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Episode 289: The Atavist's 'Feast for Lost Souls' with Annelise Jolley and Zahara Gomez
195 Plays3 years ago
For this month's Atavist bonus episode, I speak with Annelise Jolley and Zahara Gomez about their collaboration titled "A Feast for Lost Souls."
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Support: patreon.com/cnfpod
Social media: @CNFPod
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Transcript
Introduction & Submission Details
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey, before we dive into this Atavistian interview, it's got three people on it. That's pretty cool. I want to remind you that the submission for submission deadline
00:00:15
Speaker
Well boy, we're off to a real good start this time. For issue three of the audio magazine, titled Heroes has been extended to December 31st. The theme, like I said, is heroes. Essays must be no more than 2,000 words.
Creative Nonfiction Podcast Overview
00:00:30
Speaker
Submit your written essay to Creative Nonfiction Podcast at gmail.com, but bear in mind that it will ultimately, if accepted, be an audio essay, so pay attention to how the words tumble out of your mouth.
00:00:44
Speaker
And thanks to the glorious Patreon community, of which I'll make some notes a bit later in this introduction, I get to pay writers, too, some of that fat burrito money. Got it? You dig? Good. So this is the Creative Nonfiction Pocket, the show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara. How's it going?
Interview: Mexican Women's Search for Loved Ones
00:01:13
Speaker
It's that Atavistian time of the month, and this time I speak with, well, none other than lead editor Sayward Darby about the work of Anneliese Jolly and Zahara Gomez, the latter two having collaborated on a piece called A Feast for Lost Souls about a group of women whose sons or husbands had been disappeared in Mexico.
00:01:39
Speaker
These women search for the bodies, treasures, as they call them, to get that closure. Some do, some don't, but they also perform an active resistance solely around cooking the favorite meals for their lost loves. Zahara has collaborated with many of the women to make a cookbook, and you'll hear her in a moment refer to a book, and that's what she's talking about. And I'll have links to that in the show notes eventually.
00:02:09
Speaker
this piece is a trip because you'll have Annalise's writing and reporting then instead of say classic section breaks you'll have the beautiful photography and a few short documentaries by Sahara Sahara I don't know why I'm having a hard time saying your name Sahara Sahara Sahara it really puts you there you know yeah the package is just incredibly emotive
00:02:38
Speaker
By the way, I'm going on the assumption that you've read the piece and seen the whole thing, so spoiler alert, you've been warned, okay? Well, let's give you a little introduction into who they are. Zahara is a Spanish-Argentinian photographer raised in France and actually established in Mexico City, though when we spoke, she was in France, for what it's worth.
00:03:04
Speaker
She's got her master's degree in art history from the Paris Sorbonne University and from the Prados Museum School in Madrid. Professionally, she has developed her work at the Paris Magnum Agency as a production manager slash exhibitions and editorial. She was deeply apologetic about her English, to which I could only say that I wish my Spanish was half as good as her English, so take that for what it's worth.
00:03:33
Speaker
Annalise is an essayist and journalist who is incurably curious about the world. She writes about travel, food, ecology, borders, and faith. She's currently at work on a book of literary nonfiction. Hey, that's what we do here about encountering ourselves, others, and God on the road and around the table.
00:03:56
Speaker
Well that is thematically congruent with this piece for the Atavas.
Podcast Milestones & Community Engagement
00:04:04
Speaker
Pardon. A little housekeeping. So get this, this November we had our first 6,000 download month. We've kind of been knocking on the door a few times this year, some closer than others, but finally crossed that line. For some of you that might not seem like a lot, given that the monster podcast out there probably get that much in an hour.
00:04:26
Speaker
or every half hour when they drop episodes. But this little podcast that could, talking to sharks and guppies and everyone in between in the genre of creative nonfiction, that is a monster number. So I just want to thank the people who listen to this show and all the CNFers out there who I make the show for.
00:04:47
Speaker
Part of what keeps the lights on at CNF pot HQ is the lovely patreon community there You can ask questions of forthcoming guests like and next week I will be speaking with the incomparable Will Haygood and if you are even just a tier one member of the community I put out a call for questions and you can say oh It was this would be great if you asked will this and I will do that and I will give you credit for that Other tiers you get transcripts coaching and editing
00:05:17
Speaker
And the knowledge that your dollars also go into the pockets of writers for the audio magazine that I produce. I just put issue two up in the public feed on the theme of summer and I know depending on where you are it's getting cold out there. You might want to warm up with some summer essays. Patreon.com slash cnfpod.
00:05:41
Speaker
Got a frog in my throat. And if you head over to BrendanOmarra.com, hey, hey, you'll find show notes and the sign up form for my up to 11 newsletter, recommendations, raffles, exclusive happy hour, first of the month, no spam. As far as I can tell, you can't beat it. And you can always keep the conversation going on Twitter at CNF Pod and Instagram at Creative Nonfiction Podcast, but I'm sure you're sick of hearing my voice, so why don't we dig right into this sucka.
00:06:07
Speaker
with my good friend, author, editor, dog lover, Sayward Darby. I asked her at the start here what she's making of this year.
