Recently in Latin America Category

Korin Anderson

Associate Producer, NGT

Despite the Border Patrol’s amazing arsenal of technology the task to close down a desert is still daunting. Sometimes it feels as if we are getting a rare opportunity to just hang out with a bunch of guys with really cool toys. But these toys are serious equipment for a very serious job. Last night we stayed up with the night shift in the control room in Nogales, Arizona. The room is darkened and a handful of agents watch dozens of TV monitors filling an entire wall. Those screens are connected to hundreds of remote cameras that can turn to almost every inch of the Tucson sector – an area covering over 120 square miles south west of Tucson. All night long Agent Sean watched as GPS coordinates popped up on screen. Each coordinate referenced a “hit” from an underground radar sensor. These are buried in secret locations just north of the US/Mexico border. They are so sensitive that even a coyote walking past can send an alert. Whenever a group of migrants, or worse, drug smugglers passes too close, the Border Patrol knows almost instantly. The control room can track exactly where a group is crossing, but these locations may be deep into the wilderness – so they have a system of cameras that can be remotely controlled. When a sensor reports a hit, agents can turn the nearest camera to the spot to check exactly who might be crossing. Our film crew marveled at the precision of cutting-edge infra-red cameras that can detect a person’s body heat from eight miles away. I found myself holding my breath all night as we watched the computer terminals for another hit. We were able to watch an entire chase and capture play out in black and white from eight miles away. We laughed with the agents when a huge “hit” turned out to be a herd of cows.

Korin Anderson

Associate Producer, NGT

Wow, I know that Mexico is another country,–Mexicans eat different food, wear different clothes and speak a different language-- but I am still impressed with how a just crossing a tiny, man-made border line can change the world. Nogales, Mexico even smells different than Nogales, Arizona--I think it might be that they cook their foods in a different kind of oil than we do. And oh, how good that food tastes! I am delighting in the crazy little road-side taco stands, and the street vendors selling tasty treats through the car windows. I am again thankful that my mom insisted that I learn Spanish because it is infinitely more fun to be able to understand all (okay, some) of the street noise. We drove for about three hours this morning and arrived in a dusty little town. Franc introduced us to the local priest who takes care of the permanent population as well as the countless migrants who pass through Altar each month. The padre took us on a back door tour of the town introducing us to both the seedy side, and the parish grandmothers. We met the local prostitutes, the backpack sellers, volunteers who run the local shelter, a fantastic restaurant and a newlywed couple who had just opened a breakfast burrito shop. There was a strange feeling of hospitality and hostility throughout the town. Although we are here on a non-threatening mission of merely documenting what is going on, we are clearly and obviously outsiders. It is going to take some time to build trust. And many people in the town have good reason to be suspicious of nearly everyone. Wherever your sympathies lie, the migrants who attempt illegal entry are breaking U.S. laws. The penalties for being a pollero – a human smuggler – are even higher than those for merely crossing. But the crossing through the desert is extremely treacherous and there is much money to be made in smuggling. There is a sense of desperation surrounding the migrants in Altar. If you are willing to leave your home, your family, your traditions and head north to live in secret scraping together a new life in a foreign country that at least officially doesn’t want you to come, I’d imagine that the reasons have to be pretty compelling. Then you add to that a journey across some of the harshest, hottest and driest deserts – nobody is coming to Altar for a vacation. Surprisingly many were willing to openly share their stories with us anyway. We talked to, mostly, men who shared their hopes and plans. They told us they were caring for sick parents, hoping to their children school money, or looking for just a chance to earn an honest wage. Some of them seemed confused and slightly ashamed that their circumstances had driven them to seek a criminal solution. I got the sense that if there could have found a legal option, they would gladly have taken that option. All of them wanted to tell us that they were not coming to the U.S. to break laws or to hurt anyone, nor were they looking for a hand-out or to take advantage of the U.S. social services. While they are likely other people in town with less wholesome reasons for wanting to cross, every person we met told us that they only wanted work.

