Starts 01.00.00.00

FUNERAL SCENES

V/O: Paco Stanley was among Mexico's favourite sons, and when he died recently the country stopped and mourned.

00.15

SHOT OF TV SHOW

V/O: For decades his television variety show had lifted the spirits of his audience each morning with music and cheery jokes.  He was a familiar and comforting friend. 

00.31

00.45

00.50

00.59

MURDER SCENE-

CROWDS,

POLICE SIRENS

CIRCLED BULLET ON GROUND

PEOPLE MOURNING

COVERED BODY IN CAR

NAT SOUND

Two months ago he was gunned down in a hail of bullets.  It happened in broad daylight, on one of the city's main boulevards.  

Twenty six bullets hit his car, seven slammed directly into Paco Stanley. 

The shock of his death turned quickly to anger and fear. 

Mexico's chronic crime problem now had a face.  And if Paco, Who next?

01.10

NIGHT SHOTS -

ANGEL OF INDEPENDENCE

V/O: Mexico City's most famous landmark - the Angel of Independence. But right now what millions of people in this devoutly Catholic country are searching for is a guardian angel. Mexicans are living in a state of siege

01.27

GUADELUPE: "There's no law here. That is terrible to say and I don't think I am proud of that, on the contrary I feel               ashamed.  It's something that really hurts"

01.42

01.57

02.27

02.50

JUDICIAL POLICE SEQUENCE

CARS TAKE OFF SIRENS BLARING,    

RAIN ON WINDSCREEN, SLICK ROADS

NIGHTSCOPE SHOPS (FIRST RAID) ARRESTING YOUNG BOYS, SHOW DEVIL'S ALTAR, MARKSMAN WITH BALACLAVA, HAULING OFF KIDS

FIGHT BREAKS OUT (SECOND RAID)

NAT SOT

V/O: Ten PM, and a police task force assembles for a special operation. A series of drug raids - always dangerous, sometimes deadly. The bullet-proof vests are compulsory.

NAT SOT

We're going to Mexico City's slum district, Tepito. It's extremely hostile territory - gangland. The last time police raided here they were fired on and some officers were wounded. This time they're going in force - 65 officers, and a number of masked informers.

 NAT SOT

In the dark alleyways - among the flotsam of the city - they find cocaine, crack pipes and some cash.

Violent crime has doubled in Mexico in recent years, and official corruption is rife. Drug fights are a nightly event.

NAT SOT ARGUMENT

02.58

Yet it's kidnapping which has become the trademark crime of modern Mexico. This city of 20 million is suffering a kidnapping epidemic. And the criminals behind it are all too often the police themselves.

03.12

JUDICIAL POLICE DRIVING THROUGH STREETS, RAID VS

NAT SOT

As even Mexico's most senior policeman, Chief Samuel del Villar, concedes

03.22

SYNCH DEL VILLAR

DEL VILLAR: "It's excellent criminal business to kidnap people"

03.26

CUT TO Q: "What's the biggest ransom that's been paid?

A: If I remember correctly ...it was $25mn"

03.36

RUN ON VISION/ DEL VILLAR

V/O: Since Del Villar took over a year ago, he's sacked and indicted ten per cent of his force. Though many would say that's nowhere near enough."

3.51

ARIZMENDI CU

GANG LINE-UP

V/O: This man, for instance, wasn't just a crooked cop - he was a killer, Mexico's most notorious kidnapper Daniel Arizmendi - finally captured with his gang late last year.

04.03

V/O: Arizmendi's fame came not just because he'd been  policeman, but for his unique payment-incentive scheme, involving pieces of his victim's body.

04.17

GUADELUPE SYNCH

GUADELUPE: "If he didn't receive the money quickly he cut the ears"

JB: "So did he cut both the ears?"

GUADELUPE: "Yes, yes"

04.27

GUADELUPE'S SHOWS PHOTO

GUADELUPE: "Here's my mother, and all the sisters and ..."

04.32

V/O: Guadelupe Loeaza is a writer, mother of three, and a passionate Mexican who - like many - sees the rising tide of crime and kidnapping as pointing to a deeper problem - a fundamental loss of faith in the country and its institutions.