Atavist Redesign & Multimedia Ventures
00:06:16
Speaker
So far, we're getting to the end of the year, given that Atavus put out its 100th issue this year, had its major redesign, did a podcast, and now has this latest multimedia crossover. So that's where we start this conversation. What do you say?
00:06:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's such a good question. I've actually been thinking a lot about this maybe because I've just, you know, your brain's kind of geared toward recapping at this time of year. And it's been a really...
00:06:57
Speaker
I think good year for us on a lot of different levels. You know, we redesigned the magazine, which also involved a pretty big, well, all CMS migrations are big. So a CMS migration, which is a big thing. And I think that, you know, that certainly really solidified where we are aesthetically right now. And we've been around for 10 years and we relaunched the website
00:07:22
Speaker
Like, I don't know, I want to say like two months after our 10 year anniversary. And it just seemed very, uh, appropriate, right? Like we're kind of forward looking, um, toward what the next 10 years will bring. And that, you know, aesthetic change has made a huge difference for, you know, certainly just the quality, the design quality of our stories, but also, uh, we've seen a really big traffic uptick, which has been great. Um, and I think it's a combination of the new website, but then also we had a couple of stories that just did.
00:07:51
Speaker
fantastically well. And then the podcast was a really fun venture, a little bit of a throw it out and see how it goes situation for us. But I mean, we had a great, you know, production team at Cadence 13 that got behind the project. And then it really, I don't know, I think, you know, we talked about this probably on the podcast with Ariel when, when we were
00:08:14
Speaker
making No Place Like Home, I learned so much from it as an editor and as a storyteller. And I think that that's certainly something I bring to stories now. And it did well to the point that we're thinking of doing another podcast. And now with the video with A Feast for Lost Souls, which I keep trying to think of the right way to describe it because it's not a feature with videos, right? Because the videos are very
00:08:43
Speaker
they're essential to the story. You could absolutely take them out and the story would stand, but I think that it's one of those situations where the sum is greater than the parts when you put it all together because the videos
00:08:58
Speaker
really give viewers a very necessary perspective on the subject matter and also just cast the subject in a different light. You're able to see these women who've suffered tremendous loss in a way that feels
00:09:16
Speaker
warm and intimate and also I think really puts agency, like their agency front and center. And so when this was pitched to us, it was somewhat like the podcast where, you know, I'm never on the hunt for, you know, a particular video project or, you know,
00:09:38
Speaker
a podcast project for the sake of doing a podcast project. It's more like when something gets pitched, does it feel like it's right for us? And does it feel like it makes sense to do it in a particular medium? And in this case, it was pretty clear that this could be a great story, like a classic story, but that the videos would make it into something particularly special. And so we decided to go for it.
00:10:04
Speaker
And so, you know, I think it's a nice way we do have still have one more story this year, although it will be published, you know, more or less, when 2022 is looming on or around December 30.
Storytelling Reflections of the Year
00:10:14
Speaker
So, you know, in some ways, this story is the last big, big push of the year. And it's a nice
00:10:22
Speaker
cap to a year in which we did new things. But I think did new things, I like to think, did new things in ways that we're very much in keeping with who we are as a magazine and what we believe in when it comes to good storytelling, great storytelling. It's not about doing new things for the sake of doing new things. It's about doing things that allow us to flex our muscles, to grow, but to really keep the shape of who we are and who we intend to be as a publication.
00:10:53
Speaker
Yeah, when you speak of flexing your muscles, you know, what is the the atavist physique? Yeah. Oh, man. I feel like we often get into these kind of like metaphors when we talk and I and I'm like not necessarily very good at them. So my apologies to any listeners who are like, oh, God, here she goes again with some like, you know,
00:11:18
Speaker
like drawn out metaphor. But anyway, you know, I think that our physique is clean lines, you know, a very clear cut figure. And we
00:11:31
Speaker
I don't know. Muscular in the sense that I'm trying to think of the right athletic comparison, and I keep coming to a mountain climber, like a rock climber, because it's funny. In high school, we had to do this thing called a senior project where
00:11:50
Speaker
you had to write a paper and then also like learn how to do a thing. And I wrote a paper about people who climb out of risk and I learned how to rock climb, like sort of, I was not really that invested in it. But I remember you had to have like a mentor. This is all such a dumb public school thing. But anyway,
00:12:05
Speaker
You had to have a mentor. And so like my mom helped me find this guy who was a rock climber. And I remember the first time we ever did like a rock climbing lesson, I was just, it was like he had muscles like in his, you could see muscles like in his fingers in ways that, and you know, in his ankles and just things that you don't even think of as being places where there are muscles, but he was also incredibly lean. And I don't know, I like to think of out of his stories as like,
00:12:32
Speaker
as something like that, where it's very strong, very flexible, but also almost like gangly in a way. But at the same time, those muscles are very refined. There's not unnecessary stuff there. And so I don't know if that's the right comparison, but that's definitely how I...
00:12:54
Speaker
I guess, I think of it. And in the case of new projects and trying things in different mediums, that's kind of about finding those and starting to refine those muscles that maybe you didn't even know were there, but are, because narrative storytelling is great in any.
00:13:11
Speaker
format, if you can find the right resources and the right collaborators and all of that. So, yeah, I don't know. Maybe this is us developing a pinky muscle or something with these short dots. Well, it's about balance and efficiency, too. Efficiency of movement.
