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Speaker 1: the spotlight on series from our Health Discovered podcast. In
Speaker 1: this special episode, we'll hear about living a fulfilling life
Speaker 1: with chronic cart failure, a condition that doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be as scary as it sounds. I was outside shoveling
Speaker 1: snow and I noticed I was coughing up flem. Unbeknownst
Speaker 1: to me, I left a trail of blood behind me,
Speaker 1: and I was one sign. Now. Of course, prior to
Speaker 1: I was excessively gaining weight, I had issues breathing, sleep apnea,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of those classic signs. My legs
Speaker 1: were beginning to retain fluid, and I was having heart
Speaker 1: palt patients. My heart would be really excessively fast and so.
Speaker 1: But ultimately it was when that occurred that I thought
Speaker 1: something was seriously wrong. Listen to Health Discovered on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Forgotten is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartMedia and Unusual Productions. Before we start.
Speaker 1: This podcast contains accounts which some listeners will find disturbing,
Speaker 1: but without them, this story can't be fully understood. Please
Speaker 1: take care while listening. A couple of years ago, I
Speaker 1: went to El Paso, Texas, because I was making a
Speaker 1: documentary about the US Mexico border. While I was there,
Speaker 1: I asked one of the producers a question. I said,
Speaker 1: if you could tell any story about this place, what
Speaker 1: would it be. He told me that right across the
Speaker 1: border from where we stood, there were young women who
Speaker 1: worked in American owned factories in the Mexican city of
Speaker 1: Silt Wires, and they were being killed with horrific brutality.
Speaker 1: The victims were often found half naked, dumped in the desert,
Speaker 1: someone found in mass graves with strange symbols left on
Speaker 1: their bodies. The producer told me there were all kinds
Speaker 1: of theories about what was happening to the women, but
Speaker 1: that no one knew for sure. So I asked him
Speaker 1: if I could interview him on the record. When he
Speaker 1: thought about it and said no, it was too dangerous.
Speaker 1: But others did speak, and it became clear that the deaths,
Speaker 1: the disappearances of these women, they aren't random. They seem
Speaker 1: to follow a pattern. You'd have women or girls even
Speaker 1: fifteen seventeen, nineteen, and they have a similar look. They're
Speaker 1: slem art In darker you know, which suggests they may
Speaker 1: have been selected. All from poor families, all from mostly
Speaker 1: poor neighborhoods. They hold the same types of jobs, usually
Speaker 1: students factory workers, and commute regularly alone on public buses
Speaker 1: through downtown Juarez, and then they're never seen again, at
Speaker 1: least not alive. I quickly realized I'd never be able
Speaker 1: to understand the depth and complexity of this story without
Speaker 1: a partner. I asked a friend if they knew anyone
Speaker 1: who might be prepared to work with me. It turned
Speaker 1: out they knew the perfect person. In the first three
Speaker 1: weeks of twenty twenty, there have been more murders in
Speaker 1: Quaddas than days in the new year, when a crush
Speaker 1: of Central American families has overwhelmed officials at the southern border.
Speaker 1: We're going down to the basement where other migrants are
Speaker 1: hanging out at this hotel. There's a horrific history of
Speaker 1: violence against women insou thou Quads. In the last three decades,
Speaker 1: hundreds of women have been brutally murdered here. Many of
Speaker 1: their cases remain unsolved. And that's how I first got
Speaker 1: to know my co host, Monica, a reporter from El Paso,
Speaker 1: a regular voice on public radio and an authority on
Speaker 1: the region. Together will explore who is responsible for the
Speaker 1: deaths of so many women in Juarez and why the
Speaker 1: crimes have remained unsold for decades. I'm as Volosha and
Speaker 1: I'm Monica. This is forgotten the women in Juarezcano param
Speaker 1: non siste la felicia. I've always been fascinated by borders,
Speaker 1: and something about El Paso called to me long before
Speaker 1: I ever went there. It was this city of several
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people in the desert, surrounded by mountains whose
Speaker 1: name literally means the pass right across the dry bed
Speaker 1: of the Rio Grand River, separated by a twenty foot
Speaker 1: metal fence, is El Paso's twin city, sued at Juarez.
Speaker 1: When you drive along the highway in El Paso, the
Speaker 1: barrier becomes a brown blur of rusted metal, but if
Speaker 1: you stop and look, you can see right through the slats.
Speaker 1: In Uarez, there's a cathedral originally built by Spanish colonialists.
