 Welcome back to the original gangsters podcast. I'm Jimmy Buccellato here in my home studio and my partner in crime Scott Bernstein is not with us this afternoon. He is in Las Vegas. He is on the Relief Board of Directors for the Mob Museum. So this is a solo interview, but before we get into that I want to remind people please Subscribe to our YouTube channel. Please subscribe to our podcast. We're on Apple Spotify Google and also encourage audience members to Consider both formats. We have some audio episodes that aren't on YouTube. We have some video exclusives that aren't on the audio podcast So please check us out In the meantime, I'm super excited. Really psyched. We have a very prestigious guest. Deborah Bonnello is with us and She's a rock star So uh, we're I'm kind of geeking out She just published this book Narca's The Secret Rise of Women in Latin America's Cartels She's also the Latin America or the editorial director for Latin America vice and Um, we're gonna talk about this book and some other things in the cartels. So Deborah, uh, thank you for joining us Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here and that is the first time I've been called a rock star So yeah, yeah 100 percent. I'm happy right on so I want to start with just Like if you could tell us about how you became a reporter in Mexico Just in general and then maybe how that journey led you to Specifically this text and then, you know, we'll get into more of the detail. So if you want to start with that I think that would be interesting Yeah, I was I was doing journalism in London before I came to Latin America and When I was in London, I always used to go to this club called the frontline club where foreign correspondents would go and present their work and Every time I went I was like this that's the kind of journalism I wanted to do at the time I was covering business in London and I was like So I okay. I went first the Buenos Aires and then Mexico and when I arrived in Mexico in 2006 It was when the then president Felipe Calderon had just launched the The so-called drug war I'm doing inverted commas here for your podcast listeners, audio listeners And so organized crime and the drug trade were always a major part of the the general news beat and at that time I was working for you know, the LA Times the BBC the Guardian And so I was surrounded by the whole drug cartel issue And then I went to work for a think tank for a while, which is called insight crime Which is a think tank focused on latin america organized crime. So I got a very quick Education in the regional criminal dynamics in latin america and I was just I was like totally fascinated by it but during that time I also realized very how very Male all of the protagonists that were in the headlines were And that the female characters that we saw were really You know the trophy wives or the victims the drug mules the trafficking victims And again as a woman covering organized crime a lot of the time when I was really digging down on these things I found that I was surrounded by men I was friends with men who freely admitted to me that they they didn't have any women in their books And I was like, huh that has to it has to be more it has to be more complicated than that um So I started to dig around someone mentioned to me Uh dig in a via who is in the book. She is a matriarch of the via cartel which was based in honduras in the early 2000s and the late 90s Um, and at the time that she came across my radar She was waiting deportation in the us because she'd done her time for cocaine charges and and I was kind of hooked I sort of started looking into her then I found other women and the more Cases I looked for the more I found of women whose whose involvement could not be explained away With the sort of trophy wife slash victim narrative and that's that's sort of how it got started Yeah, one thing one takeaway that I have at at a kind of mbenda level is um, how we think about women in terms of the drug cartel as a specific category of organized crime That it's not just the victims or the the the wives that they're involved at every layer so from mules to weapons traffickers to assassins to um law enforcement to journalists to So um, and and I think it's it's like that's something we need to take into account As we as we rethink what what's going on and what to do about it I agree with you and you know, I I think the public and like society's view of organized crime is very sort of influenced to be like by not only journalism but Hollywood and you know Literature novels that kind of thing all of whom are fed by the way by what what journalists do And and I was encouraged, you know, I saw Ozark Um, I finished it about a year ago and I was super encouraged by The the women characters in that series who I feel kind of stole the show Um, you know from Ruth who's this kind of you know lives lives in a trailer She's from a very kind of limited socio-economic background and she's both kind of Victim and powerhouse because she's had such a hard life and yet She kind of takes no prisoners and you know, but she's also very emotional like She was so she was so multi dimensional And the same with many of the female characters in that series and I felt like they really broke the mold there and I do feel like Whether people realize it or not that's partly why Ozark was so successful because it just did create these new Narratives and these new characters So I do think you know, I remember seeing that when I was I started watching it when I was just sort of starting to To think of the book and it felt like a good time to be talking about this When the world is sort of tired of the gun-toting male macho, you know, and they They want more more nuance and It seemed like the right time You know, especially as well when we're seeing so many women rise to the top in industries that are traditionally dominated by men I think there's a catch-up process because organized crime is happening so much in the shadows that it's much harder to see and understand the trends But they're definitely there Yeah, and I also think it's something for us to think about in terms of what to what to do about this Because something that's frustrating to me Is in terms of when we don't we don't usually talk about politics on the on the podcast, but we will talk about criminal justice policy Is this kind of kingpin strategy that? um Just arrest the dons arrest the cartel bosses or you know, and um, and the rest will sort itself out And you know one thing take another takeaway from your book is clearly things are way more complicated Than than that and and it's not to say give those guys a free pass I don't I don't want people to misunderstand you know I'm not saying if they're killing hundreds of people or some some of these, you know awful statistics you read that they that they should be You know just not incarcerated. However, I think This issue is way more complicated than just arrest the the dons Including thinking about issues like like gender as part of this issue if that makes sense Yeah, I mean first of all if you look at a lot of the arrests that are made Largely under pressure from the u.s. In latin america a lot of these those people actually are women But they tend not to make the headlines as much You know one of the women in the book Guadalupe Fernandez valencia Who is the only woman on the indictment that put chapel away for life? She was