July 6, 2020 • 46 mins
Episode 7 - Uncovering who is behind the murders of women begins to suggest a much larger conspiracy. But how far does it reach? And does it stop at the border? Alfredo keeps digging, and we look for answers in Júarez's past.
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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. Last time on Forgotten,
(00:25):
when they like a girl, they find her, no matter
the cost. The men that I study mostly they operate alone.
So I started thinking, how could all of these men
trust each other. Well, 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
(00:47):
to somebody in power, or it's going to come back
to you. I had a night witness who alleged that
he had been at LEAs parties and eventually the women
will be killed because they knew too much. Alfredo Corcado
was leaving the prison in Juarez in two thousand and three,
(01:08):
having finally been introduced by Dante Almaras to an eyewitness
to the murders of women. This drug dealer had just
told Alfredo that police were kidnapping women to be raped
and killed by the cartel as a fall of celebration.
After the prison interview, Dante drove Alfredo back to the
bridge to El Paso, but he had one final tip
(01:30):
to share, and that's when Dante said, there's a name
for this group, cartel. There's a small sort of division.
There are the gatekeepers. They're the ones who controlled around
and make sure that the drugs give into the United States.
La Lina. At the time, La lina was from what
you describe it. It's like an unspeakable term. Nobody knows
(01:54):
about lallna. Nobody says anything about la linea. Why because
la lina is really when we talk about the power.
They are the hardest soul as the Quires cartel. La
ligne means the line. And Dante told Alfredo that the
group of policemen involved in abducting the women were also
(02:16):
the enforcement arm for the Juires cartel, and the world
of organized crime was one that the Devil's lawyer knew
all too well. He didn't get his nickname for nothing.
He'd represented people from the Juires underworld in legal cases
and he had this drug dealer stashed in the city
jail under a false name. And Alfredo still didn't know
(02:37):
if his source was playing him. So to corroborate what
he was hearing, he went to see Phil Jordan, the
former head of the DA and al Passo. We called
Phil ourselves and he didn't mince his words. First and foremost,
the cartel's control the police. A lot of the killings
that occurred in the Juires Cord were done by members
(03:00):
of law enforcement. Mexican law enforcement, according to Phil, La
Lina often killed to enforce silence who's according to the
intelligence that we have. The police would pick up informants
and then they would execute them, sometimes burying them alive.
Phil also corroborated the involvement of this group in the
(03:21):
abduction and murder of women. He knew them as the Gatekeepers,
but with the help us some DA documents, he Alfredo
pieced together that this was another name for the same organization.
Once we got those documents of the Gatekeepers from the
US the EA, we could finally go to the Mexican side.
(03:42):
We met with Luis vas Concelos, the drugs are in
Mexico City for the AG's office. When I brought up
La Lina, he did not want to talk about it
and just kind of pushed us away. He didn't really
deny La Lina, He just kind of say no thing,
you know, that kind of very care be very careful.
(04:02):
Jose Luis Vasconcellos was an assistant Attorney General in Mexico
whose mandate was to attack organized crime, and Alfredo was
perplexed by the response to his questions about La Lina,
so he kept going. I think in one way it
was good that I was so inexperience and so naive.
(04:24):
When that happens, you just keep going, and you keep
pushing and you push. I think some colleagues, my own
mother would say that stupidity. I would say I didn't
know what I was getting into. In response to this pushing,
Vasconcelos introduced Alfredo to the local anti drug prosecutor in Huarez.
We're having lunch and again, you know, it's the same idea,
(04:47):
what can you talk about La Linea? And suddenly he
just I mean, he just got really uncomfortable, really awkward,
and he says, you know, I have to leave. Something
else just happened. I had to follow him outside, and
he just said, stay away from them. What made the
(05:09):
Mexican drugs are? And his man inquires so uncomfortable, what
does it say about La Lina and its influence? How
high up did the corruption go? And what did all
this have to do with the murders of women. I'm
as Voloshi and I'm Mona. This is forgotten, the women
of Baram lasciv you know now? See do you know now?
(05:46):
Sque Halla Feliceva. So by this point Monica Alfredo had
(06:09):
all the confirmation he needed that La Lina did exist.
But who are they? They are the enforcement wing of
the cartel. They kidnap, they kill, they dispose of bodies.
La Lina is comprised primarily of state and local cops.
And these state and local cops are pulling a double duty.
(06:32):
And how do these cops end up getting corrupted by
the cartel? The simplest way to put this is with
the phrase plato or plomo, which means silver or lead.
Either you take a bribe or we put a bullet
in your head. And this goes for anyone, not just
a cop. It goes for a politician, street vendor, even
(06:56):
a journalist. But sometimes this ultimatum is even necessary. Some
people are willingly corrupted in exchange for some of the
spoils of drug trafficking. And you told me about a
word that's used in Juarez to describe this kind of complicity.
Metido so medivo can mean involved or implicated, and in
(07:17):
Mexico and in Huas it's often used to describe someone
that's involved or implicated in the drug trade. Just like
Alfredo walked into his story and the underworld naively, so
do many of the people who become methidos. By the
time they realize just what they've gotten themselves into, it's
(07:39):
too late. And it's through the process of methido that
Laalnia is able to exert its power. And Alfredo's reporting
revealed that some of the cops in Huires were metido
in the most horrific way. They were involved in the
murders of the women. How shocking was Alfredo's story at
(07:59):
the time, well, other reporters before Alfredo had also reported
on this theory that the police may be involved in
the murders of women, including Diana. The difference with Alfredo
is he's able to get confirmation from top federal sources,
(08:19):
and he's able to get a name, La Lina indicating
that it's not just one or two or three corrupt cops. No, no,
this is a formal organization and that that is scary.
La Lina translates as the line, and you mentioned the
name might have some connection to the border, but I
(08:41):
was very struck by the fact that it's unspeakable. Well,
La Lina exerted its power through terror. It mercilessly went
after enemies and snitches. And so this pact of silence
is far reaching, to the point where even Mexico's hop
drugs are and his men in Huatis are hesitant to
(09:04):
talk about La Lina. And if you have the authorities
in collusion with the drug traffickers, achieving justice is impossible.
These men, they had so much power. They could pick
a woman off the streets, do unthinkable things to her,
(09:26):
dump her in a vacant lot, and not suffer any
consequences for it. They would be protected by law enforcement.
Alfredo had returned to Juarez to answer what he thought
was a straightforward question, who is killing the women? But
the answer to that question seemed to involve a level
(09:48):
of conspiracy and corruption that he never believed was possible.
And the deeper Alfredo dug, the more complicity in the
murders he discovered. It's not here are the bad guys
and here good guys. They were not good guys. Everybody
was involved you have a very powerful groups, so in
order to have power, they share the profits. And then
(10:12):
suddenly it becomes solvicious that you never know who was
the government and who are the criminals. They're one and
the same. Alfredo's mother had made him promise that he'd
never report on organized crime, but he was finding that
promise so hard to keep. His reporting on the murders
(10:33):
of women had exposed to him why so many investigators
had failed to unmask the killers, and he was leaning
new understanding of how power worked in Mexico. But Alfredo
maintained some degree of optimism. He believed that if he
exposed what was happening, things might change. So he accepts
(10:54):
an invitation to Juarez shortly after his story was published
to discuss the findings with some Mexican leagues, but he
didn't get the response he was expecting. One colleague came
out to me and says, Alfredo, there is no La Linea.
And this is someone I knew and someone I trusted,
a Mexican reporter, And I said, listen, if there is
(11:15):
no La Linea, we will write a correction and we
will understand. We don't want to give quite as a
bad name. But I'm telling you, we got documents, we
have people on the record, and he just kind of
looked at me, like, thank we all be careful. Exactly
what the drugs are in Mexico City, had told Alfredo.
(11:35):
But was it a friendly warning or a veiled threat?
