BLOOD ON THE WALL Directed by Sebastian Junger and Nick Quested

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BLOOD ON THE WALL

SYNOPSIS

In Central America, a caravan of migrants seeking a better life heads north to the United States, as narco-traffickers — part of the cause for the caravan — move drugs and money back and forth across the same border. From Academy Award-nominated director SEBASTIAN JUNGER and Emmy-winning producer NICK QUESTED, BLOOD ON THE WALL explores the depths of corruption plaguing Mexico and Central America and the policies of the past that have made it impossible for everyday people to find justice.

Filmed in 2018 and 2019, just as the caravans made international news, BLOOD ON THE WALL is both intimate and wide-ranging as it follows a 17-year-old journeying from Honduras, a mother and daughter and their family trying to make the life-threatening trek easier for their children, and smugglers and traffickers who reveal what set them on their own path. Using the same on-the-ground journalism and granular point of view that Junger and Quested used in Hell on Earth: The Fall of Syria and the Rise of ISIS, , and the Oscar-nominated Restrepo, BLOOD ON THE WALL brings the humanity of the migrants to the forefront and untangles how politics, the drug trade, violence, and the desire for safety result in unbelievable anguish happening in plain sight.

INTRODUCTION

In 2017 and 2018, thousands of people fleeing violence from drug cartels and gangs, economic instability, lack of food and safety, and a shattered governmental infrastructure in Central America began a life-threatening migration through Mexico to the United States border, seeking a better life in America.

The Trump administration demonised these “caravans” and implored leaders in Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala to try to keep their citizens from fleeing. Most American media wrongly reduced the migrants’ reasons for enduring extraordinary hardship to merely wanting access to a (now mostly mythical) US safety net. And a misreading — or ignorance — of history and modern geopolitical reality tragically underestimated the dangers they were fleeing.

The truth of why so many people from Central America continue to journey to the United States — a country now in the midst of the deadly grip of the COVID-19 pandemic that has left its own citizens ironically unable to travel to many countries, including Mexico, due to coronavirus fears — is at the heart of Sebastian Junger and Nick Quested’s incisive, intense documentary BLOOD ON THE WALL.

“The accepted idea, and it is a dehumanising one, is that migrants are opportunistic economic predators. There is no acknowledgment that people will do anything to not leave their homes,” says Junger, the National Magazine Award and Peabody Award winner who has explored the human experience in impossible situations for Vanity Fair, , and Harper’s; in books including 1997’s bestselling “The Perfect ”; and in films including the 2010 Oscar nominee Restrepo as well as Korengal, The Last Patrol (both 2014), and Hell on Earth: The Fall of Syria and the Rise of ISIS (2017).

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“Human beings love their homes, and if we do leave our homes it is under enormous duress,” Junger continues. “So when some think about people who try to come to the US, they need to dehumanise them and say, ‘Oh, they will leave their homes at the drop of a hat just to come to America.’ But that is not how humans act — people flee when their children’s lives are at stake. It does not require a bizarre theory that they are ‘coming to take advantage of a system.’ A thousand miles of hard road is nothing compared to the thought that some gang in a Nicaraguan slum might kill their children.”

BLOOD ON THE WALL came together as Junger and his production partner, co-producer, and co-director Quested were exploring their next project after Hell on Earth. Junger and Quested wanted to look at other global hot spots and examine the geopolitical dynamics that fuel them. As they decided on Mexico, Junger says, “We wanted to try to understand, Why is there this level of dysfunction and violence in this country on our border? Where did it come from, and where is it going?”

Pre-production research, knowledge, and timing coalesced as Quested began the research process and brought a small Mexico-based crew together.

“We had decided on Mexico prior to the caravans,” says Quested, whose work has encompassed social reform, international issues, war zones, refugee crises, and the rap music world. “There had been a smaller caravan about a year before we started. But we wanted to focus on the larger issues surrounding migration, so we went down and began researching it, to tell the story of what is going on there.”

That story had numerous spokes in a wheel that led straight into a humanitarian tragedy most visible to the world via the ongoing migration crisis. The complex web of forces, including state insecurity and supply and demand in the drug trade, has resulted in deep problems within Mexico, which was ruled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, known as the PRI) from 1929 to 2000 — and which has not expelled the remnants of systemic dictatorship, including under current president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, referred to as AMLO, who took office in 2018.