Korin Anderson

Associate Producer, NGT

There were some very sketchy happenings on the street today. We are getting the feeling that someone is watching us very carefully. While I was walking down the street with our assistant cameraman, a man approached us and said “I hear you are staying in the Altar Inn.” We were both a little baffled because we didn’t remember meeting this man before. David tried to divert him and claimed that we couldn’t really remember the name of our hotel…it was somewhere over there, on the edge of town. But the man assured us that he knew exactly where we were staying. He wasn’t threatening us but he was letting us know that our actions are not going unnoticed. Today we learned that most of the industry in Altar is controlled by one person who somehow is involved in virtually every step of the migrants’ journey. Almost everyone who is attempting to cross takes a van from Altar to the edge of the U.S., a town called Sasebe that is right at the border. This van must travel up a private toll road that is owned by this same person. We were eager to travel in a van so we could film the very start of the migrants’ journey. The priest had helped us to find a van driver who might be willing to let us take a trip with him. Unfortunately our plans fell through and we were unable to make van journey. It was disappointing to not be able to film that part of the trip. David and I did manage to take some excellent still photos of a van being loaded on a side street in Altar. We were outside watching our gear while the other crew filmed an interview inside (and of course we grabbed a little excellent Mexican ice cream from a darling street vendor)--as we were sitting there we watched as person after person climbed into a van with “Altar – Sasebe” painted on the window. It seemed pretty clear what they were up to. We had heard that they packed 20 – 30 people into a stripped down 15-passenger van, but I still couldn’t believe how many people fit inside and drove off into the dust. Despite the sense of lurking danger our trip to Altar was successful and informative, and gave us the opportunity to meet some truly lovely people. The priest invited us to film a service in the local church especially for migrants, blessing them as they head northward. The church was packed with hopeful people who had shared a few days of their lives with us.

Korin Anderson

Associate Producer, NGT

For the past week we have been filming with the US Border Patrol in Tucson, Arizona trying to learn about their assignment to secure the southern border. It has been exhausting and enlightening. We have been working long hours, but the Border Patrol works even longer hours. The heat has been hovering in the 90s with blazing sun – and it is ONLY SEPTEMBER. I am so glad we didn’t decide to visit in August. And we aren’t the only ones who suffer in the heat. Everyone who ventures outside is vulnerable. It isn’t the kind of place you want to visit without expert guides and , plenty of water – and in our case, I was very glad to have an air conditioned truck to escape the heat. But the people who work there, and the people who try to cross the Sonoran desert illegally don’t have that luxury All of the Border Patrol agents have been welcoming and eager to share the day to day details of their job. And every single day I am more impressed by their tenacity and professionalism. They also have a really great stash of tools to help them. We jumped into one of their fleet of green striped jeeps and headed out with our guide for the next few days: Agent Danny McClafferty. An agent who has an especially unique assignment, McClafferty is a member of BORSTAR – Border Patrol Search Trauma And Rescue. BORSTAR agents are responsible for patrolling the border as all agents are, but they are also specially trained in desert rescue. Most of them are licensed paramedics ready to treat and rescue anyone in danger in the desert. Soft-spoken Danny unlike my idea of the typical Border Agent as you could imagine. He is awesome and his compassion and commitment to his work are tangible. Danny’s family has been working for the Border Patrol for years and he learned tracking from his dad.

"The distances in the desert are unthinkable to anybody who lives within walking distance of at least 12 Starbucks." - Korin Anderson

After driving for about 50 miles – the distances in the desert are unthinkable to anybody who lives within walking distance of at least 12 Starbucks - we finally reached our destination. We headed off-road – okay, it was probably officially a road, but it didn’t qualify as “road” in my experience—“dirt path” would be a generous overstatement. As we drove along, Danny leaned out the window and watched the dust at the side of the road. He encouraged us to watch along with him and explained that we were looking for either footprints – or perhaps the signs that footprints had been disguised. He explained that the crossers know exactly how the Border Patrol tracks – by driving east and west and hoping to cross their paths northward. The easiest place to see footprints is wherever a group must cross a road. But avoiding detection at these spots appears to be a minor challenge for border crossers. They use a variety of techniques to confuse the agents tracking them. Sometimes they just walk backwards so they would appear to be walking south instead of north – but this doesn’t fool Danny. When you walk backwards your heel makes a deeper impression than when you walk forward. Other groups carry brooms, or twigs to sweep out their tracks. Once they caught a group with a battery powered leaf blower to BLOW out their tracks. These people seem determined to cross at all costs.