arrested a month after chapel in culiacan um at the time it barely made headlines um in mexico And there was coverage of her guilty plea in chicago And then she kind of blurred back into the background to me that is a that that is more a result of um You know the news decisions that organizations are making than law enforcement um And and all of the women that I chose to focus on were by definition Women who were in the criminal justice system because in terms of the u.s And Hold on. Let me just get you back. I've managed to okay You know, there are lots of names that I found who are in prison in latin america Like guatemala el salvador in colombia, but there's no paper trial Like it's really hard to really dig down on cases That haven't been through the u.s justice system So I was limited in that sense that I was relying if you like on the kingpin strategy Um or queenpin strategy, whatever you want to call it even though by the way I kind of feel like it's pretty ineffective and more theater than anything else, but um Those women are there and all of their stories with a few exceptions I told through trawling through thousands of pages of legal documents Their exchanges in court their plea agreements their sentencing hearings all those sorts of things That have all this information about their background and how they got into the into the business I couldn't have done it without the help of the dea honestly but of course That's all to be taken with a pinch of salt in terms of the narratives that the dea Creates one of which is currently The chapitos in in uh In culliacan who are apparently almost entirely single-handedly to blame for the opioid crisis in the u.s so I think Like we were talking about before we started this is more about how we approach How we approach the question of organized crime and I think if you look for these women they are there um, but the problem has been maybe that They haven't been looked for and this is a result of the male gaze, you know, and it's natural like I said my my point is not to um discredit what we currently already know and like where we've gotten to Today in terms of our understanding of the world. I think it's natural that men gravitate towards male gangsters um, and I think probably a man wouldn't have written this book And that's the value of perspective and narrative, you know I'm walking into the same rooms but shining the light on different people or putting the mic on to different people and it It creates a really interesting picture and we need to overlay all of these pictures. I think To get a a truer understanding, you know, because I think they're both true Um, but we've really only been looking at one side of things largely speaking up until now You know, I agree and I think that's um while your text is is refreshing and um, I think it's going to I predict that it's going to stimulate a lot more scholarship on this on this topic. So Let me ask you um, and we could come back to some of these conversations more about the social aspects of it, but um I know our audience is also interested in the the actual, you know, organized crime of what's going on And something I want to ask you about as as an expert is one thing that that I've always been interested in is I think there's a perspective On the part of some americans that the cartels I mean, they're called a drug cartel That that they're only dealing drugs And one thing that's striking to me when I read your text when I read uh, yoan grillos books who's a friend of the show and others Is um, these are organized crime groups. It's not just drug dealing. That's certainly Probably the most lucrative But these are some of the things that are mentioned in your book and then I'll ask you to comment on them the avocado and lime rackets Mining illegal mining money laundering extortion human trafficking weapons trafficking So these are really fully formed organized crime groups not just drug cartels and I'm wondering if you can comment on that I think I the word mafia isn't really used In latin america for some reason in the way it's used in italy, but that's exactly what it is, you know, it's it's clan based They are preying on You know, they're exploiting legal loopholes. They're using violence as a currency You know extortion is one of those, you know racketeering. It's essential Violence is essential for racketeering, right because it starts off as Pay us and will protect you from them and then it becomes pay us or we're gonna mess with you, you know And without the threat of violence, it's very hard to To carry that out the same with kidnapping the same with gas theft Um, I was it's funny. I was just having a conversation this morning again about legalization and prohibition Of course the cartels don't want drugs legalized because it is such a major cash cow But if that were to happen, it's not going to in our lifetimes I know but if that were to happen Yeah, they would move on to other things um You know, um, the human smuggling business has been a huge boom for the cartels because Whether or not they're moving people physically themselves the organization the organizations that do Are taxed by the cartels to use certain parts of the border pass through certain parts of the country so Yeah, the the the the concept of just drug trafficking drug trafficking cartels is kind of It's very reductive and it fails to understand You know, just how widespread they are and How aided and abetted they are by governments in the region. I mean They're parasitic if you like, you know They wouldn't really exist if it weren't for governments and society But the but governments oil them and like provide them aid in a bet them if you like With the things that they need to make their businesses run smoothly because they benefit from it too, you know, so It's it's all encompassing like these aren't These aren't organizations that exist in a vacuum like that utterly dependent on the societies and the governments that they exist with Yeah, one thing that's that you mentioned your book speaking of the the politicians And how they're they're part of this this situation How it was really interesting to me that the president of Mexico and I think of like the sort of the spectacle of this that he Really goes out of his way to shake hands with this during covid shake hands with el chapo's mother during this like I think was it a parade or something like that? Um, what can you can you describe that and um, I mean, what do you make of that? I mean the mexican president the current mexican president and there's um, manuel In some ways, he's he's diverged from the past two presidents on the drug war and the campaign strategy I think what he has done publicly, which is smart is acknowledge that organized crime is in some ways A product of capitalist society and inequality, you know, a lot of the people that are recruited into organized crime come from the working classes And if mexico had better job opportunities Um, arguably they wouldn't do it. I think it's much more complicated Than that and I think it doesn't explain why organized crime exists in societies where Poverty is not as much of a problem as it is in latin america, but let's put that aside and I think he understands how You know, narco culture and organized crime is so embedded in mexican society and Many of his most loyal followers come from the lower socioeconomic parts of mexican society so He doesn't want to bite the hand