Mexico, which had a record 34,500 murders in 2019 according to The New York Times, “has all the hallmarks of a failed state, and it is right next to the most affluent country in the world — it really needs to be understood,” says Junger. “And if you are going to understand Mexico, you have to understand immigration, the narcotics trade, the symbiotic relationship between America and Mexico, and an acknowledgment of the enormous amount of drugs that Americans buy, which fuels the narco-state.”

“If you do not see it in a holistic way, you will never figure out the problem, and will never help people in either country rise to a better place,” Junger adds.

After Junger and Quested’s team began researching and preplanning, Quested assembled a small crew to go to Mexico. “I worked pretty exclusively with a Mexican crew there,” says Quested. “That is a big difference from what I normally do. Another thing that was crucial was talking to local journalists, cameramen, and connections to get a perspective on what is going on.”

Executive producer Nico Lupo Sonnabend’s role was essential. A native of Barcelona who covered the Syrian war and other Middle East issues for Spanish radio, Sonnabend came aboard in 2017 after meeting Junger and Quested at a screening of Hell on Earth.

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“We are all awash by news of the caravans from many media, and we see that news through a political lens, so we become desensitised to the stories of migrants and other related human stories,” says Sonnabend. “But it is so important to understand why they are doing this.”

To get to the heart of the migrants’ experience — as well as truly understand the narcotics smugglers’ network and the dynamics of the drug trade both in the US and Mexico that fuel violence south of the border — Junger, Quested, and their team collected hundreds of hours of footage over two years through interviews with experts and diplomats, technology, and on-the-ground journalism.

“Nick juggled a dozen different storylines and the logistics of keeping cameras in the field, and he never lost the thread,” says Junger. “His ability to multitask is staggering. He had cameras with people like we did in Syria, he had a drone in the air — I would not have been surprised if he had a submarine.”

Says Quested, “It is an honour to work with Sebastian as a partner and mentor. I would want to go and tell people everything about what is going on, and he would focus it into a narrative. We are both very lucky to be able to do this type of long-form journalism.”

Junger further explains the goal of his and Quested’s work: “There are powerful documentaries out there that are [more related to] activism, and they provide an important service. Yet journalism is a neutral look at all sides. If you apply the standards of veracity in a reported story to documentary filmmaking, then you get the whole truth about a subject, and the viewer then makes their own decisions about that world. … Documentaries that present the truth may get some backlash, but the truth is crucial in understanding how we can act to protect ourselves and other people from tragedy.”

WITH THE CARAVAN

One of the vital goals of BLOOD ON THE WALL was to put faces to the caravan. To do this, Quested and his crew followed Ludy, a 17-year-old from Honduras travelling with her boyfriend and a group of their friends, as well as Sara and her daughter Charol and Charol’s children from Guatemala. Quested gave Ludy an Android camera to record her experiences, then used geotracking to locate them en route to the US border. He would then collect the phone’s SIM cards to incorporate her footage.

“Some media talked about the caravan like it was Genghis Khan’s horde,” says Junger, “yet the vast majority of people in it are well-intentioned and struggling mightily to lead dignified lives. If you think that people [trying to find safety] have some other malevolent ends, for the most part you are wrong. There may be some individuals who do, but there are not populations that do, and that to me is the core message that virtually every documentary on a subject like this should contain. People want to live lives that are safe and dignified, and the pursuit of those things may force them to do things that are problematic, but that is different than having malevolent motivations.”

The filmmakers say that for various reasons, the migrants followed in the film never expressed concern about the Trump administration policy of family separation at the border carried out by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and many migrants’ subsequent detention in ICE facilities.

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“While they were travelling, there was not a complete awareness of what the ICE policy at the border represented — they may have heard of family separations, but many did not truly grasp what was happening in ICE facilities,” says Sonnabend. “The migrants we were with did not think about what might happen next. They still saw America as a safe space that would provide a better life for their kids. People knew the stories of migrants who suffered once in the US, but the future was not a worry. Every day they just had to decide which route to take, how to keep moving, and how to protect their family.”