00:13:31
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And I think, I mean, there's something too about like rock climbing. It's just, I mean, unless you're one of those people who does like speed climbing, which I find terrifying. But like, when I think about rock climbing, I think about people who are going like.
00:13:44
Speaker
very deliberately taking their time, not making rash moves, being willing to pause and consider what's the best place to put my hand, put my foot. And I definitely like to think that our stories are like that, like willing to take the time, willing to pause. So yeah, there's a deliberate quality to it. So yeah, it's like strong, flexible, refined, and deliberate.
00:14:14
Speaker
Now, when you and Ariel and I were talking about no place like home, we talked about the cooking as a metaphor and the kitchen as a metaphor in terms of collaboration and everything of that nature.
Cooking as Resistance & Remembrance
00:14:32
Speaker
But to extend that metaphor, this piece has a very food-driven element to it in the way food honors the lives of the disappeared.
00:14:43
Speaker
So maybe you can speak to that and how important it was to really capture the essence of how the food can really memorialize these men who disappeared.
00:14:59
Speaker
Yeah, no, I know the syntax is, what does she say in the story, strained by necessity. And it absolutely is. Yeah, you know, I think that in this case, these women are cooking for the dead, right? They're cooking meals for the people who
00:15:16
Speaker
even if they're, quote unquote, only missing, they are almost certainly gone forever. And in some cases, they have been found and we know that they're dead. And so they're cooking meals to honor, to remember, in some ways to commune with the people that they've lost, because these are the dishes that their sons are
00:15:37
Speaker
husbands, you know, liked or loved the most in life. But I also think that, and I think Annalise and Zahara both, like, capture this really beautifully. It's not just about memorialization. It's not just about remembrance. It's not even just about grief. There's something very powerful in what they're doing by saying, I'm creating something that's a reminder of
00:16:04
Speaker
a life that was once here that has been taken away. In some ways it's like proof of life to say this is something that I once shared with someone who was taken from me and I'm demanding that you know in sharing this food and sharing these recipes
00:16:21
Speaker
those lives, you know, not be forgotten, but it's not just about the remembrance, it's not just about holding on to memory. It's also about staking a claim and saying, you know, something has been taken from me, but I still have this space. This person existed. And, you know, the thing about disappearances so often is, and again, it always captures this really beautifully, you know, there's the horrible fact of the loss. And then there's the, you know,
00:16:48
Speaker
the salt and the wound of not being able in many, many cases to find the body. And there's something about what they're doing with food that I think really says, even if there is not matter, even if there is not substance, even if there is not
00:17:03
Speaker
you know, proof of what happened. I know that this person filled this space. I know that this person ate this food. I know that this person loved this food. And so I find that to be very powerful. And I'm just also, and I think that everybody who worked on this project is very interested in the ways in which the work of women
00:17:25
Speaker
quote unquote, is very minimized and marginalized as a political act, as something that has meaning outside of basic survival. And I think that
00:17:40
Speaker
you know, these kitchens as captured in the prose, but also, and especially in the videos, you know, these are sanctuaries for these women, but they are also spaces in which they are exercising, you know, a particular form of power. And so there's just a really interesting energy behind the project. It's not grief porn. It's not, you know, all about suffering. It's also about
00:18:06
Speaker
reckoning with suffering. It's also about reckoning with forces beyond your control and, you know, taking a stand, however intimate it may seem to say, like, I resist this. I resist being forgotten. I resist my loss being forgotten. So to me, there's just, even as I'm talking about it, like you just start to kind of feel like a lump rising in my throat. It's just a very powerful concept.
00:18:33
Speaker
Absolutely, yeah, and I think that's it almost has a feeling of of magic and in a way of kind of like how on November 1st in Dia de los Muertos and how it's it is there is a summoning in in the kitchen here to where it is it is something more than memorializing like it is actually like it's almost like bringing them back to life in a way and
00:18:59
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that there's something very specific about, and this is in both the videos and the text, to the point that Mexico is, as Anneliese says, a country that feeds its dead. It's a country in which connecting with the dead is something that is done through food, whether you're talking about the altars on
00:19:24
Speaker
Dia de los Muertos or, you know, other ways of sort of honoring ancestors and lost loved ones and whatnot. And so like the Mexican context is, you know, extremely important. And another thing that was, I think, key to the success of this project was that Zahara had had, you know, pretty long standing relationship with the women who are the subjects of this story.
00:19:48
Speaker
She had worked with them very intimately on the recipe book project that is described in our story. And I think that there was a lot of trust and understanding there of the specifics of their lives, but also the wider context of disappearances and the violence in that part of Mexico. And so there's not a sense of someone parachuting in.
00:20:16
Speaker
And there's actually some interesting moments in the text, and I think I really love the scene where Annalise is sitting with a woman who's lost her son, and Annalise mentions that she's pregnant, and the woman says to her, like, you can't possibly imagine my loss. And Annalise is like, you're right, I can't. There's a gulf between us. And I think there's something really lovely there of Annalise really articulating her position as a reporter vis-a-vis these women.