Was the trusted colleague himself Matido? Well, Alfredo had all
the DA documentation about La Linea, but even so he
started to doubt himself. Then within minutes of leaving the panel,
he got all the confirmation he'd ever't need. Now I'm
(11:57):
walking away and there's a number comes in and not
a number, it's just unknown. It says unknown on the phone,
and person says a keyboys or Lazzi says, I'm right
behind you. On sixteenth of September, Avenue, I was being
watched and I hung up the phone, and I'm looking
(12:19):
at everything with this paranoia. It goes from one minute
you're doubting you're reporting to the next moment you're like,
holy shit, they do exists, and they're here, and they
may be right next to me, or the car may
be right here, or the guy walking behind me, maybe
the person. I am scared shitless. What do I do now?
(12:45):
So I just made a bee line. I ran alfraid.
It was only a mile from the bridge to the
US and he needs to get to the Buddha to safety.
But as he runs through the streets, he's suspicious that
every person who looks his way, and he's starting to
attract notice. He knows he might not make it all
the way, So, with his life on the line and
(13:08):
in desperation, Alfredo makes a bee line towards someone he
doesn't even know if he can trust. Alfredo is running
(13:32):
through the very streets where so many women had disappeared
without witnesses. He's realizing that in hunting the story, he
himself has become the prey because La Lina, the organization
responsible for the abduction and murder of so many young women,
won't tolerate any more revelations about us inner workings. But
(13:52):
silencing journalists and murdering women is not the reason that
La Lina exists, although both do play a role in
protecting their real business, drug trafficking. So Alfreda receives this
call Monica on his cell phone, and it's not exactly
like the Dallas Morning News would have given his number out.
(14:14):
So it's kind of crazy because not only does this
person on the other end of the line know where
he is, they've managed to get his cell phone number.
How's that possible? Jeez, wouldn't we all like to know that?
Wouldn't Alfredo like to know that? But the fact that
they've got it is very concerning. That means that someone
he thinks he can trust is betraying him. I mean,
(14:37):
it just proves how far their tentacles reach that even
an American journalist for a major US newspaper can be
threatened by them. You can imagine this phone call that
Alfreda receives was exactly what his mother was fearing when
she made him promise not to cover these kinds of stories.
(14:59):
Do you know? Think about the conversation between them, But
I imagine that it was no different from the interaction
I had with my own mother. Leave them alone, because
if you don't, they're going to come after you. And
I don't want to be one of those grieving mothers
I see sobbing into the news cameras on a regular basis.
(15:20):
How do we get here? Where mothers from Paolaflores to
Alfredo's mother to your mother so scared about that children
in Hoarez the drug cartels in Mexico are like a cancer,
and it's a cancer that's been metastasizing ever since the
nineteen eighties. And why is it so severe Inhuarez. Well, honestly,
(15:45):
it comes down to simple geography. I mean, there's a
reason why the Spaniards called my hometown the pass. Four
hundred years ago, bel Pasohuadis region was the mid section
of one of the most important trade routes in the Americas,
the Camino Real. It went from Mexico City all the
(16:09):
way to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Now fast forward a
few centuries, people in goods are still moving in droves
across this region, only now there's an international border restricting
that movement. And those restrictions created a golden opportunity for
(16:29):
the black market, and with help from Laalna, the hottest
cartel was one of the groups that exploited this black
market opportunity. So Miami had this reputation of being the
place to smuggle drugs into the US, which is why
movies like Scarface were set there. But basically the government
(16:51):
got wise to that and traffickers started looking for alternate routes. Yes,
this is when Colombian traffickers discover the US Mexico border,
which turns out to be a far superior route, and
the FEDS they didn't catch up until nineteen eighty nine.
(17:12):
In that year, they busted a warehouse in North Los
Angeles and found twenty one tons of cocaine, reportedly worth
six point five billion dollars, still the largest seizure of
cocaine in American history. And guess where those twenty one
tons came from, huh, El Paso Horres. This was now
(17:37):
the new hot spot. By the late nineties, the estimate
was that seventy percent of all drug shipments to the
US were coming through the US Mexico border. But the
reason that these drug cartels are so powerful is because
of demand on the American side, and that demand is
(18:00):
worth billions of dollars every single year, and that's the
money that goes to corrupting the state and local police
who are kidnapping and raping and dumping these women in
the desert. El Paso and Huirez have been smuggling cities
(18:21):
for a hundred years, but Juirez has only been what
Diana Washington Valdez calls a killing field for women since
the nineteen nineties, So what changed? How did La Ligna
come into existence and become so brutal. To help answer
these questions, we spoke with Howard Campbell statement. He's an
(18:44):
anthropologist at the University of Texas El Paso, and in
two thousand and nine, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
asked him to testify about how the US might respond
to escalating violence in Mexico. I don't think in a
long term we're ever going to stop drug cartels exactly.
(19:04):
For thirty five years we've been doing this, but we
don't see much change in the supply or demand. The
most effective ways the US can help Mexico with a
drug problem are by first of all, cutting our demand
for illegal drives, second, slowing the flow of guns from
the US to Mexico. Third fighting drug organization. I believes
that the nature of the murders of women in Houarres,
(19:25):
the patent in the selection, and the sexual violence that
goes hand in hand with the killings, has meant that
many outside investigators have focused on the wrong leads. I think,
to some extent, the understanding of this femicide issue was
seen through the filter of the American phenomenon of serial killers,
Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy. If you think the
(19:47):
problem as serial killers and the problem is catching the
serial killers. But if your other interpretation is that the
problem is the lack of a functioning police system and
judicial system in Mexico, corrupt politicians, drug cartels, and gangs.
If you think that's the source of the violence, and
that's what you need to attack first. As far as
how it is concerned, no matter how many mamuelios are
(20:10):
taken off the streets of Juarez, or even how many
El Chapo Guzman's extradited to the US, the sums of
money involved in drug trafficking means that corruption is endemic
on both sides of the border. It's a multibillion dollar
industry in these two cities, I mean El pasoas are
probably some of the most important places in the entire
(20:31):
world for narcotics trafficking. That's another misnomer about drug trafficking
is that it's Mexican groups invading and I'd say it's no,
it's it's Mexicans and Americans working together to produce, to transport,
to smuggle, to sell drugs. You're talking about at least
one hundred years of history. In fact, up until eighteen fifty,
(20:52):
El Paso and Juarez, or one community, both were in Mexico.
It was only after the Mexican American War that El
Paso became part of Texas, with Juarez Romani in Mexico,
but the two cities stayed deeply connected, and by the
nineteen twenties the area was as smug as paradise, from
(21:12):
bootleg liquor to illegal narcotics, with the business in Juarez
run by an unlikely figure. Starting around the time of prohibition,
the smuggling of marijuana and heroin was largely monopolized by
one person, a woman called La Nacha. She had a
(21:33):
career that lasted forty or fifty years, quite a long time.
That's quite a long time. And so Lanacha died of
natural causes in her seventies, and so that's reaching heaven
or something like. So Lanacha was a genius. She was uneducated,
I grew up as a poor woman and eventually somehow
(21:54):
figured out how to make this drug business work. What
protected her for that long, So she was well protected
by a vast extended family, but also her accomplices in
the municipal police. Surely within the municipal government of Juarez,
but also even at the federal level. From the beginning,
in Juarez, illegal business thrived with the complicity of the
(22:15):
police and government, but this didn't include the abduction and
murder of young women who had nothing to do with drugs.
In fact, for a while, drug smuggling in Juarez operated
like the old school Italian mafia, violent to its enemies,
but woven into the fabric of the community. Things began
to shift when America's consumption habit shifted. People started to
(22:40):
use cocaine. It was sort of the passing of the
hippie era into the disco era, and the Mexican trafficking
organizations adapted to that. In the nineteen eighties, there was
an enterprising Huire's local who was more than happy to
help meet this new demand, even if that meant taking
on the second job. Raphael Ailaharo was head of the
(23:01):
federal police in the Chihuahua area, so he formed the
first Waters Cartel and they began the smuggle cocaine. That's
when things changed. There wasn't that much violence in Waters
in the nineteen eighties, and so you had this very
impressive drug trafficking organization that was making hundreds of millions
of dollars, but not that many people were getting killed.