Quested says that when the small film crew met up with the caravan a few days before it crossed into Mexico, it numbered about 2,000 to 3,000 people. The crew spoke with the caravan’s organisers and other migrants before meeting Ludy and her friends, and Sara and Charol and their family.

“We knew we wanted to have unaccompanied minors in the film because that is such a big part of the migrant experience,” says Quested. “At a river going into Mexico, Ludy and her boyfriend and their friends were having a swim. We got on well — they were hip-hop fans, and I have done a lot of hip-hop videos and docs — and we could tell Ludy had an energy and an openness. She was a compelling person to follow. Her energy at the beginning of the film echoes the energy of the caravan as it crossed into Mexico. But as the caravan progresses, with the scorching sun beating down and hunger setting in and all the other hardships the migrants faced, you see how Ludy’s energy ebbs. She has doubts and moments of weakness, and you see how, at the end, she is in a different situation.”

Sara and Charol offered another side of the migrant experience to capture on film.

Says Sonnabend, “Sara and Charol had to deal with kids and protect them from the hardship of it all, trying to help the little kids enjoy their lives during the migration. They were also a mother and a daughter holding a big family together, and it was great to feature two strong women.”

As for the threat of separation at the border, Quested says Sara and Charol’s fear of that was inevitable and thus easier to face, whereas the crime in their home country is violent and erratic, unpredictable and escalating: “For them, they would rather choose the devil they cannot see.”

“Migrants’ lives have no value in Mexico,” says Sonnabend. “That is why there are so many massacres and disappearances of many people in Mexico, but especially of migrants. A mass grave of 150 migrants is common. That says a lot about the main reason of the caravan: If the migrants run into trouble, they have a group around them. Many of the families we were following were scared because people had tried to kidnap their kids on the journey or they had been robbed. With 5,000 people around and so many eyes watching, there are still dangers, but imagine how much worse it would be if they were by themselves.”

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FLEEING THE NARCO-STATE

The drug trade is a crucial cause of the violence many migrants face in their homeland, driving them to the Mexico-US border and fuelling the dangers they encounter on the journey. The biggest cartel in Mexico is the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion), which has risen since 2011 thanks to its institutional connections. The Sinaloa Cartel, formerly led by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and now led by El Chapo’s sons and brother, is still powerful, while in the northeast of Mexico, the Gulf Cartel has been responsible for large-scale massacres of migrants.

“The cartels have different routes, divided by region,” says Sonnabend. “The northern groups ship drugs to Chicago and the middle of the US; the eastern groups handle New York and Philadelphia; the southern ones handle Texas. They sell different kinds of product for different sets of customers. They have an entrepreneurial and business structure and control demand and production. Like franchises.”

During fraught moments in BLOOD ON THE WALL, men and women bringing money south of the border and drugs north of the border — their faces obscured — provide a shrouded glimpse into their lives, discussing on camera why they became part of the drug trade.

“There are drug smugglers motivated by just wanting to make money and having a life without financial struggle — they are not trying to ruin America,” says Junger. “Some are sociopaths, of course, but most are trying to provide for their families. The question is not, How can we stop those individuals? It should be, What can we do to change circumstances so that it is not an attractive option for them?”

The situation that fostered it, notes Quested, “is similar to what happened during Prohibition in the US, which created criminal empires, bootleggers, and gangsters. We are allowing the same thing to happen here. If we tried to reduce the demand instead, there might be a different result.”

“A 12-year-old in Mexico sees money all around them through these groups, and they will say, ‘I have seen my parents working in stores and making no money — I would rather work in a cartel,’” says Sonnabend. “They know they are likely to die young, but state institutions that should provide education, opportunities, and stability are not providing that. So what do these kids have to look forward to?”

“But once they are in that life it is very difficult to get out,” Sonnabend continues. “The cartels do not allow them to. It is like the Mafia.”

Says Quested, “A narco knows they are going to die young or go to jail, so they run as fast and as hard as they can for as long as they can. They have a life expectancy of about 30. One smuggler we interviewed was about 26 or 27 years old, and his fours nephews who were his bodyguards were 19 or 20 years old at the most. And a lot of these guys do not even make that much money. They saw us as trying to humanise their choices, and that is a reason they allowed us to film them.”

