FORGOTTEN - EP 9: Untouchable

Episode 9 - We examine the details that connect many of the murder victims to Juárez's foreign-owned factories, also known as maquiladoras. A Mexican customs investigation takes an unusual turn, leading Diana to a new line of investigation for who else could be involved in the murders. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Forgotten is a production of iHeart Media and Unusual Productions
Before we start. This podcast contains accounts which some listeners
will find disturbing, but without them, the story can't be
fully understood. Please take care while listening. Previously un Forgotten,

(00:24):
I do recall some suggesting that I might temper my
words because big business is involved. Well, the Mikiela Dars
are American companies and you might wind up making enemies
on this side of the border. When they changed her shift,
she signed an insurance policy. Joking around, she told me,

(00:44):
if something happens to me, mamma, they're going to give
you a ton of money. I don't know. If my
innocent girl had a feeling that something was going to
happen to her, I don't know. And so when I
saw where this graveyard was located as it, I can't
believe it. It's in the middle of the city. Across
the street is the Association of Macueladoras. Why choose this

(01:05):
side to dump eight bodies of women? From the beginning,
Dina Washington Valdez told us that the femicides in Huarez
were not random, that the women were selected, and Diana
also mentioned all kinds of strange connections between the victims

(01:27):
and the maculadoras the mass grave containing eight women's bodies
at the cotton field was discovered right across the street
from the Maculadora Association, shortly before Lilia Alejandra Andrade was
abducted in February two thousand and one, her photographs were
featured in a promotional brochure for her Maculadora and Diana

(01:49):
also mentioned that men claiming to be model scouts would
take photographs of young women outside the factories. And then
there was Sagrario Gonzalez Flores. After the factory changed her shift,
Sigario was forced to commute alone. Her mother, Paula, remembers
the day that Sigario failed to come home from work.

(02:13):
We knew that she had worked and that she had
left at the time, everyone left, but no one saw anything.
And I tell you that very night we began searching
at the Red Cross and the hospitals, on the streets,
searching for her. You always san much. That night I
grabbed all the photos I had of my daughter. I
would pass them out at gas station saying I'm looking

(02:34):
for my daughter, can you please help me find her?
And that nights, I would step outside and I would
shout her name. I would run around the house and
shout her name with all my strength. In the silence
of the night. I felt she could hear me, so
I would call to my daughter. After a few agonizing

(02:59):
days and nights of searching for Cigario, I hope that
she might be found alive began to fade. Paula joined
a protest group outside the police station with other mothers
displaying photographs of their own missing daughters. One morning, after
Segario had been missing for two weeks, Paula arrived at

(03:19):
the protest to learn that a young woman's body had
been found the previous night. We arrived at the sit
in that day as usual, and as soon as we arrived,
a reporter approached me said, ma'am, did you know they
found the body of a murdered woman. As soon as
he told me that, I ran to the photos we
already had there. I said to the reporter, which one

(03:41):
did they find? He said, no, I don't know. I
don't know which one they found. I just know she
had a white mail. It was then that I sensed
that it was my daughterdo had her name on the
white Makilla coat. I had embroidered her name with colorful yarn,
just her name, Sagaradio, Paula's sense of foreboding was proven correct.

(04:08):
Next to the young woman's body dumped in the desert
outside of Huirez was the factory coat that Paula had
stitched by hand with her daughter's name. And this pattern
of young women in Juarez disappearing between home and work
was by no means unique to Sagrario. Lilia Alejandra had
also disappeared on her way home from work, and Cloudy

(04:29):
Evet Gonzalez, one of the victims discovered in the cotton field,
went missing after she was turned away from her factory
job for arriving two minutes late. These connections between the
murders and the Maquilas began to attract international attention, including
the ABC news piece where Heredrik Crawford appeared and where

(04:51):
Roberto Urea, a former president of the Maculadora Association, appeared
to blame the victims for their own deaths. We're worth
these young ladies. Where they were seen last? Were they
drinking all right? Were they parting? Were they in a
dark street? Urrea's defensiveness raised all kinds of questions. Did

(05:15):
he and Immacula Door as he represented, have something to hide?
Could there be some truth to Heredrich Crawford's assertion that
his advocacy for the women disturbed big business interests on
both sides of the border and contributed to his downfall.
And could there be another group of men operating with
or in parallel to the cartel who were also praying

(05:38):
on vulnerable young women in Huarez? Amos voloshin and this
is forgotten the women of Juarez? You know now see

