Nepotism

John Gibler talks to Meño Larios about how Transportista contacted Detective. During conversations with Meño, the pilot recounts how he began his career in aviation... until he accepted an offer from a regional kingpin.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Well, it's a kind of a funny and strange story.
He used to call or send messages to Diego. This
guy term for Dista Fernando. He's in jail, that he
somewhow has access to telephone to cell phones, and he

(00:24):
was putting a lot of messages to Diego. This wasn't
the fall of nine, twenty nineteen, couple months before the
pandemic started. So he was telling Diego that he had
a great story about the narco and politics and all
this stuff that the journalists are always looking for. So Diego,

(00:48):
who is the director of Detective, gave me the assignment
to talk to this guy. Sometimes I'm like, I don't
know if I can call it a filter for the
story we or we are always looking for new stories
to tell and stories that have to do with Mexico,
and this has to do they with the United States.

(01:10):
That's the voice of Manueladius, the reporter with Detectiva who
interviewed Fernando Blanco Sena over the course of about a year.
I asked him how he and Detective had come upon
Blancio on his story. Blankio, he said, first reached out
to Diego Sarno, sending him private messages on Twitter Diego

(01:31):
and Manuel wanted to know if there was a story there.
Blankio San Diego cell number and Diego as Manuel to
get in touch with him. First, he was like, really
mysterious guy because he only gave me a phone number,
and he told me, you gotta call this guy. He's
supposed to be in jail. He's been telling me that
he has a great story to tell us that is

(01:54):
better than a documentarios released like a couple of months
earlier in Netflix. So guy started like, I don't know
has the right name. He was looking for Diego and
he was like really anxious to talk to him. So
Diego so Orno gave me the assignment and so I
call him. Thus, in the fall of twenty nineteen, Tornando

(02:18):
Blencio Sena, using an illegal cell phone from inside a
federal prison in North Carolina, started harassing if that's the
right word for it. Diego Sono Osorno is a well
known journalist in Mexico, author of numerous books, and an
award winning documentary director, and made twenty nineteen. Osorno and
Dejective released nineteen ninety four, a documentary series profiling the

(02:43):
Zapatista uprising in Chiapas and the assassination of the Mexican
presidential candidate Luis Dondo Colosio and Tijuana. Mino himself was
one of the lead investigators on the series. After nineteen
ninety four aired, Blenkio began writing to Diego offer him
a story, a great story, the kind of story that

(03:03):
journalists are always looking for, A story that would, he said,
be better than the Zapatista rebellion and the murder of Colosio.
Blankho does not lack confidence in the value of the
story he has to tell. Diego signed the story to Meno,
but then spoke with, exchanged messages with, and interview blank
Ho over the course of about ten months. Between October

(03:26):
twenty nineteen in August twenty twenty, he recorded three long
conversations with blank Jo. Beginning in December twenty nineteen. The
first calls made to an illegal cell phone inside the
prison had poor quality audio, so they decided to record
Blankho's responses to questions using what's up audio files. They

(03:49):
used these files for the Spanish language podcast Grandsportista Faility,
and then they asked the amazing actor Juquienkosio to record
English translations of blink Hio's audio files. I'm currently Lucklap
in a prison in North Carolina called Reverse Correction Now Facility,

(04:12):
and what follows I'll retell a shorter version of the
story blink Yo told the Fectiva, using the transcripts, audio
and recordings of Kosio reading for blink Yo in English.
I'll mostly try to stay out of this story the whole,
my reactions and questions and analysis for later, but before
I can do that, the way Blinkieo talks about women

(04:36):
was the first thing that struck me when I listened
to a story, and so many Narco's stories told by men,
whether they be books or films, fiction or non fiction,
The women who appear only appear in their relation to men,
and that relationship is almost always one of a sexual nature.
The women in these stories, as told by men are girlfriends, lovers,

(04:59):
why and sex workers. Occasionally, women make brief appearances abstracted
from the realm of sexual service as mothers and daughters.
Most of the time, these women's lives are either destroyed, threatened,
or saved by the male villains and heroes. Few and
far between are the works dealing with the drug trafficking

(05:21):
drug war industry, written by men that would pass any
variation of the Becta Wallace test. The basic version of
that test asks whether in a work of fiction, two
women talk to each other about something other than a man.
Blink Heeal's story is no exception, but not only that,

(05:42):
and blink Heeal's telling his passage from a young successful
government pilot to losing his job and having his license
suspended hinged on the betrayal of a woman. My god man,
my first through life. She betrayed me. She cheated on me.