00:20:42
Speaker
and as a female reporter, especially. And I think that both of them just do—they did a lot of legwork in advance, especially in Sahara's case in having these relationships with these women over a number of years, but then in Anneliese's case too, really being clear-eyed in writing the piece about who she is vis-a-vis them and who she is to look at their grief, to engage with their grief.
00:21:07
Speaker
And I realize I'm kind of talking high concept here. But that was one of the things I really liked about the pitch and the concept was we've read a lot of stories about disappearances. I edited one that was fantastic in, I want to say, 2013 when I was at foreign policy. But it was much more on the grounds of policy and what's being done, what's not being done, what does that mean for families. And this almost takes as a given
00:21:35
Speaker
what enforce disappearances are and what they mean for people. And then says, how is this very specific group of people responding to them? And in quite frankly, really remarkable ways. And to me, that was just a special way of looking at an issue that I've read about, I've edited things about. I know a lot of editors have edited things about. This just felt like a really special
00:22:02
Speaker
sort of addition to the canon of reporting that's been done on this issue. Awesome. Well, it's such a moving and a great marriage of the visual and the text. And it tells such a wonderful, poignant story. So yeah, so it'll be great for people to dig into it. And of course, we're going to be hearing from Zahara and Annalise very soon. So say word, as always. Thank you for the time. Thanks so much.
00:22:40
Speaker
Now batting, Zahara Gomez. What can I say?
00:22:44
Speaker
When you get a load of what she did, you're going to be like, man, I wish I was Zahara. That's how I sort of feel after I speak with everyone on the show, except maybe one or two, where I'm like, man, I wish I was anybody but myself. I started off by asking Zahara how she arrived at the story and at the heart of it are the women, La Rastrea Doras Del Fuertes.
Zahara Gomez's Collaboration & Storytelling
00:23:12
Speaker
I didn't mask her that too much. So let's just get right into this one. Okay. Um, uh, I started to work with. So, uh, these women collective in the north of Mexico, I think, uh, five or six years ago. And all my work in the past five years is relation with the,
00:23:41
Speaker
enforced disappearance in Mexico and in Latin America. So in Mexico, you have more than 100 of women collectives who are looking for their disappearance. And
00:24:02
Speaker
I met them and we start to work together at the beginning in a very documentary way. And, uh, with the time I had the feeling, uh, the documentary way to speak about that, uh, it was not enough, you know? So I
00:24:30
Speaker
talk to them and we start to talk about how we can talk about the disappearance. And when I go to the matches, usually I stay at their home, so
00:24:55
Speaker
in these places, you can talk about another things and the life day after day. And I make this proposition about how if we make a book to talk about that, but maybe by other ways. And we think in the kitchen and
00:25:25
Speaker
in all the cook because the cook, it's a very basic necessity. And at the same time, it's a very powerful way to connect with other people and with a family. And you don't need to be a very good chief.
00:25:53
Speaker
to be a very good, um, in the kitchen, you know, my preferred meal, it's not very difficult to do, you know, and it's just because it's inside. You have the connection of a relationship between a mother and a child or a grandmother or, you know, so, so you connect by other ways.
00:26:23
Speaker
with this very hard subject. And at the same time, I really want, when we start to think about it from my job, I really want to speak of the people who are not here, but in a life way. And all the narratives about this appeared
00:26:52
Speaker
beginning when these people disappeared. So I have the feeling we forgot their names and what they like and what they don't like. And it's a way to humanize the more than 90, more than 90,000 disappeared from Mexico.
00:27:20
Speaker
And it's a very huge number and I really cannot understand this number, you know, but I can understand someone who his name is Juan and who liked the flan because her mother did that for his birthday, you know.
00:27:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's so important that the story that you and Annie were able to tell, it really involves food as a way to remember them and not the act of their disappearance to define who they were as people. The women are cooking these meals as a way to memorialize the disappeared. And it's a better way to remember them than the fact that they were disappeared by the cartel.
00:28:16
Speaker
Yeah, that, you know, with the disappearance, we have a lot of stigmatization of the families and of the person who disappeared. And I think there are a lot of work to do to build
00:28:44
Speaker
other narratives who don't stigmatize that and to make bridges between realities, I don't know, to maybe invite people to be part of that.
00:28:59
Speaker
And what was it like for you as the experience of being able to document these stories, you know, visually through your photography and cinematography, and also you have to bring your camera into their kitchens? You know, what did that mean to you to be able to do that? I am very grateful about all the generosity of each woman who participate in the book.
00:29:29
Speaker
And all the work, what's this noise? Excuse me. I love that you just went ooh la la. I'm so sorry. That made me very happy. I learned English in France. So when I speak English, I am not French, but I know I have a French accent. It's very ridiculous thing.
00:29:58
Speaker
Okay. So in all the process, you know, it's five, six years of process. So when we start the book, I really knew a lot of the houses and a lot of the woman. And for me, it was very strong.
00:30:27
Speaker
because when we start the project, I never thought that these women don't, they did not cook again this meal, you know? And the first time it, when we start the book project and that, that's very strong because, okay, we have the photos and we have the book and
00:30:56
Speaker
and the videos and blah, blah, blah. But the first time when she cooked this meal, it was the first time since, I don't know, five years, four years, eight years, depends of the date of the disappearance of her child. I really didn't realize that before we start and
00:31:26
Speaker
That's the reason I say I'm very grateful for this generosity because it's very intimate. And at the same time, it's a way to be part of that. And you eat this meal, who is not for you really, but at the same time, you are the, the, the witness of that. Yeah.