Speaker 1: There's the Kentucky Club, a bar that claims to have
Speaker 1: invented the margharita and that traces its name to the
Speaker 1: city's history of whiskey distilling and smuggling during prohibition. There
Speaker 1: are huge, colorful murals celebrating local legends like the musician
Speaker 1: Juan Gabriel. And for all the things you read about
Speaker 1: the cartel violence, the desert landscape has a stark beauty,
Speaker 1: and Juarez is chaotic and bustling, a city of over
Speaker 1: a million people and a city of dreams. People come
Speaker 1: here to find education, to find work. I had come
Speaker 1: here because I wanted to know what living on this
Speaker 1: divide meant. But then I heard about the women. Young
Speaker 1: women who have been going missing and turning up dead
Speaker 1: since the nineteen nineties, often dumped in the desert. At first,
Speaker 1: the authorities tried to claim the murders were random and individual,
Speaker 1: but then in nineteen ninety five, the first mass grave
Speaker 1: was discovered in a place called Lotte Bravo. Nine women's
Speaker 1: bodies were discovered in this deserted plot of land, not
Speaker 1: far from the airport. The bodies were strewn around, as
Speaker 1: if the killer hadn't even made an effort to hide them.
Speaker 1: Some of the victims had their hands tied with shoelaces,
Speaker 1: others had a severed left breast. One had a triangle
Speaker 1: carved on her back who could be capable of this.
Speaker 1: Speculations ran from a satanic cult to a serial killer.
Speaker 1: Then in nineteen ninety six, another mass grave was discovered,
Speaker 1: and then another, and another and another. The most recent
Speaker 1: was in twenty and twelve. These were crimes that shopped
Speaker 1: people in both cities, and that made it clear how
Speaker 1: powerfully a border can shape a person's fate. I needed
Speaker 1: to know more, so I sent Monica an email to
Speaker 1: ask if she'd consider working with me, and well, I
Speaker 1: received a cool reception. I was very guarded at the beginning, because, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a story that I hold close to my heart,
Speaker 1: and I was very hesitant to work with anybody I
Speaker 1: didn't know. With a stranger, I just presumed you were
Speaker 1: a gringo, even though you're not quite a gringo. I
Speaker 1: don't know. For us border ladies, I suppose we're naturally
Speaker 1: suspicious of gringo's coming in from the outside. Telling the
Speaker 1: most sensitive story of our careers. The story takes an
Speaker 1: incredible emotional toll on you, and you're suffering all this
Speaker 1: distress because of it, so much so that I was
Speaker 1: ready to walk away. But then I get this email.
Speaker 1: So what made you agree to work on this together. Well, honestly,
Speaker 1: because I've got this conscience it's eating away at me
Speaker 1: and won't let me go. When I started reporting in Wattis,
Speaker 1: there was one day when I was getting into the car.
Speaker 1: My mom followed me into the garage and got into
Speaker 1: the passenger seat with me, and she said, if you're
Speaker 1: going to go over there and put yourself in danger,
Speaker 1: then I'm going to go over there and put myself
Speaker 1: in the same danger. I can't let you go and
Speaker 1: expose yourself alone. Wow, that moment really forced me to
Speaker 1: grapple with what are you willing to give up for
Speaker 1: this story? The hottest that I knew growing up is
Speaker 1: not the hottest that exists today. It's really sad. But
Speaker 1: today I think twice before I go to hottas because
Speaker 1: of the dangers. So why did I let you pull
Speaker 1: me back in? Well? Because I identify so strongly with
Speaker 1: the victims. There are women there that look like me,
Speaker 1: that are my same age, but confront a completely different,
Speaker 1: horrific reality. The border between El Paso and Juarez is
Speaker 1: increasingly militarized, but the line between the two cities has
Speaker 1: always been poorous. Every year, millions of people cross back
Speaker 1: and forth over the three bridges that connect them. For
Speaker 1: this reason, it wasn't long before the murders of the
Speaker 1: women in Huarez made it onto the radar of the
Speaker 1: FBI's El Paso office. It strikes the heart when you
Speaker 1: see women being left like their garbage. That's Heredrik Crawford
Speaker 1: Junior speaking. He was the FBI Special Agent in charge
Speaker 1: of El Paso from two thousand and one to two
Speaker 1: thousand and three. He first learned about the crimes when
Speaker 1: he was preparing for his assignment at the FBI's headquarters.