that feeds him in terms of political support And he also understands how in states like sinhaloa The guzman family You know, and he he Shook hands with chapel's mom and chapel is is an infamous, you know, fan of women be it young women He's involved with but also his mother and his relationship with his mother I think um, andres Manuel was acknowledging just how that family is by many parts of Mexican society seen as benefactors, you know, they have for decades bought You know poppy paste and marijuana produced by humble farmers in the mountains because those humble farmers They weren't making ends meet with avocado and tomato and corn and all these other products that can be produced agriculturally So, you know, and that's where so much of the hero worship In narco culture comes from people looking up from, you know from Communities that have poverty stricken that have very little social mobility and they see these ragged richer stories, you know Chapel infamously started off as a humble farmer and by the raguato, you know, and then he then he's on the Forbes 500 list you know and to a lot of people that's making it and the fact that they've made it Primarily selling drugs to Americans. It's like well if the gringos want to give it to them, you know Like the basic economies of supply and demand But with that has also come this social capital, right, which you've seen in italy and you see in other parts of the world where If you're providing income to families that also gives you like a social and political influence and you know the political narco nexus is key to the survival and You know continuation of their businesses, but you know, you also hear of communities in latin america where Drug traffickers or organized crime groups replace the state, you know again in digner's town in illa spudy to where i went The size of the catholic church, which was apparently built in part by the vallejo cartel money Was it's looked like a cathedral. It didn't look like a church and the The pueblor was tiny, you know, maybe three thousand five four thousand people You could probably fit most of them into the church at one point, you know, the the cathedral was enormous and you see that a lot where Cartels give the community things that it needs filling filling holes where the state should be there was there was another part of that story where A policeman told an investigator not my investigation someone else's That the cartels gave them gas for their trucks and if they needed gas from the municipal government or the state government That would take weeks whereas, you know, the cartels just like here take it I'll pay for your gas, but you're gonna do a bc for me, you know, and I think it's a very it's a very kind of insidious perennial Characteristic that you see throughout latin america and I think and it is my lowest acknowledging that because he has been to every State in mexico. He does understand his political support base, you know, I may I don't agree with all his policies But I think he was also acknowledging You know, his hugs not bullets line that the arrest incarceration and violence around the drug trade Isn't really his problem in the large sense in the sense that most of the violence is to do with The production of drugs for americans so you can see the argument But like, you know, if americans want to take fantaville and coke let them have it Why am I going to wage a war in my country if this is an american problem? I feel like that argument doesn't hold anymore because mexico now has a pretty intense domestic drug consumption problem compared to what it might have had 20 or 30 years ago, you know meth cocaine They're both very very readily available all over mexico and heavily consumed. So I would argue We're also starting to see fentanyl overdoses, you know in different parts of mexico So I would argue that he can't really justify that argument anymore, but Has the violence and the kingpin strategy and the arrests Seen a reduction in overdoses isn't in the u.s. No, has it seen a reduction in the amount of drugs Seized at the border No, most people from the dea will admit that the drug war can't drug war can't be won At the same time, you know um I do understand that governments need to make examples out of people right and chapel was one of them But did chapel's arrest and sentencing affect The power and day-to-day business of the sena lower cartel. No didn't so Yeah, I mean one thing I give um the the president credit for was instead of uh taking a usually Slimey like oh, I didn't even know that was it was just coincidental. I mean he owned it, right? He said Yeah, I know that was El Chapo's mom like what the fuck like I think at some point he also said that he would help her with her visa application to go visit him in the When prison something like that, you know, which is like You know She wants to go visit her son in prison in the u.s. And she she's probably never been to the u.s. Before like fair enough, but It was I mean it was also an appeal to His political base, you know nothing andres manuel does um, he's he's very he's a very shrewd political operator like I said I'm not a huge fan of his but he very much understands The way the mexicans think and you know was smart Yeah, that's why I referred to it as a as a spectacle because it's I sense that the optics that was really important to him in that in that calculation um, but yeah, the um, I want to talk about some some of the other case studies you mentioned in there. Um I'm not sure if i'm pronouncing this correctly. You just said the name but uh digna valet valet. Is that how So one thing if you could talk about them a little bit and and let me um Say one thing that I thought was interesting Is that the clan gets it start with cattle rustling and contraband uh smuggling and I don't know if you if if you thought about this but but there's a real parallel there with the early sicilian mafia Clans like because I've published things about the sicilian mafia in the late 1800s early 1900s And I try to remind people if I give talks or whatever on the podcast that you know We're not talking about al Capone like this is late 1800s early 1900s Sicily. We're talking about you know stealing cows stealing horses You know, uh, maybe smuggling stolen goods like this isn't this isn't 1920s You know roaring 20 chicago and so, um, I don't know if you saw thought of any like parallels with how some of these clans Got their starts in mexico with with the sicilian mafia clans Yeah, I mean this is contraband, right? This is like moving things around tax-free Crossing international borders without the bureaucracy that ups the prices of everything And the geography certainly of women like dignavalle and sabastiana coton vascas in mexico Both of them lived in border cities in honduras and Guatemala respectively You know, they they were bordered. They were border residents and people who live on borders. It's the same In the u.s and mexico they understand they understand the communities that live on the other side They understand the movement of goods and so when Literally a river of cocaine starts coming up in the late, you know in the 70s and 80s It was it opportunity came knocking. Do you know what I mean? Like If you're crossing cattle or tobacco For I don't know 80 dollars 80 dollars a ton 800 dollars a cow. I don't know And and now you can move a ton of cocaine for 800 thousand dollars a ton. It's kind of a