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Disappearances Rise on Mexico's 'Highway of Death' to Border · Murder Files Unsealed

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Speaker 1: Welcome to the deep dive. Today, we're focusing on a
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stretch of highway in northern Mexico that presents well, an
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incredibly brutal paradox.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it really does.
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Speaker 1: It's an essential economic corridor, I mean, a piece of
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infrastructure critical to cross border trade, absolutely vital. Yet it
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has earned this hounding, visceral nickname the Highway of Death
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or Carretera de'm.
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Speaker 3: We are speaking specifically about the two hundred and nineteen
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kilometer stretch of Highway eighty five D. This road is
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the high speed link connecting Manterey, which is really the
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industrial engine of neuvo Ley manufacturing up huge, connecting that
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with the border city of Voivo, Laredo and Tamulipis. And look,
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if you are moving billions of dollars of manufactured goods
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from Central Mexico into the United States, this road is well,
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it's basically unavoidable.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. Then we're talking about an economic artery,
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right designed to facilitate rapid secure commerce under agreements like USMCA.
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That's the idea, yes, But instead locally people often call
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at the triangle of the bermudas which that suggests vehicles
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and people just who finish when they enter the zone.
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Speaker 2: That nickname, it.
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Speaker 3: Perfectly captures the horror, the sense of oblivion associated with
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the eighty five d Yeah, our mission in this deep
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dive is really to extract the essential facts from the
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sources detailing this horrifying surge in enforced disappearances along this
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specific route.
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Speaker 1: You need to get a handle on it.
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Speaker 3: We need to understand what this localized crisis reveals about
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Mexico's broader systemic struggles with violence, with cartel control, and
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frankly devastating community.
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Speaker 1: Because what is happening on this single highway it feels
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like a hyper concentrated version of a national tragedy, doesn't it.
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Speaker 2: It absolutely is.
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Speaker 1: When we pull back and look at the national data,
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the scale of human loss is just staggering. Over one
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hundred and sixteen thousand people remain missing nationwide since records
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began around nineteen fifty.
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Speaker 3: And here is the chilling acceleration, the part that really
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stands out. Nearly half of those one hundred and sixteen
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thousand appearances have occurred just since twenty nineteen.
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Speaker 1: Half since twenty nineteen. That's incredible.
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Speaker 3: It's a massive spike now zoom back in on this
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two hundred and nineteen kilometer stretch of the eighty five D.
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Reports indicate well over two hundred confirmed vanishings in just
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the last few years, spiking dramatically since twenty twenty one.
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Speaker 1: Wow.
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Speaker 3: This demonstrates it. Even in the most critical areas for
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international trade for economic stability, the rule of law has
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been violently supplanted by well the iron grip of criminal organizations.
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Speaker 1: So let's start right there analyzing that contradiction, commerce and
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carnage side by side.
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Speaker 3: The eighty five D is on paper at least a
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monument to economic integration.
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Speaker 2: It's a toll road.
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Speaker 3: Right, a premium route set up to expedit US Mexico
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trade under frameworks like NAFTA, which as you said is
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now USMCA. And Moneray is a huge metropolis often called
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the industrial capital of Mexico. It produces five value good
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steel components for automobiles, high tech manufacturing.
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Speaker 1: Lots of stuff, and all that manufacturing output has to
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flow north, basically directly into the U. S. WES market.
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Villa Nuevo Laredo, which is what the busiest inland port
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of entry in the whole Western hemisphere facing Laredo, Texas.
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Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
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Speaker 3: So the highway is constantly vibrating with high value targets.
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You've got thousands of semi trucks every single day carrying
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billions of dollars in exports, billions, billions. Plus you have
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wealthy individuals US citizens traveling back and forth for business
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or family. It is designed theoretically for maximum economic efficiency.
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Speaker 1: It hums with the economic purpose. Yeah yeah, but when
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we look at the actual geography surrounding the highway, it
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seems almost tailor made for criminal exploitation. What makes this
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specific two hundred and nineteen kilometers stretch so vulnerable.
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Speaker 3: Well, what's fascinating here is how the physical conditions really
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enable the criminal dynamics. I mean, if this were a
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well lit, highly patrolled interstate like you see in many
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parts of the US, these kinds of abductions would be
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much much harder. Sure, but this stretch is isolated. It
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is sparsely lit at night, very dark in places, and
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by these vast rugged ranchlands, some of the largest in northern.
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Speaker 1: Mexican's empty space.
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Speaker 2: Exactly.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, these conditions are ideal for levaned tones subductions. There
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are often no witnesses, very few places to turn for help,
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and just endless empty space to.