(06:17):
Hala Felicia. That comment from Urreya Monico where he's saying,
you know, where were the women last seen? Were they partying?
Were they drinking? That really stuck with both of us.
First of all, I have to point out how infuriating

(06:38):
it is to listen to that interview. That sort of
victim blaming has been done by police and politicians, and
now it was being done on national television by a
former president of the Makiladora Association. How dare he shirk
the responsibility his industry bears for not recognizing and responding

(07:00):
to the risks their employees clearly faced. This kind of
attitude alone puts women in danger, and in the late
nineteen nineties and early two thousands, it wasn't just ABC
News who were drawing a line between the maquilas and
the murders. Diana was also pointing out the connections, as

(07:22):
were Amnesty International correct Yes. In the beginning, the whitest
femicides were known as the maki Ladora murders because so
many of the murdered women worked in the factories. Women
were actively recruited because of these sexist stereotypes, like they're
more docile and nimble fingered. Pressure from the victims' families,

(07:47):
combined with international media scrutiny, did push the Maculadoras into
making some efforts to improve, especially providing transport to stop
young female employees disappearing on their way home from work,
But the fundamental situation in Juarez hasn't changed. Some people
get rich there because others stay poor. There are two

(08:10):
groups in particular who benefit, the largely American corporations who
manufactured goods in Juarez, and the city's own industrialists. Here's
how Diana describes them in her book. Mexico's business elites
are called impresarios, a word that sounds like emperor which
is how they are viewed. The business emperors in the

(08:33):
border state of Chihuahua benefit directly or indirectly from the
labor of young women. Diana goes on to write, they
own the industrial parks, at least buildings to maculadoras they
produce materials for housing, and they produce them sell consumer
products that all families in Juarez purchase. But I still

(08:54):
want to know just how powerful these empressarios really were.
Were they powerful enough to pressure the state Department to
silence a senior FBI official like Hardrick Crawford. To find out,
we spoke to one of the few journalists who's gotten
access to Huires's secret business elite. My name is Lauren Edder.

(09:14):
I'm an investigative reporter at Bloomberg News. In twenty seventeen,
Lauren wrote a cover story for Bloomberg Business Week about
how crucial huires Is manufacturing industry is to the global economy.
I think there is this invisibility about wires in general,
but I don't think you could walk through an average
day without touching something that was made in a maquila,

(09:38):
whether it's the pockets of your genes or the heart
stent inside your body. Any product that you pick up
today will have made its way through the border region
for one reason or another. There are over three hundred
maculadoras in Huirez, employing roughly three hundred thousand people, more
than half of whom are assembling products for US companies.

(10:02):
But the goods manufacturing what Lauren calls the quote guts
of the consumer economy. The windshield wipe on a car,
a blood pressure cuff, a medical glove. So to make
the story land, the journalist needed a character. Somebody brought
up Don Jaime, the godfather of the makila industry. Jaime

(10:22):
Bermudez had a very storied career where he interacted with
extremely prominent business men. You know, he went to England
and was the guest of the Queen for a polo match.
And I was just fascinated to learn that there was
a somebody behind this massive manufacturing economy along the border.

(10:44):
So Lauren traveled to Juarez to interview the then ninety
four year old business magnate. Benmordez has since passed away,
but in life he was one of the city's leading empressarios.
I had talked to people ahead of time, and people
said you should probably have a bodyguard, but it turned
out that Don Jaime had more bodyguards than me. So
it was funny traveling around this very gritty city. And

(11:07):
essentially what was a motorcade almost like floating through Juarez
in a chariot of some sort. The destination of the
motorcade was the Bedmudes industrial parks, where many maculadoras operate.
When you get into the manufacturing sector, inside these little fiefdoms,

(11:30):
as I described them, it's just a different world. Really.
There is a sense of security and a sense of insulation. Now,
of course, most of the workers live in places that
do not have that sense of security. To understand how
Juarez became a city of such stark contrasts, you need

(11:50):
to understand the history of the Beermudes family and how
their relationship with the US transformed their cotton fields into fiefdoms.
It all started in the nineteen twenties when the family
partnered with an industrious Kentucky distiller called Mary Dowling. After Prohibition,
she was like, hell, no, am I going to shut

(12:12):
down this business. So she literally hired people to dismantle
her distillery, loaded onto rail cars, and she had it
shipped to Warez and so when she arrives in Warez,
she meets with Jaime Bermudez's uncle. They end up going

(12:33):
into business together. Prohibition didn't stop America's demand for liquor,
It just pushed it onto the black market. And this
is the story of Warez, a place that constantly responds
to what America wants, but what America doesn't want to
take responsibility for bootleg liquor, sex, tourism, drugs, and from

(12:57):
the nineteen sixties onward, outsourced labor. But this last chapter
in Quires began when the US ended the so called
Brassero program, which had allowed Mexican workers to fill labor
shortages in the US created by the Second World War.
After the war ended, it became really a sensitive topic.

