Witness (2012) s01e01 Episode Script
Juarez
1 Eros Hoagland's voice: I met Memo in 2008 in Tijuana.
The narco war had really come to that city.
They were dropping bodies.
We started rolling together.
( speaking Spanish ) Four.
Let's go! Rebels Hoagland's voice: My name is Eros Hoagland.
I'm a photojournalist.
I've been working for 15 years.
Hoagland's voice: You're rushing to get there before the police investigators show up, tape off the area, and block your entrance.
Hoagland: Okay.
Hoagland's voice: You don't want to arrive too soon, because the gunmen are still going to be there.
I've worked in El Salvador Guatemala, Colombia, Mexico-- all those places extensively.
I've worked in Iraq, Haiti, which was one of the scariest places I've ever been.
I'm working in Afghanistan a couple times a year now.
Latin America tends to be my gravitational point.
( camera clicking ) ( car horn honks ) I'm not there to tell you what's happening.
I'm there to show you what I saw, what happened to me, and then you can come upon your own conclusion.
Original air date November 5, 2012 Man: What do you mean by "a quiet photo"? Not a lot of action or movement, you know? It's not like a hardcore, you know, action/combat photo.
It's just kind of this very quiet, lonely death-- the aftermath.
And that tends to be kind of a lot of what I do.
I'm not-- I'm not a-- I'm not an action photographer so much.
It's-- the violence, obviously, is what you start out with 'cause it's the obvious visual.
The real test is if you can fill in the blanks with context about how these people live, wherever it is.
You need layers and arcs and different things happening kind of at the same time rather than this kind of just like in-your-face imagery of death and suffering.
How much of that can you look at? ( loud chatter ) Hoagland: Each of our bags is about 15 pounds overweight because Jared and I have our body armor in that just, um-- just 'cause we're cautious fellows.
We need to go to the Holiday Inn Express - in Juárez.
- Okay.
Hoagland's voice: El Paso is the second safest city in the United States.
And 100 yards across the river, Ciudad Juárez is one of the most dangerous cities in the western hemisphere.
I think you'd want to film that part.
Jared Moossy: Is there a mountain after the bridge? But after the bridge, you're gonna see soldiers.
Reporter: 60,000 Mexican military and police are fighting against the five major drug cartels.
Reporter #2: Here in Juárez, the world's deadliest city Katie Couric: As the United States fights two wars overseas, another is raging much closer to home.
And the Mexican Drug War is every bit as violent.
Reporter #3: The bloody, gruesome backdrop is turning into a torturous killing field.
Here we are-- big, bad Juárez.
( music playing ) When you're lost in the rain in Juárez And it's Easter time, too And your gravity fails And negativity don't pull you through Don't put on any airs When you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue They've got some hungry women there They really make a mess out of you Now if you see Saint Anne Please tell her "thanks a lot" I cannot move My fingers are all in a knot I don't have the strength To get up and take another shot And my best friend, my doctor Won't even tell me what I've got.
Hoagland's voice: When I arrive in a place, I start to talk to people immediately, even the cabdriver.
Hoagland's voice: Someone on the street, the guy in the sandwich shop-- it helps me understand who these people are.
- Eres manhunter? - No, no, no.
Hoagland's voice: And how do I represent not necessarily their specific stories but the whole situation that people are living in.
I'd have to get enough information to lead me in the right direction to make a picture.
And my general rule is I just want to make one good picture every day.
I guess I work a lot on themes, you know? I think about themes.
The theme-- it might be confusion.
No one knows what's happening.
No one knows who anybody is, so I'm trying to make images that evoke emotions of not really knowing what the score is.
To me, the border does not exist in a world of color, nor does it exist in a world of black and white.
It's a half-world.
It's this place where there are no true colors.
Nothing is as it seems.
- Yeah.
- Barefoot servants, too Outside in the cold distance The wildcats did growl Two riders were approaching And the wind begin to howl Hey, yeah, yeah, yeah! Reporter: The Mexican authorities have been making big arrests, sending a message to its enemies.
Reporter #2: They've managed to arrest some top traffickers, but new, more ruthless leaders have filled the vacuum.
The war on drugs is over.
It's lost.
Nobody will say it out loud.
Now it's just death, you know.
It's fuckin' bullshit.
The Mexican Army is valiantly fighting the cartels? This war has being going on over three years.
We got 19,000 dead Mexicans and the army's lost 100 soldiers.
What are the cartels using, rubber bands to fight with? They're not fighting the cartels.
