer
Speaker 1: or you're a psychopath not to understand. Wow, it's like
Speaker 1: antelopes at the water hole. What a great opportunity for
Speaker 1: a serial killer. Once you start focusing on Warrez and
Speaker 1: El Passel, you can't miss it. Diana Vell does was
Speaker 1: written about it. Dina Washington Valdez is the reporter who
Speaker 1: has gone deeper into this story than perhaps any other.
Speaker 1: She wrote the defining book on the topic called The
Speaker 1: Killing Fields Harvest of Women, and she noticed something that
Speaker 1: Hedrick Crawford picked up on about how the killers selected
Speaker 1: their victims. When we come back, Diana tells us what
Speaker 1: she pieced together. I didn't think about the danger in
Speaker 1: the beginning, probably intentionally because if I focused on the danger,
Speaker 1: then I would immovely create a barrier for myself to
Speaker 1: hold me back. It was not unusual to find myself
Speaker 1: in White Is eleven twelve pm, one am in order
Speaker 1: to interview certain police officers who are getting off their
Speaker 1: shift and had agreed to share a confidential what they knew, Simonica,
Speaker 1: if you ask anybody from the area about these crimes,
Speaker 1: the name they mentioned is Diana Washington Valdez. Who is she? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Diana like me as a reporter. She was born
Speaker 1: in Mexico, raised in al Paso, and spent most of
Speaker 1: her career at the Al Paso Times. And when I
Speaker 1: did a college internship at the al Paso Times, Diana
Speaker 1: was one of my first teachers in journalism. And what
Speaker 1: was your first impression of Diana when you met her
Speaker 1: in the office. I saw her as a badass, so
Speaker 1: much so that I felt intimidated the first time I
Speaker 1: met her and put my hand out to shake hers,
Speaker 1: and she just laughed it off and said, no, no,
Speaker 1: don't be intimidated. I'm here for whatever you need. I
Speaker 1: think part of also what helped her reporting in Whatez
Speaker 1: is this stern exterior, this discipline that comes with military training,
Speaker 1: and what exactly to Dina do in the military. She
Speaker 1: served in the Army and then the National Guard for
Speaker 1: a total of twenty years. Wow. And that training and
Speaker 1: the discipline that comes with it helped her with her reporting.
Speaker 1: In the scariest moments, she says, her training would kick
Speaker 1: in and help her set her emotions aside and focus
Speaker 1: on the mission before her. So we went to pay
Speaker 1: Diana a visit at her home in El Paso, near
Speaker 1: the foot of the Franklin Mountains, some distance north of
Speaker 1: the border. There's your hot water for tea in the
Speaker 1: cuss wonderful thank you so much. Nice Diana welcomes us
Speaker 1: into her home with a generosity and warmth that belies
Speaker 1: a tough exterior. We were there to learn what her
Speaker 1: reporting on connections between the murders in Juarez might reveal
Speaker 1: about who was committing them. As we settled around her
Speaker 1: coffee table, I was curious about what I'd made. Diana
Speaker 1: connects so deeply to this story. When I was a
Speaker 1: young woman, I could have been one of the victims
Speaker 1: because of my look and the long hair and wandering
Speaker 1: around what is naively when I was eighteen and nineteen.
Speaker 1: You know, they're my compatriots. I'm part of them. They're
Speaker 1: part of me. Never in a million years I could
Speaker 1: imagined writing about teenage girls who were brutally murdered and
Speaker 1: whose deaths are unsolved and always could have been prevented.
Speaker 1: You know, I never would have imagined it. As a
Speaker 1: reporter at the El Paso Times, Diana started to notice
Speaker 1: a pattern of young women in Huirez disappearing and turning
Speaker 1: up dead. It was a golden age of local journalism,
Speaker 1: and she had the platform to shine a light on
Speaker 1: these unsolved murders and perhaps, in doing so, prevent more
Speaker 1: As she had to figure out exactly what was going on.
Speaker 1: We kept seeing reports about X number of bodies found,
Speaker 1: another woman found dead, mutilated, very horrific murders, the brutality,
Speaker 1: it was something we've never seen here in the border
Speaker 1: neither side. But what I had been reading in the
Speaker 1: Mexican press did not tell me who was killing the
Speaker 1: women and why. So I got involved in investigating the murders.