(23:21):
HuaaS remained a city that Lanacho would have recognized, but
the sums of money pouring in because of cocaine began
to attract notice from outsiders, not least from a man
from the western Mexican state of Sineloa. He too, was
a federal policeman called Amalo Kario Fuentes. Carrio Fuentes was
(23:42):
the great innovator in Mexican drug trafficking of bringing seven
forty seven airplanes was a seats removed filled with cocaine
from Colombia all the way up to the northern Mexican border,
and then smuggling them into the United States, sometimes in
eighteen wheel trucks right across the rebridge central El Paso
and parts, many times with paid off US customs agents
(24:07):
or US immigration officers. When you spend time in El Paso,
you can't help but notice the steel fence that bisects
it from Juarez and the militarization of the border. But
no amount of infrastructure can protect an organization from an
inside job, and Careo Fuentes, the police officer turned trafficker,
(24:30):
understood this better than most. He recognized that the bigger
his organization got, the more money it could bring in.
The more money, the more corrupt officials on both sides
of the border, and so it went on. But he
also recognized that he was operating far from his home turf,
so he brought in some associates from Sinaloa. Kario Fuentes
(24:52):
brought in a whole bunch of Scario's head man. He
had a very complex organization involving people are guarding safe houses.
You have drivers, you have gunmen, you have accountants. You
have essentially an informal criminal corporation, and that's what Kario
Fuentes created. At first, the two former policemen, Aguilar and
(25:15):
Carrio Fuentes worked together, solidifying an empire of cocaine trafficking.
But after a while, the outside has always opportunity to
go to loane. Now this isn't the same way as
when you have a big American corporation buys up another corporation.
It isn't as neat and clean. Carrio Fuentes had Aguilar,
(25:37):
the original founder of the Juadist cartel, murdered in nineteen
ninety three. That's when all the violets. That's when the
ship hit the fan. Was when the Carrio Fuentes cartel
took over in Juadas. Despite the loss of their leader,
the local cartel weren't going to roll over for the
man from Sina Looa, So Carria Fuentes began a reign
of terror. So in the early nineteen nineties, Quadas becomes
(26:01):
part of this kind of globalized, multi national, extremely violent
drug cartel. You say nineteen ninety three as the takeover
of Amalo Carrillo Fuintis of the Juaas Plaza, nineteen ninety
three is also when these brutal, horrific women's murders began
(26:21):
to happen in the city. So if you saying it's
not a coincidence, no, I would say that it's not
a coincidence. I'm not saying it's a conspiracy. I'm not
saying the cartel game and they said, okay, we're gonna
start committing femicides. What I'm saying is I think it's
an excellent hypothesis to think that many women that were raped, kidnapped,
murdered in Huatas were killed and mistreated by Ciccardios hit
(26:43):
men for the drug cartels. Outsiders who don't feel connected
to the local population, whose job is to brutalize and kill,
would see women walking on the streets as pieces of meat,
just like the people they would kidnap and murder who
were enemies of their drug organization. Alfredo's reporting had already
revealed the hand of organized crime in the murders of women,
(27:07):
but Howard was helping us piece together how a hostile
takeover of the Juarez cartel had turned the women who
lived in the city into targets. As FBI special Agent
in charge of El Paso, Heredrick Crawford had called them
antelopes at the water Hole. So Laalna was an organization
that exerted total control and whose policy of plato plomo
(27:30):
left their victims with nowhere to turn, and Alfredo was
experiencing this first hand as he ran through the streets
of downtown Juarez, hoping to make it back to the bridge.
The one person he could think to turn to for
help was Dantown Maras, But as he got closer to
the lawyer's office, he realized that he was running towards
the very people he was trying so hard to escape.
(27:53):
I'm just pushing forward, I realized where Danta's officers. And
I'm just pushing and looking all around me. I've noticed
that right next to Danta's. Just forgot there was a
police station. I'm thinking, oh my god, you know the
cals are was La Lina? What am I doing? I ran,
I come in and I just went straight to his office.
(28:17):
Paula Flores and so many other mothers had learned that
there was no point in going to the police, and
as far as Alfreda was concerned, doing so would further
endanger his life, so he put his faith into the
hands of the very lawyer he'd been told by so
many people was not to be trusted as a source,
let alone a savior. So I explained to Dante, what's
(28:41):
you know? This is what's going on. I think was
the first time I saw Dante and I look worri
and then he finally says, yeah, the chinghaste, you're fucked.
I said why. He says, there aren't you La Linia's
aunto and he says, you know, the only good thing
is a year American. I said, yeah, but my cousin
is a cop aitas coup and I have family in
(29:04):
Quitas and he says, well, then you're really fucked. Something
may happen to them because of you. Alfredo doesn't have
time to dwell on the consequences of his reporting. As
far as he's concerned, his own life depends on getting
back to the US as fast as possible. So I
tell Dante, so, look, how do I get across? And
(29:24):
he basically says, why don't I drive you back? Because
I don't think you should walk. I'll just drive you
an SUV and basically just put me in the bag,
crossing the bag and I'm looking through the windows, and
I'm looking at all these places that I grew up,
Mighty Sky, you know, again, the Marches. At one point
(29:46):
I wanted to be a songwriter and a singer, and
we had a little studio but in that area. You know,
all these things are going through my mind. And I'm
also thinking, what if Dante is in on this, What
if he's not taking it as the bridge, but if
he's taking me somewhere, but he's taking me to the
cap And then I seen him on the phone and
he's he just sounds so nnchalant. It's just another normal day.
(30:09):
I'm trying to sort of get danted tell me everything's
gonna be okay. But the whole time he's in that
damn phone, Alfredo was panicking. He wasn't sure whether he
could trust the Devil's lawyer, whether Dante might still be
me Tito or on La Linea's payroll. In fact, Alfredo
wasn't even sure if he'd make it out of hauire
(30:30):
as alive. Alfredo was in the back of Dante's suv
(30:51):
trying to make out where they were going. It was
just a quick, little dry but to me it just
felt like forever. Finally it became that the lawyer was
taking him back to the border, and as they arrived
at the bridge that would allow Alfredo to escape to
the safety of El Paso, the lawyer got off the
phone and once again he had some final words for
(31:12):
the journalist. I think he saw how scared I was,
and he's trying to tell me how important it was
what I did. But he says, I get the metal wars,
it's who awaits. You have to have bars, don't be afraid.
So basically he's telling you, don't be intimidated, continue your work.
(31:32):
I think one of his lands was esposuis chained out.
There's a squid's damn, you know. Don't be intimidated. Keep searching,
keep asking questions, keep digging. In the moment that Dante
dropped him off at the bridge, Alfredo realized once and
for all that he could trust him. In fact, it
was the lawyer who helped him get to El Paso,
(31:54):
beyond the reach of La Lina and perhaps saved his
life in the process. So monica that moment where Alfredo
gets back to the bridge and he's able to cross
into Alpasso. You told me you understood exactly how he's feeling. Yeah. Certainly,
when I was reporting on the drug war in Huadis,
(32:15):
once I crossed over the bridge and drove underneath the
sign that said nis Welcome to the United States, I
would feel this rush of relief come over me, and
I would recognize just how stressed I had been on
the other side. But I knew where to draw the line.
As long as I reported on the victims of the
(32:38):
violence that the cartel exacts on the city of Huatas,
I was unlikely to be bothered. They don't care about
the victims. It did involve going into a dangerous city
where being in the wrong place at the wrong time
could get you killed. But the kind of reporting I
tried to do was reporting that wouldn't result in me
(33:01):
being specifically targeted. Nonetheless, you told me about those cowboy
boots and about thinking about what it might be like
to be stuffed in the back of someone's car. And
it's kind of astonishing to me how much risk Alfredo
took and you took to cover this story. But also
that both of you get to come home, And that's
(33:23):
something I found very striking about that exchange between Dante
and Alfredo. When Dante says to him, keep digging, it's
almost as though he's passing the torch because Alfredo can
go back to safety and Dante has to turn around
back to the city where his friend Mario Escobado was
assassinated not that long ago. It's a very poignant moment
(33:45):
in a sense, Dante sees Alfredo as this beacon of hope.
Maybe if the Americans can call out what's truly happening
in what is, something will change the fact that this
conversation takes place at the foot of the international bridge
that connects what is to al Passo. The bridge to
(34:06):
Dante might have symbolized the bridge between impunity and justice.
