July 27, 2020 • 51 mins
Episode 9 - We examine the details that connect many of the murder victims to Juárez's foreign-owned factories, also known as maquiladoras. A Mexican customs investigation takes an unusual turn, leading Diana to a new line of investigation for who else could be involved in the murders.
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unest dot ceo. Forgotten is a production of IHNT media
and unusual productions before we start. This podcast contains accounts
which some listeners will find disturbing, but without them, the
story can't be fully understood. Please take care while listening.
(01:51):
Previously on Forgotten, I do recall some suggesting that I
might temper my words because the big business this is involved. Well,
the Mikueladars are American companies, and you might wind up
making enemies on this side of the border. When they
changed her shift, she signed an insurance policy. Joking around,
(02:13):
she told me, if something happens to me, mamma, they're
going to give you a ton of money. I don't
know if my innocent girl had a feeling that something
was going to happen to her. I don't know, and
so when I saw where this graveyard was located as it,
I can't believe it. It's in the middle of the city.
In across the street is the association of Michuela Lois.
(02:34):
Why choose this site to dump eight bodies of women?
From the beginning, Dina Washington Valdez told us that the
femicides in Juarez were not random, that the women were selected,
and Diana also mentioned all kinds of strange connections between
(02:56):
the victims and the Macula doors. The mass grave containing
eight women's bodies at the cotton Field was discovered right
across the street from the Maculadora Association, shortly before Lelia
Alejandra Andradeo was abducted in February two thousand and one.
Her photographs were featured in a promotional brochure for her Maculadora,
(03:18):
and Diana also mentioned that men claiming to be model
scouts would take photographs of young women outside the factories.
And then there was Sagrario Gonzalez Flores. After the factory
changed her shift, Sigario was forced to commute alone. Her
mother Paula remembers the day that Sigario failed to come
(03:40):
home from work. Sa we knew that she had worked
and that she had left at the time. Everyone left,
but no one saw anything. And I tell you that
very night we began searching at the Red Cross and
the hospitals, on the streets, searching for her, your Sancho.
At night, all the photos I had of my daughter,
(04:01):
I would pass them out at gas station, saying I'm
looking for my daughter, can you please help me find her?
And that nights I would step outside and I would
shout her name. I would run around the house and
shout her name with all my strength in the silence
of the night. I felt she could hear me, so
I would call to my daughter. After a few agonizing
(04:29):
days and nights of searching for Cigario, I hope that
she might be found alive began to fade. Paula joined
a protest group outside the police station with other mothers
displaying photographs of their own missing daughters. One morning, after
Segario had been missing for two weeks, Paula arrived at
(04:49):
the protest to learn that a young woman's body had
been found the previous night. Did we arrived at the
sit in that day as usual, and as soon as
we arrived, a reporter approached me said, ma'am, did you
know they found the body of a murdered woman. As
soon as he told me that, I ran to the
photos we already had there. I said to the reporter,
(05:11):
which one did they find? He said, no, I don't know.
I don't know which one they found. I just know
she had a white machileot. It was then that I
sensed that it was my daughter, Sagardio had her name
on the white makila coat. I had embroidered her name
with colorful yarn, just her name, Sagardio. Paula's sense of
(05:35):
foreboding was proven correct. Next to the young woman's body
dumped in the desert outside of Huirez was the factory
coat that Paula had stitched my hand with her daughter's name.
And this pattern of young women in Juarez disappearing between
home and work was by no means unique to Sagrario.
(05:55):
Lilia Alexandra had also disappeared on her way home from
work and cloud At Gonzalez, one of the victims discovered
in the cotton field, went missing after she was turned
away from her factory job for arriving two minutes late.
These connections between the murders and the machuelas began to
attract international attention, including the ABC news piece where Heredrick
(06:20):
Crawford appeared and where Roberto Urea, a former president of
the Maculadora Association, appeared to blame the victims for their
own deaths. Were worth these young ladies? Where they were
seen last? Were they drinking right? Were they a parting?
Were they in a dark street? Ureya's defensiveness raised all
(06:43):
kinds of questions. Did he and the maculador as he
represented have something to hide? Could there be some truth
to Heredrick Crawford's assertion that his advocacy for the women
disturbed big business interests on both sides of the border
and contributed to his downfall. And could there be another
group of men operating with or in parallel to the
(07:05):
cartel who were also praying on vulnerable young women in Juarez.
I'm as voloshin and I'm monica. This is forgotten the
women in Juarez, Baramo Verraierra loscirebiv you non si so
(07:34):
you know not sasquez hala feliciva that comment from Urea
(07:55):
Monico where he's saying, you know where were the women
last seen a party with a drinking That really stuck
with both of us. First of all, I have to
point out how infuriating it is to listen to that interview.
That sort of victim blaming has been done by police
and politicians, and now it was being done on national
(08:18):
television by a former president of the Makiladua Association. How
dare he shirk the responsibility his industry bears for not
recognizing and responding to the risks their employees clearly faced.
This kind of attitude alone puts women in danger, and
(08:39):
in the late nineteen nineties and early two thousands, it
wasn't just ABC News who were drawing a line between
the Makilas and the murders. Diana was also pointing out
the connections, as were Amnesty International correct Yes in the beginning,
the whitest femicides are known as the maki Ladora murders
(09:02):
because so many of the murdered women worked in the factories.
Women were actively recruited because of these sexist stereotypes, like
they're more docile and nimble fingered. Pressure from the victims' families,
combined with international media scrutiny, did push the Maculadoras into
making some efforts to improve, especially providing transport to stop
(09:27):
young female employees disappearing on their way home from work,
But the fundamental situation in Huirez hasn't changed. Some people
get rich there because others state poor. There are two
groups in particular who benefit, the largely American corporations who
manufactured goods in Huarez, and the city's own industrialists. His
(09:51):
how Diana describes them in her book, Mexico's business elites
are called impresarios, a word that sounds like emperor, which
is how they are viewed. The business emperors in the
border state of Chihuahua benefit directly or indirectly from the
labor of young women. Diana goes on to write. They
(10:11):
own the industrial parks that least buildings to mackiladoras, They
produce materials for housing, and they produce and sell consumer
products that all families in Juarez purchase. But I still
wanted to know just how powerful these empressarios really were.
Were they powerful enough to pressure the State department to
silence a senior FBI official like Headrick Crawford. To find out,
(10:36):
we spoke to one of the few journalists who's gotten
access to Huires's secret business elite. My name is Lauren Edder.
I'm an investigative reporter at Bloomberg News. In twenty seventeen,
Lauren wrote a cover story for Bloomberg Business Week about
how crucial huires Is manufacturing industry is to the global economy.
(10:57):
I think there is this invisibility abouts in general, but
I don't think you could walk through an average day
without touching something that was made in a Maquila. Whether
it's the pockets of your jeans or the heart stent
inside your body. Any product that you pick up today
will have made its way through the border region for
(11:18):
one reason or another. There are over three hundred Macula
doors in Huirez, employing roughly three hundred thousand people, more
than half of whom are assembling products for US companies.
But the goods manufactured in Hires are what Lauren calls
the quote guts of the consumer economy. The windshield wipe
(11:39):
on a car, a blood pressure cuff, a medical glove.
So to make the story land, the journalist needed a character.
Somebody brought up Don Jaime, the godfather of the maquila industry,
Hime Bermudez, had a very storied career where he interacted
with extremely prominent business men. You know, he went to
(12:02):
England and was the guest of the Queen for a
polo match, and I was just fascinated to learn that
there was a somebody behind this massive manufacturing economy along
the border. So Lauren traveled to Juarez to interview the
then ninety four year old business magnate. Bemudes has since
passed away, but in life he was one of the
(12:23):
city's leading empressarios. I had talked to people ahead of time,
and people said you should probably have a bodyguard, but
it turned out that Don Jaime had more bodyguards than me.