no-brainer I don't think it's for everyone, but it does make sense to me That if that opportunity is literally sitting on your doorstep Some people are going to take it and I think I think that's what happened and you've seen it too with I think there's this kind of idea That the italian mafia Weren't into drugs for a while, right? And they they they were like I mean again, it was just a business opportunity That was too good to turn down and if they were already smuggling stuff around the country and in from other places Pop some cocaine in the basket pop some weed in the bus. It like it's It's the same way that you've seen the cartels Um Integrate fentanyl into their production. They already had those networks set up with methamphetamine Production bringing precursors in from china those contexts were already established So like well, let's start with fentanyl too. They can come in the same containers We can move it in the same way like all of these products Just kind of came one after the other But I think made sense in terms of the infrastructures that were set up to smuggle to extort and to charge people and to distribute Yeah, something I've mentioned before on our podcast is that some of the big Sicilian drug lords from the 1960s and 70s Most of those guys started off smuggling cigarettes, you know to to get around the tech with the high tax asian In europe and it's it was the same thing as you're describing like why not you already have the infrastructure This smuggling networks in place. Why not add morphine or eventually, you know harrowing to to that pipeline So it makes perfect sense. So so tell us about um, uh, dignavaya a bit Don't have to give it all away. We want people to read the book But just maybe a few things that was that you found really striking about this case study So the first thing that got me interested was she was the first person arrested from the vaya cartel in 2013 when she was on a trip to miami. She clearly didn't know there was a sealed indictment Sitting sitting there So she gets arrested and then her brothers Uh, who were by all accounts a pair of vikings were arrested Um, her son she eventually helped encourage her son to come in and I think she was a pretty key co operator In bringing down what a time in 2013 was one of the most powerful drug transportation Cartels in honduras, right? She didn't do as much time as her brothers. I believe she got in the end She served I think seven or eight years. Her brothers got In excess of 20 years each And I think in part that was an acknowledgement on the part of prosecutors and the judge that like she helped put together the case, right But then when she got out as you know, if you're a foreign felon in the us you get you get You get like listed for immediate deportation at the time Juan Orlando Hernandez the president of honduras when her cartel were in power He was still the president of honduras and he's an excellent case of like he's a son of a bitch But he's our son of a bitch like he was the major anti narcotics Ally in central america with the u.s. But at the same time According to members of the via cartel and other cartels that were brought in by the dea He was oiling their businesses too. So If the u.s. Deported her back during that time Her chances of survival were low because they knew that she had been sitting In a jail cell probably receiving u.s prosecutor after u.s prosecutor Collaborating on a key case that implicated joh as he's known Juan Orlando And in fact during her time in prison The president's brother was indicted extradited charged convicted and sentenced to life on cocaine charges So it seemed to me like, huh? So this woman helped you dismantle the via cartel and now you're throwing up you're throwing her to the wolves She wasn't accused of violent Um, she wasn't formally charged with violent crimes Now this as you know, this is a game of chess that goes on all the time in the u.s. Justice system, right? Like You tried to bring down your sentence by cooperating with prosecutors But at the same time like she then has to bear the personal responsibility for that when she comes out So I thought it was kind of unfair She didn't want to talk to me because she was sitting in immigration detention um And so I went to her tiny town of El Espirito to try and find out a little bit more about her I recruited the local bishop to come with me because I know from experience that These times these towns are tiny like as soon as you walk in people See you and I don't look Honduran. I don't sound Honduran And I had to be really careful about that But at the same time from reporting in mexico I knew that these people are quite beloved by their communities in some You know certain circles love them certain circles hate them like they they walk this fine line Of respect and fear, you know, you want people to respect you but you also don't want them to mess with you um And we ended up sitting next door to her house in the Espirito with people who turned out to be her neighbors and Loyalists and within I don't know 20 minutes of small talk One of them got digging the wrong video phone because she was sitting in houston after getting out of immigration detention And I was like wow that was that I mean that said to me That they were flagging us, you know, even though she'd been in the us by that point for the best part of a decade um They were warning her look this woman's coming around and she's asking about you and she's sitting next door to your house and you know, how about that and um When I met her on, you know, face to face all be on video phone. She was very discombobulated. She was not This kind of big personality that you would expect um, you know, she's now in her early to mid 60s She had been in the us, you know, she'd been in detention of some kind for for 10 years by that point And I'm sure had been through a lot, you know, I think people underestimate how stressful it is to Constantly be under pressure, right and like It's hard being in prison. It's hard being asked to give up your family and I think people assume that all drug traffickers are these cold hard killers and I don't think they are, you know, I think they understand that Violence is part of the business. I'm not sure that You know, I think violence in their organizations is delegated So even though I was told by asylum seekers in the u.s. Who had fled Dignis town that she was sending out hits on people That doesn't necessarily mean that she was killing people with her own hands. Do you know what I mean? It's not to justify it. You know, I'm just being very business-like about it. But She didn't um You know, she seemed kind of tired and stressed And confused and you know, she wanted me to go see the church that she'd helped build and she was being nice She was almost like playing host from afar, you know And that surprised me because Again, like you have all these ideas in your head of what these people are going to be like and she was like She's an abuelita. She seemed like a a grandma and a grandmother, you know Which she is of course, but she's also a lot more than that Yeah, um something that was that was an interesting part about the in in the book You didn't see that coming that she was going to pop up on the phone call, but um There's also this part I I believe where She's like the matriarch. She's this beloved figure at least by some feared but but she's beloved by a lot of people But back