Max Salomon

Series Producer & Writer; Explorer, NGT

The field production for Border Wars posed a significant challenge for our production team. The stories in the field covered a huge expanse - the terrain of Arizona and New Mexico in which much of our story takes place is extremely vast and remote. Distances between locations often required hours of driving...along dirt roads not on the map…or miles on foot through the desert. Covering such a wide territory would have been impossible for a single crew in the time allotted. Producer Ray Telles asked if I might leave my Series Producer desk in D.C. behind and be willing to run a second unit for several days. Getting an excuse to get into the field is always a thrill. So I tossed my pen and notepad, Blackberry and laptop over my shoulder, grabbed a VariCam and headed out into the desert. I have to admit that what I experienced and saw from this privileged "front row seat" to the action fundamentally shifted my understanding of the immigration issue. Amidst the din of the immigration debate and the pundits’ rhetoric, the truth of what actually is going on our border with Mexico is easily lost in the public discourse. The US effort to secure the border has had unintended consequences. Since the 1990's we've been building a massive security fence... triple lines patrolled by SUV's, ATV's ... surveilled by watchtowers and cameras...illuminated by floodlights. The statistics show that where this massive barrier has gone up it's been extremely effective... in those areas (San Diego, El Paso, etc.) the number of crossings has dropped. But the number of migrants crossing into the US has continued to rise. The traffic has simply been funneled elsewhere. It has moved into areas that were once simply too dangerous and hard to cross...into the deserts and mountain wildernesses of a region dubbed “The Devil’s Highway”. The problem now is that thousands of migrants are entering a dangerous wilderness... one that they can't cross on their own... and it has often funneled them in to the hands of organized crime. What our nation's border patrol agents face now in securing the border is not simply unarmed migrants crossing on their own...they are battling a complex dangerous network of human traffickers.

Lisa Ling Meth really is the mother of all drugs. It's the cheapest, dirtiest and most powerful drug in existence today. It's also the fastest spreading. Meth doesn't kill its addicts immediately. The process is slow, during which it takes an extreme physical and psychological toll. Meth literally rots people's bodies—teeth, face and insides. Frankly, I was appalled by how ugly it made frequent users.

Photo by David Ross Smith

I explored the impact meth is having on societies in Portland, Omaha and Bangkok. The reasons people start using the drug differ from city to city. In Portland, I was shocked to learn that 80 percent of that city's prisons hold people on meth-related charges. Whether the charges are for drug dealing, identity theft or armed robbery, somehow they are connected to meth. Portland's hospitals are overwhelmed by patients admitted for meth abuse. I've always considered Portland to be one of the most beautiful cities in the U.S., but meth's impact on it has been tremendously ugly. But there is hope. Addicts can recover. I had the privilege of meeting a man in Portland who is six months into recovery. His name is Kobe. Kobe was very good looking, smart and athletic when he got addicted. But meth nearly destroyed his life. I was amazed after I heard his story that he was even alive. The most poignant part of his story was that his parents, who are loving and middle class, told me what a relief it was to learn that he had been arrested and jailed … because that meant they knew where he was and that he was alive.

Photo by David Ross Smith

I also met a young woman in jail named Julie. She was a prime example of how meth deteriorates a person, inside and out. She was incredibly paranoid, even though she has been clean since her incarceration. I saw pictures of Julie before she became addicted to meth—she had been so attractive. It was truly heartbreaking to see what the drug had done to her. Her face was riddled with pockmarks from sores that had gotten infected and her teeth were totally rotted from years of grating and negligence.

