Displeasing the Matriarchy with Uncomfortable Truths
Managing relationships with sources in journalism can be tricky. When you’re covering convicted female traffickers who want you to shut up and go-the-fuck-away, it’s supremely awkward.
MEXICO CITY - Last late October, I was walking down a sunny street in Mexico City when my phone buzzed.
“You’ve printed lies. Digna isn’t who you say she is.”
A text from a source in Honduras - someone close to Digna Valle, one of the drug-trafficking powerhouses I’d investigated for the Las Patronas series, which had finally been published that week on VICE World News after years in the making.
When I had visited Digna’s home in the remote town of El Espiritu in Honduras on a fact-finding mission in March 2021, a group of women who knew and loved her had welcomed me that day. I was guessing that as well as the aforementioned sender-of-message, those women were also probably pissed too. As well as Digna.
El Espíritu lies near Honduras’s border with Guatemala—a major transit route for dope moving through from Colombia on its way to the U.S. Digna was based there with her brothers, and the Valle clan was a major cocaine transporter for Colombian and Mexican organized crime. That was until the U.S government arrested Digna in 2014 and the whole organization came tumbling down.
Photo: The inscription on a bench outside the catholic church in El Espiritu, Copan, Honduras, that Digna Valle and her family helped build.
The Valles were not known for their non-violent ways. When I read the message that day, it felt like someone had poured a cup of iced-water down the back of my neck. Freezing water that subsequently made me sweat. The sensation ran through my body like a wave from top to bottom. The self-flagellation started up in my head, and went on for some twenty minutes as my internal temperature went through the roof. I felt a stress rash break out on my neck. THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT WHY DO YOU HAVE TO FOCUS ON CRIMINAL WOMEN YOU JUST GO AROUND ASKING FOR TROUBLE YOU SHOULD MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS YOU SHOULD HAVE EXPECTED THIS YOU SILLY COW YOU'RE MENTAL AND STUBBORN AND YOUR EGO IS OUT OF CONTROL.
Shhhhhhhhh. I really can explain.
I had gone to El Espiritu on a quest to learn as much about Digna as I could (she declined a few interview requests) – the backstory on her is here, and probably a necessary scan before you continue reading.
My long-suffering security team and I knew that it had to be an in-and-out kind of deal. El Espiritu is tiny, and if you go there you have to show up with a trusted local. In my case, that was Bishop Darwin, who may have saved my life. The Valles used to run the place like their personal fiefdom, and their method of control mutated from benefactors to violence overseers. Outsiders were instantly noticed and distrusted.
Yet the day I went with the bishop, the women I met there not only welcomed me and my local colleagues into their home, but lunch was served. Apart from the bishop and my driver, we were all women sitting around talking, and even spoke to Digna on a video phone call. She beamed with pride about building the local church.
But after I left Honduras, a number of sources in the U.S reached out. Word gets around when you’re looking into certain categories of people. An uglier picture of Digna than that I had seen and heard in El Espiritu emerged, so when I wrote about her I included the testimony of former local residents, countered with accounts from her female fanbase.
My interest in Digna, as well as all of the other women I’ve covered, was based on a fascination with her power and position, as well as a mild sense of outrage over the way she was treated in the U.S. After she cooperated on a major drug-trafficking investigation by the DEA that eventually put her brothers, son and daughter behind bars, the government wanted to deport her back to Honduras where almost certain death awaited her (I’m told this is standard treatment for cooperating witnesses).
I wrote a story about the deportation threat. Digna did not get deported. Are those two things connected? I do not know. Does Digna even know about that first story? No idea. She was eventually granted the right to stay in the U.S. under the Convention Against Torture, but if she leaves she won’t be able to return.
When I got that message on that sunny October afternoon, I had no idea whether to interpret it as a threat, or an opinion. I knew it did not come from Digna directly. But I also knew Digna did not want to speak to me directly in an interview-type scenario - not before and not after I went to El Espiritu. Even after I had explained the reporting and book project I was doing, and that she was a focus, to the intermediaries between us. She did not want to comment, or be involved. I get it. After more than a decade behind bars, she had done her time and wanted to put that part of her life behind her.
A second text came in: “What a great journalist you are!” I know we should never assume, but I think in this case it was safe to file that one under “sarcasm.”
When I mentioned the exchange to a friend who is always happy to lend immoral support (we all need a friend like this - if you don’t, then maybe this isn’t your place), they replied: “Precautions should be taken.”
My sweat started to stink.
“There also seems to be no benefit in killing you either, so yeah you’re probably safe,” came the second missive from my friend.
Then the penny dropped. I wasn’t really, seriously, worried about getting popped by Digna’s peeps. I calmed down. I doubted very much that she still had access to the proverbial red button that sends out the heavies. What troubled me was that I had troubled them. Her. That she could or might be annoyed and angry. Had I considered that as a possibility? Yes. But thinking about it being real felt different to it actually being real. It felt. Well….real.
The possibility of her (their) displeasure, however, was clearly not enough for me to refrain from writing about her.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth. Journalism of this type is essentially stalking, for a bigger purpose. It is pathological curiosity - the results of which are of interest to the likes of you the reader, All Things Considered, VICE World News and Beacon Press - but can come across as bad intentions to the focus of that obsession.
I suspect that you, the gracious reader, will find it hard to pity Digna, and I don’t suggest for a minute that you do. Exposure like this is in the small print when you sign that ‘I’m going to be an international cocaine-trafficker’ contract with yourself. A decision she made some twenty years ago or more.
But I did still lose sleep over those texts, and found myself caring, although not trying to control, what Digna thought. It’s hard to further damage the public image of a convicted drug-trafficker, but neither was I attached to a particular reporting result. I wrote what I found and I stand by it. These are, however, uncomfortable truths, and Digna’s version of herself is unlikely to match up with those of others who felt harmed by her.
I guess that’s what mindfulness guys mean when they talk about leaning into discomfort? Sitting with uncomfortable feelings? Living in uncertainty? This is definitely it. There’s no trite or happy ending here.
It is what it is. These are the things you have to learn to live with, not resolve, in this business.
Feel free to share, in the comments below, your experiences on managing sources, should you care to…...