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Speaker 2: Hide a captive or dispose of a vehicle or worse.
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Speaker 1: And that isolation. It's coupled with the fact that the
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road slices directly through cartel strongholds, right, territories that have
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been contested and established for decades. It's not just a
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physical problem, it's a political geography problem too.
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Speaker 3: Absolutely, the road itself is the intersection point, the battle
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line almost for various territories. And the scale of the
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disappearance resurgents that spike around twenty twenty twenty twenty one,
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it shocked even seasoned observer that by July twenty twenty one,
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authorities were officially confirming seventy one missing individuals. Okay, seventy one. However,
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the family search collectives, the collectivos.
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Speaker 1: The groups on the ground doing the searching exactly.
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Speaker 3: They reported much higher numbers, over one hundred and sixty
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three cases in just the eleven month leading up to
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October twenty twenty one.
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Speaker 1: Wow, more than double the official count in that period.
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Speaker 3: Right, And that gap between official data and civilian reporting
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that's critical. It tells you a lot about trust and
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maybe about capacity or even willingness to acknowledge the full scale.
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Speaker 1: Let's zoom in on the mechanics of that operation. How
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these abductions happen. You mentioned the cases are random. They
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seem to cluster around a specific area.
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Speaker 2: That's right.
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Speaker 3: The vast majority of these incidents, the disappearances are reported
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near kilometer twenty six of the eighty.
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Speaker 1: Five d kilometer twenty six Klombuter twenty six.
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Speaker 3: This spot has been identified by both authorities and crucially
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by the victims' families as a notorious checkpoint or hotspot.
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Speaker 1: So it suggests a more organized operation, not just random
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bandits jumping out.
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Speaker 3: Precisely, it suggests a concentrated, planned criminal operation. The cartels
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they know this is the bottleneck. It's the natural point
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to intercept travelers who might be carrying cash, maybe valuable vehicles,
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or perhaps more chillingly, people who might be useful for
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forced labor or trafficking.
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Speaker 1: It's just terrifying. But if the road is so vital
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for international economics, why hasn't this specific two hundred and
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nineteen kilometer stretch been secured? I mean, with the kind
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of resource and force that mirrors its economic importance. Doesn't
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the sheer volume of trade passing through demand a secure environment, that.
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Speaker 3: Is the central paradox, isn't it? Logically the road should
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be one of the most secure in Mexico given its
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economic function billions are at stake, but its strategic location,
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connecting the wealth of Monterey to the chaotic, contested border
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region of Tamolipas makes it just too lucrative for criminal
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enterprise to ignore. The state well, it has proven either
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unwilling or perhaps unable to match the firepower and the
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deep territorial control of the cartels in this specific region.
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Speaker 1: So a failure of state control essentially.
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Speaker 3: You could certainly argue that, and it raises that important question,
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how did we actually get here? How did this key
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trade route become a killing ground? And to answer that,
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we have to look back. We need to understand the
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history of violence in this.
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Speaker 1: Area, right because the eighty five d didn't just become
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the highway of death overnight. It's deadly reputation really solidified
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during the Caldron era drug war, didn't it, specifically from
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around two thousand and six to twenty twelve. That period
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fundamentally reshaped organized crime in Mexico.
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Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely, that era unleashed just unprecedented violence across the country.
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We're talking over three hundred thousand homicides nationwide during.
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Speaker 1: That period, three hundred thousand.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, and Tamlipas and Nuevo Leone, the two states that
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Highway eighty five D cuts through, they became primary battlegrounds.
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This violence was largely driven by the rise of one
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particular group, the Zetas.
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Speaker 1: And the Zetas were well, they're different, weren't they because
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of their unique origins. They weren't your typical criminal bosses
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growing up in the trade.
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Speaker 2: Not at all.
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Speaker 3: They were former military special forces, specifically members of the GAFE,
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the Grupo AeroMobile, the forts Ass specialis, Mexico's elite canter
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terrorism unit, trained by the best, in some cases even internationally.
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Speaker 1: So they brought military discipline and tactics to the game.
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Speaker 3: Exactly their military training meant. They brought discipline, sophisticated weaponry,
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and crucially military grade tactics to organize crime. The older
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cartels they primarily focused on trafficking drugs.
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Speaker 2: Moving product.
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Speaker 3: The Zetas they diversified the business model of brutality. How so,
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they pioneered industrial scale violence, mass kidnappings became common, systematic
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extortion rackets, and the use of incredibly graphic public displays
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of torture, often including these Narco messages, signs left with
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bodies designed specifically to seize territory through sheer psychological terror.
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Speaker 1: So the Highway it transitioned from just a route people
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traveled to an active war zone. Human lives became disposable commodities.
