July 10, 2023 • 41 mins
Liliana Rivera Garza lived in Mexico and journaled everything about her life until she was murdered. Her sister, author Cristina Rivera Garza, looked for clues inside Liliana’s diaries and letters. Determined to figure out what happened, Garza talks about her search for her sister’s killer.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
She was always very careful with her stuff. She was
very orderly. She was the kind of person who would
keep letters that she wrote, copies of letters that she wrote.
I had an idea that she was doing that, but
I certainly didn't know the extent and the kinds of
thing that she was keeping in these boxes.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the host of the historical
true crime podcast Tenfold More Wicked and the co host
of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right. I've traveled
around the world interviewing people for the show, and they
are all excellent writers. They've had so many great true
(00:55):
crime stories, and now we want to tell you those
stories with details that have been published. Tenfold War Wicked
Presents Wicked Words is about the choices that writers make,
good and bad. It's a deep dive into the stories
behind the stories. Many of the books that we talk
about on the show are very personal, and this book
(01:17):
is incredibly personal to its author. It's about a woman
in Mexico who journaled about everything in her life until
she was murdered. Were their answers to her death inside
her diaries and letters. Her sister, Christina Rivera Garza wrote
a book called Liliana's Invincible Summer. Well, let's start from
(01:39):
the beginning. Where did you two grow up? What's the
family dynamic? Like, you know, what's your age difference? All
of that?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Well, we are au Bonner family. I was born actually
on the Mexican side of the US Mexico borderline, in
Matamoros and Olippus, and five years later Leleana was born
in that re Mavolyon, also a city, an industrial city
in the north of Mexico. It was only the two
of us, two girls. My father was a scientist, my
(02:10):
mother was a homemaker. We led what I believed to
be a quite an average middle class life in Mexico.
We went to school in Central Mexico. We moved to
central Mexico when I was about I don't know, twelve
years old. My sister was much younger. We moved to
(02:31):
this city in the highest city actually in Mexico, to
Luca Tluca, very close to Mexico City. I very soon
moved back to Mexico City. We go to the university
and Liliana, who arrived in te Luca at a much
younger age and developed stronger relationships that I did. She
(02:52):
remained there in te Luca for her high school. It
was later when it came time for her to choose
she chose architecture, and she too moved to Mexico City.
She was a student at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in
Mexico City and as Caposalco twenty years old.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
What would you say your relationship the intimacy of your
relationship was like there was.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
A big age difference between the two of us, five
years when you are very young. For many many years,
we never shared friends. It was very difficult for us.
But what we did share was swimming lessons. The swimming
pool that became a place in which we always knew
we were sisters. There we told each other secrets, We
(03:41):
kept each other informed by what we were doing. We
had great admiration for each other. We exchanged books. I've
come to learn now that I've been doing that, I've
done my research around her life that she read pretty
much every single book that I recommended her to read.
She passed him along to her dearest friends as well.
(04:04):
There was a communication, a close one between the two
of us, but there were issues too that we didn't
talk about. One of those issues that I presume was
very difficult for her to actually share was the story
that she got into with his boyfriend of hers. She
met into Luca in the late nineteen eighties angle Gonzale.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Rams and how old was she when they met?
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Late fourteens, early fifteens In Mexico, we have the second
Secudaria secondary school before going properly to the high school.
She met him precisely in the first year of her
high school.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
What do you remember her saying about him, her emotions
around him? Was this a big infatuation and did he
seem to reciprocate it?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Was an interesting story from the very beginning, it seems
that he had to really try very hard to get
Leana's attention. He was a fast, short, stocky, blonde guy,
temperamental and from the very beginning he was very much
obsessed with Leana. He talked to her friends. He wanted
(05:16):
to make sure that they were going to become nobvious,
that they were going to go steady right, and Lilliana
after thinking about that, after you know, flirting with other guys.
After considering several options. Eventually, a year after they met,
they became sweethearts. They became nobvious.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
When she was a teenager. They were both teenagers.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, he was two years older than her. They were
more or less the same age.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Did your mother have a sense at all for him?
Did she have some sort of uneasiness or did she
think that they would be a good match.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
It was kind of complicated. He at that point was
very solicitous. He had a car, he was very willing
to take everywhere she wanted to go. She came and
picked her up. He was always paying attention to what
she wanted to do. So, to my mom, to my father,
(06:14):
those were good signs. We didn't have an idea. We
couldn't read all that attention as control. We read most
of that attention as just an infatuation, as a loving
interest on his side.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Was Liliana recording her thoughts journaling at this age or
did that come a little bit later.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
No. Actually, Leana was writing from a very young age,
and she was writing pretty much about every single thing
that was happening to her. She was non necessarily very
direct or open about her ideas. At times, she was
even cryptic, but at the beginning, it seems that she
(06:57):
was very much interested in him, and she had several
entries in a diary indicating that she was very happy
and that she got to really really like this guy.
Something happened though, pretty soon and some months after they
started to go steady. And that's something that happened is
(07:18):
something that is something that Leona never quite described, at
least not openly. It was something that she expressed as
a way of loving her that she disliked, a way
of connecting or trying to be with her that she
didn't find either appealing. She just said, I just don't
(07:42):
like that. I don't like the way she wants to
love me. And so that's how I came to learn
that there was something complicated there, something that she was
trying to get at and not necessarily elaborating further on that.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
She went on to university right to major architecture, So
this was a long term relationship. Were they together when
she went to school?
Speaker 2 (08:05):
That was a major issue too, because she was admitted
at this university in Mexico City, he was not. She
moved from that industrial city in central Mexico de Luca
to live on her own for the first time in
Mexico City, sprawling metropolis, and she was obviously meeting new people,
(08:31):
experiencing new facets of life, getting interested, really passionate about
her field, and he was not. And it was then
that he became even more controlling, increasingly aggressive too.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
And this was the only relationship she had between sort
of fifteen sixteen up until what ends up happening is
that right had she broken up with him at any point.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
They broke up several times, especially when Leanna was living
already in Mexico City, she would try to go out
with some other friends. She developed close relationships with, at
least two of them. One of them, Draule Spino Madrigal,
actually was profoundly in love with her, and one of
(09:18):
the most tender testimonies that I was witnessed to precisely
came from him. So she was, she was, and she
told this to all her friends. She was trying to
get out of that relationship, but she didn't know how
to do it. Jil Gonzale Ramos was very insistent. He
was carrying a gun. Lilliana confided one of her friends
(09:41):
that he had told her that if she let him,
he was going to kill herself. But I saw there
is a woman just growing very rapidly, discovering a world
that she was really passionate about, and a man who
wouldn't let her.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Go, And you and your parents didn't have a sense
for how disturbing their relationship was unraveling at this point.
Before what happens happens.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
This is the late twentieth century, this is the late eighties,
and I think all across the world, not only Mexico,
it was very difficult to talk about domestic violence, even
more difficult to talk about violence between just a young couple.