(13:17):
There were a lot of people that were very concerned
that the Mexican laborers were taking jobs that were otherwise
suited for Americans. So the Brassero program was ended in
what has been called the largest mass deportation in history.
Hundreds of thousands of workers were sent across the border
into Mexico. Many of them ended up in Huirez, and

(13:40):
both the Mexican and US governments were nervous about the
potential for unrest if these men remained unemployed, So the
two countries collaborated on the Border Industrialization Program, which created
a duty free zone with no tariffs on imports and exports.
And this would have effectively allow American companies to rehire

(14:03):
the Bresseros. But in Mexico, the Bermulez family, who made
a fortune distilling whiskey with Mary Dowling, were tasked with
turning the vision into a reality, and none other than
Don Jaime traveled to the US to pitch companies on
the idea of outsourcing to Mexico. His trip paid off

(14:23):
in spectacular fashion. By nineteen sixty eight, Hime was standing
in the family's old cotton fields laying the foundation for
a one hundred and fifteen thousand square foot plant to
assemble television parts for the Radio Corporation of America. Our
CIA no longer exists, but companies from Dell to General

(14:44):
Electric followed the path to Huarez that they forged. This
was really the beginning of the globalized economy, and the
beachhead of that was Inhuirez. That was where we saw
American companies going and testing out this new model, which
was a cross border transnational global manufacturing economy. That's originally

(15:10):
why RCA started manufacturing its televisions and warez. They didn't
want to have to pay the higher wages, they didn't
want to have to pay the increasing benefits that the
unions were demanding. And no matter how you look at
the makula industry, and the fact of the matter is,
it's still completely dependent on low wage workers. I mean,

(15:33):
that's the reason why the industry exists, that's why companies
continue to go there today. The Benmula's family remain among
Huarre's's most important local partners to the Macula doors and
there's no suggestion that they were involved in the murders.
But Capcom, the Makuela ware Sagaria worked and Leah the

(15:54):
Maquila ware Claudia Vet worked are both located on Bedmudez
Industrial Park, and both Claudia Yvette and Sagrario disappeared after
leaving work. Although the Makilas do now provide transportation, the
vulnerability of the workers remains constant. I mean, you can't

(16:15):
ignore the fact that at the end of the day
they're getting paid seven dollars a day. You can't ignore
the fact that, yeah, they're bust in every day to work,
but when they're bust home, their homes might be a
cardboard shack, and they might not have running water or electricity,
And ultimately American consumers benefit in cheaper televisions and cheaper

(16:39):
washing machines. The Bermudez family drive around in SUVs, they
played Polo don jaime, even hung out with the Queen
of England. And although they're among the richest of the
Juires impresarios, by no means the only Juires industrialists who
have profited from generations of doing business with US companies. Meanwhile,

(17:04):
those US companies who have key manufacturing operations in Huarez
have hundreds of billions of dollars of market capitalization and
the political clout that comes with it. But was there
some kind of direct conspiracy to keep profit margins high
by deflecting attention from the vulnerable women who worked in
the factories and paid the ultimate price. Could Hardrich Crawford

(17:27):
have been silenced because of drawing attention to the connection
between the Makilas and the murders. When we come back,
we asked the US ambassador who revoked Hardrick's country clearance.

