August 8, 2020 • 58 mins
Episode 10 - Another mass grave is discovered in 2012, suggesting a new wave of femicides. Oz investigates connections between the cartels and the international banking system, and Mónica returns to Juárez for a final conversation with Paula Flores about what happened after Sagrario disappeared.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Forgotten is a production of iHeart 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. Previously on Forgotten,
(00:24):
our speculation was that when you don't want a crime
to be solved, it's because the resolution of it is
going to be extremely either embarrassing to somebody in power,
or it's going to come back to you. The thing is,
the people who did this, they have power to remain
(00:44):
free to not being investigated, so there's money in powers.
I believed that the emblematic case of Sagradio has been solved,
that the murderer was in jail already, and all I've
always said the opposite, that the authors of the crime
are still free. For almost thirty years, young women have
(01:10):
been murdered with brutality and impunity in Juarez. During that time,
FBI agents, forensics experts, and journalists have corroborated multiple lines
of investigation, but in the absence of a functioning justice system,
there can be no definitive answers for a podcast listener
(01:32):
and certainly a podcast maker. This lack of resolution is frustrating,
but for the relatives of the victims, it is a
never ending trauma. It was in this context that Paula
Flores and several other families created a protest group. It
was called Voices without Echo. Grabbed our attention because when
(01:56):
girls disappear, when they ask for help, one hears, which
now no one knows anything. No one hears anything. I
posted flyers with strong messages we want our daughter's assassins
and things like that if girls disappeared. We also helped
to put up missing posters. We began to fight as
a group with Nico. After Sir Garrio went missing, Paula
(02:19):
took matters into her own hands. She led the initial search,
and when Sir Garrio wasn't found, she appealed to the
state Attorney general for a real investigation. Finally, she interviewed
the prime suspect herself. But Paula was never able to
unmask the people she called the authors of the crime,
and the flies and posters began to feel like a
(02:42):
temporary response to an entrenched problem. So the group, including
Paula's daughter Ye, decided to call out the femicides with
a more durable symbol. Well doing all that. On one occasion,
Gia thought and one don't have a protest, but a
permanent one, because she thought of a black cross with
a pink background as a symbol for the girls, pink
(03:05):
background representing the women, and the black cross for the
morning of their loss. In in March nineteen ninety nine,
we painted the first cross. Those crosses are now unmissable,
painted on lampposts all over Juarez. They are themselves an
echo of the missing women that reverberates around the city,
(03:27):
and Paula told us there was one place in particular
she felt that it was important to paint one on
the city jail, which, as far as she's concerned, has
never housed the people responsible for Sagario's murder. I painted
that cross. I had to fight with a police officer
who wouldn't let me. He said no, that I couldn't
paint it there. Are you crazy? I said, yes, maybe
(03:50):
I am. It's clear that you haven't had a daughter
of yours murdered. That gives me the right to paint
this cross here because you haven't done anything. The crosses
in Juarez are a constant reminder that the authorities have
failed to stop and solve the femicides or hold the
killers to account. They hint at the corruption and complicity
(04:13):
that mark this story, even if they don't say it
out loud, and as a result, the crosses aren't popular
with the city's officials. When Pope Francis visited Juarez in
twenty sixteen, the government painted over several of the crosses
along his planned route, but the mothers do not permit
the symbols to be raised or their daughters to be forgotten.
(04:37):
Each year, Paula goes out to repaint faded crosses in
memory of Sagario. Personally, what I would do was on
April sixteenth, the date of her disappearance, I'd go and
retouch them, and I'd invite people to support us. For me,
it's to keep denouncing my daughter's case, the injustice she suffered.
(04:59):
I think that in some way it keeps her memory alive.
When I hear power speaking, I can't help thinking about
the word metido. In Juarez, it's often used to explain
how the drug cartel gets people complicit in small ways
and then never lets them go. But it was increasingly
(05:22):
clear that these murders make unexpected people metido. The journalists
who can't put the story down, and especially the families
who never get closure, and the line between healthy remembrance
and more problematic compulsion to repeat can vanish in the sand.
(05:42):
So how does Sir Grio's death affect the rest of
the Flores family and who ultimately is responsible for her murder?
I'm azvoloshin and this is forgotten the women of hires
unco paramo laera lociv You know now, do you know?
(06:23):
Gosque hala Felicia. We've heard so many theories, Monica about
who's killing the women in Houirez, from one or more
serial killers to La Lina, the corrupt cops, the cartel,
(06:48):
even powerful industrialists, and yet none of these people were
ever prosecuted, and the crimes have been going on for
thirty years. How does this all fit together for you?
As we've been going along in this series, we've presented
these possibilities individually. We have experts and investigators attesting to
(07:10):
the involvement of serial killers, drug cartels, empresarios. But it's
important to note that the Howatis femicides also include victims
of domestic violence. Their killers were likely intimate partners who
covered up their own crime by making it look like
another serial sexual murder. Other women were themselves involved in
(07:34):
the drug trade or had a connection to someone who was.
That said, you've also told me that the situation hasn't
been stable or constant for thirty years, and even if
the murders have the same fundamental drivers, they're most likely
committed by different people over time. How do you explain
(07:55):
how the femicides indhuires have changed since the nineties. The
trajectory of femicide in howattis is that it's come in
waves over the last thirty years. Beginning in the early
nineteen nineties was one strong wave. In the early two
thousands came a second strong wave, the apex of which
(08:17):
was the cotton Field murders. And then in the later
two thousands, beginning in two thousand and eight, you see
a third wave of femicide come on. And so by
then Diana had stopped going to Hoattas and Alfredo Corcado
was mostly in Mexico City, and I was just beginning
(08:39):
to test my wings as a radio reporter as this
drug war was raging. In these waves, the first one
in the early nineties that culminated with those mass graves
being discovered in nineteen ninety five and nineteen ninety six,
the second being in the early two thousands, which is
when Lily had a hundred disappeared and which culminated in
(09:03):
the discovery of the mass grave at the Cotton Field.
Tell me about this third wave and you're reporting on it.
I'll never forget the moment when I got the first
tip that something was happening to women in Huattas yet again.
It was December two thousand and eight. I was at
a protest of doctors in Huatas near the university, and
(09:28):
as I was turning to leave, some college students walked
up to me and handed me a missing person's flyer
and on that flyer was the black and white photo
of a young woman. She had dark, curly hair and
a soft smile. I asked when she went missing. It
(09:52):
had been just twelve days. I just remember this sinking
feeling in my gut, thinking, oh no, not again. And
from that moment on more women continue to go missing
in just a short amount of time. Many were last
(10:14):
seen in downtown waters. In other words, the same pattern
we've seen before. So that's when I stepped in and
started reporting, and once again, these disappearances culminated in a
mass grave being discovered. What happened there? Fast forward to
(10:38):
late twenty eleven. A rancher is on his horse going
to check on his land out in the rugged mountainous
desert on the outskirts of waters, and they're riding along
and all of a sudden, the horse stops and kind
of seems spooked, and the rancher looks down and sees
some bone fragments. He gets off his horse, takes a
(11:02):
closer look, and realizes he's found a clandestine graveyard. He
gets back to his ranch, calls the police, and it
turns out that this was a graveyard of women's bones
eleven and all. Many of these women were women whose
missing flyers were posted all over downtown, some whose mothers
(11:25):
I interviewed, including the mother of a seventeen year old
girl named Lupa. I had gone to interview her mom,
Susanna months just sixteen days after Lupitita went missing. Susanna
showed me her daughter's room. All her things were there,
(11:47):
her backpack, her clothes. Lupita was last seen downtown, and
Susanna had been going there almost daily asking around, posting
missings and people downtown told her something very disturbing. Susanna said.
(12:09):
They told me she's probably being sold, that there's an
organized group downtown that's taking them. It's not just my daughter,
Susanna told me, it's more. More girls are missing. A
friend who worked at a fabric store downtown reported seeing
Lupeta cradline a pair of new tennis shoes in her arms.
(12:32):
He said he last saw Lupeita rushing down Mina Street
like so many other young women before. Lupeta was last
seen on Mina Street. That's the central bust interchange in Huirez,
which has all kinds of brothels and nightclubs nearby. After
(12:54):
our own trip to downtown, Sandra Rodriguez, the Huires journalist
at Al Diario, on us never to go back. That's
where a lot of the girls were seen for the
last time. We were ready. Yea, there's a very very
very dangerous place of the city. Yeah, that's had certainly
(13:16):
a song where they have lookouts. Absolutely who's day plus
as tikas the gangs. That's how they control the area
through intimidage. Sandra also reported on the third wave of femicides,
and she explained that Los Aztecas is across border criminal
(13:37):
enterprise that began life as an Elpasso prison gang. They
now work with the Cartail to traffic drugs and control
various other illegal businesses in downtown Quirez. What do you
think the Aztecas lookout to thinking when they're looking at us,
but you might be investigating them. I think that's their concern. Certainly.
(14:00):
I think that they were protecting their women exploitation business,
because you couldn't go through Downtarrea without being chasten or
follow business. This was the key word in a new
line of investigation, and according to Saunders reporting, many of
(14:20):
the victims in the third wave of femicides were trafficked
for profit. When we were last in downtown Juarez, we
saw missing posters with the faces of young women who
disappeared within the last few weeks, and that raised the
haunting question, was it possible those women were still alive
(14:41):
and perhaps even in the area we were walking around
downtown while as you know, where they went missing. There's
so many people, and you think they're here somewhere. Why
can't why can't we find them? I sometimes wished I
was a man and I could go into the brothels
and just look for the women. I have tried. You
(15:02):
have tell me. I tried to get into with a friend.