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In their strategy.
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Speaker 3: Precisely sources from around twenty ten to twenty eleven, They
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described these defining atrocities where the highway literally became a gauntlet.
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Cartel gunmen would stop buses, pull everyone off, and conduct
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passengers sorting.
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Speaker 1: Sorting. What is the mean?
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Speaker 3: It means they weren't just looking for cash or drugs anymore.
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They're looking for potential rivals, maybe people who looked like
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they could be forced recruits or people they could hold
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for ransom. This was the moment when forced disappearance became
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a systematized tool of territorial control, not just a byproduct.
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Speaker 1: Of conflicts, and we hear these almost unbelievable stories of
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depravity from that time. I mean things like cartel gunmen
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forcing bus passengers, often migrants, or just travelers who weren't
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local to fight each other to the death with sledgehammers,
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things like that.
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Speaker 3: Those stories, horrific as they are, are documented, that level
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of extreme violence served a very clear purpose to demonstrate absolute,
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uncontested dominion over that stretch of land, to make everyone afraid.
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Speaker 1: And that history it kind of culminates in the massacre
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near the highway that became globally infamous, the twenty eleven
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San Fernando massacre.
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Speaker 3: Yes, Zida's gunmen abducted and then slaughtered one hundred and
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ninety three.
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Speaker 1: Migrants, one hundred and ninety three people.
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Speaker 3: In one go, and the sickening de details that the
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primary reason they killed them was because they mistakenly identified
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them as recruits or informants for the rival Sinaloa cartel.
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They weren't even necessarily targets for ransom. They were just
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caught in the crossfire of a cartel war. Their bodies
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were discovered dumped into mass graves foss along the route.
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Speaker 1: That incident it feels like it essentially consecrated that highway
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as a site of mass execution. It put it on
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the map for all the wrong reasons.
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Speaker 3: It really did, and the legacy of that violence. It
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persists today. We know that the ranch lands surrounding the
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eighty five D still hide clandestine evans or crematorios that
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were used for incinerating bodies and hidden mass graves. These
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are literal scars on the landscape that constantly remind people
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of the Zeta's initial project of erasure the infrastructure of violence.
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You see, it never truly left, It just went quiet
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for a bit.
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Speaker 1: Okay. But if that era peaked around say twenty twelve,
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why the sudden terrifying resurgence and disappearances post twenty twenty?
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What changed to bring back this level of carnage to
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the highway.
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Speaker 3: That's the key question, isn't it. Analysts point to several
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factors happening at roughly the same time. First, the cartels
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themselves have fractured. The original Zeta splintered, giving rise to
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new groups like the Northeast Cartel the CDN. Okay, this
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fracturing meant intensified internal infighting. Successor groups were fighting tooth
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and nail over the most valuable routes, and the eighty
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five D is arguably the most valuable trafficking and extortion
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route in that region.
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Speaker 1: More competition more violence exactly.
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Speaker 3: Then you add in the pandemic disruptions you mentioned that earlier.
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How did COVID nineteen lockdowns actually contribute to the violence.
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It seems counterintuitive, Yeah, you'd think less movement. Well, the
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pandemic severely disrupted traditional smuggling operations, particularly cross border drug movements.
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Borders tightened, scrutiny increased, legitimate traffic decreased. So when the
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main flow of revenue slows down, cartels become more desperate. Ah,
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they turn aggressively toward localized extortion and kidnapping to supplement
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their income. The eighty five D became an immediate target
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because it represents high volume traffic, guaranteed potential income from
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tolls or abductions, regardless of border security conditions further south
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or north.
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Speaker 1: So the pressure cooker effect less drag and money, more
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pressure to extract locally.
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Speaker 3: Precisely, the surge we see post twenty twenty is a
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direct manifestation of this desperate fight for territorial control and
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revenue diversification. And they're using the old playbook, mirroring the
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intense bloodsoak tactics of the original zetas because well, it
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worked before. In terms of establishing fear and control.
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Speaker 1: It sounds like the environment that allowed the ztas to
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flourish in the first place. You know, weak state presence,
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high value targets, isolated geography. It was simply reactivated once
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the financial pressure and the territorial disputes escalated.
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Speaker 3: Again, that is the core takeaway. I think the infrastructure
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of violence was dormant maybe, but it certainly wasn't dismantled.
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And the actors fighting for control today, specifically the CDN
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and their rivals like the CJ ANDNG, they're using that
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same blue print of terror and disappearance. So let's pivot
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then to the architects of the present absence. When we
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talk about who controls the eighty five D today, who
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is making people disappear? Now we are basically talking about
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two main factions vying for control over that border corridor,
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and their methods are deeply rooted in erasure, in making people.
