By Sandro Mairata
The first time Guillermo Galdós set foot in Sonora, Mexico, to prepare what would become the documentary miniseries Massacre of the Mormons, a convoy of twelve drug traffickers passed him by. Located in northeastern Mexico, Sonora borders Chihuahua to the east and the fearsome Sinaloa to the south, territories that Galdós, co-founder of the Peruvian production company Pacha Films along with Luis del Valle, knows well. “It happened before the pandemic,” Galdós recalls. “It was shortly after they were killed.”
By “they” he refers to the nine members of a Mormon community – women and children – who were ambushed and murdered on November 4, 2019. The incident was a major scandal that dominated the news in the United States. Now, in the best style of Pacha Films, the four-episode miniseries follows exhaustively at the scene of the events, speaking with survivors, authorities and relatives of the victims.
“I even walked the same path where they were murdered,” adds Galdós as if describing another day at the office. The result can be seen starting April 11 on the network formerly called HBO Max, now simply Max.
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Talking to Galdós (49) is receiving an avalanche of anecdotes and experiences that are difficult to match. He is one of our most recognized journalists abroad, with Bafta nominations in the United Kingdom and various awards such as two Rory Peck de Noticias and three times elected international journalist of the year in England for his reporting in areas as diverse as Honduras, Brazil, Mexico and Peru. His name, however, is not known to the Peruvian public.
There's the time he got on the Death Train to tell the story of illegal migrants going to the United States. Or his interviews with the leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha in Honduras, with illegal animal hunters in the Peruvian jungle or his reports on prostitution in Madre de Dios, always with testimonies in front of the camera. Or when she went into the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to record on video how cocaine was prepared for street sale. Or when he traveled for six days through the very dangerous Darién Pass, in the swampy jungle between Colombia and Panama, accompanying other migrants on their route to the United States, several of whom he saw die.
In 2014, Galdós obtained an interview for the American network PBS with the mother of the boss of bosses, the Mexican drug lord Joaquín el Chapo Guzmán, before his second capture. María Consuelo Loera Pérez, her parent, told her on camera that her son “did not kill anyone” and that she did not understand why the authorities were persecuting him. In 2019, he sat down with Diego Armando Maradona and the president of the Dorados de Sinaloa Club, and convinced them to give them access to film Maradona in Sinaloa for Netflix.
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Inside Pacha
On an ordinary day everything is very intense at Pacha Films. They have their office in Miraflores, from where they monitor any news event that might be of interest to the networks they work with: from Discovery, Nat Geo, Al Jazeera or PBS to Netflix or Channel 4 in the United Kingdom, one of their main clients. The core team of six people is supported by two journalists in training and, depending on the project, freelancers are called upon to cover the needs of directors, cameramen or researcher-producers. On an average day they may be working on three or four projects at the same time.
Massacre of the Mormons was produced by a member of the team who is no longer at Pacha Films, Luciano Gorriti—a distant relative of Gustavo—, a Peruvian winner of an Emmy in 2014 for the documentary Trafficking in Women from Tenancingo to New York, also produced by Discovery and made by Pacha. “When the events occur, Guillermo travels to the area, speaks with the families and makes first contact,” says Gorriti. “With that material, Discovery buys the idea and I begin to lead the investigation along with other supports in Mexico. We traveled to La Mora, to Colonia LeBarón (site of the events). I was in Mexico for more than two months between 2021 and 2022; “Then there was a long post-production process.”
“We are a small team that on the one hand do daily development work, we look for stories and angles to make a difference,” says Luis del Valle, co-founder of Pacha Films, from Mexico. The arrival of working with Max, however, opens a new vein for them: the subgenre of true crime, in which the interstices of a crime are revealed little by little and the explanation of the causes, motivations and those responsible. . Galdós, for his part, thinks that in the not too distant future they could venture into fiction.
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Lisa Estella, who debuted as a co-director for Al Jazeera with Monkey Man last year, is the team's news producer. “We have a calendar that is always breathing down our necks,” she confesses. “We have to make the most of every minute of the day, be very clear about what we want from each story, what the vision of the project is or what the network wants.”
Galdós, whose real surname is Galdós-Tangüis, has no problem not being known in his own country. In fact, it seems that keeping a low profile is a requirement at his production company and this is one of the rare times that his members talk about his work. “Sometimes I comment on something online, but we are exposed not only to insults, but also to threats,” he acknowledges. “In the end we are not motivated by recognition or fame, but by the need to tell these stories that others do not tell and that are urgent, that are necessary.”
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