Speaker 1: You look at the newspaper clips and one of the
Speaker 1: things that jumped out at me was the murder of
Speaker 1: women in wars. To me, it's a crime on the
Speaker 1: level of the war crimes in Bosnia, in Croatia, you know,
Speaker 1: ethnic cleansing. It hit me on a personal level, more
Speaker 1: soul than it did on a professional level. It sounds funny,
Speaker 1: but I thought, Okay, now I know why Gad sent
Speaker 1: me to ol Perso. Was this? This was the reason
Speaker 1: I was sent here. Nowadays, Hardrick lives in the suburbs
Speaker 1: of Washington, d C. The day we pay him a visit,
Speaker 1: he's taking care of his grandchildren, but he was once
Speaker 1: one of the country's top law enforcement agents protecting the
Speaker 1: real He spent years investigating some of the world's most
Speaker 1: dangerous criminal networks, fair guys, evildoers. He went under cover
Speaker 1: to bus Columbian organized crime at Miami while wearing a recorder.
Speaker 1: It was kind of dacy. In nineteen ninety eight, he
Speaker 1: set up the FBI's command post in Nairobi, Kenya, after
Speaker 1: saw him in Laden bombed the embassy there. I was
Speaker 1: a senior man in the continent. But the assignment that
Speaker 1: he can't stop thinking about is El Paso, Texas just
Speaker 1: a sheer number of women was alarming that The most
Speaker 1: unsettling fact was the lack of tracking or information gathered
Speaker 1: as to the number of women when they occurred, their
Speaker 1: motives lap Randi, What were the women doing? No database?
Speaker 1: The lack of official data presented Hardrick with a concrete problem.
Speaker 1: In fact, at least six of the murdered women in
Speaker 1: Huarez were US citizens. And meanwhile, there was a letter
Speaker 1: to the editor of the El Paso Times in two
Speaker 1: thousand and two suggesting that the number of sex offenders
Speaker 1: paroled to the city from elsewhere had become a crisis.
Speaker 1: Could they have been drawn by the proximity to the
Speaker 1: border and the possibility of crossing back and forth into Mexico.
Speaker 1: Well in this binational community. A big part of Hardrick's
Speaker 1: responsibility was solving binational crimes. If you look out of
Speaker 1: your office at the FBI, you could see warriors in
Speaker 1: downtown El Paso. Driving you could see warriors. It's there,
Speaker 1: it's looming large. Shortly after he arrives at the border,
Speaker 1: a chilling hypothesis about who might be killing the women
Speaker 1: begins to take hold. Is Hardrick giving an interview to
Speaker 1: ABC News in two thousand and one, there is a
Speaker 1: real possibility then an American or someone who is residing
Speaker 1: on our side of the border is conducting these murders.
Speaker 1: Hardrick goes on to describe Juarez as a killing field
Speaker 1: for young women. We discussed the fact that it would
Speaker 1: be easy for an El Paso based predator to walk
Speaker 1: across the border every day, commit a terrible crime, and
Speaker 1: then come back to El Paso and live a life
Speaker 1: with nobody to be the wiser. I mean, if you've
Speaker 1: ever been to warres, disposing of bodies is really easy.
Speaker 1: You don't have to dig through hard dirt you're digging
Speaker 1: through sand Uarez is surrounded by desert. Law enforcement is
Speaker 1: under resourced, and you can walk that from El Paso
Speaker 1: in a matter minutes. All of this was on Hadrick's
Speaker 1: mind when he worried that it could be a hunting
Speaker 1: ground for an American serial killer. And there was something
Speaker 1: else too. Juarez was a city of migrants, young women
Speaker 1: in their families who had moved from rural Mexico to
Speaker 1: this industrial metropolis drawn by the many factories or maculadoras,
Speaker 1: and they didn't always have people to look out for them.
Speaker 1: It was like a perfect storm. You have the women
Speaker 1: coming from southern Mexico, from Central America, desperate for work
Speaker 1: to help their families, to come work at the micheladoras.
Speaker 1: They're alone. The flip side of the coin is you'd
Speaker 1: have to be a cretan if you're a serial murderer
Speaker 1: or you're a psychopath not to understand. Wow, it's like
Speaker 1: antelopes at the water hole. What a great opportunity for
Speaker 1: a serial killer. Once you start focusing on Warrez and
Speaker 1: El Passel, you can't miss it. Diana Aldz was written
Speaker 1: about it. Dinah Washington Valdez is the reporter who has
Speaker 1: gone deeper into this story than perhaps any other. She
Speaker 1: wrote the defining book on the topic, called The Killing
Speaker 1: Fields Harvest of Women, and she noticed something that Hardrick
Speaker 1: Crawford picked up on about how the killers selected their victims.
Speaker 1: When we come back, Dinah tells us what she pieced together.
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Speaker 1: I was going to plan this speech out while I
Speaker 1: got my oil change, but I went to take five.