I've been around those guys.
They have real guns.
And the American press never mentions this.
They never print the fact, the statistic I just gave you-- 100 dead soldiers, 19,000 dead Mexicans.
Well, I don't know what the future will be, but I know what's underlying the eruption of violence in Juárez.
40% of legitimate businesses have closed in the last year.
Just shut down.
Every business is extorted.
You see a guy selling tamales on the street-- he's paying extortion money or he's dead.
There's at least 400 American factories there, and they're part of the problem.
They're part of the killing.
These factories don't have low wages; these are slave wages.
You start around 40 and you work up to 60, 75-- - 75-- - Dollars a week.
We've had now two generations of kids raised without parents.
They're both working in those factories five and a half days a week.
We've created 500 to 900 street gangs in Juárez.
Those kids have nothing to do.
There's no schools for them.
After the ninth grade, you have to pay to go to school.
There's no jobs for them when they get out of school.
The drug business is fractured.
We like to talk about cartels because we want to pretend everything's organized.
These 500 to 900 gangs aren't running community barbecues; they're all peddling drugs, fighting for turf.
Now the army's weighed in to get its share of the drug money.
There's at least 8,000 soldiers in Juárez.
They're not going to leave.
They're just another gang.
Those three police forces are another gang.
There's no reason for this to end.
The ingredients to keep it going are there.
What you have now is where violence is a part of every transaction and the economy's based on crime.
If you want to survive, you sell drugs.
If you want to bear the world, you take drugs.
The Mexican Army has 250,000 people.
In a secure period, 150,000 deserted.
Look, the assumption of US Army Intelligence is they deserted to join the drug industry, because you do the same thing-- you rob, kill, torture-- and the pay's a lot better.
Hoagland's voice: Access is the key.
Of course, you can't take the picture unless you're there.
And figuring out how to be there is a delicate dance.
Known a lot of critics of the embed thing, you know? They call us, kind of, tools of the government or whatever, but the part that they don't understand is that it's just getting up to these places so we can take pictures of other stuff.
We're going to basically get a free ride into the colonias where we couldn't go alone, because we'd be killed.
( speaking Spanish ) - How are you? - What's up? See, dude? Everything turns more and more into "Apocalypse Now.
" - Julian.
- Yes? ( imitating gunfire ) Hoagland's voice: You're working with cops and military in Mexico.
I don't trust them.
I don't know who they are.
I mean, they could be crooked as hell, but if I at least make that personal bond with them, if something goes down, they're either going to look after me or give me a pass.
( dog barking ) That's serious.
Hoagland's voice: It's very tricky, because you never quite know who you're dealing with.
( dog barking wildly ) ( man speaking Spanish indistinctly ) ( speaking Spanish ) 400, go on.
( man speaking Spanish ) Do you see blurry? Bowden's voice: First, no one knows who's doing the killing, but 2,000 soldiers and 600 federal police have managed to bring Juárez to its highest annual murder rate in history.
Second, there are no arrests.
It seems strange that such a massive force with roadblocks all over the city cannot, even by accident, bag a single killer.
Third, there's the matter of the army torturing cops, raping female cops and answering to no one.
And, finally, there is a thing whispered in the city, the thing no media on either side of the line will publish-- that the army is doing the killing, and hence sees little need for arrests since the cases are not mysteries to it.
( dogs barking ) ( men speaking Spanish ) - Nothing? - Nothing.
( women coughing, sobbing ) ( speaking Spanish ) No, but I want my son.
(speaking Spanish) Yes, I understand.
Hoagland's voice: Yeah, I know what it feels like.
Fuckin' tell me I don't know what it feels like.
Cameras all over my dad's funeral, too.
Just fuckin' the way it goes.
What did my mom tell me? "Don't get mad, son.
They're just doing their job, just like your dad did.
" What that job means anymore, I have no fuckin' idea.
( sighing ) Reporter: Suddenly, our small group of eight journalists was caught in a cross fire.
John Hoagland was about 50 yards ahead of the CBS crew as all of us scrambled for cover.
( gunfire ) It seemed to us as if the army troops were firing at John and two other photographers.
Tragically, we were right.
Our tape recorder was running.
Reporter #2: I think we're in an ambush.
All of a sudden, shots broke out.
And John Hoagland, "Newsweek" photographer, has been killed.
Dan Rather: In El Salvador, in a battle area 20 miles northeast of the capital, John Hoagland of San Diego, a photographer working for "Newsweek" Magazine, was shot dead in a firefight.