Speaker 1: When was the very first time when he thought there's
Speaker 1: something connecting these crimes. The fact that multiple bodies were
Speaker 1: left in specific sits, in sites where the bodies could
Speaker 1: be found. This was unseen and unheard of. In some cases,
Speaker 1: we had what it called a sense of overkill because
Speaker 1: we would have a victim, for example, that was strangled, stabbed,
Speaker 1: and shot. Also, these strangulations the medical examiners in what
Speaker 1: is noted were for the purposes of sexual gratification of
Speaker 1: the perpect traitor. That women were being strangled to achieve
Speaker 1: this kind of sexual effect. It seemed that whoever was
Speaker 1: killing the women in Huirez was not content merely to
Speaker 1: end their lives. It seemed they wanted to completely dehumanize
Speaker 1: them in the process. But who would want to do
Speaker 1: this and why it seemed like whoever it was was
Speaker 1: taunting investigators, purposefully leaving signatures the crime scenes. Yet the
Speaker 1: symbols that law enforcements found on some of the victims
Speaker 1: who were very intriguing. These were linked to possible serial killers.
Speaker 1: And we know that serial killers have their own rituals
Speaker 1: in the way that they kill the victims and the
Speaker 1: way they positioned their bodies and the trophies that might
Speaker 1: take from them, and in several cases these triangles were
Speaker 1: carved on the backs of the victims. Those characteristics we're
Speaker 1: terrifying to people and to the families because they will
Speaker 1: look at it and say, it's not just a murderer.
Speaker 1: There's something else going on here. It's scary. Did you
Speaker 1: ever discover what that something else was? There were um no,
Speaker 1: there were just speculations. There were only speculations that the
Speaker 1: markings might have indicated the initials of a perpetrator or representative. Map.
Speaker 1: You know, a map, a map of what a map
Speaker 1: of murder, you know, geographical map, geographical map. That's that's
Speaker 1: as far as I was able to ascertain the information
Speaker 1: was provided. Could this possibly be true? A map of
Speaker 1: murder left on the bodies of the victims, and if so,
Speaker 1: where does that map lead Well. Despite a full plate
Speaker 1: of assignments in El Paso from her editors, those questions
Speaker 1: sent Diana into Juarez on her evenings, weekends, an even
Speaker 1: vacation to answer. I know just from experience that someone
Speaker 1: always knows something, someone knows what's going on. These murders
Speaker 1: appeared to be taking place systematically. It's specific kinds of
Speaker 1: victims or being selected and kidnapped or taken by force somehow,
Speaker 1: or lured, and then their bodies found. Diana was struck
Speaker 1: by the profile of the victims. They were young, they
Speaker 1: come from elsewhere in such opportunity, and they seem to
Speaker 1: disappear into thin air without witnesses. Standing at a memorial
Speaker 1: erected by the parents of one of the murdered women,
Speaker 1: Lilia Alejandra Andrade, Diana was momentarily overwhelmed. I walked through
Speaker 1: that field where her body had been found, and I
Speaker 1: saw the cross Lilia Lejandra, and it kind of just
Speaker 1: all hit me at once that this is where a
Speaker 1: young lady's life was snuffed out mercilessly, and it's just
Speaker 1: like all the emotions that I had supprised up to
Speaker 1: then about the victims. Just uh, just a damn burst
Speaker 1: and then you know, I started sobbing uncontrollably. I couldn't
Speaker 1: stop it. Just it just happened, and I cried and
Speaker 1: I cried and I cried, and the people who walked by,
Speaker 1: uh saw me, and you know, they thought something was
Speaker 1: wrong and I couldn't tell them. I had a similar
Speaker 1: momentum where the tears came and and it it was
Speaker 1: it was something that I couldn't stop, and I was
Speaker 1: surprised at myself, and um, yeah, the grief builds up
Speaker 1: on you. Yeah, yes, where it was h Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, you think about the helplessness of
Speaker 1: the victims. Look at what they were up against. Your
Speaker 1: sixteen seventy year all you went downtown to or Nearrant
Speaker 1: for your parents, or to try in some new shoes,
Speaker 1: to apply for a job, and push, you know, grabbed
Speaker 1: and lord and you're murdered. Diana and Herdrick established a
Speaker 1: clear pattern in what type of victims the killer would
Speaker 1: target and how they would kill them. And in fact,
Speaker 1: there are so many murders of young women in huires
Speaker 1: that fit this pattern that the reflex can be to
Speaker 1: retreat into statistics this many women, that cause of death.