They were two guys in the front door. No, you
cannot get into. Why you cannot just like that, they
were two guys. I didn't see if they were armed,
but I had thought, what kind of things do you
(15:22):
have inside? That you have two guys protecting your dark
so they have the girls. Sandra couldn't get into that brothel,
but there was another location where women were allegedly being
held after being abducted. It was called Hotel Verde and
it was essentially a safe house for Los Aztecas, a
(15:42):
place where they store weapons, sold drugs, and traffic women.
It was located near the downtown and not far from
the border with El Paso. Sandra interviewed a young woman
whose mother sold food to the clients at the hotel.
The girl that he was interviewing told me, my mother
found out that they were just teenagers being exploited. And
(16:06):
I said, why didn't your mother do something? I mean
call the police, to whom there was a lot of militaries,
the troops, federal police, municipal police. They were all consuming
the girls. There there is no place to go and
announce this. You know. It was heartbreaking for me to
know that these girls when they were alive, were seen
(16:29):
by a lot of people in downtown horns while the
mothers were trying to look to find them and have
already connect this too. I mean, where are you going
to go to announce this? They are there. They know
if the people who are supposed to be protecting you
are actually involved in the exploitation of the women. According
(16:52):
to this mother who was bringing food in, yes, yeah,
where are you turn for help? Oh? I think that
was the most choking part. According to Sandra, despite the
fate of women like Lupeta being an open secret, the
authorities failed to solve the crimes. There was a trial
(17:12):
in twenty fifteen and there were convictions, but at best
the jailed men was seen as low level operatives of
Los Aztecas and at worst as yet more scapegoats. Once again,
the authorities were accused of not just being incompetent, but
of being complicit and in an environment while getting away
(17:32):
with murderer is so easy, femicide has become normalized. Sandra
told us that these days, another missing woman in Juarez
doesn't even make the front page of the city's newspaper.
It became like more part of my normal life or
everybody's life. But yeah, they killing skipon and their disappearance
(17:53):
is skip on happening in their promises, squars, this is
not the country where I grew and now we're just
to the bioleness they impunity and embarrassed care of thinking
how fast you can go backwards in society. While on
(18:16):
a Nieman fellowship at Harvard, Sandra wrote a book called
La fabric The Crime Factory. In it, she traces a
line from the permanent poverty of the Maculadora workers to
the murders of women to the metastasis of organized crime
in the city. I was trying to explain so to
(18:37):
express how killing was turning into our business. Yeah, and
I think that metaphor the crime factory, relates to the
industrial character of the city, but also the criminal industry
and trying to express that crime. It's obviously not just
(19:00):
a social issue, but also its fueled by economic forces.
I think sas city with a lot of suffering. The
people is completely exploited. The people doesn't make enough to
live even when they work the whole day, and I
think it's this phase of globalization that you can see here. Immediately.
(19:25):
The whole country depends on America, but in the city
you can see it like in matter of minutes, how
we are connected, connected economically, but separated by a border.
Sundra remembers driving at night through the Franklin Mountains in
Texas and looking down into the valley at Uarez and
(19:45):
El Paso, so you can see exactly where the line
between the two countries was. Because the Mexican side was
so much more densely populated and thus brightly illuminated, the
lights appeared to Sandra like wave breaking against the wall.
I was looking at the border from very high you
(20:08):
can see the line the border, and then a lot
of flights in my viaut. It was like the whole
pressure of the whole rest of the continent trying to
reach American then again stopped trying at the border, which
is what it is, and I thought, this city cannot
(20:30):
contain this much poverty or violence. I mean, all Latin
Americas is coming. For some reason. That broke my heart,
like this city cannot hold this and it's going to explode.
No city in the wall can hold the whole pressure.
(20:52):
This pressure turned into violence, This pressure turned into legal business.
This pressure turns into very bad conditions of fleeing for
the people. I just felt that. I start to cry
and cry walking around Juarez seeing the crosses and the
(21:19):
missing posters. The femicides can appear as a self contained tragedy,
but from a vantage point up on high it becomes
clear how the city's position in relation to the US
creates the conditions for its violence. When we come back,
we look at how US financial institutions have been washing
(21:40):
the hands of Juare's criminals by laundering cartel money through
the global financial system. So there was this third wave
(22:03):
of femicide Monica that involved human trafficking at belte Verde
and other locations, and that's something that you and Sandra
both reported on. How does that relate to Alfredo Corcillo
and what he reported about La Ligne and the cartel parties.
The evolution of femicide, I guess you could say that
(22:25):
it began as a way to strengthen the bonds between
organized crime. Then it evolved to a kind of sick
form of celebration and sport, and then it became a
means of profit. It became a business just like everything else,
the drugs and the manufacturing. This third wave of femicide
(22:51):
involved women being sexually brutalized over the course of weeks
or months multiple times. You know, they found if we
can keep them, we can make some money here. So
ultimately it sounds like although serial killers and even perhaps
(23:12):
wealthy industrialists took advantage of this atmosphere of impunity in Huarez,
where violence against women up to and including murder was permissible,
the heart of this is really organized crime. Organized crime
and drug trafficking is at the root of all of
(23:36):
Mexico's problems, and until that gets resolved, nothing is going
to get better. I don't care how many goodhearted American
judges and attorneys come down and do training sessions. The
ability to corrupt police and the judicial system is still there,
and until you can get rid of that, nothing is
(23:58):
going to get better. That problem is largely out of
Mexico's hands when the demand persists on the American side,
and the US has been more than willing to pour
billions of dollars into the law enforcement side trying to
stop the drugs from coming over. And now it's clear
(24:21):
to me, I mean, I mean that is an unwinnable fight.
You have to address demand. Demand for illegal drugs in
the US creates the revenue on which Lalna, Los Astecas,
the Sinaloa Cartel, and the rest of Mexico's organized criminal
enterprises depend. To understand more about the financial underpinnings of
(24:44):
all this violence, we called Ed Bulliami. He's a British
journalist who made his name covering the war in Bosnia
in the nineteen nineties, as well as the First and
Second Gulf Wars, and he's also reported extensively from Juarez.
He wrote a book called a Mexica War along the Borderline,
and while working on it, he spent time with the
(25:05):
likes of Diana Washington Valdez, Sandra Rodriguez, and Paula Flores.
I realized actually that I first interviewed Paula Flores twenty
years ago, so it's two decades now reporting this atrocity.
You know, impunity is a hallmark of those twenty years.
In the course of his reporting, Ed came to view
(25:28):
young women like Sagrario as the casualties of a type
of conflict that he never encountered elsewhere. I think what
interested me in what has appalled me and confused me
is that, well, whereas Iraq and Bosnia were wars, I mean,
you know, and shells landing, cowering in cellars, columns of
(25:50):
refugees through the dust of the stone, these are wars.
And yet if we take sort of that experience into Mexico,
we've got we've got a death toll since two thousand
and six in Mexico which is three times that of Bosnia.
One hundred thousand in Bosnia, three hundred thousand in Mexico.
(26:11):
We've got, perhaps most appallingly of all, in its different way,
a number of disappeared, vanished people leaving families who have
no body to bury in the limbo of disappearance. And
yet we've got this situation in a country that is
irresistibly wonderful, where the football league functions very well and
(26:33):
is great to watch, where the markets are open and vibrant.
It's a new kind of war in what is supposed
to be peacetime. Things look normal, but they're not. It's
a completely brutalized society. It has the darkest shadows in
many ways of one's whole career as a war correspondent.
(26:54):
According to ed the root cause of this new kind
of war is drug trafficking and the cartels who've profited
from it. I mean there is no ring around narco
violence now, I mean narco violence becomes domestic violence, becomes extortion,
becomes trafficking, becomes sex, trafficking becomes migrant smuggling. You know,
there will come a time, I think when actually drugs
(27:16):
is probably a minority interest of these cartels because the
expansion of their business is so big within Mexico business.
There's that word again. Sundra used it to describe the
exploitation of women in the third wave of femicides, but
it's also the key to understanding why the war in
(27:38):
Mexico is so amorphous. The conflict is not about political
identity or national boundaries. It's about profit. And to understand
the cartels you have to think of them as commercial
enterprises for whom violence is a tool of domination. Cartels
are corporations. They're not opponents of our financial and economic
(28:03):
capitalist system. They're not even pastichious of it, are actually
innovators of it. Pablo Escobar, he was doing Pan American
duty free trade long before Nafter or Bill Clinton had
the idea and cocaine. You can flood the market without
a drop in price. You can soll the good stuff
to bankers, politicians, lawyers and journalists, and the ship in
the ghetto to be cooked as crack. I mean, it's
(28:26):
the perfect commodity. The one problem with cocaine the sums
generated are too big to be launded through small businesses
or stored in stash houses, and that requires innovation. The
profits are so vast, hundreds of billions of dollars. Now,
you can't go around Mexico spending net out of a
back of a truck. No, you have to bank it.
(28:48):
You have to find a banker, and a bank and
a lawyer who's prepared to get that money into the system.
To get their profits into the legitimate economy, the cartel
needed help from establishment partners. Ed became obsessed by uncovering
who they were, and in two eleven he broke a
(29:10):
story under the headline how a big US bank laundered
billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs. The bank was Word Covier,
and once again the story began with somebody who wanted justice.