Speaker 1: Then it was a lot faster than I thought. So
Speaker 1: here he goes. Okay, Tim, you were my first friend,
Speaker 1: Angela you were my first Yeah. I never thought the
Speaker 1: two of you would make it, But I guess love
Speaker 1: really is blind. No, no, no, I mean in a
Speaker 1: good way. I take five. Your oil change is faster
Speaker 1: than you think. Take five to stay in your car,
Speaker 1: ten minute oil change. I didn't think about the danger
Speaker 1: in the beginning, probably intentionally because if I focused on
Speaker 1: the danger, then I would immediately create a barrier for
Speaker 1: myself to help me back. It was not unusual to
Speaker 1: find myself in Watti's eleven twelve am one am in
Speaker 1: order to interview certain police officers who are getting off
Speaker 1: their shift and had agreed to share confidentially what they knew. Simonia,
Speaker 1: if you ask anybody from the area about these crimes,
Speaker 1: the name they mentioned is Diana Washington Valdez. Who is she? Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: Diana like me as a reporter. She was born in Mexico,
Speaker 1: raised in al Paso, and spent most of her career
Speaker 1: at the al Paso Times. And when I did a
Speaker 1: college internship at the al Paso Times, Diana was one
Speaker 1: of my first teachers in journalism. And what was your
Speaker 1: first impression of Diana when you met her in the office.
Speaker 1: I saw her as a badass, so much so that
Speaker 1: I felt intimidated the first time I met her and
Speaker 1: put my hand out to shake hers, and she just
Speaker 1: laughed it off and said, no, no, don't be intimidated.
Speaker 1: I'm here for whatever you need. I think part of
Speaker 1: also what helped her reporting in Whatez is this stern exterior,
Speaker 1: this discipline that comes with military training and what exactly
Speaker 1: to Dina do in the minitary She served in the
Speaker 1: Army and then the National Guard, or a total of
Speaker 1: twenty years. Wow. And that training and the discipline that
Speaker 1: comes with it helped her with her reporting. In the
Speaker 1: scariest moments, she says, her training would kick in and
Speaker 1: help her set her emotions aside and focus on the
Speaker 1: mission before her. So we went to pay Diana a
Speaker 1: visit at her home in El Paso, near the foot
Speaker 1: of the Franklin Mountains, some distance north of the border.
Speaker 1: There's your hot water for tea in the cuss. Oh wonderful,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Nice. Diana welcomes us into her
Speaker 1: home with a generosity and warmth that belies a tough exterior.
Speaker 1: We were there to learn what her reporting on connections
Speaker 1: between the murders in Juarez might reveal about who was
Speaker 1: committing them. As we settled around her coffee table, I
Speaker 1: was curious about what I'd made. Anna connects so deeply
Speaker 1: to this story. When I was a young woman, I
Speaker 1: could have been one of the victims because of my
Speaker 1: look and the long hair and wandering around what is
Speaker 1: naively when I was eighteen and nineteen. You know, they're
Speaker 1: my compatriots. I'm part of them, They're part of me.
Speaker 1: Never in a million years I could imagined writing about
Speaker 1: teenage girls who were brutally murdered and whose deaths are
Speaker 1: unsolved and always could have been prevented. You know, I
Speaker 1: never would have imagined it. As a reporter at the
Speaker 1: El Paso Times, Diana started to notice a pattern of
Speaker 1: young women in Huirez disappearing and turning up dead. It
Speaker 1: was a golden age of local journalism, and she had
Speaker 1: the platform to shine a light on these unsolved murders
Speaker 1: and perhaps, in doing so, prevent more. But first she
Speaker 1: had to figure out exactly what was going on. We
Speaker 1: could seeing reports about X number of bodies found another
Speaker 1: woman found dead, mutilated, very horrific murders, the brutality, it
Speaker 1: was something we've never seen here in the border, neither side.
Speaker 1: But what I had been reading in the Mexican press
Speaker 1: did not tell me who was killing the women and why.
Speaker 1: So I got involved in investigating the murders. When was
Speaker 1: the very first time when he thought there's something connecting
Speaker 1: these crimes. The fact that multiple bodies were left in
Speaker 1: specific sits, in sites where the bodies could be found.
Speaker 1: This was unseen and unheard of. In some cases, we
Speaker 1: had what I call a sense of overkill because we
Speaker 1: would have a victim, for example, that was strangled, stabbed,
Speaker 1: and shot. Also, these strangulations the medical examiners in what
Speaker 1: is noted were for the purposes of sexual gratification of
Speaker 1: the perpetrator. That women were being strangled to achieve this
Speaker 1: kind of sexual effect. It seemed that whoever was killing
Speaker 1: the women in Huirez was not content merely to end
Speaker 1: their lives. It seemed they wanted to completely dehumanize them
Speaker 1: in the process. But who would want to do this
Speaker 1: and why? It seemed like whoever it was was taunting investigators,
Speaker 1: purposefully leaving signatures of the crime scenes. Yet the symbols
Speaker 1: that law enforcements found on some of the victims who
Speaker 1: were very intriguing. These were linked to possible serial killers.