to your point about this delicate balance where you still have to have some level of community support It can't all be just terroristic Her brothers have reputations as like prolific sexual predators And even though she's like the beloved matriarch of the you know, the sort of the godmother of the area There starts to be some pushback eventually, right? You you acknowledge that in your book where people in the community start to be like You have to know about this, right? Like like you're you're kind of calling the shots here Uh, don't you know about this and uh, can you talk about that dynamic because I thought that was really Really interesting that like people were starting to push back a little bit on her as like oh the the you know, this benevolent dictate her kind of um role Yeah, I mean I can only give you my analysis because I didn't ask digner about this myself and like I say in the book we also have to accept that asylum seekers in the us are trying to make out like They're coming from the most dangerous place in the world, right? So it's in their interest to proliferate this idea of violence That all said I think You know, I was told about a conversation between digner and someone who then ended up seeking asylum in a in a place where She knew that her brothers were sexual predators But I think anyone who is in a family who is in that business understands that those sorts of terrorist tactics are Are a kind of part of this social control if people don't fear you If they don't worry that if they step out of line, you're going to come After them then they're not you're not going to have that loyalty and obedience And you know that respect loyalty obedience and fear that's all kind of a continuum, right? And I think as as the pressure started to increase From the dea on the honduran government to get its act together and start helping them met these people The need for control and loyalty became to began to become sharper And I think if I remember that conversation correctly, I was told that digner you know, she acknowledges that was going on and and You know, maybe part of her didn't like that of course as a woman no one Likes to think of women being subjected to that but probably part of her understood Or or accepted that it was it was necessary. It was a necessary tactic to keep the town under their control You know, and she she was she was profiting from that control. Yeah. Yeah, I think she rationalized it Yeah, um another interesting case study in your book is the og lachata um, if you could uh because that was another really You know reading this book. I was like, wow, this is cool because Well, maybe it's not a good thing, but you don't even I say it's cool. That was it was intriguing and interesting because We're talking about these contemporary, uh queenpins and and bosses But but as you point out, maybe this has been going on longer than Uh, a lot of people suspect and so that was one of the og's in your book if you can talk about that for a minute Yeah, I mean lachata dates back to the 1930s and 1940s when You know was kind of the inception of the narcotics industry the illegal narcotics industry between Mexico and the u.s. I have elaine carry to thank for a lot of what I learned about lachata elaine is a historian and she went back and went through thousands of historical documents, you know showing how at one point lachata was was um Declared public enemy number one by the mexican president and you can imagine I mean If we can see the marginalization of indigenous women now Despite the kind of woke culture and everything we know and understand and all the advances that have been made Imagine back in the 1930s and 1940s, you know, it was exceptional for a woman of her color and socioeconomic status to Get to that level of of hierarchy within Within any business, you know, let alone one that is As male dominators as everything else So she was a real She was a you know, I mean it's it's hard not to be impressed by that, you know I mean the book is a fine line between You know, I respect I I I have to like respect a certain the establishment of a certain amount of authority and hierarchy and power Without glorifying it, you know, and I don't think that the narcotics industry was as violent then as it is today um But it certainly wasn't an easy place to rise up in But it's her it's her existence That makes me suspect that The women I've documented Are some of dozens, you know that that this isn't This isn't like a glass ceiling problem. It's not like the glass ceiling came off in the 60s This is a perception problem. This is a documentation problem. This is again the the male gaze issue that sort of prevented us from really being able to See and acknowledge women's power and part of that male gaze is I think Seeing organized crime through the lens of violence and That is something definitely that I think the DEA tends towards and it's understandable in the sense that violence is a very Big public security problem Um, but in terms of power, you know, there are women who may not be violent themselves Who are delegating violence or furthering the interests of those violent organizations? Um, and I think that has been missed, you know, that said I did find a lot of women Who were unashamed of their use of violence? You know proud of their use of violence and absolutely capable of it. Um, So it's not as if they've just been limited to the sort of administrative money laundering transportation jobs as well Yeah, that's something we can um Another chapter that I found really fascinating and made me quite sad Is the one on excuse me is on um ms 13 and and what's going on in El Salvador And in the home girls that are affiliated with ms 13 and the other gangs down there um this complicated Relationship where and you and I were talking uh before we started recording off air about It's very complicated if we just see women through this lens of of victimology in the underworld Where they're just victims and they have no agency and sometimes that is the case sometimes there are these heartbreaking just tragic Examples and you talk up you document that in your book But in other cases there's there's like a spectrum and some women are falling sort of in a gray area in between and in other cases There there were there were women you're talking about who are thriving in that environment, uh like the black widow And that that sort of faction that you talk about there and um It's hard to think about victimology with that with that case study because That was a scary fucking person that you were talking about. I mean the insurance fraud scam I mean my god, I mean that was so brutal and sad um And so if you could talk about this um because it is in a lot of ways It's really tough to wrap my head around because Some of the brutality there. I mean it is straight up just victimization but in other ways it's more complicated and and I don't think like We can figure this out just in your book and this conversation. It's so complicated But if we could at least spend a few minutes talking about what was what you documented and discovered in el salvador Yeah, so the case of the black widow esmeralda. It's like she ran this essentially like a human trafficking ring where she would trick men into marrying women Have those men murdered by the ms 13 And then claim their life insurance payments was it was actually pretty sophisticated In the sense that she would trick those