I got a whistleblower from inside the banker, a man,
a brave man called Martin Woods to tell me the
(29:31):
whole story over seven long sessions and published it. Up
until two thousand and eight, WA Covier was one of
the biggest banks in the US, but in the aftermath
of the financial crisis, it was sold to Wells Fargo,
which is now the world's fourth largest bank. Martin Woods
(29:51):
worked at work Covier, and his job was to spot
money laundering. So when Woods noticed a series of dubious
transactions at current the exchanges in Mexico, he started issuing
suspicious activity reports to try and stop them, but then
a manager quietly advised him to quote develop a better
understanding of Mexico. Undeterred, Woods continue to flag more suspicious
(30:17):
transactions coming out of Mexico, but instead of heeding his warnings,
the bank decided to discipline him. Wakovia claimed that Woods
had exposed them to quote potential regulatory jeopardy and quote
large fines. Wackovia had been moving an ineftable amount of
money that actually belonged directly and was provably flowing from
(30:40):
the sonealoa cartel. The mind boggling some of three hundred
and seventy two billion dollars. I mean, that's the GDP
of a nation in some parts of the world. Criminal
proceedings in the US were eventually brought against Wacovia for
failing to quote maintain an effective anti money laundering program.
The federal prosecutor argued that quote were Covia's blatant disregard
(31:04):
for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual
carte blanche to finance their operations. In other words, WHA
Covia was more interested in its own profits than preventing
organized crime from entering the banking system. They ultimately settled
out of court for one hundred and sixty million dollars,
(31:24):
a tiny fraction of the launded sums. The amount was
paid by the new parent bank, Wells Fargo, who had
recently been bailed out by US taxpayers. Now, the reason
we can talk about this without fear of the Wells
Fargo legal department is because WHA Covia got court, admitted it,
and settled out of court. Too big to fail, too
(31:47):
big to jail for sure ed reports that as were
Covia was being investigated, another bank, HSBC stepped in and
filled the void to launder money for the senor lower
cart hell with HSBC is even more extraordinary because the
narcos were actually going to branches of HSBC in Mexico
with boxes especially may to fit through the teller's windows,
(32:10):
filled with hundreds of dollars in cash, be given a
receipt for the amount, without the teller actually opening the
box to look what was inside. And yet we didn't
know anything about this. The Financial Times covered the settlement
out of court with the following line, Mexico was becoming
a compliance nightmare for HSBC full stop. Ye Oh, all
(32:31):
these little dark people abusing our good bank. Once again.
No one goes to jail, No one's even prosecuted or charged.
A few apologies, wrap on the knuckle again. Not all
of the media was as forgiving. The New York Times
described HSBC as quote too big to indict and reported
that the Justice Department decided against prosecution because they were
(32:54):
worried about quote, destabilizing the global financial system. I've tried
to make it my bus to report to the best
of my ability on the impunity in our system whereby
the blood money the fat cats, who basically face absolutely
no sanction whatsoever for taking these vast profits and swilling
(33:16):
them around the so called legal economy. Whoever paid Socario
Flores killer to do what they did to her is
missing an action so far as the justice system is concerned,
as is HSBC. But there is a line, There is
a direct line from that's atrocity right up to the
(33:39):
boardrooms of Wall Street. In the game of joining the dots,
there's only two dots to join. The drug cartels exist
to make money, and they spend that money corrupting officials
and creating a reign of terror in Mexico, largely in
order to make more money, including from trafficking young women.
(34:00):
And according to Ed, one of the ways to prevent
this from happening would be to aggressively prosecute international money laundry.
I'm pretty sure that peace is better than war, and
I'm pretty sure that you could actually do something to
abate this appalling new kind of war if you simply
throttle the money, if you actually just made it not
(34:20):
lucrative or impossible to bank this money. And as my
whistle blower, Martin Woods said, from if you don't get that,
you're missing the story. The United States Justice Department effectively
chose to ignore that part of the story because they
were worried it could trigger another financial crisis. Meanwhile, Martin Woods,
(34:42):
the whistleblower, says that it was impossible for him to
get a job at another bank after exposing the money
laundry activity at WA Covia. And it is these figures
who speak out in pursuit of justice who motivate Ed's
work war journalism. It's quite a weird. Some people report
(35:02):
conflict because deep down they quite like it, because it
gives them a bit of a bit of a buzz.
I'm the opposite to that. I get terrified. I have PTSD.
I hate it. I have a sort of shortcoming whereby
when I'm reporting something, I try to think myself into it.
I can't just write down an account of what was
done to Parla Floris's daughter without trying to imagine what
(35:25):
it must have been like to be her in that
room with those people, you know, who have eyes, who
had faces, who she could see, presumably the blades they
were about to apply and applied a body. I mean,
it's not a very psychologically benefitabing to do, but I
think it's professionally necessary. But what you get is the
(35:47):
addiction to the people who were against it, because it's
a humbling thing. Being with the soldiers in Bosnia, the
guerrillas who were trying to oppose the genocide, was itself
up and humbling. Being with the mothers of the women
to whom this was done leaves you oddly enriched in
(36:08):
a way. I mean, it's the last line of Samuel
Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, A sadder and a wiser man who
woke the morrow morn. That is what one should aim
to be as a combat journalist, sadder and wiser. And
your job is to make other people sadder, and the whistleblowers,
(36:30):
the truth seekers, the mothers. Painting across or defending a
scapegoated bus driver, or even calling out non compliance with
money laundering regulation. Any of these actions can cost you
anything from your livelihood to your life, and none of
them is sufficient to produce the kind of systemic change
(36:50):
required to stop femicide. But that doesn't diminish the importance
of bearing witness as making the invisible visible from the
pocket of your genes to the bank card in that pocket.
As the FBI agent Frank Evans put it best, you
can kill me, but you can't eat me. When we
(37:14):
come back, Monica returns to Juarez for a final conversation
with Paula Flores about Sagaria's legacy and the price of activism.
(37:39):
Before we concluded this series, I knew I had to
have one last conversation with Paula. I wanted her to
tell me about what happened to her husband, Jesus. Femicide
is largely viewed as the realm of women. It's something
that happens to women, that hurts women and those fighting
(37:59):
against aside our primarily women. We focus on the pain
of the mothers, but rarely do we talk about fathers.
So despite escalating drug violence, a record heat wave, and
a raging pandemic, I traveled to Hawais again. But before
(38:20):
we began, I asked Paula she was ready to have
the conversation. I knew it wouldn't be an easy one, okay.
I started by asking Paula to tell me how she
met her husband. Well, I was eighteen. I met him
in a farming village near the little town where I lived.
(38:44):
My sister took me. She asked me to go with
her to a dance. We went walking. It was two
hours on foot, so that's when I met him. From
Elsto to his village, we walked together talking and he
told me that he wanted me to dance with him
at the dance. In fact, that night I only danced
with him if so. From there he started to fall
(39:08):
in love and we only saw each other for a
short time. I knew him for less than a month.
When I married him. Paula was just eighteen and Jsus
was twenty five. He visited her at home twice, and
on the third visit he proposed. Paula accepted, packed a
(39:30):
few things, and left with him that same day. It
was sudden, but Paula was living with an abusive stepfather
and saw it as a potential escape. I think these
things are predestined. You know my stepfather, he was very
harsh with us. He wouldn't let me go out. He
(39:50):
would hit me a lot. Hissus also came from an
abusive household, and together he and Paula formed the kind
of loving family they yearned for. Jewey, their only son,
was their firstborn. Then they had six daughters, guille Juana, Sagrario, Lupe,
(40:10):
Claudia and Alicia. From the moment I met I felt protected.
He would take care of me. He was always worrying
about me. Even in the street. He wouldn't let me
walk on the traffic side of the sidewalk. He was
a really responsible man, an exemplary father. From my children,
(40:31):
he never hit them. To this day, now that they're
all grown, they still have fond memories of him. In
their home state of Durango, his who's worked as a lumberjack,
disappearing for days at a time to the nearby mountains.
Balla would send him off with a batch of homemade
Dorotheas the family was poor, guille the oldest sister, recalls
(40:54):
erasing her notebooks at the end of a school year
so she could reuse them the following year. In Howatis
Jesus saw an opportunity to make a better life for
his family. He went to work at the factory alongside
his children, and then two years after their arrival, Sagrario disappeared. Well,
(41:16):
when our daughter went missing, he went looking for her
along with the rest of the family. From the very
first night, I think as the head of the family,
as the father of our daughters, he showed that he
was going to find her. He would say, I promise
you that we're going to find our daughter, but Jesus
(41:36):
could not keep his promise. Instead, fourteen days later, he
walked into the Howatis morgue to claim what authorities said
was his daughter's lifeless body. As soon as the family
search for Sagarrio ended, their search for justice began, this
time with Paula in the lead, has who stuck with her,
(41:58):
following alongside when she broke into the Attorney General's meeting.
He marched with her in protests, combed the desert looking
for remains, and painted crosses on lamp posts. I would
say to him, let's go, dear, and he would never
say no. He would always say let's go. Even though
I was the one who always talked, he would never
(42:19):
speak up. And one day he told me, he said,
I don't talk. I don't say anything because it's enough
to hear you speak. He said, very shaky, I feel bad,
I can't talk. Although mostly silent, Jsus was one of
the few fathers at the front lines. Most have to
(42:40):
continue working to support their families. During the fight for
justice for Sagrario, Jus started getting harassed in his own neighborhood.
He was even beaten by a couple strangers. On his
way back home from a Hamburger stand, came back to
the truck. There were three men and waiting for him.
(43:01):
They were dressed normally in jeans and T shirts. He
told me, they started asking me for money. He told
them I don't have anything, so they beat him up
pretty badly. He turns out they didn't rob him of anything,
not his watch, not the little money he had, nothing.