In addition to that in Mexico US around the world,
a lot of this kind of behavior was framed within
(10:33):
the narrative of romantic love, passion, passion, jealousy, all the
kinds of things that now we will be very worried
about and we see red flags all over. I don't
think this was the case in the nineteen nineties. I
think Lillana knew that something was not right. I think
some of the friends, closer friends of Illana were aware
(10:56):
that this guy was not necessarily the kind of person
that Leana was going to growing up with. They never
saw any incidents of violence for example. So they knew
something was off that none of us, including Lilliana, I think,
knew how dangerous the situation was.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
So tell me about the events that lead up to
July sixteenth, nineteen ninety. When was the last time you
had spoken to her before this happens.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Well, I have to tell you I have moved to
the United States before. Then, in nineteen eighty eight, I
moved to Houston to I enrolled into a master's degree
and later a PhD. So I was very much living
in the United States while this story was developing. So
(11:44):
Leana would tell me about what was happening. But taking
a look at the letters that we exchanged, at that point,
we were mostly talking about what was happening in our world,
about shared interest about movies, and she was not necessarily
talking about about him. In the years previous to this
nineteen ninety, Leleana was really eagerly embracing life. She had
(12:09):
travel with her friends to places like Wahaka in southern Mexico.
She had become a teaching assistant to a professor in
her university. She was reading all kinds of stuff, not
necessarily architecture related. So it seems that the freedom that
(12:30):
she was so insistent about the freedom that she really
cherished was becoming increasingly annoying to Unca. That was a
situation that a couple of months prior to that July sixteenth,
I see a woman trying to find her way in
the world of loving and not loving these person who
(12:53):
had been very important in her life. She was developing
new interests, and it was becoming increasingly complicated. Just to
balance that situation.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Let's talk about what happens with her murder from your
point of view, When do you find out anything after
July sixteenth, and how do you find it out?
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Well, that was a story very hard to put together,
and I had to read the newspaper articles that were
published about it. I had to I talked to Lilliana's
friends about how things developed the morning of July sixteenth.
According to most witnesses, what had happened is that Lilliana
(13:35):
had been working that Sunday, July fifteenth, in a university
project with this friend of his Manolo, a classmate too,
and a guy who had been in love with her
in the past. It seems like they were at the
initial stages of a new relationship. They've been together the
whole day working on this project, and at about ten
(13:56):
o'clock at night he left. Lilliana had asked to stay
with her because she was feeling lonely, and he said no,
I had to go to my mom. I promised my
mom that I would get there. I'll pick you up
tomorrow morning, early in the morning so that we can
take this project to class. That was at ten o'clock.
According to most witnesses, what happened is that Anhel Gonzalez
(14:19):
Ramos arrived out around one o'clock in the morning, jumped
over the fence according to some. According to authors, he
borrowed a room to open the gate, the main gate
of the place where Leana was leaving. In any case,
what I'm trying to say is that he was not
invited or is expected that night. We don't know exactly
(14:43):
what happened during those hours, but by five o'clock he
left the place. Manolo came by in the morning at
about seven point thirty and realized that Lilliana was dead.
According to the scientific report, she was suffocated. She was
renting a room in this larger home. The owner of
(15:06):
the home. Manola called the owner of the home. Both
of them very quickly called the police. The police came,
The police started to call witnesses, friends of Williana. Detectives
and investigators showed up to the scene. And meanwhile, my
parents were traveling. They were in Europe at that point
(15:28):
and I was in the United States, so they were
trying very hard to locate either of us so that
we could come to Mexico City immediately. I was, as
I said, in Houston, and I received the visit of
members of the Mexican consulate. They knock on my door,
and I was very strange. You know, people don't come
on announced in the United States usually, so I knew
(15:50):
something was strong. And as soon as they said her name,
I knew that the news were not good. They told
me very same what had happened, and I immediately called
my family, family that I have in Houston. We got
together about tickets and we left for Mexico City as
(16:10):
soon as we could.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
And when you arrived in Mexico City, what was the explanation?
Where were they in the investigation at that point?
Speaker 2 (16:19):
This is something that I actually mentioned in the book.
When I was on the plane, on the flight going
to Mexico City, I was not given any kind of explanation.
I was told that my sister was no longer with us,
and I was thinking, what could have happened, what could
have happened? And then there was this point an uncle
of mine said, the only thing I wish for her
(16:41):
is that she had a true and beautiful love in
her life. And at that point something really down at me,
and I was thinking, that's what happened. So I must
have known something, I must have remembered something, because that
was my first conclusion. So as soon as we arrived
in Mexico City, we were taking to the place where
(17:04):
where Lilliana was. She was no longer in the house
where she was killed. We had to organize taking her
from Mexico City to Toluca and organize all the family
members who were coming. It was very, very confusing, and
in fact, it's been thanks to the interviews that I've
been conducting with friends and family members that I've been
(17:24):
able to remember much of what had happened. At that point,
I really didn't remember much of it. Everything happened very fast,
there were many, many people involved, and the only thing
that we were told was that there was a strong
suspicion that Uncle Gonzales Ramos, Lilliana's ex boyfriend, that he
(17:44):
was a person that the police was looking for as
the main person of interest in the case.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Did you and your family have faith in the police
in Mexico City that they would follow through on all
of this, because I'm assuming that was the main suspect.
Like you've said, we.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Had our doubts definitely now looking at the records, though,
what I realized is that they did what they were
supposed to do at the beginning, and then I suppose
my interpretation is that they just didn't consider this to
be an important case, so they after a couple of
(18:34):
months of doing what they were supposed to be doing,
you know, they just quit. They didn't continue.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Because he vanished. Is that right escaped?
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Yeah. We didn't know exactly where he had gone, but
we knew that he was no longer in Tuluca, and
perhaps he was no longer in Mexico.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
At what point do you discover all of this material
and when does it start clicking in your head that
this would be a book that would shine a light
on an issue that's clearly been in the dark all
over the world, but in Mexico too well.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
One of the major obstacles to even think or to
go through this experience is that when this kind of
violence gets framed as a passionate crime, pretty much this
is a way of intrinsically blaming the victim and acceenerating
the perpetrator. So it's very hard to talk about is
a story that is very hard to write about in
(19:32):
the language of patriarchy, the system that is both causing
the problem and silencing the problem at the same time.
So you have to do a lot to language, a
lot to the narratives that we live by in order
to truly honor the victims in this story. So it
(19:52):
was very hard for me, both as a sister, as
a human being, and as a writer to even think
about the possibility of writing this story. But over the
last twenty thirty years, there has been a very strong
feminist movement in Mexico, throughout Latin America, women's mobilizations in general,
placing a greater emphasis on gender violence and specifically on femicide,
(20:18):
the most little of these violences. So I think all
these years after the fact, I found myself now with
the language that I needed to tell the story. And also,
very importantly, I had been thinking about reopening the case
since more or less twenty nineteen. But then it came
(20:40):
twenty twenty, and the COVID pandemic had us, and then
we all knew that we could die at any moment.