00:31:56
Speaker
and you take part.
00:31:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's amazing what you and Annie were able to do together with her writing the story and then your photography and videos spliced in between. It really is an amazing experience and you get a real sense of the weight that the women are carrying around with them and just what it means to make those meals
00:32:28
Speaker
but also to carry the burden of trying to find their treasures, as you guys tell. Yeah, absolutely. And I was very happy when Annalies contacted me, and I never did any video with them, or not in this way.
00:32:55
Speaker
And it was very beautiful to be and to take the time to tell this story with the time of the image, you know, because the still photography don't have that.
00:33:14
Speaker
Nice. Well, I want to be respectful of your time. I know it's very late over there in France. So Zahara, thank you so much for taking some time to speak with me and also just for the amazing work that you're doing. So just thank you for the work and thanks for taking the time. Thank you so much, Brenda.
00:33:45
Speaker
Well, and now it's time for Annalise Jolly to take the stage.
Anneliese Jolly's Reporting on Sensitive Topics
00:33:50
Speaker
She talks about how she went about the reporting, how she met Zahara, how she collaborated on the piece, and first, how she arrived at this story. Let's do it.
00:34:11
Speaker
Sure. So I write a good amount about food and I also have reported in Mexico. I'm actually subscribed to kind of a Mexico news daily roundup. So that came across my inbox and I don't even check it all the time, but I happened to check it. This is, this was early, early 2021. I want to say like beginning of January. And I read about this story where in which women were
00:34:35
Speaker
creating a cookbook project to honor their missing loved ones who had been victims of enforced disappearance. And I was really struck by just the story and I was obviously familiar with the issue of enforced disappearances, but I had never heard of anyone pushing back against the issue through the lens of food.
00:34:55
Speaker
So I started researching this group. The name of the collective is Las Rastre Adores. And I started researching them and just kind of looking into their cookbook project and did a little background research. And then I ended up reaching out to Zahara maybe a month or so later. And she and I chatted because I knew she had been the lead photographer who was kind of documenting the group and had also documented the images for the cookbook itself.
00:35:23
Speaker
So she and I were in touch and that's after we spoke, that's when I ended up pitching the piece to the Atavist. Nice. And what was the, what did that pitch look like in terms of how you, how you broached it and why, why it was a good fit for say Atavist versus somewhere else? Well, I've read the Atavist for years and I love their commitment to
00:35:46
Speaker
long-form storytelling and how they really give each piece so much attention and time because, you know, they're only publishing one long-form story a month. So I had been a fan and had read that for a while. And this story kind of had some of the elements that I've seen featured in other stories. The multimedia element was something that came about later. So when I originally pitched the piece to Sayward, I had just
00:36:12
Speaker
kind of pitched it as a long-form story. I hadn't envisioned it with the visual element of the videos and photos that ended up being a part of it. But I pitched it as the story of this group of women who are fighting back against this giant sort of shapeless injustice of enforced disappearances. And one thing that really struck me about the story was that they are suffering from the lack of
00:36:41
Speaker
closure and they don't have bodies to even bury or to mourn or to grieve and it felt very profound to me that they were fighting back through this really sensory and physical outlet of cooking and even something that has been sort of traditionally relegated to the domestic fear and maybe not given its due as as a tool of resistance and so that dichotomy of the absence of bodies but then
00:37:08
Speaker
the physical form of cooking these meals for loved ones felt really profound. So when I first pushed it to say a word, I kind of focused on that. And then she and I went back and forth for a while and she asked if Sahara would be interested in providing, you know, kind of like the visual element of the story, which thankfully she was, she was excited about that. So then the three of us kind of started talking and got on some calls about what it would look like to produce less of a traditional
00:37:37
Speaker
written long-form piece and more of a multimedia experience for the reader and the viewer. So how did you go about getting access to the principal figures in this story? Well, that's where Zahara was so wonderful to work with because she has built relationship with these women for years. She's worked with them for a handful of years and her background has been documenting violence in various forms often throughout South America and in Mexico.
00:38:07
Speaker
But she's, you know, good friends with a lot of these women in the collective. She's worked with them for years. She's documented them. She has worked with them on the cookbook, which was a really intimate and sort of emotional process for many of the women. So she had already established these relationships of a lot of trust and intimacy.
00:38:30
Speaker
And so she was able to connect me to them, which was so helpful because we actually went and did the reporting together. So she was, you know, shooting footage for video and shooting the photos. And then I was interviewing and doing the reporting for the written side of things. And that was
00:38:49
Speaker
just invaluable because she was serving kind of as a fixer as well and had insight into which women in the collective might be best to focus on for a future story, who would be willing to talk to me, all of that. So I went in kind of knowing that the women who ended up appearing in the story were probably going to be the ones who would become central characters just based on her knowledge going into it all.
00:39:17
Speaker
Did you encounter any hesitance or resistance from people in the story not wanting to draw attention to themselves, giving that there could be some degree of cartel retaliation? Yeah, you know what? I think they have already sort of dealt with that just by virtue of being part of the collective, like by virtue of going out and searching for bodies.