men into these arranged marriages by saying They were marrying women who had us visas so he would get his us visa But as part of the marriage he had to get life insurance, you know, I mean Who knows how she spun it and having not spoken to esmeralda Personally, there's also an interesting world of possibilities around how that scheme even came around because she was Outsourcing the violence to the gang even though she was pretty violent herself Um, and she had a sexual relationship with one of the gang members So it's like her so maybe it was his idea and he said look let's see who knows it seems like a pretty smart idea And you'd wonder why the gang Wouldn't do it themselves But anyway, she seemed pretty convinced of it because she ran her home like You know with with a lot of brutality that she imposed herself upon those women um But then, you know another of the homie the female homies that I met in al Salvador was was a killer which is traditionally You know, it's not the most common role for women in organized crime But I would say Compared to the cartels Compared to the gangs the cartels seem pretty woke And I think part of that is a reflection of how The cartels are viscerally capitalist business organizations Whereas the the gangs Started off as this brotherhood and women were brought into that especially in the us But there is this kind of very brutal misogyny that you see within the street gangs That Yes, you see it in the cartels when they want to send a message But I think the cartels when they see that women are as capable of jobs as men be that killing Extortion transportation money laundering they're like they will let them in Whereas I feel like it's not that straightforward in the gangs And the cost of entry the bar to entry in the gangs is also You know for women At least that I was told by the female homie I interviewed was You either get raped by every member of your clique or you get beaten to shit And rape is not an option if you're a male Gang member trying to get into the gang, right? They're just going to beat you for 13 minutes or however long it is So I think you know, it's again that like specially sexualized Violence directed towards women in the gangs So I I wouldn't I wouldn't say That there is any emancipation process going on in the gangs In El Salvador that said I have been looking a lot at Honduras Honduras does seem to be a different case to El Salvador I don't know whether you noticed but about three months ago There was a riot There was there was a massacre in a women's prison in Honduras in which The barrio gesiocho women Got into the ms 13 women's cage because they're kept in separate cages in the prisons in the Honduras And they massacred 46 women I think um Which speaks to me to sort of a rising significance of the The role of women in the cliques and in the gangs in Honduras because that's pretty unprecedented. You don't really see that very much Um, I need to look into it more But I do think that the role of women in the gangs probably varies a lot Not only from country to country but from region to region within each country and like I say in the book you know, there was this kind of mandate after the killing of Brenda Paz who was a female homie in the u.s. There was this mandate that like we're not going to jump women into the gang at all and that varied and was sort of left to the discretion of different cliques, so It's not sort of such a vertical structure that that didn't vary if you see what I mean and I think Again more research is needed But most of the research on women in the Marasala jucha has been through the optics of how they're victimized by the gangs and I think Again, it's much more nuance than that and in fact Just the other day I had a fan mail email from the father of a journalist colleague of mine who read the book and is a forensic Psychologist and there has done a lot of research into American prisons and he said that yes, he was totally blown away by the sort of You know the ownership and the the authority of so many of the gang men Female members that he interviewed in prison in the u.s. So I feel like You know I've only just kind of touched the surface of that one really there's a lot more interesting work to be done yeah, um something that was um, I thought was was interesting in the in that chapter is when you talk about and you mentioned this a minute ago that It's less entrepreneurial and and identity formation is is really at the core of of what we what's going on with ms 13 and I've published some things where I push back against gang policy because I think that it to a large extent in the united states at least law enforcement views The gang problem in this country as an organized crime problem And and I'm not sure that that's constructive Sometimes this is how I explain to my students Sometimes gangs are involved are involved in organized crime 100% right and you document that in in your chapter too about ms 13 There's no question, but that doesn't mean it's the same thing as The cartels in mexico or the mafia in sicily or or something like that Just because there are similarities doesn't mean it's the same and um, I think that's really something that law enforcement should think about And also social workers educators not just criminal justice that um This isn't just entrepreneurial with what's going on with ms 13 like this is like identity formation and it's a social psychological thing and um, I don't know if you want to comment on that I mean, I think it was also like a very decisive pillar of the trump administration to try and merge The immigration problem with the criminality problem And yes, we know that the ms 13 that now has metastasized across central america was formed in american prisons You know disenfranchised Um, el salvadoran and honduran youths especially in the case of el salvador. They were fleeing civil wars They found brotherhood together and then those gangs eventually criminalized and you know, steve dudley who you may have spoken to has written extensively about the gangs and You know, we worked together at insight crime and he always made this distinction. Yes, they're a transnational gang But they're not transnational organized crime and from the work that i've done in honduras and el salvador and guatemala You know the socioeconomic state of so many gang members is like it's not exactly homeless But it's it's getting there like we're talking about super impoverished communities like There is no sign of the bling that you see in the cartels and even the money that filters up to the gang members in prison These are not In my view billion dollar organizations like there's no evidence of that kind of wealth and I think you know There have been instances where I think the gangs are hired muscle for the cartel in Honduras el salvador and guatemala, but so far they don't if you pardon it They don't quite have their shit together enough To be transnational organized crime like I don't see that Now I have heard that with the dismantling of significant criminal organizations in honduras. You've seen I've heard I haven't documented this myself But you're seeing the gangs start to behave more like cartels Because they are feeling a vacuum and we all know that no matter who you take out of the game The trans the international cocaine trade isn't going away, right? Like again, it's an opportunity Someone's going to capitalize on that. So I do think the gangs