04.47

GUADELUPE SYNCH

GUADELUPE: "You must rule your own law, your own rules ... you must have your own rules"

JB: "Because the big rules, the official rules don't count?"

GUADELUPE: "Because everything is on crisis you know, there is a big lack of confidence, of hope.  Nobody believes in nothing now.  Everything is contaminated".

05.15

05.27

CUERNAVACA: HORSES SEQUENCE

MUSIC

NAT SOUND HOOVES/BOYS TALKING

V/O: Cuernavaca is where many Mexicans have fled over the years to escape the contamination -- a small resort town less than an hour's drive from Mexico City.

Here The pace is slower - the air clearer - a good place to bring up a young family.

Aldo and Francesco Jiminez were born in Cuernavaca, and spent their childhood riding its rolling hills - worshipping with their family at the local cathedral.

05.59

WS CUERNAVACA

BELLS RINGING, SOUND OF HYMNS AND CHURCH SERVICE UNDER

06.16

CUT TO INT CATHEDRAL, SERVICE UNDERWAY

SHOTS FAMILY

V/O: Now, each Sunday, the Jiminez family come to the old church to thank God and fate for bringing back their sons.

06.28

CU ALDO

(NATSOT SINGING)

Aldo was just 15 when he and his 12-year old brother Sebastian were kidnapped at gunpoint on their way to school.

06.36

CATHEDRAL SERVICE. CONGREGATION

It's a common story in Cuernavaca, so common that to try to protect his flock, the city's Bishop Luis Reynoso has taken the grave and extreme step of excommunicating kidnappers. It didn't stop them taking young Aldo

06.56

SYNCH ALDO

ALDO SYNCH: "I got really scared.  Maybe your imagination flies, maybe I thought their plan was to kill one of us and then the other one"

07.10

WS BROTHERS

V/O: Aldo's older brother Francesco remembers being told the boys were gone.

07.15

SYNCH FRANCESCO

FRANCESCO: "It was really a terrible moment because we didn't know what was happening exactly.  We thought why us? Why our family, I mean we're not rich enough to be kidnapped.  I mean we're nice people ... we don't hurt anybody so why?

07.38

WS JIMINEZ OR FATHER WITH ALDO IN CATHEDRAL

V/O: The boys' father Fernando Jiminez runs his own small business - a lot smaller than the kidnappers realised

07.51

SYNCH JIMINEZ

JIMINEZ SYNCH: "Well they asked for $300,000 which was too much for us. We are a middle class family and we didn't have that"

08.01

08.06

08.21

FAMILY IN CATHEDRAL

NATSOT

V/O 7: After four days of intense negotiation - and payment of $30,000 - the brothers were released unharmed - the family reunited.

Though with the crime of kidnapping, unharmed does not mean unscathed.

ALDO: "YOU CAN NOT NEVER FEEL SAFE AGAIN, LIKE YOU ARE ALWAYS, WHEN I AM WALKING IN THE STREET YOU SEE ON THE SIDE OF YOUR SHOULDER IF ANYBODY'S FOLLOWING YOU.  LIKE WHEN YOU'RE IN THE CAR YOU LOOK AT THE CORNERS, "WELL THAT'S WHAT I DO"

08.42

08.52

CUERNAVACA:

BUSY STREET

NAT SOT

V/O: It was in Cuernavaca, the historical capital of the State of Marellos, that the kidnapping epidemic reached a kind of crisis point last year, exploding into a massive public scandal.  First the head of the anti-kidnapping squad was found dumping the tortured body of a kidnap victim; a case he was meant to be helping solve.  He's now in jail but the corruption has spread upwards.  Three of the most senior public officials the Police Chief, the Attorney General and ultimately the Governor of the State were all implicated in the kidnapping.  All of them were forced to resign from their jobs but all of them are still free men.