And at that point I knew that I needed to
write this book, that this was a book, that I
didn't want to die without having written it, and that
there was a commitment of myself side of responsibility, that
(21:01):
I had to tell my sister's story because otherwise she
would have been erased by the violence that took her
from us.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Tell me about the research, so we know the journal
entries anything that your sister's written. You had access to
and you interviewed friends and neighbors. Were the police at
all helpful? Were court records helpful? Did you want to
learn more about Ramos?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Many things happened at the same time. I knew that
we had boxes with Lillana's belongings in our home. They
had been there for three years, no one had there
to touch them. I came down in January of twenty
twenty to my parents' house looking, in fact, for some
kind of day book, some kind of address book that
(21:49):
might help me locate Llana's friends. In Mexico City. I
didn't know their names. I didn't know if they were alive.
I didn't know if they were still living in Mexico City.
I didn't know what had happened to them. So my
husband and I started to do all We became these detectives.
We were trying to locate people, we were trying to
(22:10):
gather as much evidence as we were able to do.
That took a lot of time and a lot of efforts,
and I'm really very thankful to my husband. So I
will learn on this Baragos who really I mean, he's
a visual artist that now we know that he is,
he could be a really good detective too. He was
the one who located most of Liliana's friends, and once
(22:34):
he was able to do that, I proceeded to talk
with them to have long phone interviews which I transcribed.
I didn't record any of that. I transcribed them. I
talked to them very openly about what I was doing.
I told him that I was going to be sharing
with them the drafts of this book and that they
would have a say in whatever I was writing, and
(22:56):
that if they didn't agree with what I was writing,
that at any point I could stop it was their
work what I really wanted to be able to bring
into page, and the same happened with my parents. Obviously,
we had had many conversations about this, specifically in the
latter years, and they also got a chance to read
(23:18):
the draft before I even sent it to the press.
I think it was very important to me just to
create that trust between us, knowing that the final goal
was not only to uncover and to share Lilliana's life,
but also that at that point I was very much
trying to catch the killer. I worked with the police,
(23:41):
I hired a lawyer because it was very hard to
even get the police case. Many years had passed that
some members of the General Attorney's office, some workers that
had told me, well, you know, it's been such a
long time, we might have destroyed that file. So all
(24:02):
these issues really propelled me into writing the book. This
is a book, by the way, that I wanted to
write from the very beginning of my writing career, and
it's a book that I tried to write several times prior,
and I failed utterly every single time that I tried
to write it. But when I actually came across her
(24:23):
own writings, this effective archive as I'm calling it. I
knew that I finally was going to be able to
do it. I had the time, I had all the materials,
I had all these other voices around, and I knew
that this time I was strong enough also personally to
go through the experience of bringing her life back to us.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
But it must have been incredibly painful to hear her
voice and you know, to know her so well, and
to be able to sort of visualize it. I'm assuming
she wrote about very difficult things involving Romos at the time,
or did she not She did.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
It was very painful, no doubt about that, even uncovering
you know, her talents, her wisdom, her humor, even the
happy things were painful because she's no longer less right, obviously,
this is the most difficult world that I have ever written.
But at the same time, just having the opportunity to
get so close to her and to be able to
(25:22):
recreate this kind of community within which she is very
much alive, I think that compensates also for the pain.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Your parents, I can't imagine thought participating in this book
was easy. What do you think is the most difficult
thing that you either asked them or that they felt
compelled to explain to you in the book.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
I had no idea how they were going to be
reacting when I first approached the issue. When I told
them I was trying to do this, I was incredibly careful.
For many years, it was very difficult for us even
utter her name. So I had no idea. Really, when
I say I had no idea, I'm very honest. I
didn't know what they were going to think, and I
(26:08):
was quite surprised when their very first reaction. Both of
them were not only Willings, but also eager to participate
in the whole process, the legal process and the writing
process as well. I think for them it was as
important as it was for me to take Leleana's life
out of that passionate crime narrative, to restitute her voice
(26:33):
and her perspective, and to tell the story of her
life according to her own words and values. And I
think that that's been incredibly helpful too for all of
us as a family, just to be able to tell
a story that honors her life, that pays attention to
the way in which she died, but that is not
(26:56):
only concentrated on that. This is something that that happens
very often when violence is involved, the whole story evolves
and develops around the violent act, and at times we
forget that there are entire, complicated, complex, beautiful lives too.
So this is something that I'm trying to do very
(27:19):
consciously in this book.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
I can't imagine that families don't have some level of
feeling of I don't know if regrets the right word,
but just a mourning that they would feel over the circumstances,
like as if they could have stopped it, which I
think probably everyone knows would not be the case. I
don't think you could stop this.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
You are right. I think experts on this kind of
violence would agree that families they go through these experiences
are very hard on themselves. They blame themselves, and I
think this is something that happened to us. There is
a lot of guilt and there's a lot of shame
in a mourning process that actually never quite begins. So
(28:02):
because if the story cannot be told, if you cannot
wrest this story from the patriarchal narrative that essentially involves silencing,
then you cannot mourn properly. Right, So I think that
understanding the mechanisms going through all these different witnesses, looking
(28:25):
at the story from as many perspectives as I was
able to do through interviews and archival research and field
research and all that, I think it finally gives us
an opportunity to articulate the story in a way that
did not involve blaming the victim and certainly did not
(28:46):
involve eccenerating the perpetrator. The femicider, as we say in Spanish,
it's famous. See that. Interestingly enough, there is not a
word in English that fully translates this one, femsida. So
I'm getting to say lately the word femicider, which is
(29:07):
you know, it would be the closer translation. The word
is not necessarily in vogue or in use in the
American English. But I think that as we see domestic
violence cases grow also in the United States, even enough
to be called a siling epidemic, I think that the
(29:28):
language as to adapt to and perhaps just by calling
the killer a femicider, we will be contributing to create
more awareness about a violence that is pretty much a
problem across the world.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Well, let's talk about your pursuit of Ramos. Did you
have help from the police in Mexico City thirty years
later or do you still feel like the same attitude
about femicide is pervasive within the police department in Mexico
all over the country.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Yeah, Well, look, fortunately or unfortunately, the number of femicides
is growing so much in Mexico. The data is well
known about ten women are killed in Mexico on a
daily basis, and there is now a unit of femicides
specifically devoted to femicides in Mexico City. And the unit
is led by a lawyer that I admire very much. Sayurira,
(30:25):
that's her name, and so I've had long conversations with
herd that have been extremely useful. That doesn't mean that
other areas of General Attorney's Office are equally concerned or
even efficient about justice. When I published the book, I
created a Gmail account. When I published the book in Spanish,
(30:49):
I should say in every interview that I gave, I
mentioned that I was going to be using this Gmail
account to receive tips or any kind of information than
my leaders to these consale lums. Eventually, I learned one
of these anonymous sources sent me a link and that
(31:10):
took me to a funeral, a digital funeral of someone
whose name was michel Angelo Giovanni. These link contained pictures
from Michelle Angelo Giovanni, who had died drowned in southern
California on May the second, twenty twenty. The pictures belonged
(31:32):
to him. In my view, I communicated with the police
in Mexico because, regardless of what I believed, this is
something that they should be able to confirm. I was
told that they were going to do all they could
in order to confirm this information. This happened more or
less a year and a half ago, and to this
(31:55):
day I have not received any kind of information regarding
this case.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Did you reach out to Ramos's family in Mexico after
this happened or was that something you just wanted to
stay away from.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
I wanted to stay away from that because.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
It was part of the active investigation exactly.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
It was an active investigation, and I didn't want to
interfere with that.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
So what's the next step? Is there a next step
if we are assuming that Giovanni is Ramos and he
is dead, never seen justice for Liliana's murder in that way,
if we assume that, is there any bit of closure
for your family at all?
