Thelma Gómez Durán, Claudio Lomnitz and Marcela Turati

Earlier this year Quinto Elemento Lab, a Mexican journalism collective, published an explosive investigative story into forced labour camps run by drug cartels in the Sierra Tarahumara mountains of Chihuahua. Over five years, Marcela Turati, Thelma Gómez Durán and Eliezer Budasoff located and interviewed victims of this criminal operation – men who were kidnapped, held in captivity, and made to cultivate drugs under extreme conditions, without pay, until they nearly died. Their exposé caused a storm in Mexico, and President Claudia Sheinbaum was questioned about the report at a press conference.

An English version of the report later appeared in Equator. Now Turati and Durán will discuss their findings with the Mexican anthropologist Claudio Lomnitz. His recent Boston Review article covers the persistence of slavery in Mexico and its possible links to the tens of thousands currently disappeared.

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