So it was funny traveling around this very gritty city.
And essentially what was a motorcade almost like floating through
Juarez in a chariot of some sort. The destination of
(12:49):
the motorcade was the Bedmudes industrial parks, where many Maculadoras operate.
When you get into the manufacturing sector, inside these little fiefdoms,
as I described them, it's just a different world. Really.
There is a sense of security and a sense of insulation.
Now of course, most of the workers live in places
(13:12):
that do not have that sense of security. To understand
how Juarez became a city of such stark contrasts, you
need to understand the history of the Bermudez family and
how their relationship with the US transformed their cotton fields
into fiefdoms. It all started in the nineteen twenties when
(13:33):
the family partnered with an industrious Kentucky distiller called Mary Dowling.
After Prohibition, she was like, hell, no, am I going
to shut down this business. So she literally hired people
to dismantle her distillery, loaded onto rail cars, and she
had it shipped to Warez. And so when she arrives
(13:58):
in Warez sheets with him, a Bermudez's uncle, they end
up going into business together. Prohibition didn't stop America's demand
for liquor, It just pushed it onto the black market.
And this is the story of Huirez, a place that
constantly responds to what America wants, but what America doesn't
(14:21):
want to take responsibility for bootleg liquor, sex, tourism, drugs,
and from the nineteen sixties onward, outsourced labor. This last
chapter in Quirez began when the US ended the so
called Brassero program, which had allowed Mexican workers to fill
labor shortages in the US created by the Second World War.
(14:44):
After the war ended, it became really a sensitive topic.
There were a lot of people that were very concerned
that the Mexican laborers were taking jobs that were otherwise
suited for Americans. So the Bressero program was ended. Has
been called the largest mass deportation in history. Hundreds of
(15:04):
thousands of workers were sent across the border into Mexico.
Many of them ended up in Juarez, and both the
Mexican and US governments were nervous about the potential for
unrest if these men remained unemployed, so the two countries
collaborated on the Border Industrialization Program, which created a duty
(15:25):
free zone with no tariffs on imports and exports, and
this would effectively allow American companies to rehire the brasseros.
But in Mexico, the Bermoulez family, who made a fortune
distilling whiskey with Mary Dowling, were tasked with turning the
vision into a reality, and none other than Don Jaime
(15:46):
traveled to the US to pitch companies on the idea
of outsourcing to Mexico. His trip paid off in spectacular fashion.
By nineteen sixty eight, Hime was standing in the families
old cotton fields laying the foundation for a one hundred
and fifteen thousand square foot plant to assemble television parts
(16:07):
for the Radio Corporation of America. Our CIA no longer exists,
but companies from Dell to General Electric followed the path
to Juarez that they forged. This was really the beginning
of the globalized economy, and the beachhead of that was
in Warez. That was where we saw American companies going
(16:31):
and testing out this new model, which was a cross border,
transnational global manufacturing economy. That's originally why RCIA started manufacturing
its televisions and Warez. They didn't want to have to
pay the higher wages, they didn't want to have to
pay the increasing benefits that the unions were demanding. And
(16:54):
no matter how you look at the Makula industry, and
the fact of the matter is, it's still comletely dependent
on low wage workers. I mean, that's the reason why
the industry exists, That's why companies continue to go there today.
The Benmula's family remain among Huaras's most important local partners.
(17:14):
To the Macula Doorras, and there's no suggestion that they
were involved in the murders. But Capcom the makuela ware
Sigario worked and Leah, the maquila ware Claudia Evette worked,
are both located on Bedmudez industrial parks, and both Claudia
Evette and Sigario disappeared after leaving work. Although the makuelas
(17:37):
do now provide transportation, the vulnerability of the workers remains constant.
I mean, you can't ignore the fact that at the
end of the day they're getting paid seven dollars a day.
You can't ignore the fact that, yeah, they're bust in
every day to work, but when they're bust home, their
(17:57):
homes might be a cardboard shack, and they might not
have running water or electricity, And ultimately American consumers benefit
in cheaper televisions and cheaper washing machines. The Bermudez family
drive around in SUVs, they played Polo don jaime, even
(18:19):
hung out with the Queen of England, and although they're
among the richest of the Juarez impresarios, there by no
means the only Juires industrialists who have profited from generations
of doing business with US companies. Meanwhile, those US companies
who have key manufacturing operations in Juarez have hundreds of
billions of dollars of market capitalization and the political clout
(18:44):
that comes with it. But was there some kind of
direct conspiracy to keep profit margins high by deflecting attention
from the vulnerable women who worked in the factories and
paid the ultimate price. Could Hardrick Crawford have been silenced
because of drawing attention to the connection between the makilas
and the murders. When we come back, we ask the
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(21:21):
So before the break, Monica Lauren mentioned something that you've
been telling me since day one, which is that Juarez
as it exists today exists because of low wage workers.
Firstly with the Bresseros, and then once the Makilas were there,
they attracted internal migrants like the Flores family for the jobs. Now,
(21:44):
the Flores family arrived thirty years ago, but what's the
condition of the workers like who arrived today. I'll never
forget visiting one of these factory workers Inso you love
Howais In twenty sixteen, her name was Brenda's and she
worked for Comscope, a multi billion dollar communications company headquartered
(22:06):
in North Carolina. This is the company that outfitted the
Dallas Cowboys new football stadium with Wi Fi. But in
the assembled cables for Comscope in Huattas for seven dollars
a day, not per hour per day. And when you
go to her house you can see just what kind
(22:26):
of a life you can live on that salary. But
in the lived in a government subsidized three rooms cinder
block home. She had no central heating or cooling. In
the winter, she stayed warm by tossing plywood in a
middle trash bin. And that plywood is worth half her
(22:46):
daily salary. And meanwhile, in its annual letter to its shareholders,
Comscope brags about saving them money by putting its factories
in quote low cost geographies like Hottis told me that
for the large international companies who do business in Juarez,
these conditions aren't just an open secret, but almost pot
(23:09):
of Wuires's appeal. Yes, here's another example. In Alpaso, there's
a regional business alliance that's dedicated to helping big companies
set up in Huattas. And one of the selling points
they advertised on their website about Howatas was a quote
cooperative predominantly non union workforce. In other words, come to Huatas.
(23:32):
The workers here are submissive and they won't try to
defend themselves. When Howard Campbell first told us about how
the cartel bribes US law enforcement officials to facilitate the
flow of drugs across the border. I began to see
the wall that separates El Paso and Juarez in a
new light, and now my understanding was shifting again. The
(23:56):
wall also disguises the deep connections between the legitimate economies
of Mexico and the US. It obscures the reality that
many who are as femicide victims died, creating value for
the US economy. This was the situation that FBI Special
Agent in charge of El Paso, Hardrick Crawford, was beginning
(24:16):
to shed light on when he received a warning that
he was making enemies on the US side of the border.
He even alluded to a possible conspiracy to silence him,
involving big business interests and the US State Department. So
we had to ask the ambassador from that time, Antonio Gasa,
if that was possible. Do you remember Hardrick Crawford. I
(24:39):
remember in general terms. I don't remember having any personal
interaction with him. Yeah, you effectively withdrew his country clearance.
Why would you have done that? I likely would have
done it on the recommendation of people working within the
embassy that felt that having him in country would not
be beneficial to the US interest. I didn't to view
(25:00):
Hedrick Crawford for this podcast, and this is what he
said to me, which I'd love your response to. If
I was a conspiracy theorist, I would say that the
State Department and the US Corporation said, look at this
guy who's harming the makuladora industry, and Mexico are upset.