(17:56):
So before the break Monica Lauren mentioned some thing that
you've been telling me since day one, which is that
Juarez as it exists today exists because of low wage workers.
Firstly with the Brasseros, and then once the Makilas were there,
they attracted internal migrants like the Flores family for the jobs. Now,

(18:19):
the Flores family arrived thirty years ago, but what's the
condition of the workers like who arrived today. I'll never
forget visiting one of these factory workers Insu love Huais
in twenty sixteen. Her name was Brenda Estralla and she
worked for Comscope, a multi billion dollar communications company headquartered

(18:40):
in North Carolina. This is the company that outfitted the
Dallas Cowboys new football stadium with Wi Fi. Brenda assembled
cables for Comscope in Huatas for seven dollars a day,
not per hour per day. And when you go to
her house, you can see what kind of a life

(19:02):
you can live on that salary. But in the lived
in a government subsidized three rooms cinder block home. She
had no central heating or cooling. In the winter, she
stayed warm by tossing plywood in a middle trash bin,
and that plywood is worth half her daily salary. And meanwhile,

(19:23):
in its annual letter to its shareholders, Comscope brags about
saving them money by putting its factories in quote low
cost geographies like Wattas. And you told me that for
the lauge international companies who do business in Huarez, these
conditions aren't just an open secret, but almost pot of

(19:44):
Wuires's appeal. Yes, here's another example. In Alpasso, there's a
regional business alliance that's dedicated to helping big companies set
up in Huattas. And one of the selling points they
advertised on their website about WA was a quote cooperative,
predominantly non union workforce. In other words, come to Juares.

(20:07):
The workers here are submissive and they won't try to
defend themselves. When Howard Campbell first told us about how
the cartel bribes US law enforcement officials to facilitate the
flow of drugs across the border, I began to see
the wall that separates El Paso and Juarez in a
new light, and now my understanding was shifting again. The

(20:30):
wall also disguises the deep connections between the legitimate economies
of Mexico and the US. It obscures the reality that
many Juarez femicide victims died, creating value for the US economy.
This was the situation that FBI Special Agent in charge
of El Paso, Hardrick Crawford, was beginning to shed light

(20:51):
on when he received a warning that he was making
enemies on the US side of the border. He even
alluded to a possible moiracy to silence him, involving big
business interests and the US State Department. So we had
to ask the ambassador from that time, Antonio Gaza, if
that was possible. Do you remember Hardrick Crawford. I remember

(21:14):
in general terms. I don't remember having any personal interaction
with him. Yeah, you effectively withdrew his country clearance. Why
would you have done that? I likely would have done
it on the recommendation of people working within the embassy
that felt that having him in country would not be
beneficial to the US interest. I did interview Hardrick Crawford

(21:35):
for this podcast, and this is what he said to me,
which I'd love your response to. If I was a
conspiracy theorist, I would say that the State Department and
the US Corporation said, look at this guy who's harming
the makuladora industry and Mexico are upset We're going to
have to make a sacrifice out of him. But I'm
curious as to what you think about this idea that
the Mikuiladora industry were in some sense putting pressure on

(21:58):
the State Department to avoid too scrutiny of the fate
of their workers. Yeah. No, I think that's absurd, And
I and it's no, I just find I find that absurd.
But here's the thing. Many of America's most important and
valuable companies outsourced to quires, So it was at least

(22:20):
plausible that bringing bad press to the manufacturing industry there
would not be smiled upon by the US government. How
did the maculator industry interact with the State Department and
how much of a priority was maintaining good relations with them,
you know, in a very very broadly. You know, I'll
go back to the day I took my oath, and

(22:40):
it was to represent and protect and defend the United
States interests abroad, and largely my focus in terms of
priority was our citizens and our US interest and investments.
The ambassador went on to deny that he gave any
undue consideration to the mackela industry. Nonetheless, he did say

(23:01):
that protecting US investments in Mexico was a top priority,
and in fact, trade between the US and Mexico is
now worth more than half a trillion dollars each year.
That figure has risen almost eight hundred percent since the
start of the North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA.
Just this year, the current American ambassador publicly put pressure

(23:22):
on Mexico to keep the Macula doors open in the
face of work of protests about death from COVID, because
the factories were manufacturing key medical and defense supplies for
the US. In a further demonstration of just how intertwined
business interests are between the countries, Ambassador Gaza himself married

(23:45):
one of Mexico's richest industrialists in two thousand and five,
opening him up to accusations of conflicts of interest, which
he also denied. But in the end, as much as
the US economy does benefit from low wage workers in Juarez,
it seemed unlikely that there was a direct conspiracy to
keep them vulnerable by silencing Hardrick Crawford. But maybe somebody

(24:10):
else with big business interests in Huarez did feel Hardrick
was getting too close to the truth. Remember those Empressarios,
those emperors of industry, well his Diana. Again, there was
a suspicion on the part of authorities in Mexico City
that the Aduana the customs was not collecting the assessments