Speaker 2 (32:35):
That's such a good question, and I'm glad I mentioned
earlier as Sayuriaretra the lawyer, because once I learned about
this possibility that the killer had died, I was, as
you can imagine, very distraught, and that was a situation
that was not expecting. I was not expecting that. So
I talked to Sayuriaretta in something that she said, and
(32:57):
for me it was very important to hear there are
other aspects of justice. Justice is not only punitive in
the law of victims. This is a law that exists
in Mexico. It's equally important the issue of memory and
truth and the restitution of that. And I think, obviously
we're not going to get Lillana back, but is extremely
(33:20):
important just to be able to have the truth, and
in this case, her truth, her perspective, her view on
this full story, and for us to be able to
fully mourn her death and to build a collective memory
of Lilliano Rivera Garza among us. This is not a
(33:40):
minor dead. This is where a mourning that was forcibly
silenced has become a collective practice. So the more people
remember Lilliana, the more her name is pronounced in public
spheres in life, the more she is she remains with us,
and I think that's very important for me, for my family,
(34:03):
for those of us who believe that the dead continue,
that some part of them continue to be materially close
to us.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
I understand I think now the impact of the book
on you and your family and you personally, as this
experience of becoming closer with your sister and like you said,
putting her name out there so that there can be
some healing. Was there any unexpected benefit of this book?
Do you think, as far as the narrative that we've
(34:32):
been talking about, where you actually see people and hear
people saying this book could make a difference in this country.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
I was not expecting that, to be honest with you,
and I've been so pleasantly surprised by the way in
which young women specifically but in general readers of the
book have embraced Lilliana. She's been part of international women's
stay demonstrations, her name is being graffited on different places
on walls of Mexico City. Not long ago, I visited
(35:04):
Wadalajara in Mexico, where a very important book fair takes
place every year, and students from different high schools, having
read the book, organized a demonstration a procession of sorts
throughout the city, just honoring her name and honoring her life.
And so I think she would have been very happy
(35:24):
just to learn that her experience might be illuminating to others,
that might help others to articulate their own stories, to
go through experiences that are very hard to enunciate, and
so feeling that embraced, that embraced, it is very real.
I think has been more than I expected.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
In my writing. When I write books, I write about
crime and history, and a requirement for me is I
have to have memoirs and journals and letters to feel
closer to the people to really be able to sort
of rebuild their world. I sometimes feel like I'm invading
their privacy, and these are people who have died one
hundred or more years ago. Did you struggle with that
(36:10):
when you were piecing together this book, that there were
things that you were reading that clearly no one was
meant to read except for Lilliana to a certain extent.
And for me, I try to pack those feelings away
because I feel like the greater good of what my
book would do needs this to resonate with people, needs
these details. Did you feel like that did you really
(36:31):
struggle at all with publishing any of the things that
you found.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
That is such an important question. Thank you for asking.
I think it's always very difficult to write about violence,
precisely because it's such a slippery terrain. It's very easy
to banalyze, to make it banal right, It's very easy
to put so much emphasis on the power of the
perpetrators that you render your victim boiseless and pass it
(36:58):
right there are there are so many ways of getting
this thing wrong, and I think that requires a lot
of ethical attention. Yeah, I had to consider all those possibilities.
And that's the reason why when I was even interviewing people,
I told them I was only going to write whatever
they felt comfortable with. That I would never betray them.
(37:20):
That was essentially my message to them, and I think
I was. There was a conversation that I had with
my sister while I was writing this book. I essentially
felt her presence very close to me. I felt her,
you know, her head over my shoulder, kind of saying, oh, no,
that is so cheasy, you don't write that. She was
(37:41):
always against this kind of excessive expression of sentimentality and
things like that.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
She doesn't like flourishes.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
Yeah, exactly. That's another reason why I asked my parents
too that because this is this is her life, but
this is our life as well, is the life of
a community. So I tried to make sure as much
as I could that I was serving the book as such,
but mostly that I was serving this community that was
(38:10):
surrounding Liliana and protecting Liliana as well. I wanted her
to be the true protagonist of this book, and that's
the reason why my presence in the book is very discreet.
I didn't want to editorialize Lilliana. I didn't want to
assume that I knew more than she knew at that time.
But at the same time, I didn't want to leave
(38:32):
her all alone by herself in the book, so I
had to incorporate myself just in order to be as
vulnerable as she was becoming with the very writing of
the book. So those were my ways of dealing with
with this issue that is so important. The one is
an ethical issue, and to me, both the aesthetics of
(38:55):
the book and the ethics of the book are interwoven.
They're equally relevant. So asking that question was what I
did every single day that I wrote the book, and
it is embedded in every single paragraph of that book,
and the selection of words, the scenes that made it
into the book and the ones that didn't because some
(39:17):
didn't of course, and all that selection. It's very much
related to the care with which I wanted to approach Leana. Now.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Oftentimes, when I'm reading a journal or a memoir or
something and that's going into my book from the protagonist,
from the main person in the book, there's a phrase
or an anecdote or something that just echoes with me.
Was there anything like that in her writings that sort
of echoed to you as the theme that resonated with
you as sort of It's like, these lines are what
(39:48):
defined my sister and her vivaciousness or the theme of
her life.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
She spoke of freedom very very often. Freedom and a
new kind of love, said us several times. Other kind
of love should be possible. And I think those two components,
freedom and love, are which he's leaving us with after
reading the book, the importance of both.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Is Wicked, and American Sherlock. This has been an exactly
right production. Our senior producer is Alexis a Morosi. Our
associate producer is Alex ch This episode was mixed by
John Bradley. Curtis heath Is our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga.
(40:46):
Executive produced by Georgia Hartstark, Karen Kilgarriff and Danielle Kramer.