We're going to have to make a sacrifice out of him.
But I'm curious as to what you think about this
idea that the maculadora industry were in some sense putting
(25:23):
pressure on the State Department to avoid too much scrutiny
of the fate of their workers. Yeah. No, I think
that's absurd, and it's no I just I find that absurd.
But here's the thing. Many of America's most important and
valuable companies outsourced to quires, so it was at least
(25:45):
plausible that bringing bad press to the manufacturing industry there
would not be smiled upon by the US government. How
did the maculadoor industry interact with the State Department and
how much of a priority was maintaining good relations with well,
you know, in a very broadly you know, I'll go
back to the day I took my oath, and it
(26:06):
was to represent protect and defend the United States interest abroad,
and largely my focus in terms of priority was our
citizens and our US interest in investments. The ambassador went
on to deny that he gave any undue consideration to
the macula industry. Nonetheless, he did say that protecting US
(26:28):
investments in Mexico was a top priority, and in fact,
trade between the US and Mexico is now worth more
than half a trillion dollars each year. That figure has
risen almost eight hundred percent since the start of the
North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. Just this year,
the current American ambassador publicly put pressure on Mexico to
(26:49):
keep the Macula doors open in the face of work
of protests about death from COVID because the factories were
manufacturing key medical and defense supplies for the US. In
a further demonstration of just how intertwined business interests are
between the countries, Ambassador Gaza himself married one of Mexico's
(27:12):
richest industrialists in two thousand and five, opening him up
to accusations of conflicts of interest, which he also denied.
But in the end, as much as the US economy
does benefit from low wage workers in Juarez, it seemed
unlikely that there was a direct conspiracy to keep them
vulnerable by silencing Hardrick Crawford. But maybe somebody else with
(27:36):
big business interests in Huarez did feel Hardrick was getting
too close to the truth. Remember those empressarios, those emperors
of industry. Well, here's Diana again. There was a suspicion
on the part of authorities in Mexico City that the
Duana the Customs was not collecting the assessments people have
(27:59):
to pay at the border to take items into Mexico.
In fact, the authorities in Mexico City suspected that they
were off by two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month.
The federal government in Mexico was worried that several business
people in Huarez weren't paying that fast share of import duties,
so they started listening in on their conversations. The investigation
(28:24):
involved the use of surveillance equipment. It was during these
interventions of telephone calls that the investigators became aware of
people involved in the disappearances and murders of judas. They
notified their superiors in Mexico City. Hey, you know sort
of stuff. We're hearing and bodies and being transported and
(28:48):
blah blah blah, and so they said. Their superiors told
them keep it quiet for now, just continue with the investigation.
We'll do that later. The Customer investigators were assigned to
solve a tax issue, but they stumbled across evidence that
connected certain industrialists to a much larger crime, the femicides.
(29:11):
Here's what they told. Diana and her colleague said, he
or Gonzalez Rodriguez, a group of powerful men killed the
women with impunity sort of became a sport. And by
the way, the victims of this group, none all of
them have been found because the sources indicated they were
buried in properties that the public does not have access to.
(29:35):
Although these revelations about powerful men abducting and murdering women
for pleasure weren't the crimes the investigators had been asked
to solve, they passed along their findings to their superiors
in Mexico City, anticipating an intervention. A lot of recordings
were made, and so the principal investigators were very proud
(29:57):
of themselves, said, Wow, we solve the vermicides. And so,
you know, they wrapped up their field work and waited,
and they waited and they waited and they waited. Nothing happened.
And so that's when they started contacting and myself, when
(30:22):
it became clear that the federal government wasn't going to
do anything with their discovery. The investigators gave Diana and
Sahio a huge tip, not just the general profile of
the killers, but the specific names of the men involved.
And when Diana heard them, she didn't even need to
do a background check. She already knew who these people were.
(30:46):
We're talking about people involved in major industries. According to Diana,
the men were major players in industries ranging from transportation
to energy, to communications and real estate. And Diana also
told us she'd received an off the record tip about
these men being implicated in the murders once before from
(31:08):
a source in US intelligence. And what was amazing to
me is that there were same names, the same names
that came out, And so you're investigating this story, you
get a call about these phone conversations where these names
come up. After the authorities have also been added this information.
Don't do anything. I mean, you must want to publish something. Well, actually,
(31:33):
my first reaction was to want to crawl under a
desk and hide. It was scary. When you sit down
and think about who may be involved in the names,
Oh my god, it's like, oh my god. You know,
these are people that are well known not just at
the border but in Mexico nationally, and they have global
(31:53):
business interests. I mean, they're powerful economically, We're influential, and
you know, I'm just a little old reporter, you know.
And I also saw an explanation for the impunity of
these crimes. Right. I could understand the cartels and the
gangs serial killers to an extent, but this, this was
(32:17):
bigger than all of that together. What Diana was being
told about powerful men murdering women for pleasure was almost
exactly what Alfredo had been told about the cartel parties
by his source in the Huirez jail. But these new
revelations didn't rule out the previous ones about La Line
(32:40):
or make it impossible that one or more serial killers
were praying on a vulnerable population. The murderers were not
mutually exclusive, and I was starting to understand better how
Diana had chosen the title The Killing Fields for her book.
When We come Back, Diana attempts to make type with
the industrialists alleged to be involved in the murders. Head
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something was seriously wrong. Listen to Health Discovered on the
(34:56):
iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Diana told
(35:17):
us that when she heard the names of the businessmen
allegedly involved in the femicides, her first reaction was to
want to crawl under her death, but it didn't take
long for her reporter's instincts to kick in. I made
an effort to contact a lot of these people. I
left all message as well as emails, facts, I went
through personal secretaries. I never regard an answer from any
(35:40):
of them, not a single solitary answer. You know. Despite
the lack of response, Diana and her editors at the
El Paso Times felt confident enough in the story that
they ran it in the paper. But crucially, they decided
not to identify the industrial lists by name, both for
legal and for safety reasons. There were no names named,
(36:03):
but they were characterized. The editor chose the word cabal
to describe this network of powerful businessmen involved allegedly in
these murders. I wonder how far you were able to
go or were you just sign these are too big
and I better not. I think I went as far
(36:25):
as I could journalistically speaking. But I also knew that
even if their names appeared, nothing would happen, and in fact,
the messenger with them would become a target, meaning you,
meaning me. Of course, Now, given the time that his
past your series was published, would you be willing to
(36:47):
name those names? Now? Money, I mean, just can't get
away with it, so bury you. This is the same
Diana who walked into the neighborhood where Lilia Alejandra had
last been seen despite ahuire as lawyer, literally tearing up
a map he'd drawn for her and telling her to
(37:09):
stay away. The same Diana would continued to report on
the murders after receiving a death thread traced back to
Mexican military intelligence. But it was these business people who
Diana seemed to fear more than anyone else. We wanted
to know if it would be possible to speak to
the customs investigators ourselves, but sadly, Diana said that wouldn't
(37:31):
be possible. Nobody knows where they are anymore. The two guys,
one of them told to Setio Gonzalis that he was
asked to provide a proof of his loyalty by Mexican officials.
It may be that they were already suspecting that there
were leaks, and they were probably trying to tear a
down who could have been leaking during the cartel wars.
(37:52):
There is a suspicion that they might be dead. The
problem that the drug cartels wars created for everyone is
that then became like a way too off people who
might be inconvenient and just make it look like, you know,
the cartels did it. A drug hit yeah, yeah, so
(38:14):
many of them. It seems remarkable to me that these
Mexican investigators would come and reach out to two journalists
they wanted justice, two more people who wanted justice for
the women in Huires, two more people who disappeared presumed dead.