00:39:41
Speaker
they are already, in some ways, drawing attention to themselves. And this particular collective, Las Rastre Adores, has received a good amount of press and attention over the years. The founder, Mirna, has received lots of attention and press and has kind of become one of Mexico's leading figures in the fight against disappearances and participating in advocacy around this issue.
00:40:09
Speaker
So I think many of the women have already kind of made their peace with the fact that they are part of a collective that maybe puts them more in danger or more in the spotlight because of that. So I didn't so much encounter resistance because of that, because people were concerned about personal safety. But I think it is a really, you know, it's an intimate story. It's really emotional. There's so much personal grief tied up in all of this.
00:40:39
Speaker
So I encountered some level of the women wanting to make sure that the story was not just going to be about their loss and not whoever their loved one was, whether it was a husband or a son, that they wouldn't be just characterized as their death. And that was really, really important to me. And I tried to say that at the outset of my interview is that, of course, your loved one is more than the way they died. And this is a story that
00:41:06
Speaker
I hope honors and dignifies both the loved one and the women who are missing their loved ones. But that was kind of the resistance I encountered, which totally made sense to me. So how did you go about navigating your reporting and your interviewing of these women, given that it's such a sensitive, grief-stricken topic? It was really tricky. I think I had a good amount of trepidation about exactly that going into the reporting.
00:41:36
Speaker
a little more fraught, and a lot more weighty than some of the stories I've reported before. On a personal level, I had experienced grief earlier this year. And then actually, when I was reporting the story, I was well, I still am pregnant. And so the issue of mothers, breathing children felt closer to home and more personal to me than it had when I set out with like the pre read, clear reporting and the pre research and all of that. And none of that
00:42:04
Speaker
means that I have experienced anything close to what these mothers have experienced. But I was a little more aware of the stakes, the emotional stakes, and yeah, just kind of the level of intimacy and weight that it that it was going to require to have these conversations. I mean, I'm so thankful that the women were as forthcoming and open and gracious as they were. And the way that I went about it was essentially just starting our conversations with an acknowledgement of
00:42:34
Speaker
you know, this is a really difficult subject. And I'm aware of that. And I am well aware that I can't understand or fathom what you've been through and are going through. And here's how, like, here's my vision for the story. Here's what I want to do with it. And then I would tell them that I really wanted to honor their loved ones who were missing, paint a picture of them that was more than the way they disappeared, that I wanted to honor the work and the resistance that the women were doing and their strengths and just
00:43:03
Speaker
everything they've been through and how they are still continuing to push forward and to search and to really kind of mother the ones that they've lost even in their grief. And I thought that was such a beautiful thing. So I really tried to tell them from the outset that that was my vision for the piece because they've been interviewed before, they've been featured before, they're aware of how a story can be told in so many different ways. So I just tried to set the stage for what I was hoping to do
00:43:33
Speaker
And again, them knowing Sahara and her already communicating the vision for the story and her having built those trusting relationships was also hugely helpful for me.
00:43:42
Speaker
And maybe you can give us a look behind the curtain in terms of your pre-reporting and pre-research, as you said. Given that, I think a lot of people sometimes discount or they don't realize how much legwork goes into the reporting in a story before you are essentially commissioned to do it.
00:44:04
Speaker
It gets a little meat on the bone, so you know what you have to run with so maybe you can just say you know Let us let us into the process by which you went about you know doing that initial pre-reporting Sure well, maybe just kind of sharing the timeline of the story will help set the stage for that because like I mentioned I first learned about this story I think in January of 2021 and
00:44:31
Speaker
I had spoken with Sahara and then I had spoken with Sayward and then we had spoken with the whole out of this team about what it would look like creatively to produce this kind of multimedia piece. And then Sahara and I were, you know, in a lot of communication talking about the logistics, when we were going to travel, when we were going to do the reporting, who would we feature, all of that kind of thing throughout the spring of this year. And then we had plans to do the reporting
00:44:59
Speaker
in June, I believe, and then because of the pandemic and some COVID stuff had to push our trip back even further. So the pre-reporting and the research was actually the bulk of the timeline of this story. I spent a ton of time researching, but also just in conversation with that of his team and Sahara before we even went to Sinaloa, which ended up not being until late July, early August of this year.
00:45:26
Speaker
And then I think I had a month to write the story. So the actual writing part was probably the quickest turnaround in terms of like just the whole timeline of the story. And then of course there was like the edits and the fact checking portion of everything. But I feel like typically when I've reported, especially when I've reported abroad, I will often
00:45:45
Speaker
do some pre-reporting, go actually report the piece and then sit with it for a really long time and take more time on the writing portion. And this story felt sort of flipped in that there was a ton of lead up, a ton of coordination, a ton of research and pre-reporting. And then I had, you know, these few weeks to just like write it all out and then submit it. And then of course go through the fact checking. And now you and I are talking at the end of the year. So it's been about a year, a year long process almost.
00:46:13
Speaker
Now, when it comes time for you to start synthesizing all that information that you've reported on, do you, you know, what's the process by which you go about organizing that and maybe outlining if you're an outliner as you start to head into the writing of the piece? Yeah, that's a great question. And I wish I had a better answer that might be useful for another writer, but it feels pretty like messy and intuitive.