Quested recalls how filming a smuggler who was awaiting a shipment of cash for drugs in Phoenix made him and his cameraman catch their breath.

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“Phoenix was tricky,” says Quested. “We were in a super-sketchy area in the city’s Maryvale neighbourhood to meet two guys in a motel room. We were chatting while the camera was on in a corner of the room. And these guys were doing a little blow, smoking weed, more blow, more weed, again and again over three hours. The money was meant to turn up, but then they heard the money got [detoured]. Right after that, a helicopter spotlight completely lit up this sketchy motel filled with dealers and tweakers. Two guns were on the table, and one of the guys started yelling at us, ‘You are the f---ing police!’ I was like, ‘We are not the police, and just so you know, this is all in the film!’”

GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION’S LINK TO MIGRATION

Since the PRI’s 70 years of control ended in 2000, the subsequent Mexican administrations have not made ending corruption a priority, despite lip service toward that end.

“The systemic problems in Mexico are so entwined,” Sonnabend says, noting that the political result of over seven decades of a one-party state under the PRI (initially the Partido Nacional Revolucionario or PNR) resulted in levels of impunity that are difficult to turn around. “The justice system, the military, the police and local authorities, the presidential government, and legislators are now or have been tied to corruption, violence, cartels, or criminal groups directly or indirectly. It involves so much money, and it is so entrenched.”

Yet the bloodline of drugs that results in caravans of migrants is made worse by border corruption and drug demand inside the United States.

“Every time you see a big cartel bust in Mexico, and cartel members being extradited to the US, [it is connected] with the selling of drugs and heroin in the streets of cities like Chicago, Baltimore, and Philadelphia,” says Sonnabend. “It all starts in American streets, selling drugs to small drug dealers who then sell them to American customers.”

“Our consumption of drugs is at the root of a lot of Mexico’s problems, which in turn become our problems,” Junger says. “It is unacknowledged, as is the level of corruption among the American border patrol. The drugs are not coming into this country in backpacks — the drugs are coming in trucks, and border patrol and individual agents are getting paid off.”

None of this will likely be addressed by Mexico’s government soon.

“In terms of government, AMLO is a Sandinista with a different T-shirt on,” says Quested, noting that the Mexican president’s campaign and current administration contains people instrumental to the PRI’s longevity. “AMLO’s been around politics for 50 years. It’s just ‘same boss, different message.’”

Says Sonnabend, “It is a pity AMLO has the policies he has. A lot of people who voted for him have become very disenchanted. The problem with AMLO failing is, What will come next?”

“Mexico also cannot easily deal with the structural problems that are facing it because of a lack of means, and there is a lot of money to be made within the illegal sector,” adds Sonnabend. “It will keep happening, and there will be more disappearances, murders, and violence toward migrants and others.”

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Says Junger, “In the 1970s and ’80s, America was propping up some ghastly right-wing regimes. Of course, it is now recognised that that kind of leadership — if you can even call it leadership — is known to actually destabilise countries and cause more violence.”

“America has done a great deal of good in the world, but we need to be honest about the results of our policies,” says Junger. “It is pretty clear that if you funnel huge amounts of money into oppressive right- wing regimes, it destabilises the very region that you are trying to keep a lid on. So now here we are 50 years later, and violence in those countries is pushing people and families toward our border.”

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UPDATE ON SEVERAL KEY FILM SUBJECTS

LUDY

Ludy returned to Honduras, where she gave birth to her and Jonah’s baby. (Prior to the end of BLOOD ON THE WALL, Jonah returned home.) After staying with Jonah’s family, Ludy and the baby are now living on their own, but work for Ludy is hard to come by due to the COVID-19 pandemic and her being a single mother.

In early 2020, the Trump administration struck an agreement with Honduras that would result in some migrants seeking asylum in the US being sent to Honduras, where the murder rate in 2019 was 44 per 100,000 inhabitants — one of the highest murder rates in the world.

SARA and CHAROL

Upon first arriving in New Jersey, Sara, her three youngest children, her daughter Charol, Charol’s husband Jose, and their two kids rented the first floor of a house, where all eight of them shared a two- bedroom home. Now, Sara still resides in New Jersey with her three youngest children; she used to work in a restaurant, but she has had a rough time due to so many businesses in food service faltering because of the coronavirus. She is now working small jobs as best as she can to support her kids.