Dante had taken enormous risk in exposing to Alfredo who
was complicit in the murders of women in Juarez, and
it was because of him that the systematic involvement of
the police was confirmed and that the name La Lina
(34:28):
was published, disturbing their culture of silence. But as nonchalant
as Dante was talking on the phone as he drove
Alfredo back to the border, he was well aware that
they would likely be a price for talking to a journalist,
let alone saving his life. After publishing his story, Alfredo
moved on to Mexico City as he planned, and Dante
(34:49):
stayed in Juarez, but they stayed in touch. We talked
several times, but every time he caused it was like
a sense of emergency. It was like he was scared.
So I would just say, Dante, okay, I keep I
saw what's what's going on. I came back to Squats
because he wanted to meet me. He said, look, I
have things I want to share with your things I
want to tell you. But I thought he's got something big,
(35:13):
and we decided to meet somewhere near the bridge. I
was at the Kentucky club. I was there for an
hour than two hours, never showed up. Like a few
days later, I saw it in the news. He had
been killed right near the same area where I had
(35:35):
run to his office to gun down by hitman with
a car with new Mexico plates. Conveniently, the cameras were
not working that day. Dante was gone. Was his murder
ever solved? Murder was never saw. Do you have any
(35:59):
ideas while he was killed? I think oftentimes when people
get killed Mexico's because they know too much. I think
it's something I've learned. It's not always maybe smart to
try to know so much. But again, you know, we
were young, we were hopeful. You were certainly played a
(36:23):
role in my trying to steer away from covering the
drug cartels. Because I'll never forget a voicemail you left
on my phone. This is about ten years ago. Now
it's me, don't don't tell your mom. She means something
(36:47):
like Monica, we we like our soup cold or hot,
And I was like, that's some dark humor out of
why did you get from the cartels? You know, this
is like the cartels saying they liked a soup color hot,
you know it. Maybe five years it maybe ten years.
They might forgive you, but they're never going to forget,
(37:08):
and they might catch up with you someday. Equally, So
I got the gist of Alfredo's joke about the soup monica,
But what exactly does it mean? In other words, you
were their soup, and sooner or later they're gonna eat
you hot or cold. Sooner or later they'll take their revenge,
(37:28):
perhaps when you least expect it. So Alfredo came to
learn this, but Dante knew it all along, but nonetheless
he kept going. Remember Dante told Alfredo, this is what
is damn it. You've got to have guts, and Dante did.
In the end, he died, living up to his own
(37:49):
saying he suffered the same fate as his friend Mario Escobedo,
gunned down in the typical drive by execution favored by
La Lina. Dante may have started out as the devil's lawyer,
but in the end you could say he and Mario
gave their lives in the name of justice. La line
(38:14):
the line Dante had knowingly crossed it, and he paid
the ultimate price. He did live long enough to see
one of the bus drivers exonerated and the truth of
what was happening to the women in Huirez exposed in
the American press. But the other bus driver died in
prison in mysterious circumstances after a botched operation. Mario Escobado's father,
(38:37):
who led the protest in front of the huire As
Attorney General's office carrying his son's casket, was assassinated in
two thousand and nine at his office, along with his
other son, Edgar. There were eight women's bodies discovered in
the cotton fields in two thousand and one, and in
some sense that was just the beginning of the crime.
Within the space of a few years, at least four
(38:59):
people seeking to reveal the truth of those women's murders
had themselves been assassinated, and several others caught up in
the story also died prematurely. Even Vasconcelos, the drugs are
in Mexico City, who Alfredo met died in a plane
crash in two thousand and eight, and some suspected foul play.
(39:20):
Demanding justice in Juarez is a deadly business, which makes
that other line, the one that separates it from al Passo,
all the more significant. Alfredo could cross the bridge back
to safety, and he lived. Dante could drive Alfredo up
to the bridge, but he'd die in Huirez. But as
(39:43):
Howard Campbell told us, the cartel's reach doesn't stop at
the border. Al Pass was a dormitory for drug traffickers,
high level direct traffickers, hit man from the cartels, hundreds
of drug smugglers, probably hundreds of stash houses where drugs
are stored, trucking businesses that are dedicated to drug trafficking,
(40:05):
and so the economy of Elpass was completely saturated with
drugs and illegal money. And we consider this here normal
and not particularly a problem. As long as you don't
get hurt or you don't get in trouble, people just
kind of turn a blind eye. Even to this day,
there's dramatic inequality and unfairness in the relationship between the
(40:28):
two cities. Even though it has made a living off
of drug smuggling. Elpass is incredibly safe where I see
Lahuata is where half the population of Elpaso has relatives
and friends and the like. Is one of the most
violent cities in the world and dangerous cities in the world.
And I don't think most people in Olpasso really care
about changing that. There's a kind of way in which
(40:49):
people accept this inequality and this exploitation of Mexico as
a source for illegal drugs that we enjoy consuming and
we farm out the risk to the Mexicans who were
the ones that die by the thousands and the drug violence,
and so it isn't right. It's hypocritical, it's unjust, it's unfair.
But whether you like it or not, it's just everyday
(41:11):
life here on the border. Howard got an insight into
the depths at this hypocrisy from one of his students
at the University of Texas, El Paso. I believe he
was an immigration officer, and in the class we would
debate she was related to Mexico, and he would always
stand up for the US government and the other students,
many of them were Mexican Americans, hated the US Immigration
(41:33):
Service and so they didn't liked him, and he would
come to class in uniform. But I found it interesting
that he would wear a gold necklace around his neck
with a gold anchor, very expensive piece of jewelry. And
then one time I saw him at a very fancy
mall in West El Paso and he came out with
huge bags of expensive clothing that he had just purchased.
(41:54):
Well soon after he was my student, he was arrested
for being a corrupt immigration officer allowing large amounts of
cocaine the Huadas cartel to cross into Alpaso from Huadas
on the bridge. According to court documents Howard's student, the
immigration officer was charging the cartel ten thousand dollars for
(42:15):
each cocaine laden car that you waved through. This was
La Linea in action, except in Olpasso. They weren't murdering
young women or people who dared to ask questions, but
their money was just as capable of corrupting US officials.
And I was beginning to understand the deep irony of
the fence that divided the two cities. I would say
(42:38):
that it's a very contradictory place because even though you
have thousands of people that are involved in dirugt trafficking,
drug smuggling, drug dealing, and you also have thousands of
federal law agents, d EA, Customs, you name the agency.
You have one of the largest military bases in the world,
Fort Bliss, So there's soldiers everywhere. There's municipals, you know,
city cops, you know, state cops, any umber of law
(43:00):
enforcement agencies, the FBI in al Paso. So it's a
simultaneously it's this kind of zoo of criminals and the
law living together and even marrying each other. Alfredo was
talking about Juarez when he said, everybody's involved metito. But
the thing about metito is that it's never really clear
(43:22):
just how compromised a person is. And that brings us
back to an American law enforcement official whose name is
lightly familiar by now, Hardrick Crawford, who was head of
the FBI, started to go over there a lot and
God associated with high ranking businessman in Huadas. Hardrick was
(43:43):
the most outspoken American official on the killings of women
in Juarez. He even gave a quote to a Mexican
newspaper where he called the murders crimes against humanity. I
had a moral mission that I felt that I was
empowered on a different level than US constitution. That mission
would give Hardrick a first hand understanding of the word metito,
(44:07):
and it would unleash a series of events that called
his own life into question. So I was in the
house by myself and my brother said, direct, did you
ever think about eating your gun, I said, I did.
I did seriously consider killing myself. I'm as Velashan and
(44:33):
Monica see you next time you see. Do you know
(44:55):
I Felicia Forgotten? The Women of Juarez is co hosted
(45:22):
by Me, Monica and me oswald Oshin. Forgotten is executive
produced by Me and Mangesh Hattikila. Our producers are Julian
Weller and Katrina Norvell. Sound editing by Julian Weller, Jacopo
Penzo and Aaron Kaufman. Lucas Riley is our story editor.
(45:43):
Caitlin Thompson is our consulting producer. Recording assistance this episode
from Michael Perez. Production support from Emily Maronoff and Aaron Kaufman.
Our theme tune is the Chemo as performed by Natalie Lae.