00:46:40
Speaker
when I actually go about it, I do outline for stories like this. When I write more personal or creative essays, I do less outlining and more looking to be surprised by where the writing leads. And in this case, I don't necessarily want to be too surprised because I want to have this story arc that I've already envisioned through the research and the reporting and all of that. So I want to get across the arc of the story and arrive at the ending.
00:47:08
Speaker
So I do do a lot more outlining and with this piece specifically, you know, I had a lot of interview transcripts and then the translations to work through because they were conducted in Spanish and I wrote the story in English and that added another level, just another step to the process. But one thing I did with this story in particular was that I broke the piece into headings and different sections that
00:47:34
Speaker
Actually, those don't show up in the final version of the story because the photo and video content kind of served a similar purpose in terms of visually breaking up the story. But for my writing purposes, when I was doing this, I had different sections. So I think it started out with the missing, and that kind of outlined the issue of disappearance in Mexico. And then it was the search, and that was all about the search process and how the Rastreidoras go about searching for loved ones.
00:48:03
Speaker
And then it was the meals and that led into the cookbook project. And then I think the found was the next section. And that was, that ended up ultimately being about, I won't spoil the story, but about a woman who did end up finding her treasure, which is their word for their loved ones. And you can spoil it too. And then the last section was the living. Okay. Nice. And it's cool to spoil for the purposes of the interview, because I think we go on the assumption and I put a spoiler alert at the top.
00:48:33
Speaker
that it's good for people to read the story and then hear what the artist or the writers behind it have to say about it, so you can spoil away about that. Okay, great, spoil away. Yeah, so the found section was about Blanca ending up finding her husband, Canelo, finding his remains, and then it ended, the final section was the living, and that panned back to the women.
00:48:59
Speaker
the women who haven't found their loved ones, because to me it felt really important to acknowledge that for a lot of those who suffer from being relatives of those who've gone missing and those who have been disappeared, their grief is just endless and they're never given any sort of closure because they never find who they're looking for. And then of course in edits we kind of
00:49:25
Speaker
fiddled with the structure and changed it around. And the way the piece ultimately appears is different just because of the visual element as well. But all that to say, that was a really helpful way for me to think about these different pieces of the story almost as different chapters or buckets of what the story entails. So I outlined it that way. And then beyond that, I feel like I can't totally describe the process, just try to fill it in and write, you know, start at the top and then write through it.
00:49:52
Speaker
a page and then started to talk and write through it a page and a half and just keep doing that over and over and over. Now you essentially begin and end the story with with Blanca Soto.
Blanca Soto's Narrative Arc
00:50:04
Speaker
So maybe you can talk a little bit about you know why it was important to start and end the story with with hers. Yeah and I did that intentionally. I did want Blanca to be the central character and then to have several supporting characters
00:50:18
Speaker
helping to build out the story as a whole, but her story is kind of the central one from an individual perspective. And I did that because her story arc does have a resolution in terms of her finding her husband. And that's not to say that it's like neatly ties up and that everything is okay because she found him, like she still lives with grief and there's so much that continues for her, but it did have some sort of resolution.
00:50:46
Speaker
And she does continue to cook her dish, her dish that she contributed to the memory recipe book as the sole and she continues to cook that. And for her, it's this sort of act of healing and it gives her a vessel for her grief and allows her to continue mourning her husband while still moving forward in her life. So I want to kind of start and end with that dish itself and how it's this physical representation of this, you know, kind of abstract nebulous
00:51:14
Speaker
issue as a whole and also just of her grief. But then it also felt really important to bring in the stories of a couple other women, Lana and Monkey, who haven't yet found their treasure. And it felt really important to acknowledge that so many family members haven't found their loved ones and perhaps never will.
00:51:33
Speaker
Yeah, there's a, it's a real, there's a real touching moment too with Blanca where well Camilla had left his water cup upside down on top of this hutch in the kitchen and you know after when he left that day and then was subsequently this taken and disappeared and you know Zahara films it and you know Blanca she you know she does take it and she puts it where she can essentially a place where only she knows where it is but
00:52:01
Speaker
That must have been really, you know, just touching for you to see you just knowing, knowing her through the reporting you did. And what a moment, like on its surface, it just looks really simple, but it's just really, it's really heavy with with grief and yeah, and and longing for answers and lost ones. Yeah, yeah. And I think that speaks to kind of the human needs for ritual around grief. Like it's so important that we can
00:52:30
Speaker
bury and grave our loved ones because that feels like this final act of care and tenderness that we can offer them. And then everyone has, you know, sort of rituals or sort of physical acts that they do in remembering loved ones. And a lot of the stories are one of the, I guess, underlying themes of the story is sort of the importance of that and how in the absence of bodies cooking has kind of come to
00:53:00
Speaker
be that kind of ritualized way of grieving for many of these women and then for Blanca part of that for her too was you know being able to finally remove the cup from its place that Camilo had left it all these years and finally feeling ready to do that and you know she's it's not that she's totally moving forward in her life and everything has has tied up neatly for her but that she's taking these steps forward to kind of
00:53:27
Speaker
move into a new season of her life and that that felt like a significant part of it for her so yeah it was really special that she felt ready to do that when when we were there.