Speaker 1: And we know that serial killers have their own rituals
Speaker 1: in the way that they kill the victims and the
Speaker 1: way they positioned their bodies and the trophies that might
Speaker 1: take from them. And in several cases these triangles were
Speaker 1: carved on the backs of the victims. Those characteristics were
Speaker 1: terrifying to people and to the families because they were
Speaker 1: look at it and say, it's not just a murderer.
Speaker 1: There's something else going on here that's scary. Did you
Speaker 1: ever discover what that something else was? There were no
Speaker 1: There were just speculations. There were only speculations that the
Speaker 1: markings might have indicated the initials of a perpetrator or representative.
Speaker 1: Map A map? A map? What a map of murder?
Speaker 1: You know, geographical map to geographical map. That's That's as
Speaker 1: far as I was able to ascertain the information was provided.
Speaker 1: Could this possibly be true? A map of murder left
Speaker 1: on the bodies of the victims? And if so, where
Speaker 1: does that map lead? Well? Despite a full plate of
Speaker 1: assignments in El Paso from her editors, those questions sent
Speaker 1: Diana into Juarez on her evenings, weekends, and even vacation
Speaker 1: to answer. I know, just from experience that someone always
Speaker 1: knows something. Someone knows what's going on. These murders appeared
Speaker 1: to be taking place systematically. It's specific kinds of victims
Speaker 1: or being selected and kidnapped or taken by force somehow
Speaker 1: or lured, and then their bodies found. Diana was struck
Speaker 1: by the profile of the victims. They were young, they
Speaker 1: come from elsewhere in such opportunity, and they seem to
Speaker 1: disappear into thin air without witnesses. Standing at a memorial
Speaker 1: erected by the parents of one of the murdered women,
Speaker 1: Lilia Alejandra Andrade, Diana was momentarily overwhelmed. I walked through
Speaker 1: that field where her body had been found, and I
Speaker 1: saw the cross Lilia Lejandrade, and it kind of just
Speaker 1: hit me at once that this is where a young
Speaker 1: lady's life was snuffed out merciless sleep. And it's just
Speaker 1: like all the emotions that I had suppressed up to
Speaker 1: then about the victims just uh, just the damn burst.
Speaker 1: And then, you know, I started sobbing uncontrollably. I could
Speaker 1: stop it. Just it just happened, and I cried and
Speaker 1: I cried and I cried, and the people who walked by,
Speaker 1: uh saw me, and you know, they thought something was wrong,
Speaker 1: and uh, I couldn't tell them. I had a similar
Speaker 1: momentum where the tears came and and it it was
Speaker 1: it was something that I couldn't stop, and I was
Speaker 1: surprised at myself and um, yeah, the grief builds up
Speaker 1: on you. Yeah, yes, where it was m m yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, you think about the helplessness of
Speaker 1: the victims. Look at what they were up against. Your
Speaker 1: sixteen seventeen year old you went downtown to do or
Speaker 1: narrant for your parents, or to try in some new shoes,
Speaker 1: to apply for a job, and push, you know, grabbed
Speaker 1: and lured, and you're murdered. Diana and Herdrick established a
Speaker 1: clear pattern in what type of victims the killer would
Speaker 1: target and how they would kill them. And in fact,
Speaker 1: there are so many murders of young women in huires
Speaker 1: that fit this pattern that the reflex can be to
Speaker 1: retreat into statistics this many women, that cause of death.
Speaker 1: But you can't understand the full situation without getting to
Speaker 1: know some of the victims, victims like Cigario Gonzalez Flores.
Speaker 1: Early on when we were embarking on this story together, Monica,
Speaker 1: you mentioned Sigario Gonzalez. Sagario Gonzalez story is the story
Speaker 1: of so many other women who were murdered into the Watts.
Speaker 1: She was an immigrant, she was a factory worker. She
Speaker 1: was a teenager. She went missing between her home and
Speaker 1: her work, and her murderer transformed her family's life into
Speaker 1: this fight to try to find out what happened. But
Speaker 1: who is she? So she sang in the church choir
Speaker 1: and taught Sunday school to kindergarteners. She has a boyfriend.