Hoagland's voice: You know, when my father was killed, there was-- you know, at the wake at my grandmother's house in San Diego, the editors from "Newsweek" came there and you know, they handed me my dad's cameras in a bag.
It was like, "These are yours now.
" You know, kind of like, "What are you going to do with them?" Richard Wagner: John Hoagland was a brilliant photographer who was drawn to events like the one that cost him his life.
His pictures from Central America had been seen in magazines around the world.
Just last month, he was shooting pictures for "Newsweek" in Beirut.
As a maker of pictures and as a man, people who knew him will not forget him.
Richard Wagner, "CBS News," back from the road to Suchitoto.
Hoagland's voice: And I knew from that moment that I was going to be a photojournalist.
It took me a long, long time to get there.
It took me a long time to reach that moment.
You know, I did a lot of searching.
I had a lot of anger to deal with-- I'm still dealing with.
I mean, I went first down to El Salvador to find out why my dad left me to go there and work.
You know, what was it about this country that put the hook in him so deeply? ( police radio chatter ) ( siren wailing ) ( dog barking ) ( officer speaks Spanish indistinctly ) ( camera shutter clicking ) ( police radio chatter ) ( speaking Spanish ) Lord! Hoagland's voice: There's a crowd of probably 100 people gathered around in various places, watching this.
We're all basically just watching.
The only difference is I have a camera in my hand.
Police are kind of standing around, and I made one picture that kind of captured all of that.
You know, the guy's still alive and the police are just standing and watching him.
And that was a poignant moment.
I'm not justifying this kid being shot and killed at all.
I'm just saying that it happened.
And I was there when it happened, and that was the only reason that I was in that position, is to photograph it.
I wasn't there to mourn for him.
I wasn't there to console his family.
I wasn't there to, you know-- I was there to document it.
It's a piece of history.
If I were to be too hung up on emotions, the work would suffer.
It would suffer.
I have to use that shield as much as I can.
( camera clicks ) ( music playing ) When you're lost in the rain in Juárez And it's Easter time, too And your gravity fails And negativity don't pull you through Don't put on any airs When you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue They've got some hungry women there They really make a mess out of you Now if you see Saint Anne Please tell her "thanks a lot" I cannot move My fingers are all in a knot.
The narco war had really come to that city.
They were dropping bodies.
We started rolling together.
( speaking Spanish ) Four.
Let's go! Rebels Hoagland's voice: My name is Eros Hoagland.
I'm a photojournalist.
I've been working for 15 years.
Hoagland's voice: You're rushing to get there before the police investigators show up, tape off the area, and block your entrance.
Hoagland: Okay.
Hoagland's voice: You don't want to arrive too soon, because the gunmen are still going to be there.
I've worked in El Salvador Guatemala, Colombia, Mexico-- all those places extensively.
I've worked in Iraq, Haiti, which was one of the scariest places I've ever been.
I'm working in Afghanistan a couple times a year now.
Latin America tends to be my gravitational point.
( camera clicking ) ( car horn honks ) I'm not there to tell you what's happening.
I'm there to show you what I saw, what happened to me, and then you can come upon your own conclusion.
Original air date November 5, 2012 Man: What do you mean by "a quiet photo"? Not a lot of action or movement, you know? It's not like a hardcore, you know, action/combat photo.
It's just kind of this very quiet, lonely death-- the aftermath.
And that tends to be kind of a lot of what I do.
I'm not-- I'm not a-- I'm not an action photographer so much.
It's-- the violence, obviously, is what you start out with 'cause it's the obvious visual.
The real test is if you can fill in the blanks with context about how these people live, wherever it is.
You need layers and arcs and different things happening kind of at the same time rather than this kind of just like in-your-face imagery of death and suffering.
How much of that can you look at? ( loud chatter ) Hoagland: Each of our bags is about 15 pounds overweight because Jared and I have our body armor in that just, um-- just 'cause we're cautious fellows.
We need to go to the Holiday Inn Express - in Juárez.
- Okay.
Hoagland's voice: El Paso is the second safest city in the United States.
And 100 yards across the river, Ciudad Juárez is one of the most dangerous cities in the western hemisphere.
I think you'd want to film that part.
Jared Moossy: Is there a mountain after the bridge? But after the bridge, you're gonna see soldiers.
Reporter: 60,000 Mexican military and police are fighting against the five major drug cartels.