(06:05):
This woman's betrayal would lead the wounded victim Blankho to
show up to work drunk, that is, to try to
pilot a government or plane with alcohol in his blood.
He said that he tried to drown his sorrows and alcohol,
and then I was hunk over, hunk over as fuck.
It was easy for me to drink a couple of

(06:28):
gold ones to get rid of it. So he had
a couple of beers before going to work, and unfortunately
one of the break backs crapped one of the right
side breaks of a golden Eagle sess enough for twenty one.
The break was damage and it's sidetracked. The plane went

(06:52):
off the runway and crashed. No one was injured, but
it all went to hell from there. When they saw
my bloods alcohol level, my alliances was revoked. So, as
Blankio tells it, a woman's betrayal would lead him to
a life of crime. Later in his story, however, Blankio

(07:14):
describes his first stint in jail as follows. It was
a mixed prison, so to say, there were men and
women in psych We could meet with women and ascertained
recreation hours. Just picture the conjugal visits, the amenities, the alcohol,
the phones. We didn't want for anything. Unfortunately, Blankio is

(07:39):
describing the year or so he spent in a prison
in Baca, California, in the early nineteen nineties, and the
cozy relationships he and his employers shared with prison officials.
We tell those people ages in LAPAs. Visits were pretty frequent,

(07:59):
female visits equally. Such fun times. Man, even in the
wardens under the beauty's offices, I would receive my visitors. Josh,
imagine I lived like a rock star because I was
so popular in the region. John pretty good looking. It was.

(08:24):
It was like a fashion round way. So nice to remember, man,
so many of them. So many things got a bit
complicated with my wife. She obviously called me on it,
you know, and well, I tell her what I always say,

(08:45):
as long as you don't see anything, it's like it
never happened. The way Blinkio describes women and his relationship
to women, and the hypocrisy with which he describes the
pain of suffering betrayal and then invalidates his wife Spain
upon suffering his betrayal, as long as you'd see anything,

(09:05):
it's like precisely what caused me a mistrust blink Hill
from the very beginning of his story. In January twenty
twenty one, colleagues at The Ictive reached out to me
about a curious individual they've been interviewing using a clandestine
cell phone from inside to prison in North Carolina. The

(09:29):
man claimed to have worked as a pilot, entrepreneur and
air logistics coordinator in the international drug trade for some
thirty years. My friends at The Dictive produced a podcast
in Spanish and wanted to know if I'd be interested
in working on a sister podcast in English looking into
this man and his story. Sure, I said, but I'd
need to do my own investigations see what I can find.

(09:51):
That invited the legendary Mexican actor Joaquin Kocio to read
the English translations of Frans Bortista's quoted interviews with Manulito.
My name des Gracilamnte is John Gibler, and this in
a sense is Transportista. Episode four, Nepotism. I'm not a

(10:34):
pilot of the Guisianans. There were a series of circumstances
that let me move more quickly into my career. Fernando
Blancio Signa was born in nineteen sixty one into an
upper middle class family in Baja California. He told Manuel
that his paternal grandfather was a radio operator and his
father was an accountant. Both had worked for Mexico's public

(10:56):
airline company, Mihica. His father, also a professional musician, used
to take Fernando and his siblings to the airport to
visit the control tower, and when they were little. Blinki
went to school in Baja California and Mexico City. His
parents then paid for him to attend flight school in

(11:18):
San Diego, California. Dre Blencio met and became friends with
Carlos Bega de la Maddin, the brother of Quico de
la Maddin. Would become the governor of Baja California in
twenty thirteen to twenty nineteen. Carlos is also the nephew
of Miguel de la MADRIDI, who was the president of
Mexico from nineteen eighty two to nineteen eighty eight. Blenkio

