We've spent two days and night trying to locate the plane. We hoped to find. Unfortunately, the bodies and what was left on the garago, we couldn't find him. Fernando Blancos Ascenda spent months coordinating a major cooka in sight from Columbia Tobacco, California. It arranged for clandestine runways to be built in the desert, and then it rained. The pilots couldn't find the washed out runway. They lost communication with blank Hill and were forced to crash the end of
the dunes. But for two days of looking for the crash site, some fishermen arrived at the gas station in the area asking for blank Hill's cousin. They knew where the plane was. They quickly mobilized to find the plane. The goods were practically intact, maybe a few package torn. There were six people on board, two of them in one piece. Blink said about getting the wounded to the hospital and the coke to expire and nest of bias Mota. They sent for them and were stabilized. They injured, They
were very hurt. I had my plane register as an air ambulance, so I flew them toward Senda. He wanted to fly the wounded to Cardillo's secret clinic in New Mexico City, but Bias Mota insisted they treat them locally well. Mota was overseeing the shipment of the cocaine across the border. Linkhio says that he hired some people to take dynamite out to the crash site and blew up the plane. Then he got word from Mota. It was said, the last kid has crossed the border, meaning the last killo
had that right to the state heire. Blankhio says that they all celebrated by partying for two days. He refers to what would be international sex trafficking in the following terms. We went on a bush, she wrote, as the girls from Vega and the room, but began today's sparking non stop if you can't imagine those sputies. As I noted earlier, the use of such violent sexist language is common in blank Hill's tales and throughout what often gets called the
Narco cultura. Blank Your continues, we were staying at the Holiday Inn, and we moved with the girls to the Colonial hotel, precisely to avoid attracting unnecessary attention At the Holiday Inn. The next day, we decided not to sleep at the Holiday Inn because we felt like we were
being followed. Having just recovered five tons of cocaine from a plane that has flown from Colombia and crashed in the desert, beaking four people critically wounded in a local hospital, and then moving that coke across the border into the United States, it makes sense that Blankio and his cohort would feel a bit apprehensive, feel, for example, as if they were being followed. You walk around your tail and
so some strange stuff. I had even seen some flu when I left, and indeed there was something they didn't know. Yet those guys didn't blow up the plane. Someone found the plane and tipped off the authorities. Federal police have been tracking blank you on his team for days. So, to paraphrase Kurt Cobain, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean the Feds aren't following you. On edge Link. You and buy as more as half brother decided to pick up their things from the holiday and leave town. The cops
are waiting for them. Heard as ambushed us. There are your kill. They took us to the back. They lock us up in our rooms. They knew who we were. They knew practically everything. Then the Calindada began, and his interviews with TV Thank You exhibits an unusual relationship to acts of violence, often orients his life story around violence. He suffered multiple kidnappings and torture sessions, but he does
not describe those events in detail. He also shies away from discussing other acts of violence, whether obscure or famous, that are related to his story. Only at one point in his interviews that he seemed to hint that he had to commit an extreme act of violence to defend himself. He often describes very close friendships with people like Maloka Fuentti and who were involved in countless kidnappings and murders.
He talks about flying their families, but does not mention anything about the violence they carried out, but that Aleva himself was killed by Mexican marines in two thousand nine, commandos repelled from helicopters to storm Leva's luxury apartment in Cordovaca. Those same commandos also placed bloody baso and dollar bills on his lifeless torso and led the press photographers through the apartment to take the pa sure this for me was a key moment in the so called drug war,
the state openly speaking the language of narco terrorism. Some say that Elapauzman ordered the Marines to produce that image, which would only add one more turn of the screw. Throughout his story, Blinkio will often say the name of a good friend and colleague, someone like Miguel Basan or Juan al Gomez, and then quickly say they killed him, without ever saying who they were, what happened, or why.
Violent seems to always hover on the edge of his story, having just passed through or lingering just out of you. Reading Blinkfield's transcripts, I was struck by the casual way he had mentioned that so many of his friends had been murdered. Was he so inured to the violence of his trade? Was he avoiding details so as not to draw attention to himself and have to face questions about
his involvement in such acts of violence? Is it possible to imagine that a man and old for nearly thirty years in international drug trafficking would not have participated in kidnappings, torture, and murder. In January two one colleagues that reached out to me about a curious individual they've been interviewing using a clandestine cell phone from inside of prison in North Carolina.
The man claimed to have worked as a pilot, entrepreneur and air logistics coordinator in the international drug trade for some thirty years. My friends at the Dictive produced a podcast in Spanish and wanted to know if I'd be interested in working on a sister podcast in English looking into this man and his story. Sure, I said, but I need to do my own investigations see what I
can find. Thetieve invited the legendary Mexican actor Joaquin Coco to read the English translations of Transportista's quoted interviews with Manue Latius. My name, I guess is John Gibbler, and this, in a sense is Transportista episode six. Las Callin tell us the police rushed to blink you in his colleague as they approached the holiday in. They took them into a back entrance and up the blink Hill's room, where
they began to torture them. They put us both in there in my room, and that's when it all went down. We could listen to the complete ciasco through the radios. There we are getting the beating of our lives. Blink Hill says that he and his colleague tried to deny who they were and what they had done, but it was obvious that the police knew everything. They took them both to a federal police station and continued to beat them.