Reporter #2: Here in Juárez, the world's deadliest city Katie Couric: As the United States fights two wars overseas, another is raging much closer to home.
And the Mexican Drug War is every bit as violent.
Reporter #3: The bloody, gruesome backdrop is turning into a torturous killing field.
Here we are-- big, bad Juárez.
( music playing ) When you're lost in the rain in Juárez And it's Easter time, too And your gravity fails And negativity don't pull you through Don't put on any airs When you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue They've got some hungry women there They really make a mess out of you Now if you see Saint Anne Please tell her "thanks a lot" I cannot move My fingers are all in a knot I don't have the strength To get up and take another shot And my best friend, my doctor Won't even tell me what I've got.
Hoagland's voice: When I arrive in a place, I start to talk to people immediately, even the cabdriver.
Hoagland's voice: Someone on the street, the guy in the sandwich shop-- it helps me understand who these people are.
- Eres manhunter? - No, no, no.
Hoagland's voice: And how do I represent not necessarily their specific stories but the whole situation that people are living in.
I'd have to get enough information to lead me in the right direction to make a picture.
And my general rule is I just want to make one good picture every day.
I guess I work a lot on themes, you know? I think about themes.
The theme-- it might be confusion.
No one knows what's happening.
No one knows who anybody is, so I'm trying to make images that evoke emotions of not really knowing what the score is.
To me, the border does not exist in a world of color, nor does it exist in a world of black and white.
It's a half-world.
It's this place where there are no true colors.
Nothing is as it seems.
- Yeah.
- Barefoot servants, too Outside in the cold distance The wildcats did growl Two riders were approaching And the wind begin to howl Hey, yeah, yeah, yeah! Reporter: The Mexican authorities have been making big arrests, sending a message to its enemies.
Reporter #2: They've managed to arrest some top traffickers, but new, more ruthless leaders have filled the vacuum.
The war on drugs is over.
It's lost.
Nobody will say it out loud.
Now it's just death, you know.
It's fuckin' bullshit.
The Mexican Army is valiantly fighting the cartels? This war has being going on over three years.
We got 19,000 dead Mexicans and the army's lost 100 soldiers.
What are the cartels using, rubber bands to fight with? They're not fighting the cartels.
I've been around those guys.
They have real guns.
And the American press never mentions this.
They never print the fact, the statistic I just gave you-- 100 dead soldiers, 19,000 dead Mexicans.
Well, I don't know what the future will be, but I know what's underlying the eruption of violence in Juárez.
40% of legitimate businesses have closed in the last year.
Just shut down.
Every business is extorted.
You see a guy selling tamales on the street-- he's paying extortion money or he's dead.
There's at least 400 American factories there, and they're part of the problem.
They're part of the killing.
These factories don't have low wages; these are slave wages.
You start around 40 and you work up to 60, 75-- - 75-- - Dollars a week.
We've had now two generations of kids raised without parents.
They're both working in those factories five and a half days a week.
We've created 500 to 900 street gangs in Juárez.
Those kids have nothing to do.
There's no schools for them.
After the ninth grade, you have to pay to go to school.
There's no jobs for them when they get out of school.
The drug business is fractured.
We like to talk about cartels because we want to pretend everything's organized.
These 500 to 900 gangs aren't running community barbecues; they're all peddling drugs, fighting for turf.
Now the army's weighed in to get its share of the drug money.
There's at least 8,000 soldiers in Juárez.
They're not going to leave.
They're just another gang.
Those three police forces are another gang.
There's no reason for this to end.
The ingredients to keep it going are there.
What you have now is where violence is a part of every transaction and the economy's based on crime.
If you want to survive, you sell drugs.
If you want to bear the world, you take drugs.
The Mexican Army has 250,000 people.
In a secure period, 150,000 deserted.
Look, the assumption of US Army Intelligence is they deserted to join the drug industry, because you do the same thing-- you rob, kill, torture-- and the pay's a lot better.
Hoagland's voice: Access is the key.
Of course, you can't take the picture unless you're there.
And figuring out how to be there is a delicate dance.
Known a lot of critics of the embed thing, you know? They call us, kind of, tools of the government or whatever, but the part that they don't understand is that it's just getting up to these places so we can take pictures of other stuff.
We're going to basically get a free ride into the colonias where we couldn't go alone, because we'd be killed.
( speaking Spanish ) - How are you? - What's up? See, dude? Everything turns more and more into "Apocalypse Now.
" - Julian.