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Speaker 1: Vanish, okay, and the primary force dominating the Neuva Laredo
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side of the route, the gateway to Texas, that's the
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Northeast Cartel or CDN.
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Speaker 3: That's right, the CBN is the direct lineage. You could say,
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the most powerful splinter group of the old Zetas, and
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they operate as the heir to the Zeta's unique brand
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of savagery. They're dominance over Nueva Laredo means they effectively
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control the gateway into Texas along that route.
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Speaker 1: But they're not unopposed, No.
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Speaker 2: Definitely not.
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Speaker 3: They are being aggressively challenged by the Julisco New Generation Cartel,
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the CGNG.
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Speaker 1: Ugh, the CJNG. They're infamous across Mexico, aren't They Known
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for their hyperviolence, their almost corporate expansion, and their technological
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approach to warfare, things like US weaponized drones for assassinations.
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Speaker 3: Exactly drone assassinations, and also for their chillingly efficient methods
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of disposing of remains, like using chemical means acid baths,
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dissolving bodies to get rid of evidence quickly.
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Speaker 1: God so that turf war between CDN and CJNG. It
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turns the eighty five d into this perpetual battleground where
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vehicles and people traveling between Monterey and Laredo are seen
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as either potential revenue streams or just collateral damage.
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Speaker 2: Pretty much.
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Speaker 3: The CDN in particular seems to have perfected the art
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of extortion along that route. Sources describe as sophisticated system
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of taxation. They demand protection, payments, what they call taxes
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or peace on virtually every vehicle crossing their territory, from
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the big semi trucks down to private cars, and.
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Speaker 1: The consequence for not complying, or maybe just being suspected
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of not complying. It's a media and absolute.
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Speaker 3: It's exactly failure to pay, or even if a traveler
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is simply suspected of carrying intelligence or money for a
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rival group, that often results in dis appearance or death.
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And the victims, this is important. They're almost always utilitarian.
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This is not typically random highway robbery for a wallet.
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Speaker 1: Let's dig into that a bit. What do you mean
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by utilitarian victims? How are they used?
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Speaker 3: It means that victims are treated as resources, as assets
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to maximize profit or strategic advantage. Truckers, for example, might
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be coerced into becoming forced smugglers transporting fentanyl, or maybe
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migrants under duress. Migrants themselves are frequently kidnapped. Sometimes they're
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recruited as mules, forced into carrying drugs or acting as lookouts.
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More commonly, though, they're held for ransom, with families off
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and back in Central America or even in the US.
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Speaker 1: Being extorted and the vehicles too.
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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, the vehicles are valuable, stolen, stripped down for
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parts very quickly, or maybe repainted and used in subsequent
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criminal operations. Everything has a value in this system.
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Speaker 1: This sounds less like opportunistic crime and much more like
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a highly efficient, almost industrialized logistical operation, an operation that
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integrates violence directly into its supply chain.
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Speaker 3: I think that's a very accurate way to put it.
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It is industrialized. And this brings us back to perhaps
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the most disturbing tactic, the systematic eradication of evidence.
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Speaker 2: They need to.
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Speaker 3: Ensure that the disappearance is permanent. That guarantees their impunity.
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It keeps the families in that state of agonizing uncertainty,
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and it maintains the atmosphere of terror.
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Speaker 1: Right no body maybe no crime legally speaking, or at
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least much harder to prosecute exactly.
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Speaker 3: And our sources confirm that cartels utilize these sophisticated clandestine
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extermination centers, often located in remote areas near the border,
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specifically to process the disappeared, to make them vanish forever.
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Speaker 1: And this is where the raw data from forensic work
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becomes just horrifying to contemplate.
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Speaker 2: It truly is.
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Speaker 3: In twenty twenty one, search is conducted near this corridor,
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often led by the collectios. Initially unearthed well fragments. A
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half ton of charred human bone fragments were found in
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one location associated with these activities have a ton.
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Speaker 2: Half a ton.
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Speaker 3: These centers utilize various techniques, often dissolving bodies in lie
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or other chemicals, or burning them at extremely high temperatures
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in makeshift ovens or pits until they are essentially unrecognizable
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dust or tiny fragments. The goal is clinical make sure
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the families cannot find a body to mourn or bury,
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thus maintaining their psychological torture that limbo, and make sure
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the authorities cannot easily identify a victim, thus eliminating a
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trucial piece of evidence for any crime scene.
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Speaker 1: There's an entopologist, Rossana Rigguillo, who calls this the necro machine,
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a system that literally devours bodies and territories, leaving only echoes,
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only absence. It's a mechanism of violence that operates with
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this brutal, cold industrial logic.