09.32

09.39

10.03

INDEPENDENCE DAY SEQUENCE

NAT SOT

V/O: For exactly 70 years one party has ruled in Mexico.  The longest winning streak in the world.  They control the might of the military and the money, the power to appoint Judges and other important public officials, the power to dominate utterly both the symbols and reality of national life.

V/O: Not only can they do anything, the crimes alleged ranging from theft to murder, but by and large they can do it unpunished.  They call it the culture of impunity.  And in Mexico impunity rules, inspiring more humble criminals to follow suit 

10.20

DEL VILLAR GRABS: People is fed up with corruption, people is fed up with a system of Government that disregards the law.  Corruption is a chain you see, if you don't have moral quality at the top, then you won't be able to have moral quality at the bottom.

10.40

JAIL SEQUENCE

V/O: Living proof of this theory of trickle-down corruption can be found in Mexico's jails. A staggering 85 per cent of prisoners here are held for crimes associated with kidnapping - sometimes whole gangs or families serving time together. But they are not the poorest of the poor.

11.09

SHOT OF ASSAVADO BEING LED

V/O: Like Amando Assavado, a mechanic who with three others, two of them University graduates, kidnapped a local businessman at gunpoint over an unpaid debt.

11.20

SYNCH AMANDO

JB:  "How much money did you demand in ransom for this man?  How much did you ask for?"

AMANDO:  "$800, 000"

JB:  "When you rang this man's son and made the ransom demand, did you threaten to kill his Father"

AMANDO: "No never".

"Obviously when you kidnap a man if you don't give us the money I'm going to kill".

12.03

12.19

12.30

CU OF SCARRED EAR

JAIL SEQUENCE

SYNCH SAMIENTO

V/O: But it was a Botched job.  Police ambushed the kidnappers as they attempted to collect the ransom.

Amando was shot in the ear, an accomplice lost a leg and a policeman was killed.

For his crime Amando got 14 years but not a single peso.  Obviously dirt poor now, like many in this jail he didn't start off that way.

SAMIENTO: "When you look at criminals who are actually captured, you'll see that very few of them are actually very poor.   Most of them have the money to buy guns and they have money to buy all the equipment that they need to commit their crimes."

"This attempt to try to demonise the poor, trying to claim that the poor are intrinsically criminals is totally senseless"

12.53

SAMIENTO DOING TV INTERVIEW

NAT SOT

SAMIENTO'S TV SHOW

V/O: Sergio Samiento is a respected columnist and television interviewer with an unusual background as Latin America compiler of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Nightly he grills the nation's politicians though his interest in crime and corruption is deeply personal.  Four years ago Sergio was plucked off the street, locked in a car boot and forced to hand over a series of signed cheques.

13.27

14.29

SYNCH SAMIENTO

REPRISE: PACO'S FUNERAL

PHOTO OF PACO

SERGIO: "That's what they call an express kidnap because it is not a major operation.  It is not designed to keep someone kidnapped for three months or six months but it is something they want to do right away, get as much money as they can in a day or two and then drop you".

JB: "What was it like in the boot of the car?"

SERGIO: "It's very, it's not something I recommend.  You begin to feel claustrophobic after a little while and after six or seven hours I really felt that I was suffocating.  I even tried to escape, I began to feel my way to see if I could kick down the back seat of the car so that I could get out.  And I knew they could kill me but I was feeling so bad that I thought it was better to die of one clean shot rather than to suffocate in the trunk of a car".

V/O: Paco Stanley - slain just a few months ago - was one of Sergio Samiento's colleagues, and he attended Paco's funeral.  Samiento remembers the grief and the fear.

14.45

14.57

15.02

SYNCH SAMIENTO

AZTECA-TV BOSS DRIVING OUT SURROUNDED BY CARS, BRIEF SEQUENCE PASSING THROUGH TRAFFIC, UNDER BRIDGE

NAT SOT: CROWD CHANTING ‘PACO PACO'

SAMIENTO V/O: "There was a big uproar.  People were actually very upset, I saw people crying in the streets, calling for justice in the streets"

SAMIENTO: "If you don't control the problem of public insecurity in Mexico you're going to have a revolution"

V/O: Samiento's boss, the owner of Azteca-TV, is taking no chances.  He drives to and from work on cleared roads - in a bullet-proof Mercedes - with a phalanx of personal bodyguards.