Memory Recipe Book Development
00:53:37
Speaker
How did you and Zahara cross paths and then come to work together on this? Yeah she um as I mentioned she had kind of spearheaded the memory recipe book along with this group of women so she had proposed the idea to them because
00:53:55
Speaker
as someone who has documented violence for a long time, one of the things she was encountering with the issue of enforced disappearance was that as a country, Mexico has kind of grown numb to it because it is so widespread and insidious. And she was thinking about different ways to present the issue to the public and to keep them engaged and also to honor the women who were
00:54:21
Speaker
suffering from this, who were victims in their own way. And so she had proposed the memory recipe book project and then had gone on to actually create it alongside the women. So they were kind of co-authors, I think is the term she uses. And they provided the recipes and the stories, and then she would document them cooking these dishes, often for the first time since their loved one had died.
00:54:44
Speaker
So when I first learned about the project, her name was on it. I knew she had exhibited the project in Mexico City and she was also just the easiest to get in touch with right away because as a photographer, she has the website and all of that. So I had just reached out to her wanting to know more about the project, but she was so open and receptive and eager to support the story in whatever way that she just kind of became my go-to person as I was doing some pre-reporting.
00:55:14
Speaker
And then I'm so glad that the out of his team ended up wanting to bring her on and to do kind of this visual multimedia story because it allowed us to work together, which was such a fun and new experience for me. Was there ever a challenge of not wanting to a trespass on each other's turf in the telling of the story, if that makes any sense? Yeah, it's an interesting thing.
00:55:41
Speaker
very many stories like this where I had worked with photographers before but the story feels different and not it the story feels equally weighted toward the visual side of things with the inclusion of the three short films. So it was interesting to do the reporting together because a lot of it was her shooting and gathering the footage and then me kind of
00:56:06
Speaker
just sitting back and observing. And then I would conduct the interviews, of course, too. But a lot of the reporting was just observation while we were there. And I think we had a couple of conversations leading up to the trip about, OK, how do you work? How do I work? What is this going to look like for you? But it definitely felt like her
00:56:29
Speaker
work in terms of the production of the images was so front loaded in terms of when we were actually there she had to get everything and then I was able to kind of sit back and absorb and observe everything and then conduct these interviews in which I also had a lot of content to work through but then had to go home and actually write the piece which at least for me the writing always takes a really long time. So there wasn't a sense of necessarily like trespassing on each other's turf or anything like that. We did have to
00:56:59
Speaker
sort of chat about in advance, like what do you need from this? What do I need from this? What is this going to look like for both of our parts? But we were sort of going through each day together, like going to the women's houses together and then just setting aside separate time to do what needed to be done, whether that was like me sitting down with someone alone or her getting the shots that she needed and me kind of just like taking notes in the background.
00:57:24
Speaker
So I don't know if that's like a very helpful response to your question, but it seemed to happen pretty naturally and intuitively. And I think that's thanks to her just like knowing the women already. So already having a lot of context going in and knowing how to set up the days with them since she'd already spent so much time shooting the cookbook beforehand. And then the women themselves were like familiar with the process of
00:57:49
Speaker
you know, cooking and being filmed and also talking about what they were doing while being filmed so they were more comfortable with the process as well.
00:57:57
Speaker
Nice. Well, it's a wonderful collaboration, the two of you did, and it's an incredibly touching story, and I deeply enjoyed it, and it was a great overall experience to read your work and to see Zahara's.
Conclusion & Community Support
00:58:13
Speaker
So I have to just commend the two of you on a job well done for what it's worth coming from a little guy like me, and I just want to thank you for the work, and thanks for coming on to talk a little shop.
00:58:25
Speaker
Yeah, thanks so much, Brendan. I really appreciate it. Thanks for all the thoughtful questions. It's time to go back and revisit this story from the side of things. So I appreciate the chance to chat with you.
00:58:42
Speaker
Well, thank you to everyone involved for coming on the show. Thank you for the time and for listening. Hey, if you had a good time, the show was partly made possible by the incredible cohort of members at the Patreon page. Building up those coffers grants you access to transcripts, the audio magazine coaching, and also asking questions. Helps pay for podcast hosting, which is several hundred dollars a year.
00:59:07
Speaker
to make sure that the backlog doesn't get deleted. It's always there for you as a trough of learning. So slop it on your plate. Dauntlers also go into the pockets of writers for the audio magazine, which at this point is twice a year. Visit patreon.com slash cnfpod. Shop around. Help support the community.
00:59:29
Speaker
And for the little guy, let's face it, podcast world, I'm a little guy. Everywhere else, I'm kind of a slob. But reviews make the world go around, man. If you can spare a moment and head over to Apple Podcast and leave a kind review of the show, I'll read it on the air. They mean everything to the way we're seeing effort.
00:59:49
Speaker
I have no name recognition so if people see more and more reviews they have to notice and they might join our little community and then they might become patrons and I can pay writers more and maybe even make some of that fat burrito money for myself.
01:00:06
Speaker
Beyond that, I'm gonna let you go. Gonna have another one of these jobs come out in a couple days. So you'll get another fix, okay? So in the meantime, stay wild, CNFers. And if you can't do, interview. See ya.