(24:33):
people have to pay at the border to take items
into Mexico. In fact, the authorities in Mexico City suspected
that they were off by two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars a month. The federal government in Mexico was worried
that several business people in Huarez weren't paying their fair
share of import duties, so they started listening in on

(24:55):
their conversations. The investigation involved the use of a sort
islens equipment. It was during these interventions of telephone calls
that the investigators became aware of people involved in the
disappearances and murders of Wadis. They notified their superiors in

(25:16):
Mexico City, Hey, you know the sort of stuff we're
hearing and bodies and being transported and blah blah blah,
and so they said. Their superiors told them keep it
quiet for now, just continue with the investigation. We'll do
that later. The customs investigators were assigned to solve a
tax issue, but they stumbled across evidence that connected certain

(25:40):
industrialists to a much larger crime, the femicides. Here's what
they told Diana and her colleague, said Hio Gonzalez Rodriguez.
A group of powerful men killed the women with impunity
sort of became a sport. And by the way, the
victims of the group, not all of them have been found,

(26:02):
because the sources indicated they were buried in properties that
the public does not have access to. Although these revelations
about powerful men abducting and murdering women for pleasure weren't
the crimes the investigators had been asked to solve, they
passed along their findings to their superiors in Mexico City,

(26:22):
anticipating an intervention. A lot of recordings were made, and
so the principal investigators were very proud of themselves and that, wow,
we solve the femicide. And so, you know, they wrapped
up their field work and waited and they waited it,
and they waited and they waited. Nothing happened. And so

(26:49):
that's when they started contacting, said and myself. When it
became clear that the federal government wasn't going to do
anything with their discovery. The investigators gave Diana and Sergio
a huge tip, not just the general profile of the killers,
but the specific names of the men involved. And when

(27:12):
Diana heard them, she didn't even need to do a
background check. She already knew who these people were. We're
talking about people involved in major industries. According to Diana,
the men were major players in industries ranging from transportation
to energy, to communications and real estates. And Diana also

(27:35):
told us she had received an off the record tip
about these men being implicated in the murders once before
from a source in US intelligence. And what was amazing
to me is that there were the same names, the
same names that came out. And so you're investigating this story,
you get a call about these phone conversations where these

(27:56):
names come up after the authorities have also been handed
this information. Don't do anything, I mean, you must want
to publish something. Well, actually, my first reaction was to
want to crawl under a desk and hide. It was scary.
When you sit down and think about who may be
involved in the names. Oh my god, it's like, oh

(28:19):
my god. You know, these are people that are well
known not just at the border, but in Mexico nationally
and they have global business interests. I mean, they're powerful economically,
they're influential, and you know, I'm just a little old reporter,
you know. And I also saw an explanation for the

(28:42):
impunity of these crimes. All right, I could understand the
cartels and the gangs serial killers to an extent, but this,
this was bigger than all of that together. What Diana
was being told about powerful man and murdering women for
pleasure was almost exactly what Alfredo had been told about

(29:05):
the cartel parties by his source in the Huirez jail.
But these new revelations didn't rule out the previous ones
about La Ligna or make it impossible that one or
more serial killers were praying on a vulnerable population. The
murderers were not mutually exclusive, and I was starting to

(29:25):
understand better how Diana had chosen the title The Killing
Fields for her book. When We Come Back, Diana attempts
to make contact with the industrialists alleged to be involved
in the murders. Diana told us that when she heard

(29:57):
the names of the businessmen allegedly involved than the femicides,
her first reaction was to want to crawl under her
death but it didn't take long for her reporter's instincts
to kick in. I made an effort to contact a
lot of these people. UN left all messages as well
as emails, faxes, I went through personal secretaries. I never

(30:19):
got an answer from any of them, not a single
solitary answer. You know. Despite the lack of response, Diana
and her editors at the El Paso Times felt confident
enough in the story that they ran it in the paper.
But crucially, they decided not to identify the industrial lists
by name, both for legal and for safety reasons. There

(30:41):
were no names named, but they were characterized. The editor
chose the word cabal to describe this network of powerful
businessmen involved allegedly in these murders. I wonder how far
you were able to go or were you just these
are too big and I better not. I think I

(31:04):
weren't as far as I could journalistically speaking. But I
also knew that even if their names appeared, nothing would happen,
and in fact, the messenger with them would become a target,
meaning you, meaning me. Of course, Now, given the time
that his past your series was published, would you be

(31:25):
willing to name those names now, Monica, I mean just
can't get away with her, they'll bury you. This is
the same Diana who walked into the neighborhood where Lilia
Alejandra had last been seen, despite Ahuire's lawyer literally tearing

(31:46):
up a map he'd drawn for her and telling her
to stay away. The same Diana would continue to report
on the murders after receiving a death thread traced back
to Mexican military intelligence. But it was these business people
pool who Diana seemed to fear more than anyone else.
We wanted to know if it would be possible to
speak to the customs investigators ourselves, but sadly, Diana said

(32:11):
that wouldn't be possible. Nobody knows where they are anymore.
The two guys, one of them told Sethio Gonzalez that
he was asked to provide a proof of his loyalty
by Mexican officials. It may be that they were already
suspecting that there were leaks, and they were probably trying
to tear down who could have been leaking during the

(32:31):
cartail wars. There's a suspicion that they might be dead.
The problem that the drug cartels wars created for everyone
is that then became like a way to off people
who might be inconvenient and just make it look like,
you know, the cartels did it a drug hit? Yeah, yeah,

(32:52):
so many, so many of them. It seems remarkable to
me that these Mexican investigators would come and reach out
to to journals lists they wanted justice. Two more people
who wanted justice for the women in Huires, two more
people who disappeared presumed dead. So let's rewind for just

(33:17):
a second. Remember when Alfredo Corcillo first learned that Uirez
police officers were involved in the kidnap and murder of
young women. He wasn't sure what to believe, so he
turned to Phil Jordan of the DA who was able
to corroborate that reporting and the existence of La Ligna.
Phil was the director of the El Paso Intelligence Center,

(33:40):
a multi agency initiative to gather as much information as
possible about the movement of drugs south of the border.
We wanted to know, in the course of all of
his intelligence gathering whether Phil had ever heard anything along
the lines of what the Mexican customs investigators had told Diana,
so we called him. Diana has a line of investigation

(34:04):
that suggests that some of the powerful industrialists in Silajuarez
were involved in having the women abducted. Did your informants
ever tell you anything which suggested that may be true?
I would be lying if I tell you I didn't
hear about that. Yes, I believe those rumors to be accurate.

(34:25):
Diana Washington was accurate in the powerful and the elite
could pick up women, party with them, and then do
away with them. But since it did not involve directly
drug trafficking, we obviously didn't get involved. No, I don't
know if the FBI got involved or not, but yes,
La Lina existed primarily to traffic drugs, and so the

(34:49):
DA actively tracked their activities, including the kidnap and murder
of women, to celebrate successful drug shipments. But the city's
business elites were outside at the agency's direct purview. So
despite believing the rumors to be true, Phil never followed
up on them, but he did mention the FBI. So

(35:10):
we've reached out to Frank Evans, the former Assistant Special
Agent in Challenge of El Paso, to find out what
he knew. We were getting uncorroborated information of involvement by
prominent officials and warez in what we're purported to be
you know, no holds barred sex parties. If that's in

(35:31):
fact the case, the victims cannot be left alive because
they know they've seen certain people. If you had a
victim that turned up and says, hey, I was dragged
into this house and this guy was there, and that
guy was there, and this guy was there and that
guy was there, now you've got a real problem. But
if the victim's killed and it's a nonsolved thomicide, did

(35:53):
anyone try to cooperate this for us? The ability to
one hundred percent corroborate did not exist. Unlike the drug information.
You call Diana Washington Vold as a witness to the truth.
I think you know if you read her book, there
are some very concrete facts in there. Like any investigative reporter,

(36:17):
some of what she reports cannot be one hundred percent corroborated.
But the simple fact that the matter is she's a
witness to the truth. The only way that you stop
this is somebody has to say I'm not running, whether
it's a Diana Washington or someone else. We used to
make a joke. It was you can kill me, but

(36:38):
you can't eat me, and people would say, what the
hell does that mean. It's an attitude of you know what,
I'm here and I'm not leaving. That's one of the
things I respect about Diana Washington and the news media
and wires. They're getting blown up and killed, but you
have people that still go to work every day and

(37:00):
they still do their jobs. And that's when I called
Diana a witness to the truth, because once you're a
witness to the truth, you can kill me, but you
can't eat me. Although they can't put you in a
bat of acid and dissolve your bones. You can kill me,
but you can't eat me. So in the end, Alfredo