(38:35):
So let's rewind for just a second. Remember when Alfredo
Corcillo first learned that Ouirez police officers were involved in
the kidnap and murder of young women. He wasn't sure
what to believe, so he turned to Phil Jordan of
the DA who was able to corroborate that reporting and
the existence of La Ligna. Phil was the director of
(38:58):
the El Paso Intelligence Center, a multi agency initiative to
gather as much information as possible about the movement of
drugs south of the border. We wanted to know, in
the course of all of this intelligence gathering whether Phil
had ever heard anything along the lines of what the
Mexican customs investigators had told Diana, so we called him.
(39:22):
Diana has a line of investigation that suggests that some
of the powerful industrialists in Suljuarez were involved in having
the women abducted. Did your informants ever tell you anything
which suggested that may be true. I would be lying
if I tell you I didn't hear about that. Yes,
(39:42):
I believe those rumors to be accurate. Diana Washington was
accurate in the powerful and the elite could pick up women,
party with them, and then do away with them. But
since it did not involve directly drug trafficking, we obviously
didn't get involved. No, I don't know if the FBI
got involved or not, but yes, Lallinia existed primarily to
(40:07):
traffic drugs, and so the DA actively tracked their activities,
including the kidnap and murder of women to celebrate successful
drug shipments. But the city's business elites were outside of
the agency's direct purview. So despite believing the rumors to
be true, Phil never followed up on them, but he
(40:28):
did mention the FBI. So we've reached out to Frank Evans,
the former assistant Special Agent in charge of El Paso,
to find out what he knew. We were getting uncorroborated
information of involvement by prominent officials and wareas in what
we're purported to be. You know, no holds barred sex parties.
(40:51):
If that's in fact the case, the victims cannot be
left alive because they know they've seen certain people. If
you had a victim that earned up and says, hey,
I was dragged into this house and this guy was there,
and that guy was there, and this guy was there
and that guy was there, now you've got a real problem.
But if the victim's killed and it's a nonsolved thomaside,
(41:13):
did anyone try to cooperate for us? The ability to
one hundred corroborate did not exist. Unlike the drug information.
You called Diana Washington veld as a witness to the truth.
I think you know if you read her book, there
are some very concrete facts in there. Like any investigative reporter,
(41:37):
some of what she reports cannot be one hundred percent corroborated.
But the simple fact that the matter is she's a
witness to the truth. The only way that you stop
this is somebody has to say I'm not running, whether
it's a Diana Washington or someone else. We used to
make a joke it was you can kill me, but
(41:58):
you can't eat me, and people would say, what the
hell does that mean. It's an attitude of you know what,
I'm here and I'm not leaving. That's one of the
things I respect about Diana Washington and the news media
and wires. They're getting blown up and killed, but you
have people that still go to work every day and
(42:20):
they still do their jobs. And that's when I called
Diana a witness to the truth, because once you're a
witness to the truth. You can kill me, but you
can't eat me. Although they can't put you in a
bat of acid and dissolve your bolts. You can kill me,
but you can't eat me. So in the end, Alfredo
(42:49):
Corcillo was able to corroborate his story Monica about police
being involved in the kidnapping of women in Juarez. He
got the documents from the eat the confirmation from the
drugs are in Mexico City. Banna never got the same
degree of corroboration about the rich men. So what do
(43:11):
you make of it? To me, the investigation into powerful
men being involved in the murders of women is not
far fetched in the least. I mean, time and time again,
there are examples of powerful men abusing women, whether it's
Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Dominique Straskon, r Kelly Roger Ales.
(43:34):
I could go on and on. I mean, our own
president was caught on tape describing how he feels he
has license to sexually abuse women. Two men are now
sitting on the US Supreme Court despite strong allegations of
sexual abuse. The differences, you know, their victims were still
(43:56):
around to make allegations and tell their stories. What is
the victims can no longer speak up against their attackers.
But are there examples of powerful men being involved in
this kind of twisted and sick and deadly behavior. Absolutely
in Mexico, the elite and powerful, whether it's in business
(44:20):
or politics, act with just as much impunity as the
drug cartells do. One thing I'm still not completely clear on.
Does Digner's reporting suggests that there were two sets of
parties where women were trafficked and used for sport, Or
(44:41):
were the industrialists and the knockos attending the same parties.
Both the drug cartels and the powerful men were said
to consume these women under similar circumstances in these horrific parties.
Whether or not these were the same parties, I don't
think we know. But what we do know, as Candice Scrappic,
(45:04):
the forensic psychologist, told us, it's a way to cement
bonds ensure silence and foment a brotherhood. We know that
even college frat boys engage in this kind of behavior.
These men feel empowered to possess and attack women because
they're used to getting away with it. Rarely are they
(45:26):
ever held accountable for their actions. That's one of the
most frustrating parts about this particular story. When you have
the police and the judiciary not doing their jobs, and
when you have journalists being threatened or killed for asking questions,
and you have powerful bestI financial interests in keeping a
(45:47):
population vulnerable, you just don't get any answers. On the
other hand, Diana, it seems, was so close to revealing
the identities of these industrialists who were religiously involved in
the murders, and we know she was willing to risk
her life so many other times. Why do you think
she drew a line on theyre trying to publish their names.
(46:10):
Some of my initial reactions were, what do you mean
you're not going to publish these names? What do you
mean you're not going to try to get more confirmation?
I mean, for God's sakes, for the sake of justice,
for the sake of accountability. But the reality is, even
if you were able to get some kind of solid confirmation,
the retaliation you could expect could be deadly. And I
(46:34):
mean you just have to think. You just have to
think how hard is it to hold powerful men accountable
in this country, in the US To even begin to
fathom how much more of a challenge it would be
to hold them accountable in a place like Watts, where
you have cops in alliance with criminals. When you talk
(46:56):
about power and protection in what is the elite business
class seems to be more powerful and more protected, more
untouchable than even the top drug cartels. The odds that
young women in Huirez are up against are overwhelming, the poverty,
(47:21):
the corruption, the invisibility. It was in response to all
of this that Paula, a daughter Yea, and several other
families came up with a symbol of resistance that they
went on to paint all over Huirez, a symbol that
made it impossible to forget the fate of Sagrario and
so many others like her. Why not have a protest
(47:46):
but a permanent one is She thought of a black
cross with a pink background as a symbol for the girls,
the pink background representing the women and the Black Cross
for the morning of their loss, but its main purpose
was on a prevention that whenever a girl stood by
one of those lamp posts and saw the cross, she
would know that she was in danger. Next time, I've
(48:11):
forgotten Paula's continuing demands for justice and the consequences for
her and her family. I'm also Lushi and I'm Monica.
See you next time? You know not see do you know?
(48:32):
Stella Felicia Forgotten. The Women of Juarez is co hosted
(49:09):
by Me Monica and me oswald Oshin. Forgotten is executive
produced by Me and mangesh Hat Tikida. Our producers are
Julian Weller and Katrina Norvelle. Sound editing by Julian Weller
and Jacopo Penzo. Lucas Riley is our story editor. Caitlin
(49:29):
Thompson is our consulting producer. Production support from Emily Maronoff
and Aaron Kaufman. Recording assistant to this episode from Miguel
Perez and Ethan Bean. Music by Leonardo Hablum and Hakkabo Libermann.
Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Hello beautiful, I name you
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unest dot ceo. Forgotten is a production of IHNT media
and unusual productions before we start. This podcast contains accounts
which some listeners will find disturbing, but without them, the
story can't be fully understood. Please take care while listening.