Speaker 1: But you can't understand the full situation without getting to
Speaker 1: know some of the victims. Victims like Cigario Gonzalez Flores.
Speaker 1: Early on, when we were embarking on this story together, Monica,
Speaker 1: you mentioned Sigario Gonzalez. Sagario Gonzalez story is the story
Speaker 1: of so many other women who were murdered in Sulath. Howatis.
Speaker 1: She was an immigrant, she was a factory worker, she
Speaker 1: was a teenager. She went missing between her home and
Speaker 1: her work, and her murderer transformed her family's life into
Speaker 1: this fight to try to find out what happened. But
Speaker 1: who is she? So she sang in the church choir
Speaker 1: and taught Sunday school to kindergarteners. She has a boyfriend.
Speaker 1: His name is Andres. She's got a notebook where she
Speaker 1: writes poetry. She puts all kinds of stickers in this notebook,
Speaker 1: like hearts and princesses and rabbits. And her handwriting is impeccable,
Speaker 1: written in block print, very neat, and it's clear she's
Speaker 1: sweet on Andres too. She's got his name and phone
Speaker 1: number written on the front cover. And what was it
Speaker 1: like looking into that book. Oh gosh, how do you
Speaker 1: describe that? This is like a relic of someone who's gone.
Speaker 1: It's the closest thing to her. I mean, it's so
Speaker 1: precious just to see her name on there, her own
Speaker 1: name written in her own handwriting. I don't have the
Speaker 1: words for it. I don't have the words for it.
Speaker 1: But she's the whole reason why I'm sticking around to
Speaker 1: tell the story. Sigrio Gonzalez Flores was one of six sisters,
Speaker 1: and she was seventeen years old when she left for
Speaker 1: work at four am on Thursday, April sixteenth, nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1: She arrived at the factory, completed her normal work day,
Speaker 1: and then left to take the bus home, but she
Speaker 1: never made it. Her body was discovered two weeks later,
Speaker 1: dumped in the desert on the other side of town
Speaker 1: from where she lived. When we come back, we travel
Speaker 1: to Juarez to meet so Garrio's mother, Paula at her
Speaker 1: home to learn more about her search for answers. Driving
Speaker 1: into Mexico from El Paso is straightforward. Passports are rarely
Speaker 1: checked and most cars are way through and now orders
Speaker 1: to firsthand what Hardrick meant about how easy it would
Speaker 1: be for an American citizen to slip back and forth
Speaker 1: across the border. The part of Juare's closest to the
Speaker 1: bridge from the United States has restaurants. When the elected
Speaker 1: facades from the fifties, there's a strip of nightclubs and bars,
Speaker 1: and there are billboards in English advertising cosmetic dentistry. But
Speaker 1: as you drive west towards the Flora's household, paved streets
Speaker 1: begin to give way to dirt roads, and urban infrastructure
Speaker 1: turns to desert. The Florida's family lives in a colonia,
Speaker 1: or neighborhood called Loma Zeppoleo. It's one of the first
Speaker 1: communities in Mexico that isn't separated from the US by
Speaker 1: the Rio Grande. That river travels south from New Mexico,
Speaker 1: then takes a sharp turn east when it reaches Texas,
Speaker 1: and that's where it becomes the US Mexico border. West
Speaker 1: of that point, the landscape is mostly desert, so nothing
Speaker 1: to divide the two countries, but a series of man
Speaker 1: made barriers, each more severe than the last. Loma Zeppoleo
Speaker 1: began as a squatter community founded by migrant families from
Speaker 1: other parts of Mexico, and most of them came here
Speaker 1: to work in the Makulagouas. As we drive through Lomas Deepoleo,
Speaker 1: we pass house after house, each seemingly constructed from different materials.
Speaker 1: There are a few street names and no street lights.
Speaker 1: Powler's house is one of the more substantial in the
Speaker 1: neighborhood and it has a gated dirt yard where we part.
Speaker 1: We had an extremely warm welcome when we arrive at
Speaker 1: Powla's house, from dogs to neighborhood children, to powder herself.
Speaker 1: My name is Paula. We are at my house, which
Speaker 1: is also yours here in Lomaspole. Paula has this cascade
Speaker 1: of thick black hair almost to her waist, and her
Speaker 1: wardrobe is very feminine. She carries herself with dignity and pride.
Speaker 1: Her shoulders are back, her head is held high. Paula
Speaker 1: is like the nucleus of her household. She's, without a doubt,
Speaker 1: the matriarch in the family. So she is just telling
Speaker 1: us about where her family came from and where we lived.