(11:41):
says that Carlos Bega de la Maddin had two airplanes
at the flight school in San Diego. They became friends
and used to fly together to Mexico City. One day,
Carlos le Blenkio know that his uncle Miguel would soon
get a de vassal. During the seventy one years the
pre single party rule in Mexico, the devasso was the

(12:04):
way people referred to the outgoing president's manner of choosing
his successor by pointing his finger at him. To be
chosen as the pre's candidate was in effect, to be
chosen as the next president. Blenkhio's friendship with Carlos Vega
thus landed him a job fresh out of flight school
with the Mexican government's Presidential Flight Services lank diplomats and

(12:27):
officials traveling on presidential business. Blenkio himself described this stroke
of luck to menu as that is nepotism and its
maximum expression. Blinkio says that Carlos Vega, with his political connections,
helped him get his national and international pilot's licenses in

(12:48):
order and to send him to take flight courses in
Arizona on the Mexican government's time. Blinkio recalls the early
days of his first job as a pilot in the
following terms. Imagine, He says, me, is this young upstart
with a presidential badge, a pistol in a free car.

(13:11):
It was insane. Everything I earned I spent on getting drunk.
It was in this context that Blinkio told the story
of heartbreak my girl from my first true love. She
cheated and getting wasted, waking up the next day with
a blistering hangover, drinking a few beers at the airport

(13:32):
to ease that hangover before flying, and then getting busted
with alcohol in his blood while piloting a federal government
plane in Zamodam. After that incident, the government fired him
and suspended his license. He went to hell. From there
my alliances, Blinkio went to work selling cars with a
cousin in Mexico City. He started making money, bought a

(13:54):
few cars for himself, and then nearly killed himself in
an accident in Guadalajara because Dad went to pick him
up and took him back to Baja California. He started
a motorcycle repair shop and got into motocross. Then he
ran into an old high school friend with an air
cargo service for fisheries and asked him for a job.

(14:14):
At that time, one did not need a pilot's license
to fly the small aircraft used to look for tuna
near the coast. The friend gave him a job, and
Blakia started flying tuna search planes. At some point the
friend took Blankio to meet his uncle Chava Karuius. Before
all this, I already knew who Chaubia was, a famous

(14:37):
pilot from Antenaa worked on the street. Was that Challa
to sport to marijuana? He'd been luck up? Everybody knew it.
It was kind of an Uran lay, and you could
say the urban legend would soon offer blank Hills some
side jobs that paid quite a bit more than spotting tuna.
On my first job, let's say, at the service of

(14:57):
drug traffickers, I refuse a ast your brand plane, a
plane that flew back to Colombia. They pay me seventh
grand I actually reus fit for the rest never came.
Bankia did another refueling job and was set to do
a third one when the scheduled co pilot bowed out

(15:18):
at the last minute. Supposedly, soul Philoso Romero was going
to be jealous co pilot into the United States, but
he got cold feet and excused himself, saying he had diarrhea.
Blankio's friend encouraged him to step in for the pilot
with cold feet, so he told me and go for it.

(15:38):
Go for it is her cans. Don't be a wors
do it, And well do you know me? I went
for it, and he indeed went for it, and that
would only be the beginning next time. Transportista is a

(16:11):
detective production with Exile Content Studio in partnership with iHeartRadio's
Michael Tura podcast Network. Directed and narrated by John Gibbler,
Transportista's voice by Jaquinkosio, editing and sound design by Ferrando
de la Rossa and Pedro je Garcia. Reporting by John
Gibbler Emanuelarios, produced by Juli Gonzalez. Voice recording by Ugo

(16:35):
Merino and Rene Garcia Transportissa's interviews translated by Carlo riz Argais.
Production supervision by Nando Vila and alvar Rosespedes. Associate producers
Alonso Aguilar and Alejandro Duran Diego and Riquezoro Is the
creator and executive producer, along with Danielle Eilenberg and Eaclei.

(16:56):
Executive producers for iHeartMedia are Cono Burne and just sell Less.
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