(01:51):
Previously on Forgotten, I do recall some suggesting that I
might temper my words because the big business this is involved. Well,
the Mikueladars are American companies, and you might wind up
making enemies on this side of the border. When they
changed her shift, she signed an insurance policy. Joking around,
(02:13):
she told me, if something happens to me, mamma, they're
going to give you a ton of money. I don't
know if my innocent girl had a feeling that something
was going to happen to her. I don't know, and
so when I saw where this graveyard was located as it,
I can't believe it. It's in the middle of the city.
In across the street is the association of Michuela Lois.
(02:34):
Why choose this site to dump eight bodies of women?
From the beginning, Dina Washington Valdez told us that the
femicides in Juarez were not random, that the women were selected,
and Diana also mentioned all kinds of strange connections between
(02:56):
the victims and the Macula doors. The mass grave containing
eight women's bodies at the cotton Field was discovered right
across the street from the Maculadora Association, shortly before Lelia
Alejandra Andradeo was abducted in February two thousand and one.
Her photographs were featured in a promotional brochure for her Maculadora,
(03:18):
and Diana also mentioned that men claiming to be model
scouts would take photographs of young women outside the factories.
And then there was Sagrario Gonzalez Flores. After the factory
changed her shift, Sigario was forced to commute alone. Her
mother Paula remembers the day that Sigario failed to come
(03:40):
home from work. Sa we knew that she had worked
and that she had left at the time. Everyone left,
but no one saw anything. And I tell you that
very night we began searching at the Red Cross and
the hospitals, on the streets, searching for her, your Sancho.
At night, all the photos I had of my daughter,
(04:01):
I would pass them out at gas station, saying I'm
looking for my daughter, can you please help me find her?
And that nights I would step outside and I would
shout her name. I would run around the house and
shout her name with all my strength in the silence
of the night. I felt she could hear me, so
I would call to my daughter. After a few agonizing
(04:29):
days and nights of searching for Cigario, I hope that
she might be found alive began to fade. Paula joined
a protest group outside the police station with other mothers
displaying photographs of their own missing daughters. One morning, after
Segario had been missing for two weeks, Paula arrived at
(04:49):
the protest to learn that a young woman's body had
been found the previous night. Did we arrived at the
sit in that day as usual, and as soon as
we arrived, a reporter approached me said, ma'am, did you
know they found the body of a murdered woman. As
soon as he told me that, I ran to the
photos we already had there. I said to the reporter,
(05:11):
which one did they find? He said, no, I don't know.
I don't know which one they found. I just know
she had a white machileot. It was then that I
sensed that it was my daughter, Sagardio had her name
on the white makila coat. I had embroidered her name
with colorful yarn, just her name, Sagardio. Paula's sense of
(05:35):
foreboding was proven correct. Next to the young woman's body
dumped in the desert outside of Huirez was the factory
coat that Paula had stitched my hand with her daughter's name.
And this pattern of young women in Juarez disappearing between
home and work was by no means unique to Sagrario.
(05:55):
Lilia Alexandra had also disappeared on her way home from
work and cloud At Gonzalez, one of the victims discovered
in the cotton field, went missing after she was turned
away from her factory job for arriving two minutes late.
These connections between the murders and the machuelas began to
attract international attention, including the ABC news piece where Heredrick
(06:20):
Crawford appeared and where Roberto Urea, a former president of
the Maculadora Association, appeared to blame the victims for their
own deaths. Were worth these young ladies? Where they were
seen last? Were they drinking right? Were they a parting?
Were they in a dark street? Ureya's defensiveness raised all
(06:43):
kinds of questions. Did he and the maculador as he
represented have something to hide? Could there be some truth
to Heredrick Crawford's assertion that his advocacy for the women
disturbed big business interests on both sides of the border
and contributed to his downfall. And could there be another
group of men operating with or in parallel to the
(07:05):
cartel who were also praying on vulnerable young women in Juarez.
I'm as voloshin and I'm monica. This is forgotten the
women in Juarez, Baramo Verraierra loscirebiv you non si so
(07:34):
you know not sasquez hala feliciva that comment from Urea
(07:55):
Monico where he's saying, you know where were the women
last seen a party with a drinking That really stuck
with both of us. First of all, I have to
point out how infuriating it is to listen to that interview.
That sort of victim blaming has been done by police
and politicians, and now it was being done on national
(08:18):
television by a former president of the Makiladua Association. How
dare he shirk the responsibility his industry bears for not
recognizing and responding to the risks their employees clearly faced.
This kind of attitude alone puts women in danger, and
(08:39):
in the late nineteen nineties and early two thousands, it
wasn't just ABC News who were drawing a line between
the Makilas and the murders. Diana was also pointing out
the connections, as were Amnesty International correct Yes in the beginning,
the whitest femicides are known as the maki Ladora murders
(09:02):
because so many of the murdered women worked in the factories.
Women were actively recruited because of these sexist stereotypes, like
they're more docile and nimble fingered. Pressure from the victims' families,
combined with international media scrutiny, did push the Maculadoras into
making some efforts to improve, especially providing transport to stop
(09:27):
young female employees disappearing on their way home from work,
But the fundamental situation in Huirez hasn't changed. Some people
get rich there because others state poor. There are two
groups in particular who benefit, the largely American corporations who
manufactured goods in Huarez, and the city's own industrialists. His
(09:51):
how Diana describes them in her book, Mexico's business elites
are called impresarios, a word that sounds like emperor, which
is how they are viewed. The business emperors in the
border state of Chihuahua benefit directly or indirectly from the
labor of young women. Diana goes on to write. They
(10:11):
own the industrial parks that least buildings to mackiladoras, They
produce materials for housing, and they produce and sell consumer
products that all families in Juarez purchase. But I still
wanted to know just how powerful these empressarios really were.
Were they powerful enough to pressure the State department to
silence a senior FBI official like Headrick Crawford. To find out,
(10:36):
we spoke to one of the few journalists who's gotten
access to Huires's secret business elite. My name is Lauren Edder.
I'm an investigative reporter at Bloomberg News. In twenty seventeen,
Lauren wrote a cover story for Bloomberg Business Week about
how crucial huires Is manufacturing industry is to the global economy.
(10:57):
I think there is this invisibility abouts in general, but
I don't think you could walk through an average day
without touching something that was made in a Maquila. Whether
it's the pockets of your jeans or the heart stent
inside your body. Any product that you pick up today
will have made its way through the border region for
(11:18):
one reason or another. There are over three hundred Macula
doors in Huirez, employing roughly three hundred thousand people, more
than half of whom are assembling products for US companies.
But the goods manufactured in Hires are what Lauren calls
the quote guts of the consumer economy. The windshield wipe
(11:39):
on a car, a blood pressure cuff, a medical glove.
So to make the story land, the journalist needed a character.
Somebody brought up Don Jaime, the godfather of the maquila industry,
Hime Bermudez, had a very storied career where he interacted
with extremely prominent business men. You know, he went to
(12:02):
England and was the guest of the Queen for a
polo match, and I was just fascinated to learn that
there was a somebody behind this massive manufacturing economy along
the border. So Lauren traveled to Juarez to interview the
then ninety four year old business magnate. Bemudes has since
passed away, but in life he was one of the
(12:23):
city's leading empressarios. I had talked to people ahead of time,
and people said you should probably have a bodyguard, but
it turned out that Don Jaime had more bodyguards than me.
So it was funny traveling around this very gritty city.
And essentially what was a motorcade almost like floating through
Juarez in a chariot of some sort. The destination of
(12:49):
the motorcade was the Bedmudes industrial parks, where many Maculadoras operate.