Music by Leonardo Hablum and Hakkabo Libermann. Additional music by
(46:05):
Aaron Kaufman.
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. Last time on Forgotten,
(00:25):
when they like a girl, they find her, no matter
the cost. The men that I study mostly they operate alone.
So I started thinking, how could all of these men
trust each other. Well, 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
(00:47):
to somebody in power, or it's going to come back
to you. I had a night witness who alleged that
he had been at LEAs parties and eventually the women
will be killed because they knew too much. Alfredo Corcado
was leaving the prison in Juarez in two thousand and three,
(01:08):
having finally been introduced by Dante Almaras to an eyewitness
to the murders of women. This drug dealer had just
told Alfredo that police were kidnapping women to be raped
and killed by the cartel as a fall of celebration.
After the prison interview, Dante drove Alfredo back to the
bridge to El Paso, but he had one final tip
(01:30):
to share, and that's when Dante said, there's a name
for this group, cartel. There's a small sort of division.
There are the gatekeepers. They're the ones who controlled around
and make sure that the drugs give into the United States.
La Lina. At the time, La lina was from what
you describe it. It's like an unspeakable term. Nobody knows
(01:54):
about lallna. Nobody says anything about la linea. Why because
la lina is really when we talk about the power.
They are the hardest soul as the Quires cartel. La
ligne means the line. And Dante told Alfredo that the
group of policemen involved in abducting the women were also
(02:16):
the enforcement arm for the Juires cartel, and the world
of organized crime was one that the Devil's lawyer knew
all too well. He didn't get his nickname for nothing.
He'd represented people from the Juires underworld in legal cases
and he had this drug dealer stashed in the city
jail under a false name. And Alfredo still didn't know
(02:37):
if his source was playing him. So to corroborate what
he was hearing, he went to see Phil Jordan, the
former head of the DA and al Passo. We called
Phil ourselves and he didn't mince his words. First and foremost,
the cartel's control the police. A lot of the killings
that occurred in the Juires Cord were done by members
(03:00):
of law enforcement. Mexican law enforcement, according to Phil, La
Lina often killed to enforce silence who's according to the
intelligence that we have. The police would pick up informants
and then they would execute them, sometimes burying them alive.
Phil also corroborated the involvement of this group in the
(03:21):
abduction and murder of women. He knew them as the Gatekeepers,
but with the help us some DA documents, he Alfredo
pieced together that this was another name for the same organization.
Once we got those documents of the Gatekeepers from the
US the EA, we could finally go to the Mexican side.
(03:42):
We met with Luis vas Concelos, the drugs are in
Mexico City for the AG's office. When I brought up
La Lina, he did not want to talk about it
and just kind of pushed us away. He didn't really
deny La Lina, He just kind of say no thing,
you know, that kind of very care be very careful.
(04:02):
Jose Luis Vasconcellos was an assistant Attorney General in Mexico
whose mandate was to attack organized crime, and Alfredo was
perplexed by the response to his questions about La Lina,
so he kept going. I think in one way it
was good that I was so inexperience and so naive.
(04:24):
When that happens, you just keep going, and you keep
pushing and you push. I think some colleagues, my own
mother would say that stupidity. I would say I didn't
know what I was getting into. In response to this pushing,
Vasconcelos introduced Alfredo to the local anti drug prosecutor in Huarez.
We're having lunch and again, you know, it's the same idea,
(04:47):
what can you talk about La Linea? And suddenly he
just I mean, he just got really uncomfortable, really awkward,
and he says, you know, I have to leave. Something
else just happened. I had to follow him outside, and
he just said, stay away from them. What made the
(05:09):
Mexican drugs are? And his man inquires so uncomfortable, what
does it say about La Lina and its influence? How
high up did the corruption go? And what did all
this have to do with the murders of women. I'm
as Voloshi and I'm Mona. This is forgotten, the women
of Baram lasciv you know now? See do you know now?
(05:46):
Sque Halla Feliceva. So by this point Monica Alfredo had
(06:09):
all the confirmation he needed that La Lina did exist.
But who are they? They are the enforcement wing of
the cartel. They kidnap, they kill, they dispose of bodies.
La Lina is comprised primarily of state and local cops.
And these state and local cops are pulling a double duty.
(06:32):
And how do these cops end up getting corrupted by
the cartel? The simplest way to put this is with
the phrase plato or plomo, which means silver or lead.
Either you take a bribe or we put a bullet
in your head. And this goes for anyone, not just
a cop. It goes for a politician, street vendor, even
(06:56):
a journalist. But sometimes this ultimatum is even necessary. Some
people are willingly corrupted in exchange for some of the
spoils of drug trafficking. And you told me about a
word that's used in Juarez to describe this kind of complicity.
Metido so medivo can mean involved or implicated, and in
(07:17):
Mexico and in Huas it's often used to describe someone
that's involved or implicated in the drug trade. Just like
Alfredo walked into his story and the underworld naively, so
do many of the people who become methidos. By the
time they realize just what they've gotten themselves into, it's
(07:39):
too late. And it's through the process of methido that
Laalnia is able to exert its power. And Alfredo's reporting
revealed that some of the cops in Huires were metido
in the most horrific way. They were involved in the
murders of the women. How shocking was Alfredo's story at
(07:59):
the time, well, other reporters before Alfredo had also reported
on this theory that the police may be involved in
the murders of women, including Diana. The difference with Alfredo
is he's able to get confirmation from top federal sources,
(08:19):
and he's able to get a name, La Lina indicating
that it's not just one or two or three corrupt cops. No, no,
this is a formal organization and that that is scary.
La Lina translates as the line, and you mentioned the
name might have some connection to the border, but I
(08:41):
was very struck by the fact that it's unspeakable. Well,
La Lina exerted its power through terror. It mercilessly went
after enemies and snitches. And so this pact of silence
is far reaching, to the point where even Mexico's hop
drugs are and his men in Huatis are hesitant to
(09:04):
talk about La Lina. And if you have the authorities
in collusion with the drug traffickers, achieving justice is impossible.
These men, they had so much power. They could pick
a woman off the streets, do unthinkable things to her,
(09:26):
dump her in a vacant lot, and not suffer any
consequences for it. They would be protected by law enforcement.
Alfredo had returned to Juarez to answer what he thought
was a straightforward question, who is killing the women? But
the answer to that question seemed to involve a level
(09:48):
of conspiracy and corruption that he never believed was possible.
And the deeper Alfredo dug, the more complicity in the
murders he discovered. It's not here are the bad guys
and here good guys. They were not good guys. Everybody
was involved you have a very powerful groups, so in
order to have power, they share the profits. And then
(10:12):
suddenly it becomes solvicious that you never know who was
the government and who are the criminals. They're one and
the same. Alfredo's mother had made him promise that he'd
never report on organized crime, but he was finding that
promise so hard to keep. His reporting on the murders
(10:33):
of women had exposed to him why so many investigators
had failed to unmask the killers, and he was leaning
new understanding of how power worked in Mexico. But Alfredo
maintained some degree of optimism. He believed that if he
exposed what was happening, things might change. So he accepts
(10:54):
an invitation to Juarez shortly after his story was published
to discuss the findings with some Mexican leagues, but he
didn't get the response he was expecting. One colleague came
out to me and says, Alfredo, there is no La Linea.
And this is someone I knew and someone I trusted,
a Mexican reporter, And I said, listen, if there is
(11:15):
no La Linea, we will write a correction and we
will understand. We don't want to give quite as a
bad name. But I'm telling you, we got documents, we
have people on the record, and he just kind of
looked at me, like, thank we all be careful. Exactly
what the drugs are in Mexico City, had told Alfredo.
(11:35):
But was it a friendly warning or a veiled threat?
Was the trusted colleague himself Matido? Well, Alfredo had all
the DA documentation about La Linea, but even so he
started to doubt himself. Then within minutes of leaving the panel,
he got all the confirmation he'd ever't need. Now I'm
(11:57):
walking away and there's a number comes in and not
a number, it's just unknown. It says unknown on the phone,
and person says a keyboys or Lazzi says, I'm right
behind you. On sixteenth of September, Avenue, I was being
watched and I hung up the phone, and I'm looking
(12:19):
at everything with this paranoia. It goes from one minute
you're doubting you're reporting to the next moment you're like,
holy shit, they do exists, and they're here, and they
may be right next to me, or the car may
be right here, or the guy walking behind me, maybe
the person. I am scared shitless. What do I do now?