The only thing he lost was an address book, a
small one he fit in his pocket, and there he
(43:24):
had our home telephone number. He had telephone numbers of
other activists. After that, I started getting calls at night
to our home phoney. The men started making those calls
to say they needed sex services. The activism, the harassment,
(43:47):
the grief, it all took its toll on the entire family.
His sus began drinking more than usual, and neighbors warned
Baola that he was having an affair. His whos had
told Paula that a woman a neighbor had been provoking him.
He'd always complained to me, he would curse, I've fucking
(44:10):
had it with her. Wherever I go, she finds me.
Paula says this went on for years. His shus swore
on his children that he remained loyal to Paula. One day,
I asked him to take me shopping downtown. He said sure,
let me just go visit with a tailor first. So
(44:31):
he got in the shower and in the meanwhile, I
ironed his clothes. When he got out of the shower,
he came to me and held me. He told me
he loved me very much, and he told me he
wanted to take my breath with him. My mouth hurt.
He kissed me so much and he kept telling me
I want to take your breath with me. I didn't
(44:54):
understand what he meant. After that, he said goodbye. He
stood at the door and turned toward me, and I
told him, my eyes that watch you leave, when will
they see you return? I don't know why I said that, yes,
and then he left. Balla got into the shower herself
(45:17):
and got ready to go out. Then at two o'clock
the phone rang. It was his sous and I thought
it was strange because he was supposed to be on
his way back home right. So I answered the phone
and asked what's up? And he said, no, honey, I
just want to ask you to ask God that you
(45:38):
forgive me, forgive me. He said, I love you so much,
so much, and then he said it's better this way.
And I said, but where are you? And he said
it's better this way. He said, I love you, and
then hung up, and he told me the truck is
(46:01):
parked in front of the tailor's shop. It was drizzling
to us when it rains. It was very sad because
it was raining when Sagadio disappeared. So we went to
the truck and I told my son, Chewy, look see
what he's left us. Yes, he left us a letter
(46:21):
in the glove compartment, these words, I ask your forgiveness
and bid you farewell. Carry you all in my heart,
and Paula, I take your breath with me. Have faith
that you will persevere, will do it for our family.
(46:42):
That's my final wish. Don't deny me of it. If
God doesn't forgive my bad actions, I hope you will.
I can't continue writing. I'm shaking all over. It is.
I left your money in the piggy bank music for
God's sake, to finish your home. That's what it's for. Goodbye,
(47:04):
my love. The newspaper reported a man and a woman
had been discovered shot to death in a cardboard shack
in Lomaspoleo. They were both lying on a twin mattress,
a pistol resting between them. The man was his sous
(47:26):
the woman was the neighbor with whom he was supposedly
having an affair. Police ruled the incident a murder suicide. Yeah.
The only thing I wanted was not to live anymore.
I would think of my daughters, that they were grown,
that they didn't need me anymore, that I had done
(47:47):
my part. And besides, he and I made a pact
that whoever died first would come for the other one,
and I would admonish him. You didn't keep your promise,
because I'm still here. You see where you're I wanted
to kill myself. I would grab the car and sometimes
(48:08):
I would drive in a zigzag. I would get on
the busiest streets of what is were five lane streets,
and I would say to him, you are my pilot.
I was your pilot many times. I was always at
your side. Well, now you're my pilot. You will determine
how all this will end. The sudden loss of her husband,
(48:30):
her constant companion, broke Baula as with her daughter Sagrario.
She was never fully satisfied with the police investigation into
Jesus's death. Still, Faula told me she felt muzzled by
the possibility that Jesus had committed a femicide. How could
(48:50):
she continue to show her face in meetings and marches
to protest that very crime. It felt like the ultimate hypocrisy. Later,
Paula remembered something his suss had told her not long
before his death. He would tell me that I was
a badass woman, and that's how he would say it.
(49:12):
He would always tell me, you're a badass woman. You
can handle it. The day I'm no longer here, you
can do it again. In the letter he told me
the same thing, that I could do it, but I
could keep going. I've always continued to give interviews, offering
my testimonials because I want to keep dennouncing what happened
(49:35):
to my daughter. I'll say too that when we're no
longer here, she'll live on and say a documentary a book,
and that's where the memory of Sagadio will remain. But
I want to keep dennouncing that her case is not
yet resolved, that girls continue to disappear I want to
keep going, but it's true that it takes its toll.
(50:03):
There's something so heartbreaking about Jesus's story, Monica, the way
he stands by Paula and supports her in her acts
of bearing witness, but can't take it himself, and in
the end seems to be involved in the murder of
yet another woman in Juarez. I know you hesitate to
(50:23):
even bring this story up with Paula, but why did
you feel it was important. Jesus's story is an extreme
version of what happens to the fathers of femicide victims.
Many succumbed to quick and sudden depths, whether it be
from illness or cancer or a heart attack. In the
(50:43):
case of Jesus, by his own hand. The newspaper report
says he had a gunshot wound through his chest, but
I read a gunshot wound through his heart, almost as
if he was shooting himself in the heart. Because he
couldn't take the pain that he carried there. He wanted
(51:07):
to feel like the strong one, you know, the man
of the family with whom we felt safe, so he
kept all his feelings trapped inside. We never talked about
it because for all of us. The main focus was
to keep demanding justice for Sagardio and the rest was
pushed aside. We didn't even sit down to eat as
a family anymore. Yeah, life is passing me by. We're
(51:31):
all getting sick, our children too, and where is the justice.
That's when they say to me, well, what have you
gained from all this, Mom, It's nothing. We've lost Saradio,
We've lost our dad. And yet I never quit. I
wish some day to get out of here, for all
(51:52):
of us to leave and never hear about any of
it again. And I wish there would be a day
just for me, day without Summersides. It's heartbreaking to see
how Paula's strength drives her on and on at the
(52:13):
same time, how the active protests itself can create more
trauma for the family. But her strength is remarkable, and
I'm wondering how you make sense of it all. I
guess it's your typical David and Goliath story, only in
this case, David has not slayed the giant. The giant
lumbers on and Paula is simply trying to get by
(52:37):
day by day, and she's got her daughters. I mean,
the one thing that I do take heart from is.
After Paula and I did the interview, I sat and
I visited with her for just a little bit longer.
She opened the door to her bedroom, and the minute
she does that, people start flowing in, including her two
daughters and a grandson, And they all ended up on
(52:57):
her king size bed in her bedroom. Like the grandson
is on his phone, and like Kuana and Guille, they're
lying there and chatting and laughing, and Paula comes in,
what do you all want for lunch? What are we
gonna What are we gonna make for lunch? And there's
a softness there. Not everyone has a family that they
(53:18):
get along with that they feel so at home and
cozy with that they can just walk into their mother's
bedroom and sprawl on her bed, almost as if they
were little children. I'm certain they all draw strength from
each other. But I hope it's the last interview I
(53:38):
do with Paula about the tragedies in her life. I
don't hope it's the last time I see her or
the last time I talk to her, but I do
hope it's the last time I ask her to recount
the tragedies and trauma in her life. She's done that
enough and I think I think she needs a rest.
(54:00):
And what about you, Monica. Well, when you first start
out as a journalist and you're young and fresh and
optimistic that if you just tell the story, something will change.
And then you get to the point where where I am,
where you report the same thing over and over, not
only does it keep happening, it gets worse and there
is not much change, and then you wonder what is
(54:24):
it for. I'm just going to leave it all behind.
I'm just going to walk away, like I said at
the beginning of this podcast. But then you realize, no, no,
you just always have to fight. It doesn't mean that
you're going to win. But if you don't fight, then
all is lost. When you make a little progress, there's
going to be pushback, and you just have to keep going.
(54:46):
And maybe you do need to step away for a
spell to collect yourself and eel and gather strength again.
And once you do, then you get back out there.
I was thinking about that word again, Metido. Once this
(55:09):
story touches you, it never lets you go. Last night
I dreamt that I was stuck in Huarez, being watched hunted,
but of course I woke up in the safety of
my bed. Paula and generations of her family will never
wake up from the nightmare of Sagario's murder, but they'll
(55:30):
keep going. The story of the Flores family is just
one of hundreds like them in Huarez, and today Quires
itself is just one city among many where institutions have
collapsed in the face of money and power, and violence
against the most vulnerable prevails. But there is sadness and
wisdom to be gleaned from all of this. Wisdom at
(55:54):
the very least, to recognize one another's humanity. I'm as
Flushing and I'm Monica Ordzibe. Thanks for listening. You know
(56:18):
not Sie, so you know Mysia. We go as Basque
Teniers Halla Felicia Forgotten The Women of Juarez is co
(57:02):
hosted by Me Monica and me oswal Oschen. Forgotten is
executive produced by Me and Mangesh Hattikila. Our producers are
Julian Weller and Katrina Novel sound editing by Julian Weller,
Jacopo Penzo, Aaron Kaufman, and Michelle Lands. Lucas Riley is
(57:23):
our story editor. Caitlin Thompson is our consulting producer. Production
support from Emily Maronoff and Aaron Kaufman. Recording assistance this
episode from Phil Bodger. Music by Leonardo Heblum and Hakkabo Liberman.
Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Carla Tassara is the voice
(57:44):
actor for Paula Flores Special Thanks to Ryan Martz and
to Cynthia be Gerano and Maria Socorro Tabuenca for their
support to this series. Thanks also to the producers of
the documentary La Carta. This podcast is dedicated to all
the women lost to senseless violence in Hoattis and all
(58:06):
around the world. Esta Sia, Cedica Attola, Las Mocheres, Guen Sufrio, Vajola, Volencia,
Nina mass
Forgotten is a production of iHeart 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. Previously on Forgotten,
(00:24):
our speculation was that when you don't want a crime
to be solved, it's because the resolution of it is
going to be extremely either embarrassing to somebody in power,
or it's going to come back to you. The thing is,
the people who did this, they have power to remain
(00:44):
free to not being investigated, so there's money in powers.
I believed that the emblematic case of Sagradio has been solved,
that the murderer was in jail already, and all I've
always said the opposite, that the authors of the crime
are still free. For almost thirty years, young women have
(01:10):
been murdered with brutality and impunity in Juarez. During that time,
FBI agents, forensics experts, and journalists have corroborated multiple lines
of investigation, but in the absence of a functioning justice system,
there can be no definitive answers for a podcast listener
(01:32):
and certainly a podcast maker. This lack of resolution is frustrating,
but for the relatives of the victims, it is a
never ending trauma. It was in this context that Paula
Flores and several other families created a protest group. It
was called Voices without Echo. Grabbed our attention because when
(01:56):
girls disappear, when they ask for help, one hears, which
now no one knows anything. No one hears anything. I
posted flyers with strong messages we want our daughter's assassins
and things like that if girls disappeared. We also helped
to put up missing posters. We began to fight as
a group with Nico. After Sir Garrio went missing, Paula
(02:19):
took matters into her own hands. She led the initial search,
and when Sir Garrio wasn't found, she appealed to the
state Attorney general for a real investigation. Finally, she interviewed
the prime suspect herself. But Paula was never able to
unmask the people she called the authors of the crime,
and the flies and posters began to feel like a
(02:42):
temporary response to an entrenched problem. So the group, including
Paula's daughter Ye, decided to call out the femicides with
a more durable symbol. Well doing all that. On one occasion,
Gia thought and one don't have a protest, but a
permanent one, because she thought of a black cross with
a pink background as a symbol for the girls, pink
(03:05):
background representing the women, and the black cross for the
morning of their loss. In in March nineteen ninety nine,
we painted the first cross. Those crosses are now unmissable,
painted on lampposts all over Juarez. They are themselves an
echo of the missing women that reverberates around the city,
(03:27):
and Paula told us there was one place in particular
she felt that it was important to paint one on
the city jail, which, as far as she's concerned, has
never housed the people responsible for Sagario's murder. I painted
that cross. I had to fight with a police officer
who wouldn't let me. He said no, that I couldn't
paint it there. Are you crazy? I said, yes, maybe
(03:50):
I am. It's clear that you haven't had a daughter
of yours murdered. That gives me the right to paint
this cross here because you haven't done anything. The crosses
in Juarez are a constant reminder that the authorities have
failed to stop and solve the femicides or hold the
killers to account. They hint at the corruption and complicity
(04:13):
that mark this story, even if they don't say it
out loud, and as a result, the crosses aren't popular
with the city's officials. When Pope Francis visited Juarez in
twenty sixteen, the government painted over several of the crosses
along his planned route, but the mothers do not permit
the symbols to be raised or their daughters to be forgotten.
(04:37):
Each year, Paula goes out to repaint faded crosses in
memory of Sagario. Personally, what I would do was on
April sixteenth, the date of her disappearance, I'd go and
retouch them, and I'd invite people to support us. For me,
it's to keep denouncing my daughter's case, the injustice she suffered.
(04:59):
I think that in some way it keeps her memory alive.
When I hear power speaking, I can't help thinking about
the word metido. In Juarez, it's often used to explain
how the drug cartel gets people complicit in small ways
and then never lets them go. But it was increasingly
(05:22):
clear that these murders make unexpected people metido. The journalists
who can't put the story down, and especially the families
who never get closure, and the line between healthy remembrance
and more problematic compulsion to repeat can vanish in the sand.
(05:42):
So how does Sir Grio's death affect the rest of
the Flores family and who ultimately is responsible for her murder?
I'm azvoloshin and this is forgotten the women of hires
unco paramo laera lociv You know now, do you know?
(06:23):
Gosque hala Felicia. We've heard so many theories, Monica about
who's killing the women in Houirez, from one or more
serial killers to La Lina, the corrupt cops, the cartel,
(06:48):
even powerful industrialists, and yet none of these people were
ever prosecuted, and the crimes have been going on for
thirty years. How does this all fit together for you?
As we've been going along in this series, we've presented
these possibilities individually. We have experts and investigators attesting to
(07:10):
the involvement of serial killers, drug cartels, empresarios. But it's
important to note that the Howatis femicides also include victims
of domestic violence. Their killers were likely intimate partners who
covered up their own crime by making it look like
another serial sexual murder. Other women were themselves involved in
(07:34):
the drug trade or had a connection to someone who was.
That said, you've also told me that the situation hasn't
been stable or constant for thirty years, and even if
the murders have the same fundamental drivers, they're most likely
committed by different people over time. How do you explain
(07:55):
how the femicides indhuires have changed since the nineties. The
trajectory of femicide in howattis is that it's come in
waves over the last thirty years. Beginning in the early
nineteen nineties was one strong wave. In the early two
thousands came a second strong wave, the apex of which
(08:17):
was the cotton Field murders. And then in the later
two thousands, beginning in two thousand and eight, you see
a third wave of femicide come on. And so by
then Diana had stopped going to Hoattas and Alfredo Corcado
was mostly in Mexico City, and I was just beginning
(08:39):
to test my wings as a radio reporter as this
drug war was raging. In these waves, the first one
in the early nineties that culminated with those mass graves
being discovered in nineteen ninety five and nineteen ninety six,
the second being in the early two thousands, which is
when Lily had a hundred disappeared and which culminated in
(09:03):
the discovery of the mass grave at the Cotton Field.
Tell me about this third wave and you're reporting on it.
I'll never forget the moment when I got the first
tip that something was happening to women in Huattas yet again.
It was December two thousand and eight. I was at
a protest of doctors in Huatas near the university, and
(09:28):
as I was turning to leave, some college students walked
up to me and handed me a missing person's flyer
and on that flyer was the black and white photo
of a young woman. She had dark, curly hair and
a soft smile. I asked when she went missing. It
(09:52):
had been just twelve days. I just remember this sinking
feeling in my gut, thinking, oh no, not again. And
from that moment on more women continue to go missing
in just a short amount of time. Many were last
(10:14):
seen in downtown waters. In other words, the same pattern
we've seen before. So that's when I stepped in and
started reporting, and once again, these disappearances culminated in a
mass grave being discovered. What happened there? Fast forward to
(10:38):
late twenty eleven. A rancher is on his horse going
to check on his land out in the rugged mountainous
desert on the outskirts of waters, and they're riding along
and all of a sudden, the horse stops and kind
of seems spooked, and the rancher looks down and sees
some bone fragments. He gets off his horse, takes a
(11:02):
closer look, and realizes he's found a clandestine graveyard. He
gets back to his ranch, calls the police, and it
turns out that this was a graveyard of women's bones
eleven and all. Many of these women were women whose
missing flyers were posted all over downtown, some whose mothers
(11:25):
I interviewed, including the mother of a seventeen year old
girl named Lupa. I had gone to interview her mom,
Susanna months just sixteen days after Lupitita went missing. Susanna
showed me her daughter's room. All her things were there,
(11:47):
her backpack, her clothes. Lupita was last seen downtown, and
Susanna had been going there almost daily asking around, posting
missings and people downtown told her something very disturbing. Susanna said.
(12:09):
They told me she's probably being sold, that there's an
organized group downtown that's taking them. It's not just my daughter,
Susanna told me, it's more. More girls are missing. A
friend who worked at a fabric store downtown reported seeing
Lupeta cradline a pair of new tennis shoes in her arms.
(12:32):
He said he last saw Lupeita rushing down Mina Street
like so many other young women before. Lupeta was last
seen on Mina Street. That's the central bust interchange in Huirez,
which has all kinds of brothels and nightclubs nearby. After
(12:54):
our own trip to downtown, Sandra Rodriguez, the Huires journalist
at Al Diario, on us never to go back. That's
where a lot of the girls were seen for the
last time. We were ready. Yea, there's a very very
very dangerous place of the city. Yeah, that's had certainly
(13:16):
a song where they have lookouts. Absolutely who's day plus
as tikas the gangs. That's how they control the area
through intimidage. Sandra also reported on the third wave of femicides,
and she explained that Los Aztecas is across border criminal
(13:37):
enterprise that began life as an Elpasso prison gang. They
now work with the Cartail to traffic drugs and control
various other illegal businesses in downtown Quirez. What do you
think the Aztecas lookout to thinking when they're looking at us,
but you might be investigating them. I think that's their concern. Certainly.
(14:00):
I think that they were protecting their women exploitation business,
because you couldn't go through Downtarrea without being chasten or
follow business. This was the key word in a new
line of investigation, and according to Saunders reporting, many of
(14:20):
the victims in the third wave of femicides were trafficked
for profit. When we were last in downtown Juarez, we
saw missing posters with the faces of young women who
disappeared within the last few weeks, and that raised the
haunting question, was it possible those women were still alive
(14:41):
and perhaps even in the area we were walking around
downtown while as you know, where they went missing. There's
so many people, and you think they're here somewhere. Why
can't why can't we find them? I sometimes wished I
was a man and I could go into the brothels
and just look for the women. I have tried. You
(15:02):
have tell me. I tried to get into with a friend.