Correspondent Lisa Ling documented the experience of filming this special from El Salvador to Los Angeles. Below are accounts of some of her chilling experiences, including finding out that she and her crew had been targeted for kidnapping and touring MS-13 controlled territory in Los Angeles with an active MS-13 member. Lisa Ling Growing up in Los Angeles, it’s hard not to notice the graffiti that covers the sides of buildings, walls, fences and trucks in many parts of the city. It looks like meaningless scribble, but it’s used to mark territory. Though it is home to Hollywood and the entertainment industry, large swaths of the city are also claimed by violent street gangs. If you’re a gangster and walk into territory claimed by a rival gang, you could be shot to death without question. Although there are over 100 known gangs in L.A., my encounters with gangsters had been pretty limited. I thought I could identify them by their shaved heads, baggy pants and tattoos, but then “gangsta” style became cool and it became impossible to single out individuals as bonafide “bangers.” A gang called “White Fence” controlled the area where I was working in the ‘90s. I’d also known about the gangs plaguing the L.A. streets, particularly the big ones like the “Bloods,” “Crips” and “18th Street.” I recall hearing about a small Salvadoran gang with a really long name – Mara Salvatrucha – that was considered somewhat insignificant relative to the bigger more established gangs. For those reasons, law enforcement paid little attention to it and focused their efforts at suppressing other gangs. Big Mistake. In a very short period of time, Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, has arguably become the biggest and most dangerous gang in the world. In the 1980's a law was enacted that would deport non-U.S. citizens convicted of serious crimes back to their home countries after serving their sentences. This resulted in hundreds of thousands of criminal offenders, including thousands of gang members, being returned to countries that had never encountered gang problems – such has been the case with El Salvador. Rather than return to the U.S., many gang members stayed in their home countries and brought gangbanging culture with them. Law enforcement officials (who’ve served as journalistic sources for me in the past) have kept me up to date on the issues keeping them the busiest. Over the last couple of years, several of my gang detective colleagues urged me to take a deeper look into MS-13 because members were starting to show up in many different parts of the U.S. and other countries. They were also beginning to perpetrate heinous acts of violence in areas that had never experienced such things before. The gang started to grow so fast that a federal task force was created to deal specifically with MS – a big deal considering that it started as a small L.A. street gang. My first foray into the world of MS came through a 20-year-old active member whom I call "Jester" in the show. He was jumped in (members viciously pound and kick the individual for 13 seconds, for the purposes of initiation) when he was only eight years old. Just a year later, at age nine, Jester was sent to “attack the enemy” – to walk up to a group of six rival gangsters and open fire. He was so scared he closed his eyes. After the shots went off, he saw that one guy had fallen—whether he survived is unknown. Jester says it’s the only time he ever felt sad or scared. He’s shot nearly twenty others since then. According to Jester, it’s either “him or me.” If he doesn’t shoot the enemy, the enemy will shoot him. I found out that several weeks after my interview with him, he and his homie were arrested for murder. When I got the call from a law enforcement officer, I felt sick. I had gotten to know Jester and he took me into his world, and now he was locked up and facing murder charges. He and his friends told me many stories of having to “do what they had to do,” in order to protect themselves and their neighborhoods. At the time I couldn’t distinguish between big talk and their reality. I guess it was their reality. Gangs operate as businesses in the criminal world. What’s disturbing is how young the recruits are and how vulnerable they are to indoctrination. The young boys are made to prove themselves through violence, and the faster one becomes a killer, the faster he or she will move up the ranks. Gangs are families who raise their kids to kill. With a presence in 33 U.S. states and more than five other countries, right now the MS-13 family is the biggest of gang operations. Law enforcement is reigning in on their operations, but as soon as MS is weakened, there will be others anxious to fill the void.

Bijal Trivedi - National Geographic Channel

“There is a history book in your DNA [that reveals] how people are related to each other all over the planet and how we have moved around,” - Spencer Wells

Analyzing DNA from the cheek cells of a group of Mongolians enabled geneticist Spencer Wells, an Explorer-In-Residence at the National Geographic Society, to figure out whether they were indeed descendants of the notorious warrior who lived 800 years ago and thousands of miles away. Such exotic historical enigmas are daily fodder for Wells who is in the midst of the Genographic Project (GP)—a massive undertaking to sample human DNA from around the world to illuminate human genetic and migratory history. “There is a history book in your DNA [that reveals] how people are related to each other all over the planet and how we have moved around,” says Wells. The last 10,000 years are of particular interest to Wells who, since childhood, wanted to be an historian. “I was fascinated by Egypt and Greece and Rome and all of these great empires and I’m very interested in the impact of these empires on the patterns of genetic variation—for example, can we see traces of the Phoenicians in North Africa?” says Wells. His latest adventures have led him to discover that Thomas Jefferson’s ethnic background is not quite as one would expect. He has hunted down possible descendents of Solomon, the third king of Israel. And, he has entered a world where science and religion converge—the search for what he calls the “scientific Adam,” the man who gave rise to all men today and the “trunk” of the human family tree. Wells has used DNA to trace this common ancestor back to Africa and perhaps to the very plains where he may have hunted. He has even identified a living tribe with an ancient lineage that offers a window into the life of “scientific Adam”—and, the face of one of the tribe members served as a model to determine what he may have looked like.