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Speaker 3: That's a powerful term, and it fits.
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Speaker 1: But here's something interesting. If this system is so industrialized
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and supposedly efficient, why do analysts also note that the
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targeting can still seem tragically indiscriminate, sometimes like mistaking a
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shiny SUV for a rival's vehicle. Doesn't that suggest operational
17:56
error a lack of precision.
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Speaker 3: That's a really crucial point. It suggests that while the
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system of disposal of the necromachine part might be chillingly industrialized,
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the targeting mechanism itself is still often crude. It's driven
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by the realities of intense paranoid territorial warfare ah okay
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in contested zone like the eighty five D suspicion is
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often enough to sign someone's death warrant. If a group
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of travelers in an expensive vehicle are moving quickly, or
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maybe they just look unfamiliar, or perhaps they slow down
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on the wrong spot. Even if they are simply a
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family of tourists trying to figure out directions, they can
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be immediately mistaken for a rival. Cartel's advanced team for
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lookouts hal cones.
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Speaker 1: So that paranoia means the highway is dangerous for literally everyone,
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regardless of their actual intent or identity, which I guess
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only amplifies the fear and that sense of oblivion surrounding
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the road.
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Speaker 3: Absolutely, that pervasive fear itself is a weapon of control.
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The constant, unpredictable threat ensures that everyone using that route
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operates under the cartels to facto jurisdiction, knowing deep down
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that the state can or perhaps will not effectively protect them.
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Speaker 4: There we really have to move beyond the you know,
19:05
the architecture of the violence, the mechanics of it, and
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look at the actual human cost, because these are not
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just statistics, are they They are families, families suspended in
19:15
this agonizing limbo, just waiting for news, any news.
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Speaker 3: Absolutely, and one of the most heartbreaking examples, one that
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really highlights the risk for everyone, including US citizens and residents,
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traveling that road is the case of the Paris Sanchez family.
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Speaker 1: Tell us about them.
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Speaker 3: On June thirteenth, twenty twenty one, Gladys Christina Perez, who
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is thirty nine, and her two US born children, Juan
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Carlos Gonzalez, sixteen years old and Michelle Christina Durrant, just
19:42
nine years old, They vanished.
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Speaker 1: A mother and her two kids. Where are they going?
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Speaker 2: They were simply driving back home.
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Speaker 3: They lived in Laredo, Texas, and they were heading back
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after visiting family in Louevo, Leon, a trip they'd probably
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made before.
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Speaker 1: And their story is tragically common for this route you're
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saying it is.
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Speaker 3: They vanished near kilometer twenty six, that same identified hotspot.
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Speaker 1: We talked about, kilometer twenty six again again.
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Speaker 3: Their SUV was later found abandoned by the side of
20:06
the road. And despite the fact that the children were
20:09
US citizens, which did bring the FBI into the cross
20:12
border aspect of the investigation, they remain untraced, vanished years later.
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This is what impunity looks like in practice. Yeah, a
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family just.
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Speaker 1: Erased, just gone, and their story sadly is echoed by
20:24
countless others. I remember reading about Ricardo Valdez who disappeared
20:27
in May twenty twenty one. His desperate family plastered the
20:31
entire industrial city of Monterey with posters just demanding answers.
20:35
It's this visible public outcry of utter helplessness.
20:39
Speaker 3: It is, And we also have to acknowledge the other
20:40
American citizens who have been caught in this vourtext. Yeah,
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whose adiathesies Gomez he was from Irving, Texas. He disappeared
20:46
in June twenty twenty one as well, same time frame,
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same time FORRAME that's urge period, and even more recently,
20:51
in June twenty twenty four, Juana Marcelo Rojo Chavez fifty
20:55
five years old and her daughter Jessica Garcia Rojo only sixteen,
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they vanished on the same stretch. These aren't random accidents.
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They appear to be targeted, localized abductions of people who
21:05
are simply driving on what should be a normal highway.
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Speaker 1: And the number of survivors people who actually emerge from
21:10
this and can offer any testimony, It's minuscule, isn't it,
21:14
which just emphasizes how terrifyingly comprehensive the system of eratia
21:18
really is.
21:19
Speaker 3: Extremely small. Sources suggest that of the approximately two hundred
21:23
vanishing's log just Intomolopus related to this highway since twenty
21:28
twenty one, only about eighteen individuals have resurfaced eighteen at
21:33
a two.
21:33
Speaker 1: Hundred, that's less than ten percent.
21:35
Speaker 3: Right When they do emerge, they're often severely beaten, deeply traumatized.