When you get into the manufacturing sector, inside these little fiefdoms,
as I described them, it's just a different world. Really.
There is a sense of security and a sense of insulation.
Now of course, most of the workers live in places
(13:12):
that do not have that sense of security. To understand
how Juarez became a city of such stark contrasts, you
need to understand the history of the Bermudez family and
how their relationship with the US transformed their cotton fields
into fiefdoms. It all started in the nineteen twenties when
(13:33):
the family partnered with an industrious Kentucky distiller called Mary Dowling.
After Prohibition, she was like, hell, no, am I going
to shut down this business. So she literally hired people
to dismantle her distillery, loaded onto rail cars, and she
had it shipped to Warez. And so when she arrives
(13:58):
in Warez sheets with him, a Bermudez's uncle, they end
up going into business together. Prohibition didn't stop America's demand
for liquor, It just pushed it onto the black market.
And this is the story of Huirez, a place that
constantly responds to what America wants, but what America doesn't
(14:21):
want to take responsibility for bootleg liquor, sex, tourism, drugs,
and from the nineteen sixties onward, outsourced labor. This last
chapter in Quirez began when the US ended the so
called Brassero program, which had allowed Mexican workers to fill
labor shortages in the US created by the Second World War.
(14:44):
After the war ended, it became really a sensitive topic.
There were a lot of people that were very concerned
that the Mexican laborers were taking jobs that were otherwise
suited for Americans. So the Bressero program was ended. Has
been called the largest mass deportation in history. Hundreds of
(15:04):
thousands of workers were sent across the border into Mexico.
Many of them ended up in Juarez, and both the
Mexican and US governments were nervous about the potential for
unrest if these men remained unemployed, so the two countries
collaborated on the Border Industrialization Program, which created a duty
(15:25):
free zone with no tariffs on imports and exports, and
this would effectively allow American companies to rehire the brasseros.
But in Mexico, the Bermoulez family, who made a fortune
distilling whiskey with Mary Dowling, were tasked with turning the
vision into a reality, and none other than Don Jaime
(15:46):
traveled to the US to pitch companies on the idea
of outsourcing to Mexico. His trip paid off in spectacular fashion.
By nineteen sixty eight, Hime was standing in the families
old cotton fields laying the foundation for a one hundred
and fifteen thousand square foot plant to assemble television parts
(16:07):
for the Radio Corporation of America. Our CIA no longer exists,
but companies from Dell to General Electric followed the path
to Juarez that they forged. This was really the beginning
of the globalized economy, and the beachhead of that was
in Warez. That was where we saw American companies going
(16:31):
and testing out this new model, which was a cross border,
transnational global manufacturing economy. That's originally why RCIA started manufacturing
its televisions and Warez. They didn't want to have to
pay the higher wages, they didn't want to have to
pay the increasing benefits that the unions were demanding. And
(16:54):
no matter how you look at the Makula industry, and
the fact of the matter is, it's still comletely dependent
on low wage workers. I mean, that's the reason why
the industry exists, That's why companies continue to go there today.
The Benmula's family remain among Huaras's most important local partners.
(17:14):
To the Macula Doorras, and there's no suggestion that they
were involved in the murders. But Capcom the makuela ware
Sigario worked and Leah, the maquila ware Claudia Evette worked,
are both located on Bedmudez industrial parks, and both Claudia
Evette and Sigario disappeared after leaving work. Although the makuelas
(17:37):
do now provide transportation, the vulnerability of the workers remains constant.
I mean, you can't ignore the fact that at the
end of the day they're getting paid seven dollars a day.
You can't ignore the fact that, yeah, they're bust in
every day to work, but when they're bust home, their
(17:57):
homes might be a cardboard shack, and they might not
have running water or electricity, And ultimately American consumers benefit
in cheaper televisions and cheaper washing machines. The Bermudez family
drive around in SUVs, they played Polo don jaime, even
(18:19):
hung out with the Queen of England, and although they're
among the richest of the Juarez impresarios, there by no
means the only Juires industrialists who have profited from generations
of doing business with US companies. Meanwhile, those US companies
who have key manufacturing operations in Juarez have hundreds of
billions of dollars of market capitalization and the political clout
(18:44):
that comes with it. But was there some kind of
direct conspiracy to keep profit margins high by deflecting attention
from the vulnerable women who worked in the factories and
paid the ultimate price. Could Hardrick Crawford have been silenced
because of drawing attention to the connection between the makilas
and the murders. When we come back, we ask the
(19:06):
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(21:21):
So before the break, Monica Lauren mentioned something that you've
been telling me since day one, which is that Juarez
as it exists today exists because of low wage workers.
Firstly with the Bresseros, and then once the Makilas were there,
they attracted internal migrants like the Flores family for the jobs. Now,
(21:44):
the Flores family arrived thirty years ago, but what's the
condition of the workers like who arrived today. I'll never
forget visiting one of these factory workers Inso you love
Howais In twenty sixteen, her name was Brenda's and she
worked for Comscope, a multi billion dollar communications company headquartered
(22:06):
in North Carolina. This is the company that outfitted the
Dallas Cowboys new football stadium with Wi Fi. But in
the assembled cables for Comscope in Huattas for seven dollars
a day, not per hour per day. And when you
go to her house you can see just what kind
(22:26):
of a life you can live on that salary. But
in the lived in a government subsidized three rooms cinder
block home. She had no central heating or cooling. In
the winter, she stayed warm by tossing plywood in a
middle trash bin. And that plywood is worth half her
(22:46):
daily salary. And meanwhile, in its annual letter to its shareholders,
Comscope brags about saving them money by putting its factories
in quote low cost geographies like Hottis told me that
for the large international companies who do business in Juarez,
these conditions aren't just an open secret, but almost pot
(23:09):
of Wuires's appeal. Yes, here's another example. In Alpaso, there's
a regional business alliance that's dedicated to helping big companies
set up in Huattas. And one of the selling points
they advertised on their website about Howatas was a quote
cooperative predominantly non union workforce. In other words, come to Huatas.
(23:32):
The workers here are submissive and they won't try to
defend themselves. When Howard Campbell first told us about how
the cartel bribes US law enforcement officials to facilitate the
flow of drugs across the border. I began to see
the wall that separates El Paso and Juarez in a
new light, and now my understanding was shifting again. The
(23:56):
wall also disguises the deep connections between the legitimate economies
of Mexico and the US. It obscures the reality that
many who are as femicide victims died, creating value for
the US economy. This was the situation that FBI Special
Agent in charge of El Paso, Hardrick Crawford, was beginning
(24:16):
to shed light on when he received a warning that
he was making enemies on the US side of the border.
He even alluded to a possible conspiracy to silence him,
involving big business interests and the US State Department. So
we had to ask the ambassador from that time, Antonio Gasa,
if that was possible. Do you remember Hardrick Crawford. I
(24:39):
remember in general terms. I don't remember having any personal
interaction with him. Yeah, you effectively withdrew his country clearance.
Why would you have done that? I likely would have
done it on the recommendation of people working within the
embassy that felt that having him in country would not
be beneficial to the US interest. I didn't to view
(25:00):
Hedrick Crawford for this podcast, and this is what he
said to me, which I'd love your response to. If
I was a conspiracy theorist, I would say that the
State Department and the US Corporation said, look at this
guy who's harming the makuladora industry, and Mexico are upset.
We're going to have to make a sacrifice out of him.
But I'm curious as to what you think about this
idea that the maculadora industry were in some sense putting
(25:23):
pressure on the State Department to avoid too much scrutiny
of the fate of their workers. Yeah. No, I think
that's absurd, and it's no I just I find that absurd.