(12:45):
So I just made a bee line. I ran alfraid.
It was only a mile from the bridge to the
US and he needs to get to the Buddha to safety.
But as he runs through the streets, he's suspicious that
every person who looks his way, and he's starting to
attract notice. He knows he might not make it all
the way, So, with his life on the line and
(13:08):
in desperation, Alfredo makes a bee line towards someone he
doesn't even know if he can trust. Alfredo is running
(13:32):
through the very streets where so many women had disappeared
without witnesses. He's realizing that in hunting the story, he
himself has become the prey because La Lina, the organization
responsible for the abduction and murder of so many young women,
won't tolerate any more revelations about us inner workings. But
(13:52):
silencing journalists and murdering women is not the reason that
La Lina exists, although both do play a role in
protecting their real business, drug trafficking. So Alfreda receives this
call Monica on his cell phone, and it's not exactly
like the Dallas Morning News would have given his number out.
(14:14):
So it's kind of crazy because not only does this
person on the other end of the line know where
he is, they've managed to get his cell phone number.
How's that possible? Jeez, wouldn't we all like to know that?
Wouldn't Alfredo like to know that? But the fact that
they've got it is very concerning. That means that someone
he thinks he can trust is betraying him. I mean,
(14:37):
it just proves how far their tentacles reach that even
an American journalist for a major US newspaper can be
threatened by them. You can imagine this phone call that
Alfreda receives was exactly what his mother was fearing when
she made him promise not to cover these kinds of stories.
(14:59):
Do you know? Think about the conversation between them, But
I imagine that it was no different from the interaction
I had with my own mother. Leave them alone, because
if you don't, they're going to come after you. And
I don't want to be one of those grieving mothers
I see sobbing into the news cameras on a regular basis.
(15:20):
How do we get here? Where mothers from Paolaflores to
Alfredo's mother to your mother so scared about that children
in Hoarez the drug cartels in Mexico are like a cancer,
and it's a cancer that's been metastasizing ever since the
nineteen eighties. And why is it so severe Inhuarez. Well, honestly,
(15:45):
it comes down to simple geography. I mean, there's a
reason why the Spaniards called my hometown the pass. Four
hundred years ago, bel Pasohuadis region was the mid section
of one of the most important trade routes in the Americas,
the Camino Real. It went from Mexico City all the
(16:09):
way to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Now fast forward a
few centuries, people in goods are still moving in droves
across this region, only now there's an international border restricting
that movement. And those restrictions created a golden opportunity for
(16:29):
the black market, and with help from Laalna, the hottest
cartel was one of the groups that exploited this black
market opportunity. So Miami had this reputation of being the
place to smuggle drugs into the US, which is why
movies like Scarface were set there. But basically the government
(16:51):
got wise to that and traffickers started looking for alternate routes. Yes,
this is when Colombian traffickers discover the US Mexico border,
which turns out to be a far superior route, and
the FEDS they didn't catch up until nineteen eighty nine.
(17:12):
In that year, they busted a warehouse in North Los
Angeles and found twenty one tons of cocaine, reportedly worth
six point five billion dollars, still the largest seizure of
cocaine in American history. And guess where those twenty one
tons came from, huh, El Paso Horres. This was now
(17:37):
the new hot spot. By the late nineties, the estimate
was that seventy percent of all drug shipments to the
US were coming through the US Mexico border. But the
reason that these drug cartels are so powerful is because
of demand on the American side, and that demand is
(18:00):
worth billions of dollars every single year, and that's the
money that goes to corrupting the state and local police
who are kidnapping and raping and dumping these women in
the desert. El Paso and Huirez have been smuggling cities
(18:21):
for a hundred years, but Juirez has only been what
Diana Washington Valdez calls a killing field for women since
the nineteen nineties, So what changed? How did La Ligna
come into existence and become so brutal. To help answer
these questions, we spoke with Howard Campbell statement. He's an
(18:44):
anthropologist at the University of Texas El Paso, and in
two thousand and nine, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
asked him to testify about how the US might respond
to escalating violence in Mexico. I don't think in a
long term we're ever going to stop drug cartels exactly.
(19:04):
For thirty five years we've been doing this, but we
don't see much change in the supply or demand. The
most effective ways the US can help Mexico with a
drug problem are by first of all, cutting our demand
for illegal drives, second, slowing the flow of guns from
the US to Mexico. Third fighting drug organization. I believes
that the nature of the murders of women in Houarres,
(19:25):
the patent in the selection, and the sexual violence that
goes hand in hand with the killings, has meant that
many outside investigators have focused on the wrong leads. I think,
to some extent, the understanding of this femicide issue was
seen through the filter of the American phenomenon of serial killers,
Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy. If you think the
(19:47):
problem as serial killers and the problem is catching the
serial killers. But if your other interpretation is that the
problem is the lack of a functioning police system and
judicial system in Mexico, corrupt politicians, drug cartels, and gangs.
If you think that's the source of the violence, and
that's what you need to attack first. As far as
how it is concerned, no matter how many mamuelios are
(20:10):
taken off the streets of Juarez, or even how many
El Chapo Guzman's extradited to the US, the sums of
money involved in drug trafficking means that corruption is endemic
on both sides of the border. It's a multibillion dollar
industry in these two cities, I mean El pasoas are
probably some of the most important places in the entire
(20:31):
world for narcotics trafficking. That's another misnomer about drug trafficking
is that it's Mexican groups invading and I'd say it's no,
it's it's Mexicans and Americans working together to produce, to transport,
to smuggle, to sell drugs. You're talking about at least
one hundred years of history. In fact, up until eighteen fifty,
(20:52):
El Paso and Juarez, or one community, both were in Mexico.
It was only after the Mexican American War that El
Paso became part of Texas, with Juarez Romani in Mexico,
but the two cities stayed deeply connected, and by the
nineteen twenties the area was as smug as paradise, from
(21:12):
bootleg liquor to illegal narcotics, with the business in Juarez
run by an unlikely figure. Starting around the time of prohibition,
the smuggling of marijuana and heroin was largely monopolized by
one person, a woman called La Nacha. She had a
(21:33):
career that lasted forty or fifty years, quite a long time.
That's quite a long time. And so Lanacha died of
natural causes in her seventies, and so that's reaching heaven
or something like. So Lanacha was a genius. She was uneducated,
I grew up as a poor woman and eventually somehow
(21:54):
figured out how to make this drug business work. What
protected her for that long, So she was well protected
by a vast extended family, but also her accomplices in
the municipal police. Surely within the municipal government of Juarez,
but also even at the federal level. From the beginning,
in Juarez, illegal business thrived with the complicity of the
(22:15):
police and government, but this didn't include the abduction and
murder of young women who had nothing to do with drugs.
In fact, for a while, drug smuggling in Juarez operated
like the old school Italian mafia, violent to its enemies,
but woven into the fabric of the community. Things began
to shift when America's consumption habit shifted. People started to
(22:40):
use cocaine. It was sort of the passing of the
hippie era into the disco era, and the Mexican trafficking
organizations adapted to that. In the nineteen eighties, there was
an enterprising Huire's local who was more than happy to
help meet this new demand, even if that meant taking
on the second job. Raphael Ailaharo was head of the
(23:01):
federal police in the Chihuahua area, so he formed the
first Waters Cartel and they began the smuggle cocaine. That's
when things changed. There wasn't that much violence in Waters
in the nineteen eighties, and so you had this very
impressive drug trafficking organization that was making hundreds of millions
of dollars, but not that many people were getting killed.