21:39
They recount these terrifying stories of masked men, often dressed
21:42
in military style gear, seizing their vehicles, separating them from
21:46
loved ones, but they're limited, often fragmented. Testimony is frequently
21:51
all the outside world has to go on to try
21:53
and reconstruct the fate of everyone else who didn't come back.
21:55
Speaker 1: So, since the official state response has been well, let's say,
21:58
consistently inadequate, the struggle for truth and justice has essentially
22:02
been outsourced, hasn't it. It falls to the families themselves,
22:04
these groups you mentioned in the collectivos.
22:06
Speaker 3: These search collectives, groups like Forces Hunidas iportant West, those
22:10
days up at Acidos. They are the true resistance in
22:13
many ways, and they're overwhelmingly led by women, often the mothers,
22:17
the sisters, the wives of the day. Disappeared by twenty
22:21
twenty five. Their image, these women digging in the dirt
22:24
with shovels and picks, it has become globally recognized. It
22:28
echoes the fierce tenacity of other similar groups throughout history,
22:32
like Argentina's moderest Plausa de Mayo. They scour the vast
22:36
ranch lands along the eighty five d following any rum
22:39
or any anonymous tip, digging for foss those hidden graves,
22:43
often with just crude hand tools, sometimes just prayers. They
22:46
put their own lives at immense risk every time they
22:48
go out searching for the smallest bone, fragment, anything that
22:51
might bring an answer.
22:52
Speaker 1: Their courage is just immense, but their frustration with the
22:55
systemic impunity and must be overwhelming, because despite the National
22:58
Registry ballooning with tens of thousands of missing person reports,
23:02
we rarely see successful prosecutions or convictions related to these disappearances,
23:07
especially the ones linked to powerful cartels.
23:09
Speaker 3: Very rarely because the state's response has historically been contradictory,
23:15
sometimes performative, and ultimately widely seen as ineffective. Remember Post
23:21
twenty twenty one, after that big spike, the governor of
23:24
Nueva Leone literally offered this advice to citizens, don't drive
23:28
through Tumolipus, which.
23:29
Speaker 1: Is basically an admission of state failure. Isn't it over
23:32
a federal economic highway.
23:34
Speaker 3: It's a stunning admission. And while patrols by the Guardian
23:37
National Mexico's militarized police force were increased along the highway,
23:41
the disappearances continued. Checkpoints went up, but people still vanished
23:45
between them.
23:46
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the federal commitment versus the reality on
23:48
the ground. President Lopez Obrador's Administration am Low established the
23:53
National Search Commission the CNB back in twenty eighteen. It
23:56
was supposed to coordinate searches provide resources.
23:58
Speaker 2: Right, it was created with high hopes, but.
24:00
Speaker 1: Critics say it has been structurally doomed from the start.
24:03
Why is that? What are the main criticisms?
24:05
Speaker 3: Well, the CNB has suffered from chronic underfunding. For one,
24:09
there has been a revolving door of leadership, making consistent
24:12
strategy difficult. But perhaps the most fundamental internal conflict is
24:16
the government's continued push to militarize security overall.
24:20
Speaker 1: How does that conflict with the Search Commission's work.
24:23
Speaker 3: When the military or the guardian national which is effectively militarized,
24:27
is tasked with civilian law enforcement and investigation, accountability often vanishes.
24:33
There's a long history in Mexico and frankly elsewhere of
24:36
military forces being implicated in human rights abuses, including disappearances.
24:41
Critics argue that this cycle of militarization only perpetuates the
24:44
environment of abuse because if state forces are involved, even
24:48
by looking the other way during cartel actions, there's often
24:51
no real independent judicial check on their actions.
24:54
Speaker 1: So it creates this deep mistrust the cultiictivos don't trust
24:57
the very institutions that are supposed to help them and
25:00
their loved ones.
25:01
Speaker 3: Precisely, they often feel they have to do the work themselves,
25:04
sometimes in direct opposition to, or at least parallel to,
25:08
official efforts, and that systemic failure, that lack of resources
25:12
and trust, it creates a massive forensic backlog, which only
25:16
prolongs the anguish for the families.
25:18
Speaker 1: Right the identification process exactly.
25:21
Speaker 3: The former head of the CMBA, Carl Quintana, her team
25:23
did lead important excavations. They discovered bone fragments and other
25:27
physical evidence from some of these cartel extermination centers near
25:31
the Highway. But the sheer volume of recovered fragments, combined
25:34
with the extreme methods of disposal we talked about the
25:36
burning the chemicals, means that identification is painfully agonizingly slow.
25:42
Years can pass before families receive any kind of contramation
25:45
if they ever do it all.