Follow Wicked Words on Instagram and Facebook at tenfold more
Wicked and on Twitter at tenfold more. And if you
know of a historical crime that could you some attention
from the crew at tenfold more Wicked, email us at
info at tenfoldmore wicked dot com. We'll also take your
(41:07):
suggestions for true crime authors for Wicked Words
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
She was always very careful with her stuff. She was
very orderly. She was the kind of person who would
keep letters that she wrote, copies of letters that she wrote.
I had an idea that she was doing that, but
I certainly didn't know the extent and the kinds of
thing that she was keeping in these boxes.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the host of the historical
true crime podcast Tenfold More Wicked and the co host
of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right. I've traveled
around the world interviewing people for the show, and they
are all excellent writers. They've had so many great true
(00:55):
crime stories, and now we want to tell you those
stories with details that have been published. Tenfold War Wicked
Presents Wicked Words is about the choices that writers make,
good and bad. It's a deep dive into the stories
behind the stories. Many of the books that we talk
about on the show are very personal, and this book
(01:17):
is incredibly personal to its author. It's about a woman
in Mexico who journaled about everything in her life until
she was murdered. Were their answers to her death inside
her diaries and letters. Her sister, Christina Rivera Garza wrote
a book called Liliana's Invincible Summer. Well, let's start from
(01:39):
the beginning. Where did you two grow up? What's the
family dynamic? Like, you know, what's your age difference? All
of that?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Well, we are au Bonner family. I was born actually
on the Mexican side of the US Mexico borderline, in
Matamoros and Olippus, and five years later Leleana was born
in that re Mavolyon, also a city, an industrial city
in the north of Mexico. It was only the two
of us, two girls. My father was a scientist, my
(02:10):
mother was a homemaker. We led what I believed to
be a quite an average middle class life in Mexico.
We went to school in Central Mexico. We moved to
central Mexico when I was about I don't know, twelve
years old. My sister was much younger. We moved to
(02:31):
this city in the highest city actually in Mexico, to
Luca Tluca, very close to Mexico City. I very soon
moved back to Mexico City. We go to the university
and Liliana, who arrived in te Luca at a much
younger age and developed stronger relationships that I did. She
(02:52):
remained there in te Luca for her high school. It
was later when it came time for her to choose
she chose architecture, and she too moved to Mexico City.
She was a student at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in
Mexico City and as Caposalco twenty years old.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
What would you say your relationship the intimacy of your
relationship was like there was.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
A big age difference between the two of us, five
years when you are very young. For many many years,
we never shared friends. It was very difficult for us.
But what we did share was swimming lessons. The swimming
pool that became a place in which we always knew
we were sisters. There we told each other secrets, We
(03:41):
kept each other informed by what we were doing. We
had great admiration for each other. We exchanged books. I've
come to learn now that I've been doing that, I've
done my research around her life that she read pretty
much every single book that I recommended her to read.
She passed him along to her dearest friends as well.
(04:04):
There was a communication, a close one between the two
of us, but there were issues too that we didn't
talk about. One of those issues that I presume was
very difficult for her to actually share was the story
that she got into with his boyfriend of hers. She
met into Luca in the late nineteen eighties angle Gonzale.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Rams and how old was she when they met?
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Late fourteens, early fifteens In Mexico, we have the second
Secudaria secondary school before going properly to the high school.
She met him precisely in the first year of her
high school.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
What do you remember her saying about him, her emotions
around him? Was this a big infatuation and did he
seem to reciprocate it?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Was an interesting story from the very beginning, it seems
that he had to really try very hard to get
Leana's attention. He was a fast, short, stocky, blonde guy,
temperamental and from the very beginning he was very much
obsessed with Leana. He talked to her friends. He wanted
(05:16):
to make sure that they were going to become nobvious,
that they were going to go steady right, and Lilliana
after thinking about that, after you know, flirting with other guys.
After considering several options. Eventually, a year after they met,
they became sweethearts. They became nobvious.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
When she was a teenager. They were both teenagers.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, he was two years older than her. They were
more or less the same age.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Did your mother have a sense at all for him?
Did she have some sort of uneasiness or did she
think that they would be a good match.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
It was kind of complicated. He at that point was
very solicitous. He had a car, he was very willing
to take everywhere she wanted to go. She came and
picked her up. He was always paying attention to what
she wanted to do. So, to my mom, to my father,
(06:14):
those were good signs. We didn't have an idea. We
couldn't read all that attention as control. We read most
of that attention as just an infatuation, as a loving
interest on his side.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Was Liliana recording her thoughts journaling at this age or
did that come a little bit later.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
No. Actually, Leana was writing from a very young age,
and she was writing pretty much about every single thing
that was happening to her. She was non necessarily very
direct or open about her ideas. At times, she was
even cryptic, but at the beginning, it seems that she
(06:57):
was very much interested in him, and she had several
entries in a diary indicating that she was very happy
and that she got to really really like this guy.
Something happened though, pretty soon and some months after they
started to go steady. And that's something that happened is
(07:18):
something that is something that Leona never quite described, at
least not openly. It was something that she expressed as
a way of loving her that she disliked, a way
of connecting or trying to be with her that she
didn't find either appealing. She just said, I just don't
(07:42):
like that. I don't like the way she wants to
love me. And so that's how I came to learn
that there was something complicated there, something that she was
trying to get at and not necessarily elaborating further on that.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
She went on to university right to major architecture, So
this was a long term relationship. Were they together when
she went to school?
Speaker 2 (08:05):
That was a major issue too, because she was admitted
at this university in Mexico City, he was not. She
moved from that industrial city in central Mexico de Luca
to live on her own for the first time in
Mexico City, sprawling metropolis, and she was obviously meeting new people,
(08:31):
experiencing new facets of life, getting interested, really passionate about
her field, and he was not. And it was then
that he became even more controlling, increasingly aggressive too.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
And this was the only relationship she had between sort
of fifteen sixteen up until what ends up happening is
that right had she broken up with him at any point.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
They broke up several times, especially when Leanna was living
already in Mexico City, she would try to go out
with some other friends. She developed close relationships with, at
least two of them. One of them, Draule Spino Madrigal,
actually was profoundly in love with her, and one of
(09:18):
the most tender testimonies that I was witnessed to precisely
came from him. So she was, she was, and she
told this to all her friends. She was trying to
get out of that relationship, but she didn't know how
to do it. Jil Gonzale Ramos was very insistent. He
was carrying a gun. Lilliana confided one of her friends
(09:41):
that he had told her that if she let him,
he was going to kill herself. But I saw there
is a woman just growing very rapidly, discovering a world
that she was really passionate about, and a man who
wouldn't let her.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Go, And you and your parents didn't have a sense
for how disturbing their relationship was unraveling at this point.
Before what happens happens.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
This is the late twentieth century, this is the late eighties,
and I think all across the world, not only Mexico,
it was very difficult to talk about domestic violence, even
more difficult to talk about violence between just a young couple.