(23:21):
HuaaS remained a city that Lanacho would have recognized, but
the sums of money pouring in because of cocaine began
to attract notice from outsiders, not least from a man
from the western Mexican state of Sineloa. He too, was
a federal policeman called Amalo Kario Fuentes. Carrio Fuentes was
(23:42):
the great innovator in Mexican drug trafficking of bringing seven
forty seven airplanes was a seats removed filled with cocaine
from Colombia all the way up to the northern Mexican border,
and then smuggling them into the United States, sometimes in
eighteen wheel trucks right across the rebridge central El Paso
and parts, many times with paid off US customs agents
(24:07):
or US immigration officers. When you spend time in El Paso,
you can't help but notice the steel fence that bisects
it from Juarez and the militarization of the border. But
no amount of infrastructure can protect an organization from an
inside job, and Careo Fuentes, the police officer turned trafficker,
(24:30):
understood this better than most. He recognized that the bigger
his organization got, the more money it could bring in.
The more money, the more corrupt officials on both sides
of the border, and so it went on. But he
also recognized that he was operating far from his home turf,
so he brought in some associates from Sinaloa. Kario Fuentes
(24:52):
brought in a whole bunch of Scario's head man. He
had a very complex organization involving people are guarding safe houses.
You have drivers, you have gunmen, you have accountants. You
have essentially an informal criminal corporation, and that's what Kario
Fuentes created. At first, the two former policemen, Aguilar and
(25:15):
Carrio Fuentes worked together, solidifying an empire of cocaine trafficking.
But after a while, the outside has always opportunity to
go to loane. Now this isn't the same way as
when you have a big American corporation buys up another corporation.
It isn't as neat and clean. Carrio Fuentes had Aguilar,
(25:37):
the original founder of the Juadist cartel, murdered in nineteen
ninety three. That's when all the violets. That's when the
ship hit the fan. Was when the Carrio Fuentes cartel
took over in Juadas. Despite the loss of their leader,
the local cartel weren't going to roll over for the
man from Sina Looa, So Carria Fuentes began a reign
of terror. So in the early nineteen nineties, Quadas becomes
(26:01):
part of this kind of globalized, multi national, extremely violent
drug cartel. You say nineteen ninety three as the takeover
of Amalo Carrillo Fuintis of the Juaas Plaza, nineteen ninety
three is also when these brutal, horrific women's murders began
(26:21):
to happen in the city. So if you saying it's
not a coincidence, no, I would say that it's not
a coincidence. I'm not saying it's a conspiracy. I'm not
saying the cartel game and they said, okay, we're gonna
start committing femicides. What I'm saying is I think it's
an excellent hypothesis to think that many women that were raped, kidnapped,
murdered in Huatas were killed and mistreated by Ciccardios hit
(26:43):
men for the drug cartels. Outsiders who don't feel connected
to the local population, whose job is to brutalize and kill,
would see women walking on the streets as pieces of meat,
just like the people they would kidnap and murder who
were enemies of their drug organization. Alfredo's reporting had already
revealed the hand of organized crime in the murders of women,
(27:07):
but Howard was helping us piece together how a hostile
takeover of the Juarez cartel had turned the women who
lived in the city into targets. As FBI special Agent
in charge of El Paso, Heredrick Crawford had called them
antelopes at the water Hole. So Laalna was an organization
that exerted total control and whose policy of plato plomo
(27:30):
left their victims with nowhere to turn, and Alfredo was
experiencing this first hand as he ran through the streets
of downtown Juarez, hoping to make it back to the bridge.
The one person he could think to turn to for
help was Dantown Maras, But as he got closer to
the lawyer's office, he realized that he was running towards
the very people he was trying so hard to escape.
(27:53):
I'm just pushing forward, I realized where Danta's officers. And
I'm just pushing and looking all around me. I've noticed
that right next to Danta's. Just forgot there was a
police station. I'm thinking, oh my god, you know the
cals are was La Lina? What am I doing? I ran,
I come in and I just went straight to his office.
(28:17):
Paula Flores and so many other mothers had learned that
there was no point in going to the police, and
as far as Alfreda was concerned, doing so would further
endanger his life, so he put his faith into the
hands of the very lawyer he'd been told by so
many people was not to be trusted as a source,
let alone a savior. So I explained to Dante, what's
(28:41):
you know? This is what's going on. I think was
the first time I saw Dante and I look worri
and then he finally says, yeah, the chinghaste, you're fucked.
I said why. He says, there aren't you La Linia's
aunto and he says, you know, the only good thing
is a year American. I said, yeah, but my cousin
is a cop aitas coup and I have family in
(29:04):
Quitas and he says, well, then you're really fucked. Something
may happen to them because of you. Alfredo doesn't have
time to dwell on the consequences of his reporting. As
far as he's concerned, his own life depends on getting
back to the US as fast as possible. So I
tell Dante, so, look, how do I get across? And
(29:24):
he basically says, why don't I drive you back? Because
I don't think you should walk. I'll just drive you
an SUV and basically just put me in the bag,
crossing the bag and I'm looking through the windows, and
I'm looking at all these places that I grew up,
Mighty Sky, you know, again, the Marches. At one point
(29:46):
I wanted to be a songwriter and a singer, and
we had a little studio but in that area. You know,
all these things are going through my mind. And I'm
also thinking, what if Dante is in on this, What
if he's not taking it as the bridge, but if
he's taking me somewhere, but he's taking me to the
cap And then I seen him on the phone and
he's he just sounds so nnchalant. It's just another normal day.
(30:09):
I'm trying to sort of get danted tell me everything's
gonna be okay. But the whole time he's in that
damn phone, Alfredo was panicking. He wasn't sure whether he
could trust the Devil's lawyer, whether Dante might still be
me Tito or on La Linea's payroll. In fact, Alfredo
wasn't even sure if he'd make it out of hauire
(30:30):
as alive. Alfredo was in the back of Dante's suv
(30:51):
trying to make out where they were going. It was
just a quick, little dry but to me it just
felt like forever. Finally it became that the lawyer was
taking him back to the border, and as they arrived
at the bridge that would allow Alfredo to escape to
the safety of El Paso, the lawyer got off the
phone and once again he had some final words for
(31:12):
the journalist. I think he saw how scared I was,
and he's trying to tell me how important it was
what I did. But he says, I get the metal wars,
it's who awaits. You have to have bars, don't be afraid.
So basically he's telling you, don't be intimidated, continue your work.
(31:32):
I think one of his lands was esposuis chained out.
There's a squid's damn, you know. Don't be intimidated. Keep searching,
keep asking questions, keep digging. In the moment that Dante
dropped him off at the bridge, Alfredo realized once and
for all that he could trust him. In fact, it
was the lawyer who helped him get to El Paso,
(31:54):
beyond the reach of La Lina and perhaps saved his
life in the process. So monica that moment where Alfredo
gets back to the bridge and he's able to cross
into Alpasso. You told me you understood exactly how he's feeling. Yeah. Certainly,
when I was reporting on the drug war in Huadis,
(32:15):
once I crossed over the bridge and drove underneath the
sign that said nis Welcome to the United States, I
would feel this rush of relief come over me, and
I would recognize just how stressed I had been on
the other side. But I knew where to draw the line.
As long as I reported on the victims of the
(32:38):
violence that the cartel exacts on the city of Huatas,
I was unlikely to be bothered. They don't care about
the victims. It did involve going into a dangerous city
where being in the wrong place at the wrong time
could get you killed. But the kind of reporting I
tried to do was reporting that wouldn't result in me
(33:01):
being specifically targeted. Nonetheless, you told me about those cowboy
boots and about thinking about what it might be like
to be stuffed in the back of someone's car. And
it's kind of astonishing to me how much risk Alfredo
took and you took to cover this story. But also
that both of you get to come home, And that's
(33:23):
something I found very striking about that exchange between Dante
and Alfredo. When Dante says to him, keep digging, it's
almost as though he's passing the torch because Alfredo can
go back to safety and Dante has to turn around
back to the city where his friend Mario Escobado was
assassinated not that long ago. It's a very poignant moment
(33:45):
in a sense, Dante sees Alfredo as this beacon of hope.
Maybe if the Americans can call out what's truly happening
in what is, something will change the fact that this
conversation takes place at the foot of the international bridge
that connects what is to al Passo. The bridge to
(34:06):
Dante might have symbolized the bridge between impunity and justice.
