EP 2: The Legend

November 6, 2018·26 min·2 clips

Reporters staying near La Tuna arrived the same night El Chapo's brother was throwing a cartel birthday party — with machine gun fire in the hills at 7:30 in the morning.

The road opens with a warning. Their guide says the danger is not always that someone kills you. Sometimes armed men simply decide the road is closed. He has been stopped before: maybe 20 gunmen turned him away from La Tuna after asking why he was there and saying shootings were happening everywhere. The mood is nervous, then weirdly dry. The reporters joke that their lives are in his hands, and he answers with that odd line about being their personal Jesus Christ. It is June 16th, and they have left Culiacan for La Tuna, Badiraguato, in the Sierra of the Golden Triangle. The story settles around one house. Chema, the son of Chapo's cousin, lives near where they are staying. His place is handmade and open to the hillside: adobe bricks, mountains, sky, animals in the yard, his wife working at a wood-fired stove. A child stands inside in a Mickey Mouse shirt, seven or eight years old. For a second it feels like any family visit, until the armed presence around the town snaps back into view. The practical goal is to reach Chapo's mother. Chema may be able to arrange it, since other journalists have caught her after church. He goes up the hill, comes back, and the team waits outside the church until a truck rolls down and Consuelo Loera steps out. She is close to 90, with gray hair in a ponytail, wire-framed glasses, a granddaughter beside her, and help needed to walk. The episode lets the local contradictions breathe: Chapo paid for things people use, including one of the few paved roads, while heavily armed men still decide what is allowed there.

As heard by us

A slow-burn road story that uses place, access, and family proximity to do the heavy lifting.

Episode 2 tracks the road into Latuna with the kind of field reporting that makes distance feel like a cost. The tension comes from more than whether the crew gets there. It sits in the armed men, the family ties, and the local power that all crowd the same frame.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want Chapo country told from the road, not from a studio chair.

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