But here's the thing. Many of America's most important and
valuable companies outsourced to quires, so it was at least
(25:45):
plausible that bringing bad press to the manufacturing industry there
would not be smiled upon by the US government. How
did the maculadoor industry interact with the State Department and
how much of a priority was maintaining good relations with well,
you know, in a very broadly you know, I'll go
back to the day I took my oath, and it
(26:06):
was to represent protect and defend the United States interest abroad,
and largely my focus in terms of priority was our
citizens and our US interest in investments. The ambassador went
on to deny that he gave any undue consideration to
the macula industry. Nonetheless, he did say that protecting US
(26:28):
investments in Mexico was a top priority, and in fact,
trade between the US and Mexico is now worth more
than half a trillion dollars each year. That figure has
risen almost eight hundred percent since the start of the
North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. Just this year,
the current American ambassador publicly put pressure on Mexico to
(26:49):
keep the Macula doors open in the face of work
of protests about death from COVID because the factories were
manufacturing key medical and defense supplies for the US. In
a further demonstration of just how intertwined business interests are
between the countries, Ambassador Gaza himself married one of Mexico's
(27:12):
richest industrialists in two thousand and five, opening him up
to accusations of conflicts of interest, which he also denied.
But in the end, as much as the US economy
does benefit from low wage workers in Juarez, it seemed
unlikely that there was a direct conspiracy to keep them
vulnerable by silencing Hardrick Crawford. But maybe somebody else with
(27:36):
big business interests in Huarez did feel Hardrick was getting
too close to the truth. Remember those empressarios, those emperors
of industry. Well, here's Diana again. There was a suspicion
on the part of authorities in Mexico City that the
Duana the Customs was not collecting the assessments people have
(27:59):
to pay at the border to take items into Mexico.
In fact, the authorities in Mexico City suspected that they
were off by two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month.
The federal government in Mexico was worried that several business
people in Huarez weren't paying that fast share of import duties,
so they started listening in on their conversations. The investigation
(28:24):
involved the use of surveillance equipment. It was during these
interventions of telephone calls that the investigators became aware of
people involved in the disappearances and murders of judas. They
notified their superiors in Mexico City. Hey, you know sort
of stuff. We're hearing and bodies and being transported and
(28:48):
blah blah blah, and so they said. Their superiors told
them keep it quiet for now, just continue with the investigation.
We'll do that later. The Customer investigators were assigned to
solve a tax issue, but they stumbled across evidence that
connected certain industrialists to a much larger crime, the femicides.
(29:11):
Here's what they told. Diana and her colleague said, he
or Gonzalez Rodriguez, a group of powerful men killed the
women with impunity sort of became a sport. And by
the way, the victims of this group, none all of
them have been found because the sources indicated they were
buried in properties that the public does not have access to.
(29:35):
Although these revelations about powerful men abducting and murdering women
for pleasure weren't the crimes the investigators had been asked
to solve, they passed along their findings to their superiors
in Mexico City, anticipating an intervention. A lot of recordings
were made, and so the principal investigators were very proud
(29:57):
of themselves, said, Wow, we solve the vermicides. And so,
you know, they wrapped up their field work and waited,
and they waited and they waited and they waited. Nothing happened.
And so that's when they started contacting and myself, when
(30:22):
it became clear that the federal government wasn't going to
do anything with their discovery. The investigators gave Diana and
Sahio a huge tip, not just the general profile of
the killers, but the specific names of the men involved.
And when Diana heard them, she didn't even need to
do a background check. She already knew who these people were.
(30:46):
We're talking about people involved in major industries. According to Diana,
the men were major players in industries ranging from transportation
to energy, to communications and real estate. And Diana also
told us she'd received an off the record tip about
these men being implicated in the murders once before from
(31:08):
a source in US intelligence. And what was amazing to
me is that there were same names, the same names
that came out, And so you're investigating this story, you
get a call about these phone conversations where these names
come up. After the authorities have also been added this information.
Don't do anything. I mean, you must want to publish something. Well, actually,
(31:33):
my first reaction was to want to crawl under a
desk and hide. It was scary. When you sit down
and think about who may be involved in the names,
Oh my god, it's like, oh my god. You know,
these are people that are well known not just at
the border but in Mexico nationally, and they have global
(31:53):
business interests. I mean, they're powerful economically, We're influential, and
you know, I'm just a little old reporter, you know.
And I also saw an explanation for the impunity of
these crimes. Right. I could understand the cartels and the
gangs serial killers to an extent, but this, this was
(32:17):
bigger than all of that together. What Diana was being
told about powerful men murdering women for pleasure was almost
exactly what Alfredo had been told about the cartel parties
by his source in the Huirez jail. But these new
revelations didn't rule out the previous ones about La Line
(32:40):
or make it impossible that one or more serial killers
were praying on a vulnerable population. The murderers were not
mutually exclusive, and I was starting to understand better how
Diana had chosen the title The Killing Fields for her book.
When We come Back, Diana attempts to make type with
the industrialists alleged to be involved in the murders. Head
(33:10):
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of the spotlight on series from our Health Discovered podcast.
(34:12):
In this special episode, we'll hear about living a fulfilling
life with chronic cart failure, a condition that doesn't have
to be as scary as it sounds. I was outside
shoveling snow and I noticed I was coughing up flim
Unbeknownst to me, I left a trail of blood behind me,
and I was one sign. Now. Of course, prior to
(34:34):
I was excessively gaining weight, I had issues breathing, sleep APNA,
I had a lot of those classic signs. My legs
were beginning to retain fluid, and I was having heart
palt patients. My heart would be really excessively fast and so.
But ultimately it was when that occurred that I thought
something was seriously wrong. Listen to Health Discovered on the
(34:56):
iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Diana told
(35:17):
us that when she heard the names of the businessmen
allegedly involved in the femicides, her first reaction was to
want to crawl under her death, but it didn't take
long for her reporter's instincts to kick in. I made
an effort to contact a lot of these people. I
left all message as well as emails, facts, I went
through personal secretaries. I never regard an answer from any
(35:40):
of them, not a single solitary answer. You know. Despite
the lack of response, Diana and her editors at the
El Paso Times felt confident enough in the story that
they ran it in the paper. But crucially, they decided
not to identify the industrial lists by name, both for
legal and for safety reasons. There were no names named,
(36:03):
but they were characterized. The editor chose the word cabal
to describe this network of powerful businessmen involved allegedly in
these murders. I wonder how far you were able to
go or were you just sign these are too big
and I better not. I think I went as far
(36:25):
as I could journalistically speaking. But I also knew that
even if their names appeared, nothing would happen, and in fact,
the messenger with them would become a target, meaning you,
meaning me. Of course, Now, given the time that his
past your series was published, would you be willing to
(36:47):
name those names? Now? Money, I mean, just can't get
away with it, so bury you. This is the same
Diana who walked into the neighborhood where Lilia Alejandra had
last been seen despite ahuire as lawyer, literally tearing up
a map he'd drawn for her and telling her to
(37:09):
stay away. The same Diana would continued to report on
the murders after receiving a death thread traced back to
Mexican military intelligence. But it was these business people who
Diana seemed to fear more than anyone else. We wanted
to know if it would be possible to speak to
the customs investigators ourselves, but sadly, Diana said that wouldn't
(37:31):
be possible. Nobody knows where they are anymore. The two guys,
one of them told to Setio Gonzalis that he was
asked to provide a proof of his loyalty by Mexican officials.
It may be that they were already suspecting that there
were leaks, and they were probably trying to tear a
down who could have been leaking during the cartel wars.