They were two guys in the front door. No, you
cannot get into. Why you cannot just like that, they
were two guys. I didn't see if they were armed,
but I had thought, what kind of things do you
(15:22):
have inside? That you have two guys protecting your dark
so they have the girls. Sandra couldn't get into that brothel,
but there was another location where women were allegedly being
held after being abducted. It was called Hotel Verde and
it was essentially a safe house for Los Aztecas, a
(15:42):
place where they store weapons, sold drugs, and traffic women.
It was located near the downtown and not far from
the border with El Paso. Sandra interviewed a young woman
whose mother sold food to the clients at the hotel.
The girl that he was interviewing told me, my mother
found out that they were just teenagers being exploited. And
(16:06):
I said, why didn't your mother do something? I mean
call the police, to whom there was a lot of militaries,
the troops, federal police, municipal police. They were all consuming
the girls. There there is no place to go and
announce this. You know. It was heartbreaking for me to
know that these girls when they were alive, were seen
(16:29):
by a lot of people in downtown horns while the
mothers were trying to look to find them and have
already connect this too. I mean, where are you going
to go to announce this? They are there. They know
if the people who are supposed to be protecting you
are actually involved in the exploitation of the women. According
(16:52):
to this mother who was bringing food in, yes, yeah,
where are you turn for help? Oh? I think that
was the most choking part. According to Sandra, despite the
fate of women like Lupeta being an open secret, the
authorities failed to solve the crimes. There was a trial
(17:12):
in twenty fifteen and there were convictions, but at best
the jailed men was seen as low level operatives of
Los Aztecas and at worst as yet more scapegoats. Once again,
the authorities were accused of not just being incompetent, but
of being complicit and in an environment while getting away
(17:32):
with murderer is so easy, femicide has become normalized. Sandra
told us that these days, another missing woman in Juarez
doesn't even make the front page of the city's newspaper.
It became like more part of my normal life or
everybody's life. But yeah, they killing skipon and their disappearance
(17:53):
is skip on happening in their promises, squars, this is
not the country where I grew and now we're just
to the bioleness they impunity and embarrassed care of thinking
how fast you can go backwards in society. While on
(18:16):
a Nieman fellowship at Harvard, Sandra wrote a book called
La fabric The Crime Factory. In it, she traces a
line from the permanent poverty of the Maculadora workers to
the murders of women to the metastasis of organized crime
in the city. I was trying to explain so to
(18:37):
express how killing was turning into our business. Yeah, and
I think that metaphor the crime factory, relates to the
industrial character of the city, but also the criminal industry
and trying to express that crime. It's obviously not just
(19:00):
a social issue, but also its fueled by economic forces.
I think sas city with a lot of suffering. The
people is completely exploited. The people doesn't make enough to
live even when they work the whole day, and I
think it's this phase of globalization that you can see here. Immediately.
(19:25):
The whole country depends on America, but in the city
you can see it like in matter of minutes, how
we are connected, connected economically, but separated by a border.
Sundra remembers driving at night through the Franklin Mountains in
Texas and looking down into the valley at Uarez and
(19:45):
El Paso, so you can see exactly where the line
between the two countries was. Because the Mexican side was
so much more densely populated and thus brightly illuminated, the
lights appeared to Sandra like wave breaking against the wall.
I was looking at the border from very high you
(20:08):
can see the line the border, and then a lot
of flights in my viaut. It was like the whole
pressure of the whole rest of the continent trying to
reach American then again stopped trying at the border, which
is what it is, and I thought, this city cannot
(20:30):
contain this much poverty or violence. I mean, all Latin
Americas is coming. For some reason. That broke my heart,
like this city cannot hold this and it's going to explode.
No city in the wall can hold the whole pressure.
(20:52):
This pressure turned into violence, This pressure turned into legal business.
This pressure turns into very bad conditions of fleeing for
the people. I just felt that. I start to cry
and cry walking around Juarez seeing the crosses and the
(21:19):
missing posters. The femicides can appear as a self contained tragedy,
but from a vantage point up on high it becomes
clear how the city's position in relation to the US
creates the conditions for its violence. When we come back,
we look at how US financial institutions have been washing
(21:40):
the hands of Juare's criminals by laundering cartel money through
the global financial system. So there was this third wave
(22:03):
of femicide Monica that involved human trafficking at belte Verde
and other locations, and that's something that you and Sandra
both reported on. How does that relate to Alfredo Corcillo
and what he reported about La Ligne and the cartel parties.
The evolution of femicide, I guess you could say that
(22:25):
it began as a way to strengthen the bonds between
organized crime. Then it evolved to a kind of sick
form of celebration and sport, and then it became a
means of profit. It became a business just like everything else,
the drugs and the manufacturing. This third wave of femicide
(22:51):
involved women being sexually brutalized over the course of weeks
or months multiple times. You know, they found if we
can keep them, we can make some money here. So
ultimately it sounds like although serial killers and even perhaps
(23:12):
wealthy industrialists took advantage of this atmosphere of impunity in Huarez,
where violence against women up to and including murder was permissible,
the heart of this is really organized crime. Organized crime
and drug trafficking is at the root of all of
(23:36):
Mexico's problems, and until that gets resolved, nothing is going
to get better. I don't care how many goodhearted American
judges and attorneys come down and do training sessions. The
ability to corrupt police and the judicial system is still there,
and until you can get rid of that, nothing is
(23:58):
going to get better. That problem is largely out of
Mexico's hands when the demand persists on the American side,
and the US has been more than willing to pour
billions of dollars into the law enforcement side trying to
stop the drugs from coming over. And now it's clear
(24:21):
to me, I mean, I mean that is an unwinnable fight.
You have to address demand. Demand for illegal drugs in
the US creates the revenue on which Lalna, Los Astecas,
the Sinaloa Cartel, and the rest of Mexico's organized criminal
enterprises depend. To understand more about the financial underpinnings of
(24:44):
all this violence, we called Ed Bulliami. He's a British
journalist who made his name covering the war in Bosnia
in the nineteen nineties, as well as the First and
Second Gulf Wars, and he's also reported extensively from Juarez.
He wrote a book called a Mexica War along the Borderline,
and while working on it, he spent time with the
(25:05):
likes of Diana Washington Valdez, Sandra Rodriguez, and Paula Flores.
I realized actually that I first interviewed Paula Flores twenty
years ago, so it's two decades now reporting this atrocity.
You know, impunity is a hallmark of those twenty years.
In the course of his reporting, Ed came to view
(25:28):
young women like Sagrario as the casualties of a type
of conflict that he never encountered elsewhere. I think what
interested me in what has appalled me and confused me
is that, well, whereas Iraq and Bosnia were wars, I mean,
you know, and shells landing, cowering in cellars, columns of
(25:50):
refugees through the dust of the stone, these are wars.
And yet if we take sort of that experience into Mexico,
we've got we've got a death toll since two thousand
and six in Mexico which is three times that of Bosnia.
One hundred thousand in Bosnia, three hundred thousand in Mexico.
(26:11):
We've got, perhaps most appallingly of all, in its different way,
a number of disappeared, vanished people leaving families who have
no body to bury in the limbo of disappearance. And
yet we've got this situation in a country that is
irresistibly wonderful, where the football league functions very well and
(26:33):
is great to watch, where the markets are open and vibrant.
It's a new kind of war in what is supposed
to be peacetime. Things look normal, but they're not. It's
a completely brutalized society. It has the darkest shadows in
many ways of one's whole career as a war correspondent.
(26:54):
According to ed the root cause of this new kind
of war is drug trafficking and the cartels who've profited
from it. I mean there is no ring around narco
violence now, I mean narco violence becomes domestic violence, becomes extortion,
becomes trafficking, becomes sex, trafficking becomes migrant smuggling. You know,
there will come a time, I think when actually drugs
(27:16):
is probably a minority interest of these cartels because the
expansion of their business is so big within Mexico business.
There's that word again. Sundra used it to describe the
exploitation of women in the third wave of femicides, but
it's also the key to understanding why the war in
(27:38):
Mexico is so amorphous. The conflict is not about political
identity or national boundaries. It's about profit. And to understand
the cartels you have to think of them as commercial
enterprises for whom violence is a tool of domination. Cartels
are corporations. They're not opponents of our financial and economic
(28:03):
capitalist system. They're not even pastichious of it, are actually
innovators of it. Pablo Escobar, he was doing Pan American
duty free trade long before Nafter or Bill Clinton had
the idea and cocaine. You can flood the market without
a drop in price. You can soll the good stuff
to bankers, politicians, lawyers and journalists, and the ship in
the ghetto to be cooked as crack. I mean, it's
(28:26):
the perfect commodity. The one problem with cocaine the sums
generated are too big to be launded through small businesses
or stored in stash houses, and that requires innovation. The
profits are so vast, hundreds of billions of dollars. Now,
you can't go around Mexico spending net out of a
back of a truck. No, you have to bank it.
(28:48):
You have to find a banker, and a bank and
a lawyer who's prepared to get that money into the system.
To get their profits into the legitimate economy, the cartel
needed help from establishment partners. Ed became obsessed by uncovering
who they were, and in two eleven he broke a
(29:10):
story under the headline how a big US bank laundered
billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs. The bank was Word Covier,
and once again the story began with somebody who wanted justice.