In addition to that in Mexico US around the world,
a lot of this kind of behavior was framed within
(10:33):
the narrative of romantic love, passion, passion, jealousy, all the
kinds of things that now we will be very worried
about and we see red flags all over. I don't
think this was the case in the nineteen nineties. I
think Lillana knew that something was not right. I think
some of the friends, closer friends of Illana were aware
(10:56):
that this guy was not necessarily the kind of person
that Leana was going to growing up with. They never
saw any incidents of violence for example. So they knew
something was off that none of us, including Lilliana, I think,
knew how dangerous the situation was.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
So tell me about the events that lead up to
July sixteenth, nineteen ninety. When was the last time you
had spoken to her before this happens.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Well, I have to tell you I have moved to
the United States before. Then, in nineteen eighty eight, I
moved to Houston to I enrolled into a master's degree
and later a PhD. So I was very much living
in the United States while this story was developing. So
(11:44):
Leana would tell me about what was happening. But taking
a look at the letters that we exchanged, at that point,
we were mostly talking about what was happening in our world,
about shared interest about movies, and she was not necessarily
talking about about him. In the years previous to this
nineteen ninety, Leleana was really eagerly embracing life. She had
(12:09):
travel with her friends to places like Wahaka in southern Mexico.
She had become a teaching assistant to a professor in
her university. She was reading all kinds of stuff, not
necessarily architecture related. So it seems that the freedom that
(12:30):
she was so insistent about the freedom that she really
cherished was becoming increasingly annoying to Unca. That was a
situation that a couple of months prior to that July sixteenth,
I see a woman trying to find her way in
the world of loving and not loving these person who
(12:53):
had been very important in her life. She was developing
new interests, and it was becoming increasingly complicated. Just to
balance that situation.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Let's talk about what happens with her murder from your
point of view, When do you find out anything after
July sixteenth, and how do you find it out?
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Well, that was a story very hard to put together,
and I had to read the newspaper articles that were
published about it. I had to I talked to Lilliana's
friends about how things developed the morning of July sixteenth.
According to most witnesses, what had happened is that Lilliana
(13:35):
had been working that Sunday, July fifteenth, in a university
project with this friend of his Manolo, a classmate too,
and a guy who had been in love with her
in the past. It seems like they were at the
initial stages of a new relationship. They've been together the
whole day working on this project, and at about ten
(13:56):
o'clock at night he left. Lilliana had asked to stay
with her because she was feeling lonely, and he said no,
I had to go to my mom. I promised my
mom that I would get there. I'll pick you up
tomorrow morning, early in the morning so that we can
take this project to class. That was at ten o'clock.
According to most witnesses, what happened is that Anhel Gonzalez
(14:19):
Ramos arrived out around one o'clock in the morning, jumped
over the fence according to some. According to authors, he
borrowed a room to open the gate, the main gate
of the place where Leana was leaving. In any case,
what I'm trying to say is that he was not
invited or is expected that night. We don't know exactly
(14:43):
what happened during those hours, but by five o'clock he
left the place. Manolo came by in the morning at
about seven point thirty and realized that Lilliana was dead.
According to the scientific report, she was suffocated. She was
renting a room in this larger home. The owner of
(15:06):
the home. Manola called the owner of the home. Both
of them very quickly called the police. The police came,
The police started to call witnesses, friends of Williana. Detectives
and investigators showed up to the scene. And meanwhile, my
parents were traveling. They were in Europe at that point
(15:28):
and I was in the United States, so they were
trying very hard to locate either of us so that
we could come to Mexico City immediately. I was, as
I said, in Houston, and I received the visit of
members of the Mexican consulate. They knock on my door,
and I was very strange. You know, people don't come
on announced in the United States usually, so I knew
(15:50):
something was strong. And as soon as they said her name,
I knew that the news were not good. They told
me very same what had happened, and I immediately called
my family, family that I have in Houston. We got
together about tickets and we left for Mexico City as
(16:10):
soon as we could.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
And when you arrived in Mexico City, what was the explanation?
Where were they in the investigation at that point?
Speaker 2 (16:19):
This is something that I actually mentioned in the book.
When I was on the plane, on the flight going
to Mexico City, I was not given any kind of explanation.
I was told that my sister was no longer with us,
and I was thinking, what could have happened, what could
have happened? And then there was this point an uncle
of mine said, the only thing I wish for her
(16:41):
is that she had a true and beautiful love in
her life. And at that point something really down at me,
and I was thinking, that's what happened. So I must
have known something, I must have remembered something, because that
was my first conclusion. So as soon as we arrived
in Mexico City, we were taking to the place where
(17:04):
where Lilliana was. She was no longer in the house
where she was killed. We had to organize taking her
from Mexico City to Toluca and organize all the family
members who were coming. It was very, very confusing, and
in fact, it's been thanks to the interviews that I've
been conducting with friends and family members that I've been
(17:24):
able to remember much of what had happened. At that point,
I really didn't remember much of it. Everything happened very fast,
there were many, many people involved, and the only thing
that we were told was that there was a strong
suspicion that Uncle Gonzales Ramos, Lilliana's ex boyfriend, that he
(17:44):
was a person that the police was looking for as
the main person of interest in the case.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Did you and your family have faith in the police
in Mexico City that they would follow through on all
of this, because I'm assuming that was the main suspect.
Like you've said, we.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Had our doubts definitely now looking at the records, though,
what I realized is that they did what they were
supposed to do at the beginning, and then I suppose
my interpretation is that they just didn't consider this to
be an important case, so they after a couple of
(18:34):
months of doing what they were supposed to be doing,
you know, they just quit. They didn't continue.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Because he vanished. Is that right escaped?
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Yeah. We didn't know exactly where he had gone, but
we knew that he was no longer in Tuluca, and
perhaps he was no longer in Mexico.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
At what point do you discover all of this material
and when does it start clicking in your head that
this would be a book that would shine a light
on an issue that's clearly been in the dark all
over the world, but in Mexico too well.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
One of the major obstacles to even think or to
go through this experience is that when this kind of
violence gets framed as a passionate crime, pretty much this
is a way of intrinsically blaming the victim and acceenerating
the perpetrator. So it's very hard to talk about is
a story that is very hard to write about in
(19:32):
the language of patriarchy, the system that is both causing
the problem and silencing the problem at the same time.
So you have to do a lot to language, a
lot to the narratives that we live by in order
to truly honor the victims in this story. So it
(19:52):
was very hard for me, both as a sister, as
a human being, and as a writer to even think
about the possibility of writing this story. But over the
last twenty thirty years, there has been a very strong
feminist movement in Mexico, throughout Latin America, women's mobilizations in general,
placing a greater emphasis on gender violence and specifically on femicide,
(20:18):
the most little of these violences. So I think all
these years after the fact, I found myself now with
the language that I needed to tell the story. And also,
very importantly, I had been thinking about reopening the case
since more or less twenty nineteen. But then it came
(20:40):
twenty twenty, and the COVID pandemic had us, and then
we all knew that we could die at any moment.