Speaker 1: My husband Jesus, worked in the mountains. He was a
Speaker 1: chainsaw operator, chopping pine trees for wood. In fact, in
Speaker 1: lud Ago, that's what most people do for work. My
Speaker 1: sister in law already lived here and she was the
Speaker 1: one who invited us, saying that there was a lot
Speaker 1: of work here. We didn't bring a whole lot. We
Speaker 1: had what we were wearing and one change of clothing.
Speaker 1: The truck we were in had a camper bed, so
Speaker 1: in the back on top of a camper we packed
Speaker 1: four chairs inside the camper where my daughters who lay
Speaker 1: on a little mattress, along with a bin of dishes.
Speaker 1: That's all we brought. It was nineteen ninety five, a
Speaker 1: year after NAFTA was signed and free trade meant the
Speaker 1: factories were booming. To this day, companies like General Electric
Speaker 1: and Johnson and Johnson create things like medical gloves and
Speaker 1: blood pressure cuffs in Juarez for export to the US.
Speaker 1: But Whuire has had done little to prepare for the
Speaker 1: arrival of migrants like Paula, her husband Jesus, and their
Speaker 1: daughter Sagria. That's how neighborhoods like Lomester Poleo came into existence,
Speaker 1: and to get the materials they needed to build their life,
Speaker 1: many families salvage scrap from US dumps across the border.
Speaker 1: This was at a time when the border was much
Speaker 1: less harshly enforced. Why not positively? Well, Our primary need
Speaker 1: was would because we wanted to put a roof over
Speaker 1: our heads to live right. It was an unusual for
Speaker 1: people who lived in Loma Zeppoleo to crawl under or
Speaker 1: jump over this barbed wire fence, get to this American
Speaker 1: landfill on the other side, and pick through it to
Speaker 1: find material to construct their homes. There were a few
Speaker 1: times that Sagaradio accompanied us to the American landfill. One
Speaker 1: of those times it was in December and we were
Speaker 1: there and some guys came to throw out trash. Right,
Speaker 1: so one of the guys saw her and noticed she
Speaker 1: was cold, so he took off his jacket and gave
Speaker 1: it to her. Sagaradio was pale and her face turned
Speaker 1: bright red and she told him no, no, thank you,
Speaker 1: And I told her it's okay, take it, and Sagaradio
Speaker 1: was blushing. She went over and took it even though
Speaker 1: she didn't want to, and he gave it to her.
Speaker 1: That moment always stuck with me. Despite having to build
Speaker 1: the roof above their own heads, the Flores family did
Speaker 1: find what they'd come in search of. Work Esus and
Speaker 1: four of his kids, including Sagardrio worked the evening shift
Speaker 1: at the same Makila making refrigerator parts. They traveled as
Speaker 1: a group to and from work. Then the factory found
Speaker 1: out that Sagardrio was under age. She was seventeen, so
Speaker 1: she was told that in order to keep working, she
Speaker 1: would have to switch to the day shift, and if
Speaker 1: she did that, she would have to wake up before
Speaker 1: dawn and make the two hour bus trip to work alone.
Speaker 1: When they made the change, I told her to wait
Speaker 1: instead of accepting it. April May June July. On July thirty,
Speaker 1: first she would turn eighteen. I said to her, when
Speaker 1: you turn eighteen, you can go with your daddy and Gilla, right.
Speaker 1: She said no, that she wanted to help, that she
Speaker 1: needed the money to support our home. So every morning
Speaker 1: Sagario would wake up at three am. She'd lower her
Speaker 1: bare feet onto a square of loose carpet that was
Speaker 1: placed on the dirt floor of their home. Next to
Speaker 1: the bed. There was a chair with her clothes folded
Speaker 1: on top of it, and twenty Mexican pistoles bus fare
Speaker 1: to get from home to work. Me Chu and a
Speaker 1: sanchui would go and walk her to the number ten
Speaker 1: bus and then in downtown she would take another bus
Speaker 1: to work. When they changed her shift, she signed an
Speaker 1: insurance policy like with beneficiaries, in case something happens. Remember that.