Dante had taken enormous risk in exposing to Alfredo who
was complicit in the murders of women in Juarez, and
it was because of him that the systematic involvement of
the police was confirmed and that the name La Lina
(34:28):
was published, disturbing their culture of silence. But as nonchalant
as Dante was talking on the phone as he drove
Alfredo back to the border, he was well aware that
they would likely be a price for talking to a journalist,
let alone saving his life. After publishing his story, Alfredo
moved on to Mexico City as he planned, and Dante
(34:49):
stayed in Juarez, but they stayed in touch. We talked
several times, but every time he caused it was like
a sense of emergency. It was like he was scared.
So I would just say, Dante, okay, I keep I
saw what's what's going on. I came back to Squats
because he wanted to meet me. He said, look, I
have things I want to share with your things I
want to tell you. But I thought he's got something big,
(35:13):
and we decided to meet somewhere near the bridge. I
was at the Kentucky club. I was there for an
hour than two hours, never showed up. Like a few
days later, I saw it in the news. He had
been killed right near the same area where I had
(35:35):
run to his office to gun down by hitman with
a car with new Mexico plates. Conveniently, the cameras were
not working that day. Dante was gone. Was his murder
ever solved? Murder was never saw. Do you have any
(35:59):
ideas while he was killed? I think oftentimes when people
get killed Mexico's because they know too much. I think
it's something I've learned. It's not always maybe smart to
try to know so much. But again, you know, we
were young, we were hopeful. You were certainly played a
(36:23):
role in my trying to steer away from covering the
drug cartels. Because I'll never forget a voicemail you left
on my phone. This is about ten years ago. Now
it's me, don't don't tell your mom. She means something
(36:47):
like Monica, we we like our soup cold or hot,
And I was like, that's some dark humor out of
why did you get from the cartels? You know, this
is like the cartels saying they liked a soup color hot,
you know it. Maybe five years it maybe ten years.
They might forgive you, but they're never going to forget,
(37:08):
and they might catch up with you someday. Equally, So
I got the gist of Alfredo's joke about the soup monica,
But what exactly does it mean? In other words, you
were their soup, and sooner or later they're gonna eat
you hot or cold. Sooner or later they'll take their revenge,
(37:28):
perhaps when you least expect it. So Alfredo came to
learn this, but Dante knew it all along, but nonetheless
he kept going. Remember Dante told Alfredo, this is what
is damn it. You've got to have guts, and Dante did.
In the end, he died, living up to his own
(37:49):
saying he suffered the same fate as his friend Mario Escobedo,
gunned down in the typical drive by execution favored by
La Lina. Dante may have started out as the devil's lawyer,
but in the end you could say he and Mario
gave their lives in the name of justice. La line
(38:14):
the line Dante had knowingly crossed it, and he paid
the ultimate price. He did live long enough to see
one of the bus drivers exonerated and the truth of
what was happening to the women in Huirez exposed in
the American press. But the other bus driver died in
prison in mysterious circumstances after a botched operation. Mario Escobado's father,
(38:37):
who led the protest in front of the huire As
Attorney General's office carrying his son's casket, was assassinated in
two thousand and nine at his office, along with his
other son, Edgar. There were eight women's bodies discovered in
the cotton fields in two thousand and one, and in
some sense that was just the beginning of the crime.
Within the space of a few years, at least four
(38:59):
people seeking to reveal the truth of those women's murders
had themselves been assassinated, and several others caught up in
the story also died prematurely. Even Vasconcelos, the drugs are
in Mexico City, who Alfredo met died in a plane
crash in two thousand and eight, and some suspected foul play.
(39:20):
Demanding justice in Juarez is a deadly business, which makes
that other line, the one that separates it from al Passo,
all the more significant. Alfredo could cross the bridge back
to safety, and he lived. Dante could drive Alfredo up
to the bridge, but he'd die in Huirez. But as
(39:43):
Howard Campbell told us, the cartel's reach doesn't stop at
the border. Al Pass was a dormitory for drug traffickers,
high level direct traffickers, hit man from the cartels, hundreds
of drug smugglers, probably hundreds of stash houses where drugs
are stored, trucking businesses that are dedicated to drug trafficking,
(40:05):
and so the economy of Elpass was completely saturated with
drugs and illegal money. And we consider this here normal
and not particularly a problem. As long as you don't
get hurt or you don't get in trouble, people just
kind of turn a blind eye. Even to this day,
there's dramatic inequality and unfairness in the relationship between the
(40:28):
two cities. Even though it has made a living off
of drug smuggling. Elpass is incredibly safe where I see
Lahuata is where half the population of Elpaso has relatives
and friends and the like. Is one of the most
violent cities in the world and dangerous cities in the world.
And I don't think most people in Olpasso really care
about changing that. There's a kind of way in which
(40:49):
people accept this inequality and this exploitation of Mexico as
a source for illegal drugs that we enjoy consuming and
we farm out the risk to the Mexicans who were
the ones that die by the thousands and the drug violence,
and so it isn't right. It's hypocritical, it's unjust, it's unfair.
But whether you like it or not, it's just everyday
(41:11):
life here on the border. Howard got an insight into
the depths at this hypocrisy from one of his students
at the University of Texas, El Paso. I believe he
was an immigration officer, and in the class we would
debate she was related to Mexico, and he would always
stand up for the US government and the other students,
many of them were Mexican Americans, hated the US Immigration
(41:33):
Service and so they didn't liked him, and he would
come to class in uniform. But I found it interesting
that he would wear a gold necklace around his neck
with a gold anchor, very expensive piece of jewelry. And
then one time I saw him at a very fancy
mall in West El Paso and he came out with
huge bags of expensive clothing that he had just purchased.
(41:54):
Well soon after he was my student, he was arrested
for being a corrupt immigration officer allowing large amounts of
cocaine the Huadas cartel to cross into Alpaso from Huadas
on the bridge. According to court documents Howard's student, the
immigration officer was charging the cartel ten thousand dollars for
(42:15):
each cocaine laden car that you waved through. This was
La Linea in action, except in Olpasso. They weren't murdering
young women or people who dared to ask questions, but
their money was just as capable of corrupting US officials.
And I was beginning to understand the deep irony of
the fence that divided the two cities. I would say
(42:38):
that it's a very contradictory place because even though you
have thousands of people that are involved in dirugt trafficking,
drug smuggling, drug dealing, and you also have thousands of
federal law agents, d EA, Customs, you name the agency.
You have one of the largest military bases in the world,
Fort Bliss, So there's soldiers everywhere. There's municipals, you know,
city cops, you know, state cops, any umber of law
(43:00):
enforcement agencies, the FBI in al Paso. So it's a
simultaneously it's this kind of zoo of criminals and the
law living together and even marrying each other. Alfredo was
talking about Juarez when he said, everybody's involved metito. But
the thing about metito is that it's never really clear
(43:22):
just how compromised a person is. And that brings us
back to an American law enforcement official whose name is
lightly familiar by now, Hardrick Crawford, who was head of
the FBI, started to go over there a lot and
God associated with high ranking businessman in Huadas. Hardrick was
(43:43):
the most outspoken American official on the killings of women
in Juarez. He even gave a quote to a Mexican
newspaper where he called the murders crimes against humanity. I
had a moral mission that I felt that I was
empowered on a different level than US constitution. That mission
would give Hardrick a first hand understanding of the word metito,
(44:07):
and it would unleash a series of events that called
his own life into question. So I was in the
house by myself and my brother said, direct, did you
ever think about eating your gun, I said, I did.
I did seriously consider killing myself. I'm as Velashan and
(44:33):
Monica see you next time you see. Do you know
(44:55):
I Felicia Forgotten? The Women of Juarez is co hosted
(45:22):
by Me, Monica and me oswald Oshin. Forgotten is executive
produced by Me and Mangesh Hattikila. Our producers are Julian
Weller and Katrina Norvell. Sound editing by Julian Weller, Jacopo
Penzo and Aaron Kaufman. Lucas Riley is our story editor.
(45:43):
Caitlin Thompson is our consulting producer. Recording assistance this episode
from Michael Perez. Production support from Emily Maronoff and Aaron Kaufman.
Our theme tune is the Chemo as performed by Natalie Lae.
Music by Leonardo Hablum and Hakkabo Libermann. Additional music by
(46:05):
Aaron Kaufman.
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