25:46
Speaker 1: Now, looking forward just a bit, the new administration under
25:49
President Claudia Scheinbaum took the reins in twenty twenty five.
25:53
Her rhetoric at least promises tougher measures, things like increased
25:57
extraditions of high level capos, greater born security coordination. Does
26:01
this offer any real hope for changing things on the
26:04
eighty five D or is it potentially just more of
26:06
the same military first approach with a different face look.
26:09
Speaker 3: It presents a massive challenge for her administration. While the
26:13
rhetoric about prosecuting high level figures is politically necessary, maybe
26:17
even genuinely intended, the reality on the ground remains incredibly stark.
26:21
We still see evidence of the cartel's unwavering methods, things
26:24
like highly eras coolers being dumped in public places with
26:27
dismembered remains inside.
26:29
Speaker 1: That happened recently, So the violence continues despite the change
26:32
in leadership.
26:33
Speaker 2: It does.
26:34
Speaker 3: President Scheinbaum has inherited a crisis where the state apparatus
26:37
task with finding the disappeared is severely under resourced, faces
26:41
huge forensic challenges, and is deeply mistrusted by the very
26:45
families it's supposed to serve. Dismantling the industrialized necromachine operating
26:50
along the eighty five D requires far more than just
26:52
increased patrols or extraditing a few bosses. It demands dismantling
26:56
the deep systemic corruption and impunity that allows that violence
27:00
to flourish in the first place, and that is a
27:02
monumental task.
27:03
Speaker 1: So this crisis on Highway eighty five D, it's horrific
27:06
in its own right, but it's clearly not geographically contained,
27:09
is it. If we try to connect this to the
27:11
bigger picture, the violence and the lawlessness there spilled directly
27:15
across the border. They impact US security, US policy, maybe
27:19
even our own consumer supply chains in ways we don't
27:21
always think about.
27:22
Speaker 2: Oh.
27:23
Speaker 3: Absolutely, the connection is direct and undeniable. The most immediate link,
27:27
perhaps is the flow of illicit goods. The exact same
27:31
corridor is controlled by the CDN and CGNG for kidnapping
27:35
people and escorting businesses on the eighty five D. Those
27:39
are the vital conduits through which fentanyl is pushed north
27:42
into US border towns like Laredo right into the US,
27:45
directly fueling the opioid crisis that's devastating communities across North America.
27:50
The control of that highway is key to the logistics
27:53
of that deadly trade and the.
27:54
Speaker 1: Human trafficking operations. They seem to be getting increasingly sophisticated
27:58
and exploitative as well. We've seen these disturbing reports sometimes
28:01
viral videos detailing how cartels utilize vulnerable people, sometimes even children,
28:07
as deliberate distractions.
28:08
Speaker 3: Yes, that's a documented tactic. They might stage a large
28:11
group crossing attempt in one area to tie up border
28:14
patrol resources while simultaneously smuggling, say military age men with
28:18
potential criminal or terrorist ties, or maybe high value contrabandike
28:22
weapons or drugs across the border somewhere.
28:25
Speaker 1: Else nearby, using human misery as a strategic tool.
28:28
Speaker 3: Exactly, the control of the highway translates directly into control
28:32
of human movement across that border sector. And this also
28:35
ties into the just tragic statistics of migration itself. In
28:40
twenty twenty three alone, official figures reported three hundred and
28:43
twenty five migrants died attempting to cross near this specific
28:47
border sector.
28:48
Speaker 1: Three hundred and twenty five deaths. That's nearly one person
28:51
every single day, just in that area.
28:53
Speaker 3: Just in that area, and the cartels, they are the
28:56
de facto gatekeepers. They control the fate effectively of every
29:00
single person attempting to cross through their territory. They extract
29:03
exorbitant payments quotas, and the ensure compliance through the constant
29:07
threat and frequent use of extreme violence. If you can't pay,
29:11
or if you resist, you might end up disappeared yourself.
29:13
Speaker 1: In this localized violence, this chaos on the Mexican side
29:16
of the border. It feeds directly into the really polarized
29:19
global debate we see, particularly in the US, around migration, doesn't.
29:22
Speaker 2: It It absolutely does.
29:24
Speaker 1: Is the influx of people a simple invasion, as some
29:27
political voices frame it, or is it more fundamentally a
29:30
symptom of massive hemispheric inequality coupled with the unchecked power
29:35
of these criminal organizations who ruthlessly exploit the desperation and
29:39
the chaos.
29:40
Speaker 3: I think looking at the situation on the eighty five
29:43
D forces you to see it as at the very least,
29:45
both a profound security issue and a devastating humanitarian crisis.