And at that point I knew that I needed to
write this book, that this was a book, that I
didn't want to die without having written it, and that
there was a commitment of myself side of responsibility, that
(21:01):
I had to tell my sister's story because otherwise she
would have been erased by the violence that took her
from us.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Tell me about the research, so we know the journal
entries anything that your sister's written. You had access to
and you interviewed friends and neighbors. Were the police at
all helpful? Were court records helpful? Did you want to
learn more about Ramos?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Many things happened at the same time. I knew that
we had boxes with Lillana's belongings in our home. They
had been there for three years, no one had there
to touch them. I came down in January of twenty
twenty to my parents' house looking, in fact, for some
kind of day book, some kind of address book that
(21:49):
might help me locate Llana's friends. In Mexico City. I
didn't know their names. I didn't know if they were alive.
I didn't know if they were still living in Mexico City.
I didn't know what had happened to them. So my
husband and I started to do all We became these detectives.
We were trying to locate people, we were trying to
(22:10):
gather as much evidence as we were able to do.
That took a lot of time and a lot of efforts,
and I'm really very thankful to my husband. So I
will learn on this Baragos who really I mean, he's
a visual artist that now we know that he is,
he could be a really good detective too. He was
the one who located most of Liliana's friends, and once
(22:34):
he was able to do that, I proceeded to talk
with them to have long phone interviews which I transcribed.
I didn't record any of that. I transcribed them. I
talked to them very openly about what I was doing.
I told him that I was going to be sharing
with them the drafts of this book and that they
would have a say in whatever I was writing, and
(22:56):
that if they didn't agree with what I was writing,
that at any point I could stop it was their
work what I really wanted to be able to bring
into page, and the same happened with my parents. Obviously,
we had had many conversations about this, specifically in the
latter years, and they also got a chance to read
(23:18):
the draft before I even sent it to the press.
I think it was very important to me just to
create that trust between us, knowing that the final goal
was not only to uncover and to share Lilliana's life,
but also that at that point I was very much
trying to catch the killer. I worked with the police,
(23:41):
I hired a lawyer because it was very hard to
even get the police case. Many years had passed that
some members of the General Attorney's office, some workers that
had told me, well, you know, it's been such a
long time, we might have destroyed that file. So all
(24:02):
these issues really propelled me into writing the book. This
is a book, by the way, that I wanted to
write from the very beginning of my writing career, and
it's a book that I tried to write several times prior,
and I failed utterly every single time that I tried
to write it. But when I actually came across her
(24:23):
own writings, this effective archive as I'm calling it. I
knew that I finally was going to be able to
do it. I had the time, I had all the materials,
I had all these other voices around, and I knew
that this time I was strong enough also personally to
go through the experience of bringing her life back to us.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
But it must have been incredibly painful to hear her
voice and you know, to know her so well, and
to be able to sort of visualize it. I'm assuming
she wrote about very difficult things involving Romos at the time,
or did she not She did.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
It was very painful, no doubt about that, even uncovering
you know, her talents, her wisdom, her humor, even the
happy things were painful because she's no longer less right, obviously,
this is the most difficult world that I have ever written.
But at the same time, just having the opportunity to
get so close to her and to be able to
(25:22):
recreate this kind of community within which she is very
much alive, I think that compensates also for the pain.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Your parents, I can't imagine thought participating in this book
was easy. What do you think is the most difficult
thing that you either asked them or that they felt
compelled to explain to you in the book.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
I had no idea how they were going to be
reacting when I first approached the issue. When I told
them I was trying to do this, I was incredibly careful.
For many years, it was very difficult for us even
utter her name. So I had no idea. Really, when
I say I had no idea, I'm very honest. I
didn't know what they were going to think, and I
(26:08):
was quite surprised when their very first reaction. Both of
them were not only Willings, but also eager to participate
in the whole process, the legal process and the writing
process as well. I think for them it was as
important as it was for me to take Leleana's life
out of that passionate crime narrative, to restitute her voice
(26:33):
and her perspective, and to tell the story of her
life according to her own words and values. And I
think that that's been incredibly helpful too for all of
us as a family, just to be able to tell
a story that honors her life, that pays attention to
the way in which she died, but that is not
(26:56):
only concentrated on that. This is something that that happens
very often when violence is involved, the whole story evolves
and develops around the violent act, and at times we
forget that there are entire, complicated, complex, beautiful lives too.
So this is something that I'm trying to do very
(27:19):
consciously in this book.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
I can't imagine that families don't have some level of
feeling of I don't know if regrets the right word,
but just a mourning that they would feel over the circumstances,
like as if they could have stopped it, which I
think probably everyone knows would not be the case. I
don't think you could stop this.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
You are right. I think experts on this kind of
violence would agree that families they go through these experiences
are very hard on themselves. They blame themselves, and I
think this is something that happened to us. There is
a lot of guilt and there's a lot of shame
in a mourning process that actually never quite begins. So
(28:02):
because if the story cannot be told, if you cannot
wrest this story from the patriarchal narrative that essentially involves silencing,
then you cannot mourn properly. Right, So I think that
understanding the mechanisms going through all these different witnesses, looking
(28:25):
at the story from as many perspectives as I was
able to do through interviews and archival research and field
research and all that, I think it finally gives us
an opportunity to articulate the story in a way that
did not involve blaming the victim and certainly did not
(28:46):
involve eccenerating the perpetrator. The femicider, as we say in Spanish,
it's famous. See that. Interestingly enough, there is not a
word in English that fully translates this one, femsida. So
I'm getting to say lately the word femicider, which is
(29:07):
you know, it would be the closer translation. The word
is not necessarily in vogue or in use in the
American English. But I think that as we see domestic
violence cases grow also in the United States, even enough
to be called a siling epidemic, I think that the
(29:28):
language as to adapt to and perhaps just by calling
the killer a femicider, we will be contributing to create
more awareness about a violence that is pretty much a
problem across the world.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Well, let's talk about your pursuit of Ramos. Did you
have help from the police in Mexico City thirty years
later or do you still feel like the same attitude
about femicide is pervasive within the police department in Mexico
all over the country.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Yeah, Well, look, fortunately or unfortunately, the number of femicides
is growing so much in Mexico. The data is well
known about ten women are killed in Mexico on a
daily basis, and there is now a unit of femicides
specifically devoted to femicides in Mexico City. And the unit
is led by a lawyer that I admire very much. Sayurira,
(30:25):
that's her name, and so I've had long conversations with
herd that have been extremely useful. That doesn't mean that
other areas of General Attorney's Office are equally concerned or
even efficient about justice. When I published the book, I
created a Gmail account. When I published the book in Spanish,
(30:49):
I should say in every interview that I gave, I
mentioned that I was going to be using this Gmail
account to receive tips or any kind of information than
my leaders to these consale lums. Eventually, I learned one
of these anonymous sources sent me a link and that
(31:10):
took me to a funeral, a digital funeral of someone
whose name was michel Angelo Giovanni. These link contained pictures
from Michelle Angelo Giovanni, who had died drowned in southern
California on May the second, twenty twenty. The pictures belonged
(31:32):
to him. In my view, I communicated with the police
in Mexico because, regardless of what I believed, this is
something that they should be able to confirm. I was
told that they were going to do all they could
in order to confirm this information. This happened more or
less a year and a half ago, and to this
(31:55):
day I have not received any kind of information regarding
this case.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Did you reach out to Ramos's family in Mexico after
this happened or was that something you just wanted to
stay away from.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
I wanted to stay away from that because.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
It was part of the active investigation exactly.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
It was an active investigation, and I didn't want to
interfere with that.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
So what's the next step? Is there a next step
if we are assuming that Giovanni is Ramos and he
is dead, never seen justice for Liliana's murder in that way,
if we assume that, is there any bit of closure
for your family at all?