After a while, it became clear that the two million dollars Blinkyo's employer had paid to the police have been stolen by a subordinate. The truth came out the commandante had stolen the bribe money. The police commander thus realized that the people he had been torturing were not responsible for the mishap, and offered to write their supposed confessions in such a way that a judge would be forced
to throw them out. Thank you. To thank the man who had tortured him, offered to give him a collector's watch man. They say, thank you very much. Commandante over there, I had a goal GMT Master too. I'm going to give it to you. No, no, no, no, he said, I don't need anything. I have plenty of watches. Keep your stuff, you're gonna need it, he said. Thank your story here, assuming it's true, illustrates a common feature of
the drug war. The federal police don't arrest drug traffickers when they traffic drugs, but rather they kidnap and torture drug traffickers who haven't paid them. Once the police found out who owned the cocaine shipment and that they had made the proper payment, they lost all interest in blank you on his colleague. One can only imagine, however, what happened to the subcommandante. So blink You in jail then
faced an unusual problem. From the beginning. They said it was a total nobody, but it was in the room place of the room time, which obviously wasn't the case. He said he was a nobody and his confession was admissible. It seemed he'd be released quickly, But then his various employers got worried and they all sent their best lawyers to help him out. But with all those lawyers, they're waiting,
speaking with the prosecutor, speaking with the judge. The judge said, no, no, no, I'm not letting you go at the preliminary huting man. I'll pass and leave the problem into a district judge or some other judge who gets your case. Blink You goes into detail, naming the famous Narco lawyers who went to defend him, but in the end he would be in prison for eighteen months and then released. And his interviews, he recalls those eighteen months in jail and the rather
offensive terms we already heard an episode four. The way Blankiell talks about women was the first thing that struck me when I listened to a story, but we won't repeat that here. Once out of jail, blank he says that he moved around quite a bit. My first traveled to Tijuana, Mexicali to get myself together, so to say. I divided my time between Mexico City and SENAA Mexicali, Tijuana and got to work. I did a few jobs. It was coordinating with some Colombian friends, and got back
to work. And we keep going doing pretty well, driving with some lucky strikes, magnificent negotiations. Everything was moved sailing. During this time, blank as that he was kidnapped and forced to fly for the nephew of a well known trafficker. After his plane broke down on one of those flights, he fled to Los Angeles. There he worked for a time selling planes to drug traffickers. Then Amalo Carrillo once
again sought him out, and asked for a favor. He wanted to know if Linkio could fly a lear Jet thirty five for a friend. Blenko went to Chihuahua to meet this friend, and there he also met a man. He asked that the divette not to name. I'll call him Steve. Steve is in prison for many years. He was released some ten years ago in a technicality, with the Mexican Federal Attorney General immediately appealed. He is known to be given to extreme acts of violence, and he
is currently at large. Back in the mid nineties, Blinkio decided to work with both Amalo Carrio's friend and with Steve. He went to Vanna's, California to take some lear Jet flight courses while he was off studying. However, and my look Ario's friend was murdered, so it would just be blank Hill and Steve. In the beginning, my business was using my planes in exchange for a percentage for the transportation.
That's how it began. I did a couple of world It is around this time that Blinkio says he became close friends with Artur and started working with him as well. Blankio charged Steve around two hundred thousand dollars per flight. Steve decided this was too expensive. Instead of taking his business elsewhere, however, he decided to buy blank Hill's business from him and then hire him as a pilot. Wait, when I buy the planes and helps you on a
pay your role. It wasn't a suggestion, but rather an order. So he bowed the planes. Steve started plankling. He was sixty five thousand dollars of light. Blank Hill says he quickly became tired of this arrangement. He started flying more with Artur beltran Leva, who he says, for a time would only fly on turboprop planes with blank He as a pilot. In this context, Blanko tells a long and convoluted tale of multiple airplane acquisitions and sales gone wrong
that led Steve to accuse Blankio trying to rip him off. So, even though I hadn't done anything, they called me to Toluca there in Alamalatia restaurant. We had a couple of rings and some delicious stakes, and we left for Mexico City to an apartment that belonged to police commandant. I wasn't guilty of anything, like I said, thank you, insists that he did not try to rip Steve off, but that he was the victim of other people's ill will and nefarious dealings. He also makes it clear that he
did not like his arrangement with Steve. I was looking for a way out still while he was chewing on his fine stick, he didn't foresee what lay ahead without expecting it. Of course, Fiesta here does not refer to the kind of party he probably wished for. She started complaining and abusing me in a way I don't even want to describe, man and that kind of things. They time me up literally means the heating up, but a
more sober terms, it means torture. Coincidentally, perhaps after having been tortured by a federal police commander in his own hotel room, here it was Blankio's business partner torturing him in a federal police commander's luxury apartment. And once again we see that violence is not exercised in the battle between the infringement and the enforcement of the rule of law, but rather as the preferred manner of conflict resolution in
an industry that depends on official invisibility. Having been captured and tortured by Steve, the possibility of jail was the least of Blankio's worries next Time. Transportista is a detective a production with Exile Content Studio in partnership with iHeart Radios Michael Dura podcast Network. Directed and narrated by John Gibbler, Transportista's voice by jrquin Cosio, Editing and sound design by Ferrando de la Rossa and Pedro Garcia. Reporting by John
Gibbler Emanuelarios produced by Juli Gonzales. Voice recording by Ugo Merino and Rene Garcia. Transportisas interviews translated by Carlo Rice Arguis. Production supervision by Nando Vila and Alberto Cespedes. Associate producers Alonzo Hilar and Alejandro Duran Diego and Riquez rro Is the creator and executive producer, along with Daniel Eilenberg and Eakle. Executive producers for I Heart Media are Comma Burn and
just Sell Bunches. For more podcasts from my Heart, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H