Speaker 1: His name is Andres. She's got a notebook where she
Speaker 1: writes poetry. She puts all kinds of stickers in this notebook,
Speaker 1: like hearts and princesses and rabbits. And her handwriting is impeccable,
Speaker 1: written in block print, very neat, and it's clear she's
Speaker 1: sweet on Andres too. She's got his name and phone
Speaker 1: number written on the front cover. And what was it
Speaker 1: like looking into that book? Oh gosh, how do you
Speaker 1: describe that? This is like a relic of someone who's gone.
Speaker 1: It's the closest thing to her. I mean, it's so
Speaker 1: precious just to see her name on there, her own
Speaker 1: name written in her own handwriting. I don't have the
Speaker 1: words for it. I don't have the words for it.
Speaker 1: But she's the whole reason why I'm sticking around to
Speaker 1: tell the story. Sigrio Gonzalez Flores was one of six
Speaker 1: sisters and she was seventeen years old when she left
Speaker 1: for work at four am on Thursday, April sixteenth, ninety eight.
Speaker 1: She arrived at the factory, completed her normal work day,
Speaker 1: and then left to take the bus home, but she
Speaker 1: never made it. Her body was discovered two weeks later,
Speaker 1: dumped in the desert on the other side of town
Speaker 1: from where she lived. When we come back, we travel
Speaker 1: to Quarez to meet Sugario's Mouth of Powder at a
Speaker 1: home to learn more about her. Such for answers, what
Speaker 1: is Circle? First of all, it's a beautiful shape. It's
Speaker 1: consistent a community. It's meant to be inclusive the globe.
Speaker 1: At Circle, we build USDC a digital dollar that's actually
Speaker 1: dollar backed one to one. We're building a future where
Speaker 1: money will travel at the speed of the Internet for
Speaker 1: fractions of a penny and no one will think about
Speaker 1: it because it will just be the way we work.
Speaker 1: Circles the place where crypto meets stability, where local businesses
Speaker 1: meet global customers and the US dollar meets USDC. Visit Circle,
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Speaker 1: was going to plan this speech out while I got
Speaker 1: my oil change. But I went to take five and
Speaker 1: it was a lot faster than I thought. So here
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Speaker 1: you were my first Yeah. I never thought the two
Speaker 1: of you would make it. But I guess love really
Speaker 1: is blind. No, no, no, I mean in a good way.
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Speaker 1: Take five to stay in your car ten minute oil change.
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Speaker 1: Driving into Mexico from El Paso is straightforward. Passports are
Speaker 1: rarely checked, and most cars are way through and now
Speaker 1: orders to firsthand what Hardrick meant about how easy it
Speaker 1: would be for an American citizen to slip back and
Speaker 1: forth across the border. The part of fire is closest
Speaker 1: to the bridge from the United States has restaurants. When
Speaker 1: the elected facades from the fifties, there's a strip of
Speaker 1: nightclubs and bars, and there are billboards in English advertising
Speaker 1: cosmetic dentistry. But as you drive west towards the Flora's household,
Speaker 1: paved streets begin to give way to dirt roads and
Speaker 1: urban infrastructure turns to desert. The Floridas family lives in
Speaker 1: a colonia or neighborhood called Loma Zeppoleo. It's one of
Speaker 1: the first communities in Mexico that isn't separated from the
Speaker 1: US by the Rio Grande. That river travels south from
Speaker 1: New Mexico then takes a sharp turn east when it
Speaker 1: reaches Texas, and that's where it becomes the US Mexico border.
Speaker 1: West of that point, the landscape is mostly desert, so
Speaker 1: nothing to divide the two countries, but a series of
Speaker 1: man made barriers, each more severe than the last. Loma
Speaker 1: Zeppoleo began as a squatter community founded by migrant families
Speaker 1: from other parts of Mexico, and most of them came
Speaker 1: here to work in the Makuladouas. As we drive through
Speaker 1: Lomas de Poleo, we pass house off the house, each
Speaker 1: seemingly constructed from different materials. There are few street names
Speaker 1: and no street lights. Powla's house is one of the
Speaker 1: more substantial in the neighborhood, and it has a gated
Speaker 1: dirt yard. Where we part, we had an extremely warm welcome.
Speaker 1: Let me arrive at Powla's house. From dogs to neighborhood children,
Speaker 1: to powder herself. My name is Paula. We are at
Speaker 1: my house, which is also yours here in Lama cepole
Speaker 1: Paula has this cascade of thick black hair almost to
Speaker 1: her waist, and her wardrobe is very feminine. She carries
Speaker 1: herself with dignity and pride. Her shoulders are back, her
Speaker 1: head is held high. Paula is like the nucleus of
Speaker 1: her household. She's with out of doubt, the matriarch in
Speaker 1: the family. So she is just telling us about where
Speaker 1: her family came from. Where we lived. My husband, Jesus
Speaker 1: worked in the mountains. He was a chainsaw operator, chopping
Speaker 1: pine trees for wood. In fact, in lud Ago, that's
Speaker 1: what most people do for work. My sister in law
Speaker 1: already lived here and she was the one who invited us,
Speaker 1: saying that there was a lot of work here. We
Speaker 1: didn't bring a whole lot. We had what we were
Speaker 1: wearing and one change of clothing. The truck we were
Speaker 1: in had a camper bed, so in the back on
Speaker 1: top of a camper, we packed four chairs inside the
Speaker 1: camper where my daughters who lay on a little mattress,
Speaker 1: along with a bin of dishes. That's all we brought.