29:50
And those two things are driven by and exacerbated by
29:54
the absolute failure to secure this vital piece of international infrastructure.
29:58
Speaker 1: And economically, does the fear impact the trade that still
30:02
has to use that road?
30:03
Speaker 2: It has to.
30:05
Speaker 3: While billions in trade still manage to flow through the
30:07
eighty five D, because as we said, it's often unavoidable,
30:10
the fear surrounding it intently chokes the economy in unseen ways.
30:13
Companies have to factor in much higher insurance costs, risk premiums,
30:17
potential losses due to extortion, demands or hijacking of cargo.
30:21
That cost ultimately gets passed down the supply chain potentially
30:24
to consumers.
30:25
Speaker 1: And psychologically, what's the toll on people living in that region?
30:28
Are people who have to travel that road?
30:30
Speaker 3: Psychologically, the crisis breeds this profound sense of resignation, of
30:35
normalization of the horrific. The highway isn't just a road anymore.
30:38
It's a constant, festering scar on the collective psyche of
30:42
the entire border region. It normalizes the idea that people, neighbors,
30:46
family members can just disappear. That becomes a known risk
30:51
of daily life.
30:52
Speaker 1: And this brings us back to that profound existential cost
30:55
of this kind of violence. You mentioned the poet Sara
30:58
Rebay earlier, who pose that vocative question, what is the
31:01
body when someone strips it of name, history, surname?
31:05
Speaker 3: The haunting question. The cartels are successful in their terror
31:08
partly because they strive to eliminate the evidence, to erase
31:11
the person entirely, leaving only absence only questions they are
31:14
attempting in a way to eradicate existence itself, and that
31:17
inflicts this permanent wound not just on the families, but
31:20
on the nation's identity and its collective faith in justice,
31:23
in the state's ability to protect its citizens. It's a
31:26
form of necrosis, spreading decay hashtag tag outro so.
31:29
Speaker 1: Wrapping this up, what does this all mean? The tragedy
31:34
of the Highway of Death, the eighty five d it
31:36
really stands out as a critical flashpoint in Mexico's ongoing
31:39
complex security crisis.
31:40
Speaker 2: I think that's right.
31:41
Speaker 1: It represents this catastrophic failure really to protect a vital
31:45
trade route, a failure that has allowed a highly organized,
31:49
almost industrial system, that necromachine, fueled by the historic violence
31:53
of groups like the Zeta's and the current brutal infighting
31:55
primarily between the CDN and the aspiring CJNG, to just flourish.
32:01
Speaker 3: And it's crucial to remember that the commerce that travels
32:03
this road, the billions of dollars in goods that under
32:06
pin us Mexico trade, goods that end up on our shelves,
32:09
that commerce is inextricably linked to the carnage occurring right
32:13
alongside it. You can't separate the two cartel control over
32:16
the eighty five d is the ultimate reflection of a
32:18
fragmented state, a place where localized, hyper violent criminal organizations
32:23
can dictate who lives, who pays, and who simply vanishes.
32:27
Speaker 1: But despite the overwhelming despair, despite the deep seated impunity
32:32
that seems so hard to crack, the sheer persistence and
32:36
bravery of the collectivos, those search groups. They offer the
32:39
strongest flicker of resistance, don't they.
32:42
Speaker 2: They absolutely do.
32:43
Speaker 3: These women led groups digging in the desert, demanding answers,
32:46
refusing to forget. They are demanding fundamental change. They're putting
32:51
immense necessary pressure on the new Shinebam administration and on
32:55
the world's conscience to dismantle this entrenched systemic violence. Their work,
33:01
their refusal to give up, is the true measure of hope.
33:04
Speaker 2: In this darkness.
33:05
Speaker 1: A really important point.
33:06
Speaker 3: And maybe here is the final provocative thought we can
33:09
leave you the listener with. Consider that while the most
33:12
visible violence centers on this remote, dangerous highway in northern Mexico,
33:15
the financial engine fueling it, the billions derived from trafficking
33:19
drugs like Sentinel, from extortion, and even from the taxes
33:22
implicitly levied on the legitimate movement of goods. That engine
33:25
links the horror directly to global consumption patterns, to our
33:28
economic reliance on that border commerce. So the question becomes,
33:32
if the commerce moving on that highway is considered vital
33:35
to our economy, to our way of life, how much
33:37
longer can the world afford to treat that business separately
33:40
from the bodies being buried alongside it. The demand for genuine,
33:44
lasting security on this crucial trade route isn't just a
33:47
domestic Mexican issue. It's arguably a global imperative with deep
33:51
moral and economic dimensions for all of us.