(37:52):
There is a suspicion that they might be dead. The
problem that the drug cartels wars created for everyone is
that then became like a way too off people who
might be inconvenient and just make it look like, you know,
the cartels did it. A drug hit yeah, yeah, so
(38:14):
many of them. It seems remarkable to me that these
Mexican investigators would come and reach out to two journalists
they wanted justice, two more people who wanted justice for
the women in Huires, two more people who disappeared presumed dead.
(38:35):
So let's rewind for just a second. Remember when Alfredo
Corcillo first learned that Ouirez police officers were involved in
the kidnap and murder of young women. He wasn't sure
what to believe, so he turned to Phil Jordan of
the DA who was able to corroborate that reporting and
the existence of La Ligna. Phil was the director of
(38:58):
the El Paso Intelligence Center, a multi agency initiative to
gather as much information as possible about the movement of
drugs south of the border. We wanted to know, in
the course of all of this intelligence gathering whether Phil
had ever heard anything along the lines of what the
Mexican customs investigators had told Diana, so we called him.
(39:22):
Diana has a line of investigation that suggests that some
of the powerful industrialists in Suljuarez were involved in having
the women abducted. Did your informants ever tell you anything
which suggested that may be true. I would be lying
if I tell you I didn't hear about that. Yes,
(39:42):
I believe those rumors to be accurate. Diana Washington was
accurate in the powerful and the elite could pick up women,
party with them, and then do away with them. But
since it did not involve directly drug trafficking, we obviously
didn't get involved. No, I don't know if the FBI
got involved or not, but yes, Lallinia existed primarily to
(40:07):
traffic drugs, and so the DA actively tracked their activities,
including the kidnap and murder of women to celebrate successful
drug shipments. But the city's business elites were outside of
the agency's direct purview. So despite believing the rumors to
be true, Phil never followed up on them, but he
(40:28):
did mention the FBI. So we've reached out to Frank Evans,
the former assistant Special Agent in charge of El Paso,
to find out what he knew. We were getting uncorroborated
information of involvement by prominent officials and wareas in what
we're purported to be. You know, no holds barred sex parties.
(40:51):
If that's in fact the case, the victims cannot be
left alive because they know they've seen certain people. If
you had a victim that earned up and says, hey,
I was dragged into this house and this guy was there,
and that guy was there, and this guy was there
and that guy was there, now you've got a real problem.
But if the victim's killed and it's a nonsolved thomaside,
(41:13):
did anyone try to cooperate for us? The ability to
one hundred corroborate did not exist. Unlike the drug information.
You called Diana Washington veld as a witness to the truth.
I think you know if you read her book, there
are some very concrete facts in there. Like any investigative reporter,
(41:37):
some of what she reports cannot be one hundred percent corroborated.
But the simple fact that the matter is she's a
witness to the truth. The only way that you stop
this is somebody has to say I'm not running, whether
it's a Diana Washington or someone else. We used to
make a joke it was you can kill me, but
(41:58):
you can't eat me, and people would say, what the
hell does that mean. It's an attitude of you know what,
I'm here and I'm not leaving. That's one of the
things I respect about Diana Washington and the news media
and wires. They're getting blown up and killed, but you
have people that still go to work every day and
(42:20):
they still do their jobs. And that's when I called
Diana a witness to the truth, because once you're a
witness to the truth. You can kill me, but you
can't eat me. Although they can't put you in a
bat of acid and dissolve your bolts. You can kill me,
but you can't eat me. So in the end, Alfredo
(42:49):
Corcillo was able to corroborate his story Monica about police
being involved in the kidnapping of women in Juarez. He
got the documents from the eat the confirmation from the
drugs are in Mexico City. Banna never got the same
degree of corroboration about the rich men. So what do
(43:11):
you make of it? To me, the investigation into powerful
men being involved in the murders of women is not
far fetched in the least. I mean, time and time again,
there are examples of powerful men abusing women, whether it's
Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Dominique Straskon, r Kelly Roger Ales.
(43:34):
I could go on and on. I mean, our own
president was caught on tape describing how he feels he
has license to sexually abuse women. Two men are now
sitting on the US Supreme Court despite strong allegations of
sexual abuse. The differences, you know, their victims were still
(43:56):
around to make allegations and tell their stories. What is
the victims can no longer speak up against their attackers.
But are there examples of powerful men being involved in
this kind of twisted and sick and deadly behavior. Absolutely
in Mexico, the elite and powerful, whether it's in business
(44:20):
or politics, act with just as much impunity as the
drug cartells do. One thing I'm still not completely clear on.
Does Digner's reporting suggests that there were two sets of
parties where women were trafficked and used for sport, Or
(44:41):
were the industrialists and the knockos attending the same parties.
Both the drug cartels and the powerful men were said
to consume these women under similar circumstances in these horrific parties.
Whether or not these were the same parties, I don't
think we know. But what we do know, as Candice Scrappic,
(45:04):
the forensic psychologist, told us, it's a way to cement
bonds ensure silence and foment a brotherhood. We know that
even college frat boys engage in this kind of behavior.
These men feel empowered to possess and attack women because
they're used to getting away with it. Rarely are they
(45:26):
ever held accountable for their actions. That's one of the
most frustrating parts about this particular story. When you have
the police and the judiciary not doing their jobs, and
when you have journalists being threatened or killed for asking questions,
and you have powerful bestI financial interests in keeping a
(45:47):
population vulnerable, you just don't get any answers. On the
other hand, Diana, it seems, was so close to revealing
the identities of these industrialists who were religiously involved in
the murders, and we know she was willing to risk
her life so many other times. Why do you think
she drew a line on theyre trying to publish their names.
(46:10):
Some of my initial reactions were, what do you mean
you're not going to publish these names? What do you
mean you're not going to try to get more confirmation?
I mean, for God's sakes, for the sake of justice,
for the sake of accountability. But the reality is, even
if you were able to get some kind of solid confirmation,
the retaliation you could expect could be deadly. And I
(46:34):
mean you just have to think. You just have to
think how hard is it to hold powerful men accountable
in this country, in the US To even begin to
fathom how much more of a challenge it would be
to hold them accountable in a place like Watts, where
you have cops in alliance with criminals. When you talk
(46:56):
about power and protection in what is the elite business
class seems to be more powerful and more protected, more
untouchable than even the top drug cartels. The odds that
young women in Huirez are up against are overwhelming, the poverty,
(47:21):
the corruption, the invisibility. It was in response to all
of this that Paula, a daughter Yea, and several other
families came up with a symbol of resistance that they
went on to paint all over Huirez, a symbol that
made it impossible to forget the fate of Sagrario and
so many others like her. Why not have a protest
(47:46):
but a permanent one is She thought of a black
cross with a pink background as a symbol for the girls,
the pink background representing the women and the Black Cross
for the morning of their loss, but its main purpose
was on a prevention that whenever a girl stood by
one of those lamp posts and saw the cross, she
would know that she was in danger. Next time, I've
(48:11):
forgotten Paula's continuing demands for justice and the consequences for
her and her family. I'm also Lushi and I'm Monica.
See you next time? You know not see do you know?
(48:32):
Stella Felicia Forgotten. The Women of Juarez is co hosted
(49:09):
by Me Monica and me oswald Oshin. Forgotten is executive
produced by Me and mangesh Hat Tikida. Our producers are
Julian Weller and Katrina Norvelle. Sound editing by Julian Weller
and Jacopo Penzo. Lucas Riley is our story editor. Caitlin
(49:29):
Thompson is our consulting producer. Production support from Emily Maronoff
and Aaron Kaufman. Recording assistant to this episode from Miguel
Perez and Ethan Bean. Music by Leonardo Hablum and Hakkabo Libermann.
Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Hello beautiful, I name you
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