Speaker 2 (32:35):
That's such a good question, and I'm glad I mentioned
earlier as Sayuriaretra the lawyer, because once I learned about
this possibility that the killer had died, I was, as
you can imagine, very distraught, and that was a situation
that was not expecting. I was not expecting that. So
I talked to Sayuriaretta in something that she said, and
(32:57):
for me it was very important to hear there are
other aspects of justice. Justice is not only punitive in
the law of victims. This is a law that exists
in Mexico. It's equally important the issue of memory and
truth and the restitution of that. And I think, obviously
we're not going to get Lillana back, but is extremely
(33:20):
important just to be able to have the truth, and
in this case, her truth, her perspective, her view on
this full story, and for us to be able to
fully mourn her death and to build a collective memory
of Lilliano Rivera Garza among us. This is not a
(33:40):
minor dead. This is where a mourning that was forcibly
silenced has become a collective practice. So the more people
remember Lilliana, the more her name is pronounced in public
spheres in life, the more she is she remains with us,
and I think that's very important for me, for my family,
(34:03):
for those of us who believe that the dead continue,
that some part of them continue to be materially close
to us.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
I understand I think now the impact of the book
on you and your family and you personally, as this
experience of becoming closer with your sister and like you said,
putting her name out there so that there can be
some healing. Was there any unexpected benefit of this book?
Do you think, as far as the narrative that we've
(34:32):
been talking about, where you actually see people and hear
people saying this book could make a difference in this country.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
I was not expecting that, to be honest with you,
and I've been so pleasantly surprised by the way in
which young women specifically but in general readers of the
book have embraced Lilliana. She's been part of international women's
stay demonstrations, her name is being graffited on different places
on walls of Mexico City. Not long ago, I visited
(35:04):
Wadalajara in Mexico, where a very important book fair takes
place every year, and students from different high schools, having
read the book, organized a demonstration a procession of sorts
throughout the city, just honoring her name and honoring her life.
And so I think she would have been very happy
(35:24):
just to learn that her experience might be illuminating to others,
that might help others to articulate their own stories, to
go through experiences that are very hard to enunciate, and
so feeling that embraced, that embraced, it is very real.
I think has been more than I expected.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
In my writing. When I write books, I write about
crime and history, and a requirement for me is I
have to have memoirs and journals and letters to feel
closer to the people to really be able to sort
of rebuild their world. I sometimes feel like I'm invading
their privacy, and these are people who have died one
hundred or more years ago. Did you struggle with that
(36:10):
when you were piecing together this book, that there were
things that you were reading that clearly no one was
meant to read except for Lilliana to a certain extent.
And for me, I try to pack those feelings away
because I feel like the greater good of what my
book would do needs this to resonate with people, needs
these details. Did you feel like that did you really
(36:31):
struggle at all with publishing any of the things that
you found.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
That is such an important question. Thank you for asking.
I think it's always very difficult to write about violence,
precisely because it's such a slippery terrain. It's very easy
to banalyze, to make it banal right, It's very easy
to put so much emphasis on the power of the
perpetrators that you render your victim boiseless and pass it
(36:58):
right there are there are so many ways of getting
this thing wrong, and I think that requires a lot
of ethical attention. Yeah, I had to consider all those possibilities.
And that's the reason why when I was even interviewing people,
I told them I was only going to write whatever
they felt comfortable with. That I would never betray them.
(37:20):
That was essentially my message to them, and I think
I was. There was a conversation that I had with
my sister while I was writing this book. I essentially
felt her presence very close to me. I felt her,
you know, her head over my shoulder, kind of saying, oh, no,
that is so cheasy, you don't write that. She was
(37:41):
always against this kind of excessive expression of sentimentality and
things like that.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
She doesn't like flourishes.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
Yeah, exactly. That's another reason why I asked my parents
too that because this is this is her life, but
this is our life as well, is the life of
a community. So I tried to make sure as much
as I could that I was serving the book as such,
but mostly that I was serving this community that was
(38:10):
surrounding Liliana and protecting Liliana as well. I wanted her
to be the true protagonist of this book, and that's
the reason why my presence in the book is very discreet.
I didn't want to editorialize Lilliana. I didn't want to
assume that I knew more than she knew at that time.
But at the same time, I didn't want to leave
(38:32):
her all alone by herself in the book, so I
had to incorporate myself just in order to be as
vulnerable as she was becoming with the very writing of
the book. So those were my ways of dealing with
with this issue that is so important. The one is
an ethical issue, and to me, both the aesthetics of
(38:55):
the book and the ethics of the book are interwoven.
They're equally relevant. So asking that question was what I
did every single day that I wrote the book, and
it is embedded in every single paragraph of that book,
and the selection of words, the scenes that made it
into the book and the ones that didn't because some
(39:17):
didn't of course, and all that selection. It's very much
related to the care with which I wanted to approach Leana. Now.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Oftentimes, when I'm reading a journal or a memoir or
something and that's going into my book from the protagonist,
from the main person in the book, there's a phrase
or an anecdote or something that just echoes with me.
Was there anything like that in her writings that sort
of echoed to you as the theme that resonated with
you as sort of It's like, these lines are what
(39:48):
defined my sister and her vivaciousness or the theme of
her life.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
She spoke of freedom very very often. Freedom and a
new kind of love, said us several times. Other kind
of love should be possible. And I think those two components,
freedom and love, are which he's leaving us with after
reading the book, the importance of both.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Is Wicked, and American Sherlock. This has been an exactly
right production. Our senior producer is Alexis a Morosi. Our
associate producer is Alex ch This episode was mixed by
John Bradley. Curtis heath Is our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga.
(40:46):
Executive produced by Georgia Hartstark, Karen Kilgarriff and Danielle Kramer.
Follow Wicked Words on Instagram and Facebook at tenfold more
Wicked and on Twitter at tenfold more. And if you
know of a historical crime that could you some attention
from the crew at tenfold more Wicked, email us at
info at tenfoldmore wicked dot com. We'll also take your
(41:07):
suggestions for true crime authors for Wicked Words
Host
Kate Winkler Dawson
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