have the potential for that um And I think it's it's probably happening But that's not Currently the situation I would say yeah, there's there's a little bit of a parallel with what's going on in detroit Back to the kingpin strategy used to have these like Excuse me, um african-american Like black og's that that controlled the city and and these guys are basically like a black mafia Right and but because of the kingpin strategy, they put all those dudes in prison Some of them were killed but but a lot of those dudes were put in prison And so then what you what what we're seeing is in some cases the neighborhood gangs have Are starting to Fill that fill that absence as you talk about now it looks different. It's not it's not the same But you are seeing some of the street gangs Take on more of what what what we used to see with organized crime. It definitely doesn't look like it did before and I'll be honest. I don't know where I'm going with this but um Sometimes I think of this cliche be careful what you ask for because you you you put all those Og's away and those they were bad guys. Don't get me wrong But it's worse and it's worse now on the streets of detroit with the gangs controlling What we think of is organized criminal activities in terms of violence and uh, right? I mean because there's no one there's no one calling the shots Now and I don't know if you have any thoughts on that if you've seen any parallels or if that if that even makes Sense what I'm saying like be careful when you take out the top dog What what you end up with what it looks like after I mean that's the that's one of the major problems of the kingpin strategy And why we've seen so much violence in mexico over the last 20 years is because as you take away You know they say you know you cut off the head of the serpent and seven more grow like that's exactly what happens As you take out these key regional leaders Other people come in to take their place with the sentencing of the extradition of alchapel once he was out of mexico This war exploded between the different factions of the sinelao cartel You know and you now have though the sinelao cartel divided into three or four different factions managed by different people One of whom are his sons but You know when I was in sinelao reporting on guadalupe and other people and like you know obviously we talk about about the men in the cartel too and This the consensus I got was that people feared and respected chapo and el mail Ismael el mail who's who's one of the original founders another og But that the chapitos his four sons one of which just got extradited are considered as these like entitled millennials Who are feared but not respected and that those old rules have like moved on To be fair with the arrival of the sepas in mexico Which was around the 2000s And you know and they were sort of these former military guys They also detonated the this arms race in mexico where they had been a certain level of violence But never to the extent which you know, we saw perpetrated by the setters, you know Severed heads rolled onto dance floors military grade weapons grenades And you know all the cartels had to weapon up after that all the cartels had to start using that kind of violence Otherwise, they just weren't taken seriously So I think like part of it is a generational thing in terms of like You know younger generations Moving in where older generations have been but it's also that you know and the proliferation of weapons Which is just as you know over the last 50 years and like Especially in the last two decades and you know and griot what wrote about this extensively in this last book It's just nuts the ease with which the cartels can get hold of weapons compared to what it was 20 or 30 years ago So there's lots of different factors at play but um You know the more leaders there are the harder it is to get consensus and control You know we joke here that 20 years ago the the mexican president could just pick up the phone and speak to two or three people and completely Sort of sew up mexican drug trafficking territory and now you just couldn't do that. There's just too many smaller groups And you've seen I don't know whether you've noticed what's happened in ecuador Um and how ecuador has kind of dissolved into its own drug war a lot of which is Mexican cartels co-opting local gangs in out in ecuador to Plane territory guard the ports where all the cocaine is moving through coming up from columbia Because the mexicans need local knowledge, you know if they send their people down to ecuador They're just not going to be able to run things the way that Existing gangs are so you're taking sort of old organizations Local organizations and putting them to new use Because they have that local knowledge and the terror brand and what have you So, yeah, it's it's kind of hard to be optimistic about the way that things are going in uh in in latin america and and and detroit too because also they're sort of like You know, um I don't know Youth of today what can I tell you? I don't know like with social media and Like so the sort of power of narco culture Um, I can see how that's a pull. I can see how that's a pull for the young people of today who like you know Want to get rich and like not necessarily die young but like there is glamour in it like I get why that resonates Yeah, maybe if we could I know we're we're getting close on time here And there were so many other things to discuss but if you could talk about you you address this in Toward the toward the end of the book. I don't know if I'm pronouncing this correctly, but the narco cultura If you could talk about that in terms of the allure both for men and women by the way, um that um Through social media through the music through the tv shows and um and in some ways when I was reading your The book, I mean that's somebody that's nothing new. I mean look at my posters behind me the godfather scarface Right, like I'm not immune to I'm not immune to it. Right. I mean these they're kind of anti heroes so um, but um, it's it's it's something that that you that you address like The proliferation of in some cases some of these gangsters in mexico actually have their own instagram accounts and it's It's really it's really bizarre if we want to just talk about that for a minute and then we'll wrap up Yeah, I think the chapitos and like high profile narcos have sort of understood that it's that they need to like keep a lower profile especially as the pressure to So sort of kill the illicit fentanyl industry Has become so great from the us But the cat is kind of out of the bag and the ease with which The internet sort of sells the cartel lifestyle To people who are not in the cartel is so strong, you know and like part of that that I covered in the book is This body type we have for women that is you know displayed by Emma Coronel Chapo's young glamorous former beauty queen wife who literally just walked out of prison two weeks ago You know, she's kind of like a white kim Kardashian old kim Kardashian kim Kardashian is now like Like eat that but before it used to be, you know the boobs in the bum Yeah, and you know in in kulia can kulia can is a capital of for plastic surgery What you get just that look, you know, they'll even take out your sort of lower rib To pull in your waist a little bit more Pump up your boobs as much as they can your bum as much as they can And a lot of people masquerade, you