15.20

BODYGUARDS MILLING OUTSIDE MARRIOTT HOTEL, GENERAL SHOTS IN STREETS

In fact the men in black are everywhere. And when industrialists meet for lunch, their minders mass.

In Mexico, bodyguards outnumber police - and the private security industry is booming.

15.37

TOM CSEH DRIVING SEQUENCE

SHORTENED NAT SYNCH SHOWING MANOEUVRES

15.43

RED PAINT SPLATS ON WINDOW

CU TOM IN CAR, CONTINUES LESSON

V/O: Tom Cseh - former US intelligence officer - calls his course defensive driving. SPLAT!!

Essentially it's putting you in the situation of a potential kidnap victim - and showing you how to get the hell out.

16.04

CAR TURNS AND DRIVES AWAY AT HIGH SPEED

NATSOT

TOM'S PASSENGER: "Hey Tom, wake up.  We're free!"

16.11

16.23

RAMMING SEQUENCE

V/O: It's an extremely expensive experience -- around $1500 for the course - which includes the cost of the car bodies.

(RAM)

But compared to a multi-million dollar ransom, it's a good investment.

And companies are queuing up.

16.31

MORE RAMMING VISION, JB HAS GO

NAT SOT: BANG! CRASH!

16.36

V/O: And for the seriously scared, there's always option B - the armour-plated vehicle. Offering, in military-speak, level three protection against hand guns.

16.49

TOM CSEH

TOM SYNCH: "We also have a level four which will protect against any type of rifle, military type rifle like AK47 or M16"

JB: "What about against say a hand grenade or a machine gun?"

TOM: "The level four will also handle most types of machine guns and at least one hand grenade"

JB: "Is that a big business, armouring cars?"

TOM: "Yes it is.  It's a very big business ... we have lots of customers (laughs)"

17.15

TRAFFIC AND SHOPPERS IN MAIN STREET OF CUAUTLA

NATSOT CARS BANGING, TYRES SQUEALING, PAINT GUN SPLATTING ETC

CROSS FADE TO ....

17.21

NATSOT TRAFFIC, STREET NOISE, HORNS, SNATCHES OF MUSIC ETC

17.23

SERGIO IN RADIO STATION

V/O 15: In real Mexico - on the narrow, bustling streets of towns like Cuautla - you see the limits of self-defence. You couldn't fit an armoured vehicle here. But then again, who'd need one. -this is a small market city - there's not much money here - kidnapping, and all its terrors, are  worlds away.

17.26

SERGIO WALKING DOWN PATH TO CEMETERY GATE - music (here or later?)

For local radio talk back host Sergio Valdes Pin, a lifelong resident of Cuautla, that happy delusion was shattered  last September with a single phone call. A gang of kidnappers had taken his brother, 42-year old Geraldo. They demanded $20,000 ransom.

18.05

SERGIO SYNCH

As ordered, he took the money in a plastic bag to the local cemetery, and left it at the front gate. Four days later they asked for a further $10,000 - and Sergio received a letter from his brother.

18.24

SERGIO WALKING THROUGH CEMETERY, PAST PLOTS (music?)

SERGIO SYNCH: "He felt a lot of anguish. He was cold. He couldn't bathe. He was very sad, he says goodbye to all of us"

18.49

SERGIO SYNCH P.2

V/O 16: Sergio still doesn't know what went wrong. He paid the $30,000, but his brother never came back. Almost a year on, he believes he never will.

19.07

JB WALKING INTO PRISON

SERGIO SYNCH: "He was a good man, an honest man, a man of principles who ... and we know he'll be up there"

CUT TO: Q: Do you believe you will ever find your brother's body? And be able to bury him?

A: I don't know. Maybe. Maybe. Only God knows that"

19.31

V/O: The blight of kidnapping has created many such lost souls in Mexico - the dead are not the kidnappers' only victims.

And each day, every day, the tally rises..