Face of Adam image created by Animetrics.

Unlike medical geneticists who study genetic changes that cause morphological differences or diseases, population geneticists like Wells study genetic changes that don’t have any effect at all. These changes, called genetic markers, are created by random mutations in the DNA and are passed down through the generations. Each population accumulates its own distinctive set of markers. As these mutations are pretty rare, if two people share one of these markers that suggests they share an ancestor. By comparing DNA samples from many different populations, Wells hopes to reveal the shape of the human family tree, from twigs to trunk. Wells has traveled the world studying genetic patterns for about the past 15 years. He’s completed fieldwork in central Asia, India, and the Middle East collecting samples from about 10,000 people. Analysis of these samples revealed a broad-brush view of how man originated in Africa and moved around planet to Australia and Central Asia. “But,” says Wells, “10,000 samples isn’t enough to reveal details about how we are all related and moved around.” To figure out the details he proposed a project that required 100,000 samples—the Genographic Project. As part of the GP, 10 centers scattered around the globe will each take blood samples from 100-200 indigenous populations (50 to 100 individuals per population) over the next five years. Together the project should yield data on at least 100,000 individuals. Everyone knows a little about their parents, grandparents, and maybe even their great grandparents—but beyond that is a historical realm. “People always ask ‘it must be really tough to get samples from tribes in remote regions’ but that’s not true. When you explain to people that they are carrying this history book in there genome, in their blood, and that you can help them read it they are fascinated—most people want to participate.” “I’ve sampled in Lebanon and Christians and Muslims alike want to know if they are related to the Phoenicians—they are intrigued by the chance they could be a descendent of this great imperial power,” says Wells. Similarly on the island of Pate, off the coast of Kenya near the Somalia border, the people have an oral tradition that they are related to Chinese sailors who washed ashore on 400-foot ships and married local women. Wells discovered that the residents of Pate don’t have any Chinese Y chromosomes but they have Y-chromosomes from everywhere else—India, Pakistan, the Middle East, and Europe. However, the presence of 15th century Chinese pottery on the island suggests that there may be truth to the tales and more genetic sampling is needed. “Genographic is not really a genetics project. It is using genetics as a tool to study history and anthropology. I’m interested in the impact of the Inca empire on the genetic patterns in upper Amazonia, in Central Asia I want to look at the impact of Alexander the Great,” says Wells as he rattles of a hit list of historical mysteries that he hopes to solve. The GP has taken on a particular urgency because of massive migrations currently in progress. People are leaving their ancient homelands, moving to the cities, and becoming part of the melting pot. As people marry individuals from other cultures genetic patterns are quickly scrambled. If Wells can’t identify the location where a particular genetic pattern arose, it becomes tricky to identify how different ethnic groups are related to one another. “This makes the job of a population geneticist very difficult because though you carry your genes with you, you lose the context in which that genetic variation arose,” says Wells. A symptom of this mixing is the rapid decline in the number of spoken languages in the world. In the year 1500, linguists estimate 15,000 languages were spoken; today there are 6,000. By the end of the century about half to 90% of those are going to be extinct, says Wells. “We are going through a period of cultural mass extinction. We have a narrowing window of opportunity to collect genetic samples from indigenous populations where people have stayed put for a very long period of time.” Wells hopes that by studying the DNA from these groups he can locate where particular genetic changes occurred and when, which will reveal how our ancestors migrated around the planet. To date, Wells has visited about 50 countries to sample different genetic lineages. Of all the indigenous tribes he has met, the Hazabe of Tanzania have had the greatest impact on Wells. “I have hung out with other Bushmen and they are fascinating. But most of them don’t actually live the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. They can still mock it up for a film crew but none of them actually live in villages. The Hazabe live as hunter-gatherers. They are actually pulling up trees and carving bows and arrows and they make fire by rubbing sticks together, it is amazing and it really does give you an insight into the way people probably lived 50 or 60 thousand years ago.” You don’t need to be a member of an indigenous tribe to participate in the Genographic Project. Log onto National Geographic's Genographic Project to find out how you can contribute to the scientific endeavor of deciphering the human family tree and, learn about your ancestors.