Jenke von Wilmsdorff embarks on a dangerous journey in Mexico. He interviews contract killers, arms dealers and drug cooks and experiences first-hand how dangerous life is there. The report shows how deeply rooted violence and crime are in society.
Life in Mexico
Anyone who travels to Mexico unsuspectingly only needs to open a daily newspaper to know what is going on in the Central American country. Jenke von Wilmsdorff, who has seen a lot of misery as a ProSieben crime reporter, turns away when faced with the corpses depicted. “What is going on in this country?”
The German journalist and think tank founder Sonja Peteranderl, with whom he has arranged to meet in the café, is much more hardened when it comes to reading the newspaper: “You see open wounds, you see people who have been cut. The bad thing is that it is everyday life.”
“Jenke. Crime. The power of the cartels” is the title of the report that ProSieben broadcast on Tuesday evening and which serves as a reality check for fans of the Netflix series “Narcos”. But the real criminals also have fans. “The people in Culiacán idolize the Narcos,” explains von Wilmsdorff’s tour guide, the Mexican journalist Miguel Ángel Vega: “Small children don’t want to be the next Lionel Messi. They want to be the next El Chapo.”
“Violence is like a monster sleeping underground”
There is actually a Narcos fan shop in Culiacán. It is no coincidence that the metropolis is considered one of the most dangerous cities in Mexico. The Sinaloa cartel has everything under control here. “Don’t be fooled by the calm,” the Mexican journalist warns the German as they sit down on an idyllic bench. “The violence is there, it is like a monster that sleeps underground. You never know when it will appear.”
Shortly afterwards, Jenke von Wilmsdorff understands what the local meant. Suddenly, the city center, which had just been busy, is deserted. Miguel Ángel Vega knows why: “Something happened today,” he reports of a series of kidnappings. “There are rumors that the cartels are going to fight.” Wilmsdorff asks: “Are you shooting in the streets?” The answer is clear: “That can happen anywhere. We should go now.”
Jenke von Wilmsdorff watched the rest of the horror on TV in his hotel room. And in the newspaper the next morning. Journalist Vega, one of the last of his endangered profession in Mexico, summed up the news: “Dozens of people were kidnapped, including children. The families are going crazy because they don’t know what happened to their loved ones.”
Every year 20,000 people disappear in Mexico
Every day, around 100 murders are registered by official bodies in Mexico. 20,000 people “disappear” every year. Since 2000, more than 150 journalists have been murdered. Jenke von Wilmsdorff could not have chosen a much less inviting travel destination. However, there are things to see here that probably cannot be found anywhere else in the world. For example, a narcotics cemetery the size of a city district. The mausoleums for the deceased drug criminals have air conditioning, balconies and bathrooms, as Miguel Ángel Vega informed the astonished German. As a cartel member, you “ultimately only have the choice between a grave and prison”.
The ProSieben reporter also gets the feeling that he has no real choice from the drug cooks from a secret fentanyl laboratory where he is taken. “We cook the ingredients like any other soup,” says one of the men who work here. However, he also stresses: “What we breathe in is almost worse than what the addict breathes in. Hair falls out over time, teeth get worse.”
Wilmsdorff, he’s good at this, gives a moral keynote speech: “Two milligrams kill a person! There are hundreds of thousands of deaths in the USA every year! What goes through your mind when you produce this?” The answer shocks him even more: “We think about that, believe me!” says the fentanyl cook. “I have to produce it, otherwise they will do something to my family and me.” His children, the man says, don’t know how he earns his money. “I don’t want to be a role model for them with this. I want them to become normal, good people.”
Sicario reports: “We slit them open with knives. A bit rustically, so they talk.”
Becoming a normal, good person is apparently not easy in many places in Mexico. An arms dealer whose son is in prison replies to von Wilmsdorff in an interview: “Of course I’m worried about my children, but here everyone chooses their own fate. We are not forced. But everyone wants quick and easy money.”
Outside the city, in the middle of nowhere, where there is not even cell phone reception, von Wilmsdorff meets those mystically transfigured men who, in conversation, seem all too human and dehumanized at the same time: a group of sicarios, contract killers for the cartel. “Necessity forces us to do this,” says the leader of the armed unit. “And once you’re in, you can’t get out.”
Jenke wants to know more: “What is it like when you meet whole families, the children, the grandparents?” The leader admits: “That is a bit difficult for us. When it gets to the point where there is no other option, everyone dies. An order is an order.” The rest of the lecture is not suitable for listeners with weak stomachs: “We slit them open with knives. A bit rustic, so they talk. If they give us the information, they get the coup de grace.”
“As we treat others, they will treat us”
“We feel bad,” says the sicario, who has covered his face with a scarf, cap and sunglasses. “Because the way we treat others is the way they will treat us.” Von Wilmsdorff wants to know whether he can still enjoy life at all. “We don’t enjoy anything anymore,” replies the killer. He would love to just disappear and live in peace with his family. “But we can’t go anywhere because they would track us down.”
Towards the end of his report, Jenke von Wilmsdorff joins a group of women who have made tracking down missing people their life’s work. They are mothers and wives who are searching together for the bodies of their missing children and husbands because the police are failing to do just that. The women have found 580 bodies so far, as well as more than 18,000 “burned fragments”, as they call them.
It sounds unbelievable, but according to the filmmakers, it is backed up by the research of investigative journalists: “Most of the disappeared have been abducted by the police and the government,” claims one of the mothers. “That’s why we are more afraid of the government than of the cartels.” Why do government agencies make people disappear? “It’s easier than killing them, because killing increases the murder rate. If they disappear, there is no body, no crime, there is nothing to prosecute.”
Detective warns of increasing violence in Germany
Jenke von Wilmsdorff would also have liked to have filmed in Germany, where the contraband arrives at the container port in Hamburg, among other places. Here, they only have one X-ray machine to scan thousands of containers a day. The ProSieben team was unable to obtain permission to film.
“We confiscate an incredible amount, but it has no impact on the market,” says Detective Inspector Jan Reinecke, dismayed, in front of the Hamburg harbor backdrop. Cocaine has long since become part of mainstream society. Anyone who has a bag brought to them by drug taxi must be aware that “there is a lot of blood on it.”
Reinecke complains that politicians, in their quest for votes, only concern themselves with “visible” crimes such as robbery and murder, but not with “invisible” crimes such as drug trafficking. But this can backfire. The expert warns of increasing violence on German streets too.
Source: teleschau – the media service GmbH