I got a whistleblower from inside the banker, a man,
a brave man called Martin Woods to tell me the
(29:31):
whole story over seven long sessions and published it. Up
until two thousand and eight, WA Covier was one of
the biggest banks in the US, but in the aftermath
of the financial crisis, it was sold to Wells Fargo,
which is now the world's fourth largest bank. Martin Woods
(29:51):
worked at work Covier, and his job was to spot
money laundering. So when Woods noticed a series of dubious
transactions at current the exchanges in Mexico, he started issuing
suspicious activity reports to try and stop them, but then
a manager quietly advised him to quote develop a better
understanding of Mexico. Undeterred, Woods continue to flag more suspicious
(30:17):
transactions coming out of Mexico, but instead of heeding his warnings,
the bank decided to discipline him. Wakovia claimed that Woods
had exposed them to quote potential regulatory jeopardy and quote
large fines. Wackovia had been moving an ineftable amount of
money that actually belonged directly and was provably flowing from
(30:40):
the sonealoa cartel. The mind boggling some of three hundred
and seventy two billion dollars. I mean, that's the GDP
of a nation in some parts of the world. Criminal
proceedings in the US were eventually brought against Wacovia for
failing to quote maintain an effective anti money laundering program.
The federal prosecutor argued that quote were Covia's blatant disregard
(31:04):
for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual
carte blanche to finance their operations. In other words, WHA
Covia was more interested in its own profits than preventing
organized crime from entering the banking system. They ultimately settled
out of court for one hundred and sixty million dollars,
(31:24):
a tiny fraction of the launded sums. The amount was
paid by the new parent bank, Wells Fargo, who had
recently been bailed out by US taxpayers. Now, the reason
we can talk about this without fear of the Wells
Fargo legal department is because WHA Covia got court, admitted it,
and settled out of court. Too big to fail, too
(31:47):
big to jail for sure ed reports that as were
Covia was being investigated, another bank, HSBC stepped in and
filled the void to launder money for the senor lower
cart hell with HSBC is even more extraordinary because the
narcos were actually going to branches of HSBC in Mexico
with boxes especially may to fit through the teller's windows,
(32:10):
filled with hundreds of dollars in cash, be given a
receipt for the amount, without the teller actually opening the
box to look what was inside. And yet we didn't
know anything about this. The Financial Times covered the settlement
out of court with the following line, Mexico was becoming
a compliance nightmare for HSBC full stop. Ye Oh, all
(32:31):
these little dark people abusing our good bank. Once again.
No one goes to jail, No one's even prosecuted or charged.
A few apologies, wrap on the knuckle again. Not all
of the media was as forgiving. The New York Times
described HSBC as quote too big to indict and reported
that the Justice Department decided against prosecution because they were
(32:54):
worried about quote, destabilizing the global financial system. I've tried
to make it my bus to report to the best
of my ability on the impunity in our system whereby
the blood money the fat cats, who basically face absolutely
no sanction whatsoever for taking these vast profits and swilling
(33:16):
them around the so called legal economy. Whoever paid Socario
Flores killer to do what they did to her is
missing an action so far as the justice system is concerned,
as is HSBC. But there is a line, There is
a direct line from that's atrocity right up to the
(33:39):
boardrooms of Wall Street. In the game of joining the dots,
there's only two dots to join. The drug cartels exist
to make money, and they spend that money corrupting officials
and creating a reign of terror in Mexico, largely in
order to make more money, including from trafficking young women.
(34:00):
And according to Ed, one of the ways to prevent
this from happening would be to aggressively prosecute international money laundry.
I'm pretty sure that peace is better than war, and
I'm pretty sure that you could actually do something to
abate this appalling new kind of war if you simply
throttle the money, if you actually just made it not
(34:20):
lucrative or impossible to bank this money. And as my
whistle blower, Martin Woods said, from if you don't get that,
you're missing the story. The United States Justice Department effectively
chose to ignore that part of the story because they
were worried it could trigger another financial crisis. Meanwhile, Martin Woods,
(34:42):
the whistleblower, says that it was impossible for him to
get a job at another bank after exposing the money
laundry activity at WA Covia. And it is these figures
who speak out in pursuit of justice who motivate Ed's
work war journalism. It's quite a weird. Some people report
(35:02):
conflict because deep down they quite like it, because it
gives them a bit of a bit of a buzz.
I'm the opposite to that. I get terrified. I have PTSD.
I hate it. I have a sort of shortcoming whereby
when I'm reporting something, I try to think myself into it.
I can't just write down an account of what was
done to Parla Floris's daughter without trying to imagine what
(35:25):
it must have been like to be her in that
room with those people, you know, who have eyes, who
had faces, who she could see, presumably the blades they
were about to apply and applied a body. I mean,
it's not a very psychologically benefitabing to do, but I
think it's professionally necessary. But what you get is the
(35:47):
addiction to the people who were against it, because it's
a humbling thing. Being with the soldiers in Bosnia, the
guerrillas who were trying to oppose the genocide, was itself
up and humbling. Being with the mothers of the women
to whom this was done leaves you oddly enriched in
(36:08):
a way. I mean, it's the last line of Samuel
Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, A sadder and a wiser man who
woke the morrow morn. That is what one should aim
to be as a combat journalist, sadder and wiser. And
your job is to make other people sadder, and the whistleblowers,
(36:30):
the truth seekers, the mothers. Painting across or defending a
scapegoated bus driver, or even calling out non compliance with
money laundering regulation. Any of these actions can cost you
anything from your livelihood to your life, and none of
them is sufficient to produce the kind of systemic change
(36:50):
required to stop femicide. But that doesn't diminish the importance
of bearing witness as making the invisible visible from the
pocket of your genes to the bank card in that pocket.
As the FBI agent Frank Evans put it best, you
can kill me, but you can't eat me. When we
(37:14):
come back, Monica returns to Juarez for a final conversation
with Paula Flores about Sagaria's legacy and the price of activism.
(37:39):
Before we concluded this series, I knew I had to
have one last conversation with Paula. I wanted her to
tell me about what happened to her husband, Jesus. Femicide
is largely viewed as the realm of women. It's something
that happens to women, that hurts women and those fighting
(37:59):
against aside our primarily women. We focus on the pain
of the mothers, but rarely do we talk about fathers.
So despite escalating drug violence, a record heat wave, and
a raging pandemic, I traveled to Hawais again. But before
(38:20):
we began, I asked Paula she was ready to have
the conversation. I knew it wouldn't be an easy one, okay.
I started by asking Paula to tell me how she
met her husband. Well, I was eighteen. I met him
in a farming village near the little town where I lived.
(38:44):
My sister took me. She asked me to go with
her to a dance. We went walking. It was two
hours on foot, so that's when I met him. From
Elsto to his village, we walked together talking and he
told me that he wanted me to dance with him
at the dance. In fact, that night I only danced
with him if so. From there he started to fall
(39:08):
in love and we only saw each other for a
short time. I knew him for less than a month.
When I married him. Paula was just eighteen and Jsus
was twenty five. He visited her at home twice, and
on the third visit he proposed. Paula accepted, packed a
(39:30):
few things, and left with him that same day. It
was sudden, but Paula was living with an abusive stepfather
and saw it as a potential escape. I think these
things are predestined. You know my stepfather, he was very
harsh with us. He wouldn't let me go out. He
(39:50):
would hit me a lot. Hissus also came from an
abusive household, and together he and Paula formed the kind
of loving family they yearned for. Jewey, their only son,
was their firstborn. Then they had six daughters, guille Juana, Sagrario, Lupe,
(40:10):
Claudia and Alicia. From the moment I met I felt protected.
He would take care of me. He was always worrying
about me. Even in the street. He wouldn't let me
walk on the traffic side of the sidewalk. He was
a really responsible man, an exemplary father. From my children,
(40:31):
he never hit them. To this day, now that they're
all grown, they still have fond memories of him. In
their home state of Durango, his who's worked as a lumberjack,
disappearing for days at a time to the nearby mountains.
Balla would send him off with a batch of homemade
Dorotheas the family was poor, guille the oldest sister, recalls
(40:54):
erasing her notebooks at the end of a school year
so she could reuse them the following year. In Howatis
Jesus saw an opportunity to make a better life for
his family. He went to work at the factory alongside
his children, and then two years after their arrival, Sagrario disappeared. Well,
(41:16):
when our daughter went missing, he went looking for her
along with the rest of the family. From the very
first night, I think as the head of the family,
as the father of our daughters, he showed that he
was going to find her. He would say, I promise
you that we're going to find our daughter, but Jesus
(41:36):
could not keep his promise. Instead, fourteen days later, he
walked into the Howatis morgue to claim what authorities said
was his daughter's lifeless body. As soon as the family
search for Sagarrio ended, their search for justice began, this
time with Paula in the lead, has who stuck with her,
(41:58):
following alongside when she broke into the Attorney General's meeting.
He marched with her in protests, combed the desert looking
for remains, and painted crosses on lamp posts. I would
say to him, let's go, dear, and he would never
say no. He would always say let's go. Even though
I was the one who always talked, he would never
(42:19):
speak up. And one day he told me, he said,
I don't talk. I don't say anything because it's enough
to hear you speak. He said, very shaky, I feel bad,
I can't talk. Although mostly silent, Jsus was one of
the few fathers at the front lines. Most have to
(42:40):
continue working to support their families. During the fight for
justice for Sagrario, Jus started getting harassed in his own neighborhood.
He was even beaten by a couple strangers. On his
way back home from a Hamburger stand, came back to
the truck. There were three men and waiting for him.
(43:01):
They were dressed normally in jeans and T shirts. He
told me, they started asking me for money. He told
them I don't have anything, so they beat him up
pretty badly. He turns out they didn't rob him of anything,
not his watch, not the little money he had, nothing.