know dentists and pediatricians masquerades Plastic surgeons when really they don't have the skills and you know, women have died on the operating table or complications afterwards But I think the reason that women take those risks is they see that look as empowerment A way to associate themselves with an industry of which they may not really be a member But it sends a message, you know and like also has the promise of attracting that kind of man who frankly Like in Sinaloa, there are a few ways of getting rich, you know agriculture And the drug trade, you know, those those are those are the bigger owners So, you know, they're living in this world where that is the source of empowerment that they seek And that's the way to do it And that, you know, when you look at instagram if you google Bucana Which is the word used for that kind of fiora You'll see, I mean, it's on steroids and you know, obviously all of these photos are photo-shopped and like or mentored or whatever, but you know People are really romanced by that and they're convinced by that and like they buy into that for the reasons we were talking about before, you know, they're living in these echo chambers where That is the way of earning power and respect in their societies You know, one thing one thing that I underline in the text and this reminds me of my old studying post-structuralism in graduate school and thinking of Concepts like the spectacle and simulacra You you mentioned something I can't remember if this is exactly what you said But something about the currency is to look like a narco trafficker is more important than to actually be one So like the image like consuming a lifestyle and and it was just really fascinating like this commodification of Of a lifestyle or a look that's associated with organized crime. It was really really interesting Oh, man, you should go to you should go to kulia kan. I mean, you know 50 of the guys there if not more They're driving around in suvs. They've got the polo shirt with the neck turned up The cap like they all look like los chapitos, you know, it's like But you know, they're not all involved in the drug trade like it's a look in the same way that like Gangster hip-hop in the u.s. And you know, so many kind of music cultures that proliferate a way of looking a way of dressing a way of being That it's that is aspirational and that's definitely the case there Yeah, I mean that's something else to to take into account. I think um, it's such a complicated issue But to to to get a hold on this we have to take into account This is a a demand problem in the united states, but also to to your point about Lack of economic opportunity And so that fits into this aspirational like like why do you know? Why do I want to be a look at the one working class guy that that that's in your book? Look how it turns out for him. He gets set up for an insurance scam They kill the one guy who's like a hard-working just average dude So then it's like, well, what am I going to be the sucker? Like why not why not? I you know, I want to be balling out too like, uh, right and we And we live in a world where instant gratification Is is so the norm right like of course some people choose to go to medical school or law school or whatever school it is to like Skill up to then do well-paid jobs, but you know for a lot of people When the options aren't there, it's like, yeah, I want to get rich and ideally quickly, you know That said as you said before like a lot of a few of the women in my book had been to university had law degrees or business qualifications And and still decided to go into the into the drug world, you know And like of course those skills are very useful Especially in the cartel world who needs lawyers and money launderers and people who understand how the system works Um, so it's not it's never that simple. You know, it's not just the It's not just the no other options Probably yeah, yeah, that was something that was also an important takeaway is that this that we shouldn't just um Assume this is an issue of like economic reductionism that that's definitely a variable It's definitely a variable here, but it's one variable and a more complicated social problem Of course and by that argument every single Member of of al Salvador's working class would be a member of the Marasala future, you know And there are lots of people who don't opt for that and they you know, they do get You know low paid day jobs just because they don't want to do that or they migrate to the u.s Like they do do other things so it is yeah There's also something consending about like this idea that they didn't have any other Optional they couldn't make any other choice. Like it's again. It's just not that simple like and it yeah It's not just about poverty and social mobility. Like that's very productive. I think yeah, I agree So as we wrap up here, um, again, please I'm going to remind our audience to check out your text But also tell us what do you have coming up? What are you? I know you're busy with vise But what are you what are you working on coming up next? How can people find out more about you and your writings? People can find me on instagram as debonello and twitter or x As mexico reporter. I'm currently working on a story for vise about the the massacre in a women's prison um, I'm going to go down there and see if I can do kind of a long read about what the dynamics were behind that um, and I'm also running up a new book proposal to do with the growth of mexico's sort of psychedelic tourism industry Sort of attached to this psychedelic renaissance and I know whether you've got you guys have been keeping on top of that but you know this sort of contemporary movement to use psychedelics for therapy and healing and of course, Mexico is home Yeah, I mean mexico is home to like so many psychedelic medicines And that's probably going to be framed around a narrative of maria sabina who was um, the the sort of curandera this female priestess in mexico who sort of opened the world up to psychedelic mushrooms and was kind of made a pariah as a result um So that's super interesting the whole sort of You know, the what's happening with psychedelics around the world, but like the kind of bite from mexico's psychedelic soul is also kind of happening because they want to legalize psilocybin and what have you um, and probably also a novel based around A femur journalist protagonist who got too close to the cartel queens that she covered Oh, interesting. Well, yeah, maybe this will become a tv series or a movie or something something like Conversations happening right now. Yeah Very good. So you're going to be busy and by the way, I didn't shout out when you mentioned insight earlier that some of your stuff is on there People should that's an outstanding resource for researchers or just anyone who's interested in what's going on in latin america in terms of the the drug Um drug cartels organized crime politics things like that. So um, if I I know we've kept you for a while But if I can talk to you just for a minute after we sign off Um, but anyhow, we want to thank you debora. Uh, this was outstanding. Please buy her book check out her stuff We follow her on instagram and and twitter. So I hope our audience does too Um, anyhow, thanks everyone for watching for listening. Please, uh, you know subscribe and follow us on social media And we'll see you next time. I'm jimmy butcholato And we're out