Speaker 1: It was nineteen ninety five, a year after Nafter was
Speaker 1: signed and free trade meant the factories were booming. To
Speaker 1: this day, companies like General Electric and Johnson and Johnson
Speaker 1: create things like medical gloves and blood pressure cuffs in
Speaker 1: Huarez for export to the US. But Whire has had
Speaker 1: done little to prepare for the arrival of migrants like Paula,
Speaker 1: her husband Jesus, and their daughter Sagria. That's how neighborhoods
Speaker 1: like Lomester Poleo came into existence. And to get the
Speaker 1: materials they needed to build their life, many families salvage
Speaker 1: scrap from US dumps across the border. This was at
Speaker 1: a time when the border was much less harshly enforced.
Speaker 1: Why not positively well, our primary need was would because
Speaker 1: we wanted to put a roof over our heads to live. Right,
Speaker 1: It wasn't unusual for people who lived in Lomaz de
Speaker 1: Poleo to crawl under or jump over this barbed wire
Speaker 1: fence it to this American landfill on the other side
Speaker 1: and pick through it to find material to construct their homes.
Speaker 1: There were a few times that Sagaradio accompanied us to
Speaker 1: the American landfill. One of those times it was in
Speaker 1: December and we were there and some guys came to
Speaker 1: throw out trash. Right, so one of the guys saw
Speaker 1: her and noticed she was cold, so he took off
Speaker 1: his jacket and gave it to her. Sagaradio was pale
Speaker 1: and her face turned bright red, and she told him no, no,
Speaker 1: thank you, and I told her it's okay, take it,
Speaker 1: and Sagadio was blushing. She went over and took it
Speaker 1: even though she didn't want to, and he gave it
Speaker 1: to her. That moment always stuck with me. Despite having
Speaker 1: to build a roof above their own heads, the Flores
Speaker 1: family did find what they'd come in search of. Jesus,
Speaker 1: and four of his kids, including Sagardrio, worked the evening
Speaker 1: shift at the same Makila making refrigerator parts. They traveled
Speaker 1: as a group to and from work. Then the factory
Speaker 1: found out that Sagardrio was under age. She was seventeen,
Speaker 1: so she was told that in order to keep working,
Speaker 1: she would have to switch to the day shift, and
Speaker 1: if she did that, she would have to wake up
Speaker 1: before dawn and make the two hour bus trip to
Speaker 1: work alone. When they made the change, I told her
Speaker 1: to wait instead of accepting it. April May June July.
Speaker 1: On July thirty first, she would turn eighteen. I said
Speaker 1: to her, when you turn eighteen, you can go with
Speaker 1: your daddy and Gilla, right. She said no, that she
Speaker 1: wanted to help, that she needed the money to support
Speaker 1: her home. So every morning Sagarrio would wake up at
Speaker 1: three am. She'd lower her bare feet onto a square
Speaker 1: of loose carpet that was placed on the dirt floor
Speaker 1: of their home. Next to the bed. There was a
Speaker 1: chair with her clothes folded on top of it, and
Speaker 1: twenty Mexican pistoles bus fare to get from home to work.
Speaker 1: Me who Chu and a Sanshui would go and walk
Speaker 1: her to the number ten bus and then in downtown
Speaker 1: she would take another bus to work. When they changed
Speaker 1: her shift, she signed an insurance policy like with beneficiaries,
Speaker 1: in case something happens. Remember that. When she arrived with
Speaker 1: that paperwork, she said to me, mamma, they're going to
Speaker 1: give me life insurance and the maquila. Joking around, she
Speaker 1: told me, if something happens to me, mamma, they're going
Speaker 1: to give you a ton of money. Lea, I know,
Speaker 1: they said, don'cle saying that, honey, why do you say
Speaker 1: that to me? Yes, Mama, if something happens to me,
Speaker 1: the makuila will give you lots of money. I always
Speaker 1: remember that so vividly. I don't know if my innocent
Speaker 1: girl had a feeling that something was going to happen
Speaker 1: to her. I don't know the Flores family moved to
Speaker 1: Juarez in nineteen ninety five, the very same year that
Speaker 1: the first mass grave of women was discovered. Paula's husband, Jesus,
Speaker 1: had moved to Huaires with their son Cheui before the
Speaker 1: rest of the family, and Jesus sent let Us home
Speaker 1: to Durango, encouraging Paula and their six daughters to join.
