True Crime Telenovela

Maria and Julio are joined by Peniley Ramírez, executive producer of Futuro Unidad Hinojosa and Futuro’s Special Projects and Investigative Units to discuss the new upcoming podcast “USA v. García Luna.” Maria and Peniley talk about their experience reporting and hosting the five-episode series that examines the rise and fall of Genaro García Luna, a former high-ranking Mexican official facing trial in New York City next month for allegedly working with drug cartels to bring drugs into the United States. 

USA v. García Luna launches December 9th, wherever you get your podcasts. 

ITT Staff Picks: 

• “Given García Luna’s extensive U.S. government connections, his trial has the potential to peel back the secrecy surrounding drug war cooperation at the highest levels of the U.S. and Mexican governments and upend commonly held misperceptions of the Mexican drug war as a simple two-sided struggle between drug traffickers and law enforcement alone,” writes Ryan Devereaux in this 2021 piece for The Intercept. 

• Former DEA agent José Irizarry, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison for conspiring with Colombian cartels, talked to the Associated Press about the other alleged colleagues who were involved in corruption. 

• The government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has requested answers from the White House over the whereabouts of Édgar Valdez Villarreal, a notorious drug lord whose arrest in August 2010 was orchestrated by García Luna, El País reports. 

Photo credit: AP Foto/Elizabeth Williams, archivo