The only thing he lost was an address book, a
small one he fit in his pocket, and there he
(43:24):
had our home telephone number. He had telephone numbers of
other activists. After that, I started getting calls at night
to our home phoney. The men started making those calls
to say they needed sex services. The activism, the harassment,
(43:47):
the grief, it all took its toll on the entire family.
His sus began drinking more than usual, and neighbors warned
Baola that he was having an affair. His whos had
told Paula that a woman a neighbor had been provoking him.
He'd always complained to me, he would curse, I've fucking
(44:10):
had it with her. Wherever I go, she finds me.
Paula says this went on for years. His shus swore
on his children that he remained loyal to Paula. One day,
I asked him to take me shopping downtown. He said sure,
let me just go visit with a tailor first. So
(44:31):
he got in the shower and in the meanwhile, I
ironed his clothes. When he got out of the shower,
he came to me and held me. He told me
he loved me very much, and he told me he
wanted to take my breath with him. My mouth hurt.
He kissed me so much and he kept telling me
I want to take your breath with me. I didn't
(44:54):
understand what he meant. After that, he said goodbye. He
stood at the door and turned toward me, and I
told him, my eyes that watch you leave, when will
they see you return? I don't know why I said that, yes,
and then he left. Balla got into the shower herself
(45:17):
and got ready to go out. Then at two o'clock
the phone rang. It was his sous and I thought
it was strange because he was supposed to be on
his way back home right. So I answered the phone
and asked what's up? And he said, no, honey, I
just want to ask you to ask God that you
(45:38):
forgive me, forgive me. He said, I love you so much,
so much, and then he said it's better this way.
And I said, but where are you? And he said
it's better this way. He said, I love you, and
then hung up, and he told me the truck is
(46:01):
parked in front of the tailor's shop. It was drizzling
to us when it rains. It was very sad because
it was raining when Sagadio disappeared. So we went to
the truck and I told my son, Chewy, look see
what he's left us. Yes, he left us a letter
(46:21):
in the glove compartment, these words, I ask your forgiveness
and bid you farewell. Carry you all in my heart,
and Paula, I take your breath with me. Have faith
that you will persevere, will do it for our family.
(46:42):
That's my final wish. Don't deny me of it. If
God doesn't forgive my bad actions, I hope you will.
I can't continue writing. I'm shaking all over. It is.
I left your money in the piggy bank music for
God's sake, to finish your home. That's what it's for. Goodbye,
(47:04):
my love. The newspaper reported a man and a woman
had been discovered shot to death in a cardboard shack
in Lomaspoleo. They were both lying on a twin mattress,
a pistol resting between them. The man was his sous
(47:26):
the woman was the neighbor with whom he was supposedly
having an affair. Police ruled the incident a murder suicide. Yeah.
The only thing I wanted was not to live anymore.
I would think of my daughters, that they were grown,
that they didn't need me anymore, that I had done
(47:47):
my part. And besides, he and I made a pact
that whoever died first would come for the other one,
and I would admonish him. You didn't keep your promise,
because I'm still here. You see where you're I wanted
to kill myself. I would grab the car and sometimes
(48:08):
I would drive in a zigzag. I would get on
the busiest streets of what is were five lane streets,
and I would say to him, you are my pilot.
I was your pilot many times. I was always at
your side. Well, now you're my pilot. You will determine
how all this will end. The sudden loss of her husband,
(48:30):
her constant companion, broke Baula as with her daughter Sagrario.
She was never fully satisfied with the police investigation into
Jesus's death. Still, Faula told me she felt muzzled by
the possibility that Jesus had committed a femicide. How could
(48:50):
she continue to show her face in meetings and marches
to protest that very crime. It felt like the ultimate hypocrisy. Later,
Paula remembered something his suss had told her not long
before his death. He would tell me that I was
a badass woman, and that's how he would say it.
(49:12):
He would always tell me, you're a badass woman. You
can handle it. The day I'm no longer here, you
can do it again. In the letter he told me
the same thing, that I could do it, but I
could keep going. I've always continued to give interviews, offering
my testimonials because I want to keep dennouncing what happened
(49:35):
to my daughter. I'll say too that when we're no
longer here, she'll live on and say a documentary a book,
and that's where the memory of Sagadio will remain. But
I want to keep dennouncing that her case is not
yet resolved, that girls continue to disappear I want to
keep going, but it's true that it takes its toll.
(50:03):
There's something so heartbreaking about Jesus's story, Monica, the way
he stands by Paula and supports her in her acts
of bearing witness, but can't take it himself, and in
the end seems to be involved in the murder of
yet another woman in Juarez. I know you hesitate to
(50:23):
even bring this story up with Paula, but why did
you feel it was important. Jesus's story is an extreme
version of what happens to the fathers of femicide victims.
Many succumbed to quick and sudden depths, whether it be
from illness or cancer or a heart attack. In the
(50:43):
case of Jesus, by his own hand. The newspaper report
says he had a gunshot wound through his chest, but
I read a gunshot wound through his heart, almost as
if he was shooting himself in the heart. Because he
couldn't take the pain that he carried there. He wanted
(51:07):
to feel like the strong one, you know, the man
of the family with whom we felt safe, so he
kept all his feelings trapped inside. We never talked about
it because for all of us. The main focus was
to keep demanding justice for Sagardio and the rest was
pushed aside. We didn't even sit down to eat as
a family anymore. Yeah, life is passing me by. We're
(51:31):
all getting sick, our children too, and where is the justice.
That's when they say to me, well, what have you
gained from all this, Mom, It's nothing. We've lost Saradio,
We've lost our dad. And yet I never quit. I
wish some day to get out of here, for all
(51:52):
of us to leave and never hear about any of
it again. And I wish there would be a day
just for me, day without Summersides. It's heartbreaking to see
how Paula's strength drives her on and on at the
(52:13):
same time, how the active protests itself can create more
trauma for the family. But her strength is remarkable, and
I'm wondering how you make sense of it all. I
guess it's your typical David and Goliath story, only in
this case, David has not slayed the giant. The giant
lumbers on and Paula is simply trying to get by
(52:37):
day by day, and she's got her daughters. I mean,
the one thing that I do take heart from is.
After Paula and I did the interview, I sat and
I visited with her for just a little bit longer.
She opened the door to her bedroom, and the minute
she does that, people start flowing in, including her two
daughters and a grandson, And they all ended up on
(52:57):
her king size bed in her bedroom. Like the grandson
is on his phone, and like Kuana and Guille, they're
lying there and chatting and laughing, and Paula comes in,
what do you all want for lunch? What are we
gonna What are we gonna make for lunch? And there's
a softness there. Not everyone has a family that they
(53:18):
get along with that they feel so at home and
cozy with that they can just walk into their mother's
bedroom and sprawl on her bed, almost as if they
were little children. I'm certain they all draw strength from
each other. But I hope it's the last interview I
(53:38):
do with Paula about the tragedies in her life. I
don't hope it's the last time I see her or
the last time I talk to her, but I do
hope it's the last time I ask her to recount
the tragedies and trauma in her life. She's done that
enough and I think I think she needs a rest.
(54:00):
And what about you, Monica. Well, when you first start
out as a journalist and you're young and fresh and
optimistic that if you just tell the story, something will change.
And then you get to the point where where I am,
where you report the same thing over and over, not
only does it keep happening, it gets worse and there
is not much change, and then you wonder what is
(54:24):
it for. I'm just going to leave it all behind.
I'm just going to walk away, like I said at
the beginning of this podcast. But then you realize, no, no,
you just always have to fight. It doesn't mean that
you're going to win. But if you don't fight, then
all is lost. When you make a little progress, there's
going to be pushback, and you just have to keep going.
(54:46):
And maybe you do need to step away for a
spell to collect yourself and eel and gather strength again.
And once you do, then you get back out there.
I was thinking about that word again, Metido. Once this
(55:09):
story touches you, it never lets you go. Last night
I dreamt that I was stuck in Huarez, being watched hunted,
but of course I woke up in the safety of
my bed. Paula and generations of her family will never
wake up from the nightmare of Sagario's murder, but they'll
(55:30):
keep going. The story of the Flores family is just
one of hundreds like them in Huarez, and today Quires
itself is just one city among many where institutions have
collapsed in the face of money and power, and violence
against the most vulnerable prevails. But there is sadness and
wisdom to be gleaned from all of this. Wisdom at
(55:54):
the very least, to recognize one another's humanity. I'm as
Flushing and I'm Monica Ordzibe. Thanks for listening. You know
(56:18):
not Sie, so you know Mysia. We go as Basque
Teniers Halla Felicia Forgotten The Women of Juarez is co
(57:02):
hosted by Me Monica and me oswal Oschen. Forgotten is
executive produced by Me and Mangesh Hattikila. Our producers are
Julian Weller and Katrina Novel sound editing by Julian Weller,
Jacopo Penzo, Aaron Kaufman, and Michelle Lands. Lucas Riley is
(57:23):
our story editor. Caitlin Thompson is our consulting producer. Production
support from Emily Maronoff and Aaron Kaufman. Recording assistance this
episode from Phil Bodger. Music by Leonardo Heblum and Hakkabo Liberman.
Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Carla Tassara is the voice
(57:44):
actor for Paula Flores Special Thanks to Ryan Martz and
to Cynthia be Gerano and Maria Socorro Tabuenca for their
support to this series. Thanks also to the producers of
the documentary La Carta. This podcast is dedicated to all
the women lost to senseless violence in Hoattis and all
(58:06):
around the world. Esta Sia, Cedica Attola, Las Mocheres, Guen Sufrio, Vajola, Volencia,
Nina mass
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