Speaker 1: When she arrived with that paperwork, she said to me, Mamma,
Speaker 1: they're going to give me life insurance and the maquila
Speaker 1: joking around, she told me, if something happens to me, mamma,
Speaker 1: they're going to give you a ton of money. He said,
Speaker 1: don'cle saying that, honey, why do you say that to me? Yes, Mama,
Speaker 1: if something happens to me, that Makuila will give you
Speaker 1: lots of money. I always remember that so vividly. I
Speaker 1: don't know if my innocent girl had a feeling that
Speaker 1: something was going to happen to her, I don't know.
Speaker 1: The Flores family moved to Juarez in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: the very same year that the first mass grave of
Speaker 1: women was discovered. Paula's husband, Jesus, had moved to Huaires
Speaker 1: with their son Cheui before the rest of the family,
Speaker 1: and Jesus sent let Us home to Durango, encouraging Paula
Speaker 1: and their six daughters to join Powder read them allowed
Speaker 1: to us, my Paula, I want to tell you the following,
Speaker 1: My love, We are in Luck. As soon as we
Speaker 1: arrived we found work. I asked him how's the neighborhood,
Speaker 1: Whether it was peaceful, because I heard it was dangerous,
Speaker 1: and he said, no, it's peaceful. It's a new neighborhood.
Speaker 1: All the people are just getting started. Ladian told him
Speaker 1: they say they kill women there, they kill girls, and
Speaker 1: he said no, no. I said, it's just that we're
Speaker 1: bringing a lot you six daughters, No, no wining, and
Speaker 1: he said no, no, there's no danger. Within three years
Speaker 1: of arriving with big dreams of a brighter future, Paula's
Speaker 1: worst fears has been realized. Sigario had been brutally murdered.
Speaker 1: So people often ask me, what's the most difficult story
Speaker 1: you've had to cover as a reporter, And my answer
Speaker 1: is always the same, the missing and murdered women of whats.
Speaker 1: It's a story that I've come back to throughout my career.
Speaker 1: I was once at a gathering of activists outside a
Speaker 1: courthouse in Wais and I remember this girl, no more
Speaker 1: than seven or eight years old. She was singing a
Speaker 1: song called the Richel Nacimiento or Birthright. It was in
Speaker 1: memory of the slain women, women like Sagrario Gonzalez, Flores, Lilia,
Speaker 1: Alejandra Andrade and Guadelupe Montes. I once made a silent
Speaker 1: promise to these women that I would tell the world
Speaker 1: who they were and why they mattered, so that they
Speaker 1: would never be forgotten. In what these crimes have gone
Speaker 1: on for so long that this most extreme form of
Speaker 1: violence against women has a name femini sibo femicide, and
Speaker 1: the crimes have been maddeningly hard to solve. Witnesses rarely
Speaker 1: come forward, evidence goes missing, police are overstretched. But then
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one, a case came along that
Speaker 1: had all the pieces in place to be solved and
Speaker 1: to uncover who was behind the rest of these murders.
Speaker 1: That's in our next episode. I'm as velosh Anne would
Speaker 1: even see you next time. You're not You're not I
Speaker 1: La Felicia Forgotten. The Women of Juarez is co hosted
Speaker 1: by me Monica and me Oswaloshin. We'd like to thank
Speaker 1: Paula Flores and all the victims families, and thank you
Speaker 1: to Diana Washington Valez and all the truth seekers and
Speaker 1: activists who fight for justice, and to the many people
Speaker 1: you won't hear on tape who contributed to this podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you to Natalia La Fe and Geta Calon for
Speaker 1: their help with our theme song. Forgotten is executive produced
Speaker 1: by me Oswaloshin and Mangesh Hatia. Our producers are Julian
Speaker 1: Wela and Katrina Noval. Sound editing by Julian Weller and
Speaker 1: Jacopo Penzo. Lucas Riley is our story editor. Caitlin Thompson
Speaker 1: is our consulting producer. Production support from Emily Maronoff and
Speaker 1: Aaron Kaufman. Recording assistance this episode from Melissa Kaplan. Music
Speaker 1: by Leonardo Hablum and Hakkabo Liberman. Additional music by Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 1: Carla Tassara is the voice actor for Paula Flores Special.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Angela Cocherga for introducing me to Monica, to
Speaker 1: Weird Moved West for exceptional production support in El Paso,
Speaker 1: Anti Jonah Descent for executive producing Bridging Us, the documentary
Speaker 1: series that first brought me to the Border. This podcast
Speaker 1: is dedicated to all the women lost to senseless violence
Speaker 1: in Huadis and all around the world. Nuna Mass do
Speaker 1: you me