- Yes? ( imitating gunfire ) Hoagland's voice: You're working with cops and military in Mexico.
I don't trust them.
I don't know who they are.
I mean, they could be crooked as hell, but if I at least make that personal bond with them, if something goes down, they're either going to look after me or give me a pass.
( dog barking ) That's serious.
Hoagland's voice: It's very tricky, because you never quite know who you're dealing with.
( dog barking wildly ) ( man speaking Spanish indistinctly ) ( speaking Spanish ) 400, go on.
( man speaking Spanish ) Do you see blurry? Bowden's voice: First, no one knows who's doing the killing, but 2,000 soldiers and 600 federal police have managed to bring Juárez to its highest annual murder rate in history.
Second, there are no arrests.
It seems strange that such a massive force with roadblocks all over the city cannot, even by accident, bag a single killer.
Third, there's the matter of the army torturing cops, raping female cops and answering to no one.
And, finally, there is a thing whispered in the city, the thing no media on either side of the line will publish-- that the army is doing the killing, and hence sees little need for arrests since the cases are not mysteries to it.
( dogs barking ) ( men speaking Spanish ) - Nothing? - Nothing.
( women coughing, sobbing ) ( speaking Spanish ) No, but I want my son.
(speaking Spanish) Yes, I understand.
Hoagland's voice: Yeah, I know what it feels like.
Fuckin' tell me I don't know what it feels like.
Cameras all over my dad's funeral, too.
Just fuckin' the way it goes.
What did my mom tell me? "Don't get mad, son.
They're just doing their job, just like your dad did.
" What that job means anymore, I have no fuckin' idea.
( sighing ) Reporter: Suddenly, our small group of eight journalists was caught in a cross fire.
John Hoagland was about 50 yards ahead of the CBS crew as all of us scrambled for cover.
( gunfire ) It seemed to us as if the army troops were firing at John and two other photographers.
Tragically, we were right.
Our tape recorder was running.
Reporter #2: I think we're in an ambush.
All of a sudden, shots broke out.
And John Hoagland, "Newsweek" photographer, has been killed.
Dan Rather: In El Salvador, in a battle area 20 miles northeast of the capital, John Hoagland of San Diego, a photographer working for "Newsweek" Magazine, was shot dead in a firefight.
Hoagland's voice: You know, when my father was killed, there was-- you know, at the wake at my grandmother's house in San Diego, the editors from "Newsweek" came there and you know, they handed me my dad's cameras in a bag.
It was like, "These are yours now.
" You know, kind of like, "What are you going to do with them?" Richard Wagner: John Hoagland was a brilliant photographer who was drawn to events like the one that cost him his life.
His pictures from Central America had been seen in magazines around the world.
Just last month, he was shooting pictures for "Newsweek" in Beirut.
As a maker of pictures and as a man, people who knew him will not forget him.
Richard Wagner, "CBS News," back from the road to Suchitoto.
Hoagland's voice: And I knew from that moment that I was going to be a photojournalist.
It took me a long, long time to get there.
It took me a long time to reach that moment.
You know, I did a lot of searching.
I had a lot of anger to deal with-- I'm still dealing with.
I mean, I went first down to El Salvador to find out why my dad left me to go there and work.
You know, what was it about this country that put the hook in him so deeply? ( police radio chatter ) ( siren wailing ) ( dog barking ) ( officer speaks Spanish indistinctly ) ( camera shutter clicking ) ( police radio chatter ) ( speaking Spanish ) Lord! Hoagland's voice: There's a crowd of probably 100 people gathered around in various places, watching this.
We're all basically just watching.
The only difference is I have a camera in my hand.
Police are kind of standing around, and I made one picture that kind of captured all of that.
You know, the guy's still alive and the police are just standing and watching him.
And that was a poignant moment.
I'm not justifying this kid being shot and killed at all.
I'm just saying that it happened.
And I was there when it happened, and that was the only reason that I was in that position, is to photograph it.
I wasn't there to mourn for him.
I wasn't there to console his family.
I wasn't there to, you know-- I was there to document it.
It's a piece of history.
If I were to be too hung up on emotions, the work would suffer.
It would suffer.
I have to use that shield as much as I can.
( camera clicks ) ( music playing ) When you're lost in the rain in Juárez And it's Easter time, too And your gravity fails And negativity don't pull you through Don't put on any airs When you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue They've got some hungry women there They really make a mess out of you Now if you see Saint Anne Please tell her "thanks a lot" I cannot move My fingers are all in a knot.