Charol and Jose are expecting another baby. They moved with their two children to Philadelphia, where Jose has relatives; their youngest child is almost 3 years old as of summer 2020. It has been hard for them to find work because of the virus.

“It is tough for them now, because many places where they work, like restaurants, are closed,” says Sonnabend. “But they are working people, they know their priorities. They will keep looking.”

POPPY FARMERS IN MEXICO

In Mexico’s “Golden Triangle” — where the states of Durango, Chihuahua, and Sinoloa converge, in addition to the mountains of Guerrero and the northern region of Nayarit — production is down. Sonnabend notes, “As the consumption of fentanyl has increased, people, including in the US, are not buying heroin as much as they used to. Since fentanyl is synthetic, the narcos don’t need the opium, so the farmers and communities whose livelihood depends on growing opium are struggling even more now. And many farming villages have only ever known how to grow and farm opium.” Cultivation of opium meant the ability to buy food and clothes otherwise out of reach.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, in July 2020 a research collective that includes the University of California-San Diego’s Center for US-Mexican Studies launched a study that will take a socioeconomic approach to understanding Mexico’s poppy cultivation.

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ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

SEBASTIAN JUNGER

Sebastian Junger is the No. 1 New York Times best-selling author of “The Perfect Storm,” “Fire,” “A Death in Belmont,” “War,” and “Tribe.” As an award-winning journalist, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, and a special correspondent at ABC News, he has covered major international news stories around the world and has received both a National Magazine Award and a Peabody Award. Junger is also a documentary filmmaker whose debut film, Restrepo, a feature-length documentary (co-directed with ), was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.

Restrepo, which chronicled the deployment of a platoon of US soldiers in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, is widely considered to have broken new ground in war reporting. Junger has since produced and directed three additional documentaries about war and its aftermath. Which Way Is the Front Line From Here? which premiered on HBO, chronicles the life and career of Junger’s friend and colleague, photojournalist Tim Hetherington, who was killed while covering the civil war in Libya in 2011. Korengal returns to the subject of combat and tries to answer the eternal question of why young men miss war. The Last Patrol, which also premiered on HBO, examines the complexities of returning from war, by following Junger and three friends — all of whom had experienced combat, either as soldiers or reporters — as they travel up the East Coast railroad lines on foot as “high-speed vagrants.”

Junger has also written for such magazines as Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic Adventure, Outside, and Men’s Journal. His reporting on Afghanistan in 2000 — profiling Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was assassinated just days before 9/11 — became the subject of the National Geographic documentary Into the Forbidden Zone and introduced America to the Afghan resistance fighting the .

Junger’s duPont Award-winning film Hell on Earth: The Fall of Syria and the Rise of ISIS was released by National Geographic Documentary Films in 2017 and chronicled Syria’s descent into the unbridled chaos that allowed the rise of the Islamic State.

NICK QUESTED

Nick Quested is executive director and owner of Goldcrest Films, where he has built one of the premiere documentary brands in the world, winning two Emmys for his work. Quested has served as a producer on over 35 films, including Sebastian Junger’s The Last Patrol, Korengal, and the PGA- and twice Emmy- nominated Which Way Is the Front Line From Here?; the Oscar-nominated Restrepo; and National Geographic Doc Films’ duPont Award-winning Hell on Earth: The Fall of Syria and the Rise of ISIS.

Quested is also an award-winning music video director, working with such artists as Dr. Dre, Nas, Puffy, Sting, Master P, Cash Money, and Trick Daddy. His credits include “Stretch and Bobbito: Radio That Changed Lives,” “Rubble Kings,” “Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer,” “Smash and Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers,” “Stolen Seas,” “The List,” “Tell Spring Not to Come This Year,” and “Doin’ It in the Park: Pick- Up Basketball, NYC.”

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CREDITS

Directors Nick Quested Sebastian Junger

Producers Nick Quested Sebastian Junger Peter Goetz

Co-Producers Gretchen McGowan Nico Lupo Sonnabend

Executive Producers Matt Renner Fisher Stevens

Co-Executive Producer Mark Monroe

Editor Paula Heredia

Composers Andres Sanchez Maher Eduardo Aram

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