(37:28):
Corciallo was able to corroborate his story Monica about police
being involved in the kidnapping of women in Juarez. He
got the documents from the DA, he got the confirmation
from the drugs are in Mexico City. Diana never got
the same degree of corroboration about the rich men. So

(37:50):
what do you make of it? To me, the investigation
into powerful men being involved in the murders of women
is not far fetched in the least. I mean, time
and time again, there are examples of powerful men abusing women,
whether it's Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Dominique Straskon, r Kelly

(38:13):
Roger Ales. I could go on and on. I mean,
our own president was caught on tape describing how he
feels he has license to sexually abuse women. Two men
are now sitting on the US Supreme Court despite strong
allegations of sexual abuse. The differences, you know, their victims

(38:35):
were still around to make allegations and tell their stories.
In what is the victims can no longer speak up
against their attackers. But are there examples of powerful men
being involved in this kind of twisted and sick and
deadly behavior. Absolutely, in Mexico, the elite and powerful, whether

(38:58):
it's in business politics, act with just as much impunity
as the drug cartells do. One thing I'm still not
completely clear on. Does Diner's reporting suggest that there were
two sets of parties where women were trafficked and used

(39:19):
for sport or the industrialists and the knockers attending the
same parties. Both the drug cartels and the powerful men
were said to consume these women under similar circumstances in
these horrific parties. Whether or not these were the same parties,

(39:40):
I don't think we know. But what we do know,
as Candace Scrapic, the forensic psychologist, told us, it's a
way to cement bonds, ensure silence, and fament a brotherhood.
We know that even college frat boys engage in this
kind of behavior. These men feel empowered to you, possess

(40:00):
and attack women because they're used to getting away with it.
Rarely are they ever held accountable for their actions. That's
one of the most frustrating parts about this particular story.
When you have the police and the judiciary not doing
their jobs, and when you have journalists being threatened or

(40:21):
killed for asking questions, and you have powerful bestive financial
interests in keeping a population vulnerable, you just don't get
any answers. On the other hand, Diana, it seems, was
so close to revealing the identities of these industrialists who
were allegedly involved in the murders, and we know she

(40:42):
was willing to risk her life so many other times.
Why do you think she drew a line on theyre
trying to publish their names. Some of my initial reactions were,
what do you mean you're not going to publish these names?
What do you mean you're not going to try to
get more confirmation, I mean, for God's sakes, for the
sake of justice, for the sake of accountability. But the

(41:03):
reality is, even if you were able to get some
kind of solid confirmation, the retaliation you could expect could
be deadly. And I mean you just have to think.
You just have to think, how hard is it to
hold powerful men accountable in this country, in the US
To even begin to fathom how much more of a

(41:26):
challenge it would be to hold them accountable in a
place like Quattas, where you have cops in alliance with criminals.
When you talk about power and protection in Wattas, the
elite business class seems to be more powerful and more protected,
more untouchable than even the top drug cartels. The odds

(41:55):
that young women in Huarez are up against are overwhelming,
the poverty, the corruption, the invisibility. It was in response
to all of this that Paula, a daughter Ye and
several other families came up with a symbol of resistance
that they went on to paint all over Juarez, a
symbol that made it impossible to forget the fate of

(42:18):
Sagrario and so many others like her. Why not have
a protest, but a permanent one is. She thought of
a black cross with a pink background as a symbol
for the girls, the pink background representing the women, and
the black cross for the morning of their loss, but

(42:38):
its main purpose was one of prevention, that whenever a
girl stood by one of those lampposts and saw the cross,
she would know that she was in danger. Next time,
I forgotten Paula's continuing demands for justice and the consequences
for her and her family. I'm Asoloshin and I'm Monica.

(43:02):
See you next time? Do you Know? See? Do you Know? Halla?

(43:24):
Felicia Forgotten? The Women of Horres is co hosted by

(43:49):
Me Monica and me oswald Oshan Forgotten is executive produced
by Me and Mangesh Hatia. Our producers are Julian Weller
and Katrina Norvelle. Sound editing by Julian Weller and Jacopo Penzo.
Lucas Riley is our story editor. Caitlin Thompson is our

(44:10):
consulting producer. Production support from Emily Maronoff and Aaron Kaufman.
Recording assistant to this episode from Miguel Perez and Ethan Bean.
Music by Leonardo Hablum and Hakkabo Libermann, Additional music by
Aaron Kaufman,