Speaker 1: Powder read them allowed to us, my Paula, I want
Speaker 1: to tell you the following, My love, we are in luck.
Speaker 1: As soon as we arrived we found work. I asked
Speaker 1: him how's the neighborhood, whether it was peaceful, because I'd
Speaker 1: heard it was dangerous in Juarez, and he said, no,
Speaker 1: it's peaceful. It's a new neighborhood. All the people are
Speaker 1: just getting started. Lydian told him they say they kill
Speaker 1: women there, they kill girls, and he said no, no.
Speaker 1: I said, it's just that we're bringing a lot. You
Speaker 1: have six daughters. No, no wining, and he said, no, no,
Speaker 1: there's no danger. Within three years of arriving with big
Speaker 1: dreams of a brighter future, Paula's worst fears has been realized.
Speaker 1: Sigario had been brutally murdered, so people often ask me,
Speaker 1: what's the most difficult story you've had to cover as
Speaker 1: a reporter, and my answer is always the same, the
Speaker 1: missing and murdered women of Watts. It's a story that
Speaker 1: I've come back to throughout my career. I was once
Speaker 1: at a gathering of activists outside a courthouse in Hottis
Speaker 1: and I remember this girl no more than seven her
Speaker 1: eight years old. She was singing a song called the
Speaker 1: Richel Nacimiento or Birthright. It was in memory of the
Speaker 1: slain women, women like Sagrario Gonzalez, Flores, Lilia, Alejandra Andrade
Speaker 1: and Montes. I once made a silent promise to these
Speaker 1: women that I would tell the world who they were
Speaker 1: and why they mattered, so that they would never be forgotten.
Speaker 1: In what is These crimes have gone on for so
Speaker 1: long that this most extreme form of violence against women
Speaker 1: has a name feminio femicide, and the crimes have been
Speaker 1: maddeningly hard to solve. Witnesses rarely come forward, evidence goes missing,
Speaker 1: police are overstretched. But then in two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: a case came along that had all the pieces in
Speaker 1: place to be solved and to uncover who was behind
Speaker 1: the rest of these murders. That's in our next episode.
Speaker 1: Imzveloshen and mon would even see you next time. You're
Speaker 1: not see You're not not Illa fell Forgotten. The Women
Speaker 1: of Juarez is co hosted by me Monica and me Oswaloshin.
Speaker 1: We'd like to thank Paula Flores and all the victims families,
Speaker 1: and thank you to Diana Washington Valez and all the
Speaker 1: truth seekers and activists who fight for justice, and to
Speaker 1: the many people you won't hear on tape who contributed
Speaker 1: to this podcast. Thank you to Natalia La Furcale and
Speaker 1: Gueta Calderon for their help with our theme Songio Forgotten
Speaker 1: is executive produced by me Oswaloshin and Mangesh Hatia. Our
Speaker 1: producers are Julian Weller and Katrina Noval. Sound editing by
Speaker 1: Julian Weller and Jacopo Penzo. Lucas Riley is our story editor.
Speaker 1: Caitlin thomps And is our consulting producer. Production support from
Speaker 1: Emily Maronoff and Aaron Kaufman. Recording assistance this episode from
Speaker 1: Melissa Kaplan. Music by Leonardo Hablum and Hakkabo Liberman. Additional
Speaker 1: music by Aaron Kaufman. Karla Tassara is the voice actor
Speaker 1: for Paula Flores. Special thanks to Angela Cocherga for introducing
Speaker 1: me to Monica to Weird Moved West for exceptional production
Speaker 1: support in El Paso, Anti Jonah Descent for executive producing
Speaker 1: Bridging Us, the documentary series that first brought me to
Speaker 1: the border. This podcast is dedicated to all the women
Speaker 1: lost to senseless violence in Howadis and all around the world.
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Speaker 1: to plan this speech out while I got my oil change.
Speaker 1: But I went to take five and it was a
Speaker 1: lot faster than I thought, So here he goes. Okay, Tim,
Speaker 1: you were my first friend. Angela you were my first Yeah.
Speaker 1: I never thought the two of you would make it,
Speaker 1: But I guess love really is blind. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I mean it in a good way. I take five.
Speaker 1: Your oil change is faster than you think. Take